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WHAT ARE HEBREW VERSIONS?
M
ost who use the
New World Translation
(published by
the Watch Tower Society)
are familiar with its
reference to the Hebrew versions. What are these
Hebrew versions and why are they used to reinstate the divine
name
Jehovah
in the Christian Scriptures of the
New World
Translation
?
Why did the
New World Translation
use Hebrew versions?
All ancient Hebrew language manuscripts of the Hebrew
Scriptures use the Tetragrammaton (written
hwhy
in Hebrew
letters) for God’s name. The divine name is used almost 7,000
times between Genesis and the last book, Malachi. The
New
World Translation
is to be commended for translating these
references as
Jehovah
rather than
LORD
.
However, the Christian Scriptures were written in Greek.
The publishers of the
New World Translation
truthfully admit
that there are no ancient Christian Scripture manuscripts of
any kind that use the Tetragrammaton
.
1
This is true in spite of
numerous examples of the Tetragrammaton in the Greek
Septuagint
Hebrew Scriptures.
However, because many Hebrew versions use t h e
Tetragrammaton in the Christian Scriptures, the translators of
the
New World Translation
used these Hebrew translations of
the Christian Scriptures as the basis for reinstating the divine
name
Jehovah
237 times in their Christian Scriptures.
1
For reference see,
Aid to Bible Understanding,
page 886.
However, in spite of the absolute lack of any manuscripts
containing the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton, the
Watch Tower Society maintains that the Tetragrammaton
was used by the Inspired Christian Greek Scripture writers
and was subsequently removed because of a great heresy
in the 2
nd
and 3
rd
centuries C.E. For a complete discussion
of this lack of evidence to support such a heresy, see the
book
The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek
Scriptures.
What are Hebrew versions?
Hebrew versions are simply Hebrew language translations
of the Greek Scriptures for use by Hebrew-speaking readers. In
fact, most have been published with one purpose being t h e
conversion of Jews to Christianity. For that reason, some of
these Hebrew versions were published by a Trinitarian Bible
Society. Because the Tetragrammaton (
hwhy
) is a word
understood by Hebrew speakers, it is frequently found in these
Hebrew versions.
2
The
New World Translation
uses 25 Hebrew
versions (and two non-version sources) as footnote references
citing
hwhy
in the Christian Scriptures.
Are Hebrew versions ancient texts?
Most assume that these Hebrew versions are ancient texts.
In fact, they are not. The earliest complete Hebrew version
cited by the
New World Translation
was translated from t h e
King James Greek text in 1599. The most recent Hebrew version
cited in the
New World Translation
was translated in 1979
from a “New Testament” Greek text published in 1975. Of
course, all of the Greek texts from which these versions were
translated can be readily examined today. None of these Greek
texts contain a single occurrence of either
hwhy
in Hebrew letters
or even the divine name transliterated into Greek letters.
An example of a Hebrew version
J
18
is one of the Hebrew versions used by the New World
Bible Translation Committee to substantiate its use of t h e
Tetragrammaton. The 1969 edition of the
Kingdom Interlinear
Translation
(also published by the Watch Tower Society) gives
the following information regarding this version:
J
18
Greek Scriptures
in Hebrew. In London, England, in 1885,
a new Hebrew translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures
was published. This new translation was commenced by
Isaac Salkinson and completed after his death by Christian
David Ginsburg. Our oldest copy is of the third edition
published in 1891. This has been compared with the small
edition published by the Trinitarian Bible Society, London,
2
The reader may be surprised to realize that the
Tetragrammaton is frequently used by the Christian Jewish
translators to identify Jesus with
hwhy
in these Trinitarian
Hebrew versions. For further information, see the short
book,
The New World Translation and Hebrew Versions.
England, in 1939, and also with the Hebrew-English New
Testament published in 1941 by the same Society (page
29).
When we study the 237
Jehovah
references, a large number
of the footnotes cite J
18
. As expected, we will find confirmation
of the presence of the Tetragrammaton in this Hebrew version
exactly as listed in the
New World Translation.
However, the title page of J
18
gives this information:
T
HE
N
EW
T
ESTAMENT
OF
OUR
L
ORD AND
S
AVIOUR
J
ESUS
C
HRIST
Translated out of the original Greek: and with
the former translations diligently compared
and revised, by His Majesty's special command
Did you notice the reference to the source material for t h e
Hebrew version? The word
version
simply means
translation
.
Yet, while studying the Tetragrammaton in the Christian
Scriptures of these Hebrew versions, it seldom occurs to us that
we are talking about
translations
from a Greek text that
plainly does not use the Tetragrammaton.
Manuscript dates in the
Jehovah
footnotes
The footnotes for any
Jehovah
reference in the
New World
Translation
Christian Scriptures give meaningful information
regarding both version and manuscript dates.
Revelation 4:11 is one of the important
Jehovah
verses.
The verse appears in the
Kingdom Interlinear Translation
as
follows:
11
[Axio" ei\, oJ kuvrio" kai; oJ qeo;" hJmw`n,
Worthy you are, the Lord and the God of us,
labei`n th;n dovxan kai; th;n timh;n kai; th;n duvnamin,
to receive the glory and the honor and the power,
o{ti su; e[ktisa" ta; pavnta, kai; dia;
because you created the all (things) and through
to; qevlhmav sou h\san kai; ejktivsqhsan.
the will of you they were and they were created
The
New World Translation
quoted in the right hand margin
translates the verse:
11
"You are worthy, Jehovah,* even our God, to receive the
glory and the honor and the power, because you created all
things, and because of your will they existed and were
created."
At the bottom of the page, the
Jehovah
footnote is given:
11
*
Jehovah, J
7,8,13,14,16,18
; Lord,
Å
AV
g
Sy
h
.
The verse footnote lists six Hebrew versions (J
7,8,13,14,16,18
)
which are used as evidence for reinstating
Jehovah
; two early
Greek manuscripts (
a
Sinaitic MS
and
A AlexandrineMS
) which
have
Lord
in the Greek manuscript; and two versions (the Latin
Vulgate
and a Syriac version) which substantiate
Lord
.
J
7
Christian Greek Scriptures in Hebrew
; Elias
Hutter.
1599
J
8
Christian Greek Scriptures in Hebrew
;
William Robertson.
1661
J
13
Christian Greek Scriptures in Hebrew
; A.
McCaul and others.
1838
J
14
Christian Greek Scriptures in Hebrew
; John
Christian Reichardt.
1846
J
16
Christian Greek Scriptures in Hebrew
; John
Christian Reichardt and Joachim H. R.
Blesenthal.
1866
J
18
Christian Greek Scriptures in Hebrew
; Isaac
Salkinson.
1885
From this same verse, a similar (though shorter) list
3
is
given indicating Greek manuscripts that contain the Greek
word
Kyrios
(
Lord
).
3
The Greek word Kyrios (
Kuvrio~
) is translated
Lord
in the
Kingdom Interlinear Translation.
The number of references
to Kyrios (or
Lord
) passages are fewer in the
Kingdom
Interlinear Translation
only because the editors have chosen
to cite so few of the over 5,000 ancient Greek manuscripts
that are available today. All of these manuscripts are uniform
in their use of Kyrios (or Theos , which is translated
Go d
)
rather than the Tetragrammaton. The United Bible Societies'
Christian Greek Scripture textual apparatus (the
Textual
Commentary on the Greek New Testament
which
shows all
textual variants in cited Greek manuscripts) was consulted for
each of the 237
Jehovah
references. This volume lists
all
a
Sinaitic MS
; an uncial Greek manuscript.
4
th
cent.
A
Alexandrine MS;
an uncial Greek manuscript. 5
th
cent.
V
g
Latin Vulgate;
a revision of Old Latin by
Eusebius Jerome.
405 CE
Sy
h
Syriac Peshitta Version.
464 CE
What do these dates tell us?
The
Kingdom Interlinear Translation
cites six Hebrew
version sources for Revelation 4:11. The date of the earliest
version is 1599 C.E., while the latest version is dated 1885 C.E.
Two Greek manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries (301-
400 C.E., and 401-500 C.E. respectively) are cited for this verse
in support of the Greek word
Kyrios
.
The translators of the
New World Translation
chose to use
the divine name in 237 selected verses by virtue of supporting
evidence from Hebrew translations of 1385 C.E. and later. B y
way of contrast, the earliest evidence available for the Greek
word
Kyrios
(
Lord
), referred to in the
Kingdom Interlinear
Translation's
footnotes, was from reliable Greek manuscripts
dating as early as 300 C.E. None of these manuscripts contain
the Tetragrammaton. These are the same Greek texts from
which the Hebrew versions were translated.
We must ask ourselves if these Hebrew versions prove that
the original writers of the Christian Scriptures used t h e
Tetragrammaton in these 237 locations. It is clear that they do
not. These Hebrew translators used the same Greek texts to
translate their versions as any translator during the same
periods of time used to translate all other English Christian
Greek Scriptures that correctly use
Lord.
major Greek Scripture manuscript variations from which
translators must choose. The following tabulation was made
for each of the
Jehovah
references. 71 of the 237
references are specifically discussed in this textual
apparatus.
The presence of the Tetragrammaton is never
mentioned at any of these 71 verses, and is therefore not
considered as a textual variant in any known Greek
manuscript.
Further, because the remaining 166 references
are not mentioned, we are assured that no basis for textual
variants exists in any of the 237
Jehovah
references. A
discussion of Kyrios [
Lord
] and Theos [God] as the choice for
the specific verse occurs 31 times.
Plik z chomika:
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Inne pliki z tego folderu:
1980_Letters To Watchtower On J-Versions.pdf
(6134 KB)
1998_The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures.pdf
(1904 KB)
2000_Hiding The Divine Name.pdf
(947 KB)
2001_Jehovah in New Testament.pdf
(152 KB)
2001_New World Translation and Hebrew Versions.pdf
(264 KB)
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