Shalom everyone:

We appreciate everyone's patience as we present our response to the article "The Truth Regarding Inspired Titles," especially those who have complied with our request to withhold responding until our final installment has been sent and read. We currently hope to have the final installment sent to everyone by Yom Kippur, Yahweh willing. The following installment, however, was originally part of Installment #2, but I had to leave out text in order for our server to be able to handle it! Thus, we are forced to delay things by at least one day from our originally intended schedule. If enough people request it, I will try to send two installments per day, one in the morning, one in the evening. Our intent here is to not inundate everyone with too much content all at once! And now, we ask that you read our third installment in this series as you consider our perspective on this important

issue. May Yahweh bless our understanding of His will and may we all strive to honor Him and His Son in word and in deed. -- Larry Acheson

IV. THEIR CRITICISM OF KJV RENDERING "BEULAH" IN ISAYAH 62:4

Before addressing Mr. George and Mr. Soto's criticism of the way King James Version translators treated this verse of Scripture, let's display it for comparison purposes:

"Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for Yahweh delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married."

With the exception of our restoration of Yahweh's Name in its rightful place, the above verse is shown exactly as it appears in the King James Version of the Scriptures. With this in mind, let us proceed with Dale George and Silvio Soto's commentary (from page ten of their article) on how they believe the King James Version translators mishandled their translation of the Hebrew text:

"Another oddity involving the Hebrew word 'baal' is the choice of rendering it as 'Beulah' in this passage. This is a total fabrication by the KJV translators, as the Hebrew text does not contain the word 'Beulah.' There is NO Hebrew word in this text that phonetically comes close to being pronounced 'Beulah,' even though one gets the impression that the KJV was attempting to transliterate an actual Hebrew word!"

We respond: I do not claim to be a Hebrew scholar, but I do know enough to at least know that YES, the King James Version translators came VERY CLOSE phonetically to transliterating the Hebrew word involved in IsaYah 62:4 as "Beulah." If you happen to have "The Interlinear Bible" by Jay P. Green, Sr., you can look up this Hebrew word for yourself. It is spelled "beyth, ayin, waw, lamed, he." This Hebrew spelling does not represent the spelling of the word "Baal." The word "Baal" consists of only three Hebrew letters, and is spelled "beyth, ayin, lamed." Thus, we are talking about two different spellings, and hence, two different words. The word found in IsaYah 62:4 comes MUCH CLOSER to being pronounced "Beulah" than it does "Baal"! Based on my limited Hebrew knowledge, I would say it is actually pronounced something like "Beh-oo'-lah." According to "The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon," by Benjamin Davidson, Hendrickson Publishers, 1986, p. 101, this word is a singular feminine participle. According to "The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew-English Lexicon", by Francis Brown, Hendrickson Publishers, 1979, p. 127, this word means "be married." Suffice it to say that this is definitely not the word "baal" employed in IsaYah 62:4, as was erroneously reported in Mr. George and Mr. Soto's article. Their commentary on IsaYah 62:4 was clearly based on shallow research.

V. THE "TELL US SOMETHING WE DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW" DEPARTMENT: YAHWEH IS BAAL, EL, AND ADONAY

* (From page 9) "The word baal (as is the case for hundreds of other terms) is BOTH a COMMON NOUN and a PROPER NOUN in Hebrew!" (emphasis theirs)

We comment: Nearly everyone with whom we have become acquainted in the Yahwist Movement already knew this when we mentioned it to them, so this should not be presented as new information. This would normally be welcome information (for newcomers to the Faith), if it weren't for the fact that the apparent goal of the authors is to use this information to later "prove" the title "God" as being acceptable.

* (From page 13) "This is NOT a mere opinion, but a linguistic fact! There is nothing inherently wrong or sinful about the word baal standing by itself. The taboo that we Sacred-Name believers attribute to it is simply NOT biblical."

Our comment: Again, for many Yahwist folks, this is a "no-brainer." Of course there is nothing wrong with the word "baal" when used as a common noun. Yahweh's referring to Himself as a "baal" is all the proof we need of this. The question here once again revolves around Mr. Soto and Mr. George's failure to document exactly "which" Yahwist believers regard "baal" as being "taboo." Since we have not been of that persuasion for at least ten years, we find their practice of directing this charge against everyone within the Yahwist Movement as being unacceptable and inappropriate.

* (From page 12 of their article) "Was Isaiah not aware of the controversy surrounding the word 'baal' in his days? Did he not know that there was a false deity by that name or that Israel had perverted Yahweh's name by substituting it for that of 'baal'? Certainly Isaiah was very much aware of these linguistic facts, but as he intended a common noun application, it did not prevent him from using the word 'baal' to Yahweh!"

We reply: Obviously, IsaYah had no problem applying the title "baal" to Yahweh, for there is a difference between when a word originates as a pure, wholesome word, then BECOMES corrupted (such as baal), versus a word/title that is corrupt from the "get-go" (such as "God")! Again, to reiterate our point: The title "baal" is an acceptable title for Yahweh, since it rightfully belonged to Him long before apostatized men designated it to be the name for a new deity they chose to worship. Their transforming this title into the name of their deity did not change the fact that the title rightfully belongs to Yahweh. As the authors so aptly stated it on page 30 of their article, "Paganism does not stop Yahweh." HOWEVER, the same is not true of the name/title "God." Scripture establishes this as being the name of a false deity that Yahweh HATES eons before anyone so much as dreamed about employing it as a title for Him. To subsequently take this name, God, and then apply it as a title for Yahweh is nothing short of a spiritual slap in His face. This is not how a true believer honors His Maker.

* (From page 13, "The truth about ADONAY") "Given the history of the Sacred-Name's early pioneers, perhaps this section of the treatise will be even more difficult to deal with than the previous one on baal. However, if there is error in the camp, we are bound by divine duty to expose it and get rid of it. As people of Yahweh committed to truth, we cannot risk being found guilty of willful inaccuracies. Since no one has the right to create his own truth, if the facts do not concur with the claim, then that claim must be rejected."

We reply: First of all, we agree that if we are committed to truth, we cannot risk being found guilty of willful inaccuracies. In fact, we hope that Mr. George and Mr. Soto are willing to apply this admonition to themselves. Secondly, as we have previously stated, we have long concurred with the fact that "adonay" is a title that rightfully belongs to Yahweh. Thirdly, we are once again faced with an open-ended generalization about "the history of the Sacred-Name's early pioneers." A generalization lacking in substance because the authors simply chose to omit documentation. If there is anything I recall pertinent to the issue of the Yahwist Movement versus the title "adonay," it is that this is the title Jews are enjoined to utter whenever they read the torah and come across the Tetragrammaton. "Adonay" is this read IN PLACE OF the Tetragrammaton, i.e., "Adonay" is substituted for the Tetragrammaton. For example, from the book "Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook" by Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Vicki Hoffer and Rebecca Abts Wright, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1989, page 6, we read the following:

"The vowels of the word (yod, he, waw, he) have been omitted intentionally. This is the sacred four-letter name for God. For religious reasons this word sometimes appears in the Hebrew Bible with the vowel markings for another divine name. Some think that an approximation of the original sound of the name is 'Yahweh.' If you do not wish to say the name, you may substitute 'Adonai' ('LORD' in English) whenever you see (yod, he, waw, he)."

Of course, those of the Yahwist Movement regard substituting another word for the Father's name an act of heresy, since He enjoins His people to know His name (Is. 52:6), and King David called a curse upon all kingdoms that do not call upon His name (Ps. 79:6). Calling upon a substituted title does not constitute calling upon His name. Since "Adonay" has such a history of "perverted substitution," we can see why this title should not be highly regarded by those who love Yahweh's name. Does this make "adonay" a "forbidden word," though? No, and we don't recall any Yahwist organizations exposing it as such. Maybe some groups did, or do, but we cannot know for sure if the authors leave out documentation.

End of Installment #3

Coming up in Installment #4:

*Moot Points and Slamming A. B. Traina *Betraying a 'Theological Concept'?