Following is a series of questions I've received in response to my posts on Jehovah along with my answers:
Q: So, was Jesus named Jehovah in the pre-mortal life or not?
A: Not per the available evidence in the scriptures. This teaching was not widespread in the church until the turn of the 20th century. The reason for it seems to have been due to increasingly mainstream scholarship into the Book of Mormon, which outpaced scholarship—among Mormon students—of historical Jewish and Hebrew scholarship. Thus the lynchpin was in not understanding how Christ could have given the Law to Moses and yet not been the same being as Jehovah in the Old Testament. By catching up on the latter, precepts of men formerly used to fill gaps in the former can be deprecated.
Q: How many Jehovahs do we know of?
A: At least three: the father of God the Father (involved in creation), God the Father (ate with Abraham), and the resurrected Jesus Christ (ate with the apostles).
Q: Have any of the modern prophets talked about this?
A: Of course, when Joseph Smith prayed to God the Father he called him Jehovah (see D&C 109). Besides that, there are other statements from those who had learned about the identity of God from Joseph Smith directly:
"What proof have you of the negative of the existence of God the Father, or of Jesus as the Mediator, or of the Holy Ghost as God's minister, or of the gifts and graces that God has bestowed upon his people? None at all, not the least thing in the world. Is there anybody living on the earth that has the proof of the affirmative? Yes; we have. We have proof that God lives and that he has a body; that he has eyes, and ears to hear; that he has arms, hands and feet; that he can walk and does walk. He has declared himself to be a man of war, Jehovah, the great I AM, the Lord Almighty, and many other titles of a like import are used in reference to him in the Scriptures." (Brigham Young, JOD 14:41).
"[Jesus Christ] bore the sins of the world, and, when laboring under the pressure of those intense agonies, He exclaimed, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass.' But it was not possible. It was the decree of God; the fiat of the great Jehovah, and he had it to do. And on the cross He was heard to exclaim, 'It is finished'" (John Taylor, JOD 24:32).
"Let me tell you, you are in hell now, and you have got to qualify yourselves here in hell to become subjects for heaven; and even when you have got into heaven, you will find it right here where you are on this earth. When we escape from this earth, we suppose we are going to heaven? Do you suppose you are going to the earth that Adam came from? That Eloheim [sic] came from? Where Jehovah the Lord came from? No. When you have learned to become obedient to the Father that dwells upon this earth, to the Father and God of this earth, and obedient to the messengers He sends—when you have done all that, remember you are not going to leave this earth" (Heber C. Kimball, JOD 1:356)
Q: Didn't the book of Exodus say that God was not known to Abraham by the name Jehovah? How do we reconcile that with the Book of Abraham when God says to Abraham, "My name is Jehovah"?
A: It does say that in Exodus 6:3: "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them." However, the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) corrects this: "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob. I am the LORD God Almighty, the LORD JEHOVAH. And was not my name known unto them?"
Q: How can I know which of the Elohim are being referenced in the scriptures when the word LORD ("Jehovah") is being used?
A: Context is everything. For example, scriptural interactions with Jehovah in modern revelation could be God the Son or God the Father; interactions before Christ's resurrection would have been God the Father; and interactions before or during the creation could be the father of God the Father. Regarding this last character, Joseph Smith taught that he was revealed to John the Revelator:
"John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, [and] you may suppose that He had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? And everything comes in this way. Paul says that which is earthly is in the likeness of that which is heavenly, hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that [the Father] had a Father also?" (STPJS, p. 373).
According to the journal of Joseph F. Smith, Brigham Young taught these same principles at the school of the prophets:
"Elohim, Yahova & Michael, were Father, Son and Grandson. They made this earth and Michael became Adam" (Joseph F. Smith Journal, June 17, 1871).
Of course, in light of Joseph Smith's statement that 'Elohim' ought to be rendered in the plural throughout scripture, it may be inferred that among the Elohim was the Father of 'Yahova.'
Q: Can I pray to Jehovah?
A: Joseph Smith did, so yes, so far as we keep in mind the pattern of King David, Jesus Christ, and Joseph Smith who taught us to pray to God the Father.
Q: Is "Elohim" not the name of God the Father?
A: No. Elohim means "the gods" and is not the name of any one person. It is not infrequently encountered in discourses by church speakers as though it were a proper name, but this is not such a serious error when one considers that among the Elohim there are Jehovahs pertaining to the family of man upon this earth.
Q: Is the Holy Ghost a Jehovah?
A: Not per the available evidence in the scriptures. Since the scriptures bear out that Jesus did not receive the name-title of the father to be counted among the Elohim until after his resurrection, it stands to reason that the Holy Ghost—who doesn't even have a physical body yet—is yet a stage or two away from doing so himself.
Q: How is Jehovah supposed to be pronounced?
A: As best as you know how. As it likely means the English equivalent of "Creator," no mystical qualities probably attend the original pronunciation, whatever it was. The best Hebrew scholarship available now posits a pronunciation close to Yah-havah or Yah-hway. English doesn't have any letter combinations sufficient to express it, and in old European languages the letter J was pronounced like the modern letter Y. Nevertheless, the English word "Jehovah" carries the weight of godliness with it and no one should feel ashamed for using it the way it is written even if it's historically inaccurate. Remember, it's a name-title, not a personal name, and God hears the sincere, not the learned.
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