YHWH BOOK Chapter 9 Is the Correct Pronunciation Known?
See the attached book chapter 9.
YHWH BOOK
Chapter 9 Is the Correct Pronunciation Known?
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See the attached book chapter 9.
YHWH BOOK
Chapter 9 Is the Correct Pronunciation Known?
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SOURCE:
HaShem is a Hebrew noun that means “The Name”. Ha- is the Hebrew prefix that means “the”, while Shem is the Hebrew word that means “name”, any name or noun. When Jews speak of HaShem, they are talking about THE Name – which they also call the “essential” name of God (SHEM HA-ETZEM), which appears throughout the original Hebrew scriptures, the Torah.
The actual Hebrew name to which HaShem refers is a name consisting of the four Hebrew letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh. However, Jewish tradition holds that because of the supreme holiness of this Name, it is forbidden to utter or pronounce it. Thus it is sometimes called the “ineffable” (=unsayable) name of God. Because it has four letters, many scholars refer to it as the Tetragrammaton (in Greek, Tetra is 4 and gramma means a letter). Sometimes Jews rearrange the order of the four constituent letters of the Hebrew name and refer to this name as HAVAYAH. This rearrangement of the letters is allowed to be uttered. (The old biblical English transcription of the Tetragrammaton which used j for the Hebrew letter yod is Jehovah, but pious Jews will not say this word.)
The reason why the Jews call this the essential name of God is because although a variety of names and descriptions are used in the Hebrew scriptures to refer to different aspects of God, the name of Havayah – HASHEM — is considered the root of all those names and descriptions – the complete and perfect unity that underlies all plurality.
For example, in different places in the Hebrew scriptures God may be referred to as EIL (= “The Power”) or ELOHIM (”Powers”, a plural form used with a singular verb when referring to God, and also used with a plural verb of angels and judges); YAH (the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton), sometimes translated as “Eternal” for want of a better word); HASHEM TZEVA’OT (God of hosts or armies – the armies of His “angels” or “agents” and creations), and SHADDAI (also translated as “Eternal” for want of a better word). God is also called RAHOOM (”kind”), HANOON (”compassionate”), GIBOR (”mighty”) as well as by numerous other epithets, which manifest different “aspects” of God’s attributes.
When Abraham, Moses, David and other biblical figures and prophets address God, they use the Hebrew name ADONAY. In Hebrew an ADON is a “lord” or “master”, and the –AY suffix, which is only ever used to God, would indicate “Our Lord”. Addressing God as ADONAY, as Jews do numerous times a day in all their Hebrew prayers and blessings, indicates that we submit ourselves to God’s complete dominion over us as servants submitting to our Master.
What is so important about the name of HaShem, which first appears in the Hebrew scriptures at the climax of the account of the Creation and in the ensuing verses giving details about the creation of Adam (Genesis 2:4ff). Prior to these verses, the account of Creation uses only the Hebrew name ELOHIM.
The Torah sages teach that only when the work of creation was complete could HASHEM, The Name, be revealed. It was this Name through which God revealed Himself to Israel when they received the Torah at Mount Sinai: “I am HASHEM your God that brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slaves” (Exodus 20:2).
For better understanding of the significance this name in particular in the Torah, it is necessary to grasp that there is a fundamental difference between the words and names of Biblical Hebrew and those of modern English. In English, all kinds of names are attached to all kinds of things, but regardless of the etymological and other connotations these names possesses, the actual letters of any given name do not necessarily relate to the inner essence of the thing it denotes. English names are essentially made up of mere phonemes, sounds that are conventionally used by the speakers of that language to signify whatever thing or being each noun or name denotes. In writing, these phonemes are represented by sequences of letters of the alphabet.
However, the building bricks of Hebrew words are more than mere letters signifying phonemes that are conventionally attached to the things they denote. Each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph Beit) has a mathematical value. Since the name of each letter is made up of that letter in combination with one or two other letters, each letter is a mathematical formula capable of joining with other mathematical formulae to make powerful combinations. (Note that the 22 letters of the Aleph Beit are all consonants, and in Hebrew texts the vowels are written as small dots or lines under or sometimes over the letters.)
Everyone knows that the conventional chemical formula for water is H²O because water is a combination of two hydrogen atoms to every oxygen atom. But do the words hydrogen and oxygen relate to the integral essence of their respective substances. Historically, they do relate to what was once thought to be the integral essence of those substances, but modern science views them differently. Yet in the more precise language of scientific theory, we see that formulae may possess enormous power. It is enough to consider the revolutionary implications of Albert Einstein’s E=mc² equation, in which he formulated his entire theory of relativity.
The Torah sages of the Kabbalah tradition teach that the Hebrew names and words relate to the integral essence of the things they denote, because these names are the underlying formulae of God’s creation. It was because Adam had knowledge of the secrets of creation that he knew the correct Hebrew name for each of the different creations: this is the underlying mystery of the verse: “…and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 1:19).
Just as laymen and beginning science students find it hard to grasp Einstein’s theory of relativity, so we should not expect to grasp the secrets of the Essential Name of HaShem in the short time we can remain standing on one foot. Nevertheless, it is unnecessary to have a deep understanding of Hebrew in order to gain a glimmer of why this holy Name of God enshrined in the Torah contains the deepest mysteries of creation. All that is required is a modicum of patience and effort in order to grasp some very fundamental concepts.
The Tetragrammaton expresses even visually how three-dimensional physical space, the universe (OLAM), emanates from a higher source that is so beyond our comprehension that it can only be expressed as a mere dot.
Thus the first letter of the Tetragrammaton (reading from right to left) is the Hebrew letter YOD (?), smallest of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and considered to be their root. The YOD is written as a mere dot or blob of ink on the page. True, the Torah scribe writes the YOD with a tiny hairline above it, suggesting that this dot comes from somewhere hidden, and a tiny line emanating from underneath it, indicating that the power and energy of this dot is going somewhere. But the essence of the letter is a dot – a blob of ink that contains potential, yet the potential is not yet manifested in detail. Mathematically, the letter YOD is 10, indicating that it contains in absolute unity the 10 axiomatic powers of God (the 10 Sefirot). Similarly the cyper 1 actually contains the ten decimals – .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, .6, .7, .8, .9 and 1.0 – which are all integral parts of the unity of 1.
The second letter of the Tetragrammaton is the Hebrew letter HEH, which is made up of three lines, two of which form a right angle while the third stands parallel to one of the lines forming the angle without touching the other. Three lines – three dimensions – with a suggestion of connection and disconnection. Here we have the beginnings of three-dimensional space, which emanates from God yet often seems disconnected from Him. Thus the HEH stands next to the YUD, emanating out of it.
This letter HEH is actually made up of two other Hebrew letters – the letter VAV, which is written with a single line or stroke, and the letter DALET which is made up of two lines joining to make a right angle. The HEH consists of a DALET with a small VAV parallel to one of the lines of the DALET while not touching the other. The DALET is considered a “womb” while the VAV is an embryo inside it. Both the VAV and the DALET emanate from the YOD, considered the “father”, and the VAV and the DALET reveal the inherent power of the YUD. Thus the name of the letter YUD is made up of the letters YUD, VAV and DALET.
The third letter of the Tetragrammaton is a VAV. What was an “embryo” contained in the “womb” of the second letter of the Name is now revealed as a complete letter in its own right. The VAV is like a YUD except that the thread coming out from underneath the blob of ink is extended much further downwards, to the bottom of the line on which the letters are written. Similarly God’s creation and self-revelation stretch “from top to bottom”, from the spiritual to the material.
The fourth letter of the Tetragrammaton is HEH. This is a reflection of the second letter, which is also a HEH. Of the three base letters of the Tetragrammaton, only the HEH is repeated. Whereas the first two letters of the name, the YOD and the HEH are “father” and “mother”, respectively God’s Wisdom and Understanding, the source of creation, the fourth letter of the name, the second HEH, alludes to the “kingdom” or “dominion” (OLAM, “Universe”) that He created for His own inscrutable purposes. This “kingdom” represented by the HEH emanates from the third letter of the Tetragrammaton, the VAV, which connects above and below. God’s plan is that the actual creation in this world “below” should come to reflect and reveal the source of that creation in the spiritual world “above”, just as the fourth letter of the Tetragrammaton, the second HEH, reflects and manifests the second letter of the Tegragrammaton, the first HEH.
Almost all Hebrew words with only a very tiny number of exceptions have a root consisting of three Hebrew letters. HaShem, the Essential Name of God, also has its three-letter root contained in the last three of its four constituent letters – HOVEH, a verb denoting “being”. In Hebrew grammar the YUD that in the Tetragrammaton stands before this root expresses the active subject of the verb, in this case the unknown, inconceivable One who brings “being” into existence. In Kabbalah this is called EYN SOF, “no end” – infinite and inconceivable. He is totally above and beyond Creation, yet His very essence permeates all of Creation on every plane, material, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual… Perfect unity encompassing and contained within all plurality.
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I spoke with a very well know Priest here in Santa Monica, CA a few weeks ago... He said, Matthew do you have any idea how many millions it is costing the church to remove the Name of God from just our literature?
Why is the Catholic Church removing the name of GOD?
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0804119.htm
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CBN.com - http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/BibleStudyAndTheology/discipleship/Names_of_God.aspx
"And He said to them, 'When you pray, say: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name . . ." - Luke 11:2
Who is Our God?
In the wake of the devastating terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, there was much talk about God. The phrase "God Bless America" echoed throughout our fifty states. Believers and non-believers alike turned to churches and prayer gatherings for comfort, calling upon God to heal and comfort them in the midst of their grief and pain. Others wondered if God was truly there at all, and if He was, they questioned His whereabouts on that terrible day.
Another group did a lot of talking about God: the terrorists themselves. On the same day as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some Palestinian militants were seen celebrating in the streets, declaring "God is great!" On Sunday, October 7, 2001, Osama bin Laden said the following in a videotaped statement: "There is America, hit by God in one of its softest spots. Its greatest buildings were destroyed. Thank God for that. There is America, full of fear . . . thank God for that."
Upon hearing those words, I had to wonder: "Who is he talking about? Is he talking about our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? We of course know that he isn't, but how will the world know that? How will they know, when we tell them about the God whom we serve, that we do not mean this "God" spoken of by bin Laden? As we continue to seek our God for revival in this land, the distinction must be made between the God of the Bible and the gods of other faiths.
So, who is our God? Osama bin Laden's "God" has a name: Allah. What is our God's name? As with all matters, the answer to that question can be found in the Scriptures.
What is Our God's Name?
The Bible is full of references to the awesome power and importance of the Name of our God. For instance, Proverbs 18 refers to His Name as "a strong tower." In Psalm 119:55 the psalmist says, "I have remembered your Name in the night and have kept your law." Psalm 138:1-2 says, "I will bow myself towards your sacred temple and give thanks to your Name . . . for you have magnified your word, your Name, above all." There are many other Scriptures that speak of the sacred Name of our God.
One such verse has been adopted by CBN during this time of prayer for revival: "If my people who are called by my Name shall humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then I shall hear from the heavens, and forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).
An interesting thing to notice is that none of these Scriptures uses the plural word "names" but the singular "Name." This clearly indicates that there is but one Name for our God. So what is it?
In Exodus 3, when Moses encounters our God in the burning bush, he asks the following question: "See, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His Name?' what shall I say to them?"
What follows is one of the most profound and meaningful truths that can be found in Scripture. The answer to Moses' question is . . . "YHWH."
What's in a Name?
So, what does this mean? First, let's look at the word's structure. This Name YHWH given to Moses in Exodus 3 is comprised of the Hebrew letters Yod (Y), Hay (H), Waw (W - pronounced "Vav"), and Hay (H), which together are often referred to as the Tetragrammaton ("The four lettered name"). Although the issue of how to pronounce this Name has been the source of much debate and controversy for centuries, the pronunciation more Hebrew scholars agree is correct is "Yah-oo-way" (as in the transliteration Yahweh).
But let's not worry about what scholars think about pronunciation for a moment. Try saying the name aloud, using no vowel sounds at all. When I do it, it sounds very much like breathing. The Breath of Life.
Now, let's examine what this Name means. The Name YHWH is an archaic form of the verb "to be," so the concept drawn from the English translation of this word is "I am that I am," or "I am who I am." YHWH is not, however, the word used as "I am" when Yahweh says, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14). Although the Name YHWH conveys the same idea of His perpetual existence and presence as "I am," it means so much more, as we're about to see.
The Hebrew language is one of complexity and intricate beauty. Each of its letters has its own meaning and numerical value. In this case, the meanings of the four letters used to form the Name of YHWH give the Name a powerful and prophetic significance. First, the letter Yod literally means "hand," while Hay means "behold," and Waw means "nail" (or "hook", depending on the context). So, in sequence: "Hand (Y), behold (H), nail (W), and behold (H)." The context of the word YHWH means, "Behold the nailed hand."
Clearly, this is no ordinary, every-day name. But wait, there's more: Yahushua (often Yeshua or Yahshua), the Hebrew name of the Messiah, the son of Yahweh, means "YHWH is salvation." Therefore, you can take that a step further and see it as "Behold, the nailed hand is salvation." This not only powerfully illustrates Yahushua's role as Savior, but also His divinity (as Yahweh incarnate) and His relationship to Yahweh as His only begotten son. As Yahushua Himself said, "I have come in my Father's name (John 5:43)." Just as His life and character point us to His Father (John 14:6 - "no one comes to the Father but by me;" see also John 17:23-26), so also does His name point us to the sacred Name of Yahweh. He even instructed us to pray: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name . . . (Luke 11:2)."
What About Those Other Names?
You have no doubt heard most or all of the following descriptive terms and/or titles that have often been applied to Yahweh: El (meaning "mighty one," also the name of the sky god of the ancient Syrians), Elohim (the plural form of El), El Shaddai ("almighty one"), and Adonai ("my lord"), among others. While those words, like the commonly used English terms "Lord" and "God," can certainly express different aspects of the character of Yahweh, they are merely generic titles and descriptions. None of them is His Name.
If someone were to ask you "What is your God's name?" your first response might be "Jehovah." This is one of the most popular terms attributed to Yahweh, and is often thought by many to be His true name, but let's look at it more closely.
When the Scriptures were being transcribed, it was believed by the Jewish scribes performing the task that they should not pronounce the sacred Name of YHWH, for fear of violating the third commandment ("Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain . . . " - Exodus 20:7). This led to the use of other words, generic titles (such as "Adonai"), as substitutes for the true name, Yahweh. Therefore, if you were to compare a typical, modern English translation of the Bible with the original Hebrew texts, you would see how YHWH (which can be found a total of 7,038 times in the original Hebrew Old Testament) was replaced by "the Lord" or "God."
The following excerpt from Webster's New Riverside University Dictionary (1984 edition) details what the scribes did and the origins of the word "Jehovah:"
The form Jehovah did not exist as a Hebrew word. It is actually a conflation (blend, fusion) of two Hebrew forms that came about through a peculiarity of the Hebrew writing system. The Hebrew name for God, the consonants of which are transliterated YHWH, was considered so sacred that it was never pronounced and its proper vowel points were never written. In some texts the vowel points for a completely different word, Adonai, "lord," were written with YHWH to indicate that the word Adonai was to be spoken whenever the reader came upon the word YHWH. YHWH was never intended to be pronounced with the vowels of Adonai, but Christian scholars of the Renaissance made exactly that mistake, and the forms Iehovah (using the classical Latin equivalents of the Hebrew letters) and Jehovah (substituting in English, J for consonantal I) came into common use.
Other texts agree: The Encarta Encyclopedia (2000 edition) says that Jehovah is the "name of the God of the Hebrew people as erroneously transliterated from the Masoretic Hebrew text." A New Standard Bible Dictionary (1936 edition) states, "The form 'Jehovah' is impossible, according to the strict principles of Hebrew vocalization."
So, it is clearly no secret that Jehovah is not the true Name of our God. But don't worry - this doesn't mean that the wonderful suffixes normally attached to Jehovah (as in Jehovah Jireh, Rapha, Nissi, etc.) are also wrong. Those transliterations are for the most part correct, and when added to the name Yahweh (as in "Yahweh Yireh" - "Yahweh the Provider"), they can serve as powerful expressions of certain attributes and characteristics of our Lord Yahweh.
So, What's the Big Deal?
You may be thinking, "That's nice, but why do I need to know and use the name of Yahweh?" You may feel perfectly secure and content in using one or all of the generic and descriptive terms already mentioned, feeling no need to change how you refer to Yahweh. Perhaps you think the name sounds funny, or that it's improper or even downright wrong to use it altogether. Well, you're not alone, and I was certainly skeptical at first myself. It can be very difficult to eschew and let go of things we have practiced and held on to for many years. But let's look at it in terms of relationship.
Our Father desires to know us intimately and yearns for us to reciprocate that desire. He loves us so much that "He sent His only begotten Son" as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. If we truly long to serve our God and have a deep and intimate relationship with Him, we should address Him in a more personal and intimate way.
When someone begins a relationship with you, one of the first things they learn is your name. As the relationship develops, they begin to learn more and more of your character, and eventually, if they want to, they will know you very well and will be devoted to your relationship. However, the relationship would most likely not last very long if they kept referring to you as "man" or "woman," "sir" or "madam." Such a thing would keep a certain amount of distance between the two of you, and would surely not be a good way to create and maintain intimacy and love.
They might tell you over and over again that they love you dearly, but would you really believe them if they kept addressing you by an impersonal title or description? The same applies to our relationship with our wonderful Creator, Yahweh. To continually apply generic terms like "Lord" and "God" to Him would be like a husband constantly calling his spouse "Wife" or "Woman." To use "Jehovah" would be like the same husband calling his wife by the wrong name altogether, expecting her to respond.
As we saw earlier, there are countless Scriptures that place a great amount of importance on the Name of Yahweh. It is not simply another generic term in a long list of titles and descriptions, as some would want to believe. Nor is it a name limited only to the Old Testament, as others have said. As Yahweh Himself said when He revealed His Name to Moses, "This is my Name forever, and this is my remembrance to all generations" (Exodus 3:15).
This is why our deceptive adversary (who comes "to steal, kill and destroy") has tried to wipe out the Name altogether by deceiving men into replacing it with other titles and generic or even false "names." He does not want us to have a close relationship with Yahweh. In fact, that's exactly why he is trying to deceive us, so that we will serve that which is not of Yahweh (and therefore is of the enemy). Since he cannot create but only corrupt, he has worked for centuries to corrupt and bury the sacred Name of Yahweh our God. He knows that the Name of Yahweh is a powerful weapon. Why else would it be virtually erased from all modern translations of the Bible? Why else would there be a counterfeit name (Jehovah) in its place?
I, for one, no longer wish to give the enemy any pleasure by continuing to deny the name of Yahweh. I count it as such a wonderful blessing and privilege to know and use Yahweh's true Name. While He is indeed my "Lord" and my "God," He is also my Abba Father, my Best Friend (who "sticks closer than a brother"), my Everything. Whatever question we have, the answer is always "YHWH . . . I AM THAT I AM."
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Hebrew Gematria - | |||
![]() | Finding numerical relationships between | ||
| Within the earliest Jewish traditions, groups of Jewish scholars counted |
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| According to most practitioners, there are several methods used to |
| The Standard Method |
| Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is given an assigned number, beginning | ||||||||
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http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/09/144...
The Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters. A number of ancient Hebrew poems have an acrostic structure. The first line or set of lines of the poem begins with an alef, the second with a bet, the third with a gimel, and so on.
This section of the 144 names has an acrostic structure. The opening section of the list is introduced here. The series itself is introduced here.
Descriptive phrases for God are numerous and varied in the Hebrew Bible. It is possible to organize a subset of them in an acrostic pattern. A tight thematic unity is not attainable, but the associations that “fall out” in the process are nevertheless food for thought.
The list of names I offer is designed for memorization. Why would anyone want to memorize a text of any length? Isn’t “learning by rote” passé?
I suppose that’s true. The first time I was asked to memorize a text of any length was for a class on Homer’s Iliad at the UW-Madison. Students were required to memorize the epic poem’s first 100 lines and recite it in class. I learned a lot of Greek and even a little prosody in the process. Ever since I’ve been convinced that committing extended text to memory is an excellent way to get a language into one’s bones.
I was not asked to memorize extended text through grade school, middle school, and high school. In college the request was rare. It is as if a whole method of learning and knowing has been banned.
Are music and drama students in a class by themselves, a different subspecies of the human race? They learn long things by heart. Why can’t the rest of us?
Here are 22 names of God organized acrostically, with a scriptural preface. The text with vowels along with comment will be provided in an upcoming post.
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OCT. 24, 2005
TEENS
OMG: It's a multimedia generation
Teenagers and college-age young adults know all kinds of things others don't: Cool, unheralded musical artists. Fascinating web sites. Scintillating new books. How? They are so wired into one another - through cell phones, email and instant messaging - that they seem to absorb information through their pores. And it's clear many are looking for spiritual meaning outside their parents' tradition.
The new buzzword for reaching out religiously to this group is multimedia - using music, videos, the web, print and more, often all at the same time. The feel is energetic and edgy. The theology ranges from conservative to liberal. Will these efforts help ground this generation in age-old faiths? Will it help them form their own traditions? Time will tell.
Why it matters
Young people may not want information so much as meaning. In most cities, congregations are using multimedia, lights and sound to appeal to "Generation Net." And ministries and outreach programs using cutting-edge technology are proliferating.
Questions for reporters
• What are congregations in your area doing to attract teenagers and college students? What is edgy and new? What's working?
• Is religion flavored with hip-hop a trend in your region? What about geek-tinged hipsterism? Or alternative rock, or straight-out pop?
• What religious web sites, webzines, blogs and other multimedia are teens favoring?
• How does the presentation change the message?
| Click the map for interview sources in your state and region |
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CHRISTIAN
• Cameron Strang is president and founder of Relevant Media Group of Orlando, Fla., which targets 18- to 34-year-old Christians across denominations. He publishes RELEVANT magazine, a daily web site and Relevant Books. Read a June 23, 2004, USA Today story. Contact 407-660-1411, Cameron@relevantmediagroup.com.
• Pastor Rob Bell is featured in the NOOMA series of 10- to 14-minute films on DVD with spiritual teachings aimed at teenagers and college-age adults. Bell's Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., meets in a former shopping mall that can seat 3,500. Bell wrote Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (Zondervan, 2005); Zondervan also is distributing the films. Contact Karen Campbell, 616-698-3246, Karen.campbell@zondervan.com.
• Tommy Kyllonen, who also goes by Urban D., is a hip-hop artist and lead pastor at the Tampa, Fla., Crossover Community Church. The church's ministry is the hip-hop culture, and worship combines music, dance, visual arts and other media. He has recorded five albums, performs concerts and is writing his first book, about hip-hop and the church. Contact 813-935-8887, urband@flavoralliance.com.
• The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush, an American Baptist minister, is associate dean for religious life at Princeton University. He is the author of Teen Spirit: One World, Many Paths (HCI Teens, 2004) and writes a teen spirituality advice column on Beliefnet.com - "Ask Pastor Paul" - in which he answers teens' questions on subjects from the spiritual implications of tattooing to abstinence to interfaith dating. Contact 609-258-6245, praushen@princeton.edu.
• The Rev. Kenda Creasy Dean is assistant professor of youth, church and culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. A United Methodist minister and parent of two teenagers, she served on the research team for the National Study of Youth and Religion. She is the author of several books on youth and the church, including Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004) and co-author, with Ron Foster, of The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul-Tending for Youth Ministry (Upper Room Books, 1998). Contact kenda.dean@ptsem.edu.
• Chap Clark is an associate professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and directs the seminary's youth ministry programs. Clark immersed himself in the life of a public high school in Los Angeles County, working as a substitute teacher and conducting ethnographic research there, and convened discussion groups with teenagers around the country for his book Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (Baker Academic, 2004). Contact 626-584-5608, cclark@fuller.edu.
• T. Suzanne Eller of Muskogee, Okla., an author and speaker with a ministry to teens and college students, has a blog and a web site. Contact tseller@daretobelieve.org.
• Laurie Whaley Roe is vice president of Thomas Nelson's Nelson Bibles, which publishes youth-oriented BibleZines, including REVOLVE, the complete New Testament for teenage girls in a magazine format, and REAL, a similar product for the hip-hop crowd. Contact Cameron Conant, 615-902-1284, cconant@thomasnelson.com.
• Jennifer Swanson is spokeswoman for LIFE TEEN INC., an international Catholic youth ministry that produces videos and a web site. Contact 480-820-7001, jswanson@lifeteen.com.
JEWISH
• Jewish rocker Rick Recht of St. Louis considers himself an educator as well as a musician. He plays more than 125 concerts a year, has recorded four Jewish albums and one secular one, and is at work on a movie and web sites. Contact 314-991-0909, rick@rickrecht.com.
• Yosef I. Abramowitz is publisher of JVibe, a new magazine for Jewish youth that is produced by Jewish Family & Life Media. Abramowitz is founder and CEO of JFL. Contact 617-581-6804, yabramowitz@jflmedia.com, or Michelle Cove, editor, mcove@jflmedia.com.
• Amy L. Sales is associate director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. She has studied Jewish life on college campuses and the experience of teenagers at Jewish summer camps. She is co-author of How Goodly Are Thy Tents: Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences (University Press of New England, 2003), for which she visited 20 summer camps in 2000. Contact 781-736-2066, sales@brandeis.edu.
• Rabbi Hayim Herring is director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), an organization based in Minneapolis that works to renew the American Jewish community through congregational innovation and leadership development. He helped conduct a study called "Shema: Listening to Jewish Youth," examining the attitudes of Jewish teens in the Minneapolis area toward Judaism. Contact 612-381-8840, hherring@starsynagogue.org.
MUSLIM
• Abdul Malik Mujahid is founder and president of Soundvision.com, a web-based resource for Muslims with a teen section and multimedia products. Read a 2000 Dallas Morning News article posted by Soundvision. Contact 708-430-1255 ext. 405.
• Amir Hussain is a professor in the religious studies department at California State University, Northridge, but during the 2005-06 academic year will be teaching in the theological studies department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Hussain has taught courses about contemporary Islam and about religion and film, and can speak about the role that faith plays in the lives of Muslim young people. Contact 818-677-2741, amir.hussain@csun.edu.
• Ted Swedenburg is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He has done research on popular music, including Islamic and Middle Eastern influences on rap and hip-hop music, and he hosts a world music show on the radio. He can speak about the impact that Muslim young people are having in the world of music. Contact 479-575-6624, tsweden@uark.edu.
• Visit the web site for the Muslim Students Association, which lists chapters on college campuses across the country.
BUDDHIST
• Diana Winston of Berkeley, Calif., teaches meditation at Buddhist retreat centers and to classes of teenagers. She also leads retreats for Buddhist teenagers and young adults and is the author of Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens (Perigree Books, 2003). Contact 510-527-4729, info@wide-awake.org, or through Adrienne Biggs, 415-453-4474, Adrienne@biggspublicity.com.
• Buddhist Gateway has a teen area. Contact Press-Ads@Faith.com.
HINDU
• Hindu Gateway has a teen area. Contact Press-Ads@Faith.com.
• Visit the web site for the Hindu Students Council, which links to chapters at colleges across the country.
NEW AGE/NEOPAGAN
• Sarah M. Pike is an associate professor of religious studies at California State University in Chico. She has written about New Age and neopagan religions and is working on a project about teens on the margins of American culture. Contact 530-898-6341, spike@csuchico.edu.
ACADEMICS
• Lynn Schofield Clark is an assistant research professor in the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder and directs the Teens and the New Media@Home Project, which studies how young people use new media technologies. She also is the author of From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media and the Supernatural (Oxford University Press, 2003), which is based on extensive interviews with U.S. teens and considers how presentations of the supernatural in the media help shape the religious views of teenagers. Contact 303-735-5632, Lynn.Clark@Colorado.edu.
• Christian Smith is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-principal investigator for the Youth and Religion Project. He is the author, with Melinda Lundquist Denton, of a new book summarizing major findings from that study called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005). Contact 919-962-4524, cssmith@email.unc.edu.
Background
WEBZINES, ETC.
• Focus on the Family publishes Brio for teenage girls and Breakaway for teenage guys, and broadcasts a live call-in radio show, Life on the Edge.
• Christianity Today publishes Campus Life, which is available by email subscription.
• Beliefnet hosts teen discussion boards about a range of faiths.
POLLS AND SURVEYS
• See summaries of research findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion, funded by the Lilly Endowment and based at the University of North Carolina. From July 2002 to March 2003, the researchers conducted a random nationwide telephone survey of 3,370 teenagers ages 13 to 17 and their parents, and followed that up with 267 in-depth interviews with teenagers in 45 states. Among the findings: Teenagers seemed remarkably conventional in their religious views, and there wasn't much evidence of "spiritual seeking" or exploration. But even teenagers who considered religion important were not very articulate in talking about their faith - they have a hard time explaining what they believe.
• Read the preliminary results of a national study of spirituality in higher education. A pilot survey released in 2004 found strong interest in spiritual matters among third-year college students. It is part of a broader, longer-term study funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles, included the responses of 3,680 undergraduates at 46 diverse colleges and universities from around the country.
• "OMG! How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era" -- a survey of almost 1,400 youth ages 18 to 25 that included Christian, Muslim and Jewish youth and a mix of races and ethnicities - explored attitudes about faith, politics and volunteer service. It found a "strong and intimate" connection between religious faith and volunteerism. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed volunteered in their community in the last year, but only 14 percent did so regularly. The 2004 survey was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
WEB SITES
• A 2003 ReligionLink tip on teens and the Internet includes national and regional interview sources.
• Learn about a road trip that a group of reporters ages 11 to 16 took in 2002 to talk to teenagers across the country about spirituality - interviewing, among others, Maggie, a Buddhist teen in Texas, about reincarnation; Vidisha, an 11-year-old in Nashville, about Hindu prayer; and Alexis, a 15-year-old Baptist-turned-Catholic from New Orleans who was the only person in her family who went to church. The trip was organized by Children's PressLine, a media organization in New York City that trains young reporters.
• The Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project, based at San Francisco Theological Seminary and funded by the Lilly Endowment, worked with more than a dozen Christian congregations - Baptist, Catholic, Mennonite, Lutheran and others - as well as youth ministry leaders to explore contemplative practices such as centering prayer and walking labyrinths in working with teenagers.
• The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding is a nonprofit group that tries to help parents and other adults better understand youth culture.
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At night, when I get down on my knees beside my bed and lean my head on my folded hands in the posture of prayer I was taught as a child, there's always a moment's hesitation while I fumble for the first word to launch into the cosmos, a name that will find the infinite mystery I want my words to reach.
Doubtless my attention to the question of what to call God has been heightened by the violent clash between partisans from the world's three major monotheistic religions. Muslims call upon Allah, ideally, five times a day. The Qur'an lists the ninety-nine names of God, e. g., "He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, the Fashioner, the Exalted in Might, the Wise." The name Allah itself is the Arabic transliteration of the Hebrew Eloah (cf. Elohim, one of God's names in the Hebrew scriptures) or Aramaic Elah , meaning "Mighty One" or "One Worthy of Praise." But the Qur'an also says that Allah has names that he keeps to himself, an option I find strangely appealing.
Jewish prayers most often address God as "King of the Universe." Rabbi Yochanan, who salvaged the Torah when Jerusalem was destroyed in ad 70, instructed his fellow exiles, "Any blessing which does not include mention of [God's] sovereignty is not a blessing." During my nightly hesitation over what to call God, I often envy Jews that substantial prescription. On the other hand, while it seems appropriate for an acclamation, it lacks the kind of intimacy my Christian ears seek in prayer.
So what are my choices? Do I address myself to Father? If so, should it be preceded with Our or My? Should I say Lord, perhaps with a prefatory Dear, like the greeting of a letter? What about Jesus, Holy Spirit, or just plain God? If I say Father, is it because I am a child, seeking comfort and certain assurance? Do I say Lord because I feel strong enough to approach as an adult, yet humble enough to acknowledge servanthood? Can I, this night, transcend the barriers of time to experience the personal presence of the resurrected Jesus, the one who has "borne our griefs and carried our sorrows"? Should I appeal to the Holy Spirit, feeling the need for firing up by that life-giving but elusive essence? Or do I take the easy way out and just say God, the generic term for whatever is infinitely bigger and better than I am?
Then there's Yahweh, that most open-ended of all divine names, written in Hebrew today using only the windy consonants Y or H. Perhaps the name that God revealed to Moses was chosen especially for its exhalation. It is the very breath of God breathed into our ears. By omitting the open vowels in the written name, the Jewish scribes signaled their readers that the name of God is too holy to have on their unclean lips. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the unspeakable name revealed to Moses is variously translated as "I am who I am" or "I will be who I will be" or even "I am becoming who I will become."
It has been left to the foolhardy Christians to stick in the vowels and dare to pronounce aloud, albeit with a certain awkwardness, the name Yahweh. Even so, we speak this name most often when reading aloud certain contemporary translations of Scripture or in a few praise songs.
But unless I want to spend all night dithering, eventually I have to get on with my prayer, hoping the Great Unpronounceable will understand my struggle. So I plunge in to address him.
The name I often plunge in with these days is Father. Father is what Jesus called God. In fact, the Aramaic word he actually used, "Abba," is more akin to our homely English equivalents—Daddy or Papa, simple two-syllable names ending in open vowels easy for toddlers to pronounce.
But why would someone such as myself, a 64-year-old grandmother, suddenly want a father? Maybe because a child is what I often feel like these days. Fearful and impotent, and in need of comfort. I'm not ashamed of slipping into the persona of child when I kneel there at my bedside. I want a Parent. I need a Parent. Someone who cares for me as unfailingly as the mother I lost two years ago.
As for my father, World War II kept me from meeting him until I was four years old. Unfortunately, this meant we never formed a close natural bond. Moreover, at 88, my father has become the child while I have taken on the role of parent in caring for him.
In some ways this blank spot in my psyche has been beneficial. Many women have trouble with God because they identify him with an oppressive earthly father. For them, patriarchal oppression is a problem. But calling God Father at this point in my life doesn't put my ideological nose out of joint. I don't spurn or suspect any fatherly consolation he's likely to offer. In fact, crawling into God's lap and going to sleep in his arms seems about the best ending to a day—or a life—I can imagine.
Still, to be honest, Father has to be a conscious choice. "Lord" is the mode of address that automatically springs unbidden to my lips. In my experience, it is also the name most often used among Christians to speak about the lump-sum Trinity.
Why is Lord so routinely spoken? After all, it is an archaic word, one we never use outside of a religious context unless we're British. Such a word doesn't fit in our contemporary culture, except in certain kinds of science fiction and fantasy (The Lord of the Rings, for example). Like Father, Lord puts us in a position of dependence. But Lord implies even more. Not only do I depend on this Great Unknowable for my very breath, but with that word I acknowledge a kind of feudal relationship in which I play peasant to his patron.
Yet I've never been in such a relationship. Our word "boss" is about as close as we commonly come to Lord, but the ties between employer and employee in our capitalist democracy are not nearly so close or strong as those between Lord and liegeman. So should I call God Boss? It would be our own Americanized way of acknowledging God's sovereignty, or at least his right to be in control.
But Boss carries its own baggage, not all of it good. There's a whiff of irony, even sarcasm about the name. Boss means, "Okay, you're in charge here. Do it your way. Just don't blame me when it doesn't work out." Calling God Boss shuffles all the responsibility for my flaws to him. Which I'm already all too tempted to do.
So I'm back to Lord. Even though it isn't native to our times or tongues, it leaps unbidden to our praying lips. It's the name which most of us have heard most frequently, both in and out of prayer, whether talking to or about God. Because Lord, either in lower- or all uppercase letters, stands in for several Hebrew divine monikers, it appears more often in Scripture than any other name. We often use Lord in offhand colloquial expressions such as, "The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise." We take our troubles "to the Lord in prayer." And I use such exclamatory phrases as "Good Lord" with no hesitation whereas I would shrink from using God in the same mode.
One synonym for Lord is Master. This hits me on a deeper level. Slaves have masters. Trained animals have masters. Disciples of whatever craft or discipline have masters. Much more than Lord, calling on my Master puts me in a place I know instantly and instinctively. My personal history connects with that name as it must for anyone who grew up in the segregated South. The history of the slave-master relationship sets up internal seismic shock waves.
I recognize instantly the tone of the Syro-Phoenician woman's retort to Jesus when he turns aside her request to heal her child: "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." She is abasing herself by acknowledging, bitterly perhaps, her despised position while also acknowledging his power. Jesus himself often names the most powerful character in his parables "the master." Sometimes this is a kindly figure; at other times the master in the parable can seem arbitrary and capricious. In other places in the New Testament, master refers to a slaveowner, and not just metaphorically. Several of the pastoral letters admonish both slaves and masters to treat one another well. Master is also what his disciples often called Jesus.
Yet Master is not a name one hears addressed to anyone often these days. Nor, despite its emotional freight, do I call upon it often. Its demands scare me. Whether we're talking about slaves or wild animals or students or disciples, obeying seems to be the operative ingredient in the relationship.
But when his disciples call Jesus Master, they are not groveling before him. They use the Greek word for teacher (didaskalos) to address him. They are showing him the respect due a teacher by recognizing his superiority of knowledge or skill. Those fascinated with God, whatever manifestation of faith they find themselves in, have historically called their spiritual teacher Master. Who better to call Master than Jesus?
I have an elderly cousin who sometimes addresses her prayers directly to Jesus, adding the shockingly familiar accolade, "You're just so precious!" This woman has been throughout her long life a better Christian than I'll ever be, yet I cringe when she says it, picturing her tweaking Jesus' cheek.
On the other end of the spectrum, I once heard a radio preacher claim that we are not to pray to Jesus but rather, following his divine example, we should address our prayers to his father in heaven. I wonder what that preacher has to say about the Kyrie, one of the church's oldest prayers. Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
Which brings me to the way the names Jesus and Christ are frequently linked. Christ, of course, is the translated equivalent of Messiah. Or at least it started out that way. Children, however, often take it for his last name. And scholars debate the nuances, some suggesting that Jesus was only his earthly name and Christ his heavenly designation.
I rarely open up my heart with Jesus' name—no doubt a sad loss to my spiritual life. Of such seemingly minor distractions are stumbling blocks compounded, a fact that should make us all wary of our words. There is more than one way to take the Lord's name in vain.
As for the generic term, god, talk about God can get by with that designation, but addressing God directly seems to require something more. Prayer bonds us to God with a peculiar intimacy. It is what brings us to the point of actually needing to name this Person in whose image we are made.
If God is no more than concept or, as some theologians like to say, construct, then there is little point in naming him. One does not cry out to a concept or a construct. One may respect or admire it, even preach about it or advertise it, trying to attract converts to its cause. But one does not expect an answer if one were to address it or try to communicate with it. Only a person can do that. Calling God's name in the expectation or maybe just the hope that he hears, the supplicant recognizes God, if only fleetingly or even unwittingly, as a person, a person who can respond.
Getting that initial address right seems important to me, not because I imagine I can really capture this source of all being in a verbal container. But the name I call to God with determines the guise in which I come to this task, duty, privilege of prayer. In naming God, I am in some way—far beyond my incomplete understanding—determining my own identity. Naming God ends up defining not him, but me.
Virginia Stem Owens lives and writes in Texas. Her book And the Trees Clap Their Hands: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics was recently reissued by Wipf & Stock.
Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism
Syncretism in Christianity
Nascent Christianity appears to have incorporated many European Pagan cultural elements, "baptizing" or "Christianizing" them to conform with Christian belief and principles, at least partially, through discarding theologically or morally incompatible elements. One example of this is the strong connection between the thought of St. Augustine and Neoplatonic thought, and St. Thomas Aquinas' many citations of "The Philosopher" by Aristotle. Many scholars agree to this syncretism in principle, though any specific example is likely to be labeled "controversial". Open Theists (a subset of Protestant Evangelicals) assert that Christianity by the 3rd and 4th centuries had incorporated Greek Philosophy into its understanding of God.
"Syncretism" was not on the table when Christianity split into eastern and western rites during the Great Schism. It was invoked however with the rifts of the Protestant Reformation, with Desiderius Erasmus's readings of Plutarch. In 1615 David Pareus of Heidelberg urged Christians to a "pious syncretism"[citation needed] in opposing the Antichrist, but few 17th century Protestants discussed the compromises that might affect a reconciliation with the Catholic Church: the Lutheran Georg Calisen "Calixtus" (1586-1656) of Helmstedt School was opposed by Johann Hülsemann, Johann Georg Dorsche and Abraham Calovius (1612-1685) for his "syncretism".[1] (See: Syncretistic Strife)
The modern celebrations of Christmas (as celebrated in the northern European tradition, originating from Pagan Yule holidays), Easter and Halloween are examples of relatively late Christian syncretism. Earlier, the elevation of Christmas as an important holiday largely grew out of a need to replace the Saturnalia, a popular December festival of the Roman Empire. Roman Catholicism in Central and South America has also integrated a number of elements derived from indigenous and slave cultures in those areas (see the Caribbean and modern sections); while many African Initiated Churches demonstrate an integration of Christian and traditional African beliefs. In Asia the revolutionary movements of Taiping (19th-century China) and God's Army (Karen in the 1990s) have blended Christianity and traditional beliefs.
Syncretism can be contrasted with contextualization or inculturation, the practice of making Christianity relevant to a culture.
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*The cover of I.D.'s March/April 2006 "Design and Religion" issue, featuring a crucifix-shaped iPod, received second prize in a competition for Best Cover Concept of the Year sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors and Magazine Publishers of America. Determined by a jury of renowned editors and designers, the award was announced on October 24. www.asme.magazine.org.
http://www.howdesign.com/store/idmagdisplay.asp?id=1760
$9.00 order
March/April 2006: A Question of Faith
God=Details. This issue, I.D. explores the intersection of design and religion: Q+A with Michel Peissel on Tibet's sacred spaces....A sports stadium turned megachurch....Singapore's friendly new mosque....Surrender to the Xbox 360....The dirty truth behind the priest's collar.
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Just ordered this book, wonder what it's all about...?
HOLY TO YAHVEH
Author Terrye Goldblum Seedman
This book is a beautiful tapestry composed of Old and New Testament truths woven together to create a vivid portrait of Yahveh, the Most High God and Yahshua the Messiah. Throughout this book the plumb line of scriptural truth reveals many crooked places, faulty doctrines, and traditions that have permeated religious systems to this day. By His Spirit, Yahveh is calling Jewish and Gentile people alike to read this life changing book. For the Jewish people, the day has come to meet their Messiah; for the Gentiles it is now time to embrace the holy Hebrew roots of their faith and its scriptural mandates. For both Jews and Gentiles the hour has come for all anti-Christian and anti-Semitic walls of division to be exposed and shattered. Holy to Yahveh is a spiritual banqueting table presented before all who hunger and thirst for their Creator and His uncompromised truths. http://www.yahveh.com
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http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/names_of_g-d.html
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| Almighty God graciously chose to reveal His Name (i.e., His character and presence by means of His acts and deeds) to the world through the Jewish people. Through the ancient Hebrew Patriarchs, through the great deliverance God effected by means of His servant Moses, through the eloquent oracles and admonitions of the Hebrew prophets, and most especially through the manifestation of the Mashiach Yeshua: in all these ways God has revealed His Name. In fact, the Scriptures make it clear that the name of Yeshua is so vital to our correct apprehension of reality that without it we are literally lost, since we are told “there is no other name by means of which it is necessary for us to be saved” (Acts 4:12). |
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| Of the various Names of God found in the Tanakh, the one which occurs most |
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Names of DeityMost modern/font translations in keeping with traditional prohibitions against pronouncing the name of God have adopted a complicated and confusing system of translating the names and designations for Deity in the Hebrew Bible. The Tetragrammaton (Yahweh) is thus translated LORD in all capital letters. The problem with this practice is that it then creates confusion with the Hebrew term Adonai which does mean Lord. Accordingly most modern translations distinguish this without the capital letters. This is fine until you have the terms used together: YHVH Adonai which would then become the nonsensical LORD Lord. To address this redundancy the translators in such cases opt for GOD (all caps) for YHVH. But here another problem is createdthe normal terms for God (El Eloah and Elohim) are also rendered God throughout with no distinction so that you can end up with GOD being redundant with God if Adonai is also used. The simple solution is to reflect in every case the Hebrew terms actually used without attempting translations that only further confuse. So in the TEB you will find written in all CAPS these special names or terms for Deity: YHVH (Yahweh or Yehovah)brYAH (shortened form of YHVH) The TEB has also included notes on the 134 places where it is said that the scribes (Sopherim) removed the name YHVH for theological reasons altering it to ADONAI in the standard Masoretic text (MT). For example in Genesis 18:3 27 30 and 32 where Abraham is speaking to Yahweh the traditional text has Adonai or Lord to avoid what was considered an extreme anthropomorphism. The TEB notes the 18 emendations of the Sopherim for example see Genesis 18:22. http://www.originalbible.com/articles/7/1/How-will-you-handle-the-name-o...
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http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=PronouncingTheName&tab=weblogs&uid=3...
THE KEY TO PRONOUNCING GOD'S NAME
the Tetragrammaton is composed of four
Hebrew consonants - YHVH or YHWH (
).
Hebrew is read from right to left.
When the vowel points are added to these four
consonants, the word is pronounced literally as Yehovah,
or the Anglicized form, Jehovah. This is the straightforward
pronunciation with the vowels.
To determine the correct pronounciation of the
Divine Name of God, using the Hebrew Tetragram,
"Carr used a computer to sift through all the relevant
vowel/consonant combinations found in Hebrew scripture.
The computer eventually narrowed the list to 'e' 'o'
and 'a' or YeHoWaH (Jehovah in English)."
--The Daily Breeze
Many biblical names Started with the Tetragram,
and give insite as to how we would pronounce
The Great Divine Name of God.
The following Chart shows us some of these examples :
Chart provided by :
Christian Ginsburg, Introduction To
the Massoretico-Critical Edition
Of The Hebrew Bible, p 369.
Thus we see by the chart above
that the beginning letters of the tetragram
are pronounced in english as JEHO -
Thus, it is clear how the ancient Jews viewed
the correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton,
for without exception the first two syllables in the
above names are identical in pronunciation to the
traditional pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton.
We thus find in Hebrew : "Yehovah" and in English : "Jehovah"
"Yehova, which was in agreement with
the beginning of all the theophoric names,
was the authentic pronunciation..."
(Yehovah in Hebrew = Jehovah in English)
- Paul Drach;
De l'harmonie entre l'église et la synagogue
(Of the Harmony between the Church and the Synagogue)
published in 1842
Thus, the Hebrew
"ye-ru-sha-LA-yim" became "Jerusalem";
"ye-ri-HO" became "Jericho";
and "yar-DEN" become "Jordan".
Hebrew personal names such as
"yo-NA" became "Jonah",
"yi-SHAI" became "Jesse"
and "ye-SHU-a" became "Jesus".
Likewise
"Yehowah" became "Jehovah" in english.
DO YOU SEE THE PATTERN ?
"Jehovah is simply the form that conforms to normal
English usage with respect to Hebrew names in the Bible.
For example, in Hebrew, the name “Isaiah” was probably
pronounced “Yeshayahu.” Similarly the English “Jerusalem”
was, in Hebrew, pronounced “Yerushalaim.” “Jesus” was
pronounced “Yeshua” or “Yehohshua”. The names Isaiah,
Jerusalem and Jesus, were not the original Hebrew or
Greek pronunciations. It is normal and proper for names
to take on different pronunciations when they are
transferred into another language. In Hebrew, God’s name
was likely pronounced “Yehowah,” in Spanish it is Jehová
(pronounced: ‘he-o-vá’), in English we say “Jehovah.”
-The Divine Name of God;
Pursuit of Scriptural Truth
Home Christians.net
WHAT DO THE SCHOLARS SAY
ABOUT THE PRONOUNCIATION
OF GOD'S NAME ?
"That mystic name which is called
the Tetragrammaton...is pronounced JEHOVAH
(Iehovah), which means, Who is, and who shall be."
-Nicetas, Bishop of Heraclea, 2nd century,
From The Catena On The Pentateuch,
Published In Latin
By Francis Zephyrus, P 146
"The oldest archeological testimony
favors the pronunciation Jehovah.
A short inscription dated of the time of
Amenophis III (circa 1400 BCE)
has been found at Soleb..."
-M. Gérard GERTOUX; a Hebrew scholar,
specialist of the Tetragram;
president of the Association Biblique
de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits
"According to postings on various forums, it has been
stated that both Emanuel and Nehemiah Gordon believe
that the Name of God is closer to Yehowah, which is
similar to Jehovah in English. Nehemiah Gordon...
defends Yehovah after extensive study of the Masoretic
Text manuscripts. Nehemiah's view...based on studying
the actual manuscripts under Emanuel Tov, is that...
the earlier Masoretic manuscripts all have a Yehowah
or Yehovah pronounciation..."
- Seek God Association
(Michael John Rood: Messianic Karaite Rabbi)
"As a follower of Christ,
Peter used Gods name, Jehovah.
When Peters speech was put on record
the Tetragrammaton (YHWH / Jehovah) was here used
according to the practice during the first
century B.C.E. and the first century C.E."
- Paul Kahle; Studia Evangelica, edited by Kurt Aland,
F. L. Cross, Jean Danielou, Harald Riesenfeld
and W. C. van Unnik, Berlin, 1959, p. 614
(See App 1C §1.)
YEHOVAH FAVORED OVER YAHWEH
"non-superstitious Jewish translators always favored
the name Jehovah in their translations of the Bible.
On the other hand one can note that there is NO Jewish
translation of the Bible with Yahweh."
-M. Gérard GERTOUX; a Hebrew scholar,
specialist of the Tetragram; president of the
Association Biblique de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits
"Concerted effort has been underway for the past
several generations to alter the pronunciation of
the Divine Name, known as the Tetragrammaton,
from Jehovah into the Egyptian slur, Yahweh.
In spite of these efforts, there is compelling evidence
to stick with the traditional pronunciation."
--LambLion; by Scott Jones
"Actually, there is a problem with the
pronunciation Yahweh. It is a strange
combination of old and late elements."
-Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament
(TWOT)
"The pronunciation of yhwh as Yahweh
is a scholarly guess."
-Anchor Bible Dictionary, VI-1011.
"The great name YHWH is vocalized
as "Yehowah" in Hebrew...(Jehovah in English)
In the same way, as there were theophoric names
elaborated from the great name, that is names
beginning with Yehô- or its shortened form Y(eh)ô-, ...
The Hebrews took care of making either their names begin
with Yehô- or Yô-, or to end their names with -yah,
theophoric names like: Joshua, Jonathan, Jesus, John, etc."
For example, the name YHWHNN (John) is vocalized
Yehôha-nan in Hebrew."
- M. Gérard GERTOUX; a Hebrew scholar,
specialist of the Tetragram;
president of the Association Biblique
de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits
"The tetragrammaton, YHWH, is therefore read
I-eH-U-A (Iehoua), the equivalent of "YeHoWaH"
in Masoretic punctuation. This means that the name
is to be pronounced as it is written, or according
to its letters."
- (Won W. Lee professor at the Calvin College)
published in the Religious Studies Review
Volume 29 Number 3 July 2003 page 285.
"There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton,
the Divine Name, (Jehovah), Appeared in some
or all of the OT (Old Testament) quotations in the
NT (New Testament) when the NT documents
were first penned."
- The ANCHOR BIBLE DICTIONARY
Volume 6 Si-Z Pages 392-393
"Numerous linguists have postulated that...this name
was pronounced Yehowah in the first century..."
-M. Gérard GERTOUX; a Hebrew scholar,
specialist of the Tetragram; president of the
Association Biblique de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits
"We have objective manuscript evidence
to support placement of the sacred name
(Jehovah) into the NT (New Testament) text,
the era of guesswork is over."
- A Collection of Evidence Supporting
Original Hebrew-Aramaic New Testament
by James Trimm - Chapter 4
"The Jewish scholars known as Massoretes
introduced a system of vowels and accents...
In this way the Tetragrammaton became Ye-Ho-VaH
and later on, in Western languages, Jehovah..."
- B.9.2: The Biblical Background;
Gilles C H Nullens
"Yehovah - pronounced {yeh-ho-vaw'} -
is the correct Hebrew rendering. "
-Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible

Religious authorities favor the name Ye.ho.va.
Additionally non-superstitious Jewish translators always
favored the name Jehovah in their translations of the Bible.
On the other hand - there is NO Jewish translation of the
Bible with the name Yahweh.
See the chart below for examples :
| NAME OF VERSION (JEWISH) | TONGUE | PUBLISHED IN: | DIVINE NAME RENDERED |
| Immanuel Tremellius | Latin | 1579 | Jehova |
| Baruch Spinoza | Latin | 1670 | Jehova* |
| Samuel Cahen | French | 1836 | Iehovah |
| Alexander Harkavy | English | 1936 | Jehovah** |
| Joseph Magil (see below) | English | 1910 | Jehovah |
| Rabbi L. Golschmidt (see below) | German | 1921 | Yehovah |
"Non-Superstitious Jewish translators always favored
the name Jehovah in their translations of the Bible.
On the other hand one can note that there is NO Jewish
translation of the Bible with Yahweh."
-M. Gérard GERTOUX; a Hebrew scholar,
specialist of the Tetragram; president of the
Association Biblique de Recherche d'Anciens Manuscrits
TWO SYLLABLES OR THREE ?
YAHWEH = (2 syllables)
YEHOWAH = (3 syllables)
Concerning the tetragrammaton in favor
of the Hebrew name "Yehowah" (English-Jehovah)
"The original form of the divine name
was almost certainly three syllables, NOT two.
The accumulated data points heavily in the
direction of a "three" syllable word."
- George W. Buchanan,
"Some Unfinished Business
With the Dead Sea Scrolls,"
RevQ 13.49-52 (1988), 416
"When the Tetragrammaton was pronounced...
it was pronounced in "three" syllables
and it would have been 'Yahowah' "
- George W. Buchanan,
"How God's Name Was Pronounced,"
BAR 21.2 (March-April 1995), 31-32
"Many scholars believe...that it is more likely that
the Divine name was originally pronounced
in a three syllable form, ‘Yeh×o×wah.’ -
‘Jehovah’ is the English form of the divine name."
-The Divine Name of God;
Pursuit of Scriptural Truth
Home Christians.net
Poetry Confirms 3 Syllables
"In fact, from the evidence now available,
it may be argued that Yahweh is incorrect
and Jahoweh might be the true pronunciation."
-(The Law and the Prophets,pp. 215-224,
edited by John H. Skilton, Milton C. Fisher,
and Leslie W. Sloat).
"Samaritan poetry employs the Tetragrammaton
and then rhymes it with words having the same
sound as Yah-oo-ay (three syllables)."
-(Journal of Biblical Literature, 25, p.50
and Jewish Encyclopedia, vol.9, p.161).
"in the syllable division of the divine name
it would have ended up as Jahoweh,
a form...remarkably like the...form Jehovah"
-Laird Harris; The Pronunciation of the Tetragram,
in The Law and the Prophets: Old Testament Studies
Prepared in Honor of Oswald Thompson Allis,
ed. John H. Skilton
(Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing, 1974), pgs 218-224
"Thus the form Yahweh is an incorrect
hybrid form with an early 'w' and a late 'eh'. "
-The Law and the Prophets,
ed. by John H. Skilton,
Milton C. Fisher, and Leslie W. Sloat
PRONOUNCING GOD'S NAME
PRONOUNCING GOD'S NAME
"Y" = "J"
Many biblical names Started with the Tetragram,
and give insite as to how we would pronounce
The Great Divine Name of God in English.
The Hebrew is read from right to left.
The following Chart shows us some of these examples :
Chart provided by :
Christian Ginsburg, Introduction To
the Massoretico-Critical Edition
Of The Hebrew Bible, p 369.
`
THE BOTTOM LINE -
"the pronunciation of YHWH
is an academic matter and the God of Israel
is more interested in our personal relationship
to Him rather than the pronunciation of his name. "
"What should be obvious in all this
is that the pronunciation of YHWH
is an academic matter and the God of Israel
is more interested in our personal relationship
to Him rather than the pronunciation of his name."
-(The Law and the Prophets,pp. 215-224,
edited by John H. Skilton, Milton C. Fisher,
and Leslie W. Sloat).
God's Name -
It's Meaning and Pronunciation
(click-here).......
Is "LORD" an equivalent
for JEHOVAH ???
(click-here).......
Filed Under: General
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D. The Elohistic Interpretation of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH)
In a section of his account of the exodus, the Elohist introduces
an interpretation of the divine Name. The central importance of this
passage for the understanding Israelite history, tradition and religion
has generated much discussion and debate. The heart of the episode
reads as follows:
Then Moses said to El(ohim), "I am to go, then, to the sons of Israel
and say to them, 'The god of your fathers has sent me to you.'
But if they ask me what his name is, what am I to tell them?
And El(ohim) said to Moses, "I am becoming what I am Becoming.
This," he added, "is what you must say to the sons of Israel: 'I am
Becoming has sent me to you.'"
And El(ohim) also said to Moses, "You are to say to the sons of Israel:
'YHWH, the god of your fathers, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac,
and the god of Jacob, has sent me to you." This is my name for all time;
by this Name I shall be invoked for all generations to come.
The unusual rendering of the Hebrew, 'eyeh aser 'eyeh as
"I am becoming what I am Becoming" is informed by the fact that both
the form and content of this formulaic expression finds it closest parallel
not in Semitic thought but in Hamitic or Egyptian ontological,
mythic speculation. Its formulation, based on theological word-play on the
verb "to be(come)," not only reveals that we are dealing with ontology in a
strict sense, but also that such a formulation is characteristically Egyptian.
Consider, for example, this comparable formulation taken from an Egyptian
grammar regarding the verb, xeper ("to be[come]"):
xeper-a xeper xeperu
"I am the one who came into being
[and] who made come into being
the beings who have come into being."
We note three similarities to the formula found in the Elohist's tale.
First, the divine name is predicated upon a repetition of a verb, the Egyptian
version repeating it three times as subject, verb and object while the Hebrew
version repeats it twice with the second occurrence functioning syntactically as an
objective, subordinate predication introduced by the relative particle, aser.
Although the syntax varies, the two formulations are similar in the central
importance and repetition of the verb. Second, the verbs themselves, adjusting
for the different cultures that produced them, are roughly semantic equivalents,
both meaning "to be" or "to become." Third, both formulations are theological
proclamations, intended to expose essential characteristics of a deity based upon a
distinctively Egyptian, ontological perspective. As such, it stands apart from typical
Semitic understandings of divinity, but is demonstrably at home within Egyptian
religious tradition.
Another extract may serve to illustrate the central role that the idea of xeper
plays in Egyptian thought:
The Book of Knowing of the rollings of Ra, and the overthrowing of Apep.
[These are] the words which the god Neb-er-tcher spoke after he had come into
being:
"I am he who came into being in the form of Khepera, and I am the creator of
everything which came into being; now the things which I had created, and which
came forth out of my mouth after I had come into being myself, were exceedingly
many. The sky (or, heaven) had not come into being, the earth did not exist, and
the children of the earth, and the creeping things, had not been made at this time.
I myself raise them from out of the Nu, from a state of helpless inertness."
Upon consideration, it is not surprising that we should find a fragment of Egyptian
ontological thought embedded in the Elohist's narrative since the tradition is ascribed
to Moses, the Egyptian advocate and eventual leader of the Hebrew slaves. The
style and content of the formulaic interpretation of the Name is compatible with
the conclusion that we are dealing with a teaching that did indeed descend from
Moses as something of a Levitical catechism that ingeniously sums up the essential
teaching of Moses' understanding of God as adapted to Hebrew Yahwism. As such,
the formulaic understanding has become "demythologized," stripped of Egyptian
mythology and distilled into a purely ontological statement that become compatible
with Hebrew culture among the relatively esoteric religious traditions of the Levites.
That the tradition lived on until the post-exilic era is shown by the fact that the
Priestly Writer knew and utilized the Memphite Theology in his creation account,
di!
stinguished by its notion of creation not through the traditional Semitic notion of
theomachy but through the Hamitic concept of creation through divine fiat by both
Ptah and Elohim.
We must also recognize that the Elohist is expressing in a form of syncretism that
sought to combine the Hebrew concept of Yahweh Sabaoth, the Israelite concept of
El as the god of the fathers, and Moses' Egyptian concept of divine ontology.
This he does by reinterpreting the three religions as essentially equivalent.
The divine warrior Yahweh Sabaoth now becomes "Yihwah" through his reading of
the Tetragrammaton as a Qal rather than a Hiphil stem under the influence of the
Egyptian formulation. El, the god of the patriarchs, is simply equated through
proclamation with both Yihwah and the great I am Becoming. The Priestly Writer
was well aware on the Elohist's syncretistic intention and brilliantly reproduced it in
his pithy, poetic couplet that strikes one as another example of Levitical catechism:
And Elohim spoke to Moses and said,
"I am Yahweh.
I appeared as El Shaddai to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them."
With the same intention that informed the Elohist, the Priestly Writer utilizes the
same setting to equate Yahweh of the Hebrew southern tribes, El of the Aramean
northern tribes, and the Elohim of the Egyptian-Levitical tradition that was
introduced by Moses. Taking his cue from the Elohist, the Priestly Writer
perpetuated a brilliant synthesis that eventually led to the ascendancy of
monotheism within exilic and post-exilic theological thought by overcoming the
polytheism that was inherent in the acknowledgement of the historic and separate
identities of El and Yahweh. Both gods were absorbed into the more abstract and
speculative Egyptian concept of God as an ontological entity.
L. M. Barre, Ph.D.
barre at c-zone.net
www.angelfire.com/ca2/AncientIsrael
Filed Under: BIBLE STUDIES
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Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology
Published in
On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, Volume 2
(JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 498-507
http://www.shef.ac.uk/bibs/DJACcurrres/Postmodern2/Yahweh.html
Old Testament theologians often Þnd themselves in a defensive or apologetic position when speaking of the God of the Old Testament. Is its image of God not naïve, and unsophisticated, even crude and degrading?
No doubt, the God of the Old Testament can be a somewhat uncomfortable deity, but I would rather go on to the offensive, and argue that it is precisely where Christian theology believes it has progressed beyond Yahweh that it has obscured the reality of the biblical God. This is, therefore, a good-natured polemic against some aspects of the God of Christian theology in favour of the confessional assertion by which Israel lived: Yahweh, he is the God!
1. The
Somewhere between the Þfth and the second centuries bce a tragic accident befell God: he lost his name. More exactly, Jews gave up using God's personal name Yahweh, and began to refer to Yahweh by various periphrases: God, the Lord, the Name, the Holy One, the Presence, even the Place. Even where Yahweh was written in the biblical text, readers pronounced the name as Adonai. With the Þnal fall of the temple, even the rare liturgical occasions when the name was used ceased, and even the knowledge of the pronunciation of the name was forgotten.
Did the abandonment of the name Yahweh have any signiÞcance? G.F. Moore rightly argued that it did not affect the essential characteristics of the Jewish religion, which at all time recognized God as personal. Yet the name by which the deity is known is bound to inþuence to some degree the impression worshippers have of their God. The French Protestant, in whose Bible the divine name is consistently rendered as 'l'Eternel', must develop a rather different image of God from that of the English reader familiar with 'the Lord'. Any epithet by which God is habitually known draws attention to one particular aspect of the divine character.
A personal name is different. A personal name does not have any meaning in itself, and even if its etymology is patent, nothing can be known about the person from the name itself. The character of Frank or Felicity cannot be discerned from the name, but is entirely to be inferred from what those persons are and do. A personal name is thus at the same time a marker of personal identity and a concealment of the true reality of the person. It presents us with an individual, but does not 'give away' that person
It is the same with the personal name Yahweh. Indeed, it sounds as though it may have some connection with the verb håyâ, 'to be', and could perhaps be the causative of that verb, meaning 'he brings into being, creates'. Yet Israel itself did not recognize such a signiÞcance; there are, for example, no word-plays on such a meaning of the name. Bernhard Anderson correctly observed: 'The important feature of the name is not its linguistic value, but its historical associations. Whatever it meant once, it acquired concrete content through the historical experiences of Israel.'
But is that then not the case also with the word 'God' now? Does not the capitalization of 'God' turn it into a personal name? Not really. 'God' can be a dictionary entry, but 'Yahweh' must be an encyclopaedia entry. 'God' can be deÞned, more or less, as 'the highest being', 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived', and so on. 'Yahweh', on the other hand, does not mean anything to us but what Yahweh is and does in the Old Testament. The name is nothing more than a referent to the person. While 'God' with its capitalization respectfully acknowledges that there is only one true 'god', it does not name him with his proper name, Yahweh.
The personal
What use is to be made of the name Yahweh, then? I do not suggest that God should be known by no other term than his personal name; the Old Testament itself is rich in titles and epithets for Yahweh, all of which have their value. At least in our translations of the Bible it should be made plain (as the Jerusalem Bible does) when the personal
But does not the absence of 'Yahweh' from the New Testament suggest that in Christianity the name has been superseded? That would be so only if the New Testament as a whole may be said to have superseded the Old Testament, rendering it passé, obsolete and superþuous. Such a claim must be resisted, and with it any argument that the New Testament's usage of the divine names is regulative for Christianity. In fact, it would have been strange if the New Testament had persisted in the use of 'Yahweh' when in contemporary Judaism the common use of that name was regarded as blasphemous. Now that we live in an environment when Jews themselves would, in the main, not be offended by the Christian use of the name, the situation is altogether different.
My point is this: in popular Christian theology the personhood of God is less prominent that it ought to be because God is not referred to by his personal name. The Old Testament's reiterated use of the personal name Yahweh is some safeguard against the transformation of God into a philosophical abstraction.
2. Anthropomorphism
One striking feature of Old Testament speech about Yahweh is the frequent use made of anthropomorphic language. To him are attributed bodily parts, human-like actions, and even human emotions: he rejoices, loves, hates, feels jealousy and anger, and experiences change of heart (repentance).
Such anthropomorphisms have long been an embarrassment to Jews and Christians alike. Already in the second century bce the Septuagint translators removed many of the anthropomorphisms of the Hebrew Bible. Philo too was affronted by them, writing in his On the Unchangeableness of God that, although the Bible says both that 'God is not like a man' (Num. 23.19) and-by its anthropomorphisms-that he is like a man, 'the former statement is warranted by Þrmest truth, but the latter is introduced for the instruction of the many (hoi polloi)', those 'whose natural wit is dense or dull, whose childhood training has been mismanaged, and are incapable of seeing clearly'. To suppose, for example, that God really had second thoughts about the creation of humanity (Gen. 6.6) would be blasphemy: 'what great impiety could there be than to suppose that the unchangeable changes?'
While Christianity has produced some extremists who have believed, like the Audiani, that the biblical anthropomorphisms were to be taken literally and that God must therefore have a body, the bulk of Christian thinkers have tended in the opposite direction.
One method of explaining away anthropomorphisms has been to say that they belong to a primitive stage of revelation and are replaced later by more 'spiritual' and 'reÞned conceptions of God. A second method is to regard them as mere metaphors. Both these methods are employed in the short entry in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church under 'Anthropomorphism': 'Scripture, especially in the earlier books of the OT . . . in order to be intelligible to less developed minds, frequently uses anthropomorphic language, which is in most cases clearly metaphorical'. But the objections to both these methods are overwhelming.
To the Þrst method we can object that anthropomorphic language is not conÞned to, or even most concentrated in, the earliest parts of the Bible; it is in the prophets that we Þnd some of the most striking anthropomorphisms, Yahweh being depicted as a women screaming in childbirth (Isa. 42.14) or as a warrior red with the blood of his slain enemies (Isa. 63.1-2). Nor is anthropomorphism left behind when we reach the New Testament: 'God loved the world', 'God sent his Son', are equally anthropomorphic; it is just that the antrhopomorphism is not so vivid.
To the second method the objection is that while anthropomorphisms referring to the 'bodily parts' (such as hand or eye) of God can be understood as metaphors for his activity, for what is the speech or love of God a metaphor?
Anthropomorphic language is not some element in the biblical texts for which excuses have to be made, or a network of metaphors that must be reduced to plain language, but part of the biblical apprehension of God. It is to be evaluated, not negatively as accommodation to human language or divine condescension to human understanding, but positively, as a vital element of our knowledge of God.
A positive evaluation of anthropomorphism demands re-examination of some deeply ingrained elements in our notion of God. There is, for example, the matter of the inÞniteness of God. In an article in Theology a few years ago, Donald Mackinnon wanted to afÞrm yet again God's 'total freedom from limitation'. Anthropomorphic language, on the other hand, wants to speak of a God who expresses himself precisely through his self-limitations. When poets determine to express themselves in sonnet form or composers in sonata form, they take upon themselves a host of limitations that do not diminish but only make possible their artistic self-expression. Yahweh's self-expression in anthropomorphic form can be regarded as having the same character, quite differently from a mode of thought that argues that to predicate anything of God is thereby to limit him. Always in metaphysical theology, as Mackinnon says, agnosticism has been judged less perilous than anthropomorphism, but my contention is precisely the opposite. It is better, my argument would run, if crudely stated, to have a God who is imagined as an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud than to end up with a God about whom nothing can truly be known or said.
To take a further example: it is characteristic of Christian theology, academic and popular, to afÞrm the timelessness of God. 'For him', says Mackinnon, 'the distinction between past, present and future has no signiÞcance of any sort whatever'. Though a handful of biblical texts may point in that direction ('A thousand years with the Lord are as one day', 2 Pet. 3.8), we may ask more seriously whether it can truly be said of Yahweh, involved as he is in the moto perpetuo of Israel's history, that he is beyond time. The Yahweh of the Old Testament is not a static, timeless being: he is in constant interaction with his people and with world events; he has a history, a biography, a futurity, a past. His eternity is inÞnite duration, not a quality of existence; his changelessness so-called is simply his faithfulness to his promises, for he does change in response to the conversion of the Ninevites or the repentances of Israel. He is acted upon and reacts. He promises, threatens, reminds Israel of the past. He is the Þrst and will be the last. He will be whatever he will be. Of whom could it be said with less truth that 'the distinction between past, present and future has no signiÞcance whatever'?
Anthropomorphic language about God, rightly appreciated, is no distortion, but a perception of his reality that challenges many of the categories of traditional Christian theology.
For many Christians God is essentially loving, supportive, safe. Yet, if Yahweh is God, the Old Testament makes sure that such a simple picture of the personality of God is called in question. In the Old Testament neither the loving nor the abrasive aspect of Yahweh's personality is so underplayed that the one is swallowed up in the other. It is the experience of Israel that Yahweh is a multi-faceted personality, complex and not entirely predictable.
Yahweh is experienced by Jeremiah, for instance, as both supportive and oppressive. While he is digniÞed as a transmitter of the word of Yahweh, he also knows that word as a Þre in his bones. He knows himself to be Yahweh's prophet, but equally he knows that it is only by dint of greater strength that Yahweh has forced him into that role: 'Yahweh, you have persuaded me [to be a prophet] and I was persuaded. You are stronger than I, and you have prevailed' (20.7). Yet that oppressive strength that dominates him is at the same time the source of his conÞdence in the face of persecution (20.11).
To the psalmist of Psalms 4243, Yahweh is known under the Þgure of water. At one time it is life-giving water, which the soul desperately thirsts for: 'As a hart longs for þowing streams, so long I for you, O God' (42.2). But at another time God is experienced as destructive water: 'Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have overwhelmed me' (42.7). Or for the servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53, Yahweh is known not only as the one who elevates him to a position of pre-eminence so that he is 'exalted and extolled and very high' (52.13), but also as the one responsible for his humiliation and suffering: 'It was the purpose of Yahweh to bruise him; he has put him to grief' (53.10)
These have been some illustrations of aspects of Yahweh's personality that could be called loving and abrasive. There are many other ways in which his personality could be described: he is forever creative, dynamic; he is tender and terrible, patient and impetuous, self-determining but open to scorn, rejection and contempt, withdrawn and engaged, fresh with initiatives but taken aback by human perversity. He can be laughed at by a Sarah, blasphemed by a Job, abused petulantly by a Jonah, and yet not Þnd it necessary to bluster or use force majeure. He is domineering and þexible; but above all he is passionate. Nothing could be further from the truth about Yahweh than Clement of Alexandria's afÞrmation that God is impassible, without anger and without desire.
A Christian theology-perhaps any theology-does not care for these fragmented glimpses of the divine reality. Nothing must be discrepant, no act of God may sound wilful, everything must be shown to be purposive. All of the abrasive aspects of the divine personality must in the end be subsumed under the rubric 'love'. But the more that note is insisted upon, the more the reality of such negative encounters with God that the Old Testament witnesses to is set aside. And the more it is insisted that God is ever-loving, ever-patient, ever 'positive' in his relationships with humans, the more religion becomes a cradle or a cocoon, and the less true it is to the reality of human experience of God.
By all means let it be afÞrmed that 'judgments are his strange work, but mercy is his darling attribute', but let it be afÞrmed that both alike are his work. The Old Testament does not present us with a God whose personality is essentially simple, and whose every action may be readily integrated with the basic tenor of his personality, but with one whose judgments are unsearchable and his ways ultimately inscrutable.
3. Christomonism
One result of the absence of Yahweh from Christian consciousness has been the tendency to focus on the person of Christ as the exclusive manifestation of deity. Jesus has become, both in many circles of Christian piety, and in some academic theology, virtually the whole horizon of the divine. G. E. Wright devoted a chapter of his book The Old Testament and Theology to this interesting deviation from biblical and confessional theology. Taking as his Þrst set of examples the chorales and arias of Bach's St Matthew Passion, Wright commented: 'Jesus is here the sole and sufÞcient object of piety and devotion. Other dimensions of divine reality play no part. Jesus is divine reality-and the theology can be called a devotional unitarianism.'
A second sphere where the same Christomonistic piety can be observed is that of a certain type of pietistic and devotional hymnology of the last hundred years, still the staple diet of very much 'informal' religion. In hymns like 'Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine', and 'What a friend we have in Jesus', or in 'choruses' like 'Jesus loves me, this I know', we Þnd in practice what would be hotly denied in theory, a unitarianism of the second person of the Trinity.
For a third illustration we may take an academic example, that of the later Barth. Here the principle of Christocentricity becomes so developed to dominate the theologian's whole perspective. So, 'Everything which comes from God takes place "in Jesus Christ", i.e. in the establishment of the Covenant which, in the union of his son with Jesus of Nazareth, God has instituted and maintains and directs'. For Barth, the doctrine of humanity is really an aspect of Christology.
It can be embarrassing to protest against excessive Christocentricity, because Christian piety naturally demands ascription of the highest possible signiÞcance to Jesus. And although traditional confessional theology has had no hesitation in recognizing that Christ is not the totality of what is meant by God, what has tended to happen in practice is that trinitarian theology has given a central place to the person and work of Christ. The roles of Father and Spirit, whether in theology or in liturgy, have regularly been subordinated to that of the Son.
What 'Yahwistic' theology offers, by way of contrast, is a belief in God that is non-trinitarian, or a least pre-trinitarian. May the unity of God (frequently afÞrmed by Old Testament and New Testament alike) be a matter not only of the oneness of God as contrasted with polytheism, but also of his oneness as contrasted with his 'three-ness'? Even in Christian theology God, as well as being Father, Son, and Spirit, ought also to be recognized as Yahweh, neither Farther, Son, nor Spirit.
4. The Real versus the Available God
Throughout this discussion, the question that has been lurking in the background is whether the Old Testament's picture of Yahweh is an authentic picture of the true God or whether it needs correction from some other source.
But is it not asking too much to demand a picture of the 'true God'? For, we may argue, we do not have access to the 'true God', to God as he is in himself, but only to some mental construct of him, whether that construct be identiÞed with what God has 'revealed' of himself, or whether it is an amalgam of reason, experience, and tradition. The distinction of Gordon D. Kaufman between the 'real' and the 'available' God is of value here. He uses the analogy of an historical personage, of whom what was 'real' is by no means what is 'available'. 'The real referent for "God" ', Kaufman writes, 'is never accessible to us . . . It is the "available God" we have in mind when we worship or pray.' The concept of the 'real' God only serves to relativize our claims to theological knowledge.
Then what is the relation between the 'real' God and the 'available' God? Tillich's aphorism may point the way to an answer: 'God is a
In a word, if Yahweh is not himself the 'real' God, the God beyond God, the ineffable God, the God as unknown or unknowable, or God insofar as he is unknown or unknowable, he is the nearest we can ever get to that God. He is, if one prefers to put it this way, what God has chosen to reveal of himself. It is the anthropomorphic Yahweh who has to be God for us.
Addendum
See also the responses by Irene Mary, 'Yahweh and the God of Christian Theology', Theology 84 (1981), pp. 42-43, and by Francis Landy, 'The
Filed Under: TRUTH
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Start with Yeshua. That's his name, not 'Jesus.' It's what his father and mother and his brothers and sisters called him and it's how his followers knew him. Probably the name was pronounced in the rough regional dialect of Galilee as 'Yeshu'... (Akenson, 2000, p. 57). "In pre-exilic times, the name Yehoshua consisted of ... two roots. The first, yeho, is the theophoric referring to God. The second, shua, means "help" and the name meant, "Whose help is YHWH/God." In 2nd temple times, it became a practice NOT to use full theophorics to prevent accidentally voicing the name of God so the theophorics were truncated and Yehoshua became Y'shua. In the Galilee, Aramaic was pronounced differently and Galileans dropped their alefs and ayins like Cockney English drop their H's. Jesus' Galilean friends would have called him Yeshu. Therefore, in Judea and formally, his name was Yeshua, yehSHOO-ah, and in the Galilee his name was pronounced Yeshu, pronounced YEHshoo. Because of strong Hellenistic influence in Palestine at the time, some Jews with the name of Yeshua used a Greek transliteration of the name. Yeshua ben Sirach was one of them who went by the name IHSOUS, pronounced YAYsoos. Hence, Yeshua was rendered IHSOUS." (Jack Kilmon, 2006) |
| THE REALITY |
| There never was a person named Jesus Christ! His first name wasn’t Jesus and his last name wasn’t Christ.
Would you believe that Jesus’ real name in pre-exilic Hebrew was Yehoshua or in the Many people mistakenly believe that because Jesus was the “anointed one” he was the Messiah. Not true: being anointed was not solely reserved for the Messiah. Other people who were anointed were Kings, High Priests, and prophets. Indeed, in special circumstances, sick people would be anointed to help in the healing process (James 5:14). The person referred to as “Jesus Christ” is best understood, then, to have been “Yeshua bar Yahosef ” or “Joshua, son on Joseph, son of Jacob” or “Joshua the Anointed One”. No one ever called him Jesus Christ! [1] The fish was also one of the symbol for Horus, a precursor to Jesus, who was also known as a “fisher of men” (Harpur, 2004). [2] The numerology of the Hebrew language, that involves translating Hebrew characters into numbers, then seeking the meaning of the numbers. [3] The Hebrew word, in turn, was derived from the Egyptian word messeh, the “holy crocodile”, which referred to the practice of the Pharaoh’s sister-brides anointing their husbands with the fat of the crocodile. Interestingly enough, it’s a woman (with the alabaster jar) who anoints Jesus during his fatal trip to |
Filed Under: BIBLE STUDIES
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Levi Strauss debuts iPod-compatible jeans |
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The
Levi's brand is launching a wearable technology revolution with the
introduction of new Levi's RedWire DLX Jeans, available worldwide in
fall 2006. Designed for both men and women, the jeans seamlessly
integrate iPod plug and play technology giving music enthusiasts the
most innovative and fashionable way to enjoy music on the go. The jean
is designed to be compatible with most iPod systems and features
include a special joystick incorporated into the jeans' watch pocket to
enable easy operation of the iPod. |
Filed Under: TRENDS
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