Why Do We Say Yahshua & Yahweh?

The prefix YAH is an abbreviation of Yahweh, the name of Elohim. The Bible makes great use of this short form. It is usually found, mostly, at the end of many names in the Bible: Nehemyah, Ahazyah, Adoniyah, Hizqiyah, Zekaryah, Hilqiyah, Nethanyah, etc. It is also at the beginning of a few names, too. Some examples are Yahudah, Yahoshua, and Yahoram; but it was indicated to be pronounced as 'Yeh' by the Massoretes to avoid the accident of saying the Father's name.

The word "Shua" means "salvation", "savior". The whole name, Yahshua, signifies "Yahweh's Salvation" or the "Salvation of Yah". Miryam and Yoceph spoke Hebrew, not English or French. They gave Him a Hebrew name , Yahshua, not Jesus. There is no J in Hebrew. All English speakers know that there was no J even in the English language until recently; which is why they used to say Iesu or Iesus. J is from the letter I. In the 1600's they began to replace I by J at the beginning of a word. They got their J from German which borrowed it from Latin. It became a standard replacement for Y. We advise to you consult the many different encyclopedias. The word Jesusis from Iesus (replacing I, now, by J).  Iesus is a transliteration of the word or name Iesous. This was done by the Roman or Latin Church. The Hebrew Yu has nothing to do with it. Some rest their faith on the Strong Concordance; but all these references were put together from the point of view of those who have erred in from the truth, and who are not interested in setting the records straight.

Regarding 'Yahshua', some prefer to say 'Yahushua', and they defend the correct pronunciation of Yahweh (bless His name!) They argue that Yahshua is probably a result of Messianic believers observing the name 'Joshua', thought they had to replace Joh by 'Yah'. It seems also, if this assertion was totally true, that they could have simply rendered it as Yoshua, if this was a simple case of replacing J by Y. For your information there is also a level of controversy concerning the Father's name 'Yahweh' (blessed be He). Some opt for Yahuweh, others Yahwah, Yahuwah, Yahoweh, Yehowah, etc. We stick to the simplicity as we feel guided the Father in having opened our eyes to knowledge and understanding, to restore the Original Good News, which understanding we got not from men. This uniformity we keep among Messianic Hebrews, which appellation was not dictated to us by men, either. If saying Yahweh is correct instead of Yahuweh, so is Yahshua acceptable, based on the same evidences. For sure we all know that the Yeho, Yaho, and Yahu, are way off tract. Those who advocate Yahu ignore the fact that a French speaking person hearing that sound can write it as Yahou, Yahouh, or Iaou (same pronunciation).

Contrary to the name adopted by Christians, Yahweh (bless His name!) did not give His name to Moses as Lord. Lord is a title, not a name; just like the word GOD is not a name. There are all kinds of GODS, and each one has their own name. This is why Moshe said to Him, "Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The Elohim (god) of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?", for the God of Egypt had a name; the God of the Canaanites had a name, too. "Which God sent you, Moshe? Ammon, Anubis, Nimrod, Zeus?" So Elohim spoke to Moses in Hebrew and told him, "You shall tell them YAHWEH sent me." (Exod.3:15). For most churchgoers it does not matter what is what in regard to the name. But I'd say that those who do not care to know will die in their error. Most people would rather avoid the Truth than to make changes.

Many translators, knowing that you cannot translate nor transliterate that blessed name of Elohim have wisely decided to keep the original name as it was given. No encyclopaedia or dictionary will tell you that the Hebrews called Him Jehovah (which is purely a Britannic term; HOVAH means mischief, see Strong Concordance #1953 ), or Lord, the English translation for Baal and the title of England’s monarchical masters. Yehshua or Yeshua is a misnomer because there is no such thing as Yehweh. Many Messianic Jews, however, who are theologically more in line with traditional Christian thoughts, and who have been taught, also, to attribute Hebrew values to Gentiles and Christian semantics, such as transliterating the Greek Iesous into Iesua or Yesua, remaining as close as possible to the Latin form Iesus of Iesous, vouch for Yeshua. This is understandable, for many Messianic Jewish churches exist, today, as a result of sustained-Christian love and desire to bring Christianity to Jews. The Lutherans and the Fundamentalist Christians are reputed for that. Above all, westernization of our thought, and in particular the germanization of our tongue has subjected the acculturate Hebrew language into a kind of morphosism that readily accepts the attribution of other sounds as legitimate in Hebrew. This is why in completion of our phonics we've borrowed the V, the sound of the German W, alongside our Hebrew W, which sounds as Wah, as in water. Many less informed people simply assume that V was always there in Hebrew. They do not even know that the Indo-Europeans got their double V from the sons of Ham, the Phoenicians.

Yahweh rightly said that, "They caused the people to forget My name for Baal." Some disobedient souls hide behind the excuse of "I speak English"; yet they don't dare translate the name of a Russian president, that of a French dignitary, a German potentate, or any other important personality, and to address them by a foreign name when they come over to visit their country. "Behold, says Yahshua, I have set before you an open door and no one can shut it; for you ... have kept My word, and have not denied My name."(Rev.3:8). Remember, He also says through Isaiah, : "I AM YHWH, this is My memorial forever. I will not give My glory to another one." (Is. 42: 8) What have your church done to His name? Your creator says not to mess up with His memorial. Do you care? We hope you do. Most people are ashamed to call on the Father’s name and be saved, because their so-called church doesn’t like the name Yahweh. They’d rather use Baal, Lord. Judaists have simply replace It by Adonai, from the word Adon, meaning Master. They have also taught all other Jews to use the heathen term LORD, just Gentiles have done.

We cannot discuss the entire history of the names of the Father and the Son in these few pages. We do not want to engage in a battle over Yeshua, which some say is Aramaic. Well, Aramaic and Hebrew do have common words, for they are two sister languages. Understand that as a Francophone, I studied years of Latin. I speak read and write some Spanish. Italian was therefore easy for me in College. Believe it or not I can read some Portuguese without having ever studied Portuguese. This is because Portuguese is of the same family as the above-mentioned languages. We are not putting down other fellowship based on that difference. We are only exploring and exposing facts, including the following.

According to the Oxford Bible, "Christian writers between A.D. 150 and A. D. 450 have Yaouai... in Greek characters, and early magical texts have Yhbyh (Yahveh) in Aramaic characters, all pointing to Yahweh as the original pronunciation. The Massoretes, however, never vocalized the divine name as Yahweh; instead, to the consonants YHWH they added the vowels of adonai, ‘my Lord’ (replacing a by e as required by Hebrew phonetic law)."

The Revised Standard Version argues that, "...it is almost quite certain that the name was originally pronounced "Yahweh". The question for us is why did the 5th century Rabbis add vowel signs to the four consonants of the name YHWH? Scholars say that the name Yahweh "had come to be regarded as too sacred to be pronounced..." (RSV) Everybody, including Rabbis, testify to the same fact that, "the name was regarded as ineffable, too sacred to be pronounced. The Massoretes, therefore, wrote in the vowel signs to the alternative words adonai (lord) or elohim (god) to warn readers to use one of these in its place." The other scheme is to use ‘Hashem’ which means ‘the name’. Keep in mind that the word god is not etymologically from the word elohim.

Very simply, let those who are intelligent ask themselves this, "If the name was too "ineffable" to be pronounced, why did Yahweh say to Moshe, ‘Tell them, My name is Yahweh. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations?" (Ex. 3:15). In Chapter 6 He further appeared to Moshe and said, "I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as Elohim Shaddai, but by My name Yahweh I was not known to them," (or was I not known to them). And why in Numbers 6: 22-27, He told Moshe to tell to Aaron and his sons to always bless the children of Israel in this way, " ’Yahweh bless you and keep you; Yahweh makes His face shines upon you, and be gracious to you; Yahweh lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. ‘ So they shall put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them. " Isn’t that amazing? Today’s priests refuse to put Yahweh’s name on Israel. No wonder our people are being overrun by enemies on all sides. In their synagogues they make people sworn every Shabbat that it is blasphemy to say that Yahweh has a begotten Son. Those anti-Mashiach spirit cannot stand and do not accept the idea that the Father came in the flesh through the Son to pave a way for mankind's salvation. While we do not claim to understand, in all acquiescence the abysmal depth, height, and breath of the mystery of the oneness of the Father and the Son, we proclaim to Israel:

"Shema, O Israel, Yahweh Eloheinu Yahweh Echad."
There is no god, but Yahweh. Yahshua is His Son.
And you (the Saints of Yahshua) are the light of the world.

It was in the 5th century A.D. that a group of Rabbinical Massoretes (from Hebrew Massorah ) decided to do something most profane with the Father’s name, as aforementioned. They used different vowel symbols to tell the reader to say something else. Later they decided to replace it by the form that stands, simply, for "The name", the Hebrew "Ha Shem", "Hashem".

Those rebellious Rabbis having laid aside Yahweh’s Commandments that they may keep their own tradition (Mark 7:8-9), have endeavored to replace the reading of the Torah and the Prophets by the Midrash, the Mishna, and the Talmuds, which they teach to the people instead of Yahweh’s word, which everyone should be studying, so that the people may perpetually depend on their expertise for complicated, non-sense Yeshiva explanations. They had been trying to do that, way before Yahshua came. This is why the prophet warned them, "Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees, who write misfortune, which they have prescribed to rob the needy of justice, and to take what is right from the poor of My people, that widow may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless." The Gentiles have not called their gods by the name of Yahweh the elohim of Israel, but Israel has called their elohim (god) by the name of all the gods of the nations with whom they have played the harlot . Those who believe in Messiah must Come Out (Rev. 18). Yahweh rejected those titles in the past, so must we; "You shall no longer call me Baali (Lord)," says Yahweh (Hosea 2:16). "I am Yahweh, that is My name. I will not give My glory to another one." (Is.42:8) There is definitely something powerful in His name. What is in the name?

We cannot close this page without saying a few things some Jehovah namers that were recently brought to my attention..

Card D. Franklin, a proponent of the misleading name Jehovah, publisher of a poorly conceived document, which is part of the spirit that is causing the people to forget HaShem Elohim, argues that the argument against the use of “Jehovah” can also be used against the most sacred name of the Heavenly Father, Yahweh (bless His name). He says as much in regard to Messiah’s name, Yahshua. His reasoning is that there was no ‘w’ in English until 200 years before the invention of the letter ‘J’; there was no capital ‘S’ in English; ‘a’ and ‘h’ did not appear until the 1500’s. “This same argument,” he added, “could be used against “Yahshua”, as well. Since lowercase ‘s’ was not invented until the 1500’s, and lowercase ‘u’ did not come into regular use as vowel until the 1500’s, the spelling Yahshua was impossible before that time.”

The above argument shows the extreme paucity of that level of thinking in regards to linguistics. Right from the start it is clear that the above named author and people in his camp are seeing things from a point of view that references only English, forgetting that English is not the only language in the world. English was not part of the ancient world. One can clearly see that they do not speak any other languages, as well.

Thirdly, other languages (and I personally know of two that I speak fluently) have gone through the same motion, as English did. One of these two languages did not use the ‘K’ sounds, heavily, as of just twenty years, ago (I am adding this comment in 2007). Some of the phonics of this language is now based on that of English, contrary to the etymological roots of that language. For example, where they used to write ‘in’ they now write ‘en’. Where they used to write ‘caye’ for house; they now write ‘Kaye’.  Many educated old timers, whose mother tongue is this language in question, presently have a hard time dealing with the radical changes brought in by imperialistic domination that is seeking to control a people through their language and culture. Pay attention to the term imperialistic.

To cite, as Card D. Franklin did, the absence of a capital ‘S’ or, supposedly, an ‘a’ or ‘h’ in English, at its developing stage, is deeply flawed. Remark that in English we pronounce the letter ‘W’ as ‘double U’, although we have in fact two ‘V’s, don’t we? English borrows heavily from Latin and Greek. Some people are’n’t aware of that.

Fourthly, I am fluent in French. My knowledge of Latin is very appreciable; since there was a time I could have held a short conversation in that ‘dead language’. I had three years of Latin before I migrated to the US. And at the City University of New York, I again took Latin as part of my expertise in Romance Language. I have had English speaking teachers who cannot pronounce Latin properly, except from an English phonetic. For example, in the word agricolae they’d pronounce the ae as eye; but it is utterly wrong. For the expression de facto, I’ve heard people say dee facto (wrong). The de is like in David. For the French expression en route, except for a few educated folks, I have heard Americans say in rahwoot as in about (wrong, again). Hebrew has also been the victim of political oppression and cultural miscegenation. In Europe German-stock Jews have Yidishing Hebrew and brought in the German sound of ‘V’ for W into Hebrew. In fact even American English speakers constantly pronounce the W in the name Weiss as Wah ( in water); but again they are wrong. The proper way is ‘Vice’. Furthermore, Some people ignore the fact that in French ‘U’ can be pronounced as ‘W’. The word ‘huissier’ is an example. Phonetically, the sound of ‘U’ can be heard even when there is absolutely no ‘U’ in a word; ‘pointe’, ‘louer’ are examples. Centuries, ago, the place of a ‘V’ in a sentence would tell the reader whether he had to pronounce ‘U’ or ‘V’. That was same situation for the letters  ‘s’ and ‘f’, whether in English or French. Where we used to say f,  we now say s. Where we used to say terranvm, we now say terranum.

The question, therefore, is not whether there were lowercases ‘s’ or ‘u’ before the 1500’s, We are not transposing, equivalently, letters to letters from Hebrew into English. What linguistic experts have done is to render into English the closest phonetic sound of the Hebrew pronunciation of the sacred names. Some people either ignore or are unaware of the fact that ‘Jehovah’ is Britanic in origin, totally Britanic.

The fact that Tyndale did not use the letter ‘J’ in his translation, published in 1530, shows that he was using what was available to him, the sound of ‘I’ to render the yeh sound we get from the yod in Yah. The translation Iehouah, from the Latin dominated world of which Tyndale was a part, both religiously and culturally, can irrefutably be read as Yehowah, period, and not Jehovah. It is greatly possible that this is exactly the way those people, raised under the theological education of Roman Latin or Catholic Church, read that word. When Tyndale wrote Iacob, he was not trying to say Jacob, as superficially argued some people. There is no Jacob in Hebrew. Tyndale, in the phonic tradition of his day, would have pronounced Yacob. The substitution of ‘I’ for ‘J’, nowadays, is definitely a blatant departure from what’s closer to authenticity.

Card D. Franklin wrote, “Sacred namers used the invention of the letter ‘J’ to argue that ‘Jehvah’ is an illegimate spelling of the name יהוה (jhvh). They view ‘Yahweh’ as the only correct way to spell and pronounce the divine name. They are completely ignoring the fact that the English letter w –used in the name Yahweh—was invented two hundred years later than the first symbol for ‘j’.”

Did you read him, correctly? Isn’t true that we are getting more precise in every area of sciences and the arts as we progress more into sharpening our skills for understanding and interpretation of the past? Isn’t it true that we are now reading ancient texts whose first words we could not decipher, before. Normally, as we have linguistically changed, our way of saying or writing certain words have also changed. When we were deficient, we used what we had at our disposal to translate an ancient language into one more familiar to us. If English speakers did not know how to represent the ה sound, in Tyndale’s days, they now know. Ancient writings are now talking to us in ways that previous generation knew not. So, what? Should we stay where we were, before the sun rose? I clearly don’t get it!

Franklin definitely misleads people in saying that Hebrew, in the days of Abraham, preserved in the Scriptures by Moses, has his European ‘J’ sound. This is simply not true. He probably even ignored that Moses grew up in Africa. As such Moses would have most like been saying W (wah) and Yeh (yod). I know what I am saying first hand because I am of Hebrew African descent, Carl D. Franklin is not; and he is not even aware of Moses African connection, who received the Ten Commands, with Yahweh’ name, in Africa. Some people are always stunned to here this because of their not having overcome racial prejudices, unfortunately.

(to be continued)

"My people shall know My name, Isaiah 52: 6."