hebrewgospels.com - Peter and Justin van Rensburg

Steven Avery

Administrator
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Steven Avery

Administrator
David Compton discussion in private area, check his final try to defend.

The Creator's Name
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheCreatorsName/permalink/924724351258762/
Has review, is it the same as below?

Steven Avery

“Did Nehemia Gordon discover the ‘real’ name of God?”. The title is a really, really bad start.

· Totally confused at the beginning - thinking that Yehovah was a “new discovery of truth” rather than new evidences that support the traditional pre-Gesenius consensus. The point is that it is put forth as being new truth. Also at 9:45 there is a clip where Nehemiah clearly claims to have "discovered the name".

· Then “missing vowel”. Red herring - hard to listen to because the presumptions are false. Not sure what is being referred to here.

· Ugh - they add (previously) - faux scholarship Not sure what you are referring to here.

· They use a (stupid) quote from Michael Rood - who stayed with Yahweh for almost a decade! Now I do not trust their snippets. I thought that the snippet was fair enough - but I'm not sure that it really necessarily reflects badly on Nehemiah. I'm not a big supporter of Michael Rood. I could never really understand why Nehemiah wanted to join his "brand" with Roods. Rood seems to get the facts messed up frequently during his videos with Nehemiah - to Nehemiah's credit he usually gently sets the record straight.

· The secret was only in rabbinical Jewish circles — except the 15+ evidences found mostly by Nehemia. Isn't the point of this video that it really wasn't a secret because it was there "in black and white" in the manuscripts, and other places, all along?

· Now he claims the hey should have no vowel “for several reasons” and the right form is without the cholam — even the AV1611 has the cholam! And various additions I think that you've confused what he says here. Justin says that the final hey is a "vowel letter" (mater lectionis) and that it should have no vowel.

· Last year I discussed with Nehemia the year of the seminar at Rood’s house - he said 2002, I think that is right

· Stupid comment that without the cholam the pronunciation is “grammatically impossible” I don't think Justin is very clear in what he is saying here. He seems to actually be referring back to the first video and the fact that Nehemiah uses the order of the three words to support the pronunciation Yehovah. And if the order is changed then the pronunciation doesn't work. I wouldn't call the comment stupid - unclear and not really necessary in the flow of the video, fair enough, but I think "stupid" is a bit harsh.

· Now he switches to printed editions - as if that was a secret. This confusion (Justin?) is painful. As I have discussed the historical debate (including Reland, Drach, etc.) with Nehemia, this fellow is looking more and more as a worthless deceptive deceiver, allowing the worth of the first question. Of course we knew Ben Hayim has the full vowels and the Complutensian Polyglot is no surprise, since the Christian Hebraist movement was strong, the contras called it a Christian error. I think that you may be just looking at things from your view point here. Your studies have clearly shown you the existence of the cholam in these various places. Anyone who has done any sort of half decent in depth study would also know this. But Nehemiah, and Michael Rood, do not present it this way. They present it as some sort of new discovery that has been made. So the uneducated are going to get the wrong impression. That seems to be the very point that Justin is trying to make. So while this may all seem unnecessary and superfluous to you - to others it may well be eye opening.

· What a liar, or ignoramus — “long before Nehemia discovered the cholam” 18:45, maybe 17:45. (might actually be 16:45). I don't see the problem with this comment. Unfortunately this is the way that Nehemiah and Michael present Nehemiah's research. I actually mentioned this to a friend the other day who has watched Nehemiah's "The Gentiles Shall No My Name" series. He thought that it was definitely put forward as a new discovery.

· ‘“Does it seem to you that this cholam was a secret for 1,000 years?” 18:30

· 18:15: Now he is pretending that the ms. access online was the same in 2005 as 2020, and is confirming that most mss. have the cholam, which was written by nobody till Nehemia’s studies

· The 5 mss. was not the “giant discovery” the 1,000 to 2,000 to 2,300 is (and many have 0)

· He should have a zero count, rather than an estimate.

· All this did not become a major search till around 2015, When I was in Israel in 2016 I tried some checking at Hebrew U for Nehemia in Texas. I mean 2017. That was about rabbinical writing

· More lies - “why should we think it is impossible..?” Again I think you are being too harsh here. I think this is no more than a bad choice of words. I think he just means "why should we think it is a big task" (to find extra manuscripts).

· Now he is totally confused, thinking fragments should be combined to 100-200 pages. I'm not really sure why this combining is all about - that will be a point that I ask Justin to clarify.

· A 5-page ms. with 25 tetra counts as a ms. - only if there are close to zero tetra would they not count

· He may not be surprised, looking backwards is easy, but not one scholar had described or predicted this phenomenon — 20-20 hindsight at play. A typical fallacy approach

· Also he wrongly quotes 4,000 something “fragments” never hear those words from Nehemia

· He keeps going with the red herring stuff - that Nehemia claims Jehovah was a historic secret. He owes his people an apology With respect, I still think that this is how it would come across to the average listener.

· Terrible editing at 33:30

· Where Nehemia says everyone used Jehovah before Gesenius (a bit of an exaggeration, there were some contras in the 1600s-1700s )

· This child seems to know zero of the actual scholarship debate and pseudo-consensus.

· Based on his misrepresentation that Nehemia claimed to discover the secret cholam —he accuses Nehemia of “ignorance or dishonesty”

· Just wanted to summarize:

o The great deception in video 2 has a subtle component

o Drastically misrepresent the claims, and then smugly attack your misrepresentation

o Again and again

o Nehemia never claims that either the cholam or the name Yehovah has been secret

o That is why this pair do tricky editing

o To deform rather than inform

o Nehemia writes in the context of the modern faux pseudo-consensus that sort of begins with Gesenius. Isn't part of the problem that this video is trying to address the fact that many (most) of the listeners to Nehemiah will not be aware of this history. So they will think that Nehemiah has discovered this stuff. When in fact it has been known and widely available at pretty much any point in history.

o And now can easily be overturned - by any solid thinkers
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
From Facebook, compare to above.

Two HebrewGospels.com Vids
The post with vids from:
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/yhwh Also at https://archive.org/search.php…
Justin J van Rensburg - son
Peter van Rensburg - father
sort of fell into a Facebook vortext on this forum.
And I listened to both vids, and some notes may make it to the dad and son. (Apparently they have or plan five vids.)
And here is a summary for the forum..
==========
Vid 1 (24 minutes)
This vid raises a reasonable word order question as to Nehemia's presentation of the three tense theory (e.g. look around min 13.).
They call it an "abbreviation" theory, however I think that is only their word (placing their words in the mouth of others occurs in both vids.).
Note that the three tenses idea has a long history among strong Hebraists (which they do not mention.)
None of this is especially consequential in view of all the evidences for Yehovah. The three tense idea is an auxiliary component.
However the word order question is definitely legit for Nehemia. And can be reasonably understood.
They weaken the presentation at the end with a silly analogy.
And then the segue to Vid 2 which has the absurd title:
“Did Nehemia Gordon discover the ‘real’ name of God?”
"Did Nehemia Gordon discover the 'real' name Yehova?"
is how it is worded in the end of Vid 1.
All sorts of strawman fallacies in the vids.
===========
Vid 2 (47 minutes)
This vid is a total disaster. Nehemia is grossly misrepresented, and than attacked from the basis of the faux misrepresentations (e.g. that Nehemia claimed to find the missing cholam.)
There is an ugly smugness and arrogance which is really a disaster. (This would be true right or wrong.)
Actually the whole vid is a disaster, beginning to end, combining a group of fallacies and scholarly problems.
(Strawman, misrepresentation, anachronism, omitting salient historical information, word-parsing, vid editing to give a false impression, and numerical mish-a-mosh.) Also a type of "looking back" fallacy that assumes that everything that is known today could easily be found, based on our tools and understanding today.
The misrepresentation is key.
As a point of fact, as far as we know nobody historically has made solid points about YHVH in the Masoretic text mss. -- until Nehemia and friends.
Does Justin's youth supply a point of explanation? I don't think so, since his dad is actively involved.
It does give us another example of very poor scholarship on the contra-Nehemia train.
However, to be fair, one good point is raised in the first vid.
Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY
In biblical thinking, name equals authority and fame. By obscuring the Creator’s name (spelled ‘Yod-Hey-Waw-Hey’ in Hebrew), Satan attempts to interfere with the Creator’s authority and his fame. Help us to declare the true name of the Creator.
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
What are their names and why?
Each of these has a picture.

Introduction

Video One
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video1-yhwh
1. Is YHWH an abbreviation of 'Hayah, Hoveh, Yihyeh'?
23:45

Video Two
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video2-yhwh
2. Did Nehemia Gordon discover the 'real' name of God?
46:57

Video Three
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video3-yhwh
3. Was Ketiv-Qere applied to YHWH?
1:08:53

Video Four
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video4-yhwh
4. Would Scribes change a Composite Shewa into a Simple Shewa for Ketiv-Qere Perpetuum?
43:47

Video Five
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video5-yhwh
5. Why is the Cholem often Missing on the Name YHWH?
1:02:27

Video Six
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video6-yhwh
6. Eight proofs from the Masoretic Text that Adonai's vowels were placed on YHWH (Part A)
1:21:57

Video Seven
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video-7-yhwh
7. Eight proofs from the Masoretic Text that Adonai's vowels were placed on YHWH (Part B)
1:22:58

Video Eight
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/video-8-yhwh
8. Is Nehemia Gordon Trustworthy, Honest and a Searcher of Truth?
1:02:59
 
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Kalkas

New member
Hello,

it is a pity that most of the discussion on Justin’s videos is on Facebook, since I do not like Facebook (due to privacy issue).

In this post, I prefer to write the name “Yehovah” instead of “Jehovah.” I respect the KJV spelling ”Jehovah,” but prefer to write as “Yehovah” in English context. In the days of KJV translators, they did not pronounce the letter J as we do today, i.e., not with the sound J as in “James,” but with the sound Y as in “yellow.”

My initial thoughts on Justin’s attack on the holy name of Yehovah.

First, Justin does not explain why there is absolutely no manuscript with scribal notes indicating that the vowel points EOA (Shva, Holam, Qamatz) were Qere-Ketiv pointing to “Adonai,” even if we suppose that YeHoVah is Qere Perpetuum. Even if we were dealing with Qere Perpetuum, there would be at least once mentioned. According to Nehemiah Gordon,

“Now it is true that in such instances [of Qere Perpetuum] that the scribal note is sometimes left out. But in the other instances of Qere Perpetuum the scribal note appears sometimes and is omitted other times for brevity. Yet nowhere in Scripture is there an instance of Qere Perpetuum in which the word written one way but read another way always lacks a scribal note. If we were to apply the Qere Perpetuum rule to YHVH it would be unique in this class of Qere-Ketiv since it never has a scribal note saying "read it Adonai", not once in the 6828 times the word appears” [Nehemia Gordon, “The Pronunciation of the Name,” p. 3, accessed 24. March 2021].

Second, he does not come with an adequate explanation why is the vowel O (Holam) in most instances omitted (for instance about 93 percent in Aleppo Codex), if Yehovah reading is not forbidden. If “Yehovah” is not the true name of the God of the Bible, then there is no danger of accidental pronouncing it when reading it as it is written with EOA vowels. But the full vowels with EOA are very few, where O is in most instances omitted. Why is it omitted? The explanation is that it would give an ”impossible“ reading. But why making it impossible to read by omitting holam if Yehovah reading is not forbidden?

(After writing the first version of this post, I realized that I have not watched his fifth video dealing with this issue. Here comes some of my thoughts on some of his explanation.)

His explanation is that the scribes omitted the holam (vowel O) so that we would not read the gibberish, i.e., pronouncing wrongly the name of the Creator. His evidence for this is that there are cases of YeH?ViH (vowel points to Elohim) where O is missing. However, the question is how many are such cases against the cases with full vowel points (i.e., YeHoViH). I have not checked the Leningrad Codex, but in Aleppo Codex, there are only two times with missing holam against 291 times where holam is present. This indicates that the scribe of the Aleppo Codex was not worried if we read the gibberish YeHoViH. He was more worried about YeHoVah given the fact that there were six instances of YeHoVaH against the 4000 times of YeH?VaH. The scribes were more worried not to pronounce the true name of God, as Justin demonstrated this fact in his second video.

I have not completely watched his fifth video, and maybe he takes this issues in his video. I will watch it later today.

Third, I am not convinced by his explanation why the first vowel is shva (E) instead of hateph pathach (A) as it appears as the first vowel of the word Adonai. Even if we allow for grammatical correct conjugations where there is a vowel change from A to E, it does not show that these conjugations applies to Qere-Ketiv. One thing is to say that “Adonai” can have vowel change, but another is to apply this change to a whole different word YHVH.

I have not watched all videos, but I am curious how is his explanation of theophoric names that stars with YE, such as Yehoshua (Jesus) and Yehonathan (Jonathan). For me is such theophoric names the strongest evidence for Yehovah!

I also think that the translators of the Protestant Bibles during the Reformation were quite familiar with the scribal practices and knew about Qere-Ketiv. They were not so ignorant as the modern academics like to think of them.

Best regards,
Aleksandar
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Hi, Kalkas!

Thanks.

Thanks, Yehovah is fine. I will add some thoughts shortly.

I have not watched all videos, but I am curious how is his explanation of theophoric names that stars with YE, such as Yehoshua (Jesus) and Yehonathan (Jonathan). For me is such theophoric names the strongest evidence for Yehovah!

Let me know if you find out how he tries to handwave this connection. We agree that in many ways this is the strongest argument, and given forcefully by writers over hundreds of years, including Drach in the 1800s.

He tries to handwave the 15+ Hebraic sources by the genetic fallacy .. "they are all Kabbalists", which really is nonsense.

btw, CARM is one of the possible additional discussion points.

It will probably be a few days until I can give this due diligence, doing some proofreading :).

Note: I give Justin credit for a couple of points, and should send them to Nehemia by email, my other contact methods not really working.
 
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Kalkas

New member
Hello Steven!

Thanks for your input! It is nice to know that other people are also interested in Justin’s attack and a proper response to it. Have you contacted Nehemia?

I will let you know when I have finished watching his fourth and fifth video.

Concerning the first video. Nehemia has not actually reversed the sentence “He was, He is, and He will be,” since, in the first place, there is no sentence in any manuscript of the Bible that Nehemia was referring to. It is a mere reflection on the verb “to be” and the name of God. Justin has claimed that the sentence (“He was, He is, and He will be”) is in some manuscript and has been reversed by Nehemia, but he does not give any reference data of the manuscript in question. Nehemia’s point is that the name “Yehovah” comes from the Hebrew verb Ehyeh meaning “to be.” Here is as Nehemia explains it in his video A Disastrous Misunderstanding of the Name Yehovah:

“Yehovah comes from the same root as Ehyeh: the hollow root HYH. Yehovah is actually a combination of three verb-forms: Hayah "he was", Hoveh "he is", and Yih'yeh "he is now and will continue to be in the future". Together Hayah, Hoveh, and Yih'yeh combine into the name Yehovah.”

Now why should we combine the three verb-forms from the past tense to the future tense? Nothing forbids us to start with the future tense if we just reflect upon the verb “to be” and the name Yehovah. The point is that Yehovah is indeed a nice contraction from these three verb-forms if we start from the future tense to the past tense. It is a nice observation that a fluent speaker of Hebrew can see it at once.

Thanks for your comments, Dan. :)

Best regards,
Aleksandar
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
Hi Kalkas!

This is an interesting issue.

"Nothing forbids us to start with the future tense if we just reflect upon the verb “to be” and the name Yehovah."

Definitely.
Afaik, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any order (see below)..

The question is this, if Nehemia is showing the Hebrew in that order, future first, would it be more accurate for him to speak it and write it in the same order? Remember, he actually shows the Hebrew words in that order.

Since I will likely email this to Nehemia, all feedback welcome.

And I do think I pointed out that the issue is way overblown, for the reason you say. I have my review in The Creator's Name forum on Facebook and here, I am not checking right now though.

And all of this is simply lost with the two-syllable yahweh abomination.

==========================

Just for background:

Revelation, which is built on Hebrew idiom, goes three times in this order "is, was and will to come", which is different also.

Revelation 1:4 (AV)
John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace,
from him which is, and which was, and which is to come;
and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;

Revelation 1:8 (AV)
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord,
which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation 16:5 (AV)
And I heard the angel of the waters say,
Thou art righteous, O Lord,
which art, and wast, and shalt be,
because thou hast judged thus.

The Trisagion is in this order.

And once
"was, and is, and is to come"

Revelation 4:8 (AV)
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him;
and they were full of eyes within:
and they rest not day and night, saying,
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,
which was, and is, and is to come.
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
Listened to 40 minutes of 12. As usual, Justin has no integrity. Spends a lot of time on the shortened or poetic form Yah. He counterpoints it to some oddball views .. one is exceedingly. Yet he is simply agreeing with Nehemia who has discussed this in depth. Justin omits that because his approach is inherently dishonest.

=====

He throws out a strange idea that the name would actually be Yo-ho . Then he works with circular reasoning on dummy vowels.

So far he has not remotely touched on the cholam in the 20 plus Yeho- theophoric names, just like Yehovah. Which basically refutes his theories built on the short form.

Justin gets away with lots of shifty stuff by not putting anything in writing.

1:03:45 - no dummy vowels on ‘Yeho’
(Contradicting the gibberish claim.)

The circularity is crystal clear at 1:13 where he starts with Yahu and claims “Yeho” is a contracted form of Yahu. Now we have gibberish.

Please quote any Hebrew grammarians who work in this backwards manner.

1:13 Also Nehemia is shown explaining the Yeho- theophoric names.

=====

I went about 1:10 in, the tricks and omissions became clear. Maybe I will continue after a rest.
Just to take one point, here is a challenge.

1:13 Find any Hebrew scholars who agree with Justin’s wacky idea that Yeho- is a contraction of the Yahu- contraction.

Without that, wasting time on these videos is quite problematic.

====

1:17 in wacky Justin thinking the Yo- forms would be a triple contraction.

1:25:30 - Nehemia issue of trying to make suffix chametz into patach of Yeho-
Justin says it sometimes happens

1:33 - Justin switches to W

1:37 - root of name
1:38 Chawah Chayah Eve - Gen 3:20

1:47 - “he is”

1:47:55 Nehemiah on van
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
13

5:00 - absurd triple contraction theory

6:50 - Nehemia 0n Luzzatto / Shadal (weak on hovah)

17:50 - vowel points do capture

25:00 done

27:00 yahuah and Yahueh no work
 
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