The reason is that in the original manuscripts of the ancient Hebrews, their version of the male deity who creates everything, as found in practically all religions dating back thousands of years before "Judaism" or its "Christian" offshoot, was provided with a male name: Yahweh. When the early Catholics got hold of the original scriptures and destroyed them so that they could rewrite them to fit their own devices, Yahweh was transformed from A god to THE god, the only god, and "he" was given that title with a capital G.
Why rabbinical scholars and other Jews involved in translations of the Judaeo-Christian "bible" agreed to the change is not certain. I have spent a lot of time looking for an explanation from some historian or scholar versed in biblical matters, but I have yet to find one. Maybe the thinking has been that the transmutation serves the various forms of Judaism as well as the various forms of "Christianity" (placed in quotation marks because the term is a fraud).
Despite efforts to erase the Hebrew name for all time so that the god of Judaeo-Christian religion does not appear as merely an ancient sect's version of the male deity who creates everything, enough historical information has remained to identify "God" by "his" original name; and so it is that there remains one last vestige of it in one "Christian" denomination: that of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who have transmuted Yahweh into Jehovah.
WHO AND WHAT GOD IS
God," in any of the thousands of versions of the Judaeo-Christian "bible" (which cannot be a bible because it has been changed thousands of times and therefore is not the fixed word of "God"), is nothing more than a rewrite of earlier folk tales and fairy tales. From the Yoruba people of Nigeria comes the story, handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, of the first man and woman fashioned by the god Obatala from mud. A stone tablet dated at approximately 2800 B.C. contains inscriptions relating the legend of the Egyptian god Ptah creating the world merely by thinking it out and then pronouncing the various names of what he wants to create. On tombs near what was once Memphis when it was the capital of Egypt, two inscriptions dated at somewhere between 2100 and 2300 B.C. explain how the god Atum generated the first man and woman by masturbating or emitting spit from his mouth. In a 140-line poem called "Enki and Ninmah," inscribed in Sumerian on a clay tablet dated at sometime around 2000 B.C., the god Enki molds the first man out of clay and then, together with his mate Ninmah, creates a complex society on earth. In the folk lore of the Maori tribe of New Zealand, a god variously named Tu, Tiki, and Tanc, mixes red clay with his own blood, kneads the mix into a likeness of himself [cf. Genesis 1:27, "God created man in his own image"], and brings it to life as a man by breathing into its mouth and nostrils.
As you may imagine, when the Catholics went about the job of rewriting the scriptures composed by the ancient Hebrews who had borrowed these stories to create their version of the creator, Yahweh, the Catholics dismissed the earlier tales as emanating from "the Devil mocking the Church" - though in fact the stories existed thousands of years before there was any "church."
If you want more information about Yahweh when "Judaism" was "Yahwehism," get a copy of Ancient Israel's Faith and History by Professor George E. Mendenhall, chairman emeritus of the University of Michigan Department of Near Eastern Studies (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2001).
To get to the point, every time you hear some quack such as George Bush reciting the usual "God bless America," know that he is in reality saying "Yahweh bless America"; and every time school children are required to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag with the words "under God" in it, they are really chanting "under Yahweh."
When you have all of these historical facts at your disposal, you recognize what a farce it is for there to be an argument over whether or not "under God" ought to be included in the pledge of allegiance.
Hundreds of such historical facts can be found in my book The Case Against "Jesus," published by the Wild West Publishing House. To take a free look at its contents, go to http://burtonsbooks.com. For more information write to:
Wild West Publishing House
P.O. Box 642836
San Francisco, CA 94164-2836.
San Francisco, CA 94164-2836.