Page images
PDF
EPUB

ing, like Mohammed, to be the Prophet of God. To the ear of the people, for whose particular benefit it should be premised that this book is written, "Yahveh" can scarcely suggest an origin for itself in any country this side of India or China. As soon as we open the book, however, we are relieved by finding that this strange name "Yahveh" is only another form of the familiar and yet revered name "Jehovah," the form in which, as Gesenius infers from Theodoret's report of the pronunciation in vogue with the Samaritans, "Jehovah" was written before the superstition of the Jews made it the ineffable name. But granting that "Yahveh" was the orthography of the name by which God made himself known to Moses, “Jehovah" is the spelling by which this name has been written and spoken by Jew and Gentile so long, that "Yahveh" is lost out of tradition itself, and is strictly a reconstruction, like the picture of an extinct animal designed from a few fragments of its bones. Besides, "Yahveh" properly pronounced, a like a in "hat," and e like e in "met," has a short, flat sound, bearing no comparison with "Jehovah," one of the most sonorous and majestic words among all the words of human speech. If superstition indeed changed "Yahveh" to "Jehovah," and did not simply take advantage of the change after it was made, it is one of the very few things for which we are ready to allow that superstition deserves our thanks.

Were anything whatever dependent upon returning to the orthography "Yahveh," anything, especially, of religious importance, we could cheerfully submit to return to it at a far greater sacrifice of euphony in the pronunciation than it demands. But what possible advantage can be anticipated as the result of such an innovation? Mr. MacWhorter writes, professedly, for the multitude. To use his own language, he aims at "a popular presentation of facts known, hitherto, only to scholars." In all sincerity we ask, therefore, if he supposes that the "unlearned" will see any meaning in "Yahveh" not equally visible to them in "Jehovah?" And surely it cannot be necessary to tell the learned that that peculiar significance of this name, upon which he lays so much. stress, is not indicated by its vowels, but by its first conso

nant.

II. Dismissing the question of orthography-the orthography neither being the grand discovery of the book, nor the key to it-we proceed to the question raised by the affirmation in the preface, that the "name "Jehovah' is the grand central fact upon which the discussion turns," taken in connection with the announcement, in the first chapter, that, "it is this NAME, long buried, but now risen again in the light of modern investigation, to which we would restore the significance and glory of its ancient meaning," together with a sentence, on page 95, to the effect that "until the discovery"—recent, of course of the true derivation of Jehovah,' or 'Yahveh,' gave the clue to its meaning," &c. &c.

[ocr errors]

as

These and similar expressions are freely used to expose the ignorance of our translators, and of all who preceded them, far back as the Seventy, compared with the learning of modern scholars, on the subject of the derivation and meaning of the name "Jehovah." It is asserted that in this book are adduced some facts in the exegesis of this name to which our translators had no access." And then our author proceeds to declare that the word rendered "Jehovah" is the old future of the old root-form HAVAH, equivalent to the later root-form HAYAH, the ordinary form of the Hebrew verb "to be;" that "Jehovah," which ought to be spelled and pronounced "Yahveh," accordingly means, "He who will be." To this opinion, Gesenius, who at first held to an Egyptian or Greek derivation of "Jehovah," finally came, and in his Thesaurus evinced his candor and scholarship in the memorable decision, "They lose their time and labor who endeavor to refer this name to a foreign origin." Thus one vexed question of ages has been at last and forever settled.

This sort of language, with all that it implies, Anno Domini, 1857, and from under the shadow of Yale University, and introduced to the world by the recommendation-guarded indeed -of the venerable "Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology, Yale Theological Seminary!"

But so well was the derivation of the name "Jehovah" once known within the precincts of Yale College-the same derivation constantly represented in the book before us as a fresh discovery of modern research-that President Dwight, in one

of his sermons on the Divinity of Christ, says: "It is hardly necessary to remark, that the name I AM has the same import with JEHOVAH," thus showing his perfect, undoubting conviction of their common origin, of course, from HAYAH or HA

VAH.

On this point, the old, standard Hebrew Lexicons bear but one testimony. That, for example, published at Avignon, A. D. 1765, under the patronage of Cardinal Dominico Passionei, places "Jehovah" under " Havah," making no allusion to any other supposed origin of the MEMORIAL NAME. Castell and Cocceius give precisely the same information—no more—no less.

And in the valuable dissertation on the Ten Hebrew names of God, prefixed to Robertson's Concordantial Lexicon, London, 1680, under the name "Jehovah," it is written-let modern scholarship take heed-"Derivatur enim à radice vel, (nam utraque in lingua Hebraea est usitata,) esse, existere. Yod ab initio est formativum nominum propriorum desumptum ex tertia persona futuri;" that is, the name "Jehovah" "is derived from the root Hayah or Havah, (for each of these verbs is used in the Hebrew tongue,) to be, to exist. Yodh, the beginning of this name, is a formative of proper names chosen from the third person of the future." Again, under the name Ehyeh, or I Am as our translators rendered it, we read; "Nam ex multorum, et omnium Hebræorum, sententiâ, non est alia inter hoc, et nomen Tetragrammaton, differentia, nisi quod illud est personae primae, hoc tertiæ; et quod Deus de se in prima persona dixit, n, ero, vel sum qui sum; id homines de eo efferunt, in, erit, vel est qui est ;" i. e. "According to the opinion of many, and of all Hebrews, there is no other difference between this name, (to wit, Ehyeh,) and Jehovah, except that the former is in the first person, the latter in the third; and that God has said of himself in the first person, Ehyeh, I will be, or I Am who I am; whereas men say of him, Jehovah, He will be, or He is who he is."

The truth is that, with regard to the derivation of the name "Jehovah," there has never been, from the earliest times, a prevalent diversity of opinion either in the Jewish or Christian world. Whoever, from time to time, may have departed from the received faith on this subject, he has not succeeded in

[ocr errors]

drawing away much people after him." Only the daring of modern scholarship, or rather of modern scepticism, has even for a short period led such a mind as that of Gesenius to tolerate the idea, and to strive to establish the fact, of a relationship between the names "Jehovah" and "Jupiter."* Outside of Germany, and both before and since a very brief interval in Germany, this fact has never been seriously questioned, and Gesenius' experience in questioning it on record, we are safe in affirming that it never can be seriously questioned again.

III. With regard to the meaning of the name "Jehovah,” its derivation from Havah granted, Mr. MacWhorter maintains, and we do not deny, that it is defined by God himself in Exodus iii. 14.

But the difficulty is to define the definition. At least this used to be the difficulty. According to our author, however, the expressions in the foregoing passage, translated in our version, "I am that I am," and "I am,' ""are in the most absolute form of the future. It is not possible to the language to make them more so. To translate them by any other tense, is to depart from the original." That is, because they are in the future absolutely, therefore they cannot, consistently with the nature and usage of the Hebrew language, be understood to refer to the present or the past. These expressions must be translated, "I will be who I will be," and "I will be;" and if they are, as is conceded, the definition of the "MEMORIAL NAME," "Jehovah," given by God himself to Moses, then this name "Jehovah" must be translated, "He who will be." To clinch this argument Mr. MacWhorter subjoins, that "with

The hypothesis of a foreign origin of the name "Jehovah" had not appeared in the third edition of Gesenius' Hebrew and German Manual Lexicon. From this edition, his Hebrew and Latin Manual was revised, and enlarged, and published, A. D. 1833. And here this hypothesis is first broached, very hypothetically, as follows: "Ut dicam, quod sentio, hoc vocabulum remotissimae antiquitatis esse suspicor, nescio an ejusdem stirpis atque Jovis, Jupiter, ab Aegyptiis translatum ad Hebraeos, ab his autem paululum inflexum, ut formam et originem semiticam redoleat." But in the Thesaurus, A. D. 1839, Gesenius returned to the opinion of his youth, and the received opinion of the world, strongly declaring, "Oleum fere et operam perdidisse censendi sint, qui peregrinam huic vocabulo originem vindicare vellent." Thus the great philologist began right and ended right, and was gone timidly astray not more-we know not how much less-than six years.

respect to the proper pointing, and literal rendering of the term 'Jehovah,' there is now among scholars no difference of opinion." The darkness of ages on this subject is now at last happily dissipated. The name 'Jehovah' came to our translators "without life, embalmed like a mummy in the superstition of the Jews-a name unlawful to be uttered, or even written, with its true vowel-points. And this name, thus unpronounced, and falsely written, had a traditional rendering, made out under the shadow of the Septuagint. The Platonizing school of Alexandria gave God's declaration, in Exodus iii. 14, a Greek rendering, which may be translated 'the Being,' (selfexisted,) and so our translators give us, 'I Am."" "The Septuagint translators were incompetent in the Hebrew, it having become a dead language in their time." "A set of facts, compounded of Alexandrian metaphysics and Jewish superstition, perpetuated to the English mind by a false translation of the name itself, and as if this were not enough, by the suppression of the very name, Jehovah,' and the substitution of the unmeaning Greek term, Kurios,' (Lord, Master;) these are the means of information which the Christian world has hitherto possessed on this great subject." "Our translators have also suppressed the name Jehovah,' in all cases where not, in their view, especially emphatic, and have given us, instead, the inexpressive feudal title, 'Lord."""The Hebrew was but imperfectly understood in the time of our translators." But now "all scholars, Gesenius and Ewald on the side of philologists, Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Lutz, &c., &c., on the side of theologians, agree in giving Jehovah' the form 'Yahveh,' and the future tense, as its literal rendering."

[ocr errors]

6

6

These bold assertions represent a strong contrast between "the Seventy," together with our translators, their servile and helpless copyists, and indeed the whole Christian world, in regard to their ignorance of the name "Jehovah," compared with the fullness of knowledge and perfect unanimity on this subject to which modern scholars have attained.

But, in the first place, Ewald and Rödiger, the leading Hebrew grammarians of our day, have changed the very name of the Hebrew tense, usually called Future, to Imperfect, because it denotes what is unfinished, in progress, and of course

« PreviousContinue »