Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry
Recently I had received an email from Nigel. The following is what he had to share on Hymn #391:
"...My guess would be that John Ingalls realized "Jehovah" was a mistaken designation of God's name, so it was changed
Nick Page refers to this Hymn in the context of a discuss of Jehovah as a Misnomer. He says: "
"Although translations such as the KJV use the word [Jehovah] occasionally and we sing Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah, we are using a name that no ancient Jew ever used. And all because they left the vowels out. [Nick Page, God's Dangerous Book: The Surprising History of the World's Most Radical Book, p. ]"
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ברכי נפשי את ה׳ . ה׳ א‑להי, גדלת מאד; הוד והדר לבשת עטה אור כשלמה, נוטה שמים כיריעה.
Transliteration: Barkhi nafshi et Adonai. Adonai Elohai, gadalta m'od; hod v'hadar lavashta O'te or ka'salma, no'te shamayim ka'y'ri'a.
Translation: "Bless, (O) my soul, the LORD. LORD my God, You are very great; glory and majesty have You worn Who dons light as a garment, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain."
The obvious question to me was, why do the Jews use "Adonai" and "Elohai" when they have the "Jehovah" at their disposal? I went through a list of Jewish prayers and didn't see any "Jehovah" at all. Did the editorial staff at LSM know something about the Jewish/Hebrew language that the native speakers lacked?
Somehow, I doubt that. I think LSM's nomenclature was due to an editorial stance, i.e. bias.
The Jews seem to prefer "Adonai", or "God", which I guess is the equivalent to the Greek "Kurios", i.e. "Lord". Or the all-caps variant: L
ORD. The Boss. The Big Guy. The One that Is. My question is: if "Jehovah" is the right name to use, why don't the ones with most intimate connection to the source language (Masoretic Text, Septuagint) use it?