Hey guys! So today we’re going to be talking about who “God” is in the Old Testament. It can get a little confusing and we’ve got a lot to cover so let’s just jump right in.
Alright, so in the Old Testament, despite a variety of titles for God, there is only one proper name attributed to God. In the original Hebrew, it was this 4-letter word, which is called the tetragrammaton. This word is transliterated into English as YHWH or the variant JHVH. There are no vowels in Hebrew so to make sense of it in English we have to add our own. Thus, YHWH becomes YaHWeH, while the variant JHVH becomes the more Latinized, JeHoVaH.
The tetragrammaton appears in the Old Testament more than 6500 times. Yet, in the English King James Version of the Old Testament, “Yahweh” doesn’t appear at all, and “Jehovah” only appears a handful of times. “This is because the translators generally followed a Jewish practice that developed sometime after 500 BC of not pronouncing the divine name YHWH out of respect for its holiness.”
Instead of Jehovah or Yahweh, the tetragrammaton is translated as the more general title, “LORD”, or, in Hebrew, Adonai. Pro-tip: when “LORD” is used to represent the tetragrammaton, it will be in small capital letters in your KJV Bible. So when you see “LORD”, think, Jehovah or Yahweh. When it’s not in small caps, it refers to other heavenly or earthly leaders.
Now, Latter-day Saints believe that Yahweh, Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, was the premortal, unembodied Jesus Christ. We believe that that is what scripture teaches, both ancient and modern.
To read more: Faith & Beliefs
