Is God’s Name Jehovah?
By
Charue H. Campbell
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES INSIST THAT GOD’S NAME (YHWH in the ancient Hebrew manuscript copies of the Old Testament) is supposed to be pronounced “Jehovah.” So persuaded are they about this, they believe they are the only church (organization) that has God’s favour because they are the only ones who consistently call God by this name. Yet, Jewish and Christian scholars, who are thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament Hebrew language and how to pronounce Hebrew words, make it clear that the Hebrew word YHWH is more accurately pronounced “Yahweh” (Yaw-Way) rather than “Jehovah.”
Richard Abanes, a nationally recognized authority on cults and religions, points out that:
The origin of the word Jehovah can be traced to the late Middle Ages (around the year 1500), when Jewish scribes began inserting the vowels from the Hebrew word adonai (“my Lord”) into the name YHWH. The insertion resulted in the hybrid term YaHoWaH. Scribes wanted this new word to remind readers that God’s name was too holy to pronounce, so they should substitute adonah for it when reading biblical passages aloud.
Then, when the term YaHoWaH was Latinised, the “Y” and “W” were changed to “J” and “V”—resulting in Jehovah. In other words, Jehovah is a mistransliteration, compounded by the fact that, while “J” has a “Y” sound in Latin, it has a very different sound in English—as in the word jam. Jehovah appears in no literature earlier than about the thirteenth century, and it began to be popularised in the sixteenth century by well-meaning but mistaken Christians. (Richard Abanes, The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code, p. 19, 83)