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Thursday, March 10, 2016

Jehovah

Aramaic was the lingua franka of the Levant and Mesopotamia, just as Greek was of much of the East and Latin of the West.

This is one of the problems with the New Testament.  It was written in Greek, some parts better Greek than others, and when it quoted the OT it used the Greek LXX, not the Hebrew original that real Jews were raised on.  That is why the writers of the NT seem to have no hint that the Tetragrammaton even existed.  (A real Hebrew of the time and period would have known about it and would not dare use the LXX substitution "Adonai." )  So the NT was written by Greeks, who do seem to know about the existence of Aramaic but not much, and seem to see Jesus speaking Greek.  Indeed, when an Aramaic expression is introduced, it is prefaced by things like "as is said.""

Jehovah's Witnesses, in their version of the New Testament, put in "Jehovah" in the quotes from the OT where it belongs, but this is their invention, and is not found in any of the old MSS of the NT.  This at least is better than most Christians, who try to forget the "name" ever existed -- it is a bit of an embarrassment that even Jesus appears in the NT as ignorant of the Name of God used thousands of times in the original OT.  He never even addresses the superstition of the time and of Jews today that the name should not be pronounced out loud (a bit like Valdemort).  As anti-superstitious as Jesus is supposed to have been, this is indeed strange (unless of course one realizes there was no Jesus and the movement was a Greek invention patterned after their other mystery cults).

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