Does anyone have the 2008 letter on "The Name of God" in Latin?
This letter from Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disvipline of the Sacraments to the presidents of all conferences of bishops, includes:
- The venerable biblical tradition of Sacred Scripture, known as the Old Testament, displays a series of divine appellations, among which is the sacred name of God revealed in the tetragrammaton YHWH יהוה. As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of Sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: Adonai, which means “Lord.”
The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the so-called Septuagint, dating back to the last centuries prior to the Christian era, had regularly rendered the Hebrew tetragrammaton with the Greek word Kyrios, which means “Lord.” Since the text of the Septuagint constituted the Bible of the first generation of Greek-speaking Christians, in which language all the books of the New Testament were also written, these Christians, too, from the beginning never pronounced the divine tetragrammaton. Something similar happened likewise for Latin-speaking Christians, whose literature began to emerge from the second century, as first the Vetus Latina and, later, the Vulgate of St. Jerome attest. In these translations, too, the tetragrammaton was regularly replaced with the Latin word Dominus, corresponding both to the Hebrew Adonai and to the Greek Kyrios. The same holds for the recent Neo-Vulgate which the Church employs in the liturgy.
This was brought to my attention recently during a discussion with a Jehovah Witness. The word "replaced" translates to "removed" in the minds of jw's. My jw friend missed or ignored the earlier word "rendered". I would like to lnow the Latin word that has been translated as "replaced". Latin is a far more precise language. The meaning of the English word "replaced" depends on context, etc. The meaning assumed by jw's reflects their accusation that the divine name has been removed from the Bible by the Catholic Church in the 4th century. The precise Latin word used in the original text, translated into English as "replaced" could add clarity for me to demonstrate in my response.