Am I dogmatic about using "Yahweh" as opposed to other pronunciations? What about Yehovah? How do we end up with the pronunciation of "Yahweh" anyway? Doesn't the Septuagint provide conclusive evidence for how to pronounce the divine name? These are some closing thoughts and loose ends I wanted to address.

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The previous episodes in this series considered God’s desire for us to use his name, how the pronunciation was lost, and how the New Testament writers handled the matter. It remains, finally, to consider how it has been handled by translators since the Reformation. In that time there have been various departures from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which rendered the divine name as Dominus (“Lord/Master”), while others have maintained the tradition, which goes back to the Septuagint.

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Read about Sacred Name Translations.

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We know that the inhibition for pronouncing God’s name came before Christianity, although we don’t know how widespread it was. It’s possible that rendering the divine name as “Lord” (kurios) had already been a strong tradition for centuries by the time we get to Jesus and the apostles. What’s clear is that the New Testament manuscripts we have all follow the tradition that the Septuagint set, which was to substitute the title “Lord” (kurios) for God’s name (YHWH). So, the fact that the New Testament never uses God’s personal name as revealed in the Old Testament, or even an approximation of it, is crucial.

Why did the New Testament authors choose to do this? Was it because they thought God’s name was too sacred to write out in Greek transliteration and feared that God might strike them down if they did so? Or, had its pronunciation already been forgotten to history? Were they afraid that the Jews might be angry about it? Or, was it some other reason(s)? The writers never tell us why, so everything that follows here is speculation. Nevertheless, it’s an honest attempt to grapple with the issue.

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This is part 2 of a short series on the divine name.

It’s important to recognize right up front that we simply do not know with absolute certainty how God’s name was originally pronounced. The common English pronunciation of “Yahweh” is an educated guess, but we’ll never know for sure how it sounded when God spoke it to Moses.

Two key things prevent us from knowing: (1) Hebrew was written without vowels for many centuries, so we’re left with only four consonants: YHWH, and (2) people started avoiding the pronunciation of God’s name long before Hebrew began to be written with vowels. And when the Hebrew Bible was finally written with vowels, artificial vowels were inserted into the spelling of God’s name in order to keep people from pronouncing it! So, in this article we’ll try to understand why—why did the Israelites go from swearing by Yahweh’s name, using it in prayer, song, and greetings to forbidding its use altogether?

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Audio clip credit: Tyrant Contra God.

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A few years ago I did a series on the pronunciation and translation of the divine name here on this podcast. It was a long series that eventually turned into a book.

Now, a while back the Text and Canon Institute asked me to do a four-part series on the divine name for their website, which forced me to significantly condense the highlights of the book into smaller, less technical articles. So as a service to anyone who may not have the time to read them, or who may not have the time to listen to the longer technical series, I’ve recorded these articles, and this will be the first. Even if you end up disagreeing with my conclusions, I guarantee that most people will learn a few new and surprising things.

Growing up, I understood that the name of God was “the Lord.” As I got older, I began to understand that when I saw the Lord in all caps, that meant that it was God’s special, divine name that he revealed to Moses. This seemed strange and confusing to me—adding a level of complexity to understanding a Bible that was already difficult enough for a teenager to understand. I don’t remember when it was that I first heard the name Yahweh pronounced, but when I went to seminary, I quickly realized that it was an accepted pronunciation and spelling for God’s name, especially in academic circles.

So how did we get to this point where nearly every English Bible uses “the Lord” (a title) in place of his personal name? Can we know how God’s name was originally pronounced? Shouldn’t we avoid using God’s name out of reverence for the sacred? Why didn’t the New Testament authors use God’s name? How do Bible translators decide whether they should render something like Yahweh or the Lord? These are all important questions that we will try to answer throughout this series. But first, we need to answer a foundational question: What is God’s revealed desire regarding the use and preservation of his name?

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Back in 2021 I had Dave Brunn on this podcast to talk about his amazing book One Bible, Many Versions. If you haven’t heard parts 1 and 2 of that interview, I highly recommend going back to listen when you finish this episode. Dave recently published an article titled Gender in Bible Translation: A Crucial Issue Still Mired in Misunderstanding. It would be an understatement to say that this is an important article for the Church, particularly English-speaking evangelicals. So when I saw his article I immediately reached out to him, and he very kindly agreed to record a reading of it for the listeners of this podcast. It’s an honor to feature him and his work again here.

Dave Brunn is a missionary, translator and educator. He and his wife Nancy spent over twenty years in Papua New Guinea where they served the Lamogai people through church planting, literacy training and Bible translation. Currently, the Brunns reside in Camdenton, MO, where Dave serves as a translation instructor and an International Bible Translation Consultant. He and Nancy have helped hundreds of students in the US, Canada and Australia prepare for missionary service among remote people groups across the globe. 

Music credit: Liborio Conti, no-copyright-music.com

This is the second in a two part series that aims to introduce you to the work of Dr. Reinier de Blois and honor some of the incredible labor of love he has poured out for the sake of the Bible translation community and movement. Specifically, I want to highlight his work in Hebrew lexicography as he nears the end of a project that has spanned over two decades; and that is the creation of a new ⁠semantic dictionary of biblical Hebrew⁠. Learn more about Dr. Reinier de Blois in the previous episode.

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This is the first in a two part series that aims to introduce you to the work of Dr. Reinier de Blois and honor some of the incredible labor of love he has poured out for the sake of the Bible translation community and movement. Specifically, I want to highlight his work in Hebrew lexicography as he nears the end of a project that has spanned over two decades; and that is the creation of a new semantic dictionary of biblical Hebrew, which is available under an open creative commons license. This can be found over at marble.bible. Back in 2000 he wrote a paper outlining some of his vision for the new dictionary, and I think it would be valuable for us to work through some of it together.

Dr. Reinier de Blois is from the Netherlands and is currently the coordinator of ICAP for the United Bible Societies. ICAP stands for The Institute for Computer Assisted Publishing, which is a global initiative of the United Bible Societies which provides technology support and training for the scripture translation and publishing community. The ICAP team has extensive experience in text archiving and data conversion, and a long history of working closely with national Bible Societies and partner agencies. The knowledge and expertise accrued in this area serves as a foundation for the ongoing development of the Digital Bible Library. So currently he is in charge of the development of Bible publishing software, including implementation and training. Dr. de Blois is also a translation consultant and has served on projects in Nigeria, Guinea, and Tanzania. He teaches at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, and has published a number of things that you can see listed on his CV over at Academia.edu. 

Explore the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew.

Read the full paper.

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This is an episode about consulting, specifically addressing some challenges involved with the current consulting model, and possibly some ways it could improve. It also covers some difficulties that may arise when mentoring a consultant in training (CIT) or being mentored as a CIT. Recently I supervised a CIT doing practice checking, and I want to share some lessons learned from that experience.

I want to introduce you to an initiative called Global Bible Tools, which aims to provide the global Church with access to the same advanced biblical language tools that the West enjoys. This includes lexicons, grammars, and text critical information. In this podcast we'll discuss the importance of these tools for serious study of the Bible and Bible translation, and propose a way to make them more accessible to the majority world.

Contact me at [email protected].

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