I couldn’t decide between here and GD, so since it’s a question…
Okay, not looking for the ‘the author’ answer here…
First of all, naming in the bible implies ownership: You name something, it’s yours. (basically) Now, by definition,
God wasn’t created by any… Eh… One? Thing? Anyway, I assume the basic plot is that God was just there the whole time. So when did the name came up? Surely God didn’t need a name for himself. (would God be talking to himself?)
So… Why a name (Yehawe and not simply God), and at which point did it pop up?
And when did he tell us his name? Or is it just a nickname we gave him? Because I would prefer something more simple like “Bob”, or something more fitting like “WHOOOAAA” (really open your mouth wide when you say that, it’s God!)
So I grab my Hebrew bible, and look up that quote.
He does say “I am who I am”, but he doesn’t say “I am Yehawe”. The word for “I am” here is “ehe’ye”. “Yehawe” is considered to be “I am” because it sounds similar to something else that means something like “I am” or “to be”, but is more like “to make up”. (as in: matter is made up of molecules)
Bet you wish you knew Hebrew now, ha?
Actually, eheyeh means “I will be”. Do attempt not to be snide to somebody trying to answer your question, OK?
There isn’t really a good way in Hebrew to say “I am”. There is nothing in Hebrew that translates to the various forms of “be”, particularly the present tense stuff - that’s all implied. (“I am the Lord thy God” translates word-for-word as “I Lord your God”, with the rest of the stuff being understood.)
The name of God referred to in the OP (which is considered in Judaism to be so holy that it is never actually pronounced, and which I am very uncomfortable writing even in transliteration) doesn’t, AFAIK, have a direct translation into English. The letters are the same as those in the words hayah, hoveh, and yihiyeh (Hebrew isn’t vowelized), which mean past, present and future. According to rabbinic tradition, this is the source of the name, and I’m assuming that that’s what Mangetout is referring to.
G-d has many names. Two of the names used in the 5 books of Moses are Elokim and the tetragrammaton that you refer to. The tetragrammaton is an acronym for “he was, he is, he will be” and refers to g-d’s eternalness. Whenever is is used it refers to g-d’s attribute of judgement. When the Torah uses Elokim, it refers to g-d’s attribute of mercy.
Observant jews no longer pronounce the tetragrammaton. They instead read Ah-Do-Nay which means “my master”. When the Hebrew text is pointed with vowels (which appear as dots and lines under the letters and were not given with the Torah at Sinai) the vowles of “my master” appear under the tetragrammaton.
Not that you asked, but the corruption of its pronunciation by the XXXXX Wittnesses is caused by reading the consonants of the tetragrammaton with the vowels of “my master”.
One thing about the Yahweh/Jehovah name. I don’t remember my Latin declensions well (It’s been 8 years since I took the one Latin class. I’ll take the word of anyone who knows Latin better than I do), but one of the declensions referring to Jupiter/Ivpeter is Jova/Iova…which sounds suspiciously familiar.
Does anyone know who came up with the term first? The Israelites or the Romans?
This is a question that has always interested me, so I’ll toss in my two bits.
I’ve always heard that verse translated as “I am that I am”. Eheyeh asher eheyeh. But maybe I’ve heard wrong.
No disrespect to anyone’s beliefs intended, okay? I believe that the Yehawe/Jehova (which is from the creation epic) is transliterated as YHVH, which is the Tetragrammaton. The Eheyeh meaning “I Am” (that God gave to Moses on the mountain) is transliterated as AHYH. Different letters, different words. What the Tetragrammaton’s definition is supposed to be, I have no idea. I’ve always been fascinated by it, though. Pretty heavy concept to put into a name, no matter how you look at it.
The name of the God of the Old Testament is usually given as the tetragrammaton YHWH, which is unpronounceable, at least until you throw vowels in it. The explanation I have heard is that they borrowed from Greek “adonai” and came up with Yahweh, which in the translations became Jehovah. (I was brought up Catholic and didn’t hear that God’s name was “Jehovah” until I was a teenager. I think the Protestants were more into this.)
But…
The form of the OT God name used in combination forms was “Yo” or “Yao”. Look at the theophorous names –
“Joel” = “Jo-el” = “God (“Jo” = “Yo”) is God (“El”)”
“Jonah”
“Joshua” (very complex etymology for this that I can’t recall)
“Jonathan”
In all of these names the part that means “God” is an unadorned “Yo/Io/Jo”, basically the first letter of the tetragrammaton. Howcum?
Elias Auerbach suggested (I think in his book Moses) that there exists a “he emphaticum”, an interpolation of the syllable “he” to suggest holiness. It explains how “Abram” became “Abraham”, how “Sarai” became “Sarah”, and it explains that weird “AA” at the beginning of “Aaron” – it’s really “Aharon”. His theory is that God, being especially holy, rates two "he emphaticum"s – YoHeHe. But that’s clumsy, and to break up the HEs you add a W to get YoHeWeHe, or YHWH if you only write down the consonants (as they did before they came up with diacritical marks).
I’m not remotely qualified to judge the accuracy of this, but it seems more plausible than any other explanation I’ve heard.
Now, I admit I don’t know too much about the fundamentals of Judaism (in fact, I probably misspelled it, if so I appologize), but to the best of my knowledge, it was only a few higher ups in the religious order that knew the “True name of God,” and that over time, it was lost/“forgotten”. As for Yahweh, as Myst mentioned, it was commonly believed at the time that if you named something, you had control over it, and I thought that was where God’s response to Moses came from. I thought Moses was trying to be slick by asking God to reveal his name to him so he could control him, but God in his infinite wisdom just gave him a somewhat snide remark and sent him on his way. God, Yahweh, Jahova, and all those other “names” are nothing but tittles, which is why for me, the commandment of not taking the Lord God’s name in vain always seemed silly to me…if it’s true that no one really knows it.
At least, that’s a lot of my understanding of the situation. If anyone else has insight as to God’s name, I’d be interested to hear it, but I believe that to this day, no one’s really “named” God as of yet.
Well, the main god in the Roman pantheon was caled Iovis (which becomes “Jove” in modern English), but the Romans called him “Iovis Pater” (Father Jove) which became Jupiter. I don’t think there’s any direct connection at all between Hebrew and Latin.
The Roman lightning-god was called “Iupiter” in the nominative (subject form), and “Iovis” in the genetive (possessive form). The rest of the cases are based off of the genetive form, as the nominatives of Latin words (especially Third Declension words) tend to be somewhat irregular. Since English doesn’t have separate case forms for most nouns, the name of the Roman lightning-god can be properly rendered as either “Jupiter” or “Jove”
As to the God of the Jews and related religions, I’ve heard the thing about a name giving the namer power, as well… Except that God, in His greatness, was beyond such things, and had no reason to fear telling anyone His name. By this reasoning, the tetragrammaton He spake to Moses is, in fact, His true name.
First of all, I think I should mention (since I don’t think anyone else has) that the Hebrew bible that is currently in use was translated from its Greek translation. I just think it sheds light on the formation of the name that’s being used.
The question remains: If the “author” coined the name for God, then where did he get the audacity (or chuzpah, if you will) to do so? And if God is “beyond such things” then why did God originally name himself?
Where did the “Author” get the gaul to name God? From God most likely (it is believed that He gave the authors of the Bible the words to write). As for “If God is beyond such things, why did he name himself?” I still have yet to be convinced that Yahweh is a name itself, for if it is, what’s this “True Name of God” that is rumored to exist?
Also, for all the language people out there, if the original written language of the Jews has no vowels, then how do people know names like Abraham or Aaron were such names? For example, if Aaron was originally RN, who’s to say the guy’s name wasn’t Orion, or something similarly silly to prove my point? It’s a question I’ve had for a while now.
Tradition. It’s as simple as that. The teacher teaches his student that *-H-R-N (the * standing for Aleph, a leter that had no sound without the vowelization) was Aaron, and that student teaches his students and children the same thing, etc.
Also, if you were ever in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue on a Sabbath (Saturday) morning, you’d notice how quick people are to jump on the Torah-reader if he should happen to err in his reading. This behavior goes back thousands of years…and it certainly helped prevent any persistence of vowelization errors.
