RERUN: The Name of God

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We will return to our verse by verse study through the text of Genesis 39 next week.

As we’ve said before, an effective teacher, when teaching students, say about something like math, and they have a bird fly in the room, if their wise, will take some time to teach the students about . . . birds.

The bird we are going to discuss today is one of the single most important concepts in the scripture and one that is almost entirely overlooked, ignored or even seen as unimportant.

But it wasn’t unimportant to God.

Now some of you may remember my mentioning a Discovery channel program called, Gold Rush that I like – so does Danny and Ethan. Well, from it I have learned that when mining for gold it’s important to remove what they call “the overlay” strata of dirt that has accumulated over the gold so you can reach what they call, the pay dirt.

Sometimes the overlay is super shallow – like just 6 inches high, but sometimes its 30 feet deep. But no matter how much there is, you’ve gotta remove it before you can start sluicing, which is to run the paydirt through a massive amount of water to sort the gold away from the rocks and earth.

Now back when we were teaching through Genesis 2 and we came upon the place where God is called, the “LORD God” I accepted, like I used to accept eternal punishment, the Trinity, sola scriptura and ecclesiology, the idea that we had struck gold when it came to the four Hebrew consonant name (YHWH) and that this was in all likelihood pronounced Yahway, Yehovah or Jehovah.

That is what I has been traditionally taught, and it is generally supported in the world of Christianity so I pretty much figured I had removed the overlay through study and that it was okay to mine other areas.

And I moved on.

Now, as you know I am in close association with several people who are not Gold Miners but they are , “God Miners.” Danny and Dan here and then there are four others I speak with regularly (named Adnan, Grady, Osvaldo, and Shee-o (Xio) – who are dedicated to finding scriptural truth by the Spirit.

Well two of these guys, when I stopped mining the ground over YHWH said, “there’s mo-better God- Gold deeper than where that boy stopped.”

And they went in and continued digging while I continued to teach through Genesis.

Well, their findings opened up our conversations online and over the phone and through zoom called with Adnan even presented a paper, which was followed up by Grady taking that work and going deep and suddenly we they strike it rich relative to what is in all probability the actual name of the true and living God – which has been buried under 2 to 5 thousand years of human overlay.

So just like my initial indifference to eschatology, the Trinity, afterlife punishment, ecclesiology my eyes were opened to the truth of their findings.

So, when I sat down to prepare to teach or Chapter 39 the bird flew in the window the moment I read verse 2 where Moses, speaking of Joseph (and we’ll get to this next week) wrote these six words:

“And the LORD was with Joseph . . .”

The LORD was with Joseph.

I look up the word my Bible says is there for LORD and it says, Yehovah.

Let’s see if that is the real thing or Pyrite which is also known as fools gold.

Genesis 39 The Name of God
July 9th 2023

All the way back in Genesis 2:4 we talked about the pronunciation of what is called the tetragrammaton which are the four consonants in the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh that make up the name God gives to Moses in Exodus 3:14.

There Moses asks God what He should tell the Nation when they ask who sent him and God says,

“I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”

Remember when we covered that? Now I suggested at that time, taught at that time, what I was taught to believe was true two decades ago and that was that the name of God is sort of unknown but it seems like it is likely YAHWAY, YEHOVAH or JEHOVAH – based on the four consonants YHWH.

I taught that His name was so sacred the Jews wouldn’t even say it. And that even today many Jews won’t even write God but only put G-D.

It seems so respectful, huh?

(beat)

But I was wrong. Dead wrong. And the implications of my being wrong are super significant to seekers of God in spirit and truth.

So, with the help of my seeking brothers out there let’s dig a little deeper. And we will begin by reading what else God said to Moses after He asked Him his name and God gave it to Him. For instance in the very next verse we read:

“Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.”

Now, I am betting that God said His name to Moses – in full and without any sort of mystery, and that Moses HEARD how to pronounce it. Remember, “I am” is NOT His name. That is just our way of trying to interpret the four consonants, and we are doing this because ancient Hebrews didn’t have vowels.

Why?

They didn’t need vowels. They knew how to say their words and when they heard them said, they understood.

But when we get to chapter 9:13 in Exodus God will say to Moses (when he is preparing to lead the Nation out from Bondage to Egypt)

13 And the LORD (Tetragrammaton) said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD (Tetragrammaton) God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.
14 For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.
15 For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.
16 And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.

So we have four consonants in Hebrew, that have no vowel markings and we assume that we aren’t sure how to say them nor that we are supposed to BUT His NAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE DECLARED THROUGHOUT THE EARTH?

Someone has been tossing dirt over something here, folks.

Then . . . we come to Malachi 1:11 and read God say,

“For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.

Why isn’t His name great among the Gentiles, folks?

Now here our friends the Jehovah’s Witnesses will claim that it has been made known through them – and they say that the four letters are “YHWH right and that that name is pronounced Jehovah.

Most Christians believe this is true or they say, Yahway as the true pronunciation.

So, why, if God said “waaaaay back in Exodus” that his name was to be known throughout the earth and was to be GREAT among the Gentiles are we fumbling around with the pronunciation and why are we still saying that we can’t be certain?

Rightly or wrongly, it seems – seems – like the Nation of Israel, the one who chose adultery over faithfulness to whatever this God’s name is, purposely chose to keep His name hidden instead of making it known!

Now, this is not so surprising because in addition to making His name known, they were also supposed to shine out to the world as a beacon of Light in order to draw all nations unto Him – and His Name – but again – they chose to hide their light under a bushel burying their talents rather than multiplying them in the earth.

Why?

They wanted a proprietary relationship with God. They wanted Him all to themselves.

This is one reason why that when Yeshua came He taught them “that a city set on a hill should NOT be hid,” under a bushel but should shine forth so all would see it and be drawn to it.

Now, this is going to sting a bit to the ears of those souls who are pro-Israel today and think that they are still God’s chosen covenant people but, in my mind, and because of what God has done through His Son, there is today absolutely no difference at all between those who think they are Jews and those who are not, or between males or female, slaves or free, straight or gay, red or blue.

I say this because I am NOT anti-semetic when I lay this at their feet anciently. The scripture condemns false Israel, not me and I am profoundly grateful for true Israel.

But I think, like my brothers thought, we have to try and find the name that they hid.
And if I am not mistaken, I think God is so Good He clearly and plainly tells us what it is through the text!

So then where did we get the pronunciation of YHWH from since the Nation of Israel anciently did not make His name known?

Ready?

From a group of Jewish men called the Masorites who started-in on their “work” of giving vowel markings and punctuation that they created between the years of 500AD and 1000AD.

And what they created is called, “the Masoretic text.“

Think about this for a moment.

After five centuries from the time their city Jerusalem was obliterated and those who remained were sold off into a world-wide diaspora these Rabbi’s took a text that had no vowels and made it “available” to the world?

Now, the Old Testament WAS translated by 70 scholars (six from each of the twelve tribes) from the Hebrew into Greek about three hundred BC. It was called the Septuagint and is noted by the symbol LXX.

And that version is what Yeshua and His apostles would cite when it was repeated in the Apostolic Record.

The Septuagint was translated from what were the earlier forms of Hebrew or what some call, paleo-Hebrew into the Greek.

Paleo Hebrew was VERY different from the Hebrew the Masorites used to created their version on the Old Testament.

So when the Masoretic Rabbis got together, the Paleo Hebrew was long lost (it got lost in the Babyonian captivity) and so they translated their text from “other” sources – listen – which they themselves admit were faulty.

What led them to do this?

First of all, they did not like that Yeshua the Messiah cited the Septuagint instead of the Hebrew Old Testament in His life. And so they put their heads together – between 500 AD and 1000 AD and THEY created their own version for the world to use instead of the version Jesus used.

And what made this version so unique it they CREATED a system of punctuation and vowel demarcations that did NOT exist before!

So, there is the Septuagint, composed somewhere around 300BC or thereafter (Which Yeshua cited) and then some 800 to 1300 years later a group of alienated perhaps even angry Jewish Rabbis come together and provided the world with their own Masoretic Text.

Guess which versions of our Bibles appeal to the Masoretic Text as the basis for their translations?

The Latin Vulgate from which the Catholics produced their Douay Bible
The King James
And the VAST majority of Protestant bibles.

Only the Eastern Orthodox use the Septuagint as the source for their Old Testament.

Now, before I show you some of the realities behind the Masora text, ask yourselves a reasonable question:

If the Nation of Israel failed to make God’s name known, if the Nation of Israel failed to be a city set on a hill to the world that should not be hid, if the Nation of Israel was given a bill of divorcement from God Himself for their idolatry with other pagan nations, if the Nation of Israel rejected their promised Messiah and put Him to death (except for those who were true Israel that helped make up His Bride) and if the Nation of Israel was obliterated by God in the prophesied 70AD destruction, killed or spread out over the world, and if this remaining nation HATES Christ, WHY ON EARTH would anyone who is a believer in Christ trust a translation ”that the Rabbinical remnants that came from all of that created?

Two words – “mindless tradition.” Which I too embraced without a thought.

Praise God for my supportive brothers who sought deeper and kept digging.

Now, Masorite means, “Tradition” and while there were ultimately two main families that largely contributed to the making of the Masoretic text, one from Palestine and the other from Egypt.
In the end the ben Asher family were largely responsible for the preservation and production of the accepted text – unique vowel markings and all.

Paleo Hebrew was more like Gyptian Hierogliphs or small pictures so vowels were not needed – just right pronunciations for hearing.
But in English, for example, vowels are super important.
For instance, if we just take in English the consonants, “PN” we can construct completely different words from those who consonants
Add an E in the middles and we get “Pen” (as in a writing utensil)

Add an I in the middle and we get Pin (as in item that sticks something together)

Add a U and we get Pun (as play on words)

Add two E’s and we get pene (as in pasta)

Add and I and an E and we get Pine (as in tree)

Add and O and E and we get Pone (as in the slang you’ve been had

Add and I and O and we get Pino (as in Grizio, the wine)

I know there are some Italian words in there that we borrow from.
But, here we have the Masorites, 400 to 900 years after the life, death, resurrection, acsension of Jesus and the destruction of their city (Jerusalem).
Who came from forefathers who failed to make the name of YHWH known, and then Christianity comes in and “blossoms off their heritage and suffering” but we TRUST these scholars who have assume the task of assigning the ancient vowelless language vowel demarcations to rightly lead us to His real name?

I want you to think about a statement today that will help you wrap your mind around what I am saying: READY

Muslims today are more favorable and kind to Christ as they respect and receive Him as at least a prophet that modern people who claim to be Jews – they says He is a complete fraud.

Not anti-semetic, but I am going to build this case.

Now it is really important to remember that Judaism was an orally transmitted religion and what they HEARD was what was vital to them not so much how a picture was drawn.

How they SAID THINGS, guttural and such, was how they passed their traditions down to each other so the pronunciation of the four consonants was everything to them and NOT what was written.

And two of my brothers found that “anciently” (as I said, Hebrew changed after the exile to Babylon as it morphed into the dialect of Acadian, and then to Aramaic) the Jews who lived in the Syrian region at the time of king David would only have pronounced the W as a “V” – never as “W”…

(https://www.nehemiaswall.com/historical-pronunciation-vav)

So, the pronunciation of that letter in paleo-Hebrew is “vav” NOT “waw”. So, in terms of our pronunciation of the name it is more accurately represented by the letter “V” and not a “W”

So, Y-H-V-H not Y-H-W-H

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFhkOmznnIQ&t=673s&ab_channel=OriginalHebrew )

So, how to pronounce these letters that were supposed to go out to the world and be great among the Gentiles.

Linguists, Rabbis, Historians all agree on the pronunciation of the first and last syllables of the Name…

(NOTE the reverse order not observed here by me)

Y= “Yah”
VH= “Vah” (when a word ends in “H” the “H” is silent… like when God changed Sarai’s name to Sarah… the “H” is silent.)

So Ya Va

The mystery is in the 2nd syllable of the name, or that middle “H” sound…

Ancient Israel long knew how to pronounce YHVH, but as we get to the time of the Roman empire, it is believed that the Jews began to keep the name under wraps, again, because they thought it was too Holy and sacred to be picked up by the gentile believers and the Roman pagans.

Not the desire of God but of their own making.

It eventually got to the point that the only time the name was correctly uttered would be by the High Priest exclusively, and only when he was in their Temple duties.

And then forty years before the temple was destroyed in 70AD the High Priest actually stopped using the real name and started saying Adonai in its place.

Of course, the temple got destroyed in AD 70 and the pronunciation of the name was no longer common knowledge.

So the Masoretic Jews came in and purposely taught error (relative to the name) because they wanted to keep the secret of that name to themselves and were bitter toward Christianity which was growing bigtime.

It is believed that part of how the Jews obscured the Name was by taking the vowel sounds in “Adonai” (which means “lord” in Hebrew) and mixing it in with the consonants YHVH.

That would look like this

AD O NAI
YaH O VaH

Apparently, around this time, the “Y” sound was also changed to a “J” sound in response to unwanted Germanic influence and there is also the belief out there that the Hebrew name for God, “Elohim,” was also inserted by some Masorites, which gives some the impression that

YHVH
(would be said)
Yahovim

From there my brothers (and now myself who was willing to start listening) do not believe that Yahovim/Jehovah is how the Name of God is pronounced BUT rather it is how it has been OBSCURED!

In fact, purposely obscured. By the copilers of the Masoretic text.

To prove their larceny of Truth, the name of God is not all that they obscured. They would also try and obscure simple readings in the Tanakh that plainly pointed to the Messiah.

Let’s go to the white board

Historical research reveals five significant ways in which the Masoretic Text is different from the Septuagint version which BTW is 1000 years earlier
The Masoretes admitted that they received corrupted texts to begin with.
The Masoretic Text is written with a radically different alphabet than the original Paleo-Hebrew.
The Masoretes added vowel points which did not exist in the original.
The Masoretic Text excluded several books from the Old Testament scriptures, and (as proven)
The Masoretic Text includes changes to prophecy and doctrine.
And yet . . . the Protestants have generally received the Masoretic text over the Septuagint, lending to the “obscurification of the name of God” that God himself said He wanted known in the world early on.

So, back to the correct pronunciation of His name.

Let’s address that middle letter “H” in YHVH

The letter “h” in Hebrew is actually a word… and that word is “The” which is pronounced, “Ha.”

For example, “Ha-mashiach” means, “THE Messiah” or “Ha- Satan” is “THE Satan”

If you simply let the consonant “H” pronounce itself, without adding to it or taking away from it, then it would be pronounced “HA.”

And bringing this into the four consonant YHVH this would have God’s name (that should be known around the world) pronounced as
(beat)

(ON BOARD)
“Yah-Ha-Vah”
YAHAVA

Remember, and as we have seen thus far in our study of the Tanakh, names are important to God in the Bible, and they hold meanings to the person’s character.

There is no randomness to naming for Jews, ESPECIALLY with the very name of God himself that He gives Moses.

The point? “Jehovah” has a meaning but that is not the name God wanted to be known by because “YAHAVA” says it all.

For instance, an ancient Rabbi wrote that every creature on earth actually breathes says His name. How?

Breathing is not just exhaling (HA) nor is it just inhaling, but it is BOTH – HA HA and it is God who is both spirit and gives the breath of life.

If you want to really get mindblown, when we read in Genesis 2:7

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

The line, “and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” is really, “the breath of lives,” ostensibly referring to one male and one female.

But that is for another day.

But when Yeshua says, that YAHAVA is spirit (which is pneuma in Greek and Ruach in Hebrew) we are saying that He is the (Ha) BREATH of Life.

Speaking of Life, Adam called his rescuer, Eve – in Hebrew, what? AVA.

Did you know that the Hebrew word for breath is HAVA so when we say His name we speak of the “giver of Life.”

Additionally, we know that God is called, Father, right? Especially after the incarnation but He was also known by the Jews to be their Father.

The Hebrew word for father is AB

But the soft “b” sound in Hebrew is ALWAYS pronounced like a “V” so really, “Ab” is pronounced “Av” not “Ab”

The POINT??? (listen)

One cannot say YAHAVAH without uttering “father” at the same time.

Thus far God’s real name includes the terms,

Breath/breathing/Spirit
Father, and
Life

But we are not done. And this one is the clincher to me. The Hebrew word for love is “ahavah” (remember the soft “B” is ALWAYS pronounced like a “V”) and the POINT?

We cannot say God’s true name without saying, love, “Ahavah” and we cannot say love, in the Hebrew, without saying His name

From this, God is the Father, God is breath, God is Life, and GOD IS LOVE…. (Yahavah Ahavah)

And from this we see that His very real authentic beautiful name contains many of the main attributes of His Character.

It has been said that John wrote His epistles to confound Gnostic thought and what did the Gnostics think of the OLD TESTAMENT GOD? That he was a ruinous destroyer.

Interestingly, the Hebrew word for ruin or destroy is HOVAH.

Take what Psalm 68:4 says, which is

Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, (which means Lord) and add HOVAH

And we get, that “God is a ruiner or destroyer.”

And the joke is on us because in my opinion, any Hebrew scholar in the know is laugh at this pronunciation.

Remember that John wrote his epistles to confound the views of the Gnostics in his day and specifically said

1st John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. (He is “avahah” the lover NOT Yahovah the destroyer as the Gnostics claimed)

John repeats this 8 verses later and says

1st John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; (Avaha, love, not Yahovah ruin)

Then when we read in Mark 14:36 Where Jesus says,

Ava, Father (He doesn’t say “abba,” but ava), all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

And he was saying, and they were hearing at that time, the name of God.

OR when Paul writes

Roman 8:15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Ava, Father. (They heard that God is their Father)

Or when Paul wrote in Galatians 4:6

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Ava, Father. (And again, they and now we hear that Ava is our Father, our
YAHAVA.

And when we read Jesus saying that God is a Spirit, we prove it by the breathing His name – the inhaling and the exhaling, of name itself –

YAHAVA

Have you ever stopped and wondered what
John 12:28 means when Jesus says

“Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Have you ever asked yourself what the name is?

Its Father. (av)
Its breath. (ha ha)
Its life (Ava)
Its love (ahavah)

Have you ever wondered what Yeshua meant when, in His intercessory prayer to His father before His disciples and He said

John 17:6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

Or six verses later when He adds

12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Or 14 verses later where He adds

26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

Have you, like me, just assumed that what we were told by Kabbalistically led Israelites long after His death and resurrection was correct when the true Israelites were taken up as His Bride and the remainder were lost and wholly subject to mysticism?

I don’t know about you, but I will proudly, boldly but humbly make His name known, as it was supposed to be known for the past several thousand years and that name is not Yehovah, Jehovah or Yaway – they are meaningless. It will forever be

YAHAVA.

Questions/Comments
Prayer

David
Danny
Mallory

NOTE REFERENCES BELOW – DO NOT INCLUDE.

The oldest copies of the Masoretic Text only date back to the 10th century, nearly 1000 years after the time of Christ. And these texts differ from the originals in many specific ways. The Masoretic text is named after the Masoretes, who were scribes and Torah scholars who worked in the middle-east between the 7th and 11th centuries. The texts they received, and the edits they provided, ensured that the modern Jewish texts would manifest a notable departure from the original Hebrew Scriptures.
We will consider each point in turn:
Receiving Corrupted Texts
Many people believe that the ancient Hebrew text of Scripture was divinely preserved for many centuries, and was ultimately recorded in what we now call the “Masoretic Text”. But what did the Masoretes themselves believe? Did they believe they were perfectly preserving the ancient text? Did they even think they had received a perfect text to begin with?
History says “no” . . .
Scribal emendations – Tikkune Soferim
Early rabbinic sources, from around 200 CE, mention several passages of Scripture in which the conclusion is inevitable that the ancient reading must have differed from that of the present text. . . . Rabbi Simon ben Pazzi (3rd century) calls these readings “emendations of the Scribes” (tikkune Soferim; Midrash Genesis Rabbah xlix. 7), assuming that the Scribes actually made the changes. This view was adopted by the later Midrash and by the majority of Masoretes.
In other words, the Masorites themselves felt they had received a partly corrupted text.
A stream cannot rise higher than its source. If the texts they started with were corrupted, then even a perfect transmission of those texts would only serve to preserve the mistakes. Even if the Masoretes demonstrated great care when copying the texts, their diligence would not bring about the correction of even one error.
In addition to these intentional changes by Hebrew scribes, there also appear to be a number of accidental changes which they allowed to creep into the Hebrew text. For example, consider Psalm 145 . . .
Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem. Each line of the Psalm starts with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Yet in the Masoretic Text, one of the lines is completely missing:

Yet the Septuagint (LXX) Greek translation of the Old Testament does include the missing verse. And when that verse is translated back into Hebrew, it starts with the Hebrew letter ? (nun) which was missing from the Masoretic Text.
In the early 20th century, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves near Qumran. They revealed an ancient Hebrew textual tradition which differed from the tradition preserved by the Masoretes. Written in Hebrew, copies of Psalm 145 were found which include the missing verse:

The missing verse reads,
“The Lord is faithful in His words and holy in all His works.”
This verse can be found in the Orthodox Study Bible, which relies on the Septuagint. But this verse is absent from the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version(NKJV), the Complete Jewish Bible, and every other translation which is based on the Masoretic Text.
In this particular case, it is easy to demonstrate that the Masoretic Text is in error, for it is obvious that Psalm 145 was originally written as an acrostic Psalm. But what are we to make of the thousands of other locations where the Masoretic Text diverges from the Septuagint? If the Masoretic Text could completely erase an entire verse from one of the Psalms, how many other passages of Scripture have been edited? How many other verses have been erased?

A Radically Different Alphabet
If Moses were to see a copy of the Masoretic Text, he wouldn’t be able to read it.
As discussed in this recent post, the original Old Testament scriptures were written in Paleo-Hebrew, a text closely related to the ancient Phonecian writing system.
The Masoretic Text is written with an alphabet which was borrowed from Assyria (Persia) around the 6th-7th century B.C., and is almost 1000 years newer than the form of writing used by Moses, David, and most of the Old Testament authors.
Adding Vowel Points
For thousands of years, ancient Hebrew was only written with consonants, no vowels. When reading these texts, they had to supply all of the vowels from memory, based on oral tradition.
In Hebrew, just like modern languages, vowels can make a big difference. The change of a single vowel can radically change the meaning of a word. An example in English is the difference between “SLAP” and “SLIP”. These words have very different definitions. Yet if our language was written without vowels, both of these words would be written “SLP”. Thus the vowels are very important.
The most extensive change the Masoretes brought to the Hebrew text was the addition ofvowel points. In an attempt to solidfy for all-time the “correct” readings of all the Hebrew Scriptures, the Masoretes added a series of dots to the text, identifying which vowel to use in any given location.
Adam Clarke, an 18th Century Protestant scholar, demonstrates that the vowel-point system is actually a running commentary which was incorporated into the text itself.
In the General Preface of his biblical commentary published in 1810, Clarke writes:
“The Masorets were the most extensive Jewish commentators which that nation could ever boast. The system of punctuation, probably invented by them, is a continual gloss on the Law and the Prophets; their vowel points, and prosaic and metrical accents, &c., give every word to which they are affixed a peculiar kind of meaning, which in their simple state, multitudes of them can by no means bear. The vowel points alone add whole conjugations to the language. This system is one of the most artificial, particular, and extensive comments ever written on the Word of God; for there is not one word in the Bible that is not the subject of a particular gloss through its influence.”
Another early scholar who investigated this matter was Louis Cappel, who wrote during the early 17th century. An article in the 1948 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica includes the following information regarding his research of the Masoretic Text:
“As a Hebrew scholar, he concluded that the vowel points and accents were not an original part of Hebrew, but were inserted by the Masorete Jews of Tiberias, not earlier then the 5th Century AD, and that the primitive Hebrew characters are Aramaic and were substituted for the more ancient at the time of the captivity. . . The various readings in the Old Testament Text and the differences between the ancient versions and the Masoretic Text convinced him that the integrity of the Hebrew text as held by Protestants, was untenable.”
Many Protestants love the Masoretic Text, believing it to be a trustworthy representation of the original Hebrew text of Scripture. Yet, at the same time, most Protestants reject Orthodox Church Tradition as being untrustworthy. They believe that the Church’s oral tradition could not possibly preserve Truth over a long period of time.
Therefore, the vowel points of the Masoretic Text put Protestants in a precarious position. If they believe that the Masoretic vowels are not trustworthy, then they call the Masoretic Text itself into question. But if they believe that the Masoretic vowels are trustworthy, then they are forced to believe that the Jews successfully preserved the vowels of Scripture for thousands of years, through oral tradition alone, until the Masoretes finally invented the vowel points hundreds of years after Christ. Either conclusion is at odds with mainstream Protestant thought.
Either oral tradition can be trusted, or it can’t. If it can be trusted, then there is no reason to reject the Traditions of the Orthodox Church, which have been preserved for nearly 2000 years. But if traditions are always untrustworthy, then the Masoretic vowel points are also untrustworthy, and should be rejected.
Excluding Books of Scripture from the Old Testament
The Masoretic Text promotes a canon of the Old Testament which is significantly shorter than the canon represented by the Septuagint. Meanwhile, Orthodox Christians and Catholics have Bibles which incorporate the canon of the Septuagint. The books of Scripture found in the Septuagint, but not found in the Masoretic Text, are commonly called either the Deuterocanon or the anagignoskomena. While it is outside the scope of this article to perform an in-depth study of the canon of Scripture, a few points relevant to the Masoretic Text should be made here:
With the exception of two books, the Deuterocanon was originally written in Hebrew.
In three places, the Talmud explicitly refers to the book of Sirach as “Scripture”.
Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, a feast which originates in the book of 1 Maccabees, and nowhere else in the Old Testament.
The New Testament book of Hebrews recounts the stories of multiple Old Testament saints, including a reference to martyrs in the book of 2 Maccabees.
The book of Wisdom includes a striking prophecy of Christ, and its fulfillment is recorded in Matthew 27.
Numerous findings among the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest the existence of 1st century Jewish communities which accepted many of the Deuterocanonical books as authentic Scripture.
Many thousands of 1st-century Christians were converts from Judaism. The early Church accepted the inspiration of the Deuterocanon, and frequently quoted authoritatively from books such as Wisdom, Sirach, and Tobit. This early Christian practice suggests that many Jews accepted these books, even prior to their conversion to Christianity.
Ethiopian Jews preserved the ancient Jewish acceptance of the Septuagint, including much of its canon of Scripture. Sirach, Judith, Baruch, and Tobit are among the books included in the canon of the Ethiopian Jews.
These reasons, among others, suggest the existence of a large 1st-century Jewish community which accepted the Deuterocanon as inspired Scripture.
Changes to Prophecy and Doctrine
When compiling any given passage of Scripture, the Masoretes had to choose among multiple versions of the ancient Hebrew texts. In some cases the textual differences were relatively inconsequential. For example, two texts may differ over the spelling of a person’s name.
However, in other cases they were presented with textual variants which made a considerable impact upon doctrine or prophecy. In cases like these, were the Masoretes completely objective? Or did their anti-Christian biases influence any of their editing decisions?
In the 2nd century A.D., hundreds of years before the time of the Masoretes, Justin Martyr investigated a number of Old Testament texts in various Jewish synagogues.
He ultimately concluded that the Jews who had rejected Christ had also rejected the Septuagint, and were now tampering with the Hebrew Scriptures themselves:
“But I am far from putting reliance in your teachers, who refuse to admit that the interpretation made by the seventy elders who were with Ptolemy [king] of the Egyptians is a correct one; and they attempt to frame another. And I wish you to observe, that they have altogether taken away many Scriptures from the [Septuagint] translations effected by those seventy elders who were with Ptolemy, and by which this very man who was crucified is proved to have been set forth expressly as God, and man, and as being crucified, and as dying” (~150 A.D., Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Chapter LXXI)
If Justin Martyr’s findings are correct, then it is likely that the Masoretes inherited a Hebrew textual tradition which had already been corrupted with an anti-Christian bias. And if we look at some of the most significant differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text, that is precisely what we see. For example, consider the following comparisons:

These are not random, inconsequential differences between the texts. Rather, these appear to be places where the Masoretes (or their forebears) had a varied selection of texts to consider, and their decisions were influenced by anti-Christian bias. Simply by choosing one Hebrew text over another, they were able to subvert the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, His healing of the blind, His crucifixion, and His salvation of the Gentiles. The Jewish scribes were able to edit Jesus out of many important passages, simply by rejecting one Hebrew text, and selecting (or editing) another text instead.
Thus, the Masoretic Text has not perfectly preserved the original Hebrew text of Scripture. The Masoretes received corrupted texts to begin with, they used an alphabet which was radically different from the original Hebrew, they added countless vowel points which did not exist in the original, they excluded several books from the Old Testament scriptures, and they included a number of significant changes to prophecy and doctrine.
It would seem that the Septuagint (LXX) translation is not only far more ancient than the Masoretic Text . . . the Septuagint is far more accurate as well. It is a more faithful representation of the original Hebrew Scriptures.
Perhaps that is why Jesus and the apostles frequently quoted from the Septuagint, and accorded it full authority as the inspired Word of God.