What does God mean when he says his name is Yahweh?

[Musicat]

@C K Dexter Haven

Others have posted about the origin, authorship, linguistics or historical (or scientific) reality. I’d like to note that, while those viewpoints are certainly reasonable, there’s another perspective. We do have a text that (regardless of who wrote it or when, or who edited it or when) is in a final form. We can thus ask questions within that text, in much the same way that we can questions about Hamlet within the text, without regard for Shakespeare’s historical sources, without regard for reality (“It’s fiction” isn’t much of an answer), etc.

I can dig where you’re coming from, Dex, but shouldn’t questions be worded with light of the “origin, authorship…” knowledge? For example, I can understand a question as to what the ancient scribes might have intended to convey, or how modern scholars feel about some passage, but to me, it’s a different question to ask, “What did {some fictional character} mean when he said {X}?”

The first is more of a cultural, anthropological, archeological question and might have a factual answer; the second is more of a theological one and relies much more on faith than fact.

It would be similar to asking what Frodo meant compared to why Tolkien wrote it.

[Polerius]

@DocCathode

What does “I am that I am” mean?

FWIW, in Greek I’ve always seen it written as
“Ego eimi ho on”
i.e.
" I am he who exists"

The ‘he’ in ‘he who exists’ (at least in the Greek) is indicative that he is the only one who exists. It’s not “I am someone who exists”, it is “I am the only one who exists”.

May have no relation to the original Hebrew, just an FYI about the Greek version of it.

[BobLibDem]

@BrainGlutton

I yam what I yam and that’s alls I yam!

I believe that was the voice from the burning spinach bush.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

@Musicat

I can dig where you’re coming from, Dex, but shouldn’t questions be worded with light of the “origin, authorship…” knowledge?

What I meant was that there are several different ways of answering such a question:

• What do we think the ancient (human) authors and editors thought this meant? (If you think there were no human authors or editors, of course, then you reject this question as frivilous.)
• What do we think the Divine Author was intending to convey in terms of His identity? (If you think there was no Divine Author, of course, then you scoff at this question.)
• What is the linguistic interpretation and how does it fit other ancient languages?
• What is the historical context?
• What is the literary context?
  … etc.

And I was saying that we had several responses on the first batch of questions. I wanted to raise the question of literary context: using your example, that’s not what Frodo thought nor what Tolkien thought, but what the work itself says (as an artistic whole.)

[kelly5078]

@DocCathode

I wouldn’t let a gentile touch a torah unless I was sure they were ritually clean (mostly clean anyway).

I don’t believe this is a majority opinion. At least the Rambam had the following to say on the matter:

All tameh people, even niddot, even a gentile, are permitted to hold a Torah scroll and read from it, for the words of Torah are not susceptible to tumah.(Hilkhot Sefer Torah 10:8)

[DocCathode]

Kelly0578 Well, the opinion of Rambam is good enough for me. I sit corrected.

[rwjefferson]

@DocCathode

Anything containing the name of G-d is sacred text. It cannot touch the ground, cannot be thrown away, etc. If I write yod hay vav hay (the actual letters, not their names. I don’t feel like figuring out Hebrew mapping on this keyboard) in pink crayon on a paper towel, that towel is now sacred text. The Name is never pronounced. You see those four letters, or yod yod, you just say “Adonai”. The Name is sometimes represented by a hay and an apostrophe. This keeps the paper, just paper.

Please tell me how this differs from idolatory.

[DocCathode]

Well, we don’t worship the text for one thing. For another, human bodies and body parts also require a lot of special handling. For example, a corpse should never be turned face downwards. Judaism has a lot of rules on how a lot of things are handled.

[rwjefferson]

@DocCathode

It cannot touch the ground, it cannot be thrown away.

Although a goyim might consider that act of reverence as idolatry and desecrate the symbol, it is idolatry only if you would not forgive the sin.

r~

[DocCathode]

@rwjefferson

Although a goyim might consider that act of reverence as idolatry and desecrate the symbol, it is idolatry only if you would not forgive the sin.

Is it time once again to play the ‘Words that mean very different things to RWJefferson than to the rest of the world’ game? Because that’s a rather odd definition of idolatry you have there.

[rwjefferson]

Please accept my humble apologies. I did not make it clear I was addressing the sin of the outsider that desecrats a holy symbol. It is never a sin to hold reverence for holy.

Reverence only becomesidolatry when an act of desecration becomes unpardonable.

Peace
r~