Talk:Jehovah
Text removed (-dmh):
Proper noun
God's Name.
One of them. Within the Hebrew scriptures there are several: Adonai (LORD) and Elohim (GOD) being prominent. In the King James Version of the Bible, the Hebrew tetragrammaton for the name "Jehovah" is generally rendered by the substitute words LORD or GOD, the whole word written in capital letters, whereas the Hebrew words 'Adonai' and 'Elohim', translated as Lord and God respectively, are shown with only the first letter of the word capitalised, thus differentiating between the three different Hebrew words.
In Exodus 6:3 God declares that his name is actually JEHOVAH, not 'Lord', or 'God', because Lord and God are titles, not names. (See I Corinthians 8:5)
Believed by some modern scholars to have been pronounced like Yahweh. Other evidence points to a name with three syllables.
I believe that "Yahweh" is the strong consensus of modern scholars, based on several strands of evidence, but rather than dispute this here we should leave it to Wikipedia
'Jehovah' (Yehovah) has been the usual pronunciation for centuries.
'Um . . . the Jewish tradition of not pronouncing יהוה at all predates the both reconstructions — thus the need for reconstruction. That "Jehovah" has long standing outside Jewish tradition certainly gives it legitimacy as a dictionary entry, but has little to do with how accurate it may or may not be.
Out of misplaced reverence for God's holy Name, the Hebrews gradually stopped pronouncing it.
This seems, oh I don't know, maybe just slightly POV? I'm pretty sure that an observant Jew would not cite "misplaced reverence" as his or her reason for prefering Adonai or HaShem.
Etymology
Causative fom (Hiphil) of the verb "havah" (הוה) "to be / to become". "He causes to be" or "He comes to be". (kept)
It has generally been said that the form of God's Name "Jehovah" was a Latin mis-transliteration of the Hebrew consonants "YHVH" or "JHWH", because the Name was dotted with the vowel-ponts of the word "Adonay" (Lord) or "Elohim" (God).
That was my understanding, but again this discussion belongs elsewhere.
However, commentators as Rashi usually refered to it as "Shem Hameforash", that is: "The Name, Pronounced according to its letters."
The book given in the link said Maimonides, FWIW
Some have remarked that the letters are a rearrangement of the three words: "was" (haya, היה) "is" (ho-veh, הווה) and "shall be" (ye-hi-yeh, יהיה), implying the concept of His eternal existence. Such speculative etymologies are common for this word.
This seems more akin to Grammatria (divining additionaly meanings from the forms of words after the fact) than speculative etymology (speculating about the origins of the words themselves, but again this belongs elsewhere
All in all, there is an extraordinary amount of ink spilled over "the correct" transliteration of this particular name, and I would think it prudent for Wiktionary to steer clear of as much of this as possible -dmh 05:43, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The problem , if it is a problem, is that, as a transliteration of the Hebrew into English we only have YHWH. For the Y, most Hebrew names such as Jerusalem, Joshua, Jesus, Jew, Jeremiah, Judah, Judea, Jacob, Jabesh, Joconiah, Jehoiakim, Jonah, Jepthah, Jehu, Jezebel, Jeroboam, etc etc .. are rendered in English with a 'J' letter and sound. It would therefore seem that rendering the Y in the Hebrew YHVH as a J in English is the norm for standard English spelling and pronunciation of the initial letter of God's name represented by the Hebrew letters 'YHWH' --217.205.242.172 22:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
RFV discussion[edit]
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Meaning "Jehovah's Witnesses" (the organisation): "I left Jehovah ten years ago." Equinox ◑ 12:27, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- Never heard Jehovah used that way. The Jehovah's Witnesses normally refer to themselves (the organisation) as "The Witnesses", "The congregation", "The brotherhood", "The society", They hold God's personal name in very high esteem, and use it solely in its primary sense. If an ex-witness says that they "left Jehovah" they mean that literally, which automatically implies leaving the organisation. -- ALGRIF talk 10:09, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
- Deleted. Equinox ◑ 17:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)