• The New Welsh Bible—An Improvement?
    Awake!—1990 | January 8

    • In the Hebrew Scriptures, the name of God appears in the form of the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, which in Welsh is translated as Jehofa, or Jehofah. When asked what policy Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd would follow in translating this Tetragrammaton, the translating committee replied: “Regarding Jehofah, this is an artificial name! . . . It [Jehofah] may sound noble, but it does not correspond to anything in the original Bible language . . . The word [Tetragrammaton] may be in the Bible over seven thousand times, but the Jews said (the) LORD every time.” So, apparently guided by Jewish tradition, they chose not to translate the personal name of God but to substitute ARGLWYDD (LORD) instead. Although the translators take exception to the use of Jehofah, in their “Preface to the Old Testament,” they acknowledge that there is another “traditional manner of translating the divine name . . . Yahweh.” Why, then, did they not at least use that?

      The New English Bible in a footnote to Exodus 3:15 states: “The Hebrew consonants are YHWH, probably pronounced Yahweh, but traditionally read Jehovah.” In the modern New Jerusalem Bible, the Tetragrammaton is translated “Yahweh” because as its Editor’s Foreword admits: “To say ‘The Lord is God’ is surely a tautology [redundancy], as to say ‘Yahweh is God’ is not.” Yet, Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd takes this very course when it translates, for example, verse 3 of Psalm 100 as “Gwybyddwch mai’r ARGLWYDD sydd Dduw [“Know that the LORD is God”].”

      Although Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd translating committee stated their policy that “the Divine Name in the Old Testament . . . will appear as LORD,” they are strangely inconsistent. At Exodus 17:15, their text reads “Jehofa-​Nissi” (“Jehovah Is My Signal [Pole],”) and at Barnwyr (Judges) 6:24, “Jehofa-shalom” (“Jehovah Is Peace”). Yet, for similar expressions employing the divine name, such as “Jehovah-jireh” (“Jehovah Will See to [It]; Jehovah Will Provide”) at Genesis 22:14, “ARGLWYDD” appears, without any explanation.

      In contrast with these inconsistencies in Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd, Hebrew scholar William Morgan appreciated that the Tetragrammaton denotes personality. He used the name Jehofa, for example, at Exodus 6:2, 3 and Psalm 83:18. Interesting, too, is his use of the shortened form of the divine name, Jah, in his translation “Halelu-​Jah” (“Praise Jah, you people”) in the Christian Greek Scriptures at Gweledigaeth Ioan (Revelation) 19:1, 3, 4, and Re 19:6.