Talk:Jehovah/Archive 1

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This page has been provided so that

This page has been provided so that Wikipedia editors may comment on the Wikipedia Article:Jehovah. Seeker02421 13:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Why is this article part of the JW Project?

Why is this article part of the JW Project? No doubt they have an interest in the subject, but it's about the name of God in the Bible, which is not owned by them. Unless they really are the only ones who support using this form of the name?

Another thing, can anyone explain to me why the exact pronunciation is such an issue? Can you provide an example of any name in the Bible that English-speakers pronounce exactly like the ancient Hebrews?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.130.39 (talk) 15:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

This article has be erroneously redirected to Tetragrammaton. I beseech some adminstrator out there to revert it back ASAP.

70.178.120.190 21:37, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Where is the nice very articulate article information that was here a few months ago? Has all that info been erased? I suspect some vandalism based on POV is going on here. 70.178.120.190 21:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Because this type of format allows people to change info obviously those opposed to the use of Jehovah's name will take advantage of the oppurtunity to erase all mention of this name. But for all who will erase there will always be someone to write. It can work both ways.

I have brought back the article "Jehovah" Ice9Tea 23:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Headings

Verbose heading names such as "Modern scholars believe that Jehovah is a hybrid name" are not encyclopedic. Article needs a lot of rewriting. I don't have time to overhaul at the moment, but someone should.--Jeffro77 14:27, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Lead

The lead includes the following...

Under the heading "יהוה‎ c. 6823", the editors of the the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon write that יְהֹוָה‎ occurs 6518 times in the Masoretic Text. In the beginning of the 17th century [or possibly even earlier] scholars had rose up to question whether or not the vowel points found in the Hebrew spelling יְהֹוָה‎ were the actual vowel points of God's name and in return other scholars rose up to defend the accuracy of the vowel points found in יְהֹוָה‎. The controversy over whether or not the vowel points of יְהֹוָה‎ are the actual vowel points of God's name continues even today.

Why is this in the lead? Seems like it belongs in the main body of the article. --Richard 05:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Redirect to Yahweh

There has been an edit war between User:A.J.A. and User:Ice9Tea over the redirect to Yahweh. Would each side please explain the arguments for and against the redirect? --Richard 05:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Article:Jehovah and the Wikipedia Article:Yahweh are two different articles. The Wikipedia Article:Jehovah was started by persons who wanted to write an article on the name Jehovah, not by persons who wanted to write an article on the name Yahweh. Persons who want to write an article on the name Yahweh can go to Yahweh. It is my impression that the Wikipedia Article:Jehovah has been created by persons whose primary interest is in wanting to write a positive Article on the name Jehovah, while adhering to Wikipedia's "Neutral point of view" rules.

It is my impression that the editors of the Wikipedia Article:Yahweh are not primarilly interested in writing a positive article on the name "Jehovah", while adhering to Wikipedia's "Neutral point of view" rules.

Seeker02421 10:20, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Seeker02421 10:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It is my opinion that any article on Jehovah should deal with the obvious controversy that exists concerning the vowel points of יְהֹוָה‎. However there are scholars that can be quoted who believe that the vowel points of יְהֹוָה‎ are the actual vowel points of God's name. In my opinion, their views should be allowed to be posted, as long as Wikipedia's "Neutral point of view" rules are adhered to.

Seeker02421 11:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Content forking; this is a rather clear example of that. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 13:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

  I think I agree and, if we can agree on this, the solution is to merge the two articles. The problem would be to choose which article to keep and which to make the redirect. The third article in this mix is Tetragrammaton. We could merge all three into Tetragrammaton and redirect both Yahweh and Jehovah to that article. I would really like to hear from User:A.J.A. and User:Ice9Tea first before proceeding. --Richard 14:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Most of the content now in the article was added in this edit by Seeker02421. The actual edit summary:

Cut and pasted sections # 1 through sections # 4 from the Wikipedia Article:Yahweh into this Wikipedia Article:Jehovah

This is the fork and Yahweh is the main article; it has the same information found here and more. (Am I mistaken in the impression that the current version carefully avoids linking there? Why, if not for POV reasons?)

Second, check the article history. There appears to have been a history before the first revision saved [1]; there appear to have been a confused series of page moves and I don't know where the successor (if any) to the original article is now to be found. But this is clear: for the large majority of the time since then, this has been a redirect. A.J.A. 15:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that it is useful to say "X is the main article and Y is the fork". Let's figure out how many articles we need and then decide which titles to use as article titles and which to use as redirects. It seems obvious that Yahweh is a more comprehensive article than this one is but that could mean that we should merge Yahweh into this one or Yahweh AND Jehovah into Tetragrammaton.

What I think we need to understand now is whether we need one article, two articles or three. Right now we have three Yahweh, Jehovah and Tetragrammaton. Do we need three or can we merge some or all of these?

--Richard 15:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

We need two articles, which should be arranged so as to make the disambiguation at the top of Tetragrammaton correct.

Historical information about the rendering "Jehovah" belongs in Tetragrammaton; there is not enough content to justify a separate article. Even if there were, that isn't the issue right now. The issue is whether there should be an article devoted to a sectarian defense of a mistaken transliteration; "Wikipedia Article:Jehovah has been created by persons whose primary interest is in wanting to write a positive Article on the name Jehovah", according to one of those very people.

BTW, I've come to think this page should redirect to Jehovah (disambiguation), or that it should be copied onto this page and made a redirect here. A.J.A. 16:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

There are not three articles currently, but five: Tetragrammaton, I am that I am, Yahweh, Iaoue and Jehovah. The ideal would be one article but there is probably too much content, in which case my next best proposal would be one article on Pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton which would combine Iaoue, Jehovah and Yahweh. That would leave room for the Tetragrammaton to concentrate on the meaning of the word, incorporating I am that I am. Separate articles are required in any case for the attributes of God as taught by each faith which claims to be based on the Bible, e.g. God in Christianity.

Unless Iaoue is included in the merge - and it does seem a good self-contained article at the moment - then I do not see merit in holding just Jehovah and Yahweh in one article. - Fayenatic london (talk) 21:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It appears I may have jumped the gun in my revert, IMO however I am concerned about the need to have an article titled "Jehovah". This is a very well known english spelling of the Tetragrammaton. If we need a disambig page then all five of the articles mentioned by Fayenatic london should be included on that page. Perhaps a better solution might be a were you looking for[[[...]] tag? Or a see alos section at the beginning. George 22:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton

I was bold and implemented a variant of User:Fayenatic london's suggestion. I discovered that the word used in the Tetragrammaton article was "transcription" not "pronounciation" so I created an article titled Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton whose scope is intended to be the discussion of Jehovah, Yahweh and Iaoue from the perspective of transcription only.

I'm not sure where the discussion of the God of Judaism and Christianity should go. User:Fayenatic london suggests that it should go into the now shortened Tetragrammaton article. That makes a certain amount of sense but I have to say that it is not very satisfying because who the hell says "Hear O Israel, the Lord our Tetragrammaton is One" or "I believe in Tetragrammaton the Father and in Jesus Christ his only Son"? Ain't nobody but a Biblical scholar going to look for the description of the Judaic and Christian God in Tetragrammaton.

--Richard 23:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

For technical reasons regarding preservation of edit history, that is currently a redirect to Tetragrammaton. The original text of Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton can be found in User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton. --Richard 15:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• See Talk:Tetragrammaton for a list of various Yahweh-related pages that I found.

I merged Iaoue and Iabe into Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name, but put the non-linguistic parts of Iabe in Samaritans.

I found (but so far I have done nothing about) much content-forking between Yahweh and Tetragrammaton.

Anthony Appleyard 12:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The strategy seems to be to separate linguistic issues from semantic content. Anthony has created Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name.

I propose that we merge Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name and User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton into Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton and then merge in any other discussions of linguistic issues from Jehovah, Yahweh, etc. --Richard 15:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• After re-examination of these pages, it seems that much of Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name can be deleted as a wordy repeat of parts of Yahweh (considering original source info rather than who wrote what about it in recent centuries), and the rest merged into Yahweh.

User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton seems to be the same or nearly the same as Tetragrammaton.

Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton now is a redirect to Tetragrammaton.

Well, yes. I had tried to separate out the linguistic discussions in Tetragrammaton into User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton. If we agree to create Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton with the initial content being taken from User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton, then obviously those sections would be removed from Tetragrammaton. The next step would be to merge Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name into Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton and delete those sections from Yahweh. --Richard 17:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

There also seems to be some content forking between Yahweh and Jehovah.

Anthony Appleyard 17:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The key question is where to place the semantic discussion of what the god named by YHWH, Yahweh, Jehovah etc. Right now all these articles are a mish-mash of linguistic and semantic content with heavy duplication and content forking all over the place.

One question that also needs to be addressed is whether YHWH, Yahweh, Jehovah, etc. have any reason to exist independent of Tetragrammaton and Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton or if they should be re-directs.

If they are to be redirects, to what should they re-direct to? Obvious candidates would be Tetragrammaton or to Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton. Both proposals make sense but are emotionally unsatisfying because people who look up Yahweh or Jehovah are going to want a discussion of God not a discussion of the Tetragrammaton and especially not a discussion of linguistic issues surrounding the transcription of the Tetragrammaton. For this reason, a better candidate is actually Abrahamic conceptions of God which I am trying to rename to God in Abrahamic religions.

--Richard 17:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A fact.. "Jehovah" has been used by many Christian groups for many many years as Gods name. There is a group of people numbering in the 6-7 million range that go door to door in virtually every country pretty much at least once a week or more telling people that Gods name is Jehovah. Millions of times each day the name Jehovah is being spoken by people worshipping a God whom they know as Jehovah. are these also true of the names Yahweh (a form like Jehovah) and Tetragrammaton? Allah by the way does not redirect to God, though it means God. Jehovah is an anglicised pronunciation of the Divine name meaning "He Causes to Become". It needs to be a stand alone article, at least out of respect. Jellofever 01:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC) Jellofever 01:21, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Re User talk:Anthony Appleyard#Recent edits to Yahweh: I started to move the Jehovah stuff from Yahweh to Jehovah to try to cure some of the content-forking, but the job got complicated and it got late at night (my time here in England is Wikipedia signature time plus one hour: Wiki 22:57 = 3 minutes to midnight here), so I realized that I better back out and try again in the morning, and that I better discuss the matter longer here.

Anyway: it looks like that the sections Yahweh#Early use of forms similar to "Jehovah", Yahweh#Use of "Jehovah" in English, Yahweh#J/Y, Yahweh#Controversy in the 16th and 17th century should be moved to Jehovah and merged in in time order of the topics discussed.

Also the statement that the Hebrew leters YHWH carry the vowels for Adonai and occasionally Elohim, occurs more than once.

Anthony Appleyard 05:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be better to consolidate first into one article about God as depicted in the Old Testament at Yahweh and one about the name itself at Tetragrammaton before deciding if any subtopics have enough content to warrant forking from the consolidated articles. A.J.A. 05:27, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have made a small addition to the end of the section Yahweh#Cultus.

What happens to the text about events AD when qere-vowel-pointed forms of Hebrew y-h-w-h were misread by European Christians, thus producing the form "Jehovah"?

Anthony Appleyard 05:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have tidied up much duplicated matter in Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name. Anthony Appleyard 10:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• I hereby request permission from the group to have a go at moving Jehovah-related matter from Yahweh to Jehovah and vice-versa. Anthony Appleyard 11:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Anthony, thank you for your efforts on these articles. Please do not take the following as an attack on those efforts but rather as an effort to achive some clarity in this muddled mess.

I think you are jumping the gun and presuming a resolution to the edit war over the redirect of this article to Yahweh.

You are also presuming a decision regarding my proposal that both Jehovah and Yahweh be redirected to God in Abrahamic religions or Tetragrmmaton.

Presumably you think that Yahweh and Jehovah should each continue on as stand-alone articles rather than as redirects.

I think we should discuss the merits of your position before you invest a lot of time in these edits.

The following is based on a review of the discussions here on this Talk Page and the edit summaries in the edit history of this page.

The current situation seems to be that Ice9Tea, Seeker02421, Fayenatic london and presumably yourself believe that Jehovah and Yahweh should both exist as stand-alone articles.

A.J.A., Whpq and Jpgordon believe that Jehovah should re-direct to Yahweh.

Johanneum believes that both Jehovah and Yahweh should redirect to Tetragrammaton

I believe that both Jehovah and Yahweh should re-direct to God in Abrahamic religions. I do not believe that either Jehovah or Yahweh should have stand-alone articles as they are both transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton and we don't need three separate articles about three names for the same concept.

I am open to the idea of there being articles at Jehovah and Yahweh which discuss briefly the history of how that form of the name came to be differentiated from other transcriptions and who uses that particular transcription. However, I think there should be a single article that discusses the transcription issue. I don't understand why there should be an article on Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name. First, why "Hebrew Divine Name" instead of "Tetragrammaton" and why only "Greek transcriptions" instead of including all transcriptions including Yahweh and Jehovah?

Thus your position represents a plurality (4/9) but not a majority and certainly not the consensus position.

What do we need to do to form a consensus here?

--Richard 12:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Sorting out the Jehovah matter and the Yahweh matter each onto its own file, and then seeing how far each could be sorted and information duplications removed, would seem to be needed to be done first, before putting them into God in Abrahamic religions#Jehovah and God in Abrahamic religions#Yahweh or wherever they are put. There is also a risk that if everything was put in God in Abrahamic religions, God in Abrahamic religions would thereby become too big and need splitting: in that case the wordier sub-topics may have to stay in their own files. (I had that when I was editing Frogman: it got bigger and bigger, and in the end I had to split off Anti-frogman techniques and pages for each of some nations' frogman organizations.) Anthony Appleyard 16:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Why Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name?: OK OK, I could rename it was Greek transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton.
  • why only "Greek transcriptions" instead of including all transcriptions including Yahweh and Jehovah?: Early Christian Greek transcriptions are the only transcriptions that we have from the early Hebrew spoken priestly tradition straight into an alphabet with a full vowel system. The Roman-alphabet spelling "Yahweh" is a modern reconstruction partly based on the early Greek transcriptions. The Roman-alphabet spelling "Jehovah" came from the well-known medieval European error misreading the Hebrew text. Anthony Appleyard 16:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but my point is that they are all transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton. User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton is intended to include all transcriptions not just into English but into other languages. Why not include the Greek transcriptions in the article as the earliest transcriptions from which Yahweh was derived. My goal is to put all information about transcriptions of any sort in the Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton article and then reserve other article titles for discussions about the nature and history of God. Whether these discussions happen in Jehovah, Yahweh or God in Abrahamic religions is a secondary question to the question of where the discussions of linguistic issues should go.

--Richard 17:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard wrote:

>>>

I am open to the idea of there being articles at Jehovah and Yahweh which discuss briefly the history of how that form of the name came to be differentiated from other transcriptions and who uses that particular transcription.

>>>

In my opinion no brief article on Jehovah would satisfy those editors that want an article on Jehovah to be written,

and

In my opinion, without careful structuring of the sections,

any single Article on Jehovah is probably likely to be subject to

edit wars,

even if it was possible,

[and it wouldn’t be],

to limit the editors to only those who wanted to write about Jehovah.

Could two articles on Jehovah be created,

one that would satisfy Bible Believing Protestant Christians,

and

one that would satisfy Jehovah’s Witnesses?

or

Is it possible to create a single Article:Jehovah that could be sectioned off in such a way that Jehovah’s Witnesses and Bible Believing Protestant Christians could work together on the same article,

without getting into endless edit wars with each other?

Concerning the Jehovah/Yahweh controversy,

I think that the Article Yahweh has done an excellent job of presenting the evidence that scholars are using to make the case that God’s name may actually be “Yahweh”,

and I think that the Article Yahweh has done an excellent job of presenting the evidence that scholars are using to state more or less dogmatically that the vowel points of Jehovah are not the actual vowel points of God’s name.

However some Bible Believing Protestant Christians refuse to accept the scholarly consensus that Jehovah does not have the actual vowel points of God’s name, they sincerely believe that the scholars are mistaken, and they continue to honor God by using the name Jehovah.

And Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own particular issues to defend, concerning the name “Jehovah“

Seeker02421 17:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The following questions are not meant to be rhetorical or argumentative but are truly meant in the spirit of wanting to understand your points without my having to read all the previous discussion on all the relevant pages.

Are you therefore asserting that it is folly to try and park all the "transcription issues" in a separate article because these issues are at the very core of whether to use "Jehovah" rather than "Yahweh"? That we can't have a brief summary of the issues in Jehovah and Yahweh and a "main article" link to the Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton article?

Also, can you explain in a nutshell why one would wish for the ability to have a separate article about Jehovah that fits the JW point of view? What is different about Jehovah for them that is not true for other Christians who prefer the name Jehovah over Yahweh?

--Richard 17:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have looked at User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton, and it seems to omit some of the Jehovah matter, and some of the matter about the pre-Judaic prehistory of Yahweh. Now that Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name is fairly short, I could merge it into Yahweh at the same time as moving Jehovah matter from Yahweh to Jehovah. So far I see no sign of the Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name matter in User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton so far. Anthony Appleyard 17:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I have avoided doing any further work on User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton because I'm trying to gauge how much support there is for my proposed framework. Would you support merging Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name into User:Richardshusr/Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton followed by merging transcription-related material from Jehovah and Yahweh?

I have to admit my personal bias. I don't much care whether we call God God, Yahweh or Jehovah. The transcription issues are vaguely interesting but not relevant to my understanding of God. What's interesting from an encyclopedic perspective is that different groups of Christians do care about these names and I think the articles on Yahweh and Jehovah should spend more effort explaining how the issue of naming arose and less time on the technical aspects of the transcriptions. In essence, the reader of the current Yahweh and Jehovah articles risks "losing the forest for the trees". The average reader will not want to understand and follow the linguistic issues since most readers probably won't know enough Hebrew to follow it. (I certainly don't). My proposal is that we give the reader a synopsis of the linguistic issues and a pointer to a more technical article on the linguistic issues.

--Richard 17:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have looked again at Yahweh and Jehovah, and it seems that there are these topics here:-
  1. The history of the God Yahweh / Yahu / etc and His Name from pre-Judaic times and among Jews, excepting the linguistic results of contact with people who use Greek or Roman alphabets.
  2. The history of attempts to write the Tetragrammaton in the Greek and Roman alphabets, including the old "Jehovah" mistranscription and how the resulting scholarly dispute was eventually resolved. This will inevitably tie in with the history of theories about how Y-H-W-H was pronounced in Hebrew.
  3. The history of "Jehovah" as an established European Christian name of God.
  4. Someone above mentioned "Abrahamic religions", but presumably Allah can be left out of this.

Anthony Appleyard 17:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of repeating myself, the problem here is that the Yahweh article is highly likely to lose the average reader because it leads with the section on "The Name". I understand that there is a deep controversy over Yahweh and Jehovah but the fact remains that, for the average reader, this is not something that they can really understand or that they care about that deeply. I would wager that the average JW "knows" that "Jehovah" is the "right name" for their God but not many would be able to give you a deep erudite discourse on why it is preferable to "Yahweh" and I doubt many would care. (I admit this is pure speculation on my part and am willing to be corrected.)

What's important is that Yahweh came from YHWH and that this isn't something a Hebrew or Jew would say but that many Christians would (except for JWs and some others). Thus, I would restructure the article with the sections in the following order "Usage", "Attributes", "Derivation", "The Name" with much of the section "The Name" being moved to Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton.

The Jehovah article is even worse. It seems to talk only about the transcription issues. If any Christian, especially a JW, came to the Jehovah article, he would expect a description of the God that "Jehovah" names. That description is sorely lacking in the Jehovah article. The transcription-wonks have taken over this corner of Wikipedia and it is time for the "rest of us" to take it back.

--Richard 18:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard,

Please don't throw out the baby with the dirty washwater.

You previously wrote:

>>>

The following questions are not meant to be rhetorical or argumentative but are truly meant in the spirit of wanting to understand your points without my having to read all the previous discussion on all the relevant pages.

Are you therefore asserting that it is folly to try and park all the "transcription issues" in a separate article because these issues are at the very core of whether to use "Jehovah" rather than "Yahweh"? That we can't have a brief summary of the issues in Jehovah and Yahweh and a "main article" link to the Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton article?

Also, can you explain in a nutshell why one would wish for the ability to have a separate article about Jehovah that fits the JW point of view? What is different about Jehovah for them that is not true for other Christians who prefer the name Jehovah over Yahweh?

>>>

Richard,

Earlier I was basically responding to your previous comment:

>>>

I am open to the idea of there being articles at Jehovah and Yahweh which discuss briefly the history of how that form of the name came to be differentiated from other transcriptions and who uses that particular transcription.

>>>

It is quite possible that both Wikipedia:Yahweh and Wikipedia:Tetragrammaton could continue to exist basically as they are today, and that possibly Yahweh and Tetragrammaton might be merged. It was not too long ago some users sought for that merger to take place.

If separate Jehovah articles existed, the Jehovah sections in Wikipedia:Yahweh and Wikipedia:Tetragrammaton could possibly both be reduced, with directs to the potentially 2 new Jehovah articles.

I am not a Jehovah’s Witness but, there was a time when considerable Jehovah’s Witness input could be found on Wikipedia:Tetragrammaton. Almost all of that input was purged,

which left Jehovah‘s Witnesses very unhappy, because every attempt they made to create a Wikipedia Article:Jehovah ended up being reverted to Wikipedia:Tetragrammaton, where they were not allowed to post their views.

Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to look at the name Jehovah as being the traditional name of God, that is known all over the world, although it may be spelled slightly differently in each language. The official Watchtower Site acknowledges up front, that they don’t believe that Jehovah actually has the correct vowel points. Further more the Old Testament that Jehovah‘s Witnesses translate the name Jehovah from, only preserves the spelling (Y)Jehovah about 44 times out of the 6823 times that the Tetragrammaton is found.

In the case of the King James Bible, the Old Testament is translated from a Masoretic Text that preserved (Y)Jehovah 6518 times AND (Y)Jehovih 305 times.

Bible Believing Protestant Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses do not see eye-to-eye concerning the underlying Hebrew vocalization of the Tetragrammaton, from which Jehovah has been derived.

Seeker02421 18:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard,

I’m glad you agree it is speculative to suggest what the average reader cares about deeply or does not care about deeply. Frankly, for encyclopedic content it should be assumed that readers interested in a particular subject desire an objective and thorough presentation on that particular subject. Otherwise what is the point of encyclopedic presentation?

-- Marvin Shilmer 18:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I have nothing against "thoroughness". I do think that a good encyclopedia should present information at a level aimed at the "average reader" with additional detail for the reader with greater sophistication and interest. I do not think that the Jehovah and Yahweh articles do that.

I am proposing that the more detailed information be moved to a separate article Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton with a 2-3 paragraph summary aimed at the "average reader" kept in Jehovah and Yahweh. Do you object to this framework?

--Richard 19:02, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

As for Jehovah’s Witnesses and Yahweh versus Jehovah, for whatever it’s worth, though the Watchtower organization asserts Jehovah is the best known English rendering it nevertheless admits Yahweh is actually favored by most Hebrew scholars.

-- Marvin Shilmer 18:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, but this still doesn't explain why Seeker02421 suggests that there should be separate articles for Jehovah that the JWs can edit to their heart's content. I oppose this idea on the grounds that it would create a POV fork. What I'm trying to understand is what problem this solution is intended to solve. --Richard 19:02, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard

Years of history of the Article:Jehovah appears to have been deleted, but when the history existed, it was obvious that any attempt to write an article on Jehovah was almost impossible. Somebody was always adding a revert to some other aricle.

Jehovah_1 exists, which seems to indicate that Jehovah_2 or Jehovah_3 could also be created. However maybe something like Jehovah_JW and Jehovah_KJV might be more informative.

The article Jehovah_JW would appeal to Jehovah's Witnesses, the article Jehovah_KJV hopefully would appeal to KJVO Christians and to persons wanting to get a thourough understanding of why there is almost a 100% consensus among scholars that Jehovah is not actually God's name, yet there are scholars like Gerard Gertoux that have written books defending the pronunciation "Yehowah" / "Jehovah".

Hopefully, almost immediately the "Jehovah" sections of the articles "Yahweh" and "Tetragrammaton" could be minimized, and yet the previous information would still be accessable on Wikipedia.

Seeker02421 19:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard,

Ah. I understand.

Given that Jehovah and Yahweh represent different conclusions of the same subject it is silly, to me, that either should be addressed without the other.

I suspect the hang up stems from aggressive editing by honest individuals untrained in objective research and presentation, which leads to honest but unlearned presentation and dispute. (Not talking about you or other recent editors on this subject)

-- Marvin Shilmer 19:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict with Anthony Appleyard)

To Marvin Shilmer,

So do you support Seeker02421's solution, my solution or Anthony Appleyard's solution (which he is implementing as we speak but without a clear exposition here on this Talk Page).

I think Anthony intends that we keep the Jehovah and Yahweh articles more or less as is with the de-forking of the theophoric discussions that he has just finished implementing (see below).

--Richard 19:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

To Seeker02421,

I still don't understand the nature of the controversy between JWs and KJVO Christians regarding the Jehovah article. Presumably they both agree that the use of the name Jehovah is the appropriate name for God. What is it that they disagree about?

--Richard 19:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have ventured to merge the "evidence from theophoric names" matter from Yahweh to Jehovah. That cured major content forking and much repeated text. Feel free to revert in both files if you disagree with this. Anthony Appleyard 19:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Re Yahu- theophoric names, I have just discovered (but not done anything about) serious content forking between the above theophoric name matter and the page Theophoric name.

It also may be (but I have done nothing about) that the sections Yahweh#Early use of forms similar to "Jehovah" Yahweh#Use of "Jehovah" in English Yahweh#J/Y Yahweh#Controversy in the 16th and 17th century would be better in Jehovah.

Anthony Appleyard 20:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard,

Unfortunately I do not have time to offer a studied reply to your request (of which side). I was not trying to enter a fray. My comments were intended only to offer a brief statement of fact from the Watchtower perspective, just in case that is/was somehow party to a sticking point.

I took a brief look at the article as a whole. My impression is the article is derailed right out of the gate by the introduction mentioning particular religious perspectives. Such information should be part of the body of presentation and not the introduction. Jehovah or Yahweh or Whatever is first and foremost a scholarly question and afterward a religious issue. This is true from lexicographic, historical and theological perspectives.

At the moment I do not have the time to engage this subject with the thoroughness it deserves for an encyclopedic presentation.

-- Marvin Shilmer 20:24, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• It seems that the name "Jehovah" originated as a ghost word, but by now has life of its own and is accepted by millions of Christians who use it in hymns and prayers as a name of God. Anthony Appleyard 20:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Richard wrote:

>>>
To Seeker02421,

I still don't understand the nature of the controversy between JWs and KJVO Christians regarding the Jehovah article. Presumably they both agree that the use of the name Jehovah is the appropriate name for God. What is it that they disagree about?
>>>

Richard,

One reason Jehovah's Witnesses disagree with KJVO Christians, is that the underlying Hebrew of the Old Testament of the KJV preserves (Y)Jehovah 6518 times, but the KJV translators only translated (Y)Jehovah as Jehovah seven times. That forces KJVO Christians to offer a reasonable explanation of why the KJV translators did not translate (Y)Jehovah as Jehovah 6518 times. This can result in some heated discussions.

Jehovah's Witnesses are considered to be a non-Christian cult, by a large proportion of Protestant Christians, including myself.

Since I presently find myself on Wikipedia, trying to support efforts by Jehovah's Witnesses to have an article titled Jehovah-xxx, and since I don't believe in what I consider to be their non-Christian Doctrines, I am going to drop out of further discussions concerning the Article:Jehovah, and just wait for the final decision by the Wikipedia Moderators involved here.

Seeker02421 21:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Re queries above: e.g. getting rid of content-forking in text about theophoric names between Yahweh and Jehovah, or in in any topic between any two of these files, should mean less work to come if/when those files are merged later: e.g. if the matter about theophoric names is only on one of these files, then it will not have to be merged later as files are merged. If we gradually remove all content forking and information duplication between these files, then merging all or some of the files at the end will be easy. Anthony Appleyard 22:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have tidied Theophoric name. Feel free to revert it if you want to.

I have corrected some links at the start of Jehovah#"Yahweh" and theophoric names.

Anthony Appleyard 09:14, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

It seems that this discussion has spilled over to the related disambiguation pages. A.J.A redirected Jehovah (disambiguation) to Yahweh (disambiguation) and added the Jehova related entries there. While this has some merit, it also results immediately in questions about how exactly the respective entries should be represented and my further edits have been reverted. I have now separated the two disambiguation pages again and linked them two each other. For once, there are right now two different wikipedia articles for Jehova and Yahweh, but more importantly becuse the dab pages are mostly interesting for their other uses (besides the tetragrammaton) and the two are different search terms: It is not evry leilely that someone typing Yahweh searches for Jehovah 1 and someone typing Jehova for Prophet Yahweh. If above discussion results in a consensus on some unification, this may be revisited, but for the moment I would ask all not to not unilaterally anticipate any conclusion on the dab pages. Thanks! --Tikiwont 07:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

This last at least has some rational consideration behind it. I got the impression your previous two were done for the sake of having been the last one to alter the page. Your first post-merge edit was borderline vandalism.

But this is still highly ill-considered, because of the redirects. How do you know someone typing Iaoue wants Yahweh? Why should Transcribing JHVH lead to Yahweh rather than Jehovah? For that matter, how do we know someone typing Jehovah wants narrow information on that English rendering rather than about all renderings or the Deity Himself? The only way to make sure everyone gets where they're going is to consolidate the information about the name into one article and make the others redirects to the disambiguation page. A.J.A. 18:34, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, from my side your additions looked like a variation of earlier unilaterally redirecting Jehovah to Yahweh or wherelse. However, I saw some advantages in having only one dab page, so I did not revert your edit but was neither satisfied with the new unified page. (My first edit was in my understanding in the line of WP:MOSDAB).

It seems now to me that the main discrepancy is between approaching "disambiguation as the process of resolving conflicts in article titles that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic", while you're trying to solve the problem that more than one term is associated with the same topic. As far as I remember at that time also tetragrammaton was still a separate article and seemed to me the logical target for most content related redirects such as the ones you mention while I see the dab purpose more on the lexigraphical side. We do not know what someone actually has in mind when typing or checking a link to, or being redirected to e.g. Jehovah, but right now they will see on top a dab link to take care of other literal uses. If not explained or linked sufficiently in the article itself, maybe one could add a second note such as "For other renderings of the name of the deity, see tetragrammaton" where the latter is an example only that might be modified, depending on where this information is supposed to be. (It could also be a section in an article). I may try it out as example. On the other hand, if you want to consolidate the information in one place, why would you want to redirect related terms not there but to a dab page?--Tikiwont 22:01, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Merging

• I have merged Tetragrammaton and Greek transcriptions of the Hebrew Divine Name into Yahweh and Jehovah. I have cleared up much content forking among these pages and between them and Theophoric name. Anthony Appleyard 11:51, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

• A lot of good work. But right now all redirects to Yahweh, where Tetragrammaton would be the better target. It is neutral, and also acceptable to Jews. The discussion about the Name can be moved there (from both Jehovah and Yahweh). Then Yahweh and Jehovah can refer to the discussion in Tetragrammaton. They need not be redirects: there will be other material under these headings.

213.84.53.62 22:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree... this is what I've been trying to say for some time. --Richard 22:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

• Point taken, but it is 11.40 pm here in England. I will have to look at the matter in the morning. Anthony Appleyard 22:40, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The letter J first appeared in the 1629 1st Revision Cambridge King James Bible

The letter J first appeared in the 1629 1st Revision Cambridge King James Bible. 2601:589:4801:5660:483E:B81B:28E5:8973 (talk) 22:27, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

The name written as YeHoWaH (Jehovah) is as old as the Hebrew scrolls of the Hebrew bible manuscripts from at least 1000 years ago. Everybody knows best en they say we know best but they dont even know the name of source of all. All bibles en the koran are just copies and are written by their own denominations so are dont have a impartial view or voice in this. In this youtubelink https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA3VKpVP17U&t=1708s are the the screenshots of digital scanned scrolls from all over the world. From Allepo codex, Cairo Codex and Leningrad Codex. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.195.22.16 (talk) 13:20, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Yarden

@Stephen Walch: It's not my own research it's a word in the dictionary. Yarden starts with a 'Y' and the vowel 'Ah' the article states the rules of Hebrew grammar don't allow for a word that starts with a yod, 'Y' to have a hataf patah the vowel 'Ah' at the beginning of the word. That is factually incorrect like in the word Yarden. The book I provided was a dictionary.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Shandor Newman (talk • contribs) 12:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

@Shandor Newman: - You appear to not be understanding what I'm referring to when I remove your edits. Firstly, you state this: "However this is not the case in many words like ’Yarden’ יַרְדֵּן which begin with the letter Yod and have a hataf-patah." Where is any of this mentioned in the BDB entry? Does it say "hataf-patah"? Does it say anything in relation to the pronunciation of Yahweh in the Yarden entry? No, no it doesn't. Therefore you cannot use it as an example of your statement. I was not objecting to yarden, but rather your statement about the usage of the vowel points. Again you need a published book or article (from a reliable publisher; self-published books/articles are frowned upon in this area) which uses yarden, mentions hataf-patah, and how that relates to Yahweh or Jehovah. Without it, this is classed as original research. Stephen Walch (talk) 17:42, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps I should also point out the vowel below yod in yarden is a patah, not a hataf-patah: יֲ‎ is the hataf-patah ; יַ‎ is the patah = יַ-רְ-דֵּ-ן‎ = Yod + patah; resh + sheva ; dalet + dagesh forte + tsere; nun. Probably why you don't have an actual source for your statement: your statement is factually incorrect :) The following is quite a basic site, but it will assist you in your understanding: Hebrew Grammar Lesson Stephen Walch (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2022 (UTC)