When Moses asks God what his name is and God answers “YHWH”, what does God mean?
Is he saying his name is Yahweh (vowels added from the written Hebrew) in the same way that a person is named Teddy?
Or since Yahweh can mean “to be, to become” or “I am that I am” is God saying don’t ask me my name I am what I am?
Is Yahweh literally God’s name or a sort of smart ass answer?
Your question involves a few premises.
(1) A being identifiable as ‘God’ actually exists or existed at the time of the reported reply
(2) That there was some sort of comprehensible communication between this ‘God’ and someone who was a reliable witness and reporter
(3) What we have today, after approximately a couple of thousand years, is an accurate record, accurately translated, of this communication
There is no evidence whatsoever to support the first two, and the third is extremely unlikely (think of all the debate and dispute concerning ‘what really happened’ when the events are only a few decades or centuries old).
I therefore suggest that wondering about what his reported answer meant is somewhat premature. Establish the premises involved in the question, and then it may make sense to address the question. Not before.
And if you want to come back with, ‘This isn’t about evidence, it’s about what I personally choose to believe’, that’s fine, absolutely fine, but in that case you can ‘personally choose to believe’ any darn thing you want about what’YHWH’ means or meant. Once you have divorced yourself from the requirement for supporting evidence or data, any answer is as good as any other. I could tell you he meant ‘Bring pie’ and there’s ansolutely no way for you to show that I’m wrong.
This is why, on this Message Board devoted to fighting ignorance, a certain amount of value is placed on supporting evidence or data.
Or you could assume the question to be prefaced “Accepting for the sake of the argument that God exists and really did say this to Moses…” and not feel it necessary to horn in self-importantly with an atheist agenda. The preface should have been unnecessary given the context. :rolleyes:
Yes, I could. I could apply any number of other assumptions as well, and so could you or anyone else. I could (but I did not and do not) assume that the question is prefaced, ‘Accepting for the sake of argument that I’m a delusional fantasist…’. It’s just as fair as your suggested assumption - no better and no worse. But I did not make this or any other assumption. I took the question as asked. I also didn’t feel the need to resport to name-calling or pejorative terminology.
Note also that your suggested assumption doesn’t escape the fact that you either want to base your response to this question on facts, data and evidence, or you don’t. If you do, then my answer stands. If you don’t, then you can make up any interpretation you want and it’s as good as any other, such as my purely hypothetical example, ‘He meant to bring pie’. How would we know he didn’t mean this?
Pejorative phrasing and terminology. Irrelevant to answering the question, and unnecessary.
I have no idea what ‘an atheist agenda’ means, and in any case it is no more accurate to characterise my response as ‘an atheist agenda’ than it would be to characterise yours as ‘a theist agenda’. A factual question was asked, on a public message board which is clearly labelled as being concerned with ‘fighting ignorance’, and I put forward some of the difficulties inherent in answering it.
I haven’t distorted the context, or taken anything out of its context. Someone asked a factual question, and I pointed out some of the difficulties inherent in answering it.
Don’t you mean “vowels added to the original Hebrew?”
As I understand it, and I offer this subject to correction by a far more competent Hebrew scholar, of which the board has several, “YHWH” is the archaic causative form of the verb “to be.” Its meaning is somewhere between “I am that I am” (not “what” but “that”) and “I cause to be what I cause to be.” In other words, it’s a simple phrase which carries the theologically “loaded” senses of “I am the absolutely necessary being, the unmoved mover, the first cause, itself uncaused.” The sense of the LORD (remember the KJV convention of “Lord” in solid caps to represent the Tetragrammaton) being something other than Creation, and ontologically prior to it, is implicit in the term.
As for Ianzin’s little excursion, I read the question as being very much a parallel to “Were the Stoors who lived in the Vale of Anduin (from whom Smeagol/Gollum was descended) actually hobbits?” – an inquiry into what, within a given writing, the significance of a given term is. (If you prefer a non-fiction parallel, “Was ‘Boniface,’ Churchill’s master spy in his History of World War II, really the information he got from the top-secret Ultra decoding team at Bletchley Hall?”)
*Accepting **Malacandra’**s footnotes * (and Jebus if you were trying to stir a debate like the one ianzin thinks you were trying to I certainly apologize)
First let me say I think the exchange is very open to interpretation. I think it is harder to debate this than IMHO it (unless ianzin is right as to the wished for debate point) because obviously, you can interpret almost it anyway you wish & it is hard to say “wrong”. The way I read it is this:
It is a name that implies God is eternal – with no beginning and no end.
Everything is one great “present” to God. IOW what we perceive as the past and the future are just as real and immediate to God as what we call the present. So one way to read this verse is Moshe says “What is your name?” and this Being answers, “I AM”.
I don’t really think it is a handle-like “name” like Moses or ianzin or Fat Earl. The verse should be read more like Moses says [What] are you? and God says I am.
(Not assuming a reality-basis, and not assuming a non-reality basis, but treating this as part of the basic story accepted by many to explain a particular worldview and history …) This phrase has been the subject of much historical debate.
One traditional view is that God is an ongoing process that is still incomplete (basing that off of the fact that the word is in the imperfect tense).
Another would be sort of the “smart-ass” interpretation: basically that “I” (God) am beyond your comprehension, outside of time, outside of place, but encompassing both, outside of naming, you won’t understand but have fun trying. I am partial to this interpretation.
Sort of related would be an interpretation that this actually represents a view later articulated by Spinoza (who was excommunicated as a heretic for expressing it) of pantheism - that God is the universe and the universe is God; I am all and all is me. I also like this one.
The Kabbalist believe that it meant that God IS that name, and that words have power. (I am sure I do their view little justice as I am not a big fan of mysticism)
Another is more specific to the circumstance and is basically that I am with you in this and other sorrows.
I am sure that there are others, some I am sure quite dogmatically held …
OK, I never thought I would find myself agreeing with Malacandra, but yeah. ianzin’s behavior is totally out of line for this forum. Bash religion all you want, hell, I’m a person of faith and I bash religion myself. But do it in the Pit and let people trying to have a debate have the debate that was intended. This is the most blatant and disrespectful example of a thread hijack I’ve ever seen. As a student of ancient Hebrew, I would be interested in knowing what others think. I might even go back to the public library and dig up a copy of The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark S. Smith if the debate gets interesting. But give it a fucking chance already. Sheesh.
OK, I never thought I would find Johanna sticking up for me, but thanks! You rock. 
You go Yahweh, I’ll go mine.
Not really. If this were GQ you’d be right. But I think we can safely assume that in a debate we are trying to find out what is meant within the context of the Bible, not what the objective, scientific answer is.
But I think **Polycarp **got it right in his first paragraph, as to the meaning of YHWH. That’s always been my understanding.
I yam what I yam and that’s alls I yam! 
Yes.
I agree with everything you say, but don’t most (all?) the Hebrew names in the Bible have double meanings. Like Moses is his name, but it also means “to draw out” because he was pulled out the water. And Adam while being his name also means “soil” because Adam was created from the soil. So couldn’t Yahweh have the meaning you cite and be God’s literal name?
Looking at this from documentary hypothesis, Moses had a special significance. Prior to God’s revelvation of his name to Moses God was always referred to as Elohim (or El) in E. And we also have a very different view of God than what we have after P. While we don’t see the same anthropomorphic idea of God as in J it is still not the conceprt of God seen in P. In E God’s nature and his special relationship can best be seen in Exodus 33:18-19 where Yahweh shows Moses his back:
So in E it seems we still have a somewhat anthropomorphic God who has a very special relationship with Moses, it seems very possible that he would reveal his literal name to Moses.
What of an interpretation akin to C.S. Lewis’s that it is us who are destined to become God?
Does this imperfect, causative tense of to be support such a view?
(I’ll bet cs lewis has something to say about this himself, but I, by far, am no scholar of such things. in fact, I am really an atheist. but man, do i get a kick out of thinking that this all might be somehow legit. if we are to inherit the universe… pervade it throughout… and if the universe be god… then we shall assume him, shall we not? man, i could go on like this all day. one thing that i find an immensely prophetic parallel is the story of babel. i think right now humanity is at a crossroads. it is coalescing, turning into a monoculture. yet as technology advances and costs of living continue to fall, it is not unreasonable to say that in 50 or 100 or 500 years sustenance and shelter will be free. and then, hedonism, through drugs or virtual reality or brain interfaces, will begin to take its inevitable hold. all life, after all, functions on the basis of goals which it tries to satisfy. the point of technology is to help it succeed. but what will become of us if technology does its job fully? will we not cease to want, and then to reproduce, and to be fruitful and to multiply? the real danger of all this is that if we are a monoculture, such a wave could sweep right through us and end humanity right then. what shall determine whether we will still exist in any meaningful sense centuries from now is if we could preserve the diversity of cultures and opinions. if the encroachment of hedonism be gradual and spotty, the natural mechanisms of evolution, of survival, may carry our legacy forth. when humanity in the bible all gathered as one to speak the same language and to all say the same words, they began to build a tower that would carry them into heaven and to be free of the earth. it is only by an act of god that they were scattered and their diversity restored. soddom and gemorrha would still fall, yet humanity at babel need not have been the end.
even more bothersome is the question of purpose. my, ahem, clear view on things, unencumbered by faith, leads me inevitably to questions of existentialism. in particular, whether life matters: whether does suffering or joy or pain. the immediate answer that people might give is that of course it does. however, I cannot find immediate reason to agree. the problem, is that those sentiments are so fleeting, so bound to be erased. ultimately they would be erased by death, but much more pressing is that they will be erased by memory. some may object, and say that though time has blunted the anguish and heights of their lives, they still endure. but what of the things we forget entirely? what of dreams? Do you ever notice that if you perhaps wake up earlier than you ought to and you try to get a little more rest (but do not fall asleep too deeply), you are often surprised by how much longer time goes by in this state? Indeed, dreams, which in reality are brief, last far longer psychologically. Half our lives are spent dreaming. Half our joys and sorrows. And all erased upon waking, as if they never even happened. As if they happened to someone else. What of them? Do they still matter? One may argue that it is the moment of experience that matters. That though you forget your dreams or may never relate to the pain of someone else, it is the fact that you or they at one moment experienced the miracle of joy that is all that matters. This is also why death is wrong. Because though it causes no pain and no memory, it is the larceny of those moments that is the crime. Yet here is where things fall entirely flat. There is a long discussion of consciousness that I am omitting, but let us assume that we are but machines and that what we feel is, by whatever mechanism, as possible to be felt by anything else. That point isn’t even necessary. Because what i argue is that if it is the moment that matters, then the ultimate conclusion is that our imperative must be to spread that moment to all things. To breed as many as possible and to give them infinite joy. To convert the universe into a single feeling being, and to spread emotion to the lowlies molecules and to the mighties superclusters. Yet this sounds absurd. Especially because i’ve already said that unmetered joy will be the thing that ends us. And if accept this as reductio ad absurdum… it means… well, it means nihilism. It means that the moment doesn’t matter, and that death is as meaningless as life.
Yet perhaps… perhaps that is the wrong conclusion. Maybe that is our mission, that is our task… to spread heaven throughout… to make the world one thinking being… to create a god that would pervade through every corner of existence… that all would become him… and in being him the prophesies would come true.
Perhaps it is why we cannot enter heaven just yet. Why we must inflict misery upon ourselves. To reenact the story of Adam, and tasting of the fruit of knowledge of joy, of good and evil, to be cast off into the lot of suffering. For we are the chosen people, and our work is grave and our sacrifice be graver. Though when all is one, when the state of all particles be known to the infinite being, the arrow of time will become rather meaningless. We are nothing but causality, for there are no clear borders to us that are material (that is already a firm conclusion of existentialism). Yet if the threads of causality be once again picked up… shall all of us and all of everything not be resurrected?
The name of god is Yahweh… the becoming that becomes.
man, talk about thread hijacking.)
Jebus, but that very quote can be interpreted not anthropomorphically, but metaphorically. Even Moses could not see God’s face. God is incomprehensible to us, even to the best of us. The best we can do, even Moses, is to deal with that which God has left in his wake: the Universe. Study that, appreciate its beauty, and you come as close to God as we humans can. (As an aside, if I recall correctly, the Hebrew uses the word “ruach” as that which Moses will feel passing by him, a word that means both “wind” and “spirit”. Of course words in Torah, as in poetry and objects in any great art, can and do have multiple meanings at the same time.)
Yahbut
It’s obviously a symbolic name, to be sure – and His Name, insofar as He has one. As Hanville Svetz in Larry Niven’s time travel stories comments of his one-of-a-kind extinct animals, “You give things names to distinguish them from other similar things. You call him Fred to distinguish him from Pete. There’s only one of Horse, so he doesn’t need a special name.”
Likewise, for the majority of their existence, the Israelites and Jews have been thoroughgoing monotheists. (There’s quite a bit of Scriptural evidence for an early henotheistic tradition, admitting the existence but not the puissance of other deities, whom YHWH would overcome.) So the Divine Name was self-selected.
While the Biblical writers were great in investing names with symbolism (either intended or later assigned), God is unique. Who named Him, as Jacob named his sons and Pharaoh’s daughter named Moses? Pace Ianzin and Der Trihs, He selected the name by which He wanted Moses and the Israelites (with or without Desmond Dekker) to refer to Him. So it was His free choice, and means what He wanted it to mean. (All this, of course, presumes for the sake of argument that some event did occur and was reasonably accurately reported that resulted in the YHWH story.)
It’s worth noting, too, that the “J” source (“the Yahwist”) uses YHWH from the beginning of Genesis, while the “P” source uses “YHWH God” regularly. Only the “E” source uses “Elohim” (=“God”) without reference to the Tetragrammaton.
That should be YHVH.
Yud hay vav hay.
Yud= just like Y, sometimes a vowel, sometimes not.
Hay= Mostly H, but having it at the end of a word can sometimes get you ‘ock’
Vav= Mostly V, but with a dot on the left side it is ‘oo’, with a dot above it is ‘oh’
For those who weren’t already aware, this is the same set of letters that get mistranslated as Jehovah.
This is indeed the sacred and ineffable Name of Kaballah. You want to tell the future, discover hidden information, and make golems? You need to know what the Name means and how to pronounce it.
What does “I am that I am” mean? If there’s any consensus, I haven’t heard it.
I am the one G-d, inherent in all things, forever?
I am the Creator, nothing exists without me?
I yam what I yam?
I am G-d, and your human mind cannot truly comprehend what that means anymore than you can count to infinity?