Part of the problem with becoming specialized in any field is that it makes you more rigorous than others in your approach to that field. Normally this has little downside. If I am a medical doctor I may lament the ignorance in common sayings like carrots are good for eyesight or cracking your knuckles is bad for them, but at the end of the day it doesn't much matter.
But when your field is Religious Studies, then you are constantly confronted with many popular fads that I have trouble stomaching. Most of the time I keep my mouth shut. (Maybe I need to vent my spleen). Kadie chides me for being over critical. Few sermons (most emphatically INCLUDING my own) escape my evaluation completely. Most of the time I mutter to myself and chalk it down to academic pride/arrogance.
But what if people are continually misusing the name of the Lord? Or what if they are using a name that appears nowhere in scripture? Of course, the name to which I refer is Jehovah. The term Jehovah appears in numerous praise choruses e.g. In the Presence of Jehovah and Days of Elijah and even an old Amy Grant tune. Rarely a day goes by in my church that it is not used in the worship service.
Of course, the great problem with all of this is that the name Jehovah appears nowhere in the Hebrew text. Remarkably, in a fact overlooked/ignored by most everyone, it doesn't even appear in any modern translation of the bible either (uhhh....except one.)
So where does it come from????
(Tune in tomorrow for part II, same Bat time......)
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