(silence) - Hi, I'm Abner Chow, one of the translators of the Legacy Standard Bible. And I have with me here today, Dr. Joe Zakevich. Zakevich, Zakevich? 'Cause there's a lot of different ways to say it, huh Joe? - There are a variety of ways to say it. We say it Zakevich.

Some people in our family say Zakevich, my mom, but everybody else says Zakevich for the most part. - But it's all the same name. - It's the same name, it's the same last name. - And I guess that's pretty good, a way to illustrate what we're gonna be talking about right now, which is the issue of Yahweh.

And that is a major change in the Legacy Standard Bible. People have a lot of questions about it, and they're very understandable questions. And they usually fall into kind of three categories. One is, should we even translate the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh? Is that okay? Another question is, okay, if that is permissible, how should we say it?

And how do we know that's the right way? And the final and third question people have is, well, so what? Well, what's the big deal? Why does this matter? What's the purpose behind it? So kind of in getting this conversation started, let me begin by kind of tackling that first question of should we even translate the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh?

Is that permissible? And sometimes people ask the question kind of like this. They say, "Well, Paul in the New Testament, "he translated it as Lord, Kurios. "And if it was good enough for the Apostle Paul--" - It's good enough for me. - It's good enough for me, exactly. And we understand that argument.

And I think one thing we really want to establish is that there is nothing wrong at all of translating the Tetragrammaton as Lord. There's nothing wrong with that. To say otherwise would be to condemn the New Testament, and we definitely don't want to do that. - Right, the New Testament is inspired.

- That's right, so it's inerrant. - Those translations are inspired, and therefore they are accurate. - Absolutely, and so we don't want to say that. But there's a difference between saying something is without error, it's not wrong, and it's mandated across everything. And that's where we need to make some observations.

Like in the New Testament itself, Revelation 19, three times there is hallelujah. And there we hear the name Yahweh, hallelujah. We hear it repeated three times. So the New Testament doesn't bar the use of the name of God as Yahweh. And on top of that, the early church didn't think of it that way either.

We have Theodorette or Clement of Alexandria and others who talk about the use of the name Yahweh in amongst their people. And we even have copies of Greek translations of the Old Testament, both Jewish and Christian, that preserve the name Yahweh and reflect that in those documents. And so all that to say is that the idea in history was never that this is the only way to translate, Lord is the only way to translate the Tetragrammaton.

Now people in history, they can be wrong, we get that. But this shows us that there might be another possibility. And we can look at this from the angle of kind of consistency and translation philosophy. When we have something in the New Testament, like a change of name, a different enunciation of it, we don't read that back onto the Old Testament.

We don't change, for example, Joshua to Jesus because that's how it's pronounced or said in the New Testament. And we don't change Messiah or anointed one in the Old Testament to Christ because that's how the New Testament words it. We translate the Old Testament as the Old Testament. We translate the New Testament as the New Testament.

And likewise, when New Testament quotes the Old Testament, sometimes they change the wording slightly of the quote from the Old Testament. - They're making an interpretation and they're trying to focus on something within that quote. - That's right. - So they make that adjustment. - Right, and that brings out a nuance, that brings out a detail of the Old Testament text that was always there.

And that's why it's so important to leave the Old Testament as the Old Testament and the New Testament as the New Testament so we can compare and contrast and see that nuance brought out. And I would say that I think that's what's going on with Yahweh, that when we see it in the Old Testament and then we see this deliberate shift in the New Testament to say, Lord, there's a purpose behind that, there's a theological reason behind that, there's a theological significance to that, and it makes a very profound and repeated point.

And if people are wondering what the point is, I would just say, well, that's like question three. - Right, it's coming. - It's coming, yeah. But for now, what we would say is there's a lot of benefit to even translating the Old Testament as the Old Testament and the New Testament as the New Testament.

It is not wrong, it's permissible, and there are some even benefits. 'Cause it puts us, and this gets back to the window concept, into the shoes and the feet and the eyes of the original biblical readers as they would encounter these issues, and that gives opportunity for theology. So having said that, okay, maybe it is permissible, maybe it's okay, we're allowed to do it, it could even be beneficial, how then should we say it?

Well, Joe, walk us through this. - Right, that's the big question. So understanding the task, I think, before is that as translators, it is one of our tasks to make sure that we preserve the Old Testament the way it is and then preserve the New Testament the way it is, then we face the question, well, then how do we read it, how do we pronounce it?

We need to start with the Bible itself, where it appears and where it's introduced, and that's in Exodus chapter three, verses 14 and 15, and then it continues on into the Old Testament in later passages. But when God introduces himself, Moses says to him, if the Israelites do not believe me, and they will ask me, who has sent you, what is his name?

Then what should I say to the people? And God introduces himself by saying, first he gives a clause, he says, I am who I am, or you can translate it as, I will be whoever I will be, and then in verse 15, this is in verse 14, but then in verse 15, he uses the name that we're translating as Yahweh.

And the starting point is that verse, and what those two verses make clear for us is that we're dealing with the verb, the to be verb, or he is, he was, he will be verb, and that's pretty much decided by the text itself. So we know that the name of God, Yahweh, is connected to that verb.

- Say the verb in Hebrew for us. - In Hebrew, the verb would be haya. - Yeah, and you can even hear the connection between those two there. - That's right, yeah, haya or Yahweh, you can hear that it's the same root verb. Now, so that's the starting point, and we cling to that as one of our anchors, but then we go on and we ask, okay, so how do we know that Yahweh is the right way of pronouncing it?

And scholars have done lots of study on this over the years, and the details of this word, the way that the letters appear, and in Hebrew, the letters would be yod-hay-vav-hay for the name Yahweh, and then in English, we sometimes say it as y-h-w-h, or it's written that way, and it's very important where these letters appear and which letters appear.

And so as scholars make the linguistic and the grammatical study, they see that the first letter is Y. Well, that tells us that this is a verbal form which is identified by scholars and in grammar as yig-tol, it's a third person, and it's very important for letting us know how to start pronouncing that word, as yah, and then the word itself ends with a H, in Hebrew, hay, and that's a typical ending for a verb in a specific category, which is called a three-hay or a lamed-hay verb, and it ends as a eh sound.

And so from that type of a study, the scholars have concluded that the most accurate way would be to render that word, to read that word, the name of God, as Yahweh. And even in the 19th century, Gesenius, a very well-known and renowned scholar, did this study, and he confirmed that this would be the most accurate way of pronouncing the word.

But you also mentioned a number of other evidences in history, so some of the Christian resources and some of the other texts, they attempt or they record the way that they would have heard and the way they would have pronounced it as well, and you mentioned Theodoret and a few other guys, Origen, Hosea, Yahweh, or Clementine of Alexandria.

So we have those evidences that point to the fact that Yahweh would be the most accurate way of pronouncing it. - Yeah, and I think it's people who have done their homework, both philologically, linguistically, attested in history, that gives anchor to all of this, but sometimes people wonder, well, what about Jehovah?

I mean, we sing the song, or at least, they used to sing the song, Jehovah-Jireh, and we hear that kind of phrase. Tell us about that, too. - Yeah, Jehovah, somebody actually mentioned to me this past week, reminded me that Jehovah appears in, I guess, the old version of the King James Version, in Exodus 6, I believe.

- And that even just shows that what we're doing in the Legacy Standard Bible isn't necessarily revolutionary in the sense of doing something totally different that's never been done before. In fact, sometimes we're just going back to our roots in a sense of the King James. - Right, yeah, and we're refining it, and we're trying to make sure that it's accurate both historically and grammatically and true to the text.

- So, with regard to Jehovah, we do believe that it's an incorrect way of pronouncing it, but what that is, is it's a misreading of the vowels that appear on the letters Y-H-W-H, on the word Yahweh. It's simply a misreading of it, and what happens is that on the word Yahweh, there are two sets of vowels in the Bible, and those vowels tell us, or they tell the readers how to pronounce the word Yahweh, but those vowels do not belong to the word Yahweh.

They are actually vowels from a different title. One is from the word Adonai, which means Lord, and the other one is from the word Elohim, which means God. And so, the intent here was that when somebody would be reading the Bible, and they would get to the holy name, they believed it to be too holy to be pronounced, and so they put those vowels on that word in order to indicate to the reader, say Adonai instead of Yahweh.

Say Elohim instead of Yahweh, so that you don't say the holy name. Well, some of the translators, whether it was by accident or whether they thought that this was accurate, they came to the word in the Hebrew text, and instead of saying those proper words, Adonai or Elohim, Lord or God, they said, we're just going to read those vowels with the word Yahweh.

And when they did that, they came up with the rendering Jehovah. Now, the problem with that is that those vowels do not belong to the word Yahweh. - Yeah, and there's even a conflict because there's two sets of vowels. So, even Jehovah doesn't represent the other set of one of the two sets of the vowels that are actually present in the Hebrew manuscripts.

- That's exactly right. It would be something like Jehovah would be one option, and Jehovah would be another option, and the vowels are entirely different. So, that creates a conflict, but that shows that these vowels do not belong to the word Yahweh, to the name Yahweh. And for that reason, we believe that it's an incorrect reading of the text as well.

- That is so helpful. Thanks for taking the time to explain that and so clearly. And I think the only thing I would add is just like with the name, Zakevich, Zakavich, and the like, even from the Old Testament to the New Testament, we see that different names are enunciated different ways.

And the New Testament isn't bothered by that. The scriptures are not bothered by that. And so, we recognize that in language, sometimes you have to adjust the enunciation given the limitations of an alphabet. And so, the Lord knows, Yahweh knows, our heart to worship Him and say His name, but the reason He gave us His name is so that we would intimately commune with Him personally and distinguish Him from everyone else.

And in light of that, I think this brings us to our third question. We've said, should we say this name? Should we use this name in scripture? And we saw from the New Testament itself, yes. And the Old Testament, yes. And even in church history, yes. And even in English tradition, yes, it's there, Tyndale and early King James and everything.

And so, there is this buildup of just recovering what was in the past. And on top of that, we said, hey, we can have confidence from scholarship and from history that this is the right way to say it. But now people are saying, well, so what? What does that help us with?

Joe, help us to think through that too. - Yeah, well, I think it makes a great deal of difference. And I think it really refines and it deepens our reading of the scriptures and our study of the scriptures. And again, we wanna start where it starts. When God said to Moses, this is my name, He said His name.

And if we say Lord, we're not saying Yahweh's name, God's name, we're saying a title, Lord. And so, when we have Yahweh in the text, we actually read and we hear His name. And that spreads throughout the scriptures. I mean, the word Yahweh appears some 6,800 times or something like this.

Right, and so you go from reading Lord to reading Yahweh 6,800 times. That really changes the way that you read the Bible. Now, there are various other benefits to doing this. You see the name Yahweh and you see the personal nature of God and the way that He interacts with His people.

And the context in which He introduces His name is the covenant that He was about to make with His people. And so, every time you see Yahweh, you're thinking about the covenant that God made with His people. And then you stretch that throughout the scriptures and you get to the end of the Old Testament, you get to Zechariah, chapter 13, verse nine.

It says that the people will one day call on the name of God and they will call on His name, Yahweh. And He will say, this is my people. And they will say, Yahweh is my God. Right, so it makes the relationship between Israel and God a much more personal relationship.

And for us, it makes the experience much more readable. - Yeah, and even with that phrase, I love it in Zechariah. Yahweh is my God. That distinguishes God, the one true God, and it defines Him as this is the God of the Bible. Not just a generic God that you could stick with Buddha or Allah or other kind of gods that our society has or other religions have, but this is Yahweh.

This is the God of the Bible. This is the God of Israel. This is the New Testament's God. This is that God. And we're defining and distinguishing Him. And it also distinguishes other titles for God. We were talking about this earlier. Talk to us about that. - Yeah, that's really interesting.

And that's really helpful. So typically, the translation would have been Lord instead of Yahweh. But when you bring in Yahweh into the text, you have a clear distinction between when Yahweh is used and when Lord is used. And that really helps us understand the Bible, the reading of the Bible immediately.

I mean, you think about Psalm 110. The Lord says to my Lord. That's how I memorized it. But now my question is, well, is it Lord or is it Yahweh? Is it both Yahweh's or is it both Lord's, the title Lord? Well, in the Hebrew, it is Yahweh says to my Lord.

And once you introduce Yahweh into the text, it becomes abundantly clear, I should say, that Yahweh is speaking to my Lord, who happens to be the Messiah, the master of David. And in that statement, you begin to realize that, okay, so what is the function or what is the significance of Lord?

That He's the master of David. And then what is the function and the meaning of Yahweh? Well, that's His personal and His covenant name. And then you can take another example. Genesis chapter 19, verse 24, I believe it is. And there, this is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and God is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

And you get to the point where God is destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. And then it says in verse 24 that the Lord rained fire and brimstone from the Lord in heaven. Well, the question is, okay, once again, is it Lord, is it two Lords, is it two Yahweh's? Which one is it?

And in this case, it actually happens to be two mentions of Yahweh, two references to Yahweh. So it says, "Yahweh rained fire and brimstone from Yahweh." And this is theologically significant. And it immediately jumps off the page because you're thinking two references to Yahweh, what does that mean? Right, and then this has implications for the two persons of the Godhead, which has implications then going forward and into the New Testament of who God is and how complex God is.

- Yeah, and speaking of that, when we think then, okay, in the Old Testament, you have Yahweh. And then in the New Testament, you have Lord. There is, like we were talking about earlier, this deliberateness to translate it to Lord. And it's not just convention. We know that Jesus is Lord because he's the Messiah, because he is the Chosen One and the King of Kings.

He's even above Caesar, who was called Lord, say, in the end of Acts 25. And so we know that he is the Lord. And at the same time, though, and we know it's not just due to convention because the New Testament juxtaposes, it puts the Old Testament references that it deliberately translates as Lord very close to the title that Jesus is Lord.

We know they're making a connection, a correlation, that yes, Jesus is Lord. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but that is because he is Yahweh himself. And the shift in translating Yahweh to Lord is to point everyone to Yahweh revealed, Yahweh incarnate. This is not just a God.

This is not just a deity or a demigod or a derivative God. This is Yahweh. Jesus is Lord. Lord is Yahweh. And the New Testament is deliberately making that point. - And with that, a passage like Genesis 19.24 with two references to Yahweh begins to make sense. This is two persons of the Godhead.

- That's right. And it all just connects together then. And it kind of reminds me of what children are supposed to do at Passover. They're supposed to ask their parents, "Why are we doing this?" And with the shift from Old Testament to New Testament, the New Testament's deliberateness, yet still retaining the name Yahweh like in Revelation 19, but its deliberateness to translate it as Lord, people should be asking, "Why do they do that?" And we should be equipping them to say, "Because Jesus is Yahweh and Jesus is Lord "and the New Testament wants that absolutely correlated "and clear and connected." And it then provides a repeated theological emphasis and point.

It's really great. - It's fascinating. And there's another element in respect to the name Yahweh, and that's the shorter form of Yahweh, right? Yah. It's far less frequent. It's very rare. - We hear it in Revelation 19, though. Hallelujah. - That's right. - Yah. - It appears there. Yeah, yeah.

And the word hallelujah, I mean, Psalm 150, it ends with that. I think it begins with that as well. But the short form of Yahweh appears about 50 times or something like this. And if Yahweh is the personal name of God, I think it's fair to say that Yah would be the intimate expression of the name of God.

- That's helpful. - And you look where the reference to Yah appears, and it appears in those passages where there's this passionate and emotional expression of gratitude and love and worship of God. The first time it appears is in Exodus 15. And it appears in the song where Moses and the Israelites sing to Yah.

And they sing about the strength of Yah. Now, the significance there is that they just came out of Egypt. They just crossed the sea. They thought they were going to die and they were gonna be killed by the Egyptians. Then this massive miracle happens where God splits the sea they crossed, and their response is praise Yah, just from the abundance of their soul and the abundance of their heart.

And then Yah continues to appear in the Psalms where it's very passionate expressions of worship of God. And maybe another example is in Isaiah 38 where Hezekiah is about to die. He gets sick, he's about to die. And God gives him an extra 15 years of life. And so he writes a poetic worship song or a praise.

And there he begins with praising Yah. He uses Yahweh in that song as well, but he begins with praising Yah. And so that would be the intimate reference and appeal to Yahweh. - Well, this is really helpful. So what we see is in translating the Old Testament as the Old Testament, it's not just permissible.

It's not just that we know how to pronounce it. It's not, there are some really practical advantages to it. It captures God's distinctiveness. It distinguishes other titles for God. It even captures the emotion of the Old Testament in worship with that shortened form, particularly of Yah. There are so many great benefits.

And praise Yahweh. - Yeah, amen to that. - Hallelujah for that. - It's appropriate to say hallelujah because it's coming from the depth of your soul and you're worshiping Yahweh in an intimate way. - Well, thank you for spending the time with us to bring clarity to these things.

And our prayer is just that this would be really edifying to you all and helpful and clarifying as well as you think about worshiping and communicating with our personal God, Yahweh. (silence)