God's Name: Holy, But Not Magic

Another question from Quora

Why are some words capitalized in the Bible?

Which Bible? Which words?

A. Others have explained how words such as pronouns are capitalized out of reverence when the words refer to God. Sometimes that practice is helpful because ancient writers were not always clear about whom a pronoun referred to. If a sentence referred to a prophet, a king, and God, figuring out which one of them “he” refers to might be difficult. When the pronounce is capitalized, you know that at least the translator believes it refers to God.

B. The New American Standard Bible uses all-capitals to identify quotations, particularly quotations from the Old Testament.

C. But I think what you really want to know about is the word LORD, in all capital letters.

Before the time of the exodus from Egypt, those who worshiped God referred to Him descriptively as “God” or “Lord.” Egypt had many gods, so after God told Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses wanted a name so he could tell the Israelites who sent him to them. God answered, “Tell them I AM has sent you.” That name was spelled YHWH. Hebrew did not have vowels, so if you did not learn Hebrew by hearing it, you would not know how to pronounce the name.

A thousand years later, Israel had departed from worshiping YHWH. God removed His protection, so other nations destroyed Israel and deported the leaders for seventy years. When the leaders were sent back to Israel a few years before 530 BC to re-establish the nation, they had learned their lesson and become extremely serious about worshiping God.

They became so serious that they refused to pronounce that holy name, YHWH. Consequently, later generations forgot how to pronounce it! By the time of Christ’s birth, it had become regular practice to add the vowels from Adonai (“Lords”) to YHWH to make YaHoWaH.

Since the actual pronunciation was lost, this new pronunciation stuck. Over time, the name was Hellenized for Greek translations. Then that was Latinized for Roman translations. Then that was Anglicized for English translations. That’s how it came to be pronounced Jehovah. Sometimes, some translations use the name Jehovah; other times, they use LORD in its place.

LORD is still used in place of YHWH in many modern translations. Sometimes LORD is used for Adonai, too, especially in compound names such as Adonai Elohim (literally, “Lords Gods,” but often translated “LORD God”). It’s done partly out of respect, partly out of tradition, and partly because we have no confidence that Yahowah is the correct pronunciation. It’s just assumed that readers know; but obviously, not everybody does.

Watch out for organizations of movements that stress knowing God’s “name” such as Yah, Yahweh, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, or Jehovah. They take advantage of people who lack biblical education. It’s good to learn the meanings that words and names convey. However, God understands all human languages, even when we mispronounce His name. Biblical faith is not a religion of sorcery and incantations wherein the words themselves have power. Our goal is to know and experience God, not magical words.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Free for non-remunerated use, but please give credit where credit is due rather than committing plagiarism.

God's Name

Asked on Quora:

Why doesn’t the Christian “God” have a name, just “God”?

The purpose of a name is to distinguish one thing from other, similar things. We can call God “God” because no English-speaking, monotheistic person would confuse Him with somebody else. Nevertheless, God does have a chosen name (as well as many descriptive names that I won't go into).

The Christian god is the Hebrew (Jewish) god, with details about His nature known more explicitly to Christians but denied by the Jewish faith. God is first called Elohim in Genesis 1:1. Elohim means gods (plural) or lords, so it is an early hint at the model that describes God as being one God who, using His creative power over even time and space, entered His creation as three Persons. But Elohim is a descriptive noun rather than a name.

The name YHWH first appears in Genesis chapter 2. It gets some explanation in Exodus chapter 3. As God commissioned Moses to return to Egypt to lead Israel out of slavery, Moses asked whom he should say sent him if the Israelites asked?

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

Whereas most names describe a person from a third-person perspective, I AM is in first person. God selected the name. This, and the meaning of the name, teaches several important lessons.

• Self-existence. No god came before Him, so no god had the authority to name Him.
• When God calls Himself I AM, He contrasts Himself against all other gods, who are not.
• The names of man-made gods usually have root words that single out a sole action or attribute. For example, Romans’ Saturn traces back to the word, satus, to sow, and Egyptians’ Horus traces back to a word that meant light. In contrast, I AM encompasses a balance of all positive attributes while implying the imaginary nature of man-made gods. 

I AM is, in Hebrew, YHWH. This is called the Tetragrammaton, which means four letters. Since ancient Hebrew had no letters representing vowels, the correct pronunciation was forgotten thousands of years ago. Some pronounce it Yahweh, but that is just a guess.

Now that you know that YHWH means I AM and Elohim means gods or lords, you can see that, back in Genesis chapter 2, where it calls God YHWH ELOHIM, the hint about God’s triune nature expands because the expression would mean I AM-GODS or I AM LORDS. (This is a name and title, not a sentence.) If we combine this information with many explicit statements that God is the only one who is, by nature, a god, then a mystery forms that only the doctrine of the Trinity solves.

The Jews came to believe that God’s name was so holy that they began refusing to even say it. That contributed to why the pronunciation was forgotten. When reading scriptures, they began substituting Adonai, which means Lord.

The translators of the Authorized Version (the actual name of the King James Bible) could have used YHWH, or they could have translated it I AM. But one cannot be pronounced, and the other causes confusion when plugged into sentences. So they continued the Hebrew practice by translating it the LORD (with all capital letters).

Therefore, in the hundreds of places you see the LORD in your Bible, it actually represents YHWH, the name that God chose for Himself. For example, I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images (Isaiah 42:8).

In the dark ages, Christians translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to Latin. Latin lacks a Y, so they changed it to a J; and Latin lacks a W, so they changed it to a V. That turned it into JHVH.

There was an old practice of using the vowels from Hebrew Adonai. So a Roman Catholic monk transformed the word into Jahovah. The first Bibles produced with a printing press published it as Jehovah, and that stuck.

Christianity is not like sorcery, wherein words have magical power in themselves (or so it is claimed). The understanding and the intent of the heart are what’s important.

Certain sects that make a big deal out of calling God Yahweh or Jehovah, or about using the Hebrew or Aramaic pronunciations of Jesus appeal to people with low biblical literacy or people so focused on micro-minutiae that they miss the big picture.  If we were Hebrew-speaking Jews reading a Hebrew Bible, sure, the pronunciation would matter.

But most of us are English-speaking gentiles, and there’s no crime in using the LORD in place of the name, YHWH, and no advantage in using a word that we do not know how to pronounce and the average person would not understand.