There are many resources on this blog defending the perfect preservation of Scripture and its necessary consequence of the use of the Hebrew and Greek Textus Receptus and the KJV, as well as other resources on my website on that topic. The video below presents a summary of the historical evidence from a perfect preservationist perspective, combining the Biblical view that God has preserved His words with historical evidence for the preservation of Scripture. You can click here to view “Historical & Biblical Evidence for the Perfect Preservation of Scripture, which covers both the Old Testament Hebrew text and the New Testament Greek text from which the KJV comes, on YouTube (from the last Word of Truth Conference at Bethel Baptist Church), or click here to view the video on Rumble, or view the embedded video below:
–TDR
Very important teaching! It’s absolutely essential to exercise faith in the matter preservation, but the evidences will align with the faith position.
I have a question, that only tangentially touch on the post. But you did mention the inspiration of the Hebrew vowels.
What do you make of the form “Jehovih” that always follow Adonay? The prevailing position is, of course, that they substitute the vowels of Adonay for YHWH, but when YHWH combines with Adonay, they then substitute the vowels of Elohim. I have great distrust of such theories just by its connection to liberals. So I am curious as to how you would approach it? Is it Jehovah or Jehovih?
Dear Tenrin,
That’s a good question, thanks for asking.
In a verse such as Genesis 15:2, “Lord GOD” is the translation of אֲדֹנָ֤י יֱהוִה֙ because, I believe, Moses intended the text to be read out loud as Adonai Elohim, hence the rendition in the KJV as such, with “GOD” in all caps because, as with “LORD” in all caps, the name “Jehovah” is contained in the Hebrew text.
I do not believe that the name “Jehovah” itself is just taking the vowels of Adonai and putting them on YHWH because then a hatef-patach would be found underneath the initial yod of the Tetragrammaton instead of the shewa which actually appears, among other reasons.
I don’t believe that the reasons I set forth for believing in the inspiration of the Hebrew vowels in the two essays on that question at faithsaves.net/Bibliology/ are undermined by a recognition that the text intended “Lord GOD” to be what was read out loud in texts where Adonai and the Tetragrammaton come next to each other.
Wilhelmus a Brakel commented on this matter as follows (see the source in my essay on the inspiration of the points at the link above):
[I]t has pleased the Lord to give Himself a name by which He wishes to be called—a name which would indicate His essence, the manner of His existence, and the plurality of divine Persons. The name which is indicative of His essence is יְהוָֹה or Jehovah, it being abbreviated as יָהּ or Jah. The name which is indicative of the trinity of Persons is אֱלֹהִים or Elohim. Often there is a coalescence of these two words resulting in יֱהוִה or Jehovi. The consonants of this word constitute the name Jehovah, whereas the vowel marks produce the name Elohim. Very frequently these two names are placed side by side in the following manner: Jehovah Elohim, to reveal that God is one in essence and three in His Persons.
Thanks.
Thank you for your answer. This topic has been on my mind lately, concerning the name of God. I have a hard time accepting “Yahweh,” because of its liberal origins, and also because it occurs no-where in the text. My position is that Jehovah is correct pronunciation, however there are still questions I wrestle with. I greatly appreciate discussing this with you.
1. Why is it that in most places in the manuscripts, the YHWH is written without one of the vowels, missing the Holem?
2. You said that if “Yehovah” took its vowels from “Adonay,” then the vowel under the Yod would be the hateph-patach. They would counter by saying that the hateph-patach only occurs under gutturals, and therefore when putting it under the Yod, it reverts back to the simple-shewa. This phenomenon sort of also occurs with “Yehovih,” as there are two forms, the form with hateph-shegol under the Yod (such as in Gen. 15:2, 8, etc), and the form with the simple-shewa under the Yod (such as in Deu. 3:24; 9:26, etc).
3. Some “Yahweh” proponents claim that transliterations to Greek support Yahweh-pronunciation (I think the claim was from Josephus). Do you have any research on this?
Thank you and may the Lord Jesus Christ bless you
Thanks Bro Ross
Very good material and presentation
Thanks!
Dear Tenrin,
I’ll answer your first question now, Lord willing I’ll get back to the other ones.
The Tetragrammaton is NOT missing a cholem in the Hebrew Textus Receptus published by the Trinitarian Bible Society. That is one of the corruptions of the Hebrew critical text (UBS). The UBS Hebrew critical text is just one codex, the Leningrad Codex. I would highly recommend you get a Hebrew TR and use that instead of the UBS Hebrew text.
Unfortunately, right now the Hebrew TR is not digitized like the Hebrew CT, so a Hebrew text on Accordance or Logos is the CT. The Trinitarian Bible Society is working on digitizing the TR, but with all the accents and the other things in the text it is quite a task.
So there is no argument against “Jehovah” from a missing cholem; that is a feature of the CT / Leningrad codex that makes it inferior to the fully vocalized Divine Name in the TR.
Dear Tenrin,
As for question #2, in the Hebrew Textus Receptus all four of the texts you mention have a hateph-segol underneath the initial yod of the Tetragrammaton. The form with the simple shewa in Deu. 3:24; 9:26 of the Hebrew critical text is another corruption of the text, messing with the Divine Name again in the text of Scripture. All four texts in the Hebrew TR make it clear that there is an intention of a Qere where we speak “Lord GOD” out loud when reading Adonai followed by Jehovah.
I am not aware of any text where the name “Jehovah” itself in the Hebrew TR, or, for that matter, in the Hebrew critical text, has the hateph-qamets one would expect underneath the initial yod were the Name really just containing the vowels of Adonai. It simply is not there. There is every reason to think the Name should be pronounced as written, “Jehovah.”
Question #3: As for Greek transliterations of the Name, I discuss that in the section on the Tetragrammaton in my essay here:
https://faithsaves.net/inspiration-hebrew-vowel-points/
It is a very poor argument.
Thanks for pointing out what the Hebrew critical text does in Deu. 3:24; 9:26. I had not paid attention to this before, as far as I can recall. It is unfortunate that the Hebrew printed text that was in use from 1524-1937 was replaced by one MS, one with problems like these.
Hello Bro. Ross,
I do use a Hebrew text with full Holem on the Yehovah, published by TBS. I also use the text in AccordanceBible. I await the digital version by TBS.
My question is not about the printed/electronic Bible, but with the handwritten manuscripts. The arguments from the other side is that on the ancient manuscripts, most occurrences of the YHWH is not written with full vowels (if at all). Is this factually true? And if so, why, and how would you comment on it from the stance of vowel preservations.
Thanks.
Hi Tenrin,
OK, thanks for clarifying.
It is initially more plausible that the providentially preserved TR, edited by a Christian Jew who believed in inspiration and preservation, would preserve what has better MSS support than that one codex, that of Leningrad, would have the better MSS support.
However, I am not aware of, say, online scans of thousands of Hebrew MSS to see what percentage have a fully and properly vocalized Tetragrammaton, comparable to the many Greek NT MSS that are digitized. If someone has specific evidence of high percentages that don’t have Jehovah with all the vowels, I’m happy to take a look at that, but it may not be as easy to validate unless one goes to a lot of libraries worldwide to take a look. Of course, in the synagogue the reader chants from a solely consonantal text because they want him to know it so well that he can read it without the vowels and accents, so he studies a copy at home with them and then chants from one without them, following their uninspired traditions about which Christ had less than positive things to say in the Gospels.
Thanks Bro. Ross,
Much food for thought. I also did not realize the difference between the CT Hebrew text and the TBS one in respect to the vowel underneath the “Yehovih” form.
Going back to what you said in your first reply though, that Moses intended the phrase to be read “Adonay Elohim.” It’s still hard for me to wrap around this, because if God/Moses wanted to say Elohim, why not just write Elohim? Why confuse readers with this hybrid of consonant for one word and vowels for another?
Recently I found this person on the internet, Nehemiah Gordon, who also advocates for “Jehovah” as the real pronunciation. I wonder if you know about his work. He’s not a Christian, but a Karaite Jew. He had been on a quest to find manuscripts that contain the full vocalization “Jehovah.” A few years back, he said that he found at least 1000 manuscripts that contain the full vocalization “Jehovah.” To me this is great news, but also the very fact that he went on this “quest,” suggests that many if not most manuscripts do not have the full vocalization.
Dear Tenrin,
Thanks for the comment. One thing that is worth pointing out with the Adonai and Jehovah forms together being read out loud in the Hebrew text as “Lord GOD” is that the KJV is spot on when it renders “Jehovah” with “Adonai” as “Lord GOD” when they are together, as that is what the Hebrew text indicates.
We need to keep in mind when we look at the Hebrew OT that we are looking at a 3,500 year old text. Some things that are strange to us may not have been strange at all when Moses wrote it, just as many things today that are perfectly familiar would have been incomprehensible to those in Moses’ day. In fact, it should not surprise us that when God revealed Himself in real space and time 3,500 years ago in the Pentateuch things that certain aspects of His revelation which would have been easily comprehensible to the original audience are less easily so today, despite the timeless overarching message of Scripture. Why sometimes there is a kethiv and no qere and sometimes a qere and no kethiv is not easy to explain, for example; the liberal explanation that each of these instances is a textual variant is implausible in numbers of instances.
I think that Brakel’s explanation for why the vowels of Elohim are on the consonants of Jehovah on occasion is very reasonable, although I also recognize that I am also attempting to explain over the distance of 3,500 years and there may be another, better explanation. Here’s what Brakel said again:
[I]t has pleased the Lord to give Himself a name by which He wishes to be called—a name which would indicate His essence, the manner of His existence, and the plurality of divine Persons. The name which is indicative of His essence is יְהוָֹה or Jehovah, it being abbreviated as יָהּ or Jah. The name which is indicative of the trinity of Persons is אֱלֹהִים or Elohim. Often there is a coalescence of these two words resulting in יֱהוִה or Jehovi. The consonants of this word constitute the name Jehovah, whereas the vowel marks produce the name Elohim. Very frequently these two names are placed side by side in the following manner: Jehovah Elohim, to reveal that God is one in essence and three in His Persons.
I have not heard of Nehemiah Gordon, to my recollection. Feel free to post links to what he wrote about this; I would be interested. I would say that if he has documented over 1,000 MSS with the fully pointed Tetragrammaton that perfect preservationists are doing just fine here, and I would refrain from speculating on how many ones there are that are not fully pointed until someone does more complete collation than we currently have available, remembering also the outsized influence of a single codex–L–because of its adoption as THE basis for the critical Hebrew OT.
Note also that all the “Jehovah” names in Scripture—many of which I list in my essay on the inspiration of the vowel points—have the vowels of “Jehovah” not of something else. That also suggests strongly that “Jehovah” is the correct pronunciation.
Thanks.
Bro. Ross,
Here are some links to Nehemiah Gordon. Although I don’t agree with him in many points (he is not Christian), his research into the name Jehovah in manuscripts is very valuable I believe.
A general page: https://www.nehemiaswall.com/nehemia-gordon-name-god
About 1000 mss: https://www.nehemiaswall.com/1000-manuscripts-yehovah
(Actually, his latest count is that he has found 2441 mss with full vowels Jehovah in them)
Also interesting take from him on why the name is shortened into YaH: https://www.nehemiaswall.com/yehovah-halleluyah
Bro Ross, thank you for putting together this presentation. I really like the fact that you made it very dense with information and waste no time in presenting it. Further, I greatly benefited from learning about the overwhelming surviving Biblical manuscripts in comparison to other secular historical writings. Truly this information, I believe can be used to challenge many who think lowly of the Bible’s authenticity.
Thanks, Tenrin!
From my (cursory) examination, I saw videos, but not articles. Does he have any written material that is easier to see sources on that cover the material in the videos? Thanks.
Yes, unfortunately that’s what I’ve found so far also. He does have a book, but I don’t have it yet.