The Name of God

Much ink has been spilled over the name of God (as opposed to the various titles people gave him following dramatic experiences).  Among Jews there is only one Name – יהוה, YHWH – unpronounceable and never enunciated.  The faith of the Jews is most specifically summarized in the Shema (Deut 6:4):

שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד

Hear O Israel YHWH our God is one YHWH.

Because no reliable pronunciation for the name has been preserved, the Jews use various substitutes for both liturgy and daily reference – Adonai and haShem among are most common – as well as a variety of unpronounceable abbreviations in their prayer books and other literature.  This practice is based on the desire to sanctify The Name – that is, to set God's name apart from common use and thereby avoid transgressing the commandment against misusing the name YHWH (Ex 20:7).

Christians are much freer in their usage and references.  To them references to God include Jesus as God, just God, or God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Other than Jesus (for English speakers) there is no special name, and so sanctification of the name is not quite the concern that it is for Jews.  As a result, 'Jesus!' has become among the most common curse words in English for believers and nonbelievers alike.  As one of my linguistics professors mentioned, vulgarities for those from western cultures consists primarily of sexual, biological (particularly references to excrement), or theological references.  

Islam is a little different.  According to the Shahadah, their creedal statement with regard to their God is:

La ilah ila-llah, muhammadur-rasulu-ilah.

There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of God.  

From a linguistic standpoint, the terms ilah and allah are different forms of the same word, and that word is the common Semitic term for god.  Consequently, a truly literal translation of the first sentence is 'There is no God but God'. The terms אל ,אלוה ,אלה are attested in various forms in every known Semitic language of antiquity.  (Etheopic, which is classified as a Hamo-Semitic language, uses the term Egsiabher for God, but it is the only exception I know of.)  The first sentence in the Islamic creed amounts to a tautology.  While a tautology is always true, it conveys no information. The second sentence identifies who is being identified as God by Islam – the one spoken of by Muhammad.

In the ancient world a multitude of gods were known and recognized by every people group, even if they restricted special devotion to a particular god.  References in both the bible and secular records indicate that the ancient peoples tended to be extremely inclusive with respect to the elim, the gods.  If the biblical narrative is taken at face value, then the human story began with direct experience and certain knowledge of the one and only God, but this knowledge rapidly became corrupted by the human desire to be like god.   After that monotheism did not reappear until Abraham, and this was described more like henotheism – i.e., their devotion to YHWH was exclusive, but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob recognized that the peoples among whom they lived had other gods whose existence they never overtly denied. 

The narrative in Gen 31 is instructive with respect to this topic.  In this passage, Jacob states that a messenger of God came to him in a dream.  This messenger identified himself as the God he had seen at Bethel and told him that it was time for him to return to the land of his birth.  When he departed with his wives, children, and possessions, Rachel stole Laban's household god(s) without Jacob's knowledge (Gen 31:19).   At that time, the people believed that the presence of the household gods provided protection and blessing.  As a minimum, this act symbolized the departure of blessing and prosperity from Laban to Jacob and his household.  There is no mention of Laban's gods after this chapter, so they evidently had no hold on Jacob's mind; but their loss had major impact on Laban -- to the point that he was willing to kill to get them back.  As such it constituted his excuse for following after Jacob in wrath.  After Laban failed to find his gods among Jacob’s possessions, the two made a covenant that neither would again cross that point (a pile of stones) to the other’s location.

Now, as previously mentioned, the actual vocalization of the name יהוה has not been preserved from antiquity, but that has not stopped people from attempting to generate a vocalization today.  Printed Hebrew bibles present God’s name in two different ways:

·      hw:hy]

·      hwIhy‘

Neither of these vocalizations represent the pronunciation of the name.  Rather, when the first form appears, a reader is intended to say Adonai – my (majestic) Lord; when the second form appears, the reader is intended to say Elohim – God.  The purpose of this difference is to prevent repetition of the same divine title during the reading of the text. 

In the late 1870’s Charles Taze Russel, who knew nothing of the Jewish cantillation traditions, used the first of the above vocalizations to come up with the pronunciation Jehovah.  This pronunciation is not remotely possible for the sound system of ancient Hebrew or any other ancient Semitic language.  However, the Hebrew bible does preserve two shorten forms of God’s name within personal names – Yah and Yahu – and these forms continue in use to this day.  In my opinion, the divine name is based on the hiphil (causative form) imperfect of the verb root הוה, which is a rare synonym of the verb to be.  Taking the sense of the form to be gnomic in force, the name would mean He causes being.  This is just how the God of the bible is presented throughout its text.  (Identifying YHWH as a 3ms imperfect causative form is the current scholarly consensus.)