¶1Did you know that God's name is so sacred that Catholics aren't allowed to say it in certain contexts? So, in today's episode, we'll examine the 3,000-year-old mystery of God's name, when it can and can't be said, and which religious groups still misunderstand God's name and identity today. Now, right off the bat, you should know God's personal name isn't God, just as the president's personal name isn't Mr. President. The word God comes from an Old German word meaning the invoked one.
¶2Now, a believer can use the title God as a kind of name and refer to God in that way, such as in the Liturgy of the Hours when we pray, "O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me." But, scripture reveals God's personal name in Exodus chapter 3 when it describes Moses encountering God in the burning bush. It says, "Then Moses said to God, 'If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you," and they ask me, "What is his name?" what shall I say to them?'" God said to Moses, "I am who I am." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'I am' has sent me to you." The phrase I am who I am is ehyeh asher ehyeh in Hebrew. In verse 15, the word rendered I am comes from four consonants rendered YHWH in English. Most scholars believe this word ehyeh come from the same root hayah, which means to be.
¶3In John 8:58, Jesus uses the divine name to describe himself because he says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." Or in Greek, ego eimi. In earlier parts of the Old Testament, God's personal name was spoken frequently, but after the Babylonian captivity, Jewish people became much more hesitant to say God's name for fear of breaking the Second Commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." The Talmud records a tradition that the high priest only uttered God's name once a year during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the word Kurios or Lord was often used in place of the divine name. By the time of Jesus' ministry, this was a widespread practice with the Hebrew word for Lord, Adonai, replacing God's name when scripture was read aloud. This became universal practice among Jews after the destruction of the temple in AD 70.
¶4And in the medieval period, Jewish scribes added the vowel points for Adonai to YHWH to remind readers to say Adonai and not God's name. Christian scholars who weren't familiar with this notation thought the consonants and vowels belong together. So, when they translated it into Latin, we would get God's name as YHWH with the vowels a o i, leading to the word Yahovah or Jehovah, though the spelling gets interesting. As you may remember, in this scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indy has to step on stones to spell God's name to get to the Holy Grail. >> Jehovah.
¶5But in the Latin alphabet, Jehovah begins with an I. >> J? >> Indy ends up correcting his error and spells Jehovah with an I because, as his dad correctly noted, Latin used an I because the letter J did not exist until the 17th century. Before that time, Latin used an I even for names like Julius Caesar. In 1524, Gian Giorgio Trissino proposed an elongated I to represent J sounds, though it took a while for his idea to catch on, as can be seen in the first 1597 edition of Romeo and Juliet being spelled with an I.
¶6And the 1611 edition of the King James Bible spelled Jehovah with an I. But by 1611, the KJV rendered Jehovah with a J as we know it today. But most Bibles in church history followed the Jewish tradition of not translating God's name and instead use the word Lord or Dominus in Latin. After the Reformation, Protestant scholars attempted to go back to the sources for their biblical studies and believed Jehovah was the correct pronunciation of the divine name. However, by the late 1800s, scholars like Wilhelm Gesenius used archaeology, textual study, and early Christian sources to show the divine name sounded more like Yahweh than Jehovah.
¶7And now scholars have settled on Yahweh being closer to the original pronunciation. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one group was still firmly committed to God's name being pronounced Jehovah, and you can probably guess which group I'm talking about. In 1874, Charles Taze Russell, a self-described Bible student, taught that several Christian doctrines on hell and the soul were wrong and that Christ had invisibly returned to earth in 1874. By 1882, Russell had published Zion's Watch Tower, which openly denied the Trinity, saying, "The incomprehensible doctrine of Trinity was of papal decree and without any foundation in scripture." Russell's text also frequently refers to the true God as Jehovah, who exists apart from Christ, who is not the one true God, but merely a god or an exalted creature. In 1931, the organization's president, Joseph Rutherford, changed the group's name to the Jehovah's Witnesses in order to distinguish them from other competing Bible student groups.
¶8According to the Jehovah's Witnesses, it is important not only to know but also to use that name. Why? Because the Bible tells us, "Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved." But Romans 10:13, the verse this author references, does not say everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved. It says, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Or in Greek, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Kurieu will be saved." The name Jehovah, or any variation of that name like Yahweh, is not found in any New Testament manuscripts, which brings us to one of the oddest features of the Jehovah's Witnesses New World Translation of the Bible. Whenever the word Lord or Kyrios is found in the New Testament, the New World Translation renders it Jehovah with a few curious exceptions.
¶9Look how the New World Translation renders Romans 10. For if you publicly declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and exercise faith in your heart that God raised him up from the dead, you will be saved. For everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved. If the New World Translation were consistent, it would render Romans 10:9 this way. For if you publicly declare with your mouth that Jesus is Jehovah and exercise faith in your heart that God raised him up from the dead, you will be saved.
¶10But the Jehovah's Witnesses translation can't do that because Jehovah's Witnesses deny Jesus is the true God or that he is Jehovah, even though the New Testament identifies Jesus with the God called Yahweh in the Old Testament. In John 12, John describes how some of the people's unbelief fulfilled the prophecy of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. Lord, who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? John 12:41 then says, Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him. The pronouns his and him, auto in Greek, refer to Jesus, but the incident John is referring to is found in Isaiah chapter 6 where Isaiah has a vision of God, of Yahweh on his throne.
¶11That means John is saying that Jesus is the enthroned God that Isaiah saw. And so Jesus is fully God and fully man. Another non-Christian group that makes the mistake about Jehovah are Mormons. In the Book of Mormon, Nephi is an Israelite who emigrates to the Americas and delivers various teachings in a text called Second Nephi. About 1/3 of the text or 13 chapters are direct copying of Isaiah and what appears to be the translation of Isaiah found in the King James Bible, which was published almost 2,000 years after Nephi allegedly lived.
¶12In the original Hebrew, Isaiah 12:2 says, "Yah or Yahweh is my strength." While 2 Nephi 22:2 says, "Jehovah is my strength." Matching the King James version. I'll let you decide if this is because Joseph Smith just wanted his translation to sound like the vernacular of his time, so he chose not to use Yah or Yahweh as some Mormons claim, or if he just borrowed straight from Isaiah and didn't translate anything as non-Mormon scholars claim. In 1916, the Mormon presidency officially taught that quote, "Among the spirit children of Elohim, the firstborn was and is Jehovah or Jesus Christ, to whom all others are juniors." Mormons are correct that Jesus Christ is Jehovah or Yahweh. Where they err is that they do not believe Yahweh is the only divine being. They believe the Hebrew term Elohim, which also means God, refers to a different being than Jehovah.
¶13As I noted in my episode on whether Mormons are atheists, Mormonism can be best described as a kind of henotheism that recognizes multiple divine beings exist, but only one of them deserves the highest form of worship. In contrast, Christian monotheism believes there is only one divine being who exists as three distinct persons, each of whom is worthy of the highest form of worship. That's why the Mormon Book of Abraham describes the gods, plural, organizing the world, whereas Genesis 1:1 says God, Elohim, created the world. The verse uses the singular verb bara to note that only one being engages in this creation, even though Elohim has plural elements to it. Similar to the plural of majesty given to ancient kings who would speak of themselves with plural pronouns, also known as the royal we.
¶14>> This whole area is technically closed while we're trimming. >> Who's we? >> The candy tree department. >> Oh, where is everybody else? >> Uh, it's just me today.
¶15Uh >> So, you just meant like the royal we? >> Yeah. >> [sighs and gasps] >> That's right. >> Hey. >> However, the division of Elohim and Yahweh into separate beings does not explain how the Hebrew Bible treats them as being interchangeable.
¶16This includes Exodus 20:2, which says, "I am Yahweh, your Eloheka," a form of Elohim. And Deuteronomy 4:35, which says, "Yahweh ha Elohim," or Yahweh is Elohim. Now, it is true that early in biblical history, the term Yahweh referred to the God who rescued his people from Egypt, while El or Elohim referred to the supreme deity of the Canaanites. So, in that sense, they were considered separate beings. But, eventually, God's people recognized these different names referred to the same being, the one supreme creator of all things.
¶17What the Canaanites called El, the Israelites knew as Yahweh. In fact, the name Israel means El rules. This is like when St. Paul said the God he preached was what the Athenians called the unknown God. It also helps explain how Christians can say Muslims worship God, even though Muslims don't completely understand God.
¶18According to Old Testament scholar Mark Smith, although the Bible fiercely criticizes other pagan deities like Baal, quote, "There are no biblical polemics against El. At an early point, Israelite tradition identified El with Yahweh or presupposed this equation." And John Day in his book Yahweh and the gods and goddesses of Canaan writes, "It is interesting that the Old Testament has no qualms in equating Yahweh with El, something which stands in marked contrast to its vehement opposition to Baal, let alone the equation of Yahweh with Baal. This must reflect a favorable judgment on El's characteristic attributes as supreme deity, creator God, and one possessed of wisdom. El was deemed wholly fit to be equated with Yahweh. Day goes on to say that Yahweh was not a Canaanite deity, but was introduced to the land of Canaan and originally came from the region of Midia, which corresponds to Moses learning God's name in Midia since he fled there after killing the Egyptian.
¶19So, to summarize, in scripture words like Elohim refer to God, but the name God revealed to Moses sounded more like Yahweh than Jehovah, which was the result of misunderstanding medieval Hebrew renderings of the divine name. But, in knowing God's name, we also have a sacred responsibility to treat that name with the utmost respect. The Catechism says this, "Among all the words of revelation, there is one which is unique, the revealed name of God. God confides his name to those who believe in him. He reveals himself to them in his personal mystery.
¶20The gift of a name belongs to the order of trust and intimacy. The Lord's name is holy. For this reason, man must not abuse it." Catholics aren't always prohibited from referring to God as Yahweh, since I've said God's name numerous times in this video and nothing bad has happened. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
¶21But, the church has sought to preserve the reverence of the divine name when it's used in the liturgy and to maintain continuity with the tradition of how it was treated in that context. In 2008, the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship gave an instruction for how the name of God should be used in the public worship of God. It recounted how Christian biblical tradition, going all the way through the contemporary Latin Vulgate, did not translate the divine name, but rendered it some equivalent of the word Lord. The letter says this practice was related to remaining faithful to the church's tradition from the beginning, that the sacred tetragrammaton was never pronounced in the Christian context, nor translated into any of the languages into which the Bible was translated. The congregation then said, "In liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers, the name of God in the form of the tetragrammaton, YHWH, is neither to be used or pronounced.
¶22It then instructs that alternatives like God or Lord be used instead. Now, it's important to remember that it's not intrinsically wrong to utter God's name. God never said his name can't be uttered, only that it can't be uttered in vain. Moreover, a person can utter the name Lord in vain if their heart is set on doing that. But, the people of God can develop customs to encourage holy behavior.
¶23And one of those customs was to not treat God's personal name like any other name we might proclaim in the context of the liturgy. Other commentators have noted that referring to God as Yahweh in the liturgy can be confusing to those who don't understand the theological background of the term. And it could be insensitive to Jewish people who may be inquiring about Catholicism. So, while there's nothing wrong with calling God Yahweh, the church also desires us to be in conformity with ancient tradition that shows a special reverence to the divine name by not including it in the liturgy. Ultimately, as Cardinal Ratzinger put it in his letter, by focusing our liturgical prayer on calling God Lord instead of Yahweh, we are placing an important emphasis on Christ's divinity, which should always be the focus of our prayer.
¶24He wrote the following: "When in fact, St. Paul, with regard to the crucifixion, writes that God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, he does not mean any other name than Lord. For he continues by saying, 'And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.'" Or as we see in Isaiah 42:8, "I am the Lord, that is my name." The attribution of this title to the risen Christ corresponds exactly to the proclamation of his divinity. The title, in fact, becomes interchangeable between the God of Israel and the Messiah of the Christian faith, even though it is not, in fact, one of the titles used for the Messiah of Israel. If you'd like more information about the name of God, God's nature, and other questions about the liturgy, be sure to check out our resources at catholic.com.
¶25Thank you guys so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.