They are one of the first repeated sounds that a baby hears and learns – and arguably the one vocalization that you hear more than any other in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Names are central to how we think of ourselves – that\u2019s the underlying import of the verse in the Revelation to Saint John that God will give everyone who is redeemed a new name, known only to the person and to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And historically, knowing a person\u2019s name was often thought to give one some amount of power over them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Names are also central to how we think about others. Some people are so great an example of some characteristic that it\u2019s connected with their name \u2014 for example, \u201cHonest Abe\u201d Lincoln, \u201cMother Teresa\u201d for compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One modern problem is that names for God are a bit iffy. One reason for this is the reticence actually to say a name for God \u2014 we substitute “Lord” or “God”, but those are titles, not names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The old version of God\u2019s name(in the Authorized or \u201cKing James\u201d) translation of the Bible was \u201cJehovah\u201d. We now know that \u201cJehovah\u201d is a hybrid name, used because Hebrew didn\u2019t have vowels. So the divine Name \u201cYHWH\u201d not only had consonantal shifts (Y to J, W to V), but had the vowels inserted from the title \u201cAdonai\u201d \u2014 the sequential vowels A-O-A inserted into JHVH gave\u201cJehovah\u201d. Linguistic studies have basically shown that no Jew in Jesus\u2019 time would have pronounced it as \u201cJehovah\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Newer translations sometimes use \u201cYahweh\u201d as the name of God. And there is a tradition which translates the name of God as \u201cI am\u201d – which is how \u201cyhwh\u201d is parsed in Hebrew. In parts of the US, people used \u201cThe Great I AM\u201d as the name of God.
But what name should we use? Should we use it at all, sparingly, or every time we speak to or of God?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fred Williams<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Image: Adam naming the animals<\/em>, Theophanes of Crete (St. Nicholas Anapavsa Monastery, Meteora; 16th Century)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" They are one of the first repeated sounds that a baby hears and learns – and arguably the one vocalization that you hear more than any other in life. Names are central to how we think of ourselves – that\u2019s the underlying import of the verse in the Revelation to Saint John that God will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-edu","category-lang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scholarsonline.org\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}