Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Mark,

If this is a scholarly list, I suggest that we cease using ad hominem
arguments. Why should we bring Jehovah´s Witnesses or any other religious
denomination into the discussion, as you have done several times? Because
this already has been done and the JW's have been misrepresented, let me
add the following note:

In the course of writing a book about Bible translation I made a thorough
study of the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, and the
following quote from the Foreword of "The New World Translation of the
Christian Greek Scriptures, 1950, p 25,  shows that your claim below is
wrong:

"While inclining to view the pronunciation "Yah.weh'" as the more correct
way, we have retained the form "Jehovah" because of people's familiarity
with it since the 14th century. Moreover, it preserves, equally with other
forms, the four letters of the tetragrammaton JHVH."


Regards
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo


>Kirk Lowery wrote:
>
>>The discussion of Jehovah's Witnesses and their theological views isn't
>>germane
>>to our list, as Greg Stafford noted. Let's keep the discussion to how YHWH
>>was pronounced, understood, etc., and leave off discussing denominational
>>motivations and distinctives, shall we?
>
>With all due respect, I must disagree with Kirk's presentation. The
>question being discussed was, indeed, "how YHWH was pronounced,
>understood, etc." At one point, when it appeared that someone had been
>seriously led astray, someone simply asked if any of the material he had
>been reading was from the Jehovah's Witnesses, a legitimate question
>given the JW's predilection for insisting on one particular pronunciation
>of the Divine name. Analysis of source material is always germane to
>scholarly discussion. As to the material point, anyone who denies that
>JWs insist that (in English) Je-ho-vah is the only correct pronunciation
>of the Tetragrammaton has never spoken with a JW.
>
>Mark Joseph (my real name ;-)