Saturday, November 3, 2018

Did Pietro Colonna Galatino Invent the Form "Jehovah"?

Brown-Driver-Briggs states:
The pronunciation Jehovah was unknown until 1520, when it was introduced by Galatinus; but it was contested by Le Mercier, J. Drusius, and L. Capellus, as against grammatical and historical propriety.
As yet we have not found Galatino's works online so as to examine how he used the form "Jehovah." Evidently, he wrote in Latin, not English. At any rate, the forms Jehovah, Iehouah, Yehowah, etc., are all based on one of the forms of the Holy Name as found in the Masoretic text. The Masoretes had supplied the vowel points for that form long before Galatino was alive. 

We have not been able to find much online about this, and most of what we found is inaccurate, or incomplete, in what is stated. We will present some of what we found, and our comments:

The statement still commonly repeated that [the form "Jehovah] originated with Petrus Galatinus (1518) is erroneous; "Jehova" occurs in manuscripts at least as early as the 14th century.
The form Jehovah was used in the 16th century by many authors, both Catholic and Protestant, and in the 17th was zealously defended by Fuller, Gataker, Leusden and others, against the criticisms of such scholars as Drusius, Cappellus and the elder Buxtorf. It appeared in the English Bible in Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch (1530), and is found in all English Protestant versions of the 16th century except that of Coverdale (1535). In the Authorized Version of 1611 it occurs in Exod. vi. 3; Ps. lxxxiii. 15; Isa. xii., xxvi. 4, beside the compound names Jehovah-jireh, Jehovah-nissi, Jehovah-shalom; elsewhere, in accordance with the usage of the ancient versions, Jhvh is represented by lord (distinguished by capitals from the title "Lord," Heb. adonay). In the Revised Version of 1885, Jehovah is retained in the places in which it stood in the A. V., and is introduced also in Exod. vi. 2, 6, 7, 8; Ps. lxviii. 20; Isa. xlix. 14; Jer. xvi. 21; Hab. iii. 19. The American committee which cooperated in the revision desired to employ the name Jehovah wherever Jhvh occurs in the original, and editions embodying their preferences are printed accordingly. -- "Jehovah", 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
The author of this article evidently is only considering either Latin or English forms, and appears to disregard the vowel points supplied the Masoretes. The Masoretes completed their work sometime before the tenth century, but they had been working on this for several centuries before. As far as we can determine, there is no way to know when they first used the Hebrew form with its vowel points. Regardless, the form in that text predates all of the usages spoken of in the quote.

Another article:
He [Galatino] is sometimes referred to as the "inventor" of the Latinized term Jehovah; however, this is really not accurate. The pronuntiation "Jehovah" occurred as a result of mixing the Tetragrammaton "YHWH" with the vowels of "Adonai,"[citation needed] which the Jewish Masoretes had added to the Hebrew text to remind readers NOT to pronounce the Holy Name of God "YHWH", but substitute, in reading, "Adonai" which means "Lord.">> "Pietro Colonna Galatino", Wikipedia, The Free Encylopedia.
The author of the above does show that the Masoretes added the vowel points from which the form Jehovah is derived, but then repeats the often-stated claim that the Masoretes took the vowels from the Masoretic form transliterated as Adonai for use in the Holy Name, supposedly to remind the reader to mispronounce the Holy Name by substituting it with Adonai. While this view has become very popular among both Christian and Jewish scholars, there is no real evidence that this what the Masoretes did.

It has been maintained by some recent scholars that the word Jehovah dates only from the year 1520 (cf. Hastings, "Dictionary of the Bible", II, 1899, p. 199: Gesenius-Buhl, "Handwörterbuch", 13th ed., 1899, p. 311). Drusius (loc. cit., 344) represents Peter Galatinus as the inventor of the word Jehovah, and Fagius as it propagator in the world of scholars and commentators. But the writers of the sixteenth century, Catholic and Protestant (e.g. Cajetan and Théodore de Bèze), are perfectly familiar with the word. Galatinus himself ("Areana cathol. veritatis", I, Bari, 1516, a, p. 77) represents the form as known and received in his time. Besides, Drusius (loc. cit., 351) discovered it in Porchetus, a theologian of the fourteenth century. Finally, the word is found even in the "Pugio fidei" of Raymund Martin, a work written about 1270 (ed. Paris, 1651, pt. III, dist. ii, cap. iii, p. 448, and Note, p. 745). Probably the introduction of the name Jehovah antedates even R. Martin. -- "Jehovah (Yahweh)", Catholic Encylopedia. 

The author of this article again does not point out that the Masoretes provided the vowel points that correspond to the rendering "Jehovah", "Yehowah", etc., sometime before the tenth century BC. The author does, in the context, discuss the use of vowels from ADONAI or ELOHIM in the Holy Name, although it does not mention the Masoretes or the Masoretic text.


Another point is that the author states that Raymund Martini used the form "Jehovah" about 1270. The form "Jehova", does appear in the later published work, but in the original, it is reported that Martini used the form "Yohoua." We have not been able to obtain a copy of this work, but it is reported that Martini argued against the Masoretic text, which would not support the idea that he used the form "Jehova" (as found in the later published edition), since "Jehova" is definitely based on the vowel points found in the Masoretic text.

At any rate, to say that any author invented the form "Jehovah" sometime after the tenth century AD would be very misleading, since the Masoretes had already provided the vowel points that result in the various forms "Jehovah", "Yehowah", etc.


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