De-Mythologizing the Divine Name

Carl Franklin—May 11, 1996

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The Divine name is the Old Testament name that we no longer use, because this was a name that God used in covenant with the people in the Old Testament. Both Gods were called JHVH, and we translate it as Jehovah or some say Yahweh.

In my studies I've discovered that Yahweh has no connection with the Hebrew at all, and is a name that came out of paganism. But now people are objecting to—in our own fellowship that the name JHVH, translated Jehovah—it being translated with the English J (the hard sound) and with the V, feeling that there was no J or V ever in Hebrew. Well, that's not true!

In the Middle Ages I found references in the Ladino language of the Jewish community of Spain, the common use of the sound 'J' and the common use of the sound 'V' and that 'Y, I, C or Z' depending how they were marked with diacritical marks would be spoken with the 'J' sound. The 'V' sound would be exchanged with the 'B' sound.

They were interchanged depending on how they were marked. So, the sounds were in the language. I personally believe that when Tyndale translated out of the Hebrew with the tutorship of the teachers he had in Germany—I believe in the City of Worms—the leading Levitical school, and I'll say Levitical instead of Jewish to make a distinction between the Levites in the Jewish community and he rabbis in the Jewish community.

There was a big difference, even though both are called rabbis in the literature. The Levites treated the Old Testament text much differently than the rabbinic community did. There's a very big difference how all of this plays out with how the name was translated.

It's my personal belief that when Tyndale heard JHVH spoken in Ladino, that he heard Jehovah. That's where he got that. I believe Luther heard Jehovah, but when he wrote 'J' into German, there is no 'J' sound, it's 'ya.' So, the German schools have had the most influence over the last 200 years—for good or for evil—the scholarship began to use the term 'Yahovah' as opposed to Jehovah, and it was an easy step to go into the paganism of Yahweh and to claim there's no 'J' sound at all.

I haven't given you any evidence for this, so it's fair that you ask. I have a paper on this with a couple hundred references from journals, books that I've gone through.

I know it's not fair not to give you the references now; it's not fair just to state hypotheses, but there's not else I can do at this point in time. I'm in the middle of the research and you're being brought into it, hopefully without too much confusion, in the middle of the stream.

So, if I can bring you into it and bring you online and we can go along with this; I'm not asking you to believe everything I say, check it. A lot of times people won't believe what I say, but they won't check it either; they won't go to the sources. If you don't got to the sources and check it out, how can you condemn me for being wrong?

If you answer a matter before you studied it, what does Scripture say? I don't think I need to say anymore on that matter, but we should study these things as disciples of Jesus Christ. We're His students and we are to grow in grace and knowledge. When we're baptized, we don't have all knowledge. We don't have everything poured into our heads. Certainly, a lot the knowledge has been lost over the years because of the dumbing-down of the doctrines, and the brethren had no resources to use.

So, we're trying to get past that now and get into some material that is a bit technical and might be offensive to people, because I'm going to use some names. I'm not using them or naming them to hurt them or injure them, but to show you the source. My name is on everything I do, and I don't mind people using my name.

The Demonizing of the name JHVH:

I feel like people are trying to do this, probably inadvertently. But I personally think it's a dangerous thing to do. The Gnostics did this with the name of Christ. They took the works of God the Father and Jesus Christ and attributed them to the devil. That's blaspheme! That's blaspheming the Holy Spirit, the Father and Christ, so we want to be very careful what we do.

If these people are right, then I want the change to their side. If they're wrong then I would call upon them to change. It seems to be growing and I'm very positive that this is wrong and want to present some of the evidence to you today.

What I hope to do here is start with some of the problems that I've developed and give you a brief series of about ten mythologies and reiterate them and then go back through the first four with some hard evidence to show that these truly are mythologies. Once we destroy these mythologies, then the other problems begin to fall by the wayside. If you see what I mean, the demonizing of the name is based on an assumption—like an onion—and that's based on an assumption and that's based on another assumption.

After a while these assumptions are never spoken of, and never known by the people on the first layer. So, the people on the first layer of the onion don't know what the core is. If we get to the core and find that it's rotten, then everything else from there can be taken down automatically, because the initial assumptions are wrong!

This is what I'm attempting to do, essentially giving you five hours of material in an hour and a half. So, hang onto your seat; here we go!

Here's a quote from a lady who confronted me some years ago at the Feast of Tabernacles. The very first second that I walked in the door at the Feast in southern Alabama, I was confronted with this. She later wrote this up, but I've not seen anything written anymore than this since this time. I did not receive this letter, even though I'm the cause of the problem. I'm the one who published the material using the name Jehovah. I did not receive this letter, it was sent to me by somebody else. The lady sent it to other brethren, but did not send me a copy.

I now have the entire letter here and I quote these two paragraphs and this is the section of the letter that she addresses the question of God's name. She writes:

I continue to study the names issue, and have discovered many interesting aspects concerning the name "Jehovah." One startling piece of information you can find by looking up the meaning of "hovah"—Strong's #1943—another form of "havvah"—Strong's #1942; "hovah" means ruin, mischief.

#1942—"hovvah"—from Strong's 1933: in the sense of eagerly coveting and rushing upon; by implication of falling; desire; also ruin; calamity, iniquity, mischief, mischievousness (thing), naughtiness, naughty, noisome, perverse thing, substance, very wickedness.

We know whose characteristics fit the above description!

That's not fair; that's begging the question. This is what people will do quite often. I don't know. She wants me to assume that this Satan, a description of Satan; that Jehovah is a name of Satan the devil. If we use the name Jehovah, therefore, we're worshipping Satan the devil.

There's no evidence of that here; she wants us to assume that. That's not right; that's not good logic. A good editor would catch this right away; go back to the person and say, 'Prove it!' It wouldn't go out.

But we don't edit these things anymore; we don't edit ourselves; we don't take the time to stop and think things through far enough. Published things that float around on the Internet and gets shoved all around the world and everybody works themselves up into a frenzy over nothing. It's a big ado about nothing!

This is not true, and God's name JHVH has not root verb. There is not root in the Hebrew; it's a primary word, a noun, that has no root. What she is saying here is the "hovah' is the root and that 'Ja' has been attached to it, so therefore, the name 'Jahovah' built upon this root comes from a name that means mischief, etc., etc.!

No scholar, nobody,writes about this; no one has said this. You won't find this in any of the legitimate literature. All I'm asking our brethren to do is to be careful in what they do. If I'm asking you to be careful, I have to ask myself to be careful—or doubly careful—as well.

I'm speaking, as God says, 'In many words there lacks not sin.' When we speak we say things that are sinful sometimes, inadvertently spewing things out; either out of our passion or anger or just our innocence. reference a phrase that offends someone.

In writing we don't need to do that. We have the opportunity to be careful. We can put our words down, go back and look at them. My wife won't let anything get by her without great scrutiny. She not only is able to criticize me, but she's very willing to do so and takes every opportunity to let me know that my logic breaks down. She is my spot: 'It doesn't compute; where did you get this?' We'll go round and round about something—I don't me fisticuffs or verbal shouting at each other—but mentally wrestling with it.

Usually I'll get to the point where this mental wrestling happens when she'll take a whole page and cross it off, take it out of the work and cuts it down to one or two paragraphs. I had five or six pages to begin with and she's cut me down to one or two paragraphs!

I might have worked for a day or two weeks on something, and 'you can't do that to me.' What did you mean to say here? We'll start talking and it will come out, 'What I really meant to say was…' Well, why didn't you say that? Even after that we go through a series of re-editing and re-editing: Is this what we really mean to say?

The gift of a good editor is that he or she can put himself into the shoes of the listener or reader. Put yourself in the other person's mind. Try to do that as you write, as you type on the Internet. Maybe type it out before you get on the Internet. Take a look at it; sit on it. The next morning you may feel differently about it, then it won't have to go out and cause all the trouble it causes.

I'm not against communication. I'm not against brothers and sisters passing information back and forth on the Internet. I'm all in favor of that. I'm just cautioning us to be careful, to be wise and be considerate of the person on the other end; to think things through and not jump to conclusions and offend others unnecessarily. If you're going to offend them, have something to back it up.

You're always going to offend someone, we can't back off from that. But if she had just thought it through a little more or if they could have had other friends looked at it, or had look at some of the journals/material and taken a little more time, this was written well after a year after I was confronted at the Feast. It would have helped, it wouldn't be out. But now this material is starting to float around, and people are beginning to believe that the name Jehovah is a name of Satan the devil. It is not! It absolutely is not!

One writer wrote that Jehovah's a name for Lucifer. This is a fellow out of Illinois who publishes a newsletter. In the April 1996 issue and a quotes a Messianic book and writes:

From The Ineffable Name (http://www.sacred-texts.com/mas/sof/sof26.htm)

That name of God, which we, at a venture, pronounce Jehovah—although whether this is, or is not, the true pronunciation can now never be authoritatively settled—…

Not true! This is one of the myths that has been passed on, one of the fables that Paul talks about that came out of rabbinic Judaism. This is a fable! We can know! We must know!

…was ever held by the Jews in the most profound veneration….

That is not true! That is another myth! They have rebelled so much that God kicked them out of the land. They hated God so much that they said, 'We're not even going to use Your name.' That's in the last part of the paper: Two Jehovahs of the Pentateuch by Carl Franklin (truthofgod.org). the last 20 pages cover the Schema and the development of the Schema and how it is mistranslated, mishandled, misused, misunderstood, and that the monotheism or Judaism goes back to the worship of Mithras; back to Osiris, Nimrod; there is a trail all the way back to the beginning of the Garden of Eden, to the dragon/snake who said, 'Eve, by the way, if you do this you'll gain a lot of knowledge.' He is the one who has the secret name and that's where it all goes back to.

But Jehovah—YHVH or JHVH—as used in Scripture, as revealed to Adam, as used by God, recorded by God (Gen. 2:4); God introduces Himself to mankind in His record, the only record we have, beginning in the book of Genesis with this name. This is what God calls Himself. This is not a name of Lucifer, not a name of the devil, not a name of Cain or anything evil. This is God's name. It was used in the Old Testament, but He didn't bring it over into the New Testament.

…They derived its origin from the immediate inspiration of the Almighty…
true
…who communicated it to Moses as his especial appellation, to be used only by his chosen people…

Not true, another myth! God never intended that He just be the God of the Jews or the Israelites wandering around the desert. We know it, brethren! When you go back to the Psalms and Prophets, it talks about God in the world, a universal sense, all mankind, all humans, not just a select few. God is not the God of a few Israelites walking around on cacti in the Egyptian peninsula.

…and this communication was made at the Burning Bush…
true
…when he said to him, "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you…
that's true
…this [Jehovah] is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." And at a subsequent period he still more emphatically declared this to be his peculiar name: "I am Jehovah; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them."

This is a weak translation! He was not known in the same relationship, but they knew Him by the name Jehovah. This can be shown by a critical analysis of the text itself. That's quote by James Torkey in his newsletter: The Ancient Mysteries and the Ineffable Name. This is taken from MacKey, Symbolism of Freemasonry:

the Cabalists, by the change of a single letter, read the passage, "This is my name forever" into "this is my mane to be concealed."

That's not true! The Hebrew/Masoretic Text was not changed there! I have them in my home; I've traced the history of the Masoretic Text; this is a lie! It's a deception! It's a refocus! It wasn't changed.

They took the name JHVH and added the Hebrew 's' to it and came up with Yesuha; but that totally impossible. That's not true, that's not in Scripture; they didn't modify that.

There are other place where they inserted Elohim for Jehovah, and inserted Jehovah for Elohim, but they marked it. God didn't let them get away with the willy-nilly change of the Scriptures. They had to keep a record of what they changed  and have passed on to the rest of us that mistake and that sin. Why God allowed it to remain there I'm not sure. But we know that Jehovah should be there as opposed to Elohim or visa versa or some other name.

 "In their zeal to conceal the name, the Jews," according the MacKey, "even changed the spelling so that only those who had heard the name would know what it was."

Now it's been marked as Jehovah from the beginning. That's the essence of the Hebrew language that has not changed in pronunciation or in the consonantal spelling from the time it was first written down. Scholars know this; they admit it. I have their quotes.

Torkey of Illinois says: MacKey says that Jehovah is God's name….

I want you to follow the logic here because this is a perfect example of a logic flaw it does not follow.

…Which God does he and his fellows worship?

That is a loaded question. He already is setting us up to come to the answer as the false god. That's another flaw in logic. This is what people do. They start with the right premise, then they'll ask a question to set you up. That's not the right question that should be asked, and you should go, 'Ut oh, something is coming; I'm going to get it now.'

We know the answer to be Lucifer.

He got from Jehovah as being the true God's name and in two steps to Lucifer. That's the deduction he made. But the last statement is not relevant to the first. Jehovah is truly God's name. It's n to relevant and is not true because the proof that Jehovah is Lucifer is not embedded in the first premise, or the second premise. It's totally illogical and irrelevant, totally irresponsible and Torkey should retract it. It's bad English, bad grammar, bad everything; bad theology for sure.

It's setting people up to demonize God's name! The name that He went by in the Old Testament, and push everybody into Yahweh, push everybody into Yahweh's compounds, into a camp with FBI, ATF and automatic rifles shoved down your throats. {referencing an incident in Waco, Texas, against the Branch Dividians}

In the same newsletter, another fellows says that JHVH is a name for Nimrod. So, we've gotten from Satan, to Lucifer, to Nimrod and we're making the track, we're on our way down.

Hershall Shanks shows that the horse was associated with the worship of Yahweh. I don't doubt that; probably was. Yahweh was an Amoritic god with an Amoritic name, the personal god of the Amorites who used it on their amulets and secret rings. So, he was a personal family god of the Amorites; but not the God of the Old Testament.

Again, follow this logic with men. Daniel (of the Bible) brings out the fact that Nimrod was associated with the horse. I'm sure he was. So are my neighbors, they have horses. So what? What is the relevancy of this? There are boys and girls in my neighborhood that ride horse up and down the road. What should I conclude from that? That they're Lucifer's agents because they're connected with horses?

Nimrod was also famous among pagans for having subdued the horse. So did my neighbor. He was legendary as a great big fellow and in his youth he raised horses. He had teamed a pair of horses that ran away with one of his young daughters, and he ran out there and grabbed the reins and knocked the hoses down, subdued them. He was a big, strong, fearless man. A wonderful neighbor and would do anything for you.

To this feat we perhaps his great military success. Pagan religions commemorated Nimrod's mastery of the horse in the mythological figure of the centaur.
It might be true!
According to Scarlet and the Beast, Nimrod's name was the ineffable name.

I believe that! This is where sacred names comes from. Not from the Bible, but pagan worship.

Nimrod's idolatrous priesthood literally went underground with their religion.

Right, because Nimrod was killed and Semiramis had to flee and for 30 years she was underground from about 2167 to 2137B.C. She reappears with a little baby who is blonde and blue-eyed, the supposed reincarnation of Nimrod. Yes, they did go underground and he did have a sacred name. So, did the dead Nimrod.

To avoid exposure the ancient Babylonian priesthood met in caverns beneath the earth, and there developed an elaborate system of secret rituals that would take the initiant priests by degrees to a hodgepodge of deities, all of whom represented Nimrod in his various manifestations.

In search for his original lost name, yes! I don't have any problem with that. Here's what I have a problem with:

In the final initiation, the ancient priesthood would whisper Nimrods name Bell in the year of the initiated priests who was then told to never divulge this secret lost name of God!

See the link that was just made after all this—that's probably true, that's probably true—twork, refocus, twist off to the side; the argument suddenly has changed. Now we blink to all this 'secret name' stuff with Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament.

See what they've done in their logic? Brethren, do everything you can, pray as hard as you can, and ask God to give you the spirit of discernment to pick on where these people go astray. They'll lead us astray if we're not careful, inadvertently refocusing us and leading us down the primrose path.

What does this tell us about YHWH? All of a sudden we've got the Nimrod, the god, and now what does it tell us about him. I think I'm being setup again, here comes the bowling ball!

It must be associated with Nimrod. Now we've got Jehovah as a secret name of Nimrod, not the name of the God of the Old Testament. So, if you or I use the name Jehovah we're worshipping Satan. NOT TRUE! That's false!

Is Jehovah a modern reconstruction of JHVJ? This is another question in the same article, from the same newsletter. This is by Aaron Newport:

Have you ever heard of a tetragrammaton? We all have! It's just the Greek word for characters/letters: JHVH. It happens to be one of the secrets copied by the Alexandria Gnostics, a legitimate name in the Old Testament, and used by them as a secret name.

That doesn't make God name, originally, wrong. They took the name and misused it, just as people use the name Christ when worshipping a false god. They were doing the same thing back there, and now they're bringing the false worship back in, not just with the name of Christ, but using the name of the God of the Old Testament as well.

Have you ever heard of a tetragrammaton or an effable name?

Webster's Unabridged Dictionary says this of:

Tetragrammaton: the four consonants of the ancient Hebrew name for God—JHVJ, IHVH, JHVH, YHWH—considered too sacred to pronounce…

Not true! The Scriptures they quote, if you look them up, have nothing to do with the pronunciation but with turning God's name into an idol and using idol worship in God's name. That was a prohibition in Exo., Num. and the Scriptures they quote. It is has nothing to do whether you can pronounce it or not; that's a lie that the Gnostic Jews and Levites brought in starting in the 300sB.C. to justify their sin!

The word Adonai, which is a legitimate word for God in the Old Testament, is also used by the pagans from Greece all the way through Babylon, all the way through the Mediterranean region, except in the Roman Empire.

Continuing from Webster's Dictionary:

The word Adonai—Lord—is substituted for His name in utterance in the vowels of Adonai or Elohim are inserted into Hebrew texts so that the modern re-constructionists are Yahweh or Jehovah.

This is not true! Let me show you where they go off. Adonai is right, it does mean Lord. It was substituted in reading by the pagan priests, by the Hasidic Jews who didn't want to use God's name Jehovah. The rabbis admit that it was pronounced Jehovah by the priests. Rabbi Coler admits that, and we have that as one of the quotes in the material. Here's where the twork it and twist it off:

In the vowels of Adonai or Elohim… [meaning God] …are inserted in Hebrew texts.

No, they weren't! Another myth! They didn't take JHVH and the vowels of a couple of other names and threw them around like a juggler and put them under the J, like Yoda; remember the little character in Star Wars, comes from Cabalistic-worship. May the force NOT be with you! That little Yoda, stay away from that guy!

When the Levities and Masoretes marked the consonants, they did not, at that time, take the vowels of other words and put them under YHVH to give us the illegitimate term Jehovah.

That's not true! That's another myth! There's layer upon layer of myth, and we end up 2-3 thousand years later with a web of mythology that's taken me two years to begin to wade through. I can understand why people misunderstand it. I can understand why scholars don't get the point.

You have to understand, to get your PhD and to enter into the scholarship of this world, you have to be the most conformist of all people. You have to tow the line or you will not get the job. You have to please their theories or language or whatever you're going into—whatever it is—or you won't get the job. Science is not made up of free-thinking people. Mathematicians are not free-thinkers. Scientists are not free-thinkers. They stopped about a hundred years ago of describing the physical universe, and they've gone to, at the time of Darwin, to pre-scribing the universe.

These people have done the same thing, that have brought in the wrong terminology of Yahweh and pushing aside the name Jehovah and the true understanding of the Old Testament Covenant form of God's name. This is Darwinism at its worst, that we have inherited!

This is a theological platypus! God made the platypus, and there's a reason for that, and there's a reason for this. God didn't make this; this is theological garbage! And we've got to stop this passing it on and passing it on; it's got to stop somewhere.

The modern reconstruction is not Jehovah, it's not a reconstruction, it's been God's name and the pronunciation from the beginning.

The Myth of the Perpetual Reading:

This is a little more abstract; so let me give you a little background I've taken this from the Introduction of the: NIV Interlinear-English Old Testament by John R. Kohlenberger III—Introduction.

We're getting down into the inner layers of the mythology, one of the myths that's down inside the onion ring. We're not to the core, yet, but it's upon this that all the rest of mythology is built. They use this to justify everything else they say. This is why Webster's wrote the way they did, because they went to the scholars who wrote about this, assumed this was true, and it gets passed on to the next 200 years and nobody checks it.

There was story in the Reader's Digest a few years ago where a GI was painting a bench at Pearl Harbor (same day as the bombing). He left a sign saying "Do not sit." The sign remained for the next 20-30 years. After all the confusion of the bombing, the people forgot what the sign was for, and just took it as a command not to sit. Nobody questioned it.

What scholars will do is put signs on benches that say, intellectually, 'Don't sit here.' Don't let your mind rest here. Don't wrestle with this. This is none of your business. We know what's going on, we'll speak for you.'

That smacks me of the ancient arrogance of the Catholic Church that locked the Bible up and said you can't understand Scripture, it takes a priest to interpret it. Who are the new priests of our culture? If you'd been reared a Catholic you would have been reared in that culture, so you would have two cultures that believe this. We have Catholic friends who have a beautiful Bible in their front room, but they won't read it because they say they can't understand it. These are people who studied for the priesthood and one studied to be a nun. They broke away from that and got married. Wonderful people, but nevertheless, sit on this, don't do anything with this because they can't understand it. It takes a priest to understand it.

Kohlenberger is a high priest of theology who says you can't understand this, 'don't dabble.' This is the word he uses, 'Don't dabble with this.' Well, all of you are dabbling today. We're disobeying the high priesthood of scholarship; we're dabbling! If you don't dabble, you will be mudded up in that fence that all daubed up with all kinds of false mythology and false doctrine stuck in there theologically and being told something is right or wrong and having no way of figuring it out or discerning it, because you're stuck in that daubed up wall of false scholarship.

NIV Interlinear-English Old Testament by John R. Kohlenberger III—Introduction:

The ancient textual variance noted within the Masoretic text, which occurred when the reading off the text, the 'k' and 'q'….

When you read something in the text and it was marked you were supposed to read the marginal reading. From this they developed the notion that they took the vowels from Adonai and stuck them under Jehovah. Then they built the next mythology and the next thing you know Jehovah is Satan, Nimrod, anything but the name of the true God of the Old Testament. This is a very important layer of mythology. The 'k' is in the text, and the 'q' is in the margin.

The ketib, that which is written was corrected for proper pronunciation or spelling in the margin qere—read?

That's a myth, not true! Scholarship since the 1960s has absolutely shown that that is not right. It's in the journals, you can dig it up, it's there. But Kohlenberger doesn't seem to read them or care about the recent studies and absolute proof that this is a falsehood. Either way I don't know the man and I can't judge his heart. Either way, he's not doing it and he's passing on mythology and falsehoods to us in the grossest way.

It has nothing to do with pronunciation or correcting the text. It's just a variant that they weren't sure, and it was a minor variant in one of the major Masoretic texts when they copied and formed the text that was the codex to use from then on. Being true to their scholarship they left a reference in the margin that this may be a reading, but they're not sure. It has nothing to do with correcting the text or changing the vowel system or the pronunciation at all. Nothing whatsoever!

The ketib is given in the footnote of the NIV Interlinear. The Masoretic text in the NIV Interlinear is good. Nothing wrong with the Hebrew, it's the way that they treat it, it's what they do with it. This is part of what they're doing with it, they're setting the reader up.

The 'q' form is given in a footnote with its verse numbers preceded by the small circle. When there are more than one type of footnote on a page, the k/q is always at the bottom of the page in the NIV Interlinear. For example Numb. 12:3.

The exception to this occurs when the 'q' form is a different word or word division than the 'k.'

This goes back and forth, but that's the way the guy's written. If you're into this kind of scholarship this in the NIV Interlinear would be good to have, because it shows how they misuse a totally legitimate Masoretic text and begin to pervert it, because they take God's text that He's preserved through the Levites that's a legitimate text and bring in Gnostic texts and begin to evaluate the legitimate texts to the eyes of the pagan priests.

Then you come up with the English NIV that's twisted, perverted, warped and all out of shape. You may have gotten Fred's message on the New Age Bible and how they're warping and twisting. The NIV in particular is one of the first ones they started to do this with. If you were to get this set it would give you an idea of how they go about doing it. It would take some time to go through it, so you would have to take some time to curl up with it when you go to bed. The scholarship is worth it.

Four forms in the Hebrew Bible are always pronounced differently. They're called perpetual readings. Differently from the way they are pointed.
Not true! A myth!
They are not noted in the k/q…

So, you're not going to find this in the margin as a k/q reference. Where did this come from then? I can find no Jewish source, no rabbi, that will attest to this, going back all the way to the Talmud and the Mishnah and any other legend that I can find. I could find nothing in any journal that made the link from this bold statement to trace this back. I don't know where it came from. Somebody picked it up and passed it on and on. They just put a sign there: Don't sit! Everybody believes this and passes it on!

Of these so-called perpetual readings, three occur in this volume.

Of course, the first one and the most important one is Jehovah. He uses the name Yahweh, which is totally illegitimate, there's no justification for that at all. But he has the Hebrew characters YHVH and JHVH, and then he says Yahweh.

The proper name of God is either pointed with the vowels of Adonai… [he has the Hebrew for Jehovah] …or Elohim or Jehovah and is to be pronounced as the word whose vowels it borrows.

That's a myth! That's not right! That's not true! Yes, you'll read it in the journals, and scholars will pass this on. I'm here to tell you that they're wrong!

I think it's pretty scary for me to sit here and say that they're wrong, but my nose led me to this branch and led me out to the end of the it. So, either I'm very, very right, or I'm very, very wrong. There's nothing in between, and it's long way to the ground. It took me two years to get to this point, so I tried to stack up enough stuff so that when I got to the top of the barrel and looked out, that the fall wouldn't be that far if I did so something wrong. I've gone back and looked at this and tried to re-verify it and re-verify it for two years.

There is some repetition in this, and it's not all original, because this is how I do the research and try to pull it together toward a writing and pull the quotes out. This is just some of it. It's not just something where I went to Webster's Dictionary and said, 'There it is.' Or read the NIV and said that's it!

He says something else in here that is a gross piece of mythology that I've spent years looking for the name and knew that if I ran across the name it would send up a flag and I would pursue it. That's the way you have to do research.

Research is like a hound dog on a trail that's either fresh and gets better or is fresh and gets old. Sometimes you bark up the wrong tree. There's nothing up there, so you have to just admit that you've followed the wrong trail and back off and find out where you went wrong and follow another trail. That's the way research is. I've been following all these trails the last few years and this is what I've come up with.

This man is wrong, whether he realizes it or not. Maybe he can read and translate all the Hebrew in the world, going back to the original, and the original by the way was written from left to right. The oldest archeological records are from left to right, not right to left.

The characters in the ancient Hebrew are very much like English characters. So, is it possible that with Tyndale translating from the Hebrew—from right to left—into the English from left to right, with characters that are very similar to the ancient Hebrew that God has restored something for His people? I think there's a great possibility of that! That's one of the things I wanted to pursue and write up. It's an interesting thought!

(go to the next track)

This deliberate mis-pointing was an effort by the scribes to keep the name of God from being taken in vain (Exo. 20:7; Lev. 24:11).

Look at them, by making it unpronounceable, and you'll see that the basic argument is about idolatry, not about pronouncing.

Exodus 20:7: "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain."

Leviticus 24:11: "And the son of the woman of Israel blasphemed the name of the LORD, and cursed. And they brought him to Moses. (And his mother's name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.)"

Although the 'k/q' in the perpetual reading are included in the NIV Interlinear Hebrew/English Old Testament. One of the features is that textual notes are included only because of alternate readings of the NIV go back to Gnostic literature, go back to Greek and Hebrew manuscripts that were discarded and buried by God a long time ago.

Modern scholarship comes along and digs them up and says, 'Oh, here's the real Bible; here's the true Bible, the Gospel of Thomas. This is the real Bible, the real insight into what Jesus was really like. The Gospel of Sophia, and all these Gnostic writings, and the Qumran writings out of the caves. God buried them, and kept His text going along and now they're digging them up and judging the Bible by them.

Textual criticism, Greek or Hebrew, is the domain of the scholar and should not be dabbled in by beginning intermediate or even advanced students.

I think that covers all of us! There's your warning! Do not dabble! I told my wife this story by mistake because she throws it back at me every now and then when I do something wrong.

I can remember being about three-years-old, and my mother visiting with one of her friends at my grandpa's farm. Everyone in those days had burned either wood or coal or had kerosene heaters. The coal bin out in the shed. I knew where it was. I was a nice little angel and listening to my mother talk to her friend telling her how good I am, not getting into trouble. She was going to ruin my reputation, and thought I can't let this happen, so I ran out and got into the coal pile and rolled in it. Dabble! So, a naughty little boy going into scholarship, I'm not supposed to be dabbling.

They're telling us we're not supposed to go out there and do that, that's a forbidden thing to do. It's not a perfect analogy, but the part of it that I like is that if we aren't afraid and go and stick our fingers in there and pry the books apart and do take a look, what we find is quite interesting.

It's not impossible to understand, it's not something that's going to bite you or kill you or going to take you off. We're not to be afraid it or afraid of these scholars. So they can read Hebrew, millions of Jews read Hebrew! So they can read Greek, millions of Greeks read Greek! So they know the English language, millions of people speak the English language. That doesn't mean that you think straight, it doesn't mean you have God's Truth. It doesn't mean you know everything on the face of the earth. It doesn't mean you have a corner on God's Bible. It just means you can read Hebrew or Greek, that's all!

It doesn't mean that if you can read Greek or Hebrew that that's bad. I'm just saying to someone who can, don't dabble. Smile and gird up your loins and run out to 'the coal pile' and see what's out there.

I ran out there and found out that this is a myth, this perpetual reading is a total myth. This has been a stumbling block in my research for a long time, because it's stated so positively, so absolutely by the 'authorities.' I can't find it and trace it back. He also says this:

This deliberate mis-pointing… [which it was not] …was an effort by the scribes to keep the name of God from being taken in vain and making it unpronounceable. This device was misinterpreted in 1520 by one 'Galatinus' who mixed the vowels of Adonai with the consonants of Jehovah, thus producing the hybrid form Jehovah, which has remained with us to this day.

I heard that years ago, and for two years I was on a trek looking for 'Galatinus'; I can't find the man. Whoever he is, he sure is afraid, or they're afraid to write about him. I looked him up in well over a hundred reference works at the library, looking for this man, going back to the 1860s and earlier down to 1996. In the NIV dictionary to this volume he's not in there. In all the commentaries, he's not in there. All the encyclopedias, he's not in there. In the theological dictionary of the Old Testament, he's not in there. The Latinists, would you stand up? I want to get a good look at you! I can't find the man; he's a phantom.

I begin to get suspicious when a man's name that sounds very much like the money that's used by the 'Ferengi' from Star Trek. If some of you have run across 'Galatinus' copy it and write me and let me know. I really want to meet the man, but I don't think he's around; I think he's a phantom.

The name was there, and if I would have run across the name a flag would have come up. A myth! He did not do that! It was not done! It was pronounced Jehovah in the Hebrew. That's God's name in the Old Testament even though we don't use it in the New Testament. So, let's not demonize the name used in the Old Testament.

We've addressed and partially debunked:

• the myth that Jehovah as a name for Satan
• the spelling of Jehovah has changed

It has not! It was revealed from the beginning and never changed!

• the myth that Jehovah is a name for Lucifer

NO!

• the myth that Jehovah is a name for Nimrod

NO!

This doesn't mean that Nimrod might not have gone to the literature of God and borrowed the name Jehovah.

But you cannot say that Jehovah is a name of Nimrod and not God. That does not follow; it's a non-sequitur, that's just the Latin for it's doesn't follow. You fall off and stumble on; going along on this logic path and all of a sudden you trip and hit this rock and off the cliff you go!

• the myth that Jehovah is a modern reconstruction of JHVH

Not so!

• the myth of the perpetual reading

Not true!

• the myth that of a deliberate mis-pointing

Not true!

The Levites who faithfully carried the text down year after year, family by family—because this had to be within families; you had to teach sons who taught their sons—and it was passed on with lineage. Even to this day even the manuscripts are named the Ben Asher, after the Asher family, or the ben Naphtali after the Naphtali family; they were cousins.

I believe there were Levites who had come from Naphtali and Levites who had come from Asher. They come from an area of Tiberius, where Christ grew up, by the areas of ancient Naphtali and Asher are right there adjacent to those territories or are a part of them.

• the myth that the pronunciation for Jehovah was lost

It wasn't lost!

• the myth that the Jews so revered God's name that they wouldn't pronounce it

That's not true! That is a total myth!

If I might I'll give you some references, a few books and just take a few quotes from them; otherwise I would totally wear you out. Let's debunk some of this from the literature off the rabbis themselves. Take a close look at their words and see what they have to say.

Concerning the myth that the Jews so revered God's name that that's why they stopped pronouncing it: this is the at the core of the whole thing. This is the rotten part of the onion that has layer upon layer upon rotten layer that's stinks to high heaven.

If you've ever cut into a rotten onion… we have recently. We made the mistake of putting some beautiful onions on the back porch and they froze. When they thawed out there's only one thing that smells worse than rotten onion, and that's a rotten potato. They really smell bad, especially if you're reaching down into the bin and you run your hand into a mucky old rotten potato.

Here's the truth concerning the sacred name controversy. These series of quotes are taken from a book by Rabbi Marmorstein entitled The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God: The Names and Attributes of God.

Subsequent to finding this book, and pulling this material out, I find that he's not very beloved by the other rabbis; a sure sign that found a good rabbi! He got out there on a limb and his rabbi friends cut it off. He was on the right limb on the right tree.

The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God: The Names and Attributes of God by Rabbi Marmorstein

The origin, popularity and abandonment of a Divine name contain the history of more than one religious movement. It is a step in the evolution of religious thought and intellectual development.

How did these names originate?

I can see the rabbi now, 'This is a good question?

Were they born under foreign influence? Or did the religious genius of the people invent them? Are they revealed by the deity to the chosen ones? Why are they, after a time, discarded altogether, supplanted by others? Or relegated into dark corners of magic or prayers?

Well put, rabbi! Well done! Thank you!

The history of the Divine names in our literature, rabbinic literature—the Talmud, the Mishnah—that they've written since then offers a good many observations on and explanations of these questions. Some points are shrouded in obscurity

While this may become clear by investigation, we notice a very far reaching difference between Palestinian and Alexandrian theology concerning the tetragrammaton.
JHVH
A bitter struggle between Hellenists in Egypt, Alexandrian Gnostics, and the Hasidim, Palestinian Gnostics who founded Judaism…

We saw a Hasidic family was driving through South Field where they had to run the interstate underground because of all the religious fighting there.

This was the Hasidim at the time of the Maccabees that founded Judaism. The Pharisees being the most dominate ones. The Sadducees were a part of the Hasidic, but they were a little better than the Pharisees. What I'm saying, of course, makes all Jews very happy! God, help me!

The bitter dispute centered around the pronunciation of the Divine name.

Why? Because they revered the name? If you read that at face value, this is what you would assume. Not so!

A similar controversy arose afterward around the use of the name 'Elohim.' And even as the substitution of the tetragrammaton….

Greek philosophy, Jewish Alexandrian theology, Christian apology and Gnostic lore concur in the idea of God's namelessness.

If you're worshipping a nameless God and you still want to call yourself God's servant, what do you do? Do you go to the Bible and look at 'Elohim' or 'JHVH' say it can't be pronounced because 'we love Him so much.' That sounds more like the pope. 'We love him, we can't pronounce his name.' That's the rotten core at the center of our rotten onion.

God has no name was taught by Aristotle, and taught by Seneca, the great Roman philosopher, Maximum of Tyre, Celsius a Christian apologists…

Whose creed is not quoted in the Worldwide Church of God. At every Mass Catholics say that the Father was the Creator and there's only one God in heaven—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Hermes the Greek version of the god of Egypt, Mercury in the Roman world; the one I wrote about. Marmorstein says:

As the Levitical translators of the Septuagint altered in several places the Hebrew text of the Scriptures in order to reconcile the philosophy of their adopted country with the doctrines of their ancestral faith.

Not because they loved God so much and revered His name so much, but a rabbi says it. Because they were trying to justify the philosophy, they came to believe that shoving that into Scripture and superimposing that upon Scripture.

Philo follows the footsteps of the 70. The Christian apologists emphasize this teaching again and again, beginning with Celsius and the pagan philosophers of Catholicism.

Apparently Christians and Jews who wrote for heathens could not divert their attention from a teaching, which was current in their days and countries.

What was the attitude of the Palestinian teachers toward this apparently accepted philosophic dogma of their age? They accepted it. They believe it. They set in motion a philosophy that leads today to one of the greatest Jewish myths whoever hit the world.

Why 'we love God's name so much that we just wouldn't pronounce it. We forgot how to pronounce it. We love God so much that we put in the vowels from Adonai and Elohim and put them here and now we have the hybrid name Jehovah.' Layer upon layer upon layer.

The influence of Greek philosophy is felt in the Septuagint. They see in Lev. 24:15 and forward a prohibition of pronouncing the Divine name.

It's not a prohibition against pronouncing it, this is the way the rabbis interpreted it to justify their paganism. Then they write about that and perpetuate that. Since we're so afraid of being anti-Semitic or being accused of being anti-Semitic or whatever, or the scholarship is such that you don't dare—in the universities—it gets repeated over and over again until 'you repeat a lie enough, it will be believed'; you keep reinforcing it.

This is what TV and the movies do all the time. They take big lies and keep reinforcing them, just hammering away at us. This is what these people are doing, until they get to the point where they threaten us: don't dabble, don't fool with this or you're liable to become possessed by the spirit of scholarly demons, or something! 'We'll take care of you, that book will jump off the shelf and club you good.'

Philo, Josephus and Aquila of Egypt (not the Aquila of the Bible) agree with their Greek Bible. Philo tell with his teachers the philosophy that no name can adequately give an idea or expression of God.

God wrote and preserved the New Testament to reveal Himself. These people presume to tell us that we cannot know God. Our heavenly Father Who called us, Who begat us, Who sent Christ to sacrifice for us, willingly! He wrote our names in the Book of Life as we read of in Rom. 8. He preordained that we would be made spiritual into the image of Christ, and that we would live with Him in glory (Philippians). John writes about this, 'We will see Him as He is because we will be as He is.'

This is the not the God that they worship, and they want to take that from us, so they will do anything to rob us of that glory. Don't let them take it!

If people object to what I'm saying, I can't help it. At least be reasonable. If I'm wrong in this, go back and get rabbinical literature that proves me wrong. Go back and get philosophy that proves me wrong. Go back and look at the scholarship and prove me wrong. Do it! Don't come to me and say that I'm a dissenter.

What does that mean? It just means that they don't like me and are trying to shut me up! It doesn't have anything to do with whether I'm telling the truth or not. 'He's being divisive.' Pardon me, brethren, are we to fear men? or love God? How can we love each other and hate God? If we love each other and accept every doctrine that comes along with out asking our heavenly Father and Jesus Christ what He believes:

• When does He want us to keep the Passover?
• When does He want us to keep Atonement?
• When does Jesus Christ want us to keep the Sabbath?

It doesn't matter what I believe! That doesn't amount to a hill of beans! Only if it matches God. If it matches what They want, then we're in good company. If we try to fellowship with God, and He shows up on one day and we show up on another day, we're in each other's company and that's all. That's all we've done, that's all that's happened to us.

I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at these false doctrines. I'm torked! I'm upset! I can say things stronger, but it wouldn't be Christian; and I won't. I can't tell you how strongly I feel about this. This is not something that's divisive. If I name somebody it's not because I hate them. I wouldn't necessarily have great fellowship with them, because we disagree on some doctrines. That doesn't mean that I hate them or I'm trying to be divisive and trying to ruin God's Church at all.

New material is gained from the magic tablet of adrumetum where the important saying is inserted, 'I adjure thee by the sacred name, which is not uttered in any place.'

Comes out of Gnostic paganism where there are many, many colorations of that. The myth that the pronunciation of the name was lost, here a quote from Marmorstein:

One of the great German scholars of the papyri in the 1800s considers it absolutely impossible that anyone having any kind of sympathy with Judaism whatever could assert that the Holy name was not pronounced in the temple.

It was not lost! The Levites did not lose the pronunciation of the name. It was pronounced as it was written.

In the Babylonian documents of Nippur…

A region of Babylonia where Judah was sent after the fall of the first temple in 586B.C.[transcriber's correction]

…dating from the time of Artaxerxes I up to Darius Hystaspis we find many names ending with 'hj' which is equal to Yahweh in the Babylonian language.

Neither in Egypt nor in Babylonia did the Jews knew or keep a law prohibiting the use of God's name. The tetragrammaton in ordinary conversation or meetings was used. Yet, from the third century B.C. until the third centuryA.D. such a prohibition was existed and was partially observed.

They didn't get it from Scripture; it came from paganism. He knows and admits it right here. This is why this rabbi is not liked. He opened the inner chamber and told the truth.

The priests did not forget the pronunciation. We are told that the priests, after the death Simon the Just…

The last of the great synagogues that Ezra set up with the scribes to write the Old Testament books. When it was completed they went on for a few years down into the third century. The last faithful one of that text was Simon the Just. I think he died about 180 or 190A.D. somewhere in there, just before the Maccabees come on the scene.

…either ceased altogether or stopped for a short period to use the name in pronouncing the blessing. Geiger connects this historical tradition with the information derived from Hellenistic sources. According to which the pronunciation of the Divine name was strictly prohibited. Wise says, 'We do not know of the special reason for this reform. But it is quite clear that the priests seeing the decline of faith and fear of God considered neither themselves nor their contemporaries worthy of proclaiming or appearing the name of God.

This information contradicts many other traditions of the Mishnah.

In their own writings! They wrote it. We weren't there forcing them to write this stuff. They wrote it. The Mishnah was written before the Talmud.

In the sanctuary the priests said that the tetragrammaton, according to its writing outside the temple by its substitute Adonai.

To this day they use the word Adonai in the Schema. They won't use Jehovah or whatever they want to call it: JHVH or whatever.

What is that telling us, brethren? That tells me that they knew how to pronounce it, but the pronunciation was different from Adonai—the vowels that were there. If they were taking the vowels of Adonai at this time and putting them under JHVH and pronouncing them accordingly, illegitimately, you could not write this, you could not say this.

In the sanctuary the priests said that the tetragrammaton, according to its writing, outside the temple by its substitute Adonai.

Further proof and evidence that one of these inner cores that they not only forgot the pronunciation, but bastardized the text by putting in an illegitimate vowel signs that are wrong. Flags go up in our mind that that is wrong! Something is 'rotten in Denmark.'

There is a consensus of opinion as to the prohibition of the using of Shem ---- outside the temple. Yet, in the service of the temple the name was pronounced.

As Rabbi Kohler admits, in his book The Origins of the Synagogue, it was pronounced Jehovah. They know! But you have to dig! You have to dabble! You have to get in there and start throwing things out, and you get into it and you find that the cockatrice web that's all been put around us is trying to turn us into a cocoon, wrap us and seal us off and push us off to the side. Take the sword of the Gospel out and cut through it. Don't let them do that to us.

The third version is given by the Schema where the view off Rabbi Josiah is ascribed to Rabbi Jonathan and that of Rabbi Jonathan to Rabbi Josiah. So, their being tricky.

We learn that according to these rabbis the name was pronounced in the temple by the priests. We can cite Rabbi Tarfon who tells us, as an eyewitness, that the priests used to pronounce the name in the temple. Rabbi Tarfon was of the priestly decent, saw the temple service and relates, "Once I followed my uncle to say the priestly blessing, and I inclined my ear near the high priest, and I have heard that he mixed or called to swallow the name with the tune of his brethren, the priests." The name was said, but not distinctly.

The high priests pronounced the name according to its writing.

I want to hammer away at the core of this in what little time I have here.

There is a further passage which exhibits the same difficulty. The Mishnah contains several institutions which are of the greatest importance for the knowledge of the intellectual movements of the first centuryA.D. They instituted that people should greet their fellow men by the name.

At the time of Christ the common Jew was using the name Jehovah on the streets.

They all knew! It's admitted in these writings.

The date of this arrangement must be very old. In the very Mishnah it was put together with practices in the temple. It must date back, therefore, before the destruction of the second temple.

So, this was common knowledge to the people going down to the time of Christ. It's an absolute myth the things that we are hearing. The mythology of the deliberate pointing is too long for me to get into now, but let me give you a couple of sources that are wonderful sources that will be worth your looking up.

• An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax by Bruce K. Waltke

Waltke is a professor of Semitic and Hebrew studies at Southern Baptist Seminary; a wonderful scholar. Some of the greatest scholarship that CBCG uses comes out of the Baptist scholarship there, and they tend to be more conservative and more respectful of God's Word.

• Interlinear Greek-English New Testament and Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament by George Ricker Berry

The interlinear that Fred uses so much for the Old and New Testaments. Berry was a Baptist professor at the University of Chicago.

Greene who translated the Hebrew and Greek New Testament Interlinear was a Baptist. I don't agree with their beliefs.

Waltke writes this:

The expectation that the vowels changed within the chronological and morphological…

the sound and the way that it was written

…system can be verified. Of course, there were some slight changes to the vowel system the way it was heard over the centuries and centuries and centuries.

The way the consonants were written, or that they were later written as vowels.

Nevertheless, the Masoretic texts vocalization essentially represents an ancient reliable tradition.

Amen! This is one the world's leading scholars and one of the finest books you'll ever come across. It's an interesting read. He takes almost every verse in the Old Testament and has some comment on it. It's a wonderful scholarly work. He goes on to say, and he goes into great detail; he's the authority on this. The other fellow, Kohlenberger III said, 'Don't dabble.' Well, let's go to his fellow, and when we get in there and learn a little bit, we'll dabble-dabble!

The Masoretic tradition, including the vowel points, represents the overall grammatical systems current during the period when Biblical literature was being created.

Before it was vocalized on paper. The Biblical Hebrew we possess today is basically the Hebrew of Abraham and Moses. It hasn't changed that much. Waltke shows in there that it's the Hebrew of Moses and the Hebrew of Abraham. I believe that it's the Hebrew of Adam.

We may say this, despite the problems we have reviewed, because of a considerable body of evidence indicating that the traditioning function…

You don't change this, you carry it on like it's written in cement. God didn't want this changed. They didn't just go in there and say, 'Today, I think God's name is ---- What should we call God today?' Like redecorating your front room or something. They didn't do that at all, and would even place curses on anyone who would change a jot or a tittle of the Scripture. I think some of those were fulfilled in our lifetime.

…was taken seriously and that the linguistic data of the MT could not be faked.

Under God's name, you don't have to read Hebrew to read dots. Get a Hebrew Interlinear that's marked with the vowel points. Go through every name in Hebrew that begins with that little tick mark with the two dots under it, and look at the transliteration below and you will see Jerusalem, Jehosphat and hundreds of other names large and small all the way through the Old Testament. If one was fake, they all had to be fake. See what I mean.

It's impossible with in the Semitic language is what Waltke is saying. The way it's marked is true to the language itself and cannot be faked. What is faked is the thinking, the writing, and the teaching about all of this. That's what is faked. The scholarship is fake, a lot of it. The preaching is fake! The preaching about Yahweh is fake! This is a wonderful book. There is modern evidence

In addition to ancient evidence for the general validity of the MT, there is modern evidence, both systematic and incidental.

MT is Masoretic Text (throughout). There's a pattern to it. Others you can just inductively look around and it's obvious it's there; that's the incidental evidence.

On the whole the grammar of the MT admirably fits the framework of Semitic philology…

He study of and the entire field of everything linguistic. He's saying that all the rules that we now know, all the history of the Semitic languages that we now have records of, that are in our libraries that we can read and studied. Everybody who studies them can say this:

…and this fact certifies the work of the Masoretes.

The Masoretes, whose work had culminated in the tenth century with the school of Ben Asher in Tiberias

The Crusades came in and they were forced out. The wonderful Europeans came down to Palestine and drove out the Masoretes and they went up into Spain and the Crimea. In fact, the Masoretes, at this point, took the texts that had been set by them for 300 years, the most perfect copies, copied them and fled into the other parts of the world and they became the basis of other manuscripts that come down to our Hebrew Old Testament in the King James Version.

For a period of 2-300 years other sources in the Jewish community, rabbis, liturgical worship began to twist and twork again, play with these things, place God's name in for liturgical purposes, because hey said you can't pronounce it in the synagogue. So, they would take it out, put dots in and put in Adonai, put in Elohim, just screw it up, change the margins, just willy-nilly rewrote everything around. That's not the work of the Masoretes. That's the work of Cabalistic rabbis.

Nevertheless their activity in vocalizing the text…

All the dots and symbols they invented. This was not an invention of theirs in the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries. They faithfully preserved what they heard. They heard Jehovah and they marked it Jehovah. They heard Adonai and they marked it Adonai. They marked faithfully what they heard. That's the nature of the philological studies in this whole field. That's what they lead us to.

…and in commenting on it in the Masorah, both activities aimed at preserving an essentially oral body of tradition, formed the basis for early grammatical descriptions….

The evidence is here, brethren, that we're looking at a 'rotten onion' that's been put together by some 'rotten eggs.' I think they both stink to high heaven!

The Masoretes had a sophisticated linguistic theory with an underdeveloped expression…

They were faithful to God's Word, faithful to the death.

At the end of each codices they would write an inscription called a 'colophon.' They would tell the year, usually; give a little of who they were, who was involved in the project. It took ten years to transcribe the consonants, the script part. And for the pointers, those who worked with the consonants, the scribes.

Then you had the Masoretes who wrote the marginal notes that locked it all together, counting the words, counting the verbs, counting the position of the words, the center of books and how many books. All so they wouldn't lose one word, not one jot or one tittle, not one vowel marking.

It took ten years to do that and when they finished it was literally the size from the top of my fingers to my elbow and eight inches thick. Try to carry that in your pocket. You can't! It was a mammoth document. For year after year being chased all over the Mediterranean, all over the world, their families being slaughtered and butchered, some of them will tell how they changed their names to protect themselves to protect their families. It didn't always work. They lost fathers and mothers, but God girded up their loins and they preserved it for us today.

I want to read this colophon, this inscription at the end of one of the codices out of Cairo, dated 895A.D. of the Masoretic text:

I, Moshe Ben Asher, have written this codex called a mazor.

This is a totally personal sidelight: My father remarried after WWII, I was three years old and he married a woman by the name of Mazer. In reading this, that they called this codices mazers  I've often wondered that over the centuries in the scattering of these people that they were mazers, that they were the ----. My half-brother and I look just alike, like twins, even though we have the same father but different mothers. It's uncanny.

I can go back to the pictures of the Levities from the Middle Ages and they look like my brothers; we look like we're family. I used the book at the college where I taught in applied philosophy, edited by a fellow named Cohen. He was my brother. If I cut the picture of my brother out and pasted it over his, they wouldn't have known the difference.

All Scriptures from The Holy Bible in Its Original Order, A Faithful Version

Scriptural References:

• Exodus 20:7
• Leviticus 24:11

Scriptures referenced, not quoted:

• Genesis 2:4
• Leviticus 24:15
• Romans 8

Also referenced:

Article: Two Jehovahs of the Pentateuch by Carl Franklin (truthofgod.org)

Books:

• NIV Interlinear-English Old Testament by John R. Kohlenberger III
• The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God: The Names and Attributes of God by Rabbi Marmorstein
• The Origins of the Synagogue by Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler
• An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax by Bruce K. Waltke (http://www.areopage.net/PDF/waltke.pdf)
• Interlinear Greek-English New Testament by George Ricker Berry
• Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament by George Ricker Berry

CF: bo
Transcribed: 9/15/17