Sacred Name Bible


Sacred Name Bibles are Bible translations that consistently use Hebraic forms of God's personal name, instead of its English language translation, in both the Old and New Testaments. Some Bible versions, such as the Jerusalem Bible, employ the name Yahweh, a transliteration of Hebrew YHWH, in the English text of the Old Testament, where traditional English versions have.
Most sacred name versions use the name Yahshua, a Semitic form of the name Jesus.
None of the Sacred Name Bibles are published by mainstream publishers. Instead, most are published by the same group that produced the translation. Some are available for download on the Web. Very few of these Bibles have been noted or reviewed by scholars outside the Sacred Name Movement.
Some Sacred Name Bibles, such as the Hallelujah Scriptures, are also considered Messianic Bibles due to their significant Hebrew style. Therefore they are commonly used by Messianic Jews as well.

Historical background

YHWH occurs in the Hebrew Bible, and also within the Greek text in a few manuscripts of the Greek translation found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It does not occur in early manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.
Although the Greek forms Iao and Iave do occur in magical inscriptions in the Hellenistic Jewish texts of Philo, Josephus and the New Testament use the word Kyrios when citing verses where YHWH occurs in the Hebrew.
For centuries, Bible translators around the world did not transliterate or copy the tetragrammaton in their translations. For example, English Bible translators used to represent it. Modern authorities on Bible translation have called for translating it with a vernacular word or phrase that would be locally meaningful. The Catholic Church has called for maintaining in the liturgy the tradition of using "the Lord" to represent the tetragrammaton, but does not forbid its use outside the liturgy, as is shown by the existence of Catholic Bibles such as the Jerusalem Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible', where it appears as "Yahweh", and place names that incorporate the tetragrammaton are not affected.
A few Bible translators, with varying theological motivations, have taken a different approach to translating the tetragrammaton. In the 1800s–1900s at least three English translations contained a variation of YHWH. Two of these translations comprised only a portion of the New Testament. They did not restore YHWH throughout the body of the New Testament.
In the twentieth century, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible was the first to employ full transliteration of the tetragrammaton where it appears in the Bible. Angelo Traina's translation, The New Testament of our Messiah and Saviour Yahshua in 1950 also used it throughout to translate Κύριος, and The Holy Name Bible containing the Holy Name Version of the Old and New Testaments in 1963 was the first to systematically use a Hebrew form for sacred names throughout the Old and New Testament, becoming the first complete Sacred Name Bible.

Aramaic primacy

Some translators of Sacred Name Bibles hold to the view that the New Testament, or significant portions of it, were originally written in a Semitic language, Hebrew or Aramaic, from which the Greek text is a translation. This view is colloquially known as "Aramaic primacy", and is also taken by some academics, such as Matthew Black. Therefore, translators of Sacred Name Bibles consider it appropriate to use Semitic names in their translations of the New Testament, which they regard as intended for use by all people, not just Jews.
Although no early manuscripts of the New Testament contain these names, some rabbinical translations of Matthew did use the tetragrammaton in part of the Hebrew New Testament. Sidney Jellicoe in The Septuagint and Modern Study states that the name YHWH appeared in Greek Old Testament texts written for Jews by Jews, often in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet to indicate that it was not to be pronounced, or in Aramaic, or using the four Greek letters PIPI, and that Kyrios was a Christian introduction. Bible scholars and translators such as Eusebius and Jerome consulted the Hexapla, but did not attempt to preserve sacred names in Semitic forms. Justin Martyr argued that YHWH is not a personal name, writing of the "namelessness of God".
George Lamsa, the translator of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts: Containing the Old and New Testaments believed the New Testament was originally written in a Semitic language, not clearly differentiating between Syriac and Aramaic. However, despite his adherence to a Semitic original of the New Testament, Lamsa translated using the English word "Lord" instead of a Hebraic form of the divine name.

Accuracy or popularity

Sacred Name Bibles are not used frequently within Christianity, or Judaism. Only a few translations replace Jesus with Semitic forms such as Yeshua or Yahshua. Most English Bible translations translate the tetragrammaton with Lord#Religion| where it occurs in the Old Testament rather than use a transliteration into English. This pattern is followed in languages around the world, as translators have translated sacred names without preserving the Hebraic forms, often preferring local names for the creator or highest deity, conceptualizing accuracy as semantic rather than phonetic.
The limited number and popularity of Sacred Name Bible translations suggests that phonetic accuracy is not considered to be of major importance by Bible translators or the public. The translator Joseph Bryant Rotherham lamented not making his work into a Sacred Name Bible by using the more accurate name Yahweh in his translation, though he also said, "I trust that in a popular version like the present my choice will be understood even by those who may be slow to pardon it.".

Transliterated Sacred Name Bibles

These Bibles systematically transliterate the tetragrammaton in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as a Semitic form of the name of Jesus such as Yahshua or Yeshua. They consider the names of both God the Father, and God the Son, to be sacred.
These Sacred Name Bibles use the tetragrammaton without vowels. They follow this practice in both the Old and New Testaments.
Some translations use a form of "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" only sporadically:
A few translations use either "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" in the Old and New Testaments, but are not generally considered Sacred Name Bibles:
These versions use either "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" only in the Old Testament:
The Literal Standard Version uses the unpointed tetragrammaton "YHWH" only where it occurs in the Hebrew text.

Non-English