There are other top Masoretic manuscripts with the name of God written out with full vowels along with the Aleppo Codex (924 AD). One thing first, the Aleppo Codex has missing pages due to a fire in 1947. The Arabs saw no value in it and discarded it. Most of the Codex was found but it has missing pages. We also have the Leningrad Codex (1005 AD); the British Library Or 4445 (920-950 AD); the Cairo Codex of the Prophets (895 AD); the Damascus Crown Sassoon 507 (10th Century) and Sassoon 1053 (10th Century). These are key manuscripts.
In the Leningrad Codex, YHVH is written with full vowels in Lev 25.17, “So you shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear God; for I am Yehovah your God.” The British Library Or 4445 has full vowels in Lev 22.9, “They shall therefore keep my charge so that they may not sine because of it, and die thereby because they profane it; I am Yehovah who sanctifies you.”
In the Cairo Codex of the Prophets, in Ezek 7.4 it says, “For my eyes will have no pity on you, nor shall I spare you, but I shall bring your ways down on you, and your abominations will be among you, then you will know I am Yehovah.” In the Damascus Crown Sassoon 507, in Deut 6.4-5 it says, “Hear O Israel, Yehovah is our God, Yehovah is one. And you shall love Yehovah your God with all your heart.” Three times it is written fully! Yeshua said this was the greatest commandment of all in Matt 22.35-40. In the Damascus Crown Sassoon 1053, in Exo 10.9, it says, “And Moses said, “We shall go with our young and our old; with our sons and daughters, with our flocks and our herds we will go, for we must hold a feast to Yehovah.”
The most accurate manuscript is the Aleppo Codex by Aaron Ben Asher. It turns out that there are two manuscripts written by Aaron Ben Asher’s father. His name was Moshe Ben Asher. Now we know where Aaron learned to do manuscripts. The Ben Asher family of scribes go back to at least 650 AD. The father Moshe wrote the Cairo Codex of the Prophets in 895 AD, but there is a second Moshe Ben Asher manuscript which is in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. That location has over 1500 Bible manuscripts and many are from this early period. Ivri 2-B-88 from 908 AD was written by Moshe Ben Asher and it also had God’s name written out with full vowels.
Our Bibles came from the work of the Ben Asher family of scribes in Tiberius between 600 and 1000 AD. There was a rival family of scribes called the Ben Naftali family, but some say there are no Ben Naftali manuscripts anymore, so says the current wisdom. However, there are two Ben Naftali manuscripts, and until Hebrew manuscripts were digitalized, very few people knew they existed. One is from the Russian Library, Ivri 2-B-5 and the other is Ivri 2-B-63. Both of these have the full vowels of God’s name written out as Yehovah.
So, not only do we have it in the Ben Asher family of scribes but we also have it in their rivals work. They both knew the name was pronounced “Yehovah.” They were also a part of this Jewish conspiracy of silence that did not want the people to know or speak the name. In their head they know it, but in their hand they put in the full vowels. The earliest dated manuscript from 894 AD in the Russian National Library is Ivri 2-B-100. This was part of the personal Bible of Saadia Gaon, who was the leading rabbi of the 9th and 10th century. He literally was the lead rabbi in the world. He defended Judaism against the Karaites and is considered a hero in Rabbinic Judaism. His name is in the manuscript of his Bible and this Bible has the full vowels of God’s name as Yehovah.
Aaron Ben Asher was a Karaite. The Karaites maintain that all the commandments handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah without an additional Oral Law. As a result, the Karaite Jews do not accept as binding the written collections of the oral tradition in the Mishnah or Talmud. The Cairo Codex of the Prophets is in the Karaite Synagogue in Cairo today.
The great opponent of the Karaites, Saadia Gaon, has Yehovah in his Bible. This is not some crazy Karaite “thing” about the name, it is found in the Bible of the leading rabbi in Judaism of the 9th and 10th century. We have two completely different witnesses who were not colluding to create some kind of falsehood. The Vatican even has a manuscript called “Hebrew 448” (1100 AD) which says in Gen 21.33, “And there he called on the name of Yehovah the everlasting God.” The name is written with full vowels.
Now, we have mentioned before that there are over 2300 manuscripts with the name Yehovah in them (and none with Yahweh). There are people who are searching available manuscripts and are finding YHVH written with full vowels, and there are 2300 as of 2020. This name has been a secret for over 1000 years and these manuscripts go back to 894 AD. When the scribes put in the full vowels it is consistently read as Yehovah. There are three different types of vowel pointing. They are the Tiberian, Babylonian and the Land of Israel. All the “schools” of vowel pointing say Yehovah.
The 1000th manuscript found with the name written with vowels says, “and serve in the name of Yehovah” (Deut 18.5). Later on in the manuscript in Deut 18.15 it has YHVH written with full vowels saying, “Yehovah your God will raise up to you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.” This clearly refers to Yeshua as the Shaliach of the Second Redemption. This name is important for all people (Psa 148.13; Mal 1.11).
Now, there is a misunderstanding out there of the name Yehovah. There are people who are teaching that “Hovah” means “destruction.” If you look into Strong’s Concordance, which is the extent of their Hebrew knowledge, there is a word “hovah” that means “destruction.” So, in their limited Hebrew knowledge, they say Yehovah means “O hail, destruction.” That is not how Hebrew, or English, works. For instance, if you say” assume” you are not saying to make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” Assume comes from the Latin “Assumere.” It has nothing to do with “ass” but only sounds like it. Assume has as much to do with the word “ass” as Yehovah has to do with the word “hovah.” It is sickening to tie in the two. Why would anyone strip the “yod” (‘) from YHVH and turn it into “destruction?”
God’s name clearly comes from the words “hayah, hoveh and yihyeh” which are three forms of the Hebrew verb “he was, he is, he that will be.” If you take “hoveh” from that root it doesn’t mean “destruction” but “she is.” Why tie it to a completely different word? This is done by people who do not know Hebrew. There is no connection between the name Yehovah and the word hovah because they are from two unraleted Hebrew roots: HYH “to be” and HVH “destruction.” The beauty of “hayah, hoveh and yihyeh” is it means “to be” and when you add the Hebrew letter “Yod” (‘), it means “he was, he is and he is to be” or in other words, Yehovah. The book of Hebrews and the book of Revelation both say that about God (Heb 13.8; Rev 1.4,8). For more information on this, go to “Nehemiah’s Wall” and the article “A Disastrous misunderstanding of the name Yehovah.”
Now, let’s look at the exact same five names. If a “YHV” (yod, hey, vav) appears at the beginning of a name, it is pronounced “Yeho” as in Yehoshua, Yehonatan, Yehoachaz, Yehochanan and Yehotzadak. If the “YHV” (yod, hey, vav) appears at the end of a name it is pronounced “Yahu” as in Yeshayahu, Natanyahu, Achazyahu, Chananyahu, Tzadakiyahu. These five names mean the same thing, even if it begins with “Yeho” or ends with “Yahu.” Now, the name of God begins with a “YHV” (yod, hey, vav) so it is “Yeho” and that is what they find in the Hebrew manuscripts.
There is a verse in Prob 18.10 that says “The name of Yehovah is a strong tower (Migdal Oz), the righteous run into it and are safe.” On September 11, 2001, as the terrorists were destroying the towers of men, they proclaimed the name of their false god. At that very moment in Israel, the true pronunciation of YHVH was being revealed to be proclaimed in the earth, from the Aleppo Codex.
A strong tower, like a “keep” in castles, is the last refuge when everything else fails. His name is like that to us. Now, there is an example of this concept associated with September 11. 2001. There is a church in New York City, right next to ground zero. It is called St. Paul’s Chapel of the Trinity. When the two towers collapsed, this chapel was untouched even though it was 0.2 miles from the WTC. It was built in 1766 and George Washington attended it when he was in New York, it was the capital. People ran into this chapel as debris was crashing all around them, and found refuge.
The reason it is relevant is because at the front of the chapel is a sculpture of Mount Sinai. At the bottom of it there is the Ten Commandments, and up at the top of Mount Sinai, with light coming out of it, was the name of God in Hebrew (YHVH). The man who designed this is Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who did the basic design for Washington, DC. How many churches have the name of God written in Hebrew at the front? Not many. On top of that, on one of the arches, God’s name YHVH appears again. Is it possible that this is a fulfillment of not only Prov 18.10, but Exo 20.24 where it says, “In every place that I cause my name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you.” People literally ran into a place where the strong tower of God was, not the strong tower of men that was crashing down, and found safety.
In Part 7 we will pick up here.
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