More searching for the original El Shaddai

Suzanne has added two more posts on her discussion of the various translations of El Shaddai:

1. Psalm 68: Shaddai cont. — Suzanne includes some of my earlier comments on the “God of the Mountain” and “God of Shaddai” possibilities, then quotes from the Jewish Encyclopedia.com on the exegesis of “He is sufficient”: “It is conjectured also that the pointing of may be due to an improbable rabbinical explanation of the word as (“He who is sufficient”), and that the word originally may have been without the doubling of the middle letter.”
2. Psalm 68: Almighty — Here, Suzanne traces the origins of the English “Almighty” as the primary (and inaccurate) translation of Shaddai. Essentially, the Greek pantocrator was used in the Septuagint (LXX) as the primary translation of Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts. For the most part, Shaddai was simply translated theos, “God”, except in the book of Job, where Shaddai was translated using pantocrator. Then, in the Latin Vulgate, both Yahweh Sabaoth and Shaddai were translated as Omnipotens, or all powerful/almighty. When English translations were made, Yahweh Sabaoth was correctly translated “Lord of Hosts”, while Shaddai has inaccurately retained the “Almighty” translational thought of Omnipotens and pantocrator.

For additional insight related to Yahweh, Sabaoth and Shaddai, here is an interesting article on the translation decisions made by the NIV team as they created their new translation.

All of the above has made me even more appreciative of the decision by the translation team of the (New) Jerusalem Bible to use transliterated names of God in the Old Testament, rather than translated them into English. So Yahweh Sabaoth and El Shaddai, among the many other formal names of God used by the OT authors, appear directly in the text, rather than as footnotes. I wish more translations would take this approach.