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What gives them the right to insert YHWH so that the the scriptures are manipulated to suit the their doctrine?


Micah Ong
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It is what it is! @Anna.  What gives them the right to insert YHWH so that the the scriptures are manipulated to suit the their doctrine?  You can't get away from that.  You can't add or take away fro

You can always start another thread if one gets enormous. I doubt you caused any real angst for anyone. Anyone who shares an internet forum or even responds to a youtube video will be well prepar

@Arauna the point is that the Watchtower Organisation as changed the bible to fit doctrine. Rev 22:18 "I am bearing witness to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone ma

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On 5/19/2017 at 2:30 PM, bruceq said:

Yes that one is good and also his research into "IAO" as the Greek version of "Jehovah"  and what he says about how it may have appeared in original NT authographs.

https://www.academia.edu/30967321/_The_god_Iao_and_his_connection_with_the_Biblical_God_with_special_emphasis_on_the_manuscript_4QpapLXXLevb_Ο_θεός_Ιαώ_και_η_σχέση_του_με_τον_Βιβλικό_Θεό_με_ιδιαίτερη_εστίαση_στο_χειρόγραφο_4QpapLXXLevb_Vetus_Testamentum_et_Hellas_Vol._4_2017_pp._xx

It is similar to George Howards ideas of the Tetragram in the NT  except this guy goes into much more research into the subject

I finished the two papers by Vasieiadis. I have previously read what George Howard said and found him convincing at the time. What I'm trying to do now though is start from scratch, with no bias for or against any position, and just see where the evidence takes us.

His research into "IAO" would be rather devastating to the position that the NWT translators have held, and that the Watch Tower publications promote. It has similarities to a lot of the research that AllenSmith has just presented, which would also be devastating to the Watch Tower's currently accepted research if even half of it were true. Recall that the NWT Appendix said:

*** nwtsty C1 The Restoration of the Divine Name in the “New Testament” ***
The divine name also appeared in the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the “Old Testament” that was widely used in the first century C.E. At that time [in the first century C.E.], the divine name was represented in the Septuagint by either the Hebrew characters (YHWH) or the Greek transliteration of those characters (IAO).

What is striking about Vasileiadis's research, is that he claims that the original Septuagint [LXX] which came from Egypt, might have never contained YHWH, but initially contained the name of an Egyptian "Almighty God" who went by the name Iao. He says this could have been based on Hellenistic syncretism, especially prevalent among Jews who lived outside of Palestine. This is nearly the opposite of what the NWT Appendix claims above:

On the other side, the god named Iao is found in Greek and Latin works of the Hellenistic period already since the 1st century BCE. It mainly appears in writings displaying marks of religious syncretism, used as one of the names designating either the highest God or one of his emanations. In the following the possibility is examined that the use of the name Iao, instead of another form of the Tetragrammaton, in the manuscript 4QpapLXXLevb (4Q120; Rahlfs 802) may be the result of a Hellenizing rather than a re-Hebraizing tendency, a view that tends to prevail in the Septuagint studies. Evidence coming from Christian writers shows that for few centuries CE Bible manuscripts that contained the theonym Iao were circulating among them and even possibly produced by them.

He traces the possibility through the large Jewish community at Elephantine since the 6th & 5th century B.C.E.  (famous for the second ancient Jewish Temple). These Jews had long used a 3-letter "Tetragrammaton:" YHW (likely pronounced "Yaho"/"Ya'u"). Scholars have said that this Jewish community was syncretic almost to the point of being polytheistic, similar to the common problem that all the prophets continued to warn the Jews in Jerusalem about. But it wasn't about polytheism so much as the idea that various cultures in Hellenistic society had a pantheon of gods, but identified one of those gods as "the Supreme Being" or the "Highest One." He says this would include usually, Zeus, Helios, Sarapis, and Iao. 

He doesn't mention it, but this may not be so different from how Zeus becomes Dzeus or Deus, which many languages use to refer to the Almighty God of Christianity and Judaism. (Dios, Deity, Divine)

Also, his research doesn't mention it, but it seems that it would have been the same as if the LXX had happened 400 years later in a Latin translation and the choice had been to translate YHWH as either "Jupiter" or "Jove," the equivalent of the Supreme, Highest God (Jove=Zeus). Following the logic of his research, they would have likely chosen "Jove" because it was a close compromise to YHW. But, who knows, even Jupiter could have been possible, because its derivation is likely related to changing DZeu-pater or God-the-Father. Easy to rationalize as a good name for any Almighty God.

He says that many of the Gnostic influences (also widespread in Egypt) popularized IAO as the name of angels or subordinate deities from the 1st century BCE to the first century CE. (Then again, the Gnostics also subordinated Jehovah as a lesser deity.)

On the point of subordinate deities, I found this particular footnote interesting:

Sean McDonough, YHWH at Patmos: Rev. 1:4 in Its Hellenistic and
Early Jewish Setting, Tübingen 1999, 95–97. For instance, in late
Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, Ιαω [IAO] was a prominent name of the lion-
headed Sabaoth, the Biblical Creator,
who could assume many
names and be identified with some gods or heroes. He was Mihos
for the Egyptians, Ialdabaoth for the Ophite Gnostics,
Judas, Michael
or Moses for other Judaizing sects
, and also the Greek hero
Perseus. He was the god of amulets and was invoked in several
magical spells. Also, he was depicted to use the powerful divine
snake Chnoubis as his weapon. . . . This is widely observable all over the
Mediterranean world in inscriptions of that period.

Of course, YHWH is also called Jehovah-Sabaoth in the Bible [Lord of Hosts/Jehovah of Armies], and the name Sabaoth remained intact through Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The mention of the magic amulets and papyri is interesting, because in the magic of the time, the idea was to pronounce the name of a god properly to gain the power or influence of the god. The papyri might even offer several possible pronunciations, and at least two of the magic sources even give us some hints as to how YHWH was to be pronounced.

I found another academic source that claims that although "Yahweh" was the more likely Jewish pronunciation of YHWH, it claims that "Yehova/Jehovah" was a pronunciation given in the magical papyri for casting spells, gaining power, etc.

 

 

 

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I put this up merely for research purposes. I do not endorse the entire research anymore than the Watchtower Society endorses everything mentioned in the hundreds of books they also quote from. I do not consider the points I gleaned from it "devastating" to any position as I try to keep an open mind as long as it is in accord with Jehovah's Organization.

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1 hour ago, bruceq said:

I put this up merely for research purposes. I do not endorse the entire research anymore than the Watchtower Society endorses everything mentioned in the hundreds of books they also quote from. I do not consider the points I gleaned from it "devastating" to any position as I try to keep an open mind as long as it is in accord with Jehovah's Organization.

I understand this and I agree. I gleaned many points from it that were valuable and were not at all devastating to the positions promoted in our publications.

I was speaking about a specific position he posits that would be devastating if it's true.  It would be devastating because it would take away the entire point we make about YHWH in the LXX. We would probably stop making use of any argument about the LXX and YHWH.

1. That's because the basic point is that the original LXX may have used IAO instead of YHWH. IAO would have come first because of the pagan and Hellenistic influences that remained in copies of the LXX well into the Christian era, even copied by Christians who made copies of the LXX. Then, he says, it could have been later Hebraist influences that were intended to correct the "pagan" influence, by putting YHWH into the places where IAO had originally been.

2. But another point is that the use of YHWH in the LXX was to keep it from being pronounced, while the use of IAO made a word like Iao (Ya'o, or Yaho), easy to pronounce. In some cases the term YHWH was put not just in Hebrew/Aramaic characters but in 1,000-year-old style archaic Hebrew letters, which would further assure that it was not pronounced. 

Both these points are devastating to our argument about IAO because we have said it was so that a form of YHWH would be pronounced.

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On 5/19/2017 at 4:07 PM, AllenSmith said:

Among the Qumran manuscripts, The Manual of Discipline is unique in attesting a five-letter name for God, hw'h* (1QS VIII.13). In an allusion to Isa.40:3, the phrase V drk hw'h יcorresponds to drk YHWH of the MT, which is represented by drk followed by four dots where the Tetragrammaton occurs.

I ran across a document here, that either you or bruceq might find interesting:

https://www8.twu.ca/library/theses/330418_pdf_331138_23B9F692-8718-11E4-B9A0-5421EF8616FA_lake_j.pdf

It appears to be very thorough for what it does. It's title is:

YHWH, THE INEFFABLE NAME: AVOIDANCE, ALTERNATIONS AND CIRCUMVENTIONS IN THE NON-BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPTS AT QUMRAN

by JOËLLE ALHADEF-LAKE

The introduction provides a kind of summary:

This thesis studies alternations in the usage of the Tetragrammaton in non-biblical manuscripts at Qumran through an analysis of scriptural quotations from the Torah to the Nevi’im in the Dead Sea Scrolls citing the Tetragrammaton. Thirty-three distinctive divine name alternations were identified. Additionally, a list of alternation types and of scrolls featuring alternations in Qumran were compiled. Distinctive groups of scrolls were identified at Qumran: some featured the Tetragrammaton, with or without alternations, and some circumvented it completely. Our study focuses on the avoidance of the Tetragrammaton, on alternations in square script, and on writing traditions: El, Tetrapuncta and paleo-Hebrew. Two applications were then investigated: the use of alternations in divine names in order to determine the scrolls’ origins and the distribution of names in paleo-Hebrew in these scrolls.

For context, the author says that:

The scrolls date from about 250 B.C.E. to 68 C.E. Scholars divide the Dead Sea Scrolls into two convenient categories: the “biblical” and the “non-biblical” manuscripts. The term “biblical” is based on the traditional Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The non-biblical scrolls were previously estimated to approximately 670 scrolls. [out of 1,000+ total manuscripts]

The document is 187 pages, but much of it is in tables that describe every example found by type. The author also decided to look at how these documents avoided the divine name or otherwise changed or circumvented the wording of direct quotes from the Bible in these manuscripts. Can't tell yet if that could have any bearing on the way various scribes might have copied NT documents, but it would still be an interesting comparison, if different. Quoting from the document again:

THE THESIS QUESTION This thesis will discuss what alternations for the name YHWH appear in Qumran nonbiblical manuscripts when scriptural units are quoted. The term “alternations” refers to lexical and syntactical changes, as well as to alternations in writing traditions, such as the use of paleo-Hebrew script and Tetrapuncta for divine names. The first step of research involved a discovery of scriptural quotations from the Hebrew Bible referring to the Tetragrammaton in Qumran non-biblical manuscript; as a result, a corpus of alternations was established—some scrolls displayed the Tetragrammaton, others exhibited a mix of alternations and a group of scrolls circumvented the use of the Tetragrammaton altogether.

These findings led to this thesis question: In the Qumran non-biblical manuscripts circumventing the Tetragrammaton, what alternation patterns predominated and what was the nature of these documents? Two applications of the research were then investigated. Could the information on alternations to the Tetragrammaton be useful in locating the origins of scrolls? Additionally, in scrolls displaying instances of paleo-El (or Elohim), was there a consistent organization in all the scrolls with respect to the combination of El (God) in square script and El in paleo-Hebrew?

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3 minutes ago, Eoin Joyce said:

his has to take the biscuit for off topic posting! :o Oh just noticed you are the original poster???

 

3 hours ago, bruceq said:

I do not endorse the entire research anymore than the Watchtower Society endorses everything mentioned in the hundreds of books they also quote from.

I was showing bruceq one of the magazines they quoted or used a picture from.

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1 hour ago, Micah Ong said:

 

I was showing bruceq one of the magazines they quoted or used a picture from.

As for your other point on Love I agree that Love would identify God's People not arguments or debates about words  in the Bible which by the way YOU started . John 13:35 :D

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@bruceq Yes I know but I feel this is a loving warning to present factual information regarding the information this Governing Body is presenting to you.  This is not a debate about words but merely showing you the deception that is taking place.  I only hope that you put your complete trust in God and not a group of men.  Especially when they say they things like this:

At that time, the lifesaving direction that we receive from Jehovah’s organization may not appear practical from a human standpoint. All of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not. (w13 11/15 p.20)

Have any of theirdates been correct!

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It is true that we are to be LOYAL to Jehovah and his people whether they are right or wrong. 

"They replied to Jeremiah: “May Jehovah be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not do exactly as Jehovah your God instructs us through you.  Whether good or bad, we will obey the voice of Jehovah our God" Jer. 42:5,6.

Jeremiah was imperfect and made mistakes. Yet they were to obey "whether good OR BAD".

   In the First Century the Christians were also to be LOYAL :"And they continued devoting themselves to the TEACHING of the APOSTLES" Acts 2:42. Yet they also made many MISTAKES and were imperfect people yet God used them as well.

   The real question of LOYALTY that I am perceiving is WHY after my last posting on YHWH {which just happens to be the TOPIC} you suddenly start attacking Jehovah's Witnesses and go OFF topic? What was in in the previous post I made that made you SO upset to start attacking and NOT even be LOYAL to your own topic about YHWH but to go off topic?

Here is the post in full - what was it that made you go off?:

 

    "You seem to understand the truth that YHWH was in the Hebrew Scriptures. But you have not provided any original autographs of the NT to prove your point that YHWH was not in the NT. Of course we also cannot prove our point "by those means" since no one has the original mss. So this discussion is pointless as you say.

   However it occurs to me that we should believe what Jesus taught as you say. And what did he use to teach God's Word? Did he use the NEW TESTAMENT? No. It was not even written yet. Jesus read from and taught from the HEBREW SCRIPTURES which I am under the impression that you agree and as everyone knows that YHWH was in the Hebrew Scriptures which is the ONLY Bible Jesus had. JESUS used such as the Isaiah scroll he first picked up which contained the Divine Name. 

  As for the Bibles message being changed I agree that the message has not but "WORDS" have been such as at 1 John 5:7 which was in the Latin Vulgates Catholic Douay version of 1610 but later versions of Catholic Bibles removed the spurious addition found there. So even the Bible says that this would happen as John said even when he wrote in 98 C.E. {long before 150 C.E.}  that already there were some who were once true Christians who left and started teaching false religious things and of course John also said at Revelation 22:18 some of the very last words in the Bible :"" If anyone makes an addition to these things,  God will add to him the plagues that are written in this scroll;  19  and if anyone takes anything away from the words of the scroll of this prophecy, God will take his portion away from the trees of life  and out of the holy city,  things that are written about in this scroll".

   Notice it did not say no one would ever attempt to remove or add to the Bible but that they would have accountability if they did. And notice it said "WORDS of the scroll" not message of the Bible which God has kept intact.

   As for your other point on Love I agree that Love would identify God's People not debates about words in the Bible which by the way YOU started" . John 13:35.

:D

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Any Interlinear bible goes off the earliest manuscripts.  That's why the Kingdom Interlinear as used by Jehovah's Witnesses doesn't have it because if there was proof that it was in there then you would find it in the Kingdom Interlinear.

There is a difference between making mistakes and manipulating quotes from research articles and also lying and plagiarism.

The Watchtower quotes the Gazette for support that in 1914 War War 1 changed the world for the worse. Taken in context the article says something quite different.

“News columnists recently commented on the end of World War I 60 years ago. Gwynne Dyer of the Montreal “Gazette” wrote: “World War I—simply The Great War to its survivors—remains the watershed of modern history in men’s minds. Before 1914, the figures in the fading photographs live in another world . . . marked by a peculiar innocence. . . . It was the period before 1914 that was the island in time, when men could believe that progress was changing us as quickly as it was changing our machines. Then World War I tumbled us back into reality.” Watchtower 1979 Fe 15 p.13

Between these carefully chosen comments and the ellipses the Gazette includes the following paragraph.

 

"This is of course a hopelessly romantic view of the world we are idealizing the past, and over-dramatizing our own circumstances. The 20th century is certainly no worse than the 13th for mass slaughter, nor than the ancient empires for regimentation." Gazette 11 Nov 1976

 

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4 minutes ago, Micah Ong said:

Any Interlinear bible goes off the earliest manuscripts.  That's why the Kingdom Interlinear as used by Jehovah's Witnesses doesn't have it because if there was proof that it was in there then you would find it in the Kingdom Interlinear.

 

what did JESUS use to teach God's Word? Did he use the NEW TESTAMENT? No. It was not even written yet. Jesus read from and taught from the HEBREW SCRIPTURES which I am under the impression that you agree and as everyone knows that YHWH was in the Hebrew Scriptures which is the ONLY Bible Jesus had. JESUS used such as the Isaiah scroll he first picked up which contained the Divine Name. 

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