The true name of God

Originally posted by RJHinds
I went to Hogg Junior High School in Tyler, Texas and that is not what my teacher told me.

I heard the same thing until a few years ago. There seems to be plenty of info to back up that Ura did not exist.

Originally posted by galveston75
I heard the same thing until a few years ago. There seems to be plenty of info to back up that Ura did not exist.

There seems to be plenty of info to back up evolution does not exist either. 😏

Originally posted by galveston75
No we do not know the true name of God just as we don't know the true name of many in the past, even Jesus's name.
But that does not keep us from using the name of Jesus as that is the accepted name the world uses. Even the name Jehovah is widely accepted throughout the world even though it may not be the right way to pronounce it.
The Bible makes it ...[text shortened]... y indications that he does have a name that we all need to know and recognize and use.

I take a bit more of an expansive view (though similar to your line of thought here): sometimes “name” is a euphemism for “essence”, just as “face” is a euphemism for “presence” (in the Hebrew, anyway). Different names ascribed to God are intended to capture different features of God’s ontological essence: shaddai, tzevaot, and the like.

The word YHVH—which is really a kind of construct in ancient Hebrew—is the name that most points to God’s ineffability.* YHVH literally means “the one that is” (Note: I have used the gender-neutral “the one”, rather than the gendered “he” because the word actually has both a feminine and a masculine component;** there is no neuter in Hebrew).

However— That statement “literally means” is deceptive. Hebrew is polysemous in a number of ways. YHVH, as you know, derives from the statement eheyeh asher eheyeh, which can “literally” mean any of the following (and really, to an original speaker, would be seen as capturing all of the following:

I am that I am; I will be how I will be; I am how I will be; I become as I become; I am as I will become; . . . etc., etc.

Robbie’s offering of “causes to become” (I suspect from the NWT), from the point-of-view of the ins and outs of the Hebrew, is perfectly valid I think (he and I discussed that, quite cordially, once before). I also agree with him (and you) that arguments over pronunciation (“Y” or “J”?) seem a bit silly—no one actually knows how YHVH might have been originally pronounced (even the Masoretes don’t help here, although their rather late attempts at “standardization” are on no way linguistically or semantically binding on Jewish exegesis).

When pronunciation of “the Name” it became halachically prohibited (I think about the time of the Babylonian exile, but my memory might be faulty), the word Adonai (sir, mister, lord—but only in the sense of a title of respect—in the Spanish: El Señor, rather than El Don) was substituted liturgically; the most common nonliturgical substitution is Hashem, which literally means “the name”, but is used as a name (another substitution sometimes used is havayah—HVYH—which means “being/existence”.

I do view all such names, however else they are intended, as being ascribed by humans. But you and I differ on the nature of “revelation”, and no sense having that argument here (at least between you and I).

_______________________________________________________

* Biblically (written Torah); in some of the Oral Torah, Ein Sof is the term most used to identify the ineffability of “the godhead” (getting a lot of theologically loaded terms here, perhaps).

** Yah, as in Hallelu Yah, is actually feminine, and is taken to represent the feminine aspect of YHVH’s essence; WH represents the masculine aspect.