I have a policy about this. If somebody comes to my door and wants to talk about knowing God, I'm in. The last time it happened, it was an older lady, and a roommate and I (This was a few years ago) invited her in. She opened her Bible to Exodus 3:14 and showed us that God had actually revealed his name to be Jehovah.
Jehovah's Witnesses have a slightly different Bible from the one you might have (unless, of course, you're a Jehovah's Witness). Most biblical translation is done with the intention of faithfully translating the plain meaning of the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts. The Jehovah's Witnesses also rely on direct revelation through their prophets, as God tells them how the Bible should really be translated. So theirs reads a little differently sometimes.
I grabbed my own Bible and pointed out the distinction. She really wasn't interested. I shared a theory about the origin of the name Jehovah that I'll share with you as well.
In Hebrew, that text in Exodus 3:14 says God's name is YHWH. We transliterate that as Yahweh sometimes, but that's just a guess at the pronunciation. It's difficult to translate it in English. Most often we translate it as "I Am," but it says more than that. It's "I Am Who I Am," or "I Will Be Who I Will Be." But if you're reading Hebrew, you'll see something funny there. See, the Hebrew language didn't have vowels. But in later years, rabbis added in vowels underneath the text, so you'd know how to pronounce the words. This was an exception.
The true name of God, as revealed in Exodus 3:14 was spoken only once a year, by the High Priest. And there hasn't been one of those for about 2,000 years. So now we really have no idea how to pronounce YHWH. If you look at the word in the ancient Masoretic text, YHWH has the vowels "AOA" below it. That's short for "Adonai," which is what Jews will say instead of uttering God's true name, which they would deem sacrilegious.
Now watch this...
If for whatever reason, no one ever told you that, and you just tried to read the Masoretic text with no knowledge of all that, you might read it as "Yahowah," unless, of course, you were German. So much theological work was done in Germany over the past 1,000 years that German is now a required language for Ph.D. students in theology. You don't really have to know Hebrew or Greek, but you do have to know German (and probably French).
If you're German, and you see before you the word "Yahowah," you're gonna read the Y as a J and the W as a V, cause that's what you do in German. And all of a sudden, bam. There you are with "Jahovah" (or "Jehovah?"). It's just a theory, but do you think that might possibly be where that came from?
Back to my story...
So there I was, with a barking dog in my hands, looking at a young Jehovah's Witness through a screen door, and I just wasn't feeling up to the conversation. I said something like, "I'd be glad to talk to you, but I don't think you're gonna want to talk to me. I've had some training in theology, and usually you guys don't like to hear me out. I appreciate you coming by though."
I was nice, but the kid left. Fine. I've tried to justify it, but really I was just being lazy, as is so often the problem. So let me try and make up for it by saying that if there are any JW's out there reading this blog, or Mormons, or...I don't know...atheists, agnostics, whatever, let me just say I'd be glad to talk. And for everybody else, I hope you at least appreciated the etymology lesson.
-Solid
The true name of God, as revealed in Exodus 3:14 was spoken only once a year, by the High Priest. And there hasn't been one of those for about 2,000 years. So now we really have no idea how to pronounce YHWH. If you look at the word in the ancient Masoretic text, YHWH has the vowels "AOA" below it. That's short for "Adonai," which is what Jews will say instead of uttering God's true name, which they would deem sacrilegious.
Now watch this...
If for whatever reason, no one ever told you that, and you just tried to read the Masoretic text with no knowledge of all that, you might read it as "Yahowah," unless, of course, you were German. So much theological work was done in Germany over the past 1,000 years that German is now a required language for Ph.D. students in theology. You don't really have to know Hebrew or Greek, but you do have to know German (and probably French).
If you're German, and you see before you the word "Yahowah," you're gonna read the Y as a J and the W as a V, cause that's what you do in German. And all of a sudden, bam. There you are with "Jahovah" (or "Jehovah?"). It's just a theory, but do you think that might possibly be where that came from?
Back to my story...
So there I was, with a barking dog in my hands, looking at a young Jehovah's Witness through a screen door, and I just wasn't feeling up to the conversation. I said something like, "I'd be glad to talk to you, but I don't think you're gonna want to talk to me. I've had some training in theology, and usually you guys don't like to hear me out. I appreciate you coming by though."
I was nice, but the kid left. Fine. I've tried to justify it, but really I was just being lazy, as is so often the problem. So let me try and make up for it by saying that if there are any JW's out there reading this blog, or Mormons, or...I don't know...atheists, agnostics, whatever, let me just say I'd be glad to talk. And for everybody else, I hope you at least appreciated the etymology lesson.
-Solid
David, that is an interesting story, but where in it were you talking about bugs?
ReplyDeleteBugs?
ReplyDeleteDavid, Sorry. I looked back and you said etymology, not entomology.
ReplyDeleteHaha! Ok, I got it.
ReplyDelete75 million years ago, there was an alien galactic ruler named Xenu who was in charge of 76 planets in our sector of the galaxy, including planet Earth, whose name at that time was Teegeeack.
ReplyDeleteAll of the planets Xenu controlled were over-populated by, on average, 178 billion people. Social problems dictated that Xenu rid his sector of the galaxy of this overpopulation problem, so he developed a plan.
Xenu sent out Tax Audit demands to all these billions of people.
As each one entered the audit centers for the income tax inspections, the people were seized, held down and injected with a mixture of alcohol and glycol, and frozen. Then, all 13.5 trillion of these frozen people were put into spaceships that looked exactly like DC8 airplanes, except that the spaceships had rocket engines instead of propellers.
Xenu's entire fleet of DC8-like spaceships then flew to planet Earth, where the frozen people were dumped in and around volcanoes in the Canary Islands and the Hawaiian Islands. When Xenu's Air Force had finished dumping the bodies into the volcanoes, hydrogen bombs were dropped into the volcanoes and the frozen space aliens were destroyed.
However, Xenu's plan involved setting up electronic traps in Teegeeack's atmosphere which were designed to trap the souls or spirits of the dead space aliens. When the 13.5 trillion spirits were being blown around on the nuclear winds, the electronic traps worked like a charm and captured all the souls in the electronic, sticky fly-paper like traps.
The spirits of the aliens were then taken to huge multiplex cinemas that Xenu had previously instructed his forces to build on Teegeeack. In these movie theaters the spirits had to spend many days watching special 3-D movies, the purpose of which was twofold: 1) to implant into these spirits a false reality, i.e. the reality that WOGS know on Earth today; and, 2) to control these spirits for all eternity so that they could never cause trouble for Xenu in this sector of the Galaxy. During these films, many false pictures were implanted into these spirits, which resulted in the spirits believing in all the things that control mankind on Earth today, including religion. The concept of religion, including God, Christ, Mohammed, Moses etc., were all an implanted false reality that to this very minute is used to control WOGS on Earth.
When the films ended and the souls left the cinema, they started to stick together in clusters of a few thousand and remained that way until mankind began to inhabit the Earth. Today on Earth all the spirits of these aliens have attached themselves to our bodies and are the root cause of the false reality that all but Scientology's "Homo Novis" or OT 8's on earth experience. It is the job of all Scientologists to remove this false reality from the world by auditing each and every space alien spirit and human on earth to CLEAR not only this planet but the universe.
We have calculated that on average, each person on planet earth has 2,209 of these Body Thetans (BT's for short), alien spirits, attached to you causing you and all mankind to be constrained by Xenu's false reality. The average cost for Scientology to OT 8 is a mere USD 360,000, meaning that each BT only costs USD 163 to clear. Now that is a bargain if there ever was one.
The planetary cost equation is as follows: 13.5 trillion spirits times USD 163 equals a mere USD 2,205,000,000,000,000.
The Loyal Officers of the Marcab Confederation finally discovered how evil Xenu was and overthrew him. He is now locked away in a mountain on one of the planets and kept in by a force-field powered by an eternal battery.
That must have taken forever to type. Clearly though, it punctuates that fact that all religions are NOT the same.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness! a fantastic post dude. Thank you Even so I will be experiencing issue with ur rss . Don’t know why Can not subscribe to it. Will there be any person getting identical rss problem? Anybody who knows kindly respond. Thnkx family law matter
ReplyDeleteSome times its a pain in the ass to read what blog owners wrote but this website is really user pleasant! . Malvern law firm Australia
ReplyDelete