Sheep and Goats

Category: Divine Name

  • The God Not Made with Human Hands vs the Gods that Are

    So here is Rabshekah hollering outside the Jerusalem city wall. The guy on top, a diplomat, wants him to speak the diplomatic Aramaic language that he understands, but the commoners do not. It’s not happening: Rabshekah responds: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12) Such things did occur during prolonged sieges. Food and water would run out. It would make conquest of a city so much easier. It happened as recently as 1941, when the Nazis laid siege to Leningrad. The siege lasted over 2 years. Residents ate wallpaper paste, leather, pets, rats, even each other. Up to 1.5 million died.

    Faced with such a diet, one might overlook it if Hezekiah’s knees knocked as loudly as would Belsazzar’s 200 years later.  One might overlook it is his sole thought was for his own neck and the necks of his people. But it didn’t unfold that way. It’s not how he presented the matter to God, first through Isaiah (37:4) and then to God directly:

    “Incline your ear, O Jehovah, and hear! Open your eyes, O Jehovah, and see! Hear all the words that Sennacherib has sent to taunt the living God.” (37:17) It’s the taunting that gets him going! One thinks of teenaged David, furious that Goliath is “taunting the battle lines of the living God,” overlooking the fact that the lout is four times his size. Maybe that’s what faith is: you don’t see yourself at all, everything is in terms of God’s presence and ability to deliver.

    Letters spread out so God can better read them, Hezekiah says: “It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land. And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone,” (18-19) he continues, as though adding, “Well, duh! What do you expect from that type of god” In fact, he does say it: “That is why they could destroy them.”

    Rabhekah is not really up to speed, either, on just how Jehovah (Yahweh) operates, as he throws everything he has against the wall to see what, if anything, will stick:

    “And if you should say to me, ‘We trust in Jehovah our God,’ is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, while he says to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You should bow down before this altar’?”’ (36:7) Yeah, that really must have set him off, Rabshekah figures. His gods would take it poorly if you did that to them. Must be that Jehovah would be steamed, too. He doesn’t know that it’s setting up the far-away altars in the first place that steamed God. Rabshekah has never heard of a god not made with human hands. He doesn’t know how to relate to one. Usually, the more statues and altars you have for them, the happier they are.

    He blusters away: “Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, ‘Jehovah will rescue us.’ Have any of the gods of the nations rescued their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they rescued Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?”’” (36:18-20)

    There are gods galore. Every nation has an arsenal them. Sometimes they’re unique to the nation. Sometimes they overlap. They’re all made with hands and they’re all no good in the clutch. They all have names, too, though not mentioned in chapter 36. Some of them were such duds that the names have been forgotten, like Charlie Browns and Elmer Fudds of long ago, perpetually outsmarted and outmaneuvered. But ones that are recalled are Ashima, Baalshamin, Iluwer, Hadad, Arpad, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Shamash, Ishtar, Anunit—the names have been recorded somewhere, sometimes in the Bible, sometimes in secular history, sometimes in archeology. Sennacherib himself was bowing to his god Nisroch when his own sons bumped him off, the ungrateful brats.

    The Forward of the Revised Standard Version is surely wrong as it explains the choice to completely replace the divine name, Jehovah, with LORD (all caps): “The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom he had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.”

    Is it? Inappropriate? Doesn’t 1 Corinthians 8:5 show that it is entirely appropriate, with its recognition that “there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords?”True, the passage continues (verse 6): “there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.” 

    Okay. Got it. Only one is real. The thing is, if you do not name all the “so-called gods,” the “many gods” and “many lords,” they all fold into one who is worshiped in different ways by different people. It’s an approach that works great for people, since anything they do counts, but not so great for God, who might have preferences.

    I think those ancient nations were on to something and I’m sorry to see the Revised Standard Version (and almost everyone has followed suit) wave the God-centered view away in preference for the human-centered. We’ve all experienced cases of mistaken identity. We’ll speak with someone of a name we both know, yet the attributes don’t line up. We soon realize we’re speaking of two different persons who share a common name. If anyone said, “No, it’s still just one person; it’s just that we approach him differently,” we would know that that person is not pulling with both oars.  It’s the same with God.

    The “Jesus gets us” God is surely not the same as the MAGA God. The God whose aim is to reform this world is not the same as the God who reckons to rescue people from it before it is scrapped. The God who is a trinity (and thus incomprehensible) is not the same as the God who is not. The God willing to torture people in hell is not the same as the God who would never dream of such a thing. Different attributes mean different Gods (gods).

    Surely, the modern view is advanced to us by the critics who conclude that God is unknowable, the tenets of faith beyond the ability of their tools to mention. As with theology itself, the modern view is human centered, not God centered. 

    The God not made with human hands is not something Sennacherib has encountered before. He can cream all the ones made with hands. He has. But he has never met the god not formed by hands.

    Hezekiah continues in prayer: “But now, O Jehovah our God, save us out of his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are God, O Jehovah.” (37:20) He does this only after decrying the taunt to God’s name. He does it the same way as Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. He puts God’s concern first, even before his own, even in a super-dire emergency where you could understand if he put his own first.

    The answer to his prayer is immediate.: “Isaiah son of Amoz then sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel says, ‘Because you prayed to me concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria, this is the word that Jehovah has spoken against him: 

    “The virgin daughter of Zion despises you, she scoffs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you. Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice And lifted your arrogant eyes?  It is against the Holy One of Israel!” (37:21-23)

    It isn’t the answer that Rabshekah had expected. It is hooks in the nose and bridle between the lips time for him. (37:29)

    ******  The bookstore

    Supplementary: This is why I like it that religions in general flee in terror at saying “Jehovah.” Some take refuge temporarily in “Yahweh,” since they know “The LORD” sounds ridiculous, but Yahweh sounds too Jewish, so they tend not to hang around there too long. 

    It means that, while “God,” may have 100 different definitions, “Jehovah” is what Jehovah’s Witnesses say he is, since others avoid the term. 

    It’s not unheard of to come across someone who shares your name. The way that anyone else knows it is not you is that the attributes don’t line up. If anyone was to say they, too, know Tom Harley, it’s just that they approach him in differently, you’d know you were not speaking with someone playing with a full deck. Yet, this is all the rage with God, asserting that there is but one God and people approach him in different ways. 

    No. They are approaching different Gods. The MAGA God is surely not the same as the God behind “Jesus Gets Us.” The “no part of the world” God is surely not the same as the “fix the world” God. The trinity God is not the same as the “Father is greater than the Son” God. The hellfire God is not the same as the one who would dream of such a thing. They ought to have different names. In Jehovah’s-Witness land, they do.

    The ancients were on to something with their myriad names for gods. We never should have strayed from that. Witnesses never did.

  • The Divine Name Included in the New Testament—continued.

    “Okay, so we DID cheat,” say the later guardians of the Septuagint. “But you didn’t CATCH us cheating! We managed to slip our fraud into the New Testament before you could catch us. So it’s all good.”

    That’s what it boils down to with the Septuagint, the Hebrew-to-Greek translation of the OT that served as the basis for writing the New Testament. There is no question that early Septuagint manuscripts use the divine name. Latter Septuagint manuscripts have removed it. The issue becomes WHAT version did the NT authors use—the before or after? So far, evidence suggests the after, though common sense suggests the before.  (See the post: the Divine Name in the New Testament)

    Say what you will about the Jews avoiding pronunciation of the Divine Name. They never REMOVED it. It takes a special type of sleaze to do that. But somewhere from early on, people with such qualities removed the Name for Lord (kyios) in the Septuagint, which has enabled a furtherance of the trinity doctrine. Prior to that, it had been either ‘YHWH’ transposed into Greek or the Greek equivalent letters (IAO) employed in that Hebrew-Greek translation.

    The only question becomes, not whether there was fraud or not—there clearly was—but did the NT writers catch it? The record of extant NT manuscripts so far suggests they did not. Surely the Word of God will not be transmitted through such devious methods! That’s why translators of the NWT proposed a theory that, just as the Name was quickly defused in the OT, and removed in the Greek Septuagint, the same thing may well have happened with early Christian manuscripts.

    Frankly, I suspect the New Testament writers DID search out the uncontaminated Septuagint copies. At least two such manuscripts date from the first century. A change so fundamental as that, removal of the divine name for ‘lord’ must surely have caught someone attention. It would be like attending the Kingdom Hall for years and years, then one day discovering it had been renamed the Empire Hall. Someone would have noticed that.

    Almost always, persons who fervently argue the trinity do such from a personal revelation. In my time, it was Billy Graham’s “Come Down and Be Saved!” Conversion was instantaneous, whereas Witnesses are well known to require a long period of Bible study, along with a trial period of the JW way of life, before getting baptized. Trinity people are known to convert instantly. Thereafter, whatever the Word says or does not say regarding Jesus and his Father makes no impression at all upon them. If a point seems to go their way, they’ll take it. If it doesn’t they ignore it. They have acquired their sureness from another source, that of a personal revelation.

    Perhaps “sleaze” is too strong a work for removal of the unique divine name, to be replaced with “kyrios.’ Perhaps it is just an extension of the same uber-sensitivity to the name that caused its disappearance. On the other hand, since you’re supposed to be careful in handling the Word, perhaps sleaze is the right term after all. Many acknowledge the confusion presented by the generic “kyrios” in the NT placed where the distinctive name of God in the OT used to be. But trinitarians welcome the “confusion” and pass it off as doings of the holy spirit.

    The New World Translation’s move to restore the divine name in the New Testament is unconventional move. No one has said differently, nor have the NWT translators themselves in their appendix (A5). Obviously, I can understand how many people would think only existing NT manuscripts be considered, not shenanigans in the source Septuagint. Maybe the NWT even jumped the gun on this point. But they are honest with regard to their reasons, and the reasons do reflect scholarship. And except for the ferocity of those determined to advance the trinity doctrine, nobody is overly concerned about it. To them, it is just one more variation in the challenge of translation ancient languages related through multiple sources.

    Counting revisions, every year or three someone presents a new English translation of the Bible. They all differ. But they all work. Each has its own reason for existence. Each thinks it can better represent the thought expressed in the ancient languages inspired by the Bible’s true author. Each incorporates the latest findings of scholarship. Each is unique—no one would go to all the bother of translating the Bible if it was just to rubber-stamp a prior version.

    Bible readers have long accepted some accounts related in scripture as genuine, even though outside of scripture there is no evidence it is so. Then, archeologists come along and discover that evidence. In this case, the “account” is the clear testimony of scripture that Jesus and God are not one and the same. NWT translators think maybe some parallel development will shed more light on “kyrios” vs ‘IAO.’ In the meantime, they run with what they have based on Septuagint versions.

    Several foreign-language translations of the Bible—in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese—do contain the divine name in the NT. I’ve never heard anyone make a complaint. If you ask AI about it, making clear you want no reference to Jehovah's Witnesses or the New World Translation, it still comes up with lengthy justifications, albeit minority, for included the Name in their New Testaments. I admit I was surprised at this myself. I thought it was only JWs who have reasoned this way. It’s not. Said AI (Grok):

    “Some translators and scholars have argued for continuity in the use of the divine name across both the Old and New Testaments, especially in cases where the New Testament quotes Old Testament passages that originally contained the Tetragrammaton. For example, when New Testament writers cite passages like Isaiah 40:3 (“Prepare the way of the Lord”)—where “Lord” translates יהוה in the Hebrew—some translators believe it is appropriate to render the divine name explicitly as “Jehovah” in the New Testament to reflect the original intent of the quoted text. This approach is often motivated by a desire to preserve the distinctiveness of God’s personal name and to avoid conflating it with generic terms like “Lord” (Kyrios in Greek), which could refer to other figures in different contexts.

    “Some translators and scholars have posited that the divine name may have been used in the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, or at least in early oral traditions, but was later replaced with Kyrios (Greek for “Lord”) or Theos (Greek for “God”) in surviving copies. This theory, while speculative, is based on several historical and textual considerations:

    “Some translators point to historical evidence suggesting that the divine name was known and revered in early Christian and Jewish communities, even in the Greek-speaking world. For example: – Certain early Christian writings, such as those of the Church Fathers, occasionally reference the divine name or discuss its significance, though they do not provide clear evidence of its use in New Testament texts.

    “In certain theological traditions, there is a strong emphasis on the importance of God’s personal name as a means of distinguishing the God of the Bible from other deities or generic concepts of divinity. This theological perspective has influenced some translators to include “Jehovah” in the New Testament, even in the absence of direct textual evidence, as a way of highlighting God’s unique identity.

    “In some languages, the transliteration “Jehovah” became a familiar and traditional way to refer to God, especially in Christian contexts. Translators in these languages may have chosen to use “Jehovah” in the New Testament to make the text more accessible and relatable to their audience, even if the original Greek text does not explicitly support it.bFor example, in certain African, Asian, or indigenous language translations, the use of “Jehovah” may have been adopted to distinguish the God of the Bible from local deities or to align with missionary traditions that emphasized the divine name. This practice was often driven by the cultural and linguistic needs of the target audience rather than strict adherence to the Greek text.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • Sympathy for ‘Sympathy for the Devil’

    “Sympathy for the Devil? No. I don’t like that fellow. He makes a lot of trouble. I’m not listening to no song that has sympathy for the devil.“

    That was my sentiment for 50 years. It will still be my sentiment, but not so much, until my grave—which maybe will not arrive anytime soon, and if I play my cards right and the ducks line up, maybe not at all. Funny how you can live life as though the system may end tomorrow, and also as though it may not end before your natural death. Yikes! Cognitive dissonance! I hate that stuff!

    Nah—cognitive dissonance is a topic worthy of a pamphlet, perhaps, but no more. It is what used to be called, ‘Coming to grips with the fact that you don’t know everything.’ People used to be able to do that without their heads shorting out—before ‘critical thinking’ became all the rage.

    “You will still dislike the song, but ‘not so much’ Tom?” You going warm and fuzzy on the Devil these days? No. I still don’t like him. But somewhere along the road I came to recognize that ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ the Rolling Stones song, is not really about sympathy for the Devil. It is about exposure of him.

    For years I refused to listen to the song. For years I slapped it down if it reared up on the radio, and later skipped it over if Pandora served it up. I still will, of course, at least if in anyone’s hearing. “Wow, brothers—great song! Sympathy for the Devil! I love it! Let’s give it a listen—right here at the congregation picnic!”—can I picture myself saying that? No. There is stuff that you tuck out of sight when the respectable people come calling. I always did that with the Keith Richards/Mick Jagger song. It’s a little too bad, because if you like rock music, you really can’t do better than The Rolling Stones. On the other hand, there’s a lot of music—you don’t have to chug down everything that comes down the pipe;

    The song exposes the works of the Devil nearly as well as the Bible itself—in fact, better—if we are going for specifics and exclusive focus—that is, not being diluted by anything else. The obscenities of history—the Devil’s behind them all. He’s pulling the strings.

    A fellow with the handle “Apollyon911” says of the song, that Satan is “implicating humanity for the evil they have committed” and “expresses glee for the crucifixion and other atrocities that he helped orchestrate”—Hitler’s reign, murder of the czar, murder of the Kennedy’s. “He is a ‘man of wealth and taste’…just as the SS had impeccable manners, listened to Wagner and drank fine wine, there is a powerful desire to be impressive…to be admired (or, more to the point, worshipped).”

    What is the polar opposite circumstance that triggered for me memories of this song? It was this verse from Isaiah and a subsequent video included in the mid-week JW meetings during June 2020–a video on highlighting God’s name in the countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. “I am Jehovah. That is my name,” says Isaiah 42:8 (NWT). But the King James Version, and the majority of translations, say, “I am the LORD. That is my name.” How can translators be so dense? “The LORD” is a name? What’s with the all-caps?

    You don’t translate the tetragrammaton as “The LORD.” The first is clearly a distinctive name—the name God gives himself—a name that makes clear his power to transform: “He causes to become.” The second is no more than a title, gussied up with all-caps, but clearly a title. Sometimes I call people’s attention to Psalm 110:1 to expose this idiocy: “The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I place your enemies as a tool for your feet.’” Who is talking to who? Why is one Lord all caps and the other not? There is a Charlton Heston movie—I think it is ‘The Ten Commandments’—in which the Israelites are distressed early on because “We don’t even know our God’s name.” Later on, they are as happy as pigs in mud, for they have learned it: it is ‘The LORD’—how much sense does that make?

    Even Mick Jagger knows better. “Pleased to meet you—hope you guess my name,” his devil says—and later in the song he gives his name! It is not ‘The DEVIL.”—it is ‘Lucifer!’ Now, as it turns out, ‘Lucifer’ is not a name either; it is a translation of the Hebrew word “hehlel’ and means “shining one.” But the intent is there—Jagger has his head screwed on straight. He knows that if you say Satan has a name, you don’t tell people it is SATAN. And if God has a name, you don’t say it is The LORD. He has put his name in scripture nearly 7,000 times. You don’t think he might be a little peeved that churchmen paper it over, essentially taking it out? Wouldn’t you—if you wrote the most beautiful letter that people sighed in delight over and praised it for its beauty—after crossing out your name, as though it were a putrid thing?

    Richards and Jagger are more on to matters of truth than they know. Sign them up for the Kingdom Hall! Of course, they’ll have to clean up their acts first. They can’t quite carry on the way they do, can they? But having declared a “been there, done that—time to move on,” let them do one of the ‘original songs.’ Why—with their background, let them even do two! Seriously. Prince did this—cleaned up his act—whereupon they let him do an original song. Well—they didn’t, actually, they slapped his hand when he tried to rework their own—but they would have today. I wrote up a nice chapter on Prince. It heads the book ‘Tom Irregardless and Me’ and is even in the free preview section. You don’t think that I would do the same for Mick and Keith if only they would behave a bit more?

    These guys are on to something with their ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ even if they don’t nail every little detail. They do better than Apollyon911–he has a little too much ‘churchiness’ in him. The reason I had to quote excerpts from him and not the entirety is that he screws it up in part—whereas the Stone’s song I can let stand untouched. Apollyon says in full:

    While Satan is clearly implicating humanity for the evil they have committed, he is not absolving himself. He expresses glee for the crucifixion and other atrocities that he helped orchestrate (not realizing, until it was too late, that Christ’s Crucifixion – and Resurrection, were all part of God’s Plan).

    He is a ‘man of wealth and taste’. This does not simply mean he is sophisticated. He does not deny his evil but, just as the SS had impeccable manners, listened to Wagner and drank fine wine, there is a powerful desire to be impressive (and perhaps, in the case of humans, to deny the evil they commit). He wants to be admired (or, more to the point, worshipped).

    Satan or, as he prefers to be called, Lucifer, his pre-Fall name, is also warning mankind to treat him with respect or he will destroy us. As Martin Luther (the Reformer) noted: ‘Satan cannot bear to be mocked’.

    Satan is not denying he is the author of evil. He is merely implicating mankind and also emphasizing his power.

    Satan, the Devil, is the Father of Lies and this is implied when he talks about ‘lay[ing] your soul to waste’. Satan does not have full authority over mankind. Only what is allowed by God (his Creator). But, Satan wants us to believe he has all power.

    Well, maybe it’s not so bad. But isn’t it a little too glib on how things like the Holocaust is “part of God’s Plan?” (capitalized, no less, though it includes the Holocaust!) It reminds me of the time I passed the church billboard that read “‘Don’t Worry, I’m in Charge’—God” Two days later planes flew into the twin towers in New York City, and I began to wonder if that stupid sign was still there. I returned to read the modified version: “God Bless America.” Had the priest swapped the letters at 3 AM, hoping no one would see him? Even the new didn’t fit. Would you have carried on about God’s blessing in the big city at the time?

    What Apollyon downplays is that Satan, not God, is described as the “ruler of this system of this world.” Satan is the one who is “blinding the minds of the unbelievers.” Satan is the one who is “misleading the entire inhabited earth”—that covers a lot of territory!—so it seems that Apollyon might expound at least a little on how Satan has managed to hijack the world God created. He doesn’t do this because he doesn’t know—all he can do is offer up some muddled alteration: “‘Don’t worry (much), I’m in charge, even if it seems I am sleeping at the switch’—God.” No. It won’t do. Satan is the “ruler of this world,” says the Bible repeatedly. (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Revelation 12:9)

    Jagger and Richards nail it, but they don’t go far enough. Jesus has come to “break up the works of the Devil,” 1 John 3:8 says. The first thing you do in breaking up the works of the Devil is to expose them. If they went far enough they would come to the indictment of Babylon the Great, the party identified by Jehovah’s Witnesses as “the world empire of false religion.” “Yes, in her was found the blood of prophets and of holy ones and of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth.” (Revelation 18:24) Of all those? Yes, for it is not just the acts of commission we speak of, but it is far more for the acts of omission. Had religion trained its members to be peaceable, as Jehovah’s Witnesses do theirs, they would have held their ground when the king tried enlist them in his latest war; they would have “paid Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God”—they would have told Hitler to take a hike, as Jehovah’s Witnesses in Axis lands did. That Babylon the Great has been so negligent is why it can be fingered for the blood of all.

    The Daily Text under consideration for Friday, June 26, was John 16:2. “The hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he has offered a sacred service to God.​.” The commentary included: “How ironic that in committing such evil crimes as murder, religious fanatics violate the very laws of the One whom they claim to worship! Clearly, their consciences are treacherous guides! How can we prevent our conscience from becoming ineffective? The laws and principles contained in God’s Word are “beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness.” (2 Tim. 3:16) Therefore, by diligently studying the Bible, meditating on what it says, and applying it in our lives, we can train our conscience to be more sensitive to God’s thinking, and it can thus serve as a reliable guide.”

    We hear the remark all the time that so and so will be guided by his or her conscience—and it sounds good, it plays well—how can anyone go wrong if he listens to his conscience? But as history demonstrates time and time again, the local king and the prevailing mindset is more than a match for any conscience. That conscience must be trained by God’s thinking—otherwise it will be trained by Satan’s. We ought not be as “children, tossed about as by waves and carried here and there by every wind of teaching by means of the trickery of men, by means of cunning in deceptive schemes.” (Ephesians 4:14) It requires training in God’s thinking to stand firm. Had religion not so quickly bent over for the sake of anything claiming to be “science,” it might still be able to draw upon Genesis as a credible source to explain some of the deeper questions that science cannot touch. Had religion held fast to its core, it would not find itself acquiescing, to various degrees,—sometimes only partially, and sometimes completely—to the humanist and Satanic lie that humans are capable of self-rule.

    Mick and Keith are on to it—they even nail the too-frequent reversal of roles, with their, “Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints”—but they still haven’t gone far enough. They even nail the “refinement” of those under Satan’s influence, who may very well be men “of wealth and taste”—but they still don’t go far enough. They still deserve an honorable mention, not me burning their record. I’ll burn it anyway, for—let’s face it—‘Sympathy for the Devil’ is not really a kingdom song, is it? But they deserve better. Ah, well—there are greater injustices. There are bigger fish to fry. I’ll stick with the other songs on the Martin Scorsese movie ‘Shine a Light’—which is the Stones in concert—and I’ll reaffirm my favorite scene: that of Buddy Guy standing like a mountain while two of the scrawny Stones buzz around him like gnats, blown away by his fierce guitar work.

    Please allow me to introduce myself

    I’m a man of wealth and taste

    I’ve been around for a long, long year

    Stole many a man’s soul to waste

    And I was ’round when Jesus Christ

    Had his moment of doubt and pain

    Made damn sure that Pilate

    Washed his hands and sealed his fate

    Pleased to meet you

    Hope you guess my name

    But what’s puzzling you

    Is the nature of my game

    I stuck around St. Petersburg

    When I saw it was a time for a change

    Killed the czar and his ministers

    Anastasia screamed in vain

    I rode a tank

    Held a general’s rank

    When the blitzkrieg raged

    And the bodies stank

    Pleased to meet you

    Hope you guess my name, oh yeah

    Ah, what’s puzzling you

    Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

    I watched with glee

    While your kings and queens

    Fought for ten decades

    For the gods they made

    I shouted out

    Who killed the Kennedys?

    When after all

    It was you and me

    Let me please introduce myself

    I’m a man of wealth and taste

    And I laid traps for troubadours

    Who get killed before they reached Bombay

    Pleased to meet you

    Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah

    But what’s puzzling you

    Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

    Pleased to meet you

    Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah

    But what’s confusing you

    Is just the nature of my game, mm yeah

    Just as every cop is a criminal

    And all the sinners saints

    As heads is tails

    Just call me Lucifer

    ‘Cause I’m in need of some restraint

    So if you meet me

    Have some courtesy

    Have some sympathy, and some taste

    Use all your well-learned politesse

    Or I’ll lay your soul to waste, mm yeah

    Pleased to meet you

    Hope you guessed my name, mm yeah

    But what’s puzzling you

    Is the nature of my game, mm mean it, get down

    Oh yeah, get on down

    Oh yeah

    Oh yeah

    Tell me baby, what’s my name

    Tell me honey, can ya guess my name

    Tell me baby, what’s my name

    I tell you one time, you’re to blame

    Oh, right

    What’s my name

    Tell me, baby, what’s my name

    Tell me, sweetie, what’s my name

  • The Divine Name and the New Testament

    When you are preparing your English translation of the Bible, it's perfectly acceptable to use God's name Jehovah in the Old Testament. Nobody who knows anything will you any grief about this. You can do it nearly 7000 times. That's how often the four consonant tetragrammaton appears in the original Hebrew.
     
    Using God's name in the New Testament is a different matter. It is a bolder move, not without controversy. At first glance, it would seem that you ought to be able to do it without fuss. At second glance, it begins to seem that you have no right to do it at all. At third glance – you get the green light once again, and using God's name is okay. It's solid. The New World Translation does this, and their reasoning is explained in an appendix section.
     
    At first glance, why would you not use the name Jehovah in the New Testament? The NT is packed with direct quotes from the Old Testament. So, if the Name appears without controversy in an Old Testament verse, why should it not also appear when that verse is lifted and inserted into the New Testament?
     
    But at second glance, it's not quite so simple as that. Ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament [Hebrew] contain the divine name, but ancient manuscripts of the New Testament [Greek] do not. Maybe you think they should, but they don't. That's strange – why would a direct quote pick up every word except the divine name? Nonetheless, as a translator, you have to translate what is, not what you think ought to be.
     
    At third glance, the picture changes again. Those NT writers didn't take their quotes directly from the Hebrew Scriptures. Starting around the 3rd century BC, Greek became the dominant language in that part of the world. Therefore, the Hebrew Old Testament was put into Greek in a translation that came to be known as the Septuagint. For the most part, New Testament writers took their OT quotes from this translation, not directly from the Hebrew writings.

    Now, the Septuagint doesn't contain the divine name, either – that is, the Septuagint as we have it today. Instead, where you might expect to find God's name, you find kyrios, a Greek word that means lord. However, numerous early fragments have been found that do contain the divine name. Thus, it appears that the same sentiment (that the Name is too sacred to pronounce) which caused it to disappear in latter Hebrew manuscript copies also caused it to disappear in latter Septuagint manuscript copies!

    Obviously, New Testament authors did not consult latter Septuagint versions – ones produced centuries after their deaths. They used the early versions, and these versions include the Name. The New World Translation (Large Print Version, with References) contain numerous examples, in an appendix, of early Septuagint inclusions of the name. So the translation is on firm ground to use it in the NT, even though few Bibles do.
     
    George Howard of the University of Georgia writes this in Journal of Biblical Literature (Vol. 96, 1977, p. 63): "Recent discoveries in Egypt and the Judean Desert allow us to see first hand the use of God's name in pre-Christian times. These discoveries are significant for New Testament studies in that they form a literary analogy with the earliest Christian documents and may explain how NT authors used the divine name. In the following pages we will set forth a theory that the divine name, YHWH [he uses the Hebrew characters] . . . was originally written in the NT quotations of and allusions to the Old Testament and that in the course of time it was replaced mainly with the surrogate abbreviation for Kyrios, "Lord" [Greek characters]. This removal of the Tetragram[maton], in our view,     created a confusion in the minds of early Gentile Christians about the relationship between the 'Lord God' and the 'Lord Christ' which is reflected in the MS tradition of the NT text itself." [bolded print mine]
     
    Not only did the removal of the divine name in the Old Testament create that confusion, but its proper addition in the New Testament, now that it is clearly found in the earliest Septuagint manuscripts, is resisted by Trinitarians precisely as to continue that confusion.

    Continued here

    ******  The bookstore

  • The New International Version and the Tetragrammaton

    The world’s most popular Bible translation today is The New International Version. It does not even once mention God’s distinctive name Jehovah. Edwin H Palmer, Executive Secretary for the NIV committee, was asked about that.

    “Here is why we did not,” he replied. “You are right that Jehovah is a distinctive name for God and ideally we should have used it. But we put 2 1/4 million dollars into this translation and a sure way of throwing that down the drain is to translate, for example, Psalm 23 as, ‘Yahweh is my shepherd.’ Immediately, we would have translated for nothing. Nobody would have used it. Oh, maybe you and a handful [of] others. But a Christian has to be also wise and practical. We are the victims of 350 years of the King James tradition. It is far better to get two million to read it—that is how many have bought it to date—and to follow the King James [which does include the name in four places], than to have two thousand buy it and have the correct translation of Yahweh. . . . It was a hard decision, and many of our translators agree with you.”    (2nd set of brackets mine)

    Who can’t empathize with this fellow? Do you want your new Bible translation to be read by everybody or by nobody? All you need do to ensure the former is remove the feature people loathe so much that its inclusion would send sales into the toilet. Yes, you must be “wise and practical.” As Jesus said, “the sons of this system of things are wiser in a practical way toward their own generation than the sons of the light are.” (Luke 16:8) So the sons of this system of things remove God’s name from their Bibles and sales go through the roof, whereas the dopey and pious sons of the light won’t compromise an inch and sell a thousand copies of theirs.

    What can one say when you have to pull the author’s name from his own book in order to get anyone to read it? This might not be a big deal if the original text featured that name a half dozen times or so, but it appears in the Hebrew almost 7000 times!  [the tetragrammaton: YHWH] You don’t think that if God includes his own name 7000 times, he must consider it important, perhaps the most important aspect of the scriptures? After all, the Son’s name, Jesus, appears only 1000 times and you can just imagine the furor if some translator saw fit to take that out! And yet the sons of this system of things pull God’s name, and consider themselves “wise and practical” in doing so.

    Over the years, some have pointed outwhat a blunder that is. For instance…."the most common "error" made by most translators in the last 3500 years…is their elimination of heaven's revealed Name of the Most High, Yahweh (Jehovah)" – A. B. Traina; in the Preface of the Holy Name Bible

    and    "The substitution of the word "Lord" is most unhappy; for…it in NO WAY represents the meaning of the sacred name (Jehovah)…" – The 1872 edition of Smith's Bible Dictionary

     

     

    Various sons of the light through the years have produced some translations that consistently translate the tetragrammaton as “Jehovah:”  such as the American Standard Bible of 1901, or the Bible in Living English (Stephen Byington – 1972), or the Holy Name Bible (1963). Have you heard of any of them? True to Mr. Palmer’s prophesy, they have all slipped into obscurity. Alas, there would appear to be no way to highlight the name of the Bible’s author!

    But there is a way, and the sons of the light have proved themselves less dopey than they may at first appear. The key is to dispense with commercial distribution channels and not try to run Christianity as a popularity contest. There is one translation today that both faithfully publishes the divine name Jehovah and enjoys widespread circulation: the New World Translation. It is both translated, published, and distributed by faithful servants of Jehovah. Jehovah’s Witnesses are organized as a separate Bible society in no way beholden to the commercial interests Dr. Palmer felt held hostage to. The translators were free to focus on accurate translating, unconcerned with any popular or commercial verdict, feeling no need to come up with familiar and favored renderings lest money-conscious executives turn thumbs down.

    It’s master text in Greek is Westcott and Hort, the same as the Revised Standard Version (1946), the Emphasized Bible (1902), An American Translation (1923) and others…..and in Hebrew, the Masoretic Text, same as most versions. Again, it is by no means the first Bible ever to incorporate God’s name throughout. Many others have done so. It is merely the first such Bible to receive widespread distribution. It’s success lies in the fact that distribution depends upon the efforts of dedicated Christians, and not upon the world’s commercial interests.

    If the churches in general reject use of God’s name, Jehovah’s Witnesses are not as put out about it as one might expect. Instead, they have suggested [strongly] that the situation is of God’s doing:

    God’s name Jehovah is hated so badly that the clergy of Christendom…. have denied it as being the Creator’s name, have removed it from their modern translations of the Bible, have said it is not the name of the God of Christians and thereby have left Jehovah’s witnesses alone to bear the distinguished divine Name. Little do they know that this is a maneuvering of God, for he respects his sacred name, and has arranged it so that only those devoted to him may bear it.              Watchtower 1966, pg 634

    ……………………………………..

    The parable giving rise to the expressions sons of this system of things and sons of the light is an odd one. Several of Jesus’ illustrations are downright quirky…..not at all the syrupy drivel you get at church…and the reader isn’t entirely sure who to root for:

    “A certain man was rich and he had a steward, and this one was accused to him as handling his goods wastefully. So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Hand in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer manage the house.’ Then the steward said to himself, ‘What am I to do, seeing that my master will take the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, I am ashamed to beg. Ah! I know what I shall do, so that, when I am put out of the stewardship, people will receive me into their homes.’ And calling to him each one of the debtors of his master he proceeded to say to the first, ‘How much are you owing my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred bath measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your written agreement back and sit down and quickly write fifty.’ Next, he said to another one, ‘Now you, how much are you owing?’ He said, ‘A hundred cor measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your written agreement back and write eighty.’ And his master commended the steward, though unrighteous, because he acted with practical wisdom; for the sons of this system of things are wiser in a practical way toward their own generation than the sons of the light are.     Luke 16:2-8

    Ain't that the truth.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me       No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

     

  • The Divine Name and the Old Testament

    When you are translating your Old Testament from the original Hebrew to English, it’s perfectly acceptable to render the Divine Name as “Jehovah.” Nobody who knows anything will give you any grief over this. All you have to do is translate the four-consonant tetragrammaton, and there it is, over 6000 times, in the original writings. You don’t think if someone puts their name in a document 6000 times that they want it known? 

    Even translations that decline to render the name as a name do so for reasons philosophical, not technical. They simply don’t want to do it. So they usually render the tetragrammaton as (the title, not name) LORD, in all caps to distinguish it from the actual word Lord. It can make for odd reading, such as at Ps 110:1.

    The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool?  RVS

    Who is speaking to whom? Obviously, there’s a difference in the two original language terms rendered Lord.

    It’s a bit clunky, too, when context indicates a name:

    Let then know that thou alone, whose name is the LORD, art the Most High over all the earth.    Ps 83:18

    Hi, my name’s “the LORD.” Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue? Or take those ancient Israelites in Charlton Heston’s “The Ten Commandments.” There they are whining and crying in the movie’s first half: they don’t even know their God’s name. Even the Egyptians taunt them about this. Later on, they do know: it’s “the LORD.” Everybody’s happy.

    Translations that pull the name often do so without a trace, and you have to reason on Ps 110:1 (above) to show there is a difference in the original language. Other translations pull it in all but a few places. Thus, the King James Version leaves the name intact in four locations, Ps 83:18 being one of these. Still other translations pull it entirely, but explain why in their prefaces. The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is one of these:

    “For two reasons the [translation] Committee has returned to the more familiar usage of the King James Version [rendering YHWH as LORD]: (1) the word “Jehovah” does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew; and (2) the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.”

    Note the philosophical, not technical, basis. Neither argument holds water.

    1. Okay, okay, so “Jehovah” is not the Hebrew pronunciation. Neither is Jesus, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, indeed, most names from the OT. We all know names change when we cross languages. In Ecuador, they call me “Tomas.” You think I don’t answer? If you want to be so picky, then render the name “Yahweh.” We could live with that. But removing the name entirely in order to slap in a title betrays a callous attitude toward the Book’s author.

    2. It is? Inappropriate? What about 1 Cor. 8:5?

    For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.    (KJV)

    We’ve all experienced cases of mistaken identity. We speak with someone of a name we both know, yet the attributes don’t line up. We soon realize we’re speaking of two different persons who share a common name. It’s that way with “God.” The God who would torture people forever and ever in hellfire is entirely different from our God [Jehovah] who would never dream of such a thing. (Jer 2:35)

    You’re safe, therefore, putting “Jehovah” in the Old Testament. You ought to do it, in fact, rather than presume to hide his name. Putting it in the New Testament is another matter. It’s a move readily justified, yet it is bolder, not without controversy. A future post will deal with the subject.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me         No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash