Matthew Bell, November 2002
Original Link
Let me start
by making a seemingly shocking statement for a proponent of Christian
fundamentalism.
For those of us who truly believe in the Messiah...
We are not 'Christians'.
The title 'Christian' and all the Western Europeanized 'holy' names that
go along with it are largely in error.
Let us understand the meaning of the word 'Christ'. This word is based on
the Greek translation for 'messiah', Christos, which means
'Anointed One'. Check the beginning of a King James version of the New
Testament. You will see 'Translated out of the Original Greek'. Was Jesus
Christ a Greek? Negative. He was an Israelite. Israelites spoke Hebrew.
'Messiah' is much closer to the original Hebrew word mashiyach.
[1]
But then understand clearly. Neither Christ nor Messiah are proper names
in the sense of family names such as Smith or Johnson. They are actually
titles appended to the Saviour's original name to distinguish Him from
others who also had His name.
[2]
And so removing the titles attached to the sacred Name, we are left with
just the divinely ordained name Jesus.
Matthew 1:20,21 ~ But
while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take
unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the
Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his
name JESUS:
for he shall save his people from their sins.
Matthew 1:25 ~ And knew her not till she had brought forth her
firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
Luke 1:30, 31 ~ And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for
thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy
womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name
JESUS.
And one may ask:
Just how important is this name ?
Very important.
John 14: 6 ~ Jesus saith
unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the
Father but by me.
Acts 4: 12 ~ Neither is there salvation in any other: for there
is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved
Such a powerful
statement —none other name given among men— makes a very simple
request. And that request is that we get the name right. Remember,
there is no other name. There is no substitute.
Before continuing, let us understand the difference between 'translate'
and 'transliterate'. Translate, generally speaking, means to take a word
in one language and wholly supplant it with a word having an equivalent
meaning in another language. Transliterate, on the other hand, means
to take a word in one language and represent it with the corresponding
letters or characters of another language. Here the goal is to
reproduce the sound of the word.
These two processes, translating and transliterating, may produce entirely
different results. When employing a translator, say from French to
English, the translator is concerned exclusively with supplanting the
French words in a phrase or sentence with English words having an
equivalent meaning. The translator gives no thought whatsoever to
trying to make the English words that have been translated 'sound' like
the French words that he started with. An example would be the French word
dieu. Translated into English this would be god. Dieu
does not sound like god in any way, shape or form, but it is
nevertheless an exact translation.
If, on the other hand, the French word 'dieu' was transliterated
into English, the result —because French and English have the exact same
alphabet— would still be 'dieu'. However, 'dieu' has no meaning in
English. The equivalent English characters have been supplanted for the
original French but one must be aware of the original French meaning in
order to understand the word if it were, hypothetically speaking,
'transliterated' into English.
When two languages have entirely different alphabets, such as Hebrew and
Greek, the process of transliteration becomes much more precarious.
Furthermore, when transliteration of a word or name takes place many
times, goes across several different languages and spans numerous
centuries, then some gross errors may become the final result.
With the sacred Name that was divinely ordained to the Messiah, the
process of translation, i.e. simply supplanting the Name with a word
having an equivalent meaning in another language, is entirely
inappropriate. In prayer and worship, the actual Name must be respected.
The New Testament may have been originally written in Greek but, as
previously stated, our Saviour was not Greek. Rather He was an Israelite
whose mother tongue was Hebrew. Therefore the original name
divinely ordained as described above in the scriptures —Matthew 1:20,21—
must have been a Hebrew name.
According to Strong's Concordance reference #2424 (Greek) which leads to
reference #3091, the original Hebrew name is
(Yahushua). What is important
here to remember is that
(Yahushua) was not translated into the final
Greek-Latinized-Anglicized name 'Jesus'. Rather it was transliterated into
the final Greek-Latinized-Anglicized name 'Jesus'. Moreover, as one can
plainly see,
went through many transliterations before it finally came to the English
form of 'Jesus'.
[3]
All these transliterations that took place in the sacred name of the
Messiah eventually rendered a name that sounds completely different from
the original. Pronouncing the name 'Jesus' fails to respect the original
Hebrew pronunciation of the sacred name of the Messiah and, hence, fails
to convey the original meaning. In reality, the Greek-Latinized-Anglicized
name 'Jesus' has no root meaning in either Hebrew, Greek, Latin or
English. On the other hand, the original Hebrew name,
,
Yahushua, has a specific meaning. According to Strong's
Concordance, this meaning is Jehovah is salvation.
Now, all of a sudden, the statement "Neither is there salvation in any
other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby
we must be saved" has a profound meaning.
Saved. Jehovah is
salvation.
The connection is crystal clear.
 Let
us now follow the various transliterations that the original Hebrew name
,
Yahushua, went through to finally come upon the name Jesus.
Starting from the name Jesus and working back through time, the first
thing to understand is that the letter 'J' was unknown in any alphabet in
form or sound until the 14th century. Therefore, it is at once impossible
that anyone living during the time of the Messiah, i.e. ancient Rome,
referred to Him as Jesus. Before the soft 'G' sound,
currently attributed to the letter 'J', came into general use in England
in the early seventeenth century, 'J' was pronounced with the consonantal
'Y' sound. Hence, the Latin rendition of Janaurius was pronounced 'Yanaurius'.
Traces of this are still evident in our modern pronunciation of the word
'hallelujah'. Here the letter 'J' is plainly pronounced with a consonantal
'Y' sound. Prior to fourteenth century, the letter 'J' did not even exist
in written form and the letter 'I' was the original letter used where 'J'
now appears in words in the English language. Thus in Latin, during these
times, Jesus was written Iesus and was pronounced 'Yesus'.
This, in turn, was derived from the Greek version of the sacred Name,
Ιησους Iesous (pronounced ee-ay-sooce'). The Greeks transliterated
this from the late Hebrew or Aramaic
Yeshua. The 'sh' sound in Yeshua could not be properly
transliterated by the Greek alphabet so this was replaced with Greek
sigma s, a character that simply produced an 's' sound.
Likewise, the 'a' ending in Yeshua was problematic because it had a
feminine connotation in Greek (although it didn't in Hebrew). Hence the
'a' ending was changed to 'us' to make the name masculine. This was how
the late Hebrew/Aramaic 'Yeshua' became the Greek 'Iesous'. Yeshua,
in turn, was a syncopated variant or short form of the original Hebrew
Yahushua.
Chronologically speaking then, the various transliterations can be charted
as follows:
| Language |
Original rendition |
English transliteration |
| Early Hebrew |
|
Yahushua |
| Late Hebrew |
|
Yeshua |
| Greek |
Ιησους
|
Iesous |
| Late Latin |
Iesus
|
Iesus |
| English |
Jesus
|
Jesus |
We can see (and
hear) that the spelling and pronunciation of the original sacred Name
transliterated directly into English, Yahushua, is
dramatically different from the current rendition Jesus.
So... Yahushua translated = Jehovah is salvation.
Now the question is: Who is Jehovah?
How Yahweh became 'God'
In my humble opinion, it is NOT enough to merely worship 'God' since it is
only a generic title which could apply to any 'god'.
Mankind has been propagandized for many centuries by a bible that has
almost entirely substituted the sacred Name of the Creator with words like
'Lord' and 'God'. In the Old Testament, almost everytime you see 'the
LORD', what was stated in the original Hebrew text is the four-letter
sacred name of the Creator, (YHWH). When 'the LORD' appears in small
capital letters in the King James Version of the Old Testament (e.g.
Genesis 2: 4 or Exodus 20:2), Strong's Concordance refers to 6510 times :
'the LORD' -
Strong's Concordance #3068 -
These four original Hebrew characters are known as the 'Tetragrammaton'
and —in Hebrew characters reading in Hebrew from right to left— spell 'yod',
'hey', 'waw', 'hey'. When transliterated into English characters this
spells YHWH and according to a general consensus of historians, is
pronounced Yahweh (ee-ah-oo-eh).
Almost everytime the word 'LORD'
appears in small capitals in the King James Version of the Holy Bible, it
should really read 'Yahweh'.
This has a huge impact on how one perceives worshipping the Creator.
Take a look at one simple example from the Old Testament and see how
dramatically the essence of the scripture changes ~
Joel 2:32 ~ And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the
name of the LORD
shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in
Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD
hath said, and in the remnant whom the
LORD shall call.
Instead this should really read:
Joel 2: 32 ~ And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the
name of YAHWEH
shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be
deliverance, as YAHWEH
hath said, and in the remnant whom
YAHWEH shall call.
See the difference? In the former example, one is commanded to call upon
the name of 'the LORD' and yet the name of 'the
LORD' is not even given! In the latter
example, the actual name is specified. By removing the shroud of a
centuries-old tradition we suddenly realize that 'the LORD' is not even a
name but rather a title. When we replace 'the
LORD' with the original sacred name, the
scripture now takes on a whole new meaning. Or more accurately, the
scripture reverts back to its original meaning.
Take a look at one of the ten commandments and see how it likewise takes
on its true meaning when the sacred name of Yahweh is restored:
Exodus 20:7 ~ Thou
shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not
hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
If the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) were inserted into the text, the verse would
read as:
Exodus 20:7 ~ Thou shalt not take the name of
YAHWEH
thy God in vain; for YAHWEH
will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Suddenly the commandment has greater meaning. There is an actual name that
is not to be taken in vain.
ENTER ADONAI...
[4]
Meanwhile, back in pre-Christian times, around 250 BC, the Hebrew text of
the Old Testament was translated into Greek. This volume became known as
the Septuagint (LXX) because the translation was alleged to have been
performed by seventy-two men, six from each of the twelve tribes of
Israel. In this translation, although the sacred Tetragrammaton YHWH was
initially rendered in its original Hebrew, , it was soon replaced with the
Greek word kyrios.
[5]
It was from the Septuagint that the New Testament was based when quoting
scriptures from the Old Testament and in this fashion the sacred name of
Yahweh came to be represented in the New Testament by the Greek word
kyrios (Lord) and sometimes theos (God).
For these reasons, in the King James Version of the Holy Bible which
eventually emerged from all of the above, even the mistransliterated name
Jehovah only appears four times in the entire bible. All the rest of the
time, the sacred name of Yahweh is rendered as 'the LORD'
or 'God', both of which are generic titles (not names!) which could
conceivably apply any 'lord' or any 'god'. In this sense, this is how the
sacred name of Yahweh became 'hidden' from modern believers of the one and
only true Creator of the universe. But this was never meant to be so.
Exodus 3:15 ~ And God
said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of
Israel, the LORD
God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob, hath sent me unto you:
this is my name for ever,
and this is my memorial unto all generations.
Now remember, this
should read:
Exodus 3:15 ~ And God
said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of
Israel, Yahweh, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you:
this is my name for ever,
and this is my memorial unto all generations.
In reality, when
the scriptures are properly understood, there is NOWHERE IN THE HOLY BIBLE
where it is specifically forbidden to call upon the sacred name of YAHWEH.
In fact, the opposite is encouraged and even commanded.
Exodus 9:16 ~ And in
very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in
thee my power; and that my name may be
declared throughout all the earth.
Deuteronomy 32:3 ~
Because I will publish the name of the LORD:
ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
In the
latter verse, 'publish' translates the original Hebrew word qara
which is defined as 'to call, call out, recite, read, cry out, proclaim'.
Moreover let us now once again replace 'the LORD'
with 'Yahweh' ~
Deuteronomy 32:3 ~
Because I will call out the name of
Yahweh: ascribe ye greatness unto
our God.
The third
commandment was misinterpreted and the fear of blaspheming the sacred name
of YAHWEH overrided the actual worshipping of YAHWEH which is done, in
effect, by calling upon His real Name. The final result of this
misinterpretation hid the sacred name of YAHWEH altogether.
WHY NOT WORSHIP 'GOD'?
Some may wonder why not just worship 'God'? After all, there is only one
'God'.
...right?...
And some may postulate:
"Well, what about those for whom the Bible is not their 'book', yet
they worship 'God', love their neighbor as themselves, strive to live
right and do no wrong, wish or do no harm upon others and are, hence,
really following the way of 'God' (choose whatever the faith
tradition)...?"
And yet they worship God.
In other words, how close is close enough?
Well the plain fact of the matter is:
When we worship 'God', once again, we worship a title —not an actual name,
big difference— that could apply to any pagan god, e.g. Jupiter, Zeus,
Ba'al, etcetera. On the other hand, when you worship Yahweh, you worship
the one and only true Creator of heaven and earth according to His real
name. The worship is direct and properly attributed.
Worshipping 'God' specifically avoids the sacred Name and supplants it
with a generic title that anyone could use and apply to their own practice
or belief system no matter how different it may be from others.
Consider the doctrine of an international secret society known as the
Freemasons and the principles that one must adhere to in order to become a
member. One of these principles is that one must believe in 'God'. But it
doesn't matter which god. According to masonic authors Christopher
Knight and Robert Lomas:
Colour,
race creed or politics have always been irrelevant to membership
[6] and its two driving goals are a
social order based on freedom of the individual, and the pursuit of all
knowledge. The only absolute requirement
is a belief in God ... any god.
The Hiram Key © 1997 by Chris Knight and Robert Lomas (Red
emphasis mine)
Any god. It
doesn't matter if it's Buddha, Allah, Krishna or 'Jesus Christ'. It just
has to be A GOD. Then, after joining, everyone's god becomes the same
god, whom they all refer to in prayer at lodge meetings as the 'Grand
Architect Of The Universe', or sometimes, the 'Supreme Governor Of The
Universe'.
All this seems very fine and dandy, eh? Interfaith, peace, love, and
grooviness, hands across the waters, etcetera...?
...right?...
*BUZZER SOUND*
JUST A MINUTE HERE!
Let's take a closer look.
With the Freemasons, one of the most powerful interfaith organizations on
the planet, there is a hidden agenda going on behind the scenes. It is
described as a secret organization, but more accurately, it is an
'organization of secrets'.
In the Freemasons, there are 33 ascending classes of membership called
'degrees' with the 1st degree being the lowest and the 33rd degree being
the highest. As you ascend up the ladder of membership, this seemingly
innocuous interfaith gentlemen's club takes on increasingly darker
overtones and the true nature of the 'craft', as it is called amongst the
insiders, becomes revealed.
From page 48 of The Lost Keys of Freemasonry by Manly P.
Hall, 33rd degree Knights Templar (closely related to Freemasons) and
highly respected Scottish Rite Freemason author:
"When the Mason learns that the
key to the warrior on the block is the proper application of the dynamo
of living power, he has learned the mystery of his Craft. The seething
energies of Lucifer are in his hands and before he may step
onward and upward, he must prove his ability to properly apply energy.
He must follow in the footsteps of his forefather, Tubal-Cain, who with
the mighty strength of the war god hammered his sword into a plowshare."
(Emphasis mine)
Moreover, here's a
brief description of some of the ceremonial trappings involved when one is
initiated into 33rd degree (top level) Freemasonry:
33. SOVEREIGN GRAND
INSPECTOR-GENERAL
This degree, mainly executive in character, "is conferred as an
honorarium on those who for great merit and long and arduous services
have deserved well of the Order." The mottos of this degree are "Deus
Meumque Jus," "Unio. Toleratio. Robur.," "Ordo ab Chao," "S.A.P.I.E.N.T.I.A.,"
and "Ad Universi Terrarum Orbis Summi Architecti Gloriam."
The Lodge, styled a Supreme Council, is hung in purple, with skeletons
and skulls and cross-bones. A magnificent throne with a purple and gold
canopy is in the East, and a delta with the "ineffable characters" is
beneath it. In the North is a skeleton holding the white banner of the
Order (with a black double-headed eagle, and gilded in gold), and in the
South is the flag of the country. The Lodge is lit by eleven lights
(five in the East, three in the West, one in the North, and two in the
South).
Lucifer? Skeletons
and cross-bones?!?
Whoa. Stop the presses.
As you can see, all of this is, no doubt, very occult. Freemasonry clearly
demonstrates the dangers of submitting oneself to an interfaith belief
system. Once your worship is compromised to a generic title, i.e.
the 'Grand Architect of the Universe' or 'God' or anything but that which
has been divinely ordained, such as Yahweh, the third commandment
is broken to a new extreme.
Thou shalt not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain.
Now remember, this
should really read:
Thou shalt not take the name
of Yahweh in vain.
Now understanding
this according to the original Hebrew:
take = nacah (Heb.) or 'to
lift, bear up, carry, take'
vain = shav (Heb.) or 'emptiness, vanity, falsehood'
Therefore:
Thou shalt not bear up the
name of Yahweh in falsehood.
But when we
worship a generic title, such as 'God', we cease to 'bear up' the name of
Yahweh altogether. This is the true danger of 'interfaith'.
When we ponder this situation in its true light, we can only come to the
conclusion that the interfaith belief system is of Satan. It is, in fact,
a grand conspiracy perpetrated by Satan that has been going on since the
beginning of time. It gained alot of steam when ancient Hebrews, through
their overzealous misinterpretation of the third commandment, began
suppressing the utterance of the sacred name of Yahweh and it became
full-blown when generic titles were substituted. Maintaining this
tradition for the many centuries that followed has cast a spell on us and
caused us to forget the true meaning of the sacred Name.
And this, my dear friends, is how Yahweh became 'God'.
The New Covenant
Now under the New
Covenant we worship YAHWEH whom we praise through His sacred Son YAHUSHUA.
We are told that YAHUSHUA comes in His Father's name:
John 5:43 ~ I am come in my
Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own
name, him ye will receive.
If we
compare the Hebrew spellings of tetragrammaton
YHWH to the sacred name
Yahushua, we see that the first three Hebrew characters, 'yod', 'hey', 'waw',
are the same in each Name. In this sense then, Yahushua (ee-ah-oo-shoo-ah)
comes in the name of Yahweh (ee-ah-oo-eh).
To exemplify this even further, we can look at the following scripture:
Psalms 68:4 ~ Sing unto
God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by
his name JAH, and rejoice before him.
Here 'JAH'
transliterates the original Yahh. There are 47 other times in the
King James Version where 'the LORD'
replaces the original Hebrew word spelt (from right to left) 'yod', 'hey',
or 'Yahh'. This is transliterated into English as 'YH' and is an
abbreviation of the Tetragrammaton
YHWH.
There are numerous other instances in the scriptures where an abbreviation
of the sacred name
YHWH appears in the names of prophets and other personnages.
Yeshayahuw
(Isaiah) - YHWH has saved
Yirmeyahuw
(Jeremiah) - YHWH has appointed
Obadyahuw
(Obadiah) - servant of YHWH
Tsephanyahuw
(Zephaniah) - YHWH has treasured
Zekaryahuw
(Zechariah) - YHWH remembers
Achiyahuw (Ahijah)
- brother of YHWH
Abiyahuw
(Abiah) - YHWH is my father
This is what Yahushua,
i.e. YHWH is salvation, means when He says that He comes in His
Father's name.
Neglecting to worship and call upon the true sacred name of Yahushua would
be akin to a teacher having taught his pupils that his name is really
Charles and no one should call him anything but Charles and one or more of
his pupils going around behind his back saying to the rest of the group,
"It's okay. Just call him Chuck. That's what everyone does."
Therefore...
We are not 'Christians'.
We are disciples of Yahushua
the Messiah.
by Matthew Bell, November 2002
Footnotes
Christ - anointed, the Greek
translation of the Hebrew word rendered "Messiah"
~ Easton's Bible Dictionary under "Christ"
In the New Testament the name Christ is used as equivalent to the Hebrew
Messiah (anointed)...
~ Smith's Bible Dictionary under "Jesus Christ"
JESUS CHRIST (or JESUS THE CHRIST, the Anointed or Messiah: Greek
Christos; Hebrew Mashiakh)... Matthew (1:21) interprets the
name (originally Joshua, that is 'Yahweh is salvation')...
Encyclopedia Americana, 1979, Volume 16 under "JESUS CHRIST"
[2] - 'Christ' as a title
Christ - anointed, the Greek
translation of the Hebrew word rendered "Messiah" (q.v.), the official
title of our Lord, occurring five hundred and fourteen times in the New
Testament.
Easton's Bible Dictionary under 'Christ'
...The titles (such as 'Christ') given to Jesus during his lifetime and
later by the first Christians illustrate how their thinking about him
was moulded by their experience of him.
The New Concise Bible Dictionary, 1989 under "JESUS CHRIST, TITLES
OF" (Titles in the early church, page 272)
The word Christ, Christos, the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word
Messiah, means "anointed." According to the Old Law, priests (Ex.,
xxix, 29; Lev., iv, 3), kings (I Kings, x, 1; xxiv, 7), and prophets
(Is., lxi, l) were supposed to be anointed for their respective offices;
now, the Christ, or the Messias, combined this threefold dignity in His
Person. It is not surprising, therefore, that for centuries the Jews had
referred to their expected Deliverer as "the Anointed"; perhaps this
designation alludes to Is., lxi, 1, and Dan., ix, 24 26, or even to Ps.,
ii, 2; xix, 7; xliv, 8. Thus the term
Christ or Messias was a title rather than a proper name:
"Non proprium nomen est, sed nuncupatio
potestatis et regni", says Lactantius (Inst. Div., IV, vii).
The Catholic
Encyclopedia under "Origin of the name of
Jesus Christ"
Jesus - This is the
Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which was originally Hoshea (Num.
13:8, 16), but changed by Moses into Jehoshua (Num. 13:16; 1 Chr. 7:27),
or Joshua. After the Exile it assumed the form Jeshua, whence the Greek
form Jesus.
Easton's Bible Dictionary under "Jesus"
Je'sus - (saviour ). The Greek form of the name Joshua or Jeshua,
a contraction of Jehoshua, that is, "help of Jehovah" or "saviour."
(Numbers 13:16)
Smith's Bible Dictionary under "Jesus"
Jesus - [1200-50; Middle English < Late Latin Iesus <
Greek Iesous < Hebrew Yeshua', syncopated variant of Y@hoshua
God is help]
Random House Webster's College Dictionary, © 1992
Jesus - the Founder of
Christianity. Not used in Old English, in which it was rendered by
Hæland Saviour; in Middle English (XII) not usually written in full,
but almost always in the abbreviated forms ihu and ihs, ihus, ihc, ihu,
etc.; represented Christian Latin Iesus -- Greek Iesous, Iesou
-- late Hebrew or Aramaic yeshua, for earlier y'hoshua,
Joshua, which is explained 'Jah (Jahveh) is salvation'.
Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, © 1966 by Oxford University
Press
Jesus (dzizus). [a. Latin. Iesu-s,
a. Greek 'Ihsouz, ad. late Hebrew or Aramaic
yeshua, Jeshua, for the earlier
y'hoshua, Jehoshua or Jehoshua (explained as 'Jah (or
Jahveh) is salvation', which, as that of the founder of Christianity,
has passed through Greek and Latin into all the languages of
Christendom...]
Oxford English Dictionary at the Clarendon Press, 1933
Jehovah - is an erroneous
form of the name of the God of Israel. The ancient Hebrews, like many
other peoples, believed that names had mysterious power and therefore
rarely pronounced "Yahweh," the personal name of their God. In early
biblical manuscripts they used the Tetragrammaton, or four consonants of
his name --YHWH-- which were pronounced from memory. After the
Babylonian Exile in the 6th century B.C., Adonai ("My Lord") and
Elohim ("God") were gradually substituted for "Yahweh" and its
pronunciation was forgotten.
In the 6th and 7th centuries A.D., Masoretic scribes wrote the vowels
for Adonai under the Tetragrammaton to remind readers to use the
substitute term. Medieval Christian scholars mistakenly combined the
consonants and vowels of the two words in the new word "Jehovah," which
was used in the King James Version. Greek, Latin, and Modern English
versions use "Lord" or "Yahweh."
Encyclopedia Americana, 1979, Volume 16 under Jehovah
Jehovah - The Hebrew
word Yahweh is in English versions usually translated 'the LORD'
(note the capitals) and sometimes 'Jehovah'. The latter name originated
as follows. The original Hebrew text was not vocalized; in time the 'tetragrammaton'
YHWH was considered too sacred to pronounce; so ' adonay
('my lord') was substituted in reading, and the vowels of this word were
combined with the consonants YHWH to give 'Jehovah', a form first
attested at the beginning of the 12th century AD.
The New Bible Dictionary under "God, names of", © May 1962 The
Intervarsity Fellowship
Jehovah - [The
English and common European representation, since the 16th century, of
the Hebrew divine name
. This word (the 'sacred
tetragrammaton') having come to be considered by the Jews too sacred for
utterance, was pointed in the Old Testament by the Masoretes, with the
vowels (=a), o, a, of 
(adonai), as a direction to the reader to substitute ADONAI for
the 'ineffable name'; which is actually done by Jerome in the Vulgate
translation of Exodus vi. 3, and hence by Wyclif. Students of Hebrew at
the Revivial of Letters took these vowels as those of the word
(IHUH, JHVH) itself, which was
accordingly transliterated in Latin spelling as IeHoVa(H), i.e.
Iehoua(h. It is now held that the original name IaHUe(H), i.e.
Jahve(h, or with the English values of the letters, Yahwe(h,
and one or other of these forms is now generally used by writers upon
the religion of the Hebrews... The principal and personal name of God in
the Old Testament; in English versions usually represented by 'the LORD'.
Oxford English Dictionary at the Clarendon Press, 1933
The divine name Yahweh, which was
no longer pronounced at this time, was replaced by the word kyrios
(lord), which renders the Hebrew word Adonai substituted for Yahweh in
the reading of the Bible, but it is also a divine and royal title in
Hellenistic culture.
Dictionary of the Bible (under "Septuagint") p. 316, by John L.
McKenzie, S.J. © 1965, Macmillan Publishing Company p. 787
[6] - From The Hiram Key:
"Colour, race creed or politics
have always been irrelevant to membership..."
This is not true.
Freemasonry has traditionally excluded those of African descent. This is
clearly exemplified in the '25 Ancient Landmarks' –a set of guidelines for
freemasonry– in which Landmark #18 states:
Masons must be male,
free-born,
unmutilated, and legally adult.
The term
'free-born' refers to the forbidding of slaves from becoming Freemasons.
More specifically, it refers to the forbidding of slaves of African
descent from becoming Freemasons and subsequently, after the
proclamation of emancipation in the U.S., simply forbid those of African
descent from becoming Freemasons.
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