The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share the name YHWH. In order to be saved, a Jehovah’s Witness has to do the very thing the Watchtower vehemently denies to them. They must confess that Jesus is Jehovah and call on Jesus as Jehovah, as God, to be saved. 

The Hebrew letters yod, he, vav, that represent the four-letter name of our God are called the Tetragrammaton. When Christians use it, we don’t generally translate it into English but rather, transliterate it, use words or letters that most closely correspond to the original word. For English, that would be YHWH. The Tetragrammaton first appears in Genesis 2:4 and occurs approximately 6,828 times in the Old Testament. In scripture, names most often describe something about the name holder. Jacob meant “supplanter” or “one who follows after.” The name “Abraham” means “father of many” or “father of a multitude.” The same is true of what is often referred to as the divine name, YHWH. In Exodus 3, Moses asks God His name, and in 3:14, His response is “I Am that I am” or “I Am Who I Am.” He is the eternal self-existent One. Some individuals or groups try to find unique ways of using the Tetragrammaton to appear to others as though they have some “special knowledge” or to claim an understanding of God’s name that had been a secret until they arrived on the scene to reveal it. Panentheist Richard Rohr gives a 6-minute teaching on the divine name, which he claims he learned from a scientist who is also a Jewish Rabbi. According to his story, the rabbi told the audience that, for centuries, Jewish tradition held that they were not to speak the Lord’s name, for doing so would be breaking the commandment against taking the Lord’s name. He went on to explain that the name is to be correctly said by inhaling and exhaling YEH…WEH. This works well for Richard Rohr’s contemplative prayer ideas. But are the claims of the scientist/rabbi true? We sent the video to Dr. Thomas Howe who responded:

This is interesting, but it has nothing to do with the actual text. The Rabbi with whom Rohr was talking was perhaps explaining a Jewish tradition, but his views were not universally held by ancient Jews. There were many views about the interpretation of the commandment, just as there are today. Rohr simply unquestionably assumes that his source is true of all Jews, ancient and modern.

One problem is, on the one hand, he was told never to speak the divine name, and then the Rabbi says this is how you were to speak the divine name. Ancient Hebrew certainly had vowel sounds, since not to have vowel sounds one cannot speak. In the ancient language, there were no marks that represented the vowel sounds. Syriac and Aramaic were the same, written consonants without vowel marks. The points that are now used in modern Hebrew Bibles were developed by the Masoretes beginning around 600 AD. The vowel sounds for pronouncing the divine name have been lost precisely because the divine name was never written with vowel points. This was to prevent pronunciation. In the modern Hebrew Bibles, the tetragrammaton is pointed differently in different passages. Consequently, there are conflicting views even today about how the name should be pronounced. In many of the existing manuscripts, the divine name was written in Paleo-Hebrew script ( ) even though the surrounding text was written in the Aramaic square script יהוה which is used in the modern Hebrew Bibles. This was to alert the reader not to pronounce the name. So, when reading, one would not pronounce the divine name but substitute the word ‘Adon’ (a long o sound) or Adonay. The Shema would be read, “Hear Israel, Adonay our God, Adonay is one,” rather than “Hear Israel, YHWH our God, YHWH is one.”

Many commentators today are like the Corinthians, always seeking some new thing in order to make a name for themselves.

While we were working on the issue with Richard Rohr, one of our supporters sent us a link to “Who Is God?” on JW.org, asking us how they should engage JWs about the information contained in this particular video study. This person is meeting with Jehovah’s Witnesses and would like to share the gospel but is unsure how to respond to the Watchtower’s claims about the divine name and to their assertion of the overriding importance of having and using THE correct name, which of course is the particular one they ascribe to. We explained that the New World Translation is part of a genre of translations classified as Sacred Name Bibles. There are over a dozen translations in the Sacred Name Movement. In Peter Unseth’s paper, “Sacred Name Bible Translations in English: a Fast Growing Phenomenon,” he notes:

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