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Subject: The Divine Name
Replies: 15 Views: 882
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 03:44pm
Hallowed be thy name. Wot name...? im sure you know and have great respect for the well-known prayer, taught by Jesus to his followers known as the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father. The prayer begins like this: ''Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.'' Matthew 6:9 (NIV)
Have you ever wondered why Jesus put the 'hallowing,' or sanctifying, of God's name first in this prayer?
Afterwards, he mentioned other things such as the coming of God's Kingdom, God's will being done on earth and our sins being forgiven.
The fulfillment of these other requests will ultimately mean lasting peace on earth and eternal life for mankind.
Can you think of anything more important than that?
Even so, Jesus told us to pray first of all for the sanctification of God's name. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:00pm
It was not merely by chance that Jesus taught his followers to put God's name first in their prayers. That name was clearly of crucial importance to him, since he mentioned it repeatedly in his own prayers. When he was praying publicly to God, he was heard to say: ''Father, glorify your name!'' And God himself answered: ''I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.'' John 12:28 (The Jerusalem Bible)
The evening before Jesus died, he was praying to God in the hearing of his disciples, and once again they heard him highlight the importance of God's name. He said: ''I have made your name known to the men you took from the world to give Me.'' Later, he repeated: ''I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known.'' John 17:6, 26, (The Jerusalem Bible)
Thing is, why was God's name so important to Jesus? Why did he show that it is important for us, too, by telling us to pray for its sanctification? To
understand this, we need to realize how names were viewed in Bible times. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:04pm
God evidently put in man a desire to name things. The first human had a name, Adam. In the story of creation, one of the first things Adam is reported as doing is naming the animals. When God gave Adam a wife, immediately Adam called her 'Woman'. Later, he gave her the name Eve.
Jewish names at that time had also had meanings Abraham meaning 'father of many', Isaac means 'laughter'.
Even today we follow the custom of giving names to people, pets and everything else. And those names have a meaning. Surely God must have a name. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:08pm
Wots God s name?
Surprisingly, the majority of the hundreds of millions of members of the churches of would probably find it difficult to answer that question.
Some would say that God's name is Jesus. Yet Jesus was praying to someone else
when he said: ''I have made YOUR name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world.'' (John 17:6) He was praying to God in heaven, as a son speaking to his father. (John 17:1) It was his heavenly Father's name that had to be ''hallowed,'' or ''sanctified'' *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:13pm
Yet many modern Bibles do not contain the name, and it is rarely used in the churches. That s why it s far from being ''hallowed'' it has been lost to millions of Bible readers.
As an example of the way Bible translators have treated God's name, consider just one verse where it appears: Psalm 83:18.
Here is how this scripture is rendered in four different Bibles:
''Let them know that thou alone, whose name is the LORD, art the Most High over all the earth.'' (Revised Standard Version of 1952)
''To teach them that thou, O Eternal, thou art God Most High o'er all the world.'' (A New Translation of the Bible, by James Moffatt, of 1922)
''Let them know this: you alone bear the name Yahweh, Most High over the
whole world.'' (Catholic Jerusalem Bible of 1966)
''That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.'' (Authorized, or King James, Version of 1611)
Why does God's name look so different in these versions? Is his name LORD, the Eternal, Yahweh or Jehovah? Or are these all acceptable? *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:16pm
God himself has revealed his name to man both verbally and in writing. So, what is that name?
In the Hebrew language it is written in four letters i cant type on here.
These four letters, called the Tetragrammaton, are read from right to left in Hebrew and can be represented in many modern languages as YHWH or JHVH. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:30pm
God's name, represented by these four consonants, appears almost 7,000 times
in the original Hebrew Scriptures. The name is a form of a Hebrew verb
meaning ''to become,'' and actually signifies ''He Causes to Become.''
So, God's name identifies him as the One who progressively fulfills his promises and unfailingly realizes his purposes. Only the true God could bear such a meaningful name. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:32pm
Remember the different ways that God's name appeared in Psalm 83:18? Two of those translations had mere titles (the LORD, the Eternal) as substitutes for God's name. But in two of them, Yahweh and Jehovah, you can see the four letters of God's name. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:37pm
However, the pro nunciation is different. Why?
The first language used in writing the Bible was Hebrew, and when the Hebrew language was written down, the writers wrote only consonants not vowels. And so, when the inspired writers wrote God's name, they naturally did the same thing and wrote only the consonants.
While ancient Hebrew was an everyday spoken language, this presented no problem. The pro nunciation of the Name was familiar to the
Israelites and when they saw it in writing they supplied the vowels without
thinking (just as, for an English reader, the abbreviation 'Ltd.' represents 'Limited') *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:40pm
Two things happened to change this, situation. First, a superstitious idea arose among the Jews that it was wrong to say the divine name out loud, so when they came to it in their Bible reading they uttered the Hebrew word 'Adonai' (Sovereign Lord).
Further, as time went by, that ancient Hebrew language itself ceased to be spoken in everyday conversation, and, in this way the original Hebrew pro nunciation of God's name was eventually forgotten. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 04:54pm
In order to ensure that the pro nunciation of the Hebrew language as a whole would not be lost, Jewish scholars of the second half of the first millennium C.E. invented a system of points to represent the missing vowels, and they placed these around the consonants in the Hebrew Bible. Thus, both vowels and consonants were written down, and the pro nunciation as it was at that time was preserved.
When it came to God's name, instead of putting the proper vowel signs around it, in most cases they put other vowel signs to remind the reader that he should say 'Adonai'. From this came the spelling lehouah, and, eventually, Jehovah became the accepted pro nunciation of the divine name in English. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 05:00pm
This retains the essential elements of God's name from the Hebrew original.
pro nunciation like Yahweh are forms that have been suggested by modern scholars trying to deduce the original pro nunciation of God's name. Some though not all feel that the Israelites before the time of Jesus probably pro nounced God's name Yahweh.
But no one can be sure. Perhaps they pro nounced it that way, perhaps not. Nevertheless, many prefer the pro nunciation Jehovah. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 05:04pm
it would be better to use a form closer to the original....?.
Not really, for that is not the custom with Bible names.
To take the most prominent example, consider the name of Jesus. Do you know how Jesus' family and friends addressed him in day-to-day conversation while he was growing up in Nazareth? The truth is, no human knows for certain, although it may have been something like Yeshua (or perhaps Yehoshua). It certainly was not Jesus.
When the accounts of his life were written in the Greek language, the inspired writers did not try to preserve that original Hebrew pro nunciation. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 05:21pm
Rather, they rendered the name in Greek, I-e-sous'. Today, it is rendered
differently according to the language of the reader of the Bible. Spanish Bible readers encounter Jestis (pro nounced Hes-soos'). Italians spell it Gesu (pro nounced Djayzoo'). And Germans spell it Jesus (pro nounced Yay'soos). *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 05:23pm
Must we stop using the name of Jesus because most of us, or even all of us, do not really know its original pro nunciation?
So far, no translator has
suggested this. We like to use the name, for it identifies the beloved Son of God, Jesus Christ, who gave his lifeblood for us.
Would it be showing honour to Jesus to remove all mention of his name in the Bible and replace it with a mere title like Teacher, or Mediator?
Of course not!
We can relate to Jesus when we use his name the way it is commonly pro nounced in our language. We say Jeremiah, not Yir-me-ya'hu. Similarly we say Isaiah, although in his own day this prophet likely was known as Yeshaya'hu. Even scholars who are aware of the original pro nunciation of these names use the modern pro nunciation, not the ancient, when speaking about them. *
unquiet1 21.06.10 - 05:29pm
The same is true with the name Jehovah. Even though the modern pro nunciation Jehovah might not be exactly the way it was pro nounced originally, this in no way detracts from the importance of the name. It identifies the Creator, the living God, the Most High to whom Jesus said: 'Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified.' Matthew 6:9.
Also, it s not wrong to use a form like Yahweh. The important thing is that we use the name and declare it to others. ''Give thanks to Jehovah, you people! Call upon his name. Make known among the peoples his dealings. Make mention that his name is put on high. Isaiah 12:4. *
