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The Secret Name of God By Athol Dickson
Thursday, March 27, 2008
I am still amazed
by something a friend emailed to me yesterday, a quote from adevotional called
Behold and Be Held, the Memorial Name of God,
by Aaron Rabin. I can't findthis devotional on the web, or I would link to it. I won't quote the whole thing here, lest Iinfringe on Mr. Rabin's copyright. So I'll just get to the bottom line.In the devotional, Mr. Rabin refers to the tetragrammaton, YHVH. This is the most holy nameof God, given to Moses at the burning bush, the one that most English translations render as “
I AM
”. The Hebrew letters sound like "Yud Hey Vav Hey". YHVH is also the "forgotten" nameof God, which Jews say has a meaning and a pronunciation that was lost because theirancestors have refused to speak it aloud since about a generation before the Romandestruction of the temple in Jerusalem. (To learn more about this, visit
this site
, and scrolldown to "The Name".) Today YHVH is most often rendered as "Yahweh" when written orspoken by Christians and others. It is still never pronounced aloud by Orthodox Jews. “Jehovah” is an older, less accurate rendition. YHVH is also the name most often printed as theLORD (all caps) in English Bibles. (Sometimes "Adonai" is translated that way as well.)Anyway, in his devotional Mr. Rabin refers to a conversation he had with an Orthodox rabbi,which drove him to question his Christian faith. Here is a quote:
"As I spoke to the Orthodox rabbi and used the Scriptures to support my faith, I felt like achild in a highchair trying to explain the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein. He called me anapostate Jew, accusing me not of finding Messiah but of embracing a pagan religion. Hewielded the Scriptures like a sharp sword, slicing my faith - and my heart - into smaller and smaller pieces."My testimony, which had always been to me like a beautiful stained glass window that I could gaze at to see the power of God's saving grace, now seemed like a pile of broken glass. My faith was in crisis. I knelt and pleaded with God to restore the joy of His salvation in me." 
This is very like the crisis I felt myself after spending years studying the Torah with severalrabbis in my home town. (You can read about it
here
.) Like me, Mr. Rabin turned to the Lordand to the Bible. In the midst of his search for truth, he says the Holy Spirit led him to thestory of the burning bush, and the secret name of God, YHVH.Mr. Rabin investigated the ideographic meaning of the Hebrew letters Yud Hey Vav Hey. Anideogram is a symbol that represents an idea, like those little male and female shaped signsyou see on the outside of public restroom doors. This is similar--but not identical--to theChinese written system, or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Hebrew letters have had

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Jedi Ninjaleft a comment

Watchuwand, Thanks for the comment. But if the Name was only spoken once a year, how do you explain its many uses throughout the Old Testament? It is normally translated as "the LORD" in English Bibles, but throughout the Old Testament (such as in the Psalms, for example) we see the Name spoken by many individuals other than the High Priest.
07 / 10 / 2009
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watchuwand?left a comment

This is very interesting. The name in question is not the name Moshe (Moses) received from the Burning Bush however. The Name he received was Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh..."I Am that I Am" The name you describe is called HaShem by members of the Jewish Faith and it is Transcendent having no meaning to created minds as it is the One Beyond Manifestation Holy Forever. That name is spelled Y H V H. Idiomata aside, this Name has greater significance than an alleged foreshadowing of Jesus crucifixion. This Name represents G-d as G-d relates to G-d before any Thing was. Therefore no Thing may understand it. This Name was spoken only once a year in the Holy of Holies by the Cohen Gadol (the High Priest) on the day of Atonement. It was so dangerous for a Thing to speak this Name that when the Priest entered the Innermost Sanctuary he had a rope tied around his waist so that if the pronunciation of the Name killed him he could be dragged out of the Holy of Holies.
07 / 09 / 2009
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Jedi Ninjaleft a comment

"I Am Who I Am" or perhaps more accurately "He That Causes to Become" (I am no expert when it comes to Hebrew) is the phonetic meaning of the Tetragrammaton - what the Tetragrammaton sounds like. I believe that for thousands of years the Jews knew the ideographic meaning ("Behold the hand, behold the nail") but did not think it had any significance whatsoever. But now, we can clearly see its significance in Jesus.
05 / 18 / 2008
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onlinedesignleft a comment

I was under the impression from my studies, although I am no Hebrew Scholar, that from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Hebrew and Greek Concordances, and also sparse references from the Emphatic Diaglott, that the Tetragamaton best interpreted "The Creator's Name" to mean literally: "He Causes To Become" - which would be a very fitting Name for the supposed Creator of All things. It would even be a fitting name for the Creator of all things...to any religion that believed in a Master Builder. I have never heard this version, although, it is quite heart-touching a story for someone who was Jewish and "found the Lord" to believe that His name means "Behold the Hand. Behold the Nail."? Does that even make sense in any other context outside of an "I Got Saved Story"? No disrespect intended. When I use online search engines to search for "He That Causes to Become" *poof* articles about the Tetragrameton appear and thoughts from Hebrew Scholars over the Centuries that agree on "I AM" and "He That IS".
05 / 18 / 2008
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