If you do not believe in God, you must not have read the Bible

What if they don't believe in the Nicene Creed?

 

Well since it is written in hebrew, is it pronounced the tetragrammaton or is it pronounced yahweh or is it pronounced jehovah?.
When they ask me what is his name, what shall I say to them, tell them I am. God also said... my name is the tetragrammaton, or yahweh, or jehovah? I will go with what I have been reassured of my whole life, that god is.

 

I'd ask them what kind of Christian doesn't.

 

A true Christian?

 

And how would you define Christianity, outside of the Nicene Creed? Good grief.

 

"Christianity" is "Christianity".

Christ is Christ.

It's not important to define "Christianity", since it's man-made, and comes in 31 flavors.

What's important is knowing who Christ is, and what, and where.

 

Nobody, including the Jews, knows for sure anymore how to pronounce the name or exactly what it's meaning is. It is an imperfect (in the grammatical sense) of the Hebrew verb "to be". The Jews stopped pronouncing it after the destruction of the Temple. The Temple priests had previously been the only ones to pronounce the name, and only in the Temple sanctuary. For ordinary lay people to pronounce it was considered blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16. In fact some scholars believe that the charge of blasphemy which was leveled against Jesus was based on the notion that He must have used the name to perform His miracles. The point of what you call this "superstition" is that God is ineffable, and for the same reason we are prohibited from making graven images the Jews believed that it was wrong to use His true name. At that time in the region, knowing a god's name was thought to give the believer some control over him. When we anthropormophize and reify God, and become familiar with him as our fishing buddy (as is common in my part of the country) we can easily get the feeling that we have Him figured out, which is far from the truth.

 

"Well since it is written in hebrew, is it pronounced the tetragrammaton or is it pronounced yahweh or is it pronounced jehovah?."

Pronounced tetragrammaton? As I already pointed out the correct pronunciation at this time is unknown.

"When they ask me what is his name, what shall I say to them, tell them I am. God also said... my name is the tetragrammaton, or yahweh, or jehovah? I will go with what I have been reassured of my whole life, that god is."

You just didn't go far enough; Exodus 3:15 (Revised Standard Version)
God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you': this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations."

When the RSV uses the capital lettered LORD it is the tetragrammaton and thus Moses was told to tell the Israelites that God's name was "Jehovah".

 

As a followers of Jesus Christ as defined by the Bible, not by anything the Counsel Nicaea came up with.

 

Superstitiously not pronouncing God's name was one of those traditions of men that Jesus warned us about.

 

Do you have authority for that? I personally would regard it as a tradition of men, but I think I understand the rational basis for it. The New World translation of the Bible, favored by the Jehovah's Witnesses and, I gather, by you, has been criticized for using the word Jehovah 237 times in translation of the New Testament, in place of the word Kyrios (Lord), when neither Jehovah nor the tetragrammaton appear in the Greek manuscripts. Another tradition of men?

 

Well is gods name the tetragrammaton? If the correct pronunciation is unknown at this time then why do you insist on jehovah?

Yes, I did go far enough, I gave verse 15 the first time I quoted the passage and I allude to verse 15 above. What I am pointing out is god said both things of his name. And in addition, the various suffixes, god of.

 

I'm not sure what the New World translation has to do with my comment about the Jews superstitiously not pronouncing God's name.

But anyway, 237 times? Do they give a reason for that? would you know what that reason is?

Well, according to you that would make the NWT incorrect 237 times but that would mean that Bibles that don't translate the tetragrammaton as a name such as Jehovah or Yahweh is incorrect some 6,828 times, so which seems a more accurate translation to you?

 

"Well is gods name the tetragrammaton? "
Yes.

"If the correct pronunciation is unknown at this time then why do you insist on jehovah?"
I don't insist, if you want to use Yahweh that's fine. It's just in common English, Jehovah is generally used.


"Yes, I did go far enough, I gave verse 15 the first time I quoted the passage and I allude to verse 15 above. What I am pointing out is god said both things of his name."

What I was pointing out is that "name" in this case is not pointing to "I am" but to the tetragrammaton or Jehovah, as God's name.

 

I know you didn't ask me specifically but accurate is not the same as most accurate. If it is a matter of relative inaccuracy then the protracted arguments over meaning cannot be solved by looking over inaccurate materials. If the translations of the bible are only relatively accurate then meaning is only alluded to.

 

I understand it's a lot to swallow.

It is bizarre, absolutely.

 

If God wrote the Bible, as you've said, and the manuscripts say "Elohim", "Adonai" and "Kyrios", who are the Jehovah's witnesses to edit it as if they know better? And what was that again about a self-interpreting book? Sometimes, it seems, it's been given a little help. Those words are not attempts to translate the tetragrammaton but to defer to the understanding that it's not to be used except on very special occasions. In A History of God Karen Armstrong argues that the words used by god to Moses, (I Am Who I Am) was the equivalent of "None of your business."

 

Elohim was God's name before he began to interact with man.

Jehovah began to be used after he created man.

The name "Jesus" is the Greek equivalent of "Jehovah the Savior".

I call on "Jesus" as Lord, and I get the Man.

Same if I were to call on Jesus in Spanish, or Jesus in French. Jesus has equivalent names in various languages. They all work. It's His "handle", as they say in radio talk.

 

That's just poppycock.

Jesus said "Before Abraham was, I am.

Jesus, the Son, is the eternally existing God, manifest in humanity.

To say "I AM" is simply to acknowledge His eternal existence and pre-existence.

Time is not an element, with the eternal life. When we receive this life, there is, in us, something that is eternal in nature, not merely "everlasting".

To receive God's life is more than merely becoming "everlasting" in our natural existence. It means that we receive a life that is eternal in quality and nature, which transcends time and space.

Christ is the great "I AM". In this, He is also "El Shaddai", meaning that He is everything we need, supplying whatever we need to live a life in God. He is our eternal "portion", as Paul puts it, and our bountiful supply.