Jehovah is not in the Bible!

February 26th, 2008 by J.R. Miller Leave a reply »

Did you know that the name “Jehovah” is not in the original Bible?

Exodus 3:14 reveals the personal name of God as “I Am Who I Am” (That’s right, Popeye stole it from God.) In the Hebrew this was written as YHWH . Through time,religionists made this special name so “sacred” that some refused to write it and would insert other names in its place.

The name “Jehovah” probably first came into use during the Middle Ages where the consonants from the revealed name of God; YHWH, and  the vowels from one of the generic terms for God: adonai, were combined into the new Man-made word “Jehovah.”

As time went by, the Hebrew was translated into Latin, the Latin into German and  the German into English.  Eventually the translation from one language to the next converted the “Y” into a “J” and the “W” into a “V”.   If you have ever met someone with a German accent, you will notice how the letter “w” is pronounced like the English “v” and the letter “y” is pronounced with “j” sound.   Eventually the King James translation adopted the made-up term “Jehovah” which is not really in the Bible.  Of course this has a lot of important implications for all of the King James Version Only folks, the Jehovah’s Witness faithful, and even for all of our English translations.

There is a newer practice of writing the personal name of God as, “Yahweh.”  This translation brings back the revealed name of God by using the Hebrew consonants with the addition of vowels to make it more readable in English.  This is a completely acceptable translation.  However, my own practice is simply use the Hebrew consonants with no added vowels, but the pronunciation of YHWH is the same as Yahweh.

I hope that helps my readers better understand why I use the personal name of God; YHWH, in my writing.

This blog post is based on my Bible curriculum available at EmergingLife.org.

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Posted in Bibliology, OT Translation, Paterology

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4 comments

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  1. Eric Bryant says:
    March 5, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    I have always found this fact so fascinating! Why is it that so many people still don’t know this?!?

    Reply
  2. eahaddix says:
    March 6, 2008 at 8:19 am

    J.R., there is no “w” sound in Hebrew, so how can you say that the Tetragrammaton should be YHWH, as opposed to YHVH?

    Reply
  3. J. R. Miller says:
    March 6, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    Obviously we are using English letters to represent Hebrew, so there is no perfect solution except to teach everyone Hebrew. Here is a short quote from Wikipedia that might help you understand the translation dilemma:

    “These four letters are usually transliterated JHWH in German, French and Dutch, and either YHWH, YHVH, JHWH or JHVH in English.”

    You are welcome to use the V if you like. the point is not to become dogmatic about which 4 letters, but simply to demonstrate that Jehovah is not in the Bible.

    Reply
  4. Prickly says:
    September 20, 2008 at 6:31 pm

    There is a good discussion of YHWH
    on http://www.yhwhhisgreatname.org

    Just thought you might like to look at it.

    Reply

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