YHVH

I've decided that it would be silly to spend a bunch of time and energy trying to figure out how to write things in Hebrew on my blog because nobody would appreciate the effort, since nobody I know would see what I was talking about, so since it's in English, enjoy:

In my vocabulary this week, we had ADNY (Adonai) and YHVH (Adonai), which confused me, and I was kinda interested since I might be getting YHVH tattooed into my sleeve somewhere. I have most of my tattoos mapped out, but the verse I want in Hebrew is too long for my wrist...Or my arm...Anyway, I wanted to know why what I thought was Yahweh was pronounced Adonai, since the consonants don't fit, and the reason follows:

YHVH was super Holy. It was so Holy that the Israelites didn't want to pronounce it, for fear that that would be disrespectful, like calling your Drill Sergeant by his first name (Not "Drill"). So they decided that wherever YHVH appeared in Scripture, they would pronounce it ADNY, because all those stories that were too scary to teach in Sunday School at your churches were engraved on their hearts. They didn't think of God as their buddy. God is GOD!

So when time came to add vowels, which I won't get into here because I'm hideously boring, they added the vowels for AdoNaY, and instead of pronouncing it from then on the way they would if you sound it out, YaHoVaH (See where that just went?) is still pronounced Adonai.

Then when the Germans decided to Reform and people were dying for the sake of a translation in their own language, whoever translated the Hebrew to German didn't have a Y handy, so they threw in a J, as they often did (These are not approved rules for Scrabble) and created Jehovah.

So next time a Jehovah's Witness tells you that Jehovah is the only name for God and it is the name God used to introduce Himself and so it is the only name they will use because they are elitist fascists, let them know that they are anti-Semitic pigs, burn swasticas into their foreheads, and tell them Uncle Jesse sent you. Or, if you are a pacifist, you could just tell them that it required thousands of years of misspelling and translation into a couple different languages to come up with that Name. Or, if you want to keep your precious knowledge to yourself, smirk, and then slam the door.