What in God's Name?
Guest post by Don Alabaster Let’s talk about God’s name and how it gives us clues about the origins of the Abrahamic faiths. Or maybe we should say his lack of a name. “God” isn’t a name, it's a job title. You don’t go to work and refer to your boss as “Boss” or “Team Leader”. Your Mom probably isn’t actually named “Mom”, either. But God does have an actual name! The Hebrew God of the Old Testament is named “Yahweh”, but even then it's not so simple. Yahweh has many names sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Bible: YHWH (Yahweh), Adonai, Ehyeh, El, Elohim, El Shaddai, and Tzevaot, among others. Rabbinic Judaism says that many of these names of God are so holy that they should never be erased. I feel like I would have a lot of questions for this guy at happy hour Why did the Israelites end up with all of these names in their holy book? Because the Israelites were Canaanites before they were Israelites. The ancient Canaanite religion had an entire pantheon ...
Comments
Post a Comment
Please leave a respectful and kind comment.