Member-only story
Now I’m not making the claim that there is no God (not in this article at least) but the lesser claim that the word Jehovah isn’t real. It is a mistranslation of European origin dating back to the middle ages.
So now the Jehovah’s witnesses that come knocking on your door to preach are twice as annoying, since they can’t even get the name of their cult right.
So the Old Testament complicates the name of God by instructing the people of Israel not to use it. So instead they often use the word ‘Adonai’ meaning lord, instead. So that leads to the following situation which I quote from an article on logos.com
“First, Jehovah is the weirdest kind of portmanteau: it’s 1) the vowels of one Hebrew word (Adonai) inserted into 2) the consonants of another (Yahweh), with the result then 3) transliterated into various European languages.”
To explain to the best of my ability, since Hebrew is an all consonant language, at least originally with vowel markings added on, the consonants spelled out ‘Yahweh’ but the vowel placement was for the preferred substitute Adonai (lord) as I mentioned above.
So the right letters plus the wrong vowels gave us something like ‘Jehovah’ and the Christians were off and running. But since Jesus was actually named Joshua, it’s not like using the wrong name for Jewish gods is anything new.
Anyway I suggest you save this amusing little factoid to share with the next Jehovah’s witness that comes knocking and please share your story in the comments.
