The term Sacred Name Bibles and the term sacred-name versions[1] are used in general sources to refer to editions of the Bible that are usually connected with the Sacred Name Movement.[2] A specific definition of Sacred Name Bibles is Bible "translations that consistently use Hebraic forms of God's name in both the Old and New Testaments" [3]
The term is not used in general sources to refer to mainstream Bible editions such as the Jerusalem Bible which employs the name "Yahweh" in the English text of only the Old Testament, where traditional English versions have "LORD".[4]
Most "Sacred Name" versions also use a Semitic form of the name Jesus.[3] The Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation also employs "Jehovah", a form of Yahweh, in New Testament verses which quote the Old Testament, but does not do this throughout, and is not considered a "Sacred Name Bible" by the above definition or either in Sacred Name Movement nor Watchtower Society sources, though some authors have noted a connection.[5] None of these Sacred Name Bibles "are published by well-established publishers. Instead, most are published by the same group that produced the translation. Some are available for download on the Web."[6]
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The Tetragrammation (Hebrew YHWH) occurs in the Hebrew Old Testament, and also (written in Hebrew within the Greek text) in a few of the manuscripts of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although the Greek forms Iao and Iave do occur in magical inscriptions, generally Hellenistic Jewish texts, such as the works of Philo, Josephus and the New Testament, use the word Kyrios, "Lord", when citing verses where YHWH occurs in the Hebrew.[7] Translators of Sacred Name Bibles argue that Sacred Name Bibles are about restoring the original Name back to the text, usually because of a desire to know Yahweh. For centuries, Hebrew-language editions of the New Testament have included in their text ha-Shem "the Name" or the Tetragrammaton rather than "Lord" or similar.
For centuries, Bible translators around the world did not transliterate or copy the tetragrammaton in their translations. For example, English Bible translators (Christian and Jewish) used "LORD" to represent it. Many authors on Bible translation have explicitly called for translating it with a vernacular word or phrase that would be locally meaningful.[8][9][10] The Catholic Church has formally called for translating the Tetragrammaton into other languages rather than attempting to preserve the sounds of the Hebrew.[11]
But a few other Bible translators, with varying theological motivations, have taken a different approach to translating the Tetragrammaton. In the 1800s–1900s at least three English translations contained a variation of the Name [12] In some cases, these translations were of only a portion of the New Testament; they did not represent a stated effort to restore the Name throughout the body of the New Testament. However, in the twentieth century the first translation to employ a full transliteration of the Tetragrammaton was the Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, but his translation only does so in the Old Testament. Angelo Traina's translation, The New Testament of our Messiah and Saviour Yahshua in 1950, then The Holy Name Bible containing the Holy Name Version of the Old and New Testaments in 1963 was the first to systematically use a Hebrew form for sacred names throughout the New Testament, the first complete Sacred Name Bible. The Jerusalem Bible in 1966 and over a dozen other translations in the years since used the name "Yahweh" in the Old Testament.
Some translators of Sacred Name Bibles hold to the view that the New Testament, or at least significant portions of it, were originally written in a Semitic language, Hebrew or Aramaic, from which the Greek text is a translation, seen as deficient in not having preserved the Hebraic forms of names, particularly sacred names. This view is colloquially known as "Aramaic primacy", and is also taken by some academics, such as Matthew Black.[13][14] Therefore, translators of Sacred Name Bibles consider it appropriate to use Semitic names in their translations of the New Testament, which they regard as being intended for use by all people, not just Jews (The Sacred Name 2002: 89ff). Though no early manuscripts of the New Testament contain these names, some Hebrew translations from the Latin did use the Tetragrammaton in part of the Hebrew New Testament. Sidney Jellicoe in The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford, 1968) states that the name YHWH appeared in Greek Old Testament texts written for Jews by Jews, often in paleo-Hebraic square script to indicate that it was not to be pronounced, or in Aramaic, or using the four Greek letters PIPI (Π Ι Π Ι that physically imitate the appearance of Hebrew YHWH), and that Kyrios was a Christian introduction.[15] Bible scholars and translators such as Eusebius and Jerome (translator of the Latin Vulgate) consulted the Hexapla, but did not attempt to preserve sacred names in Semitic forms. Justin Martyr (second century) argued that YHWH is not a personal name, writing of the “namelessness of God”.[16]
George Lamsa, the translator of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts: Containing the Old and New Testaments (1957) believed the New Testament was originally written in a Semitic language (the terms Syriac and Aramaic are not always clearly differentiated by some). However, despite his adherence to a Semitic original of the New Testament, Lamsa translated using the English word "Lord" instead of some Hebraic form of the divine name.
Sacred Name Bibles are not used frequently within Christianity, even less (if at all) in Judaism. Similarly, only a few translations replace Jesus with Semitic forms such as Yeshua or Yahshua. Most English Bible translations translate the Tetragrammaton with Lord where it occurs in the Old Testament and do not transliterate (“bring over the sound”) into the English. These same patterns are found in languages around the world, as translators have translated sacred names without striving to preserve the Hebraic forms, often using local names for the creator or highest deity,[9][17] conceptualizing accuracy as semantic rather than phonetic.
The limited number of Sacred Name Bibles suggests that phonetic accuracy is not considered to be of importance by mainstream Bible translators. The translator Joseph Bryant Rotherham lamented not making his work into a Sacred Name Bible by using the more accurate name Yahweh in his translation (pp. 20 – 26), though he also said, "I trust that in a popular version like the present my choice will be understood even by those who may be slow to pardon it." (p. xxi).
The following versions are Bibles which systematically use some transliteration the Tetragramamton (usually "Yahweh") in both the Old and New Testament as well as a Semitic form of the name of Jesus such as Yahshua or Yeshua. These Bibles apply this to both the names of the Father and Son, both of which are considered to be sacred.[18]
The following versions of Sacred Name Bibles only contain the Tetragrammaton without any vowels so that the reader is unable to read the Name except by pronouncing each of the four letters in English or in Hebrew. They follow this practice in both the Old and New Testaments (though some translations are not complete).
The following versions are those where either "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" is limited to use in the Old Testament. Unlike other Sacred Name Bibles, these are usually published by general publishers.
In addition to these English translations, an Indonesian translation produced by the Sacred Name Movement, Kitab Suci, uses Hebraic forms of sacred names in the Old and New Testaments (Soesilo 2001:416), based on Shellabear's translation. A French translation, by André Chouraqui, also uses Hebraic forms in the Old and New Testaments.[21]