THE MISSING J

   The popular names Jehovah and Jesus were not in the original Scriptures and therefore cannot be genuine. It is a fact, provable in part by the historical nonexistence of the letter J. Now learn what the inspired names of the Father and Son actually are.

   "Precious name, oh how sweet," sing many voices as people gather each week to praise and worship the Savior and Redeemer of Israel. But the name they sing praises to is not the Messiah's name and never was.

   The name "Jesus" is a combination of the Greek "Iesous" and the Latin version employing the letter J. This name commonly used in Christianity did not exist until about 500 years ago.

   The French philosopher, historian, and religion scholar Ernest Renan stated in his book, The Life of Jesus, that the Savior never was called Jesus in His lifetime. Renan based his conclusion on his archaeological trips to the Holy Land in searching for inspiration and materials on the Savior.

   Renan is not the only one disclaiming the popular name of the Messiah. Proof likely exists in your own home or can easily be found in your local library. You'll find a wealth of proof in these pages—references common in any library.

   References also abound that show that the Creator's name is not Jehovah. The name Jehovah is a mistake brought on by copyists, who deliberately added the vowels from "Adonai" to the Tetragrammaton (the Heavenly Father's Name in Hebrew Scriptures) in an effort to warn the reader not to enunciate the name they believed was too sacred to voice.

   The Third Commandment expressly forbids misusing the sacred Name and "bringing it to naught." Accepting a substitute certainly is not using His Name as intended. Jeremiah prophesied that the Scribes (copyists) would err: "How can you say, 'We are wise for we have the law of Yahweh,' when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?" Jeremiah 8:8, New International Version.

   All aspiring religious groups strive to be the Philadelphia assembly mentioned in Revelation chapter 3. But they overlook one of its important attributes: "I know you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name," Revelation 3:8, NIV.

   Webster's New World Dictionary says of the word "deny": "To declare untrue; contradict; refuse to accept as true or right; reject as unfounded, unreal, etc.; to refuse to acknowledge as one's own; refuse to grant or give; to refuse the use of or access to; to refuse the request of (a person).

   By using substitute names, churchianity has denied the sacred Name. Let's understand why the popular names for the Creator and His Son are erroneous and how they came to be accepted.

The "J" Didn't Exist

   One of the most obvious reasons that "Jesus" and "Jehovah" are incorrect is found in their common initial letter, J. Most comprehensive dictionaries and encyclopedias demonstrate that the letter J is of recent derivation. The Encyclopedia Americana contains the following on the J:

The form of J was unknown in any alphabet until the 14th century. Either symbol (J,I) used initially generally had the consonantal sound of Y as in year. Gradually, the two symbols (J,l) were differentiated, the J usually acquiring consonantal force and thus becoming regarded as a consonant, and the I becoming a vowel. It was not until 1630 that the differentiation became general in England.

   The letter J developed from the letter I and was used to avoid confusion. Chambers' Encyclopedia says that in medieval handwriting the small i was liable to be confused with one of the strokes of a preceding or following u. Therefore an oblique stroke and later a dot was often made over the i. Alternately, the i was prolonged below the line.

   The J and its I sound is still used in the German language. In the names of the months of January, June, and July, the German keeps the "ee" sound much like our Y. For example, July is pronounced "Yulee."

   Note the substantiating comments of the Encyclopedia Americana regarding The Letter J:

    It is one of the few permanent additions to those alphabets, made in medieval or modern times. More exactly, it was not an addition, but a differentiation from an existing letter, i, which in Latin, besides being a vowel (as in index), had also the consonantal value of "Y" (as in maior, pronounced "mayor").
    At a later stage, the symbol "J" was used for distinctive purposes, particularly when the "I" had to be written initially (or in conjunction with another "I"). Either symbol used initially generally had the consonantal sound of "Y" (as in year) so that the Latin pronunciation of either Ianuarius or Januarius was as though the spelling was "Yanuarius." While in some words of Hebrew and other origin (such as Hallelujah or Junker), "J" has the phonetic value of "Y." 

The J Develops

Around 1000 B.C. The Phoenicians and other Semites of Syria and Palestine began to use a graphic sign in the forms (1,2) They gave it the name yodh, meaning "hand," and used it for a semi consonant y, as in English boy, boys. After 900 B.C. the Greeks borrowed the sign from the Phoenicians, using at first various angular versions (3,4,5), and then a simplified form (6) They also changed its name to iota and made it stand for their vowel i. The Greek form (6) passed unchanged via Etruscan to the Roman alphabet (7,8). The Romans used the sign both for the vowel i and for the semi consonant y, as in IECIT. When subsequently the need arose to differentiate the two sounds, an unsystematic habit grew up of adding a tail to the i for the semi consonant, as in the late Roman and medieval Uncial (9,10) and Cursive (11). The distinction was not fully established until the 17th century, when the capital (12,13) and small letter (14,15) took their modem forms The dot on the small letter was carried over from the letter i.  ~American Heritage Dictionary

   Because the letter J derived from the I, and had the same sound, it was classed as a vowel. The letter I comes from the Greek "iota," which is the Hebrew "yothe." Both have a vowel sound. There is no "J" sound in the Anglo-Saxon, let alone Hebrew, and no Roman form to work from. The J was first pronounced as the I until the printing press was introduced. Gradually the letter J acquired its own sound through French influence.

   Webster's Universal Dictionary (1936) discloses the early relationship between I and J:

As a character it was formerly used interchangeably with "i," both letters having originally the same sound; and after the "j" sound came to be common in English, it was often written where this sound must have been pronounced. The separation of these two letters is of comparatively recent date, being brought about through the influence of the Dutch printers.

THE MISSING J IN THE BIBLE--Early practice was to use letters for references in center columns of study bibles. Notice the missing j indicated by the arrow.

   The New Book of Knowledge demonstrates that the I was derived from the Hebrew "yothe." The yothe is the same Hebrew letter that begins Yahweh's Name. It also begins the Savior's Name Yahshua. The sound of the yothe is "ee" or "eh." (More on the sacred Name later in this booklet.)

   The printing press soon replaced the laborious copying by scribes the longhand editions of the Bible. The initial copies of the King James Version did not use the letter J for the Savior's Name. No evidence has come to light that shows the letter I ever had the consonantal sound of the letter J. This is shown in the New Funk and Wagnall Encyclopedia:

Not until the middle of the 17th century did this usage become universal in English books; in the King James Bible of 1611 for example, the words Jesus and judge are invariably Iesus and iudge.

   This is corroborated by the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary concerning the letter J, "The J types are not used in the Bible of 1611...."

Writing Followed Speech

   The Oxford English Dictionary is acknowledged as the most authoritative work on the origins and meanings of words in the English language. A 12-volume work, the dictionary took 50 years to produce.

   Under the entry "J," this dictionary explains how the J received its sound:

Some time before the 6th century, this y-sound had, by compression in articulation, and consequent development of an initial 'stop,' become a consonantal diphthong, passing through a sound (dy), akin to that of our di, de, in odious, hideous, to that represented in our phonetic symbolization (dz). At the same time, the original guttural sound of G, when followed by a front vowel, had changed to that of palatal g (gy), and then, by an advance of the point of closure, had passed through that of (dy), to the same sound (dz); so the i consonant and the so-called g 'soft' came to have, in the Romanic languages, the same identical value.

   The Encyclopedia Britannica shows that the sound of the letter J was the same as the letter I:

The original consonantal sound represented by the letter was the semi-vowel or spirant "I" (the sound of y in yacht). This passed into dy and later into the sound dz which the letter represents today.

   Along with the changing pronunciation, there came the change in the alphabet to accommodate the alteration. Webster's New International Dictionary explains:

J is a comparatively late variant from the Latin I which was used indifferently as a vowel or consonant, its consonantal value being that of English Y in yet. The form J was developed from i during the Middle Ages, and it was long used in certain positions in the word merely without regard to the sound as a consonant or vowel. But the lengthened form was often initial, and the initial was usually consonantal, so the j gradually became differentiated from i in function as well as form. It was not, however, until the 17th century that the distinction of j as a consonant and i as a vowel was fully established and the capital J introduced. In English, the regular and practically uniform sound of j as in "jet" (dzh), the same as g in "gem," dates from the 11th century, that being the sound represented by i when consonantal in words then introduced from old French.

J Sound Same as I Sound

   In his book, Triumph of the Alphabet, author A.C. Moorhouse explains how the Y and the I (hence the J also) were all related in sound. Furthermore, he cites how one language will borrow from another to bring the same sound across. Note his comment on page 128:

The Semitic alphabet had no vowels, but it was essential for intelligibility that the Greek alphabet should have them. This it did by using Semitic letters which represented sounds unknown to the Greek. Semitic yod stood for the semivowel y, and it is easy to use it in Greek for the related vowel i.

   Written language develops from spoken. Even today, missionaries are challenged to reduce a tribal language in some remote area to writing. It is difficult to bring across into English every vocalization in a foreign tongue using our alphabet.

   The New Book of Knowledge confirms the findings of Moorhouse:

The early history of the letter "J" is the same as the history of the letter "1." "1" is a descendant of the ancient Phoenician and Hebrew letter "yod" and the Greek letter "iota." The Phoenicians gave the yod a semiconsonant sound pronounced like the "Y" in yellow. While the lower case "J" of modern type was derived directly from medieval manuscripts, the capital "J" is virtually a printer's invention. The sound "J" as we know it in English today was derived when the "Y" sound eventually passed into a "dy" sound and later into the "J" sound as in juggle.

   Eventually, all modern languages picked up the new sound from Latin. Under the topic "J," Collier's Encyclopedia shows how this happened:

Introduced as a sign for the consonantal sound of "i" in Latin words, the letter j was soon used in English, French, and Spanish to represent the sound that developed out of Latinic consonantic i in each of these three languages. This was a certain improvement, since these three sounds (y, z, dz) which all developed out of the Latin consonant i, did not exist in Latin, and the Latin alphabet had no sign for them.

   If the letter J and its sound (dz) did not exist until shortly before the printing of the King James Version of the Bible, what were the names of the Heavenly Father and His Son before that time?

The Actual Name

   The Creator's Name Yahweh derives from the Tetragrammaton YHWH, the English equivalent of the Hebrew letters yothe, hay, waw, hay. The Tetragrammaton—"four letters" is found in ancient Bible manuscripts. Early Christian writers such as Clement of Alexandria transliterated it into Greek as IAOUE. (Transliterate means to carry the actual sound of a word from one language to another.) The Tetragrammaton is made up of four Hebrew letters having the force of vowels, as Hebrew primers readily show. Josephus says that the Tetragrammaton appeared in the High Priest's miter (hat) and consisted of four vowels. Wars, Book V, chapter V, 7.

   In Greek, the I has an "ee" sound as in machine. When we pronounce the Tetragrammaton IAOUE we get the sound "ee-ah-ou-eh." Saying it rapidly we produce "Yah-way," which appears as 'Yahweh' in English. The Tetragrammaton appears 6,823 times in Hebrew Scriptures.

   The short form of the sacred Name appears in one place in the King James Version: ". . .extol Him that rideth upon the heavens by His name JAH, and rejoice before Him," Psalm 68:4. As we have seen, the J should be a Y.

   Hebrew names are transliterated into our English Bible as evidenced by many common names. Many names of Old Testament writers such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zephaniah, end with this first part (Yah) of the sacred Name. Note that they retain the "ee" sound of the I in "iah."

   Numerous secular as well as religious scholars attest that Yahweh is the correct, original Name of the Heavenly Father. Following is a listing of some of each, taken right from reference works and materials available in nearly every public library.

"Yahweh" in Hebrew Scriptures

THIS IS THE FIRST PART of Isaiah 61 in the Hebrew text, quoted by Yahshua Himself. The sacred Name Yahweh is circled three places.

Secular Scholars

   The New American Encyclopedia: "Jehovah— (properly Yahweh) a name of the God of Israel, now widely regarded as a mispronunciation of the Hebrew YHWH

   The Encyclopedia Britannica: "...the letters YHWH used in the original Hebrew Bible to represent the name of God."

   The Oxford Cyclopedic Concordance: "Jehovah— the name revealed to Moses at Horeb. Its real pronunciation is approximately Yahweh. The Name itself was not pronounced Jehovah before the 16th century."

   American Heritage Dictionary: "Yahweh—A name for God assumed by modern scholars to be a rendering of the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton.

   Webster's New World Dictionary: "Yahweh— God, a form of the Hebrew name in the Old Testament. See Tetragrammaton.

   New Century Dictionary:

"Jehovah—the common European rendering of Heb. JHVH (or YHWH), representing, without vowels, Heb. Jahweh (or Yahweh), a divine name...regarded by the Jews as too Sacred for utterance and hence replaced in the reading of the Scriptures by Adonai or Elohim; the form Jehovah being due to a mispronunciation of Heb. JHVH with the vowels of the associated Heb. Adonai. A name of God in the Old Testament, being the Christian rendering the 'ineffable name,' JHVH in the Hebrew Scriptures.

A History of Christianity, Kenneth Scott Latourette (p. 11):

Israel regarded their god, Yahweh, a name mistakenly put into the English as Jehovah, as the God of the universe, the maker and ruler of heaven and earth. Other peoples had their gods, but Yahweh was regarded by these monotheists as far more powerful than they.

Encyclopedia Britannica (Micropedia, vol. 10):

Yahweh—the personal name of the God of the Israelites....The Masoretes, Jewish biblical scholars of the Middle Ages, replaced the vowel signs that had appeared above or beneath the consonants of YHWH with the vowel signs of Adonai or of Elohim. Thus, the artificial name Jehovah (YeHoWaH) came into being. Although Christian scholars after the Renaissance and Reformation periods used the term Jehovah for YHWH, in the l9th and 20th centuries biblical scholars again began to use the form Yahweh. Early Christian writers, Such as Clement of Alexandria in the 2nd century, had used the form Yahweh, thus this pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton was never really lost. Greek transcriptions also indicated that YHWH Should be pronounced Yahweh.

Religious Scholars

   Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature: "Jehovah — the imperfect of Jahve (Yahwe or Jehovah or Jahwe (Yahweh) ). He is self existing." Vol. 3, p. 901.

   Jewish Encyclopedia: "Rabbinical Literature—The name Yahweh is considered the Name proper." Vol. 9, p. 162.

   Seventh-Day Adventist Bible Commentary: "And the name above all others that was looked upon as the name, the personal name of God, was YAHWEH." Vol. 1, p. 172.

   The International Bible Encyclopedia of King James Version: "Jehovah - It is believed that the correct pronunciation of this word is 'Yahweh.'"

   New Standard Bible Dictionary: "Jehovah - Properly Yahweh . . the form 'Jehovah' is impossible, according to the strict principles of Hebrew vocalization."

   Davis Dictionary of the Bible: "Jehovah - The Tetragrammaton is generally believed to have been pronounced Jahweh, Yahweh..."

   A Greek-English Lexicon: "Kurios - equals 'Yahweh.'" p.1013.

   Jewish Quarterly Review: "In the biblical period Yahweh was a proper name, the God of Israel, an ethnic God," April 1969, Dr. Zolomon Zeitlin.

   New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 2:

In the OT the words el, eloah, and elohim, from related roots, are generic designations of God. Alongside and alternating with them stands the individual personal name Yahweh.

Review and Herald, December 16, 1971:

Yahweh is the name that identifies the God of the Hebrews. Where the Philistines worshiped Dagon, the Egyptians, Amon, and the Ammonites, Milcom, the Hebrews worshiped Yahweh. The title 'god' (elohim) is applied to false deities in the Scriptures as well as to Yahweh, hence is not a term by which one can be distinguished from the others. When the voice said, 'I am Yahweh,' there was no doubt in any listener's mind as to the identity of the speaker. He was the god of the Hebrews. So far as is known, no other peoples called their god by his name.

"Jehovah" Wrong From the Start

   "Jehovah" is a hybrid name manufactured as a result of a fear to pronounce the sacred Name Yahweh.

   In chapter 4 of the introduction to The Emphasized Bible, Joseph Rotherman explains how the sacred Name was avoided:

   It is willingly admitted that the suppression has not been absolute; at least so far as Hebrew and English are concerned. The Name, in its four essential letters, was reverently transcribed by the Hebrew copyists, and therefore was necessarily placed before the eye of the Hebrew reader. The latter, however, was instructed not to pronounce it, but to utter instead a less sacred name - Adonay or Elohim. In this way the Name was not suffered to reach the ear of the listener.

   Jehovah is the result of a further derailment in the convoluted efforts to avoid the Name Yahweh.

   Scholars all know that Jehovah could not be the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton YHWH used for the Name of the Creator in the oldest available manuscripts.

   In the preface to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, pp. 6-7, is the following about "Jehovah":

The form Jehovah is of late medieval origin; it is a combination of the consonants of the Divine Name and the vowels attached to it by the Masoretes but belonging to an entirely different word. The sound of Y is represented by J and the sound of W by V, as in Latin. The word "Jehovah" does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew.

   A note on Exodus 3:14. taken from The Authorized Catholic Bible, says:

3:14. I am who am: apparently this utterance is the source of the word Yahweh, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. It is commonly explained in reference to God as the absolute and necessary Being. It may be understood of God as the Source of all created beings. Out of reverence for this name the term Adonai, "my lord" was later used as a substitute. The word LORD in the present version represents this traditional usage. The word "Jehovah" arose from a false reading of the name as it is written in the current Hebrew text.

   More proof is found on page 15 of the preface to The Bible, An American Translation, by Smith and Goodspeed:

As nearly as we can now tell, the Hebrews called their Deity by the name Yahweh, and in a shorter form, Yah, used in relatively few cases. In course of time they came to regard this name as too sacred for utterance. They therefore substituted for it the Hebrew word for Lord." When vowels were added to the text, the consonants of "Yahweh" were given the vowels of "Lord." Somewhere in the fourteenth century C.E. Christian scholars, not understanding this usage, took the vowels and consonants exactly as they were written and produced the artificial name "Jehovah" which has persisted ever since.

   The Oxford English Dictionary succinctly demonstrates exactly how the word "Jehovah" became an erroneous substitution for the sacred Name Yahweh (direct photocopy see left insert):

   The O.E.D. is supported by the New English Bible. On page 16 of this Bible's introduction, we read:

This personal name, written with the consonants YHWH, was considered too sacred to he uttered; so the vowels for the words 'my Lord' or 'God' were added to the consonants YHWH, and the reader was warned by these vowels that he must substitute other consonants. This change having to be made so frequently, the Rabbis did not consider it necessary to put the consonants of the new reading in the margin . . . YHWH was read with the intruded vowels, the vowels of an entirely different word, namely 'my Lord' or 'God'. In late medieval times this mispronunciation became current as Jehova, and it was unwittingly taken over as Jehovah by the reformers in the Protestant Bibles.

   The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, corroborates the foregoing religious sources:

The pronunciation 'Jehovah' is an error resulting among Christians from combining the consonants YHWH with the vowels of 'adonay.'

   The Jehovah's Witnesses themselves admit that "Jehovah" is inferior to "Yahweh." On pages 16 and 20 of their book, Let Your Name Be Sanctafied, are these words:

Yahweh...is admittedly superior to Jehovah. 'The wrong spelling Jehovah OCCURS since about 1100 and then it offers its arguments in favor of Yahweh as the correct and original pronunciation.'

   Their New Testament Bible translation, New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (published by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society), has on p. 25 of the foreword:

While inclining to view the pronunciation "Yahweh" as the more correct way, we have retained the form "Jehovah" because of people's familiarity with it since the 14th century.

   The person credited with popularizing the name Jehovah is Peter Galatin, confessor to Pope Leo the 10th. The Oxford English Dictionary puts the date of Galatin's use of Jehovah at 1516 in De Arcanis Catholic Veritatis.

   Rotherham has this to say about "Jehovah's" origins:

The pronunciation Jehovah was unknown until 1520, when it was introduced by Galatinus; but was contested by Le Mercier, J. Drusius, and L. Capellus, as against grammatical and historical propriety.

   Obviously, if the first recorded use of the name Jehovah is only some 500 years old, it can't be the Name the Creator gave the Hebrews 5,000 years earlier. The illogical fusion of the sacred Name with the vowel points of another name is shown by Rotherham:

To give the name JHVH the vowels of the word for Lord (Heh. Adonai) and pronounce it Jehovah, is about as hybrid a combination as it would be to spell the name Germany with the vowels in the name Portugal-viz., Gormuna.

   The Jews' superstitious fear of the Name led to a complete fabrication in the name Jehovah.

To read more about "The Missing J," click here to continue.