Editorial – Yahweh Or Lord

“And as Essaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha” (Rom 9:29).

Yahweh

Yahweh, the memorial name of God is nowhere to be found in the KJV of the Bible, although an old form, Jehovah, is to be found four times. In this, the vast majority of modern translations follow the same pattern: neither Jehovah nor Yahweh is to be found in the NIV, RSV, or ESV. However, almost all Christadelphians are very familiar with the term, because its use is very common is our community. This has been true from the earliest days. Starting in 1859, John Thomas wrote a series of articles which were later published as his study on God manifestation, Phanerosis. And on many occasions since then the meaning of the term, and its significance, has been expounded.

I do not intend to repeat this type of exposition, but the use of the term in our community. It has become common — almost universal in some ecclesias — for brethren when reading the Old Testament to substitute Yahweh wherever LORD occurs in the Old Testament

LORD

The memorial name of God customarily appears in the English versions as LORD. In the Hebrew the word behind this term is normally1 originally represented by four consonants, YHWH, the “Tetragrammaton”. Very few vowels were included in the original text: the knowledge of pronunciation was passed on by tradition. Sometime around the sixth or seventh century A.D., a written vowel system was introduced known as the Masoretic System of Points (from the word “Massora” which means “tradition”). The consonantal text remained unchanged and the new vowel signs were not placed among the consonants but as tiny dots and dashes below or above them.

The Divine name presented a problem to the Masoretes because the Jews had for a long time regarded it with such awe that they would not utter it. So no one was absolutely certain how it should be pronounced and therefore what the original vowel sounds were. Nor did they wish that anyone should utter it. So they compromised by placing in the text the vowels of the Hebrew word Adonay with the consonants YHWH. Adonay is the word represented in the A.V. by “Lord” (‘ord’ in lowercase). The first “a” in Adonay is in Hebrew an “indistinct” vowel so we can see how the combination of YHWY consonants and Adonay vowels produced YeHoWaH or Jehovah. In their reading of the Scriptures to this day Jews still say the whole word Adonay when Yehowah appears in the text. Many scholars believe that the original pronunciation of YHWH was Yahweh, but this is by no means certain.

In the New Testament, in quotations from the Old, the Hebrew YHWH is invari­ably rendered as Kyrios, which perhaps indicates, through divine inspiration, a tradition established very early. Interestingly, in both Rom 9:29 and James 5:4, we have the term sabaoth, which in Romans is a translation of Isa 1:9, where the Hebrew is Yahweh Sabaoth (Lord of Hosts). So although Yahweh is translated by Kyrios, Greek for Lord, the Hebrew term Sabaoth is transliterated.

It might also be mentioned that in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament common in the first century, the word “Yahweh” nowhere occurs. Some have argued that this is because of early Christian influence, although there is no direct evidence of this I can see. So, for whatever reason, the early Christian Church never used the term “Yahweh”, preferring instead the Greek translation.

John Thomas never used the term Yahweh until he started studying the Divine Name in detail in 1859, when he commenced a series of articles entitled “The Mosaic and Nazarene Teaching Concerning God”, later issued as “Phanerosis”. Instead he had used “Jehovah”, starting from his earliest writings in 1834.

Present Day

Ever since I was baptized, I have heard many valuable expositions on the Divine Name, and indeed you can find well over 5,000 uses of the term in The Christadel­phian, with no year missing at least one reference. Fifty years of The Tidings gives similar results, with well over 1,000 references. So the knowledge and awareness of the meaning of the Divine Name has been emphasized in our community since before the name “Christadelphian” was in use. But it was only in the late 1960’s that I remember first hearing the term used while reading the Old Testament. There was a great wave of enthusiasm that swept the UK at the time for the practice. I remember I had bought a copy of The Jerusalem Bible, mainly because as a Catholic Bible it contained the Apocrypha, which I was looking into at the time. But many noted quite approvingly of the fact that it often used the term “Yahweh” in the Old Testament. And thus the practice spread, with sometimes unfortunate consequences, at least in the UK.

By the late 1970’s, there were several ecclesias that had separated over this practice, some holding we ought to read the KJV as written, some holding that, out of respect for our Heavenly Father, we ought to use “Yahweh” for “LORD” where it occurs in the Old Testament. This area of dispute seems to have died down, but the tensions still survive. And in North America, a country now somewhat more traditional in Christadelphian ways than the UK, I would suspect that at least half the brethren will substitute “Yahweh” for LORD while reading the Old Testament and some will substitute “ecclesia” for church.

Yahweh

There are some quite powerful arguments for substituting Yahweh for LORD.

  • Yahweh desires that all people “know that his Name is LORD (Yahweh)” (Jer 16:21), and we are privileged to have that great opportunity.
  • The Name “Yahweh” is expressive of His purpose achieved through Jesus Christ. It means, at least in part, “He who will be manifested,” and thus expresses the divine intention to recreate Himself in those who are ‘like Him’.
  • It is the importance and deep significance of the Name that delights those who so understand it, and who honor it in expression. It is the Name by which He has made Himself known in the original Scriptures.
  • With the proliferation of so-called religions in our midst, it is important that we recognize that there is only one true god, who only is the creator of all things, and who has made known to us his name.

There are those who point out other aspects of this discussion:

  • Neither in any manuscript of the New Testament, nor in the Greek version of the Old Testament, is there any hint of the use of the Hebrew name of our Heavenly Father.
  • The reason for this has been much discussed. Whether the Greek speaking Christians, the majority audience of the New Testament, would not understand the meaning of the transliteration, or that the minority Jewish Christians would be offended, are only two of the many suggestions.
  • It is only in the last generation of Christadelphians that this custom has arisen.
  • The consistent advice of both The Christadelphian and The Tidings has been to counsel against insistence on the practice of substituting Yahweh for Lord in reading the Old Testament.
  • All recognize the importance of emphasizing the vital importance of understanding the significance of the divine name, but this does not mean we should use the term is reading our modern translation of the Bible.

Conclusion

The arguments for and against the substituting Yahweh for Lord are, I believe, a matter of personal opinion. No-one would find any problem with emphasizing the meaning of the term Lord in expounding from the Old Testament, or in substituting Yahweh for Lord during such an exposition. And I have no problems with brethren who fell impelled to substitute the term when reading from the Bible at Memorial Service or during a Bible class. But I have concerns in two areas

  • When we imply or state that those who do not follow the practice are in some way incorrect.
  • When we follow the same practice when speaking to strangers, who know nothing of the background. So doing would tend to leave the impression of a cult, not a Bible-loving community.
  1. In fact, 47 times in the KJV the Hebrew term translated by Lord is not Yahweh but YAH, as can be seen in the KJV at Psa 68:4, the only time it is transliterated as Jah. And four times we see Jehovah as a transliteration of YHWH. An interesting verse is Isa 26:4, where we have Lord Jehovah in the KJV, Hebrew Yah Yahweh.