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Should the Name Be Used?The Watchtower—1983 | December 1
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Archaeologists have found confirmation of the Bible’s statements that the people used this name. In the 1930’s they discovered the Lachish Letters, pottery fragments believed to date from the Babylonian conquest in the seventh century B.C.E. These repeatedly use such expressions as: “May YHWH [Yahweh, or Jehovah] cause my lord to hear this very day tidings of good!”
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God’s Name in the Christian ScripturesThe Watchtower—1983 | December 1
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Jesus’ early disciples also saw God’s name in the Septuagint—the translation of the Bible into Greek, which the early Christians used in teaching and writing. True, at one time it was thought that God’s name did not appear in the Septuagint, but it is now definitely known that this name was so respected that the Tetragrammaton (the term scholars use for the four letters with which God’s name is written in Hebrew) was copied in Hebrew letters, right into the Greek text.
Aquila wrote God’s name in Hebrew letters in his Greek text as late as the second century. In the third century Origen wrote that “in the most faithful manuscripts THE NAME is written in Hebrew characters.” In the fourth century the Bible translator Jerome wrote: “We find the four-lettered name of God (i.e., יהוה) in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in the ancient letters.”
Dr. Paul E. Kahle writes: “We now know that the Greek Bible text [the Septuagint] as far as it was written by Jews for Jews did not translate the Divine name by kyʹrios [Lord], but the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters was retained in such MSS [manuscripts].”—The Cairo Geniza, pages 222, 224.
What does this mean? It means that, whether they spoke Hebrew or Greek, when Jesus’ hearers read the Scriptures they saw God’s name in them. Thus, it is only reasonable that when they quoted these texts they would follow the custom they had observed—putting the four Hebrew letters of Jehovah’s name in the text of their Christian Greek Scripture writings.
In the Journal of Biblical Literature, George Howard, associate professor of religion at the University of Georgia, wrote: “Since the Tetragram was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible which made up the Scriptures of the early church, it is reasonable to believe that the N[ew] T[estament] writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the biblical text.”—1977, Volume 96, No. 1, page 77.
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