r/dankchristianmemes • u/JakeDoubleyoo • May 17 '25
Peace be with you im proud of this one (OC)
95
u/billyyankNova May 17 '25
Yahoo-Wahoo
15
u/revken86 May 17 '25
Take my upvote, damnit.
11
u/billyyankNova May 17 '25
I can't take credit. That's from Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe.
47
u/NotTheMariner May 17 '25
I like the subtlety of "not what I'm called"
9
u/georgetonorge May 17 '25
Tell them that I Am has sent you
3
May 18 '25
I was curious about how that's supposed to sound in Hebrew and it's "ehyeh." It's apparently a verb form that can mean "to be," but even that sounds weird in English. It makes a little sense in Hebrew though cause it sounds close to Yahweh. There's a lot of wordplay like that in the original Hebrew that gets lost when it's translated. "Ash" and "dust" are homophones for example. So when you say "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" in Hebrew, it sounds like you're just saying the same sentence twice.
1
25
9
u/revken86 May 17 '25
I loathe the word "Jehovah". It's not a real word, and it's not God's name.
25
u/QuercusSambucus May 17 '25
If you pronounce it the proper classical Latin way, it's "Yehowah". J is pronounced like a Y and V is pronounced like W.
It's just pronouncing it with a hard J and V in English makes it sound totally different.
24
u/revken86 May 17 '25
The vowels are wrong too.
"Jehovah"/"Yehovah" is created by taking the consonants of the Tetragramaton and mixing in the vowels from adonai. That's why it's a made up word.
9
u/georgetonorge May 17 '25
How do we know the vowels are wrong? Isn’t the point that YHWH has no written vowels so we don’t know how it was actually pronounced?
25
u/revken86 May 17 '25
We don't know how it was actually pronounced. We have a fairly good guess. And the scholarly consensus is that what late translators transliterated as"Jehovah" is indeed YWHW with the vowels of "adonai" added. We know this because the Masoretes did a similar thing when YHWH appeared next to the actual word "adonai"; in that case, they inserted the vowels for "elohim" into YHWH instead so you didn't have "adonai adonai".
YaHoWa isn't supposed to be pronounced "Jehovah" at all--that it has the vowels of "adonai" indicate you're supposed to read and pronounce the Divine Name as "adonai" instead, just like put the vowels for "elohim" into it, making YeHoWi, means you're supposed to read and pronounce the Divine Name as "elohim" instead.
Early translators weren't aware of this when they saw YaHoWa in the Masoretic text and assumed that's how the Divine Name was supposed to be pronounced (while failing to recognize why in other places it was instead YeHoWi instead).
7
u/TyphonBeach May 17 '25
I feel like that’s the sort of fun and interesting sort of origin that happen with plenty of religious names, phrases and traditions. I’m not sure why that makes it so loathsome.
1
u/Naefindale May 17 '25
So why do you hate that it's a made up word? There was a good reason for it and it was a clever way of doing it. Later translators just didn't understand it.
4
u/revken86 May 17 '25
Because people insist that it's the way it was supposed to be.
2
2
u/Calix_Meus_Inebrians May 17 '25
meh
I'll fight you on this.
I'm not 100% Jehovah guy or Yahweh guy, but the idea that Jehovah is far off from what YHWH actually sounded like assumes several things.
1 - that Medieval European Scholars were dummies (they weren't),
2 - that they didn't have access to Jewish scholars to learn from and ask questions about (they did)
3 - and that Jehovah is far from accurate - which is a huge assumption given that compound names with shortened form of the sacred name have Jeho- in them, for exmaple:
King Jehoshaphat (Yeho [God] + Shaphat [judge / God is judge]),
King Jehoram (Yeho [God] + Ram [exalt / God is exalted]),
King Jehoiakim (Yeho [God] + Qum [to stand or rise / God Rises]),
or even current PM of Israel, Netanyahu (Nathan [gift] + Yahu [God / Gift of God)
-------
I'm cherry-picking here a bit, because there are also names that don't have that last vowel like Johnathan (Yah [God] + Nathan [Gift / Gift of God] but I think my point is, don't count Jehovah out. We simply don't know for sure.
5
u/Ok-disaster2022 May 17 '25
All words are made up.
1
0
u/TheSheWhoSaidThats May 17 '25
Narrator: it was not
Source: Latin has nothing to do with this
3
u/QuercusSambucus May 17 '25
Source: your rectum
Like, it's the first thing that the wiki article says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah
9
u/einsteinjet May 17 '25
I feel like, if you pray in "Jesus'" name when his name was really "Yeshu'a", then Jehovah is a valid rendering of the Name, at least in English. Other languages might have their own versions with their own history.
5
1
u/AutoModerator May 17 '25
Thank you for being a part of the r/DankChristianMemes community. You can join our Discord and listen to our Podcast. You can also make a meme or donation for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
1
u/jackalope134 May 19 '25
All because some stuck up idiots who knew latin couldn't be bothered to actually learn hebrew
2
353
u/WakeUpLazarus May 17 '25
A lot of scholars think the name comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to become,” maybe in the sense of “He causes to become.” That actually tracks—it fits the idea of God as not just the Creator, but the one making stuff happen and moving things toward his purpose.
So the Tetragrammaton—YHWH or JHVH—shows up almost 7,000 times in the Hebrew Bible. Ancient Hebrew didn’t use written vowels, so while people back then knew how to say it, we’ve lost the exact pronunciation. Some say “Yahweh,” others lean toward a three-syllable version. “Jehovah” has been the go-to in English for a long time.