This issue concerning the divine name has existed for hundreds of years, and there have been a number of Bible translations that have restored the divine name in the Hebrew Scriptures. One such version is the American Standard Version of 1901. However, in recent times this issue has gained even more attention because of a particular Bible translation. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, translated by the Watchtower organization, has not only restored the divine name to the Hebrew portion of the Bible, but has used the name 237 times in the New Testament. In its Introduction, it explains the restoration of the divine name.
Since the Bible sets forth the sacred will of the Sovereign Lord of the universe, it would be a great indignity, indeed an affront to his majesty and authority, to omit or hide his unique divine name, which plainly occurs in the Hebrew text nearly 7,000 times as (YHWH). Therefore, the foremost feature of this translation is the restoration of the divine name to its rightful place in the English text. It has been done, using the commonly accepted English form “Jehovah” 6,973 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
Even though there have been a few Bibles that have used the divine name in the New Testament. (see Appendix C) This version has been severely criticized for its use of Jehovah 237 times. One recent critic, Lynn Lundquist who has written a book called "The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures." Lundquist argues that the Greek word Kurios should only be translated in English Bibles as "Lord." Even though the translators of the NWT knew there were no Christian Greek manuscripts that include the full form of the Tetragrammaton, they sti...
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...roaches represent emphasis, respectively, on readability and on literal fidelity to the source text. There is, however, in reality no sharp boundary between dynamic and formal equivalence. Broadly, the two represent a spectrum of translation approaches.
Depending on the method used for a translation, we will come across the situation shown below. With regard to the name Jesus, some translators have inserted the name Jesus into the English text of the NT where there is no manuscript support. In the following chart, we evaluate 16 Bibles on their use of Jesus in the NT. As you can see by the numbers, the name varies by nearly 1000 occurrences from the ASV to the NCV. These translators obviously were using either dynamic equivalence or formal equivalence with reference to Jesus name. Is this an acceptable translation method? It has been accepted for over 100 years.
In the study of the Greek language here lately Tom takes you there. He often refers to the Greek translation of some of the scriptures he is referring to. This could be good or not. For me it was good because we are currently studying Greek. For some...
The book of Revelation gives us our greatest insight to the use of God's name in the New Testament. The imagery of the book of Revelation is very similar to the prophetic books of the Old Testament where the name was used frequently. But even more, the book of Revelation can be used to disprove most theories as to why the divine name was not used in the NT. The book uses many references to God's name. These are not just some kind of reference to God's character, since we are told this name is written on something on a number of occasions. You can not write someone's character on a forehead. These must be references to a literal name.
Most well-known English versions of the Hebrew Bible translate the Hebrew "Hallelujah" (as at Psalm 150:1) as two Hebrew words, generally rendered as "Praise (ye)" and "the LORD", but the second word is given as "Yah" in the Lexham English Bible and Young's Literal Translation, "Jah" in the New World Translation, "Jehovah" in the American Standard Version, and "Hashem" in the Orthodox Jewish Bible. Instead of a translation, the transliteration "Hallelujah" is used by JPS Tanakh, International Standard Version, Darby Translation, God's Word Translation, Holman Christian Standard Bible, and The Message, with the spelling "Halleluyah" appearing in the Complete Jewish Bible. The Greek-influenced form "Alleluia" appears in Wycliffe's Bible, the Knox Version and the New Jerusalem Bible.
Robinson, B. A. (2008, March 30). Books of the Hebrew Scripture . Retrieved May 7, 2011, from Religious Tolerance: http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_otb3.htm
Both God and mortals understand the tremendous power of language and of naming. For example, at one point ". ....
The Old Testament and the Bible itself has been studied extensively for centuries. Archeologists and Scholars have labored and pondered over texts trying to decipher its clues. It does not matter how many times the Old Testament has been studied there will always be something new to learn about it or the history surrounding it. In the book Reading the Old Testament: an Introduction, the author Lawrence Boadt presents us with a few different authors of the Old Testament that used different names for God and had a unique insight into the texts. These four sources are titled P for priests, E for Elohim, J for Jehovah, and Y for Yahweh (95). These four unique sources help us realize that there is more than one author of the Pentateuch. These authors took the text and adapted for their culture. This independent source is used by scholars to help gain insight into what was behind the texts of the bible so we are not left with an incomplete picture of what went into the creation of the bible. Julius Wellhausen used these four sources to publish a book to able us to better understand the sources and to give it credibility with the Protestant scholars at the time (Boadt 94). These sources that is independent of the bible as in the DVD Who Wrote the Bible? and the Nova website aide in shedding light on the history that surrounded the writers who wrote the text and what inspired them to write it in the first place. The DVD shows the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the extensive history of the texts and all its sources in an effort to try to find exactly who wrote the bible (Who Wrote). These scrolls have aided scholars immensely by giving us some of the oldest known manuscripts of the bible in the world today. It shows that the bible w...
Sakenfeld, Kathaine Doob, ed. The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: D-H: Volume 2. Vol. 2. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2007.
Since their founding in 1872 by Charles Taze Russell, the religious principles of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been diametrically in conflict with fundamental positions held by both the Protestant and Catholic churches. While they believe in the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible, they have a different translation – the New World Translation –, which is viewed by many traditional Bible scholars as a “frightful mistranslation”.
Holy Bible: the New King James Version, Containing the Old and New Testaments.Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Bibles, 1982. Print.
For centuries now Christians have claimed to possess the special revelation of an omnipotent, loving Deity who is sovereign over all of His creation. This special revelation is in written form and is what has come to be known as The Bible which consists of two books. The first book is the Hebrew Scriptures, written by prophets in a time that was before Christ, and the second book is the New Testament, which was written by Apostles and disciples of the risen Lord after His ascension. It is well documented that Christians in the context of the early first century were used to viewing a set of writings as being not only authoritative, but divinely inspired. The fact that there were certain books out in the public that were written by followers of Jesus and recognized as being just as authoritative as the Hebrew Scriptures was never under debate. The disagreement between some groups of Christians and Gnostics centered on which exact group of books were divinely inspired and which were not. The debate also took place over the way we can know for sure what God would have us include in a book of divinely inspired writings. This ultimately led to the formation of the Biblical canon in the next centuries. Some may ask, “Isn’t Jesus really the only thing that we can and should call God’s Word?” and “Isn’t the Bible just a man made collection of writings all centered on the same thing, Jesus Christ?” This paper summarizes some of the evidences for the Old and New Testament canon’s accuracy in choosing God breathed, authoritative writings and then reflects on the wide ranging
Unger, Merrill F. The New Unger's Bible Dictionary. Ed. R. K. Harrison, Howard F. Vos, and Cyril J. Barber. Chicago: Moody, 1988. Print.
New Revised Standard Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1989. Print. The. Russell, Eddie.
The Holy Bible: giant print ; containing the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues ; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special command, authorized King James version ; words of Chri. Giant print reference ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Pub. House, 1994.
The New Interpreter's Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha. Nashville: Abingdon Press, ©2003.
Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1995. Print. (BS195 .C66 1995)