Anthony Byatt | |
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| Born | 23 February 1928 London, UK |
| Died | 17 September 2014 (aged 86) |
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| Movement | Jehovah's Witnesses |
| Spouse | Sue |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | goldenagebooks |
Anthony "Tony" Byatt (23 February 1928 – 17 September 2014) was an English postcard publisher, photographer and writer. Byatt's works cover a broad range of subjects: reproduction of historical photographs and picture postcards, Bible translation, New Testament metaphors, water systems and population of Jerusalem, human body and clothing.
Byatt and his wife had two daughters.
Byatt joined Jehovah's Witnesses in c. 1939, and he was appointed to special service within the denomination by 1956. Apart from preaching, his activity included collecting books for the library of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead with future Governing Body member Albert Schroeder.
Byatt directed the publishing company Golden Age Books, which was based at his residency in Malvern. Byatt had been an antiquarian bookseller since 1981 and Golden Age Books also dealt in second-hand literature.
He published a book on the interpretation of New Testament metaphors in 1995.
In 2004, Byatt and other Jehovah's Witness writers published the anthology 'Your Word is Truth', Essays in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (1950, 1953), which included essays defending the New World Translation against criticism from non-Witnesses and a bibliography of works on the translation. While most doctrines defended by Byatt continue to be accepted by Jehovah's Witnesses, some of the views have been retracted by the organization in the course of more scholarship.
As a member of the International Society of Bible Collectors (ISBC), Byatt was an Associate Editor of The Bible Collector, changed to Bible Collectors' World in 1985.
A two-syllable pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton as "Yahweh" would not allow for the o vowel sound to exist as part of God's name. But in the dozens of Biblical names that incorporate the divine name, this middle vowel sound appears in both the original and the shortened forms, as in Jehonathan and Jonathan.
Also, the forms Yehohʹ, Yoh, Yah, and Yaʹhu, found in the Hebrew spelling of the names Jehoshaphat, Joshaphat, Shephatiah, and others, can all be derived from Yahweh.
When I lived in London, I sometimes had the privilege of going round the bookshops with Brother Bert Schroeder when he was on a visit, looking for books for Gilead. By 1962 Gilead had some 10,000 volumes
On the Elder's remark, we would ask Lundquist, what about Jehovah's Witnesses before the NWT was published in 1950; did they not have a faith in Jehovah then? Of course they did! I myself was a Witness for eleven years before 1950, and the NWT did not change my faith, for it is the Hebrew Scriptures which fully establish so much about Jehovah.
The crucial question to ask of all Bible translators is why they render all those Israelite names in an English form beginning with 'Jeho' as Jehoash, Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, etc., but they do not use 'Jehovah' at all? 'The Jerusalem Bible' and 'The New Jerusalem Bible' are to be commended for at least using the form 'Yahweh', but why do they thus create such an inconsistency with all other Biblical names which commence with the two syllables 'Jeho'?