Name of God

Fritz Poppenberg a German filmaker made a DVD from the simplified version of the book ( http://www.dreilindenfilm.de/shop/der-name-gottes_en.html )  which is available for free on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjpGXSyIqTc

The understanding of God's name YHWH is so controversial that it is eventually the controversy of controversies, or the ultimate controversy. Indeed, why most of competent Hebrew scholars propagate patently false explanations about God's name? Why do the Jews refuse to read God's name as it is written and read Adonay "my Lord" (a plural of majesty) instead of it? Why God's name is usually punctuated e,â (shewa, qamats) by the Masoretes what makes its reading impossible, because the 4 consonants of the name YHWH must have at least 3 vowels (long or short) to be read, like the words ’aDoNâY and ’eLoHîM "God" (a plural of majesty), which have 4 consonants and 3 vowels? At last, why the obvious reading "Yehowah", according to theophoric names, which all begin by Yehô-, without exception, is so despised, and why the simple biblical meaning, "He will be" from Exodus 3:14, is rejected.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/gerard-gertoux/the-name-of-god-yehowah-which-is-pronounced-as-it-is-written-i_eh_ou_ah/paperback/product-1z48eejk.html

This article proposes the following interpretation of Ex. 3,14: "God said to Moses: I shall be who shall (will) be. He said: Thus you say to the sons of Israel: I shall be in so far as he has sent me to you." In favor of this interpretation the author examines the context of Ex. 3,14, the story of Moses´ vocation, and the structure of the speech situation and the dynamics of the usage of the divine names in Ex. 3,1-4,12. In a final paragraph the universal significance of Moses´ vocation is outlined.

UPDATE 03/01/2019
This paper has undergone significant edits and rewrites. The new name is "The God Behind the Names" and has been uploaded under that name. I have left the link here too, however, for those who might already have linked to this post.

Old Africa (Kenya) said of this book
" "...the most important book on the history of eastern Africa to have been published for a century...."
This is a translation from Russian to English of two books by Alexander Bulatovich: From Entotto to the River Baro and With the Armies of Menelik II. This is a unique and detailed first-hand account of Ethiopia in 1896-1898, at the change of an era, by a Russian Officer who lived there and had keen insight into their destiny.  This edition includes 78 photos taken in Ethiopia 1896-1898.

Zwei bislang noch unveröffentlichte unvollständige Typoskripte Martin Bubers beschäftigen sich anhand von Ex 3,13f u.a. mit der Frage, ob Gott einen Namen haben kann, und was die jüdische Geistes- und die Religionsgeschichte zu dieser Stelle zu sagen haben. Der Aufsatz stellt die beiden Texte im Kontext von Bubers Äußerungen zum Gottesnamen vor. Es ergibt sich bereits aus der Analyse des Kontextes, dass Buber entgegen der geläufigen Forschungsmeinung durchaus an der Wahl des Personalpronomens zur Übersetzung des Gottesnamens in der gemeinsamen Bibelübersetzung mit Franz Rosenzweig beteiligt war. Auch die Typoskripte machen deutlich, dass sich Buber intensiver mit der Übersetzung des Gottesnamens beschäftigt hat, als dies seine publizierten Äußerungen dazu nahelegen.

This paper focuses on the conceptualization of the term שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי (shem
qodeshi) and its desecration or contamination in the context of the book of Ezekiel, with the purpose of attaining the following: 1) to determine the meaning of words shem qodeshi and its equivalent in Ezekiel in light of the person-namereputation relationship in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible; 2) to understand the nature of the desecration and how the vindication of  shem qodeshi is found in Ezekiel; 3) to study the statement "it's not because of you (...) but because of shem qodeshi" in the context of Ezekiel 20:1-44 and 36:16-38 in order to understand its harmonization with the character of God; 4) to provide an overview of the relationship between shem qodeshi, its desecration and vindication, and the influence it has on the nations around Israel and over Israel itself. In this study the biblical text is analyzed from a synchronic perspective, taking it in its canonical context and in its final form. Since it is basically a literature search, primarily based on biblical commentaries available, and some non-exhaustive
grammatical and etymological analysis, this study makes a contextual analysis of the pericopes of Ezekiel 20:1-44 and 36:16-38 in order to seek the understanding of the meaning of the expression shem qodeshi and also the statements that are relevant.

Michael Servetus participated in the Protestant Reformation and translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin. In July 1531, he published his De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity) in which he explained clearly that the Trinity was a 3-headed monster. Accordingly, Catholics and Protestants alike condemned him. He was then arrested in Geneva and burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the city's Protestant governing council. This book was translated into English only in 1932, but still worse, the main arguments from part V were completely distorted. For example he explained that God's name was Iehouah because in Hebrew this name was close to the name of Iesuah (Jesus), or Iehosuah, which means “Iehouah is salvation”. He also knew that according to Paulus de Heredia, a Christian Cabbalist, the meaning of God's name was “He causes to be” (yehauueh), but he never confused the pronunciation of God's name with its Kabbalistic meaning (yehaweh). For Servetus, Iehouah was the only true God.
https://www.lulu.com/shop/gerard-gertoux/did-jesus-jehovah-salvation-know-gods-name/paperback/product-18rmykjp.html

One of the most powerful traditions of the Jewish fascination with language is that of the Name. Indeed, the Jewish mystical tradition would seem a two millennia long meditation on the nature of name in relation to object, and how name mediates between subject and object. Even within the tide of the 20th century’s linguistic turn, the aspect most notable in – the almost entirely secular - Jewish philosophers is that of the personal name, here given pivotal importance in the articulation of human relationships and dialogue.

The Name of God in Jewish Thought examines the texts of Judaism pertaining to the Name of God, offering a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. The book begins with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, travelling through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th and 21st Century. This investigation will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis depends on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God.

Providing a comprehensive description of historical aspects of Jewish Name-Theology, this book also offers new ways of thinking about subjectivity and ontology through its original approach to the nature of the name, combining philosophy with text-critical analysis. As such, it is an essential resource for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Religion.

Streszczenie. Zdanie z Wj 3,14a, które w polskich wydaniach Biblii najczęściej brzmią " JA JESTEM, KTÓRY JESTEM ", są od wieków przedmiotem badań dla wielu egzegetów i znawców języka hebrajskiego. W prezentowanym artykule zostały poruszone dwa zagadnienia: przekłady oraz interpretacje tych słów w tradycji chrześcijańskiej i żydowskiej. Na początku zostały omówione trudności gramatyczne związane z tym zdaniem. Następnie zostały przeanalizowane różne propozycje jego przekładów, jakie pojawiły się w ciągu wieków w języku polskim. Do tłumaczeń, które na obecnym etapie badań można uznać za właściwe, należą: JA JESTEM, KTÓRY JESTEM; JA BĘDĘ, KTÓRY BĘDĘ oraz JA BĘDĘ, KTÓRY BYŁEM. W drugiej części zostały w syntetyczny sposób omówione interpretacje chrześcijańskie i żydowskie, które już w pierwszych wiekach poszły w odmiennym kierunku interpretacyjnym omawianego zdania. Przyczyniło się do tego niewątpliwie tłumaczenie Septuaginty, które oddało to zdanie w duchu filozofii greckiej (ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν " Ja jestem «ten» będący). W interpretacjach żydowskich (współczesnych i antycznych) nie spotykamy się nigdy z metafizyczną interpretacją zdania Jeśli jest w nich podkreślone istnienie Boga, to tylko w sensie dynamicznym – Bóg istnieje, aby w sposób czynny opiekować się swoim narodem.

Abstract. God's enigmatic answer to Moses' question about his name – , usually translated " I am who I am " (Exod 3:14) – has provoked philological analysis for centuries, often coupled with philosophical and theological reflection. In this article there are taken in consideration two questions: the translation and the meaning of this sentence in Christian and Jewish tradition. At the very beginning there are presented the grammatical difficulties linked to the clause "ehye asher ehye " (Exod 3:14). There are presented also the most popular proposals for the translations of the sentence. Indeed, the original construction of these words allows translating them in various ways. In the second part of this article there are presented in a syntactical way the interpretations of the words " ehye asher ehye " in Christian and Jewish tradition, which are different. This difference is probably caused by the translation of Septuagint's ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν (" I AM the existing Being "), which was influenced by Greek philosophy. Christians in the first centuries used to read basically this Greek translation. For this reason

פסיקתא לעשרת הדברות היא מדרש ארץ-ישראלי קלאסי, ערוך לפי פסוקי עשרת הדברות ואורג סביבם דרשות, סוגיות ומעשים. פסע"ד הגיעה לידינו כשהיא משוקעת בתור דרשה לשבועות בחיבור מאוחר יחסית, פסיקתא רבתי, שהוא אוסף דרשות ופסקאות למועדים ולשבתות המיוחדות. בעבודה זו חזרתי ובחנתי את הפסקאות לעשרת הדברות וביררתי בעיות ותחומים שכמעט לא נדונו במחקר. העבודה ערוכה בשלושה תחומים ושלושה שלבים עוקבים. ראשית בחנתי בעיות יסוד הנוגעות לנוסח החיבור ולאופי מסירותיו הקדומות; לאחר מכן ביררתי את עריכתה של פסע"ד, הן מצד מבנה הפנימי ודרכי ארגונה הן מצד מקומה בספרות חז"ל; ולבסוף חקרתי מקצת מהמסורות הייחודיות ששוקעו בה ואת גלגולי הצורה והמשמעות שעברו בספרות חז"ל ובספרויות הנושקות לה. תחומי הנוסח, העריכה והפרשנות לגופן של דרשות כרוכים זה בזה ומלמדים זה על זה, והעיון המפולש בשלושתם – בכל תחום בפני עצמו ובשלושתם כאחד – יעמיד תיאור מורכב ויתרום להבנה שלמה ומעמיקה של הפסקאות לעשרת הדברות.

The thirteenth century kabbalist Abraham Abulafia held Hebrew to be the divine language, designed by God as an ontological aspect of reality. Through meditating on and deconstructing names into their letters, one could then engage in the process of reunifying reality into the primordial Name of God, the Tetragrammaton. This paper offers an original analysis, aligning Abulafia with Walter Benjamin's writings on language wherein the world speaks itself phenomenally to human beings, who must take an active role in translating this silent speech. Here the human, as name-giver, is finalizer of reality; by translating base phenomena into named entities humanity elevates them into a new realm, beyond the merely real into the true. This epistemic-soteriological theory speaks to common speculative questions about language and the world, offering a new way of understanding how human beings can come to know the world as-it-is, and as-it-should-be; a way that is philosophical, yet based firmly in Medieval Jewish theology.

This study argues that there is a tradition, arising from a ‘Jewish milieu’, based around the exegesis of select biblical passages, indicating that the messiah bears the Divine Name. This tradition appears to predate the Christian movement, and is referenced also in rabbinic literature. In the first section we highlight a tradition regarding the relationship between the Name of God and the messiah, the righteous and Jerusalem, a tradition which is shared by the Talmud and the New Testament book of Revelation. The next section will look at the pre-existence of the messiah’s name, which appears to be known by several groups in the early centuries of the Common Era. The fact that several different groups share this tradition points to the existence of an important idea which may be independent of each of these specific manifestations, whether Enochic, rabbinic or Christian, as this tradition was common across several Jewish sects in Late Antiquity.

***Note: this is only the first page. PM me for the entire article.*** After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews lived under Flavian lords who peppered Rome’s landscape with sculpted images of themselves, oftentimes suggesting that these images, and the emperors who stood behind them, functioned as gods in embodied form. This paper considers how these divine images impacted Jews, given that these same Jews lived under Roman authority yet also served the God of Israel alone. By analyzing Josephus’s Antiquities 11.331-334 in light of Israel’s strong anti-idolic tradition, I explore how the name of Israel’s God, inscribed on the high priest’s golden miter, may have functioned as visible counterpoint to the Flavians’ graven images. It is widely assumed that first-century Jews viewed God as invisible, incorporeal, and utterly removed from the material realm, but for Josephus at least God’s name offered a means by which Jews could gaze upon an aspect of their God in visible, perceptible, and material form.

This study argues that there is a tradition, arising from a 'Jewish milieu', based around the exegesis of select biblical passages, indicating that the messiah bears the Divine Name. This tradition appears to predate the Christian movement, and is referenced also in rabbinic literature. In the first section we highlight a tradition regarding the relationship between the Name of God and the messiah, the righteous and Jerusalem, a tradition which is shared by the Talmud and the New Testament book of Revelation. The next section will look at the pre-existence of the messiah's name, which appears to be known by several groups in the early centuries of the Common Era. The fact that several different groups share this tradition points to the existence of an important idea which may be independent of each of these specific manifestations, whether Enochic, rabbinic or Christian, as this tradition was common across several Jewish sects in Late Antiquity.

This essay gives the interpretation of the answer that God gives to Moses when he asks about His name. The complete answer will be only in Jesus' lips, but here we find some very interesting annotations in the triple answer of YHWH to Moses.

When translating the name of God, the reader becomes thrown inexorably into a thick and inescapable tangle, a veritable “gnommero” (literally, an unsettling jumble, according to the dense and coloured expression of Carlo Emilio Gadda’s linguistic artistry).  In a certain sense, the outcome is prejudiced both by the very definition and wording of the subject, to the extent that any unbiased, objective claim may be irreparably nullified. As such, this paper deals with a typical hermeneutic tangle, whose absolute solution clearly does not exist.
Exodus 3:14, the focus of this paper, has been the object of extensive studies over the last two-thousand years, thus returning to it may seem a little pedantic. I have already done various studies on the subject in the past, one of which featured in the IV Incontranto Nazionale di Traduzione in Brazil, which took place at the University of São Paulo in 1990, entitled “Acerca do problema da tradução do Nome de Deus”. It provided yet another variation to the theme, even if the dimensions of the presented text came to only, at most, a quarter of its actual length (fortunately for the reader). The extensive notes to Erri de Luca’s own Italian translation from Hebrew of Esodi/Nomi (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1994) reinforces my own reasoning, which is a little rough, amateur and somewhat playful.

The article deals with some important aspects of priest Pavel Florensky’s doctrine of the name. The author gives a brief overview of the background that produced a substantial influence on the complicacy of the Name Worshipping problem in the early 20ieth century. Some important features of the main documents of the controversy are noted: the book by schemonk Ilarion “On the Caucasian Mountains”, a review by schemonk Khrisanf, the “Apology” by schemonk Antony (Bulatovich), the three reports submitted to the Holy Synod (by archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvensky), archbishop Antony (Khrapovitsky), S. V. Troitsky) and the Synodic Address of May 13, 1913. Florensky’s philosophical and theological concept of a symbol is considered. On the basis of this concept, the Synodic Address was unacceptable as a whole. According to Florensky, names are the symbols, a higher reality is “revealed” through the symbol which is part of our reality. Florensky was convinced that the notion of a symbol was a key notion of the issue of God’s name and only the “symbolic” world structure, that he identified, was capable of assuring the reality of deification.

Keywords: onomatodoxy, onomatostrife, name of God, priest Pavel Florensky, philosophy, theology, symbol, ontology, deification.

The author of this article presents arguments in favor of the new hypothesis, according to which the misunderstanding by non-Jews of God’s name ho ōn (Exod 3:14), and its subsequent association with the Greek word ho onos (“the ass”), stands as a source for accusing Jews of onolatry.

Love, from the Christian perspective, is the likeness of imago Dei that has been imprinted on our lives and the constituent elements of the universe. Man, through his own nature, acknowledges his need to establish a direct relationship with the personal God by continuously aiming at the Absolute because the power to love has been instilled in his heart. Man is internally driven to open himself through love because he stands on the foundation that created and maintains this tendency in him, that of communion with the Persons of the Holy Trinity which is the eternal and the paramount reciprocal openness in the light of love. God anticipates a prompt response to His call to His ocean of love from which He wants to impart waves, but, He will do this according to one’s thirst and readiness. He loves each of us, He will bestow everything upon us, on one condition: that we turn and take steps toward Him so that we should receive Him. Man is invited to reciprocate God’s love with his love and interact with all men in the power of humble and sacrificial love that he received through intimate communion with Him. It is my intention to approach in the lines below these topics that I state and propose for the readers’ consideration: love for God as a response of man to God’s agape love for him, love for man’s neighbor in the name of God – this is the distinctive sign of good Christians – and, at the same time, the new commandment of the new era. The classic paradigms of Christian love have also been briefly broached in a subchapter. The subject matter of this paper consists of the conviction that God bestowed life on us also because He desired to teach us to eternally love Him and our neighbors, ever more intensely.

This paper focuses on the conceptualization of the term שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי  and its desecration or contamination in the context of the book of Ezekiel, with the purpose of attaining the following: 1) to determine the meaning of words שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי  and its equivalent in Ezekiel in light of the person-name-reputation relationship in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible; 2) to understand the nature of the desecration and how the vindication of שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי  is found in Ezekiel; 3) to study the statement "it's not because of you (...) but because of שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי " in the context of Ezekiel 20:1-44 and 36:16-38 in order to understand its harmonization with the character of God; 4) to provide an overview of the relationship between שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי, its desecration and vindication, and the influence it has on the nations around Israel and over Israel itself. In this study the biblical text is analyzed from a synchronic perspective, taking it in its canonical context and in its final form. Since it is basically a literature search, primarily based on biblical commentaries available, and some non-exhaustive grammatical and etymological analysis, this study makes a contextual analysis of the periscopes of Ezekiel 20:1-44 and 36:16-38 in order to seek the understanding of the meaning of the expression שֵׁם־קָדְשִׁי  and also the statements that are relevant.

Keywords: Ezekiel – name of God; profanation; vindication.

Le dernier essai de Rosenzweig a pour titre « L’Éternel » (Der Ewige). Rosenzweig n’y précise d’ailleurs pas qu’il accorde lui-même une importance centrale à « l’Éternel » comme nom de Dieu dans L’Étoile de la Rédemption, où « l’Éternel » représente rien moins que la « synthèse » du système.

Nos Mandamentos, Deus proíbe aos homens tanto a feitura de imagens quanto a pronúncia em vão de Seu nome. Há, portanto, limites rígidos entre as esferas do sagrado e do humano. Este artigo examinará paralelos e divergências entre os pensamentos de dois autores que abordaram essa questão a partir de escolas de pensamento distintas: o filósofo neo-marxista judeu Theodor Adorno e o teólogo luterano Eberhard Jüngel.