Ok, as always, I want to preface this article by pointing out that I am no theologian, nor do I hold any degree from any seminary school of any kind. I am however an avid researcher of information, driven by a knowledge of truth. Unlike many, I am not content with the words of a single pastor as being my only source of factual information. In fact, Scripture teaches us that at the words of two or three, that every word will be established. This even holds up in a court of law. No one gets convicted on one persons single testimony, but rather on several shreds of personal testimony and evidence. Many of us, as believers are guilty of running wild with what a pastor says, as if it is verified truth, having failed to fact check. Interestingly enough, most pastors encourage their members to fact check them, but it’s not often that it gets done. I can personally recall a time one of my old pastors was preaching on a topic and in the middle of it, he challenged us to fact check him. It wasn’t in a arrogant type of way, but in a way that he was sure he was on point and wanted others to be assured. Me being me, I instantly took the challenge and looked it up, only to find that what he said wasn’t completely accurate. For me, I learned the importance of being more like the Bereans, spoken about in the Book of Acts, who studied the Scriptures daily, to see if those things were true. But for those who didn’t fact check, that topic being taught on was another unconfirmed yet accepted truth in their ears. I am in no way saying don’t listen to your pastor’s, but rather not to allow the research of one person to be your only source of truth. In my personal studies of the Hebrew roots of this faith, there have been many times that I understood a thing as being one way, but as time went on, I learned that it was not quite right, and as a result, I had to change my thinking, to align with truth rather than aligning the truth to line up with my thinking. That being said, in this blog, I want to address the 6th letter of the Hebrew alefbet, and the ongoing, never ending debate about its pronunciation.
I have addressed the name of YHVH a few times in past blogs, so I really won’t delve much into that, at the hope of not seeming repetitive on information. However, the extent of the info that I did share on the topic was mainly addressing the fact that there is no “J” in Hebrew. One such example of us being off track in our understanding, by means of allowing one person to be our source of complete information would be a message I once heard Pastor John Hagee teach on the mystery of the tallit. For the most part, it was an amazing and enlightening message, but there was one part where he lost me at. It was a point where he went a bit off track. As he attempted to get into the Hebrew aspect, he touched on the “Tetragrammaton” (the four letters of the name of God), being YHVH, and then confidently proclaimed it “Jehovah”. Have you ever seen a movie, where something crazy and unexpected happens, and then you hear the sound of a record being scratched? For me, that was one of those moments. He had a board out that he wrote out YHVH, and with everyone looking, he proclaimed it Jehovah, and everyone cheered. I was like, “wait, what”? Did they NOT see the first letter of the Tetragrammaton was a “Y”? Since when does Y sound like J? Nonetheless, although many saw it with their own eyes, believed sound over sight. Needless to say a large portion of everyone there are fully convinced that His name is Jehovah, despite the fact that the first letter is a “Y”. This is what I mean by not allowing your pastor to be your only source for factual information. Anyway, one of the biggest debates I have seen is in whether the 6th letter of the Hebrew Alefbet is a “Vav”, pronounced as a hard V, or a “Waw” pronounced as a W. Due to this ongoing debate, those who agree that “Jehovah” is not the name of God are at odds as to whether or not “Yahweh” is His correct name. In my old church, my pastor used the name Yahweh frequently, and as such, the congregation accepted it as so. So what did I do? Well, after learning to read Hebrew, I began my search for books and articles by top people in this field of study. In my mind, the best place to get info is in a scholar with countless years in the field, and look at the info that they present, for both sides of the coin, and then begin my study on those two, to see what seems most accurate. Although this is not 100% because my bias could choose the one who lined up with my preconceived notion, I would allow the most believable info as well as sources to be my guide. This seemed a lot more reasonable than just running with one man’s personal view, especially, one that has no accolades in the topic of discussion. I also found it odd that I have yet to ever hear a preacher or teacher come back to a congregation and acknowledge that something he once taught wasn’t accurate. I mean, are they so on point that they never miss it? Or maybe it’s just me, because I have quite a few moments when I find that what was once thought to be right, really wasn’t. One such example, that just happened recently was concerning the dietary laws. The Torah teaches on not boiling the kid (beef), in its mothers milk. This was a hard thing to understand, but as I looked into it, I had come to understand that this meant that you do not eat beef with dairy products. This was a tough one because as I understood it, it meant that you could not eat things like cheeseburgers because that was beef and cheese, and cheese is dairy. No more spaghetti with cheese, or nachos and cheese, and so on. I wanted to be in compliance with the dietary laws of Torah, so I explained this to my family, and we cut all those things out. It was hard, but not impossible. Our overall desire was to follow Torah, not to be saved, but because we are saved. Time went on, and one day, I was listening to a teaching from one of my top sources of information. He was addressing the issue about foods like cheeseburgers, and went on to say that he himself eats them from time to time. Keep in mind, this man is not only a scholar, but holds degrees in archaeology, a translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Author of numerous books, public speaker, and a Jew. Not only that, but as a Jew, he is a full observer of Torah, well versed in Ancient manuscripts such as the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, both of which our Bibles were translated from. As for being a Jew, he was the son of a modern day Pharisee Rabbi, and a Litvac Jew, which are considered more prestigious in the realm of lifestyle and understanding of Scripture. I laid all of these accolades out there to make a contrast between a pastor with no real background beyond a Strongs Concordance and basic understanding of what he believes the Bible to say, and someone extremely knowledgeable in all of the above. I believe that all of us, even Pastors must always be teachable, but in my experience, it seems that many pastors feel that due to their call, the pressure is on them to have all the answers so they simply teach on their own personal understanding. Anyway, as he taught, he took it back to centuries ago, when Rabbinic Judaism had overshadowed the Torah. This teaching was part of the “takanote” (man made teachings) of the Rabbi’s, and accepted by all because it was believed that the Rabbi’s gave them the Word as it came from YHVH. In reality, the understanding behind not boiling the kid in its mothers milk had nothing to do with not eating dairy and beef. There was more to it than this, but to much to address now. The important thing was that this teaching came from Rabbinic Judaism, and was therefore not applicable to Torah. As a result, I shared it with my family and we now eat beef and dairy once again.
So lets get back to the Vav and Waw. I am sure many would still disagree with thhe info I am going to put out because many are utterly convinced that Yahweh is the name of our Father, but long before I came across this info, when I learned the Hebrew Alefbet, from every source I looked at, the 6th letter was always a Vav and not a Waw, so there was never a doubt for me, and that Yahweh was totally not accurate. Anyway, theres was a study a few hundred years ago, concerning the Hebrew Alefbet. Jews from around the world were spoken to concerning each letter. When coming to the 6th letter, there was a debate. Some addressed it as Vav, and others as Waw. A majority of Jewish cultures used Vav. For example, the Jews of Syria, dating back to the time of King David, used the Vav when reading Torah, but when at home speaking their adoptive Arabic language, spoke with a Waw. In Arabic, the Vav is pronounced as Waw, because there is no Vav sound. It is interesting that they would use the Vav when reading the Torah when there current language does not recognize that sound, almost as if to imply that they are preserving something by keeping the Vav. It was found that of all Jewish communities around the planet, that there 5 Jewish communities that use the Waw, and surprisingly, they all live in Arabic speaking regions. One of the top Hebrew scholars, who happens to speak Arabic, insists that without a doubt that the Waw is Arabic influenced. Many people believe that there was no V sound in Hebrew, howbeit, all Jews agree that there is a “soft” V sound in Hebrew, found in the second and third letter of Hebrew, the “bet/vet”. Lets go back 1500 years ago. There was a Hebrew poet who while writing a poem, rhymed the words “Levi” as in the levites, and “navi”, meaning “prophet”. In both words, the poet had used the hard V, or the “Vav” to spell them. The interesting thing is that, in all of his writings, his words always rhymed, so the probability of this one occasion they don’t rhyme is highly unlikely. And yes, I am aware that the spelling of Navi today is used with a “Vet”, not a “Vav”, for whatever reason, he choose to use the “Vav”. Perhaps it was for rhyming purposes, I really can’t say. Perhaps the fans of the “Yahweh” name can have this as a point in their favor. Well, 700 years later, another famous Rabbi/Poet was criticizing him for foolishly rhyming “Lewi” with “Navi”. something to note in this story, is that the Rabbi doing the criticizing of this, lived in an Arabic community, and also spoke Arabic, so in his particular dialect of Hebrew, the Vav was pronounced Waw, thereby making it noticeable how the Arabic language had an impact on the Hebrew language. During the time of the Prophet Ezekiel, the word “back”, which is “Gav” in Hebrew was spelled using the Vav in some cases and the Vet in other cases. The point is, by differentiating the sounding of these two letters, Vet and Vav, you come up with the different words for the word back, “Gav” and “Gaw”, and that is highly unlikely. The fact that Vav and Vet can be frequently interchangeable in the Hebrew language, and was done so as far back as the time of Ezekiel makes quite a valid argument that these two letters, without a doubt makes the V sound and not the V sound for one and the W for the other. With this in mind, when looking at the Tetragrammaton in Scripture, we find more cases for Vav, than Waw. When these same letters are spoken, it is spoken as so, Yod Hay Vav Hay, yet some would still insists on pronouncing that V in Vav as a W in Way, kind of like John Hagee pronouncing the Y in Yod yet making it become a J sound.
I submit, many people have seen erroneous sources or even heard pastors erroneously declare the name as Yahweh, and ran without, not even verifying it for themselves. Speaking for myself, again I can admit that I too went through a few variations for the name of our Heavenly Father before I got to where I am now. In the beginning, I met a few people who insisted it was Yahuah, or even Yahusha, and although I accepted it briefly, I did not set well with me because I could read Hebrew, and clearly in the Tetragrammaton alone, it was not possible for either name to be correct. It just didn’t work for me. And from looking at ancient documents online, the Aleppo Codex to be exact, I was able to see two noticeable vowel markers in the name, making it clear that there was no “Sh” sound in it, and then then presence of a Vav proved there was was no OO sound either. From these thousand year old documents, two of the three vowel sounds stood out, the “eh” sound below the Yod (the Y sound), and the “ah” sound below the Vav (the V sound). With part of the name clear, I learned that there had to be one more vowel, according the rules of Hebrew writing. By this point I was totally convinced that Yahuah, Yahusha and Yahweh was NOT the name of God. Shortly after that, Nehemia Gordon found well over a thousand cases where the name had all three vowel markers, having gone through hundreds of ancient documents. After revealing where they came from, rather than accepting it for face value, despite his numerous accolades, I viewed his resources for myself and found the same thing he did, and as a result unanimously agree that the missing vowel was the “oh” (the O sound), just over the Hay. When looking at the Tetragrammaton with all three vowels, the name of our Heavenly Father, is without doubt, pronounced as YeHoVaH (Yehovah). Although many scholars still disagree, and hold on to Yahweh, and many of you may still choose to do the same, I have to stand with the above name because based off of my ability to read Hebrew, and the understanding of the pronunciation of the vowel markers, along with the whole Vav and Waw thing, it is the only thing it could me. I would therefore admonish all reading this, do as I did, and do your own due diligence, for yourself, and see what you come up with. We may all agree to disagree, and that is cool, I mean we are all here to learn, but at least by doing your own due diligence, you are not under the beliefs of a single person because you respect them, but rather under your own personal belief based off what you understand. I hope this blog has give you the desire to dig for yourself. Don’t take my word for it just because I choose to spend my days studying and researching all the time, but rather decide for yourself simply because you can. Blessings!
