From the Never Thirsy website: One should also note that a Greek grammatical rule known as Colwell’s rule states that when a predicate nominative (theos) precedes the verb it cannot be considered indefinite. This means the WBS violated a basic Greek grammar rule. As expected, the WBTS takes exception to the rule, but unsuccessfully. In summary, the NWT has ignored the basics of Greek grammar in order to push their theological viewpoint. See https://www.neverthirsty.org/bible-qa/qa-archives/question/how-accurate-is-the-new-world-translation/
Reply: The problem with all of this is that no one uses Colwell's Rule any more...it is uniformly rejected. Oh sure, it was used for decades as a defence for the definiteness of John 1:1c. As Daniel Wallace in his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics writes: “Almost immediately many scholars (especially of a more conservative stripe) misunderstood Colwell’s rule. They saw the benefit of the rule for affirming the deity of Christ in John 1:1.” (p. 257)
Jason Beduhn adds in his book, Truth in Translation, "So Bruce Metzger mistakenly writes that 'Colwell's Rule' 'cessitates the rendering' ... and the Word was God' (Metzger 1953, page 75). Sakae Kubo and Walter F. Specht, in their book So Many Versions? Twentieth-century English Versions of the Bible, say 'It is true that the Greek does not have the article before 'God' here. However, since in this verse in Greek theos (God) is a predicate noun and precedes the verb and subject, it is definite, since a defmite predicate noun when it precedes the verb never takes an article in Greek" (Kubo and Specht, page 99)....Since many Bible readers rely on the opinions of people like Metzger, Kubo, and Specht, it is easy to understand why the public remains ill-informed about assessing Bible translations."
Two other famous 1970's studies were among the first to attack Colwell's Rule. Philip B. Harner in his “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1,” (p. 87, published in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 92, 1973.) stated “In John 1:1 I think that the qualitative force of the predicate is so prominent that the noun cannot be regarded as definite.” Colwell actually stated, "The absence of the article does not make the predicate indefinite or qualitative when it precedes the verb." The other study was provided by Paul S. Dixon in his “The significance of the Anarthrous Predicate Nominative in John”(1975) write: “Colwell’s rule cannot be applied to [John 1:1] as an argument for definiteness...The rule says nothing about definiteness.”
In other words, "Colwell's rule’ is not a valid rule of Greek grammar." Jason Beduhn. As someone else wrote: "Colwell's Rule is incorrectly articulated (pardon the pun, please)."
But let's take the Never Thirty's website statement "that when a predicate nominative (theos) precedes the verb it cannot be considered indefinite."
Simply looking in the Gospel of John, over half of the pre-verbal anarthrous predicate nominatives (such as in John 1:1c) actually appear to be indefinite. For example:
John 4:19 has PROFHTHS EI SU which translates to: "you are a prophet."
John 6:70 has DIABOLOS ESTIN which translates to: "is a slanderer."
John 8:34 has DOULOS ESTIN which translates to: "is a slave."
John 8:44 has ANQRWPOKTONOS HN which translates to "a murderer."
John 8:44 has EUSTHS ESTIN which translates to "he is a liar."
John 8:48 has SAMARITHS EI SU which translates to "you are a Samaritan."
John 9:8 has PROSAITHS HN which translates to "as a beggar."
John 9:17 has PROFTHS ESTIN which translates to "He is a prophet."
John 9:24 has hAMARTWLOS ESTIN which translates to "is a sinner."
John 9:25 has hAMARTWLOS ESTIN which translates to "he is a sinner."
John 10:1 has KLEPTHS ESTIN which translates to "is a thief"
John 10:13 has MISQWTOS ESTIN which translates to "a hired hand."
John 12:6 has KLEPTHS HN which translates to "he was a thief."
John 18:35 has MHTI EGO IOUDAIOS EIMI which translates to "I am not a Jew, am I?"
John 18:37 has BASILEUS EI SU which translates to "So you are a king?"
John 18:37 also has BASILEUS EIMI EGW which translates to "I am a king."
Notice the indefinite article "a" inserted, in all of these examples. A definite translation would turn John 8:48 to "you are Samaritan" or "you are the Samaritan" which doesn't really work. A qualitative translation would mean that we would translate John 9:25 as "he is sinful", which would work, but most Bibles I have examined don't translate it that way.
In conclusion, the translation "the Word was a god" is a grammatical, proper and better translation for John 1:1c, despite some fake rules. The acceptance of this Piltdown Man of Greek Grammar should make us question these types of "scholars" and their research methodology.
Only $6.99 - You can pay using the Cash App by sending money to $HeinzSchmitz and send me an email at theoldcdbookshop@gmail.com with your information. You can also pay using Facebook Pay in Messenger
Books are in the public domain. I will take checks or money orders as well. Contents (created on a Windows computer):
The Book of Yahweh - The Yahwist Bible by Clarimond Mansfield 1922
Fragments from the Primitive Document in 7 Early Books of the Old Testament by an Unknown Genius of the 9th Century BC
A Greek and English lexicon to the New Testament by John Parkhurst
(Not a great quality scan, but on page 388 of the original you can read under Kurios: "III. In LXX it answers to the several names or titles of God . . . but far most frequently to [the Tetragrammaton]: . . . In the N.T., likewise Kurios, when used as a name of God . . .most usually corresponds to . . . Jehovah, and in this sense is applied."
The LORD said to my lord - Adoni and the Divine Title by Heinz Schmitz
A Misunderstood Jehovah by Heinz Schmitz
A Study in American Hebraic Names, article in The Improvement Era (Mormon Periodical) 1916
Jehovah by Clement Wood 1920
Jehovah Magnified by George Muller 1895
Amos- an essay in exegesis by Hinckley Gilbert Thomas Mitchell 1900
"The name by which the prophet most frequently refers to the Deity is Jehovah (Yahweh). This he uses in every variety of expression and construction, and no fewer than fifty-two times. The word God on the other hand, occurs but once..."
The Ineffable Name, article in The Homiletic review
The Origin of the Name Jehovah, article in The Modern review 1882
The doctrine of Jehovah (one page hard to read) by John Wilson 1839
An Interesting Question: How Old is Jehovah, article in Current opinion 1888
Beginnings of Hebrew Monotheism - The Ineffable Name, article in The Methodist Review 1902
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES, Volume 1 by Albert Mackey 1917 (has a large section on "Jehovah")
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES, Volume 2 by Albert Mackey 1917
Jehovah-Eve, article in The Church monthly 1861
Isis Unveiled - a master-key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology by HP Blavatsky 1877 Volume 1
Isis Unveiled - a master-key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology by HP Blavatsky 1877 Volume 2 (mentions Jehovah 128 times, including "Jehovah identical with Bacchus" and "Jehovah not the Ineffable Name"
A New Solution to an Old Problem, article in Bibliotheca sacra ("It is well known that Ex. vi. 3 involves a problem with regard to the use of the Divine Name YHWH("Jehovah," or rather Yahweh), as to whether it was or was not used in pre-Mosaic times.") 1913
The Name Jehovah in the Abrahamic Age, article in The Expositor 1903
The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Volume 1 1893 (Jehovah not the Supreme Deity, Jehovah a God of the Elements, Jehovah one of the Elohim,
The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Volume 2 1893 (Jehovah a Personating Spirit)
The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Volume 3 1893 (Jehovah and Teraphim, etc)
Bible mystery and Bible meaning by Thomas Troward 1913
Who was Jehovah? by John Page Hopps 1891
The Name Jehovah, article in Tracts for the Christian seasons 1864
The Open Mystery - a reading of the Mosaic story 1897
A Reply to Professor Robertson Smith including a vindication of Protestant theology, a critique on "the newer criticism", and some important hints on the integration of Bible truth, the mystery of the divine names and of the Elohistic and Jehovistic styles of sacred scripture by P Melville 1882
Thirty thousand thoughts by HDM Spence 1885 (JEHOVISTIC NAMES AND TITLES OF GOD)
The Kabbalah, its doctrines, development, and literature by Christian D Ginsburg 1920 (Jehovah is mentioned 29 times)
Qabbalah: The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol Or Avicebron by Isaac Myer 1888
The Names of God, and Meditative Summaries of Divine Perfections by Leonardus Lessius 1912
Genesis and its authorship by John Quarry 1873 (On the use of the names of God in the book of Genesis)
Personal Names in the Bible by WF Wilkinson 1865
Divine Name Bibles on Youtube
God: his knowability, essence, and attributes by Joseph Pohle 1911
The Names of God in the Old Testament, article in The Lutheran church 1903
The Angel of Jehovah, article in the Bibliotheca Sacra 1859
The Angel of Jehovah, article in The Exegete and homiletic monthly 1880
The Angel of Jehovah, article in The Christian examiner and general review 1836
Jehovah-Jireh by John C Smith 1855
Lectures on the Pentateuch and the Moabite stone by John William Colenso - 1873
The Religion of Israel by George Barton 1918
Ron Rhodes vs Jehovah- Jehovah, Yahweh or LORD?
"Many may argue that some, like the Jews, stopped saying the Divine Name in order that they may not break the commandment, "Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain." (Ex 20:7). Yet, I do not see the same kind of zeal to remove the sex organs for fear of breaking the commandment at v. 14, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." This is the height of piety and arrogance, and nothing else."
How Many of the 237 Occurences of "Jehovah" in the NWT Christian Greek Scriptures (NT) are Traceable back to the Old Testament? by Heinz Schmitz
A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language by John Gill
Eighteenth-century theologian John Gill in his writing, A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowel-Points and Accents,disputed the idea that the vowel points were invented by the Masorites. Gill claimed that the use of Hebrew vowel points and therefore of the name Jehovah (Ye-HO-VaH in Hebrew) is documented from before 200 BC, and even back to Adam, throughout the centuries of Jewish Authorities, the early Church and the following millennium. He argued that throughout this history the Masorites did not invent the vowel points and accents, but that they were delivered to Moses by God at Sinai
A Response to Lynn Lundquist's "The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures"
Jehovah, God of battles up to date, the German God by Harvey Watts 1918
The God of the Jews - Jehovah Unveiled 1819
An article on the Divine Name in the Bibliotheca Sacra 1913
The Pronunciation of the Divine Name in National religions and Universal religions By Philip Henry Wicksteed 1882
Theology of the Old Testament by Gustav Oehler 1883
III. The Name Jehovah.
§ 38. Pronunciation and grammatical explanation of the name
§ 39. Signification of the name
§ 40. Age and origin of the name Jehovah
§ 41. Comparison of the name Jehovah with Elohim and El
§ 42. Attributes or names of God which are derived immediately from the idea of Jehovah
The Origin and Interpretation of the Tetragrammaton by Hans Spoer 1901
Signs and symbols illustrated and explained, 12 lectures on Freemasonry by George Oliver 1826 (talks about the Tetragrammaton)
The Book of Genesis in English-Hebrew, accompanied by an interlinear translation by William Greenfield 1828
The transliterated Hebrew Text has Yehovah, the English text has Jehovah
Tyndale's Five Books of Moses - probably the first English Bible to restore the Divine Name to the text (see Ex. 6:3)
The New Testament in Hebrew 1817
A complete Hebrew and English critical and pronouncing dictionary by William Roy 1846
The Bay Psalm Book - the first book produced in America used the Divine Name.
Plus You Get:
Scriptures Hebrew and Christian Volume 1 (first 543 pages) by Edward Bartlett and John Peters 1888
Follows the KJV but has made changes in idiom, and uses the divine name Jehovah throughout.
Scriptures Hebrew and Christian Volume 2 by Edward Bartlett and John Peters 1888
The Julia Smith Bible 1876 - first few pages are missing.
A Liberal Translation of the New Testament Volume 1 by Edward Harwood 1768
A Liberal Translation of the New Testament Volume 2 by Edward Harwood 1768 "The Supreme Jehovah said to my Lord..."
The Psalms Translated and Explained by JA Alexander 1853 Volume 1
The Psalms Translated and Explained by JA Alexander 1853 Volume 2
The Psalms Translated and Explained by JA Alexander 1853 Volume 3 "For I have kept the ways of Jehovah and have not apostasised from my God." Ps 18:22
The New Metrical Version of the Psalms 1909 - United Presbyterian (Uses Jehovah)
A New Rendering of the Hebrew Psalms into English verse By Abraham Coles 1888 (Uses Jehovah)
A New Literal Version of the Book of Psalms by Stephen Street 1790 Volume 1 (Uses Jehovah)
A New Literal Version of the Book of Psalms by Stephen Street 1790 Volume 2 (Uses Jehovah)
Isaiah - a New Translation by TK Cheyne 1898 (Uses JHVH)
Psalms, a New Translation by TK Cheyne 1895 (Uses Jehovah)
The Book of Joshua by Paul Kaupf and William Furness 1899 (Uses JHVH)
The Book of the Prophet Hosea Literally Translated with Notes by Francis Tilney Bassett M.A. 1869
The Books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth - the Common Version revised for the American Bible Union 1878
The Book of Genesis - the Common Version Revised for the American Bible Union, with explanatory notes 1868
The Psalms - a New Translation by John De Witt 1891
The Psalter: With Responsive Readings by United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 1912
The Holy Bible - An Improved Edition, based in Part on the Bible Union Version 1913
American Standard Version Cross Reference Bible
Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament Vol 4
by Heinrich Ewald, John Frederick Smith - 1880 (translation uses Yahve)
Commentary on the Books of Haggai, Zakharya, Malaki, Yona, Barukh, Daniel
By Heinrich Ewald, John Frederick Smith 1881 (translation uses Yahve)
Biblical Commentary on the Psalms
by Franz Delitzsch, Francis Bolton - 1871 (translation uses Yahve)
Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon
by Franz Delitzsch - 1884 (translation uses Yahve)
The Holy Bible by John Nelson Darby in txt format.
American Standard Version 1901 - Searchable
Newcome's Corrected New Testament 1808 (uses Jehovah at Matthew 22:44)
The Holy Bible Volume 2 by Leicester Ambrose Sawyer
Young's Literal Translation of the Bible - Searchable
Hymns, Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures
by Philip Doddridge, Job Orton - Hymns - 1825 - 290 pages
The Epistles of Paul in Modern English-A Paraphrase by George Barker Stevens, Ph.D., D.D. 1898
"In the Scripture Jehovah solemnly declares he will punish his foes and vindicate his people." Hebrews 10:29
Isaiah: a New Translation: With a Preliminary Dissertation, and Notes
by Robert Lowth - 1834 - 417 pages
The Book of Genesis and part of the Book of Exodus - A Revised Version with Marginal References and Explanatory Commentary by Henry Alford D.D. 1872
St. Paul from the Trenches: A Rendering of the Epistles to the Corinthians and Ephesians Done in France During the Great War by Gerald Warre Cornish
The Psalter, Or, Psalms of David In English Verse by John Keble 1869
Emphatic Diaglott by Benjamin Wilson
The Holy Bible translated by Leicester Ambrose Sawyer - Vol 2 - 1861 - 390 pages
The Modern Readers Bible by Richard Moulton, 1907, 1740 pages
The Prophets of the Restoration: Or, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. A New Translation by T. V. Moore - 1856 - 400 pages
A New Translation of the Book of Psalms: With an Introduction - Page 153
by George Rapall Noyes - Bible - 227 pages
"O SING to Jehovah a new song, Sing to Jehovah, all the earth ! ¡aim is, with
some slight and said to have been ¡a of the ark to mount 2 Sing to Jehovah"
The Psalms: A New Translation by John De Witt 1891 - 320 pages
"With Jehovah on my side as my helper, Even I, undismayed, can look on my foes. To hide in Jehovah is better Than trusting in man"
The book of Daniel, tr. from the Heb. and Chaldee text by J. Bellamy by Daniel, John Bellamy - 1863
Joseph Bryant Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (one of the first to use YAHWEH as a divine name)
A New Translation of Job, Ecclesiastes and the Canticles
by George Noyes - 1868
Notes on the prophecies of Amos; with a new translation
by William Drake - 1869
The Psalms of David: Versified from a New Translation and Adapted
by Elhanan Winchester 1797
A new translation of the Book of psalms, with explanatory notes
1842
The Book of Job: Its Origin, Growth and Interpretation : Together with a New Translation by Morris Jastrow - 1920
Quotations in the New Testament by Crawford Toy 1884
(Mentions "Yahwe" quite often)
THE BOOK OF PSALMS BY JOHN CALVIN TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN, AND COLLATED WITH THE AUTHOR'S FRENCH VERSION BY THE REV. JAMES ANDERSON 1849 (Volume 5)
The Book of Ecclesiastes with a new translation by Samuel Cox 1890
The Book of Genesis in English-Hebrew Accompanied by an Interlinear Translation, with Notes by William Greenfield 1828
On the use of Jehovah and Elohim in the Pentateuch by H.T. 1869
The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New Translation by Thomas Cheyne 1884 Volume 1
The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New Translation by Thomas Cheyne 1884 Volume 2
A New Translation of the Psalms with a Plea for Revisal of our Versions Part 1
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the book of Genesis, with a New Translation by James Murphy
Notes, Critical, Illustrative, and Practical, on the book of Job with a New Translation by Albert Barnes Volume 1
Notes, Critical, Illustrative, and Practical, on the book of Job with a New Translation by Albert Barnes Volume 2
THE PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION - HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, AND MALACHI, a New Translation by Rev. T.V. Moore 1856
The Psalms of David Versified from a New Translation by Elhanan Winchester 1797
The Book of Psalms a New Translation by J.J. Stewart Perowne 1880
The Book of Esther a New Translation by J. W. Haley
A Commentary on the Proverbs with a new translation by John Miller 1872
Literal translation of the Psalms of David by Parkhurst 1830
Heinfetter New Testament 1864 (uses "Jehovah" liberally throughout his New Testament)
St Paul's Epistle to the Romans by W.G. Rutherford
A Version or Paraphrase of the Psalms by James Merrick 1789
The Epistles of Paul in Modern English, A Paraphrase by George Barker Stevens 1898
A Paraphrase and Notes on the Revelation of St. John by Moses Lowman 1773
(JEHOVAH scattered throughout, but not a lot of uses)
The Book of Job, essays and a Metrical Paraphrase by Rossiter Raymond 1878
The Messages of the Later Prophets arranged in the order of time, Analyzed, and Freely Rendered in Paraphrase by Charles Foster Kent 1899
The Book of Psalms of David the king and prophet by Edward Faulkener 1875
The First Book of Moses, called Genesis translated into the Grebo Tongue (African) uses "Jehova" 1850
Notes on the Book of Job with a New Version by William Kelly 1879
A New Version of the Psalms of David Fitted to the Tunes Used in the Churches by Nicholas Brady 1839
(Uses Jehovah about 6 times)
The Songs Hymns And Prayers Of The Old Testament by Charles Foster Kent 1914
Isaiah in Modern Speech by John McFadyen 1918
Jeremiah in Modern speech by John McFadyen 1919
The Psalms in Modern Speech by John McFadyen 1870
The Wisdom Books in Modern Speech by John McFadyen
The book of Job translated from the Hebrew by Ernst Renan 1889
The books of Chronicles by WH Bennett 1894
Joshua by WH Bennett 1899 (some pages hard to read)
The Book of Judges by JF Moore 1899
The Holy Scriptures of the Old Covenant by Wellbeloved Volume 1 1862
The Holy Scriptures of the Old Covenant by Wellbeloved Volume 2 1862
The Holy Scriptures of the Old Covenant by Wellbeloved Volume 3 1862
The Epic of the Inner Life being the Book of Job by J Genung 1891
The Book of Job - the Poetic Portion Versified by Homer Sprague 1913
Mozes bi naltsos alsedihigi odesziz holychigi inda yistainilli ba Hani Mark naltsos ye yiki-iscinigi. Tohatcidi enisoti dine bizadkyehgo ayila (Navajo Book of Moses - retains the name JEHOVAH for God 1912)
Choctaw New Testament 1857 (text sometimes difficult to read)
Joshua, Judges and Ruth in Choctaw by Alfred Wright 1913 (the divine name used is "Chihowah" even sometimes in the New Testament above)
Gospel according to John - Creek by HF Buckner 1860
"In my translation of John I have transfered the Hebraic name Jehovah for the name of the Supreme Being, instead of adopting the Creek word Hesakitvmise."
La Sainte Bible - Crampon (French) Volume 1 1894
La Sainte Bible - Crampon (French) Volume 2 1894
La Sainte Bible - Crampon (French) Volume 3 1894
La Sainte Bible - Crampon (French) Volume 4 1894
La Sainte Bible - Crampon (French) Volume 5 1894
La Sainte Bible - Crampon (French) Volume 6 1894
Mysteries and Controversies behind the Divine Name YHWH - Many Books scanned from the originals into PDF format on CDrom
Contents:
National Religions and Universal Religions: Lectures Delivered at Oxford
by Abraham Kuenen 1882
"The Pronunciation of the Divine Name "Yahweh." By declaring, as soon as I had occasion to use it, that we have good grounds for pronouncing the name of the god of Israel "Yahweh," I implied that the objections which have been urged against this pronunciation—most recently by Friedrich Delitzsch (Wo Iag das Paradiesl Eine biblisch-assyriologische Studie, S. 158—166) and von Hartmann (Das relig. Bewusstsein u. s. w. S. 370 f.)—have not convinced me. I must now briefly explain the reason of this. On the derivation and significance of the name I will not now touch, but will confine myself exclusively to the anterior question of how it was pronounced." - Page 308
How the Bible Grew: The Story as Told by the Book and Its Keepers
by Frank Grant Lewis 1919
"Where this divine name occurrs in the Hebrew, Israelitish readers pronounce the word for master, lord. This Hebrew word is ordinarily transliterated adonai. Israelites still say "Adonai" when in reading they come to the divine name. Christians, however, as early as the fourteenth or the fifteenth century began to combine the two words, pronouncing the consonants Jhvh with modifications of the vowels of adonai. We should expect perhaps as an outcome such a word as Jahovaih, but it did not come into use. Instead, one of the earliest results of the combination of the two words was the form Johouah. Later the form Jehovah was adopted. This is now known not only to be a hybrid term but also to have no good linguistic basis for its vowels. Careful investigations have been made concerning the original pronunciation of the divine name itself, that
is, investigations to discover the vowel sounds which were originally a part of the name. These investigations offer different possibilities, such as Jahveh, Jahvah, or even Yahu." - Page 84
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology by Society of Biblical Archaeology 1895
With a chapter on: ON THE DIVINE NAME By REV. G. MARGOLIOUTH.
Jehovah the redeemer god: the scriptural interpretation of the divine name by Thomas Tyler - 1861
Light on the Old Testament from Babel by Albert Tobias Clay 1906
Page 247 discusses various pronunciations, such as Iabe, Yahwa, Yahwe and Yawa
Studies in the History of Religions: Presented to Crawford Howell Toy by David Gordon Lyon, George Foot Moore 1912
"It has been contended that the name Yahweh as an element in a proper name occurs in Babylonia still earlier. In a text published by Thureau-Dangin, a granddaughter of the king Naram-Sin bears a name which may be read Lipush-Iaum, 'May Iaum make.' Radau, Burney, and Clay all regard this as an occurrence of Yahweh. Rogers with more caution holds that it is doubtful, and that possibly Ea is referred to. It would certainly be rash to assert that this name is proof that Yahweh as a divine name was known among the immediate descendants of Naram-Sin, but it is clearly possible that such may be the case.
Bible and Spade: Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College
by John Punnett Peters - Bible - 1922
"I was struck with the fact that the divine name Yah commences to become prominent in David's time. After he set up the Ark in Jerusalem, the divine name Yah becomes the dominating name in Judah, and especially in the royal family. On the other hand, it does not come to the fore among the ten tribes until two hundred years later, in the time of the great prophet Elijah, whose name means "Yah time the Pharaoh raided and plundered Palestine." p. 99
Theology of the Old Testament by Gustav Friedrich Oehler, George Edward Day 1883
With Sections: THE NAME JEHOVAH. Pronunciation and grammatical explanation of the
name
Signification of the name
Age and origin of the name Jehovah
Comparison of the name Jehovah with Elohim and El
Attributes or names of God which are derived immediately from the idea of Jehovah
Princeton Theological Review by Princeton Theological Seminary 1914 (partial copy)
"The Septuagint with one exception (18:1) attests the word Jehovah at the beginning of these paragraphs, as the first divine name in the seder, however much the Septuagint may differ from the Massoretic text in respect to the divine name elsewhere in the paragraph. Dahse's theory, it will be noted, accords with these facts regarding the initial divine name, and also accounts for the difference between the Massoretic text and the Septuagint in 18:1. And the general agreement of the two texts in regard to the divine name used, where a particular rule seems to have been followed by the author or early editor of the narratives, is an additional attestation of the fidelity of the Greek translators to their Hebrew text, and affords valuable testimony to the readings of the early Hebrew text."
Hours with the Bible: Or, The Scriptures in the Light of Modern Discovery
by John Cunningham Geikie - 1889
"Among the Egyptians there was a god whose name it was unlawful to utter; and it was forbidden to name or to speak of the supreme guardian divinity of Rome.' Even to mention a god's name in taking an oath was deemed irreverent. In the Book of Henoch 7 a secret magic power is ascribed to the Divine Name, and "it upholds all things which are." Men learned it through the craft of the evil angel, Kesbeel, who, in heaven, before he was cast out, gained it by craft from Michael, its original guardian." Page 839
The Pythagorean Triangle: Or, The Science of Numbers by George Oliver 1875
"...making together twenty-six, the same number as the Tetragrammaton. Reason apparently supports the idea that profound mysteries are contained in the characters of this holy language; and who will contend that they do not all involve many secrets and reasons for being used in the law of God, from the perfect art with which they are formed" p. 23
The great Dionysiak myth by Robert Brown 1877
"Clemens Alexandrinus says, 'the mystic name of four letters, 'the sacred Tetragrammaton YaHVeH, 'which was affixed to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible, is called Iaou, which is interpreted, "Who is and shall be." Mr. King observes, 'Theodoret states that the four letters of the Holy Name were pronounced by the Samaritans IABE; by the Jews, IAO Jerome (Ps. viii.), "The name of the Lord amongst the Hebrews is of four letters, Jod, He, Vau, He ; which is properly the name of God, and may be read as I A H O, and is held by the Jews for ineffable." ' 2Bunsen, very
reasonably, considers it questionable whether the real etymology of the word is Hebrew, but remarks, 'The sublime idea, "I am that I am," i.e. the Eternal, is certainly the right one in a Hebrew point of view.'"
Medical Symbolism in Connection with Historical Studies in the Arts by Thomas S. Sozinskey 1891
"Tetragrammaton — that is, J H V H, or, as it is commonly rendered, Jehovah — was the same thing as the IAW. Much could be said about it, as those familiar with Masonic legends and occult literature are aware. Lenormant states, of the wide belief in the power of the hidden "name of the Lord," that "we now see clearly that it came from Chaldea." p. 133
The Names of God in Holy Scripture: A Revelation of His Nature by Andrew John Jukes 1889
Cumorah Revisited: Or, "The Book of Mormon" and the Claims of the Mormons by Charles Augustus Shook 1910
"Latter-day Saints tell us further that the Indians were in the habit of using the sacred ejaculation, "Hallelujah," and Jenkins says: "In the Choctaw nation they often sing 'Halleluyah,' intermixed with their lamentations." — The Ten Tribes, p. 132. Elsewhere (p. 144) he informs us that both the Choctaw and Cherokee tribes use the word. The Creeks had a sacred chant, hi-yo-yu or hay-ay-al-gi* The Cherokees employed the sacred, but meaningless, chant, ha-wi-ye-e-hi, in their "Groundhog Dance;" he-e! hay-u-ya han-iwa, etc., was employed by their bear-hunters to attract the bear ; while ha-wi-ye-hy-u-we was a part of one of their baby songs. Hayuya falling on the ears of an Englishman might be mistaken for "hallelujah." Lastly, the words for "Jehovah" (Yohewah in the Cherokee, Che-ho-wa in the Choctaw, and Chihufa in the Creek) are not original words at all, and the same may be said for Shiloh, Canaan and other Old Testament names, but are simply the efforts of these tribes to pronounce our Scriptural terms."
View of the Hebrews: Exhibiting the Destruction of Jerusalem by Ethan Smith 1823
"These Indians have many wild pagan notions of this one God. But they have brought down by tradition, it seems, the above essentially correct view of him, in opposition to the polytheistical world. Their name of God is remarkable — Wahconda. It has been shown in the body of this work, that various of the Indians call God Yohewah, Ale, Yah, and Wah, doubtless from the Hebrew names Jehovah, Ale, and Jah, And it has been shown that these syllables which compose the mime of God,
sire compounded in many Indian words, or form the roots from which they are formed."
The Glorious Name of God, The Lord of Hosts: Opened in Two Sermons by Jeremiah Burroughs 1643 (very old copy, often hard to read, but beautiful to behold just the same)
Indian Myths Or, Legends, Traditions, and Symbols of the Aborigines
by Ellen Russell Emerson 1884
"the form Jehovah, instead of Yahweh or Yahaveh, has been adopted; but it may be justly claimed that the two latter words are the more accurate. In these we trace a still more remarkable resemblance to the sacred name of Indian invocation. An instance is quoted by M. Remusut from one of the works of a Chinese philosopher of the sixth or seventh century before Christ, in which the name appears in Chinese scriptures. The reference is as follows...Here again reappears the name as J-hi-wai, which, with due regard to phonetic and vernacular changes, may be claimed as identical with that of the Indian's sacred name, Yo-he-wah. The universality of the use of the syllable yo, or jo, in a divine name may be illustrated by other examples. lio was the Coptic name of the moon ; Java, or Kara-Java, was a name said to be given the Supreme Being by a tribe in the jungles of Burmah.
Page 638
A Discourse on the Religion of the Indian Tribes of North America: Delivered by Samuel Farmar Jarvis 1820 (only first 119 pages)
"Much stress has been laid upon the supposed use of the Hebrew words Jehovah and Halliluiah among the Indians. With regard to the invocation of God, by the name of Jehovah, the fact, in the first place, is not certain. Some travellers assert that the Indians, when assembled in council, and on other solemn occasions, express their approbation by ejaculating Ho, ho, ho, with a very guttural emission. In the minutes of a treaty, held at Lancaster, I think in 1742, on which occasion Conrad Weiser was interpreter, it is said that the chiefs expressed their approbation in the usual manner, by saying, "Yo-wah." p. 90
Light and Truth: Collected from the Bible and Ancient and Modern History by Robert Benjamin Lewis 1844
"In their sacred dances, these authors assure us the Indians sing "Halleluyah Yohewah;"—praise to Jah Jehovah. When they return victorious from their wars, they sing, Yo-he-wah; having been by tradition taught to ascribe the praise to God. The same authors assure us, the Indians make great use of the initials of the mysterious name of God, like the tetragrammation of the ancient Hebrews; or the four radical letters which form the name of Jehovah; as the Indians pronounce thus, Y-O-He-wah." p. 261
Plus you a get many pdf books containing the Divine Name in the message title
Contents of CD: Jehovah-Jesus: The Oneness of God: the True Trinity ...
by Robert D Weeks - 1880
Jehovah-Jesus by Thomas Whitelaw - 1913 - 143 pages
Jehovah the redeemer god: the scriptural interpretation of the divine name.
by Thomas Tyler - 1861
The Life and Exploits of Jehovah
by Henry Mulford Tichenor - 1915 - 222 pages
Trinity hymns for the worship of the three-one Jehovah in faith & love ...
by Trinity hymns - 1876
The Shekinah: Or, The Presence and Manifestation of Jehovah
by William Cooke - 1877
The Self-revealing Jehovah of the Old Testament: The Christ of the New Testament
by Sarah Matilda (Fry) Barclay 1885
A Commentary on the Holy Bible by John Roberts Dummelow - 1909 - 1091 pages
"Events of their history had been foretold by Jehovah long before they happened
... But now the things Jehovah purposes are declared on the eve of the event..."
The Righteousness of Jehovah: That Makes for Peace
by Richard F. Chambers - 1917
Final Restoration Demonstrated from the Scriptures of Truth: By Three Sufficiant Argument - The Oath of Jehovah; The Love of Jehovah; The Prayer of Faith by Enoch B. Kenrick - 1821
Jehovah, the covenant name of God; or, God in Christ, in the name of Jehovah - 1873
Jehovah-Jesus: Scripture studies of seven sayings of our Lord in the Gospel ...
by Alexander Macleod Symington - 1876
Jehovah Elohim. Trinitarian and unitarian sermons
by Edward John Turnour - 1831
Judgment of the judges of Jehovah: or, The rationalism of ultra-Calvinism ...
by William Robertson Aikman - 1875
The wars of Jehovah, in Heaven, earth and Hell.
by Thomas Hawkins - 1844
The Eternal; or, The attributes of Jehovah, as 'the God of our fathers'.
by Robert Philip - 1874
A selection of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, to the praise and glory of Jehovah. edited by George W Straton - 1837
On the use of Jehovah and Elohim in the Pentateuch by H. T - Pentateuch - 1869
The Day of Yahweh
by John Merlin Powis Smith - 1901 - 31 pages
The BDAG Lexicon (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature 2001) is considered among the most highly respected dictionaries of Biblical Greek. It is the gold standard in Greek/English lexicons. So I was interested in what English Bible versions they referenced, and I came up with the following list:
CCD = Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, sponsors of The NT Translated from the Latin Vulgate 1941 C. C. Torrey, The Four Gospels [1933] Goodsp. = Edgar Goodspeed. With no title specified this abbr. refers to The NT: An American Translation 1923 (republished in the Goodspeed Parallel NT 1943) JB = Jerusalem Bible, ed. AJones 1966 KJV = King James version, originally 1611; text generally cited is the one standardized since BBlayney 1769 Mft. = James Moffatt, The Bible: A New Translation 1926 NAB = New American Bible 1970 (includes textual notes, not included in later editions, on OT readings) NABRev = New American Bible with Revised New Testament 1986 NEB = New English Bible 1970 New Life = The New Life Testament, tr. by Gleason Ledyard 1969 NRSV = New Revised Standard Version of the NT 1990 REB = The Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha 1989 RSV = The Revised Standard Version of the NT Twentieth Century NT = Twentieth Century New Testament 1900
I can't help but notice the Bibles that are not listed. For instance, the New American Standard Bible, considered the most literal and the most accurate by many Protestants and Evangelicals was not used. Other Evangelical mainstays, such as the New International Version (NIV), including its offshoots (TNIV, NIrV), the New King James Version (NKJV), the New Living Translation, etc., are also not used. In fact, they BDAG list reflects many of my favorite Bibles I have listed on my board on Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/ncbartender/my-favorite-bible-versions/
"...let’s bear in mind that these English versions were translated by teams of the world’s expert New Testament Greek scholars- New International Version Bible – translation committee of 115 scholars. King James Version – translation committee of 54 scholars. New King James Version – 119 scholars. New American Standard Bible – 54 scholars Contemporary English Version – 100+ scholars English Standard Version – 100+ scholars"
Reply: If the above English versions are indeed "translated by teams of the world’s expert New Testament Greek scholars" then why are they snubbed by the world's expert New Testament Greek scholars when it comes to lexicography? (The KJV is excepted by my arguments as it predates modern conservative Christianity)
The debator added: "...The checks and balances used in the translation process is designed to eliminate the possibility of a radical influence dictating the mishandling of a particular verse (i.e. making it say something other than the original Greek annotated)."
Reply: But what if the committee translations are made by translators who all hold the same theological conclusions. Committee translations of this type are known to compromise, and they are also expected to fulfill certain expectations that the public demands, especially if they want to sell those Bibles and pay the members of those committees. Perhaps this is why the BDAG lexicon has often made use of translations made by individuals.
Going back to these conservative committee translations, I remember reading the Dallas Theological Seminary Doctrinal Statement posted at https://www.dts.edu/about/doctrinalstatement/:
"While our faculty and board annually affirm their agreement with the full doctrinal statement (below), students need only agree with these seven essentials: 1. the Trinity 2. the full deity and humanity of Christ the spiritual lostness of the human race the substitutionary atonement and bodily resurrection of Christ salvation by faith alone in Christ alone the physical return of Christ the authority and inerrancy of Scripture."
The Dallas Theological Seminary also adds: "Our professors and alumni have been involved in numerous English Bible versions including the New International Version (NIV), the New King James Version (NKJV), the New Living Translation (NLT), The Message (TM), the New American Standard Bible update (NASB), the English Standard Version (ESV), the International Children’s Version (ICV), the New Century Version (NCV), the Holman Christian Study Bible (HCSB), and the NET Bible." https://voice.dts.edu/article/truth-that-translates-dallas-theological-seminary/
The students and the translators the DTS produces must adhere to several articles of faith, and this bias then tends to tarnish the Bibles it produces. As Conservative Sola Scriptura Christians, these translators need the Bible to reflect their beliefs and theology. As a consequence, their beliefs are translated back into the Bible. Hence, Evangelical Bibles are viewed as biased.
Catholics on the other hand don't derive their beliefs from the Bible. As Robert M. Price stated in the review of Jason Beduhn's book: "Catholics can be freer with the details of the text because they don’t have to pretend to find their theology in it in full-blown form." http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/beduhn_truth.htm
Consider also N.T. Wright's comments on the NIV Bible: "When the New International Version was published in 1980, I was one of those who hailed it with delight. I believed its own claim about itself, that it was determined to translate exactly what was there, and inject no extra paraphrasing or interpretative glosses…. Disillusionment set in over the next two years, as I lectured verse by verse through several of Paul’s letters, not least Galatians and Romans. Again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV beside it, I discovered that the translators had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said…. [I]f a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about." [Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, 2009, pp. 51-52]
Laurence Vance, writes of the NASB in his book Double Jeopardy, "...Zane Hodges, writing in Bibliotheca Sacra, declared that the NASB was unfaithful to the Greek text and concluded that 'though more accurate in many places than other versions, there are probably just as many new faults introduced as old ones removed'...F. F. Bruce...in his book on English Bible history, perceptively said about the NASB: 'If the R.S.V. had never appeared, this revision of the A.S.V. would be a more valuable work than it is. As things are, there are few things done well by the N.A.S.B. which are not done better by the R.S.V.'"
The greatest modern and even skeptical scholars of the Bible (what Fundagelicals would call "Liberal Scholars"), like John D. Crossan, John Shelby Spong, Tom Harpur, Bart Ehrman, Marcus Borg mainly use the New Revised Standard Version. Check out the list of endorsements at https://www.nrsv.net/about/endorsements/. A generation ago these types of scholars would have hailed the Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible or Goodspeed in a similar way.
So don't depend on Lifeway stores to supply your Bible translations for you. Expand your Bible library to include those by groups you may have found troublesome in the past, and check out Amazon and Ebay for some great deals on the Bibles listed on my pinterest page or the ones list within the BDAG Lexicon.
John 1:1 in Greek reads like this when transliterated: en (in) arche (beginning) en (was) ho (the) logos (word) kai (and) ho (the) logos (word) en (was) pros (with) ton (the) theon (god) kai (and) theos (god) en (was) ho (the) logos (word).
The traditional and most accepted/defended translation of this is: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." King James Version
Now look the following comments from "experts" in the field on Biblical scholarship:
"It would be pure Sabellianism to say 'the Word was ho theos.'" [B. F. Wescott. The Gospel According to St. John. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975. p. 3.]*
"The structure of the third clause in verse I, theos en ho logos, demands the translation 'The Word was God.'...Had theos as well as logos been preceded by the article the meaning would have been that the Word was completely identical with God, which is impossible if the Word was also 'with God'." [F.F. Bruce. The Gospel and Epistles of John. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids, MI. 1983. p. 31.]
Now go back to the Greek above. It say that the word was with ton theon, THE god (god with the definite article) it is simply translated "the Word was with God" (the definite article THE is left untranslated) and the Scripture closes with "and the Word was God." (GOD here does not have the definite article in the Greek but it is translated simply as GOD.) Notice that the traditional (and most defended) translation makes no distinction between GOD with the article, and GOD without the article. The traditional translation translates BOTH instances of GOD as if they both had the definite article.
In other words, the traditional (and most defended) translation translates so "that the Word was completely identical with God" if I may use Bruce's words, which, of course "is impossible if the Word was also ‘with God.’" Translating as though the Word also had the definite article would be "pure Sabellianism" according to Westcott's words.
So the traditional (and most defended) translation is actually heretical from their own point of view. A translation that creates a distinction between the two uses of GOD at John 1:1 would not be.
*Sabellianism...is the belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes or aspects of God, as opposed to a Trinitarian view of three distinct persons within the Godhead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabellianism (In other words, Sabellianism says that the Father and the Son are exactly the same person, while Trinitarianism say they are different persons, but yet they exist within one God.)
Here is the NWT followed by the NASB translation.... . . . for YOU know that it is from Jehovah YOU will receive the due reward of the inheritance. SLAVE for the Master, Christ. Col. 3:24 (NWT) . . . knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. Col 3:24 (NAS) First, notice that the NWT replaced the Greek word kuriou that is normally translated as “Lord” with “Jehovah.” Jehovah is a Hebrew word YHWH that does not appear in the Greek text.
Reply: While the writer here prefers the NASB Bible, it should be noted that the NASB mistranslates the Hebrew NAME YHWH as LORD almost 7000 times in their Old Testament. You cannot condemn the one and condone the other for the same thing.
The Website: Second, the NWT arbitrarily substitutes the Greek word for Lord, kurio, for “Master” later in the verse.
Reply: Arbitrarily? Really? The choice of "Master" is actually a better translation as the Scripture deals with a Master/Slave dynamic. That is why many Bibles have also translated the word in question was MASTER, i.e.:
The New Living Translation, the Good News Bible, Weymouth's New Testament, Goodspeed's New Testament, Moffatt's New Testament, International English Bible, New Simplified Bible, New English Bible, Revised English Bible, the Kingdon New Testament by N.T. Wright, Twentieth Century New Testament, Kleisy & Lilly New Testament, NIV Study Bible footnote, Heinz Cassirer New Covenant, 21st Century New Testament.
The BDAG Lexicon gives "lord, master" as the chief definitions of KURIOS, as does Vine's Dictionary. It is interesting that Vine's also adds in regards to KURIOS, "kurios is the Sept. and NT representative of Heb. Jehovah."
In fact, if you go two verses later, at Colossians 4:1, almost all Bibles render KURIOI as "Masters," which is again, another Scripture that mentions the Master/Slave relationship.
The Website: The NWT does not want the reader to understand that the entire verse is about Jesus and that Jesus is God.
Reply: The verse says nothing about Jesus being God. In fact, the very first verse in that chapter says that "Christ" is "seated on the right hand of God." God does not sit at the "right hand of God." In fact, the book of Colossians opens up with "Grace to you and peace from God our Father" which is then followed up with "We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Colossians makes it perfectly clear that the Father is God, and that he is the God of Jesus as well.
We translate theophoric names with parts of "Jehovah" without argument or vitriol. When you see the name "Jehoshaphat" in the Bible, is it accompanied by a footnote declaring that the true pronunciation is lost? Does the footnote declare that since we cannot know for sure that Jehoshaphat is proper, that we will simply replace it with a title, or we will just call him "son of Asa?" Of course not. Did you know that no one when Jesus was alive actually called him "Jesus." Will you now replace that name with a title? Did you know that the Biblical name of "James" is "Giacomo" in Italian, and "John" is "Giovanni." Does this upset you? No, of course not. Therefore no one should be upset about the pronunciation of JEHOVAH.
But what else do we know about this name?
Notice the very interesting statements in the Catholic Encyclopedia
(1913) (http://www.newadvent.org)
"Jehovah (Yahweh): The proper name of God in the Old Testament; hence the Jews called it the name by excellence, the great name, the only name,.... Finally, the word is found even in the "Pugio fidei" of Raymund Martin, a work written about 1270 (ed. Paris, 1651, pt. III, dist. ii, cap. iii, p. 448, and Note, p. 745). PROBABLY THE INTRODUCTION OF THE NAME JEHOVAH ANTEDATES EVEN R. MARTIN. No wonder then that this form has been regarded as the true pronunciation of the Divine name by such scholars as Michaelis ("Supplementa ad lexica hebraica", I, 1792, p. 524), Drach (loc. cit., I, 469-98), Stier (Lehrgebäude der hebr. Sprache, 327), and others."
What of Michaelis? Johann David Michaelis in his German translation of the Old Testament of the eighteenth century...said in part: "On the other hand, the name Jehovah [Jehova in German] is used. . . . so I considered it to be a matter of integrity in translation to identify it, even though it might not always be pleasing to the German ear." ....Several of my friends insisted that I not at all insert this foreign word. . . . Jehovah is a Nomen Proprium, and, just as properly as I retain other nomina propria [such as] Abraham, Isaac, Jacob... In the translation of a classical author one would not have the slightest hesitance toward the use of the names Jupiter, Apollo [and] Diana; and why then should the name of the Only True God sound more offensive? I do not therefore see why I should not use the name Jehovah in the German Bible."
How God's Name Was Pronounced, Biblical Archaeology Review, Mar./Apr. 1995 Volume 21 Number 2; page 30:
"1) Among the magical papyri the name appears as IAWOUHE (Ya-oh-oo-ay-eh), but it is difficult to know how much this pronunciation had to do with the Tetragrammaton...so it is not certain how many of these syllables were thought to belong to the name. At least, however, it has more syllables than two, and the central vowel is not omitted, as is done in Yah-weh.
"2) Clement of Alexandria spelled the Tetragrammaton IAOAI (Ya-oo-ai), IAOE (Ya-oo-eh), and IAO (Ya-oh). In none of these is the central oo or oh vowel omitted.
"3) Rabbis often deduced the meaning of a word by taking the word apart and interpreting each part...By this logic Clement argued that the Tetragrammaton had the same consonants as the verb "to be," so it meant the one who caused things to be, but he did not pronounce the word according to any form of that verb. His conjecture was homiletic ally thought provoking, but not scientifically or historically correct...Reams of paper and gallons of ink have been expended over the years justifying a pronunciation Westerners deduced on the basis of Clement's conjecture. It may all be irrelevant to the subject....The word spelled Ya-hoo or Ya-hoh may have been pronounced Yahowah or Yahoowah, but in no case is the vowel oo or oh omitted. The word was sometimes abbreviated as "Ya," but never as "Ya-weh." This can be illustrated further by studying the proper names of the Bible that were based on the Tetragrammaton....Yah-ho-na-than..."Yaho-cha-nan"...Eli-yahoo ...Anyone who cares to check the concordances will find that there is no name in the entire Scriptures that includes the Tetragrammaton and also omits the vowel that is left out in the two-syllable pronunciation Rainey upholds. (Anson F. Rainey is Hebrew professor of Tel Aviv University)
"There is still one other clue to the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton— Hebrew poetry. For example, from the poem of Exodus 15, read aloud verses 1, 3, 6, 11, 17 and 18, first pronouncing the Tetragrammaton as "Yahweh" and then read it again, pronouncing the same word as "Yahowah." Notice the rhyme and poetic beat of the two. In this way the reader can judge which one is the more likely pronunciation used in antiquity.
"The name "Yahowah" is not a ghost word, as Rainey declared. Clement of Alexandria's conjecture that the Tetragrammaton was based on the verb "to be" overlooks the pronunciation of the proper names in the Scripture that include some portion of the Tetragrammaton. Clement did not have access to the scrolls and may never have seen the Aramaic Papyri. Nevertheless, he spelled the Tetragrammaton in Greek employing the central vowel that Rainey omitted in his determination that the proper name was Yahweh....
The way Rudolf Kittle translates YHWH is more accurate than "Yahweh", he translates it "Yehowah. Why? Became YHWH is a 3 syllable word, not a two syllable word like "Yahweh" is. George Buchanan of Wesley Theological Seminary favors the use of "Yahowah" or "Yahoowah." He explains how he came up with those: "In ancient times, parents often named their children after their deities. That means that they would have pronounced their children's names the way the deity's name was pronounced. The Tetragrammaton was used in people's names, and they always used the middle vowel." A few examples of proper names found in the Bible that include the shortened form of God's name are Jonathan, which appears as Yohnathan or Yehohnathan in Hebrew. It means "Yaho or Yahowah has given." Elijah's name is Eliyah or Eliyahu in Hebrew, which means: "My God is Yahoo or Yahoo-wah." Also, Jehoshaphat is Yehohshaphat meaning "Yaho has judged." The two syllable pronunciation of YHWH as "Yahweh" would not allow for the "o" vowel sound to exist as part of God's name. But in dozens of Biblical names that incorporate the divine name, this middle vowel sound appears in both the original and the shortened forms, as in Jehonathan and Jonathan. Professor Buchanan says about God's name: "In no case is the vowel oo or oh omitted. The word was sometimes abbreviated as 'Ya,' but never as 'Ya-weh.'... When the Tetragrammaton was pronounced in one syllable it was 'Yah' or 'Yo.' When it was pronounced in three syllables it would have been 'Yahowah' or 'Yahoowa.' If it was ever abbreviated to two syllables it would have been 'Yaho.' " (Biblical Archaeology Review)
Gesenius in his Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament Scriptures agrees saying: "Those who consider that YHWH [Yehowah] was the actual pronunciation are not altogether without ground on which to defend their opinion. In this way can the abbreviated syllables YHW [Yeho] and YH [Yo], with which many proper names begin, be more satisfactorily explained." -George Wesley Buchanan, Professor Emeritus, Wesley Theological Seminary Washington, DC
However, if the word were spelled with four letters in Moses' day, we would expect it to have had more than two syllables, for at that period there were no vowel letters. All the letters were sounded. At the end of the OT period the Elephantine papyri write the word YHW to be read either yahu (as in names like Shemayahu) or yaho (as in names like Jehozadek). The pronunciation yaho would be favored by the later Greek from iao found in Qumran Greek fragments (2d or 1st centuries B.C.) and in Gnostic materials of the first Christian centuries.—Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
"In the history of the English language however, the letter J has a written counterpart in the German J, although the latter J in German is pronounced like an English Y. The bulk of theological studies having come from the German sources, there has been an intermixed usage in English of the J and the Y. Our English translations of the bible reflect this, so we have chosen to use J, thus Jehovah, rather than Yahweh, because this is established English usage for Biblical names beginning with this Hebrew letters. No one suggests that we ought to change Jacob, Joseph, Jehoshaphat, Joshua etc. to begin with a Y, and neither should we at this late date change Jehovah to Yahweh." -Bible Translator Jay P. Green, Sr.
Francis B. Denio, a man who studied and taught Hebrew for 40 years adds:
"Jehovah misrepresents Yahweh no more that Jeremiah misrepresents Yirmeyahu. The settled connotation of Isaiah and Jeremiah forbid questioning their right. Usage has given them the connotations proper for designating the personalities which these words represent. Much the same is true of Jehovah. It is not barbarism. It has already many of the connotations needed for the proper name of the covenant God of Israel. There is no other word which can faintly compare with it. For centuries it has been gathering these connotations. No other word approaches this name in fullness of associations required. The use of any other word falls so far short of the proper ideas that it is a serious blemish in a translation." On the Use of the Word Jehovah, JBL 46, 1927, 147-148
While nearly all "orthodox" authorities of eminence concede that Sheol and Hadees do not denote a place of torment in the future world, most of those who accept the doctrine of endless torment claim that Gehenna does convey that meaning.
Campbell, in his "Four Gospels," says: "That Gehenna is employed in the New Testament, to denote the place of future punishment, prepared for the devil and his angels, is indisputable. This is the sense, if I mistake not, in which Gehenna is always to be understood in the New Testament, where it occurs just twelve times. It is a word peculiar to the Jews, and was employed by them some time before the coming of Christ, to denote that part of Sheol which was the habitation of the wicked after death. This is proved by the fact of its familiar use in the New Testament, and by the fact of its being found in the Apocrypha books and Jewish Targums, some of which were written before the time of our Savior."
But no such force resides in the word, nor is there a scintilla of evidence that it ever conveyed such an idea until many years after Christ. It is not found in the Apocrypha, Campbell mistakes.
Stuart says (Exeg. Ess.); "It is admitted that the Jews of a later date used the word Gehenna to denote Tartarus, that is, the place of infernal punishment."
In the second century Clemens Alexandrinus says: "Does not Plato acknowledge both the rivers of fire, and that profound depth of the earth which the barbarians call Gehenna? Does he not mention prophetically, Tartarus, Cocytus, Acheron, the Phlegethon of fire, and certain other places of punishment, which lead to correction and discipline?" Univ. Ex.
But an examination of the Bible use of the term will show us that the popular view is obtained by injecting the word with pagan superstition. Its origin and the first references to it in the Old Testament, are well stated by eminent critics and exegetes.
OPINION OF SCHOLARS
Says Campbell: "The word Gehenna is derived, as all agree, from the Hebrew words ge hinnom; which, in process of time, passing into other languages, assumed diverse forms; e.g., Chaldee Gehennom, Arabic Gahannam, Greek Gehenna.
The valley of Hinnom is part of the pleasant wadi or valley, which bounds Jerusalem on the south. Josh. 15: 8; 18: 6. Here, in ancient times and under some of the idolatrous kings, the worship of Moloch, the horrid idol-god of the Ammonites, was practiced. To this idol, children were offered in sacrifice. II Kings 23: 10; Ezek. 23: 37, 39; II Chron. 28: 3; Lev. 28: 21; 20: 2. If we may credit the Rabbins, the head of the idol was like that of an ox; while the rest of the body resembled that of a man. It was hollow within; and being heated by fire, children were laid in its arms and were literally roasted alive. We cannot wonder, then at the severe terms in which the worship of Moloch is everywhere denounced in the Scriptures. Nor can we wonder that the place itself should have been called Tophet, i.e., abomination, detestation, (from toph, to vomit with loathing)." Jer. 8: 32; 19: 6; II Kings 23: 10; Ezek. 23: 36, 39.
"After these sacrifices had ceased, the place was desecrated, and made one of loathing and horror. The pious king Josiah caused it to be polluted, i.e., he caused to be carried there the filth of the city of Jerusalem. It would seem that the custom of desecrating this place thus happily begun, was continued in after ages down to the period when our Savior was on earth. Perpetual fires were kept up in order to consume the offal which was deposited there. And as the same offal would breed worms, (for so all putrefying meat does of course), hence came the expression, 'Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' " Stuart's Exegetical Ess., pp. 140-141.
"Gehenna, originally a Hebrew word, which signifies the valley of Hinnom, is composed of the common noun, Gee, valley, and the proper name Hinnom, the owner of this valley. The valley of the sons of Hinnom was a delightful vale, planted with trees, watered by fountains, and lying near Jerusalem, on the south-east, by the brook Kedron. Here the Jews placed that brazen image of Moloch, which had the face of a calf, and extended its hands as those of a man. It is said, on the authority of the ancient Rabbins, that, to this image, the idolatrous Jews were wont not only to sacrifice doves, pigeons, lambs, rams, calves and bulls, but even to offer their children. I Kings 9: 7; II Kings 15: 3, 4. In the prophecy of Jeremiah, (Ch. 7: 31), this valley is called Tophet, from Toph, a drum; because the administrators in these horrid rites, beat drums, lest the cries and shrieks of the infants who were burned, should be heard by the assembly. At length, these nefarious practices were abolished by Josiah, and the Jews brought back to the pure worship of God.
II Kings 23: 10. After this, they held the place in such abomination, it is said, that they cast into it all kinds of filth, together with the carcasses of beasts, and the unburied bodies of criminals who had been executed. Continual fires were necessary, in order to consume these, lest the putrefaction should infect the air; and there were always worms feeding on the remaining relics. Hence it came, that any severe punishment, especially a shameful kind of death, was denominated Gehenna." Schleusner.
As we trace the history of the locality as it occurs in the Old Testament we learn that it should never have been translated by the word Hell. It is a proper name of a well-known locality, and ought to have stood Gehenna, as it does in the French Bible, in Newcome's and Wakefield's translations. In the Improved Version, Emphatic Diaglott, etc. Babylon might have been translated Hell with as much propriety as Gehenna. It is fully described in numerous passages in the Old Testament, and is exactly located.
GEHENNA LOCATED IN THIS WORLD
"And the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem, and the border went up to the top of the mountain that lieth before the valley of Hinnom westward." Joshua 15: 8. "And he (Josiah) defiled Tophet, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch." II Kings 23: 10. "Moreover, he (Ahaz) burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen." II Chron. 28: 3. "And they (the children of Judah) have built the high places of Tophet which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter; for they shall bury in Tophet till there be no place." Jer. 7: 31, 32. "And go forth into the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter." Jer 19: 2, 6.
These and other passages show that Gehenna was a well-known valley, near Jerusalem, in which the Jews in their idolatrous days had sacrificed their children to the idol Moloch, in consequence of which it was condemned to receive the offal and refuse and sewage of the city, and into which the bodies of malefactors were cast and where to destroy the odor and pestilential influences, continual fires were kept burning. Here fire, smoke, worms bred by the corruption, and other repulsive features, rendered the place a horrible one, in the eyes of the Jews. It was locality with which they were as well acquainted as they were with any place in or around the city. The valley was sometimes called Tophet, according to Schleusner, from Toph, a drum, because drums were beat during the idolatrous rites, but Adam Clarke says in consequence of the fact that Moloch was hollow, and heated, and children were placed in its arms, and burn to death; the word Tophet he says, meaning fire stove; but Prof. Stuart thinks the name derived from "Toph, to vomit the loathing." After these horrible practices, King Josiah polluted the place and rendered it repulsive.
"Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter; for they shall bury in Tophet till there be no place. And the carcasses of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away. Then will I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride: for the land shall be desolate." Jer. 7: 32-34. "At that time, saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of the princes, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of the graves: and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped; they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth. And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts. And I will make this city desolate, and a hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss, because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them. And they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury. Thus will I do unto this place, saith the Lord, and to the inhabitants thereof, and even make the city as Tophet: and the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods. Then came Jeremiah from Tophet, whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the Lord's house, and said to all the people: Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words." Jer. 19: 8-15.
These passages show that Gehenna or Tophet was a horrible locality near Jerusalem, and that to be cast there literally, was the doom threatened and executed originally. Every reference is to this world, and to a literal casting into that place.
In Dr. Bailey's English Dictionary, Gehenna is defined to be "a place in the valley of the tribe of Benjamin, terrible for two sorts of fire in it, that wherein the Israelites sacrificed their children to the idol Moloch, and also another kept continually burning to consume the dead carcasses and filth of Jerusalem."
But in process of time Gehenna came to be an emblem of the consequences of sin, and to be employed figuratively by the Jews, to denote those consequences. But always in this world. The Jews never used it to mean torment after death, until long after Christ. That the word had not the meaning of post-mortem torment when our Savior used it, is demonstrable:
Josephus was a Pharisee, and wrote at about the time of Christ, and expressly says that the Jews at the time (corrupted from the teaching of Moses) believed in punishment after death, but he never employs Gehenna to denote the place of punishment. He uses the word Hadees, which the Jews had then obtained from the heathen, but he never uses Gehenna, as he would have done, had it possessed that meaning then. This demonstrates that the word had no such meaning then. In addition to this neither the Apocrypha, which was written from 280 to 150 years. B. C., nor Philo, ever uses the word. It was first used in the modern sense of Hell by Justin Martyr, one hundred and fifty years after Christ.
Dr. Thayer concludes a most thorough excursus on the word ("Theology, etc.,") thus: "Our inquiry shows that it is employed in the Old Testament in its literal or geographical sense only, as the name of the valley lying on the south of Jerusalem-that the Septuagint proves it retained this meaning at late as B. C. 150--that it is not found at all in the Apocrypha; neither of Philo, nor in Josephus, whose writings cover the very times of the Savior and the New Testament, thus leaving us without a single example of contemporary usage to determine its meaning at this period-that from A. D. 150-195, we find in two Greek authors, Justin and Clement of Alexandria, the first resident in Italy and the last in Egypt that Gehenna began to be used to designate a place of punishment after death, but not endless punishment since Clement was a believer in universal restoration-that the first time we find Gehenna used in this sense in any Jewish writing is near the beginning of the third century, in the Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, two hundred years too late to be of any service in the argument-and lastly, that the New Testament usage shows that while it had not wholly lost its literal sense, it was also employed in the time of Christ as a symbol of moral corruption and wickedness; but more especially as a figure of the terrible judgments of God on the rebellious and sinful nation of the Jews."
The Jewish talmuds and targums use the word in the sense that the Christian Church has so long used it, though without attributing endlessness to it, but none of them are probably older than A. D. 200. The oldest is the targum (translation) of Jonathan Ben Uzziel, which was written according to the best authorities between A. D. 200 and A. D. 400.
"Most of the eminent critics now agree, that it could not have been completed till some time between two and four hundred years after Christ." Univ. Expos. Vol 2, p. 368. "Neither the language nor the method of interpretation is the same in all the books. In the historical works, the text is translated with greater accuracy than elsewhere; in some of the Prophets, as in Zechariah, the interpretation has more of the Rabbinical and Talmudical character. From this variety we may properly infer, that the work is a collection of interpretations of several learned men made toward the close of the third century, and containing some of a much older date; for that some parts of it existed as early as in the second century, appears from the additions which have been transferred from some Chaldee paraphrase into the Hebrew text, and were already in the text in the second century." Jahn Int. p. 66. Horne's Intro. Vol. 2. p. 160.
Dr. T. B. Thayer in his "Theology," says: "Dr. Jahn assigns it to the end of the third century after Christ; Eichhorn decides for the fourth century; Bertholdt inclines to the second or third century, and is confident that it 'cannot have attained its present complete form, before the end of the second century.' Bauer coincides generally in these views.
Some critics put the date even as low down as the seventh or eighth century. See a full discussion of the question in the Universalist Expositor, Vol. 2, p. 35l-368. See, also, Horne's Introduction, Vol. 2, 157-163. Justin Martyr. A. D. 150, and Clement of Alexandria, A. D. 195, both employ Gehenna to designate the place of future punishment; but the first utters an opinion only of its meaning in a certain text, and the last was a Universalist and did not, of course, believe that Gehenna was the place of endless punishment. Augustine, A. D. 400, says Gehenna 'stagnum ignis el sulphuris corporeus ignis erit.' De Civitate Dei, L. 21. C. 10."
At the time of Christ the Old Testament existed in Hebrew. The Septuagint translation of it was made between two hundred and four hundred years before his birth. In both Gehenna is never used as the name of a place of future punishment. A writer in the Universalist Expositor remarks, (Vol. 2): "Both the Apocrypha, and the works of Philo, when compared together, afford circumstantial evidence that the word cannot have been currently employed, during their age, to denote a place of future torment. . . . From the few traces which remain to us of this age, it seems that the idea of future punishment, such as it was among the Jews, was associated with that of darkeness, and not of fire; and that among those of Palestine, the misery of the wicked was supposed to consist rather in privation, than in positive infliction. . . . But we cannot discover, in Josephus, that either of these sects, the Pharisees or the Essenes, both of which believed the doctrine of endless misery, supposed it to be a state of fire, or that the Jews ever alluded to it by that emblem."
Thus the Apocrypha, B. C. 150-500, Philo Judaeus A. D. 40, and Josephus, A. D. 70-100, all refer to future punishment, but none of them use Gehenna to describe it, which they would have done, being Jews, had the word been then in use with that meaning. Were it the name of a place of future torment, then, can any one doubt that it would be found repeatedly in their writings? And does not the fact that it is never found in their writings demonstrate that it had no such use then, and if so, does it not follow that Christ used it in no such sense?
Canon Farrar says of Gehenna (Preface to "Eternal Hope): "In the Old Testament it is merely the pleasant valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom), subsequently desecrated by idolatry, and especially by Moloch worship, and defiled by Josiah on this account. (See I Kings 11: 7; II Kings 23: 10.)(Jer. 7: 31; 19: 10-14; Isa. 30: 33; Tophet). Used according to Jewish tradition, as the common sewage of the city, the corpses of the worst criminals were flung into it unburied, and fires were lit to purify the contaminated air. It then became a word which secondarily implied (1) the severest judgment which a Jewish court could pass upon a criminal-the casting forth of his unburied corpse amid the fires and worms of this polluted valley; and (2) a punishment-which to the Jews a body never meant an endless punishment beyond the grave. Whatever may be the meaning of the entire passages in which the word occurs, 'Hell' must be a complete mistranslation, since it attributes to the term used by Christ a sense entirely different from that in which it was understood by our Lord's hearers, and therefore entirely different from the sense in which he could have used it. Origen says (c. Celsus 6: 25) that Gehenna denotes (1) the vale of Hinnon; and (2) a purificatory fire (eis ten meta basanon katharsin). He declares that Celsus was totally ignorant of the meaning of Gehenna."
JEWISH VIEWS OF GEHENNA
Gehenna is the name given by Jews to Hell. Rev. H. N. Adler, a Jewish Rabbi, says: "They do not teach endless retributive suffering. They hold that it is not conceivable that a God of mercy and justice would ordain infinite punishment for finite wrong-doing." Dr. Dentsch declares: "There is not a word in the Talmud that lends any support to that damnable dogma of endless torment." Dr. Dewes in his "Plea for Rational Translation," says that Gehenna is alluded to four or five times in the Mishna, thus: "The judgment of Gehenna is for twelve months;" "Gehenna is a day in which the impious shall be burnt." Bartolocci declares that "the Jews did not believe in a material fire, and thought that such fire as they did believe in would one day be put out." Rabbi Akiba, "the second Moses," said: "The duration of the punishment of the wicked in Gehenna is twelve months." Adyoth 3: 10. some rabbis said Gehenna only lasted from Passover to Pentecost. This was the prevalent conception. (Abridged from Excursus 5, in Canon Farrar's "Eternal Hope." He gives in a note these testimonies to prove that the Jews to whom Jesus spoke, did not regard Gehenna as of endless duration). Asarath Maamaroth, f. 35, 1: "There will hereafter be no Gehenna." Jalkuth Shimoni, f. 46, 1: "Gabriel and Michael will open the eight thousand gates of Gehenna, and let out Israelites and righteous Gentiles." A passage in Othoth, (attributed to R. Akiba) declares that Gabriel and Michael will open the forty thousand gates of Gehenna, and set free the damned, and in Emek Hammelech, f. 138, 4, we read: "The wicked stay in Gehenna till the resurrection, and then the Messiah, passing through it redeems them." See Stephelius' Rabbinical Literature.
Rev. Dr. Wise, a learned Jewish Rabbi, says: "That the ancient Hebrews had no knowledge of Hell is evident from the fact that their language has no term for it. When they in after times began to believe in a similar place they were obliged to borrow the word 'Gehinnom,' the valley of Hinnom,' a place outside of Jerusalem, which was the receptacle for the refuse of the city-a locality which by its offensive smell and sickening miasma was shunned, until vulgar superstition surrounded it with hob-goblins. Haunted places of that kind are not rare in the vicinity of populous cities. In the Mishna of the latest origin the word Gehinnom is used as a locality of punishment for evil-doers, and hence had been so used at no time before the third century, A. D."
From the time of Josephus onwards, there is an interval of about a century, from which no Jewish writings have descended to us. It was a period of dreadful change with that ruined and distracted people. The body politic was dissolved, the whole system of their ceremonial religion had been crushed in the fall of their city and temple; and they themselves scattered abroad were accursed on all the face of the earth. Their sentiments underwent a rapid transformation, and when next we see their writings, we find them filled with every extravagant conceit that mad and visionary brains ever cherished. Expos. Vol. 2. Art, Gehenna, II Ballou, 2d.
Before considering the passages of Scripture containing the word, the reader should carefully read and remember the following:
IMPORTANT FACTS
Gehenna was a well-known locality near Jerusalem, and ought no more to be translated Hell, than should Sodom or Gomorrah. See Josh. 15: 8; II Kings 17: 10; II Chron. 28: 3; Jer. 7: 31, 32; 19: 2.
Gehenna is never employed in the Old Testament to mean anything else than the place with which every Jew was familiar.
The word should have been left untranslated as it is in some versions, and it would not be misunderstood. It was not misunderstood by the Jews to whom Jesus addressed it. Walter Balfour well says: "What meaning would the Jews who were familiar with this word, and knew it to signify the valley of Hinnom, be likely to attach to it when they heard it used by our Lord? Would they, contrary to all former usage, transfer its meaning from a place with whose locality and history they had been familiar from their infancy, to a place of misery in another world? This conclusion is certainly inadmissible. By what rule of interpretation, then, can we arrive at the conclusion that this word means a place of misery and death?"
The French Bible, the Emphatic Diaglott, Improved Version, Wakefield's Translation and Newcome's retain the proper noun, Gehenna, the name of a place as well-known as Babylon.
Gehenna is never mentioned in the Apocrypha as a place of future punishment as it would have been had such been its meaning before and at the time of Christ.
No Jewish writer, such as Josephus or Philo, ever uses it as the name of a place of future punishment, as they would have done had such then been its meaning.
No classic Greek author ever alludes to it and therefore it was a Jewish locality, purely.
The first Jewish writer who ever names it as a place of future punishment is Jonathan Ben Uzziel who wrote, according to various authorities, from the second to the eighth century, A. D.
The first Christian writer who calls Hell Gehenna is Justin Martyr who wrote about A. D. 150.
Neither Christ nor his apostles ever named it to Gentiles, but only to Jews which proves it a locality only known to Jews, whereas, if it were a place of punishment after death for sinners, it would have been preached to Gentiles as well as Jews.
It was only referred to twelve times on eight occasions in all the ministry of Christ and the apostles, and in the Gospels and Epistles. Were they faithful to their mission to say no more than this on so vital a theme as an endless Hell, if they intended to teach it?
Only Jesus and James ever named it. Neither Paul, John, Peter nor Jude ever employ it. Would they not have warned sinners concerning it, if there were a Gehenna of torment after death?
Paul says he "shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God," and yet though he was the great preacher of the Gospel to the Gentiles he never told them that Gehenna is a place of after-death punishment. Would he not have repeatedly warned sinners against it were there such a place?
Dr. Thayer significantly remarks: "The Savior and James are the only persons in all the New Testament who use the word. John Baptist, who preached to the most wicked of men did not use it once. Paul wrote fourteen epistles and yet never once mentions it. Peter does not name it, nor Jude; and John, who wrote the gospel, three epistles, and the Book of Revelations, never employs it in a single instance. Now if Gehenna or Hell really reveals the terrible fact of endless woe, how can we account for this strange silence? How is it possible, if they knew its meaning and believed it a part of Christ's teaching that they should not have used it a hundred or a thousand times, instead of never using it at all; especially when we consider the infinite interests involved? The Book of Acts contains the record of the apostolic preaching,and the history of the first planting of the church among the Jews and Gentiles, and embraces a period of thirty years from the ascension of Christ. In all this history, in all this preaching of the disciples and apostles of Jesus there is no mention of Gehenna. In thirty years of missionary effort these men of God, addressing people of all characters and nations never under any circumstances threaten them with the torments of Gehenna or allude to it in the most distant manner! In the face of such a fact as this can any man believe that Gehenna signifies endless punishment and that this is part of divine revelation, a part of the Gospel message to the world? These considerations show how impossible it is to establish the doctrine in review on the word Gehenna. All the facts are against the supposition that the term was used by Christ or his disciples in the sense of endless punishment. There is not the least hint of any such meaning attached to it, nor the slightest preparatory notice that any such new revelation was to be looked for in this old familiar word."
Jesus never uttered it to unbelieving Jews, nor to anybody but his disciples, but twice (Matt. 23: 15-33) during his entire ministry, nor but four times in all. If it were the final abode of unhappy millions, would not his warnings abound with exhortations to avoid it?
Jesus never warned unbelievers against it but once in all his ministry (Matt. 23: 33) and he immediately explained it as about to come in this life.
If Gehenna is the name of Hell then men's bodies are burned there as well as their souls. Matt. 5: 29; 18: 9.
If it be the name of endless torment, then literal fire is the sinner's punishment. Mark 9: 43-48.
Salvation is never said to be from Gehenna.
Gehenna is never said to be of endless duration nor spoken of as destined to last forever, so that even admitting the popular ideas of its existence after death it gives no support to the idea of endless torment.
Clement, a Universalist, used Gehenna to describe his ideas of punishment. He was one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers. The word did not then denote endless punishment.
A shameful death or severe punishment in this life was at the time of Christ denominated Gehenna (Schleusner, Canon Farrar and others), and there is no evidence that Gehenna meant anything else at the time of Christ.
With these preliminaries let us consider the twelve passages in which the word occurs.
"But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raea, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of Hell-fire." Matt. 5: 22. The purpose of Jesus here was to show how exacting is Christianity. It judges the motives. This he affirms in the last sentence of the verse, after referring to the legal penalties of Judaism in the first two. The "judgment" here is the lower ecclesiastical court of twenty-three judges: the "council" is the higher court, which could condemn to death. But Christianity is so exacting, that if one is contemptuous towards another, he will be adjudged by Christian principles guilty of the worst crimes, as "he who hates his brother has already committed murder in his heart." We can give the true meaning of this passage in the words of "orthodox" commentators.
Wynne correctly says: "This alludes to the three degrees of punishment among the Jews, viz., civil punishment inflicted by the judges or elders at the gates; excommunication pronounced by the great Ecclesiastical Council or Sanhedrim; and burning to death, like those who were sacrificed to devils in the valley of Hinnom or Tophet, where the idolatrous Israelites used to offer their children to Moloch." Note in loc. Dr. Adam Clarke says: "It is very probable that our Lord means no more here than this: 'If a man charge another with apostasy from the Jewish religion, or rebellion against God, and cannot prove his charge, then he is exposed to that punishment (burning alive) which the other must have suffered, if the charges had been substantiated. There are three offenses here which exceed each other in their degrees of guilt. 1. Anger against a man, accompanied with some injurious act. 2. Contempt, expressed by the opprobrious epithet raea, or shallow brains. 3. Hatred and mortal enmity, expressed by the term morch, or apostate, where such apostasy could not be proved. Now proportioned to these three offenses were three different degrees of punishment, each exceeding the other in severity, as the offenses exceeded each other in their different degrees of guilt. 1. The judgment, the council of twenty-three, which could inflict the punishment of strangling. 2. The Sanhedrim, or great council, which could inflict the punishment of stoning. 3. The being burnt in the valley of the son of Hinnom. This appears to be the meaning of our Lord. Our Lord here alludes to the valley of the son of Hinnom. This place was near Jerusalem; and had been formerly used for these abominable sacrifices in which the idolatrous Jews had caused their children to pass through the fire to Moloch." Com. in loc.
We do not understand that a literal casting into Gehenna is here inculcated-as Clarke and Wynne teach-but that the severest of all punishments are due those who are contemptuous to others. Gehenna fire is here figuratively and not literally used, but its torment is in this life.
Barnes: "In this verse it denotes a degree of suffering higher than the punishment inflicted by the court of seventy, the Sanhedrim. And the whole verse may therefore mean, He that hates his brother without a cause, is guilty of a violation of the sixth commandment, and shall be punished with a severity similar to that inflicted by the court of judgment. He that shall suffer his passions to transport him to still greater extravagances, and shall make him an object of derision and contempt, shall be exposed to still severer punishment, corresponding to that which the Sanhedrim, or council, inflicts. But he who shall load his brother with odious appellations and abusive language, shall incur the severest degree of punishment, represented by being burnt alive in the horrid and awful valley of Hinnom." (Com.)--A. A. Livermore, D. D., says: "Three degrees of anger are specified, and three corresponding gradations of punishment, proportioned to the different degrees of guilt. Where these punishments will be inflicted, he does not say, he need not say. The man, who indulges any wicked feelings against his brother man, is in this world punished; his anger is the torture of his soul and unless he repents of it and forsakes it, it must prove his woe in all future states of his being."
Whether Jesus here means the literal Gehenna, or makes these three degrees of punishment emblems of the severe spiritual penalties inflicted by Christianity, there is no reference to the future world in the language. "Unlike the teachings of Judaism, Jesus taught that it was not absolutely necessary to commit the overt act, to be guilty before God, but if a man wickedly gave way to temptation, and harbored vile passions and purposes, he was guilty before God and amenable to the divine law. He who hated his brother was a murderer. Jesus also taught that punishment under his rule was proportioned to criminality, as under the legal dispensation. He refers to three distinct modes of punishment recognized by Jewish regulations. Each one of these exceeded the other in severity. They were, first, strangling or beheading; second, stoning; and third, burning alive. The lower tribunal or court, referred to in the passage before us, by the term 'judgment,' was composed of twenty-three judges, or as some learned men think, of seven judges and two scribes. The higher tribunal, or 'council' was doubtless the Sanhedrim, the highest ecclesiastical and civil tribunal of the Jews, composed of seventy judges, whose prerogative it was to judge the greatest offenders of the law, and could even condemn the guilty to death. They were often condemned to Gehenna-fire or as it is translated Hell-fire. Jesus did not intend to say, that under the Christian dispensation, men should be brought before the different tribunals referred to in the text to be adjudicated but he designed to show that under the new economy of grace and truth man was still a subject of retributive justice, but was judged according to the motives of the heart. 'But I say unto you, whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment.' According to the Christian principle, man is guilty if he designs to do wrong." Livermore's "Proof Texts."
