Some Alternative Views on "The Names"

Among those who use the Hebrew names are groups holding doctrines as diverse as all Christianity, itself. These include, but are not limited to: Trinitarians, Arians, Modalists, Sunday-keepers, Sabbath-keepers, non-Christian Jews, Kabbalists, new-agers, ecumenists, mystics and some who believe the most radical of conspiracy theories. One group says that "blacks" are the "true Hebrews" and that "whites" are "gentiles". Another group believes that Satan is female and is God?s estranged wife. One group teaches that AIDS today, is the same disease as the Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages. All these beliefs can all be found among the pro-names groups listed in Appendix 1, at the end of this article.

Our approach in visiting these websites was to be optimistic that everyone has something of value to offer. We found most of these websites to be informative at the least and overall, enjoyable, as some have included a history and photographs of their group.

1. A Pictograph?
Among some of the more original presentations was one who suggested that God's name is "not in any book", which we understood to include the Bible. He suggested that instead of writing the Tetragrammaton (yhwh) from right to left (as in Hebrew) or from left to right (as in most other languages), that God wrote it from top to bottom. Doing this with the Hebrew letters "Yod (y), He (h), Vav (w), He (h) can yield something resembling a stick figure, which he says represents our being created "in his image" (Gen. 1:26), or in the image of God's name. Understanding God's sense of humor, his sense of irony and the multiple levels of meanings in some of his statements, we try to avoid discounting an idea just because it is new to us. In this case, the representation works using modern Hebrew, or even Hebrew of the 1st century AD. But in early Hebrew, the image of a stick-figure is lost because of the difference in the letters. In 1st century Hebrew the "yod" (y) resembles the numeral 1, only shorter. In early Hebrew (c. 586 BC) the same letter resembles an "F" reversed, and an even earlier version (c. 700 BC) resembles "Z" with a horizontal slash in the middle.
In 1st century Hebrew the letter "he" (h) resembles "H" but with the horizontal moved near the top and the left leg is disconnected. In early Hebrew this letter resembles an "E" reversed, and tilted downward on the left side, with the vertical leg extended downward past the bottom horizontal (like the leg of an "F").
The differences in the letters can be seen at the following web site:
http://www.historian.net/files.htm

The following sites also provide links for downloading the fonts if needed. http://user.dtcc.edu/~berlin/fonts.html
http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/Links/fonts.htm
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur/

2. An unspoken, graphic symbol?
From an informative article titled, "Biblical Beginnings in Canaan, The Mighty Bronze Age Empire", we find the following quote:

"To the Hebrew mind the 'name' stands for 'nature', and in answer to Moses' plea to be given an immediate sight of God, God promises to reveal just as much of his 'nature' that mortal man could bear."
- Marshall Cavendish, Genesis, Exodus
(Source: http://home.fireplug.net/~rshand/streams/thera/canaan.html)

In other words, Moses wasn't asking for a name in the sense of how to address God, but was inquiring about the nature of God. He was not asking "who are you" so much as he was asking "what are you". We see the same question asked by Paul, when he was suddenly blinded, saying, "Who are you Lord?" (Acts 9:5). In both cases, the men had no doubt about who was speaking to them. God had already identified himself to Moses, and Paul addressed the "voice" as "Lord". They were trying to understand "who" only in the sense of "what". Both heard voices. While one saw a flame, the other saw a flash of light which blinded him. They both wanted some other means of understanding the nature of the being who addressed them.
In the case of Moses, God answered by using a verb "I Am", which we understand refers to his eternal existence. If "yhwh" was only a reference to God's nature, and was not meant to be used as a spoken, personal name, then that would help us to understand why no one, not even the Jews themselves, can explain when or why it was decided that "yhwh" was not to be spoken. It would mean that "yhwh" was a graphic "memorial, not a phonetic one. That would explain why it was preserved in writing, but "presumed lost" in vocalization. It would answer an number of previously unanswerable questions as we see in section No. 4, below.

3. "Yahweh is not Hebrew"?

Is "Yahweh" not a Hebrew name?
In The Law and the Prophets, ed. by John H. Skilton, Milton C. Fisher, and Leslie W. Sloat, information is presented that challenges any linguistic or historical credibility for the Hebrew names doctrines (emphasis ours):

"This explanation was first advanced by Jewish writers in the Middle Ages and has found wide
acceptance now. The serious objection to this explanation is that the verb 'to be' has no causative stem in the Hebrew. So, in order to express this idea it is necessary to employ a different verb. In Exodus 3:14 the assumption is drawn that Yahweh is derived from the verb 'to be'. But the verb 'to be' in the Hebrew is 'hayah', not 'hawah'. 'Hawah' belongs to an earlier era of the language. In the historical sense, then, YAHWEH is not a Hebrew name.

"The curious fact is that the ancient pronunciation of the YHWH has been totally lost. The Dead Sea scrolls did not solve the problem, but merely demonstrated that the ban was in effect two hundred years before the time of Christ. The form Yahweh is thus an incorrect hybrid with an early 'w' and a late 'eh'. The indication, though, is that often the inspired writers of the Old Testament were not interested in etymology. Rather, they wanted to draw attention to the similarity of sound, that is, to use the pun and write a word descriptive of the event. Therefore, it is quite likely that the interpretation of the Name in Exodus 3:14 may not be etymological at all."

"What should be obvious in all this is that the pronunciation of the 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. 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).

(Source of the above quotes: http://www.bibleresearch.org/law/sacredname.html)

4. A matter of Faith?

An intriguing possibility is proposed by Herbert Brichto in his book, "The Names of God" (Oxford University Press, 1998). This work is laboriously scholarly, but definitely worth reading. Brichto shows that, by context and usage, the words "elohyim" and "ha-elohyim" are also proper nouns or "proper names", for one God. (He acknowledges other "proper names" but limits his discussion to these terms, perhaps to keep his book down to one volume.) He discusses briefly why "source criticism" has not resolved the questions surrounding the names "yhwh", and "elohyim". Those questions include:
1. Which name is older, which is younger?
2. Why was one preserved in speech while the other was preserved in writing only, with it's vocalization prohibited and a substitute epithet (Adonai) for sovereignty substituted?
3. Is Yahweh a successful retrieval of both sense and pronunciation of a one-time vocable reduced by tabu tradition to a "sacred" but unvoiced grapheme?
4. Why was the name "lost"? When? How?
5. Exactly when were the vocables "adonay" and (in a few cases) "elohyim" substituted for it?
6. Exactly how was "yhwh" pronounced before the substitution?
7. Why was a substitution made anyway?
8. How did a commonplace name become wiped from universal memory, while, at the same time the consonants remained? Someone suggested that this is equivalent to attempting to continually "not think" about a white elephant. As long as you are consciously attempting to "not think" about it, it is the only thing of which you can think.
9. In view of religious denominations' failure to achieve unanimous agreement on even minor points of doctrine, how could this prohibition be achieved?
10. In view of religious disagreement over every point of doctrine, how could this be achieved without a trace of disagreement or struggle?
11. Why would the name be revealed to Moses while being denied to the Patriarchs?
12. Was it "lost" between Noah and Abraham? That would present other problems.
13. Why have multiple "proper" names for one God?
14. Why have an explanation or introduction of a "new" name (Ex. 6:3) while showing the pre-existence of that name? [Brichto says "yhwh" is shown by the narrator (Moses) in dialogue 11 times prior to Ex. 6:3]

As Brichto explains, "source criticism" has never been able to do more than speculate on the answers to these questions. These opinions are often contradictory. They include the following:
1. That Genesis and Exodus were written by several different authors.
2. That Ex. 6:3 is merely a "play on words" and that the Patriarchs really did know the name "yhwh".
3. That the apparent contradiction is due to errors by the narrator (Moses).
4. That the apparent contradiction is due to errors by translators.
5. That the only error is in the translation of Ex. 6:3.

The author acknowledges that, for the discussion at hand, the possibilities of "errors" in translation has been eliminated. He also shows that Moses was using contemporary terms in writing about historical events and places. (We discussed this at length, earlier in this article.) For Brichto, the remaining question is about the apparent conflict between the introduction of a new name in Ex. 6:3, while it is shown in dialogue in earlier scriptures. When the author acknowledges that Moses used contemporary terms, he demonstrates the simplest explanation for the apparent conflict. Moses used the contemporary name, when he wrote about earlier events and discussions. This is fully consistent with Moses' treatment of place names, as we showed from scripture earlier, and as Brichto also acknowledged.
Totally aside from this, Brichto's book offers an intriguing possibility regarding the vocalization of "yhwh".

Brichto writes that the proper name represented by the four-letter "yhwh" was "never until recent times, pronounced by knowledgeable students of the Bible". "Before the now widespread assertion that the etymology of the Tetragrammaton has been retrieved and is correctly reflected in Yahweh, this grapheme was generally rendered as "the Lord"."
"Unique in the history of religions is this loss in speech and preservation in writing of the name of a people's god. And it is equally remarkable that neither in rabbinic literature nor in modern scholarship do we come across surmise as to when these substitutions for YHWH were first introduced." Some say perhaps it was in the days of David or perhaps in the time of Nehemiah but, "when, in search of a clue, we seek for a written source about this tradition of holy ineffability, we find that there is none, none whatsoever." "And in the absence of a tradition written or oral, we are driven to further conjecture: how it came about that an entire people accepted the notion that one of its names for God had become too holy to pronounce. Was this by common assent, or was it imposed by authorities ecclesiastical wielding powers temporal? In either case, is it conceivable that a name that had been a commonplace should be wiped from universal memory, leaving no trace behind?" (except for the consonants).

In building his arguments, Brichto mentions several facts which are noticeably absent in pro-names literature. The Hebrew language did not and does not use capital letters. Hebrew has only one case, as opposed to the upper and lower case of English. Therefore, one cannot recognize a "name" in scripture strictly because of the use of capital letters. The capitalization, along with the division into chapters and verses, were added by the translators, who added capitals whenever they felt, by context, it was used as a "name". Along this line, Brichto shows that, by literary style, the word "God" is also sometimes used as a proper name. Brichto also includes a list of other names used both as "proper names" of God and as common nouns, "El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Olam, Shaddai, Elyon" and others. He points out the difference in sections where the narrator seems devoted to usage of different terms. In one section, Moses uses "elohyim" almost exclusively, in another, "yhwh-elohyim" and in another, "yhwh", all as the proper name for the Deity.
Brichto's development of this subject cannot be adequately treated here, short of quoting large sections of his work verbatim. While we will omit his through development, his proposal is still best stated in his own words (emphasis his):

"Our solution will involve a radical suggestion: that there never existed a pronunciation proper to the name transcribed by the letters Y-H-W-H. This suggestion would seem to fly in the face of two rabbinic texts that seem to be in simple attestation that the name represented by the Tetragrammaton was still uttered in public in Second Temple times. One of these is, indeed, the one written statement on which one might base speculation that the name was regarded as too sacred for evocation, except on rare occasion by the most sanctified of human lips. The following translation is from Danby's The Mishnah:

"And when the priests and the people which stood in the Temple Court heard the Expressed Name come from the mouth of the High Priest, they used to kneel and bow themselves and fall down on their faces and say, 'Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom for ever and ever!' (Yoma 6:2)"

The specific context of the High Priest's pronouncing of "the Expressed Name" is his citation of Leviticus 16:10, [30] which concludes, "ye shall be clean before the Lord (i.e., YHWH)." On this last citation in Mishna Yoma 3:8, Danby--drawing on rabbinic commentaries, needless to say--has the following footnote:

"The final word 'Lord' was pronounced by the High Priest as it was written and not, as usually, by a reverential pseudonym or alternative divine name such as Adonai."

One might quarrel with Danby's formulation on a number of counts. For one thing, what does he have in mind by "a reverential pseudonym" other than "an alternative divine name," and is not Adonai a substitute for rather than an alternative divine name? But these are quibbles. What is not a quibble, however, is the objection to his having the High Priest pronounce the name "as it was written." Inasmuch as the written name YHWH is without vowels, it could not be pronounced as it was written. These last four words (in italics) are an interpretation of the Hebrew, which in Yoma 6:2 is translated by him as "the Expressed Name." The Hebrew thus rendered is hassem hammeforas, a reference to the Tetragrammaton (known in later rabbinic Hebrew as sem hawwaya, i.e., the name containing the Hebrew verb hwh "to be"). And while it is true that later rabbinic tradition understood this phrase as the consonantal YHWH pronounced according to the original vocalization, it is equally true that this understanding is eisegetical, not exegetical. For Hebrew hassem hammeforas means simply the Name Expounded or the Name Explicated and not the Name Expressed or the Name Pronounced or the Name Enunciated."
[Note: exegesis = critical explanation or interpretation, esp. of Scripture.]
"Had the Name been enunciated by the High Priest on every Day of Atonement in the hearing of the throng in the temple courtyard, we should then have to seek for the date of the forgetfulness of the vowels in the decades after the Temple's destruction by Rome. And the Mishna's intent, that the Name Explicated was indeed heard at large, admits of no question. For in our second citation, Mishna Tamid 3:8, a fanciful catalogue of sounds from the Temple that could be heard as far away as Jericho, we read "and there are those who say that even the voice of the High Priest [could be heard] when he uttered (hizkir) the Name on the Day of Atonement." And if that Name was the sem hammeforas "the Explicated Name," the name expressive of God's eternality and enduring sovereignty as expounded in the Ehye or Ehye aser Ehye of Exodus 3 (or the attributes of Exodus 34:6-7), we should have no difficulty understanding why the tannaitic rabbis would have wanted the Name to resound so far and wide. And we would be in a better position to understand the response of the people to the expounding of this name. For a more meaningful translation of the people's response to the expounding of this Name--baruk sem kevod malkuto le'olam waed--is "Praised be this name for His Sovereign Presence for all time.""

Brichto asks, "Where does all this leave us?". If the name were enunciated in Second Temple times, who decreed its suppression and how was that accomplished among the Jews scattered from Egypt to Babylon to Europe? How could a people who argued for centuries over whether one could offer sacrifices outside Jerusalem, be so unanimous on this action?
He continues, "Scripture--consider its literal meaning--is a literary witness, a witness in writing. As such it may express an eloquence unsurpassed. But as a literally (sic!) linguistic phenomenon, speech (loquens), it is mute. The vocalization for YHWH need never have been forgotten if, for example, it was never known; and never known for never having existed." (Brichto proceeds with a detailed and logical examination of the linguistic, literary, and etymological details of the Hebrew text and of specific words, a development too large to include here.)
"For in the sense of a name as a phenomenon of speech, an oral or auditory phenomenon, the name reflected in the written characters YHWH was never made known to anyone. Hebrew sem means "name" and, as often indicated by close association with qara "to call out, to utter," is essentially a sonic or auricular phenomenon. The Hebrew word zeker, which may indeed be a synonym for "name," has a denotation which is essentially visual, "mark, sign, trace." Only a pedant, himself a stranger to a sense of humor, would with assurance deny the possibility of any humorous intent in the narration of Exodus 3. After going through the near rigmarole of the first episode in which Moses' question, "Who am I that (ki) I (presume to) go to Pharaoh" receives the elliptical answer, "Verily (ki) Ehye (I am) (is) with you;" this followed by the granting of an unasked for sign (ot) that is no sign at all, we reach the second episode: Moses asks a rather bizarre question--what name shall he give as the name of the ancestral god--and receives the answer Ehye aser Ehye, which is immediately reduced to the Ehye of episode A, and then summarized or glossed as "YHWH god of the ancestors...sent me to you." And this culminates in the final pronouncement, which can refer only to the (unprounounceable) name YHWH and not to the predicate ("sent me," ze semi leolam weze zikri ledor dor "That is my name for all time and that is my SIGNature for all generations."
(Source: The Names of God, Herbert Chanan Brichto, 1998)

To summarize, in the Hebrew language, "name" has more of a sense of one's "nature" than a "label". When Moses, and others, asked for a "name", they were inquiring, not about a "secret name" as the Egyptians and other pagans would do, but about the "nature" of God. God's response to Moses, written in classical Hebrew and having no capital letters, involved a "word play" which is lost in translation, partly because we must choose to use one or the other.
The word "yhwh" has been translated more than one way. It has been translated as:
He who is

The self-existent one

He who is ever becoming what He is

Is-ness is is-ness

I am that I am

I shall be what I shall be

I am what I shall be

What I was I shall be

(And so on, using every combination of the "be" verb, in past, present and future tense.)

There are three events recorded, in which God, or his representative are asked about their "name":
Jacob, who is answered only with a question (Gen 32:29).
Moses, who is answered almost cryptically, with a verb, in three forms (Ex.6:3)
The parents of Samson, who are answered with a question (Jud. 13:17-18) but it includes an adjective "secret" (or "wonderful") which is used elsewhere as a proper name (Isa. 9:6).

Another aspect of Hebrew which is not mentioned in pro-names literature is that the verb "to be", in the denotative sense "I am", is totally superfluous because Biblical Hebrew regularly omits the verb "to be" in the present tense.
The first lesson for Moses and for us, apparent in the 'flame that does not consume', is that God can be present in a vessel without doing it harm. Contrast this to the seemingly prevalent belief that even God's presence meant death (Judg. 13:22).
We note that "God" (elohyim) is used when God warns Moses to take off his sandals (as he is in danger)(Ex. 3:4-5), but "yhwh" is used when God expresses concern for "my (his) people" (verse 7). Moses knew and we know that both refer to "one" and the same God.
When Moses, through humility, reluctance, fear, or self-doubt, asks, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" (verse 11), God answers in effect, "I am with you". What kind of answer is that?
Brichto explains, "Implicitly it says, "Your point is well taken. You are indeed a nonentity, in yourself. But you are not going for yourself alone, on your own. I, God, am with you. And that changes everything. For you are no longer you, you now are my vessel." And if Deity's answer stopped here, that would be the bottom line of the kerygma: when God calls to service, modesty is as silly as fear. But the answer of Deity does not stop there. It goes on to answer a question that Moses has not asked. Explicitly. But the question is there in the elliptical density of the second part of the answer: Deity's offering of a token by which the mortal may be reassured "that it is I Who have sent you" reveals a very basic problem of faith and revelation. Doubt about a revelation, even as it is being experienced, may bespeak no lack of faith in God as such, nor in his ability to call upon mortals in such direct and specific communication, but rather self-doubt: Can I really believe that this is happening to me, that the transcendent Lord has picked this unlikely frame for his spirit?
And the answer to this doubt, this reassurance by Deity that he is indeed speaking and commissioning Moses as his prophet, is as ironic--yet existentially true--as the irony of the prophetic ear doubting its capacity to recognize its Caller. For a divinely provided sign that will set doubt to rest, that will reassure the agent of the future success of his mission (hence validation of the fact of the commissioning), must take place in the present. Yet the sign offered by Deity to Moses lies in the future, indeed in the future when the present doubt will have been canceled by a reality that is yet to transpire, Just so. That is the kerygma: when the receiver of the prophetic call would doubt the reality of the call, would tremble to undertake an enterprise of such dubious chance of success (if the call is an illusion), there can be no reassurance. If prophetic call is questioned by prophetic self-doubt, well then, the proof of the pudding can only be in the eating. "When you will have brought the people free from Egypt, your sign that it was indeed I Who sent you will be that all of you will worship Me at this very mountain."
This last quote is faithful to the Hebrew text except in one particular. The Hebrew has no Me." (Source: Brichto, Op. Cit.)

When Moses asks, "Whom shall I say sent me?", he is asking for something by which to prove to the Israelites that it was God who had appeared to him and commissioned him to lead Israel. God's response is to answer using a verb in three forms. But this verb is not normally used in the present tense in Hebrew. Look at the listing in Strong's. Although it appears in English over 500 times as "am", it is only shown in the Hebrew three times, aside from Ex. 3:14. Is it any wonder then, that the pronunciation and spelling (with vowels) appears to have been "lost". If it is a word form that is "foreign" to Hebrew, then it wasn't "lost", it was just never used. This would explain why the Jews commonly referred to it as "the name", ha-shem. It was a name that had no pronunciation in Hebrew. While "yah" has been preserved in the names of individuals, the rest (reflected in the multitude of variations) is a modern construction devised by men.

When Moses asks for, in effect, a "sign", God uses a word that for all practical purposes doesn't exist in that language. In effect, God says, "It is a matter of faith.".
Later in the conversation, Moses states emphatically, "...behold, they will not believe me...". At this time, God gives him three physical miracles (or "tricks") to perform, to convince the Israelites. Yet when Moses returns to Egypt and relays God's message, the Israelites just keep on making bricks. They didn't believe Moses (Ex. 6:9). It wouldn't have mattered what "name" God had given Moses. Israel lacked faith, and the rest of their history in scripture demonstrates that.
In the NT, when the scribes and Pharisees asked Christ for a "sign from heaven" (proof of who he claimed to be, of whom had sent him) he responded that, "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign and no sign shall be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas;" (see Mat. 12:38-39). One could say that wasn't much of a sign, since others had claimed to be the Messiah, others had died, and others were resurrected (Lazarus, and others on the day Christ died). Besides, Christ only appeared to his disciples and a few other followers after his Resurrection. Most had to take their word for it, that Christ did rise after three days and nights. In other words, they had to have faith. Christ was specific about what he would be looking for, upon his return. "...Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Lk. 18:8).

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