Nehemia Gordon and the Tetragrammaton

For those who don’t know, Nehemia Gordon argues that the Tetragrammaton was pronounced as Yehovah. The reasons why this does not work, why he is incorrect, has been explained here^[1] before.

However, he made a conspicuous case for his belief on Facebook in 2012 that will be analyzed here. It actually serves as a good case in point how he makes his fundamental mistake thinking that the Tetragrammaton was pointed as Yehovah. Additionally, there are a number of my fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses who have fallen prey to his argumentation, some even well-versed in Hebrew. I believe they are making the same basic mistake as he is making. The mistake is rather simple, but it also takes humility to recognize it. Unfortunately, the more knowledge of Hebrew one has, the more humility is needed to see this mistake.

So, here is the presentation Nehemia Gordon made that he thinks is unimpeachable:

The Tetragrammaton in Ezekiel 28:22 in the Aleppo Codex. In this instance the name is juxtaposed to "Adonai" and traditionally read as "Elohim" to avoid reading "Adonai" twice in a row. Rather than inserting the vowels of Elohim, the scribe inserted the true vowels "Yehovah"!

While the example he showed from Ezekiel 28:22 is quite interesting, what it amounts to is an example of inconsistency. That is all. The reason for this is that copyist here inconsistently added the vowels of Anonai instead of Elohim. That is, the copyist was presented with Adonai YHWH, translated as “Sovereign Lord Jehovah” in the New World Transation. Instead of adding the vowels of Adonai again, he was supposed to add the vowels of Elohim. But he didn’t, and used the standard conversion of the vowels of Adonai on the Tetragrammaton. We know it’s the standard conversion of the vowels of Adonai because the compound shewa was converted to the simple shewa on the yodh. The copyist also inconsistently neglected to add the cholem (dot above the D) for Adonai. So, there are actually two cases of copyist inconsistencies together, and Nehemia only alerted his audience to one of them.

Presented below are screenshots of the Aleppo Codex^[2]:

Ezekiel 28:22 is in the lower right corner with Adonai YHWH in a green box that Nehemia misused to support his beliefs. The Tetragrammaton appears again in verse 22 on the top of the next column, and is in a red box, as is the Tetragrammaton of verse 23. Both have the vowels of Adonai, with the one in verse 22 sporting the cholem while the other does not. This is another case of inconsistency. “Adonai YHWH” appears in verses 24 and 25, and they are in blue boxes, and the Tetragrammaton is pointed with Elohim and the cholem is consistently present. Verse 26 in the top image, the last verse in chapter 28, has the Tetragrammaton with the vowels of Adonai but without the cholem.

So, all Mr. Gordan did was point out one inconsistency while ignoring the other, and ignoring how the Tetragrammaton was treated in the rest of the chapter. Hopefully it is clear now why this type of reasoning, as seen in his Facebook post, is wholly unconvincing and aggravatingly simplistic.

Footnotes:
^[1] See: The reason for the name and On Pronouncing YHWH
^[2] barhama.com (manually select panel 19-177-v).