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IS IT A SIN TO CALL GOD “GOD” AND TO CALL THE LORD “LORD”? A GENERAL REPLY TO THE SACRED NAMES DOCTRINE
Eric
V. Snow
Do Christians sin when we call
God "God"? Is it wrong to
call our Savior "Jesus Christ"?
Are we breaking the Third Commandment when we refer to God as "the
Lord"? Such questions may seem
absurd to most Christians. But one
doctrine a number are teaching today says that it is disrespectful to God, and
a sin, to use any words other than the Hebrew names from the Old Testament to
refer to the Creator. They insist that
we call the Lord God "Yahweh Elohim," and Jesus Christ "Yahshua
the Messiah," although they are divided among themselves about how to
pronounce or transliterate "Yahweh" and "Yahshua." They reject translating any words that refer
to God into English, Greek, or any other language. So--is this teaching correct?
Fundamentally, because the Bible itself places no restrictions on its
translation, and within itself does use words referring to the Supreme Being in
Greek and Aramaic, and even translates some from Hebrew into Greek in the New
Testament, we know referring to God using English words is acceptable to Him.
WHAT
IS A "NAME" TO BEGIN WITH?
Before considering the "sacred
names" issue further, we need to consider exactly what a "name"
is to begin with. A word or name is a
symbol that uses a particular sound and a particular squiggle on a page to
stand for a concept, for something that exists in the real world. Of course, some words stand for things which
have no actual physical or spiritual existence, such as "unicorn" or
"centaur." Such words exist
only as ideas in various humans' minds.
Different languages will have correspondingly different words or names
for the same things. For example, the
jumping four-footed amphibian animal we call a "frog" in English is
"la grenouille" in French and "la rana" in Spanish. When we turn to Supreme Being, our Creator,
Sustainer, and Savior, who is everywhere (omnipresent), all-knowing
(omniscient), all-powerful (omnipotent), and all-loving, the word customarily
used in English to symbolize this Person is "God." Fundamentally, what matters is what a person
conceives when he uses the English word "God" (in Spanish,
"Dios," and French, "Dieu"), not the particular noise that
he makes or the marks he writes to symbolize his reference to the Creator of
the universe. Did he use it as a curse
word? Or, did he use it reverently and
sincerely while praying in faith? What
matters is the attitude and belief behind the use of the word "God,"
not its specific pronunciation. This is
why Christians may pray to God and refer to him in whatever modern language
they speak. The Bible places no
restrictions on its translation, and nowhere prohibits referring to the true
God in languages other than Hebrew.
Those who advocate using only Hebrew names to refer to God have to read
into it such restrictions.
"YAHWEH"--THE
TRUE PRONUNCIATION WAS LOST
Now we should investigate the Hebrew
names for God more closely. The name of
God that gets the most attention in this teaching is "Yahweh" or
"Jehovah," which is more traditionally translated "the
LORD." This name comes from the
four consonant letters "YHWH" in Hebrew, and is so called the
Tetragammaton. Because ancient Hebrew
was written only in consonants and a few semi-vowels, those who read it aloud
had to supply the missing vowel sounds.
The Jews after returning from the Babylonian captivity under Ezra and
Nehemiah (c. 450 b.c.) began to reverence the name "Yahweh" so
greatly they outlawed the very use of it, first for the common people, later
for the priests. Finally, only the high
priest, and then only on the Day of Atonement, was allowed to say it. When Simon (300 to 270 b.c.) died, who was
the last high priest permitted to use it, a total prohibition against saying
the Name came into force among the Jews.
They would substitute the word "Adonay"--"Lord," or
sometimes "Elohim"--"God," for the YHWH whenever they
encountered it when reading aloud the scriptures. The medieval Jewish scribes who preserved the Hebrew Old
Testament, the Masoretes, around the sixth or seventh century A.D. devised a
system of using dots and other small marks to symbolize what vowels came
between the originally inspired consonants.
However, the pronunciation of "Yahweh" was not preserved by
them. Whenever YHWH appeared in the
next, they put in the vowel points for Adonay or sometimes, as appropriate,
Elohim, in order to avoid saying "Lord" twice in a row. This clued the oral reader to say the
substitute name for Yahweh.
WHY
DID THE JEWS STOP SAYING "YAHWEH"?
The Jews came to have this
misconception against saying "Yahweh" due to a misinterpretation of
Lev. 24:11, 16. The Hebrew word
translated "blaspheme" in these texts--nachav--can also be
translated "to say clearly" or "to declare
distinctly." If we translate nachav
this way in Lev. 24:16, a total prohibition against saying "Yahweh"
results: "'And whoever [declares
distinctly] the name of [Yahweh] shall surely be put to death, and all the
congregation shall certainly stone him . . . (NKJV throughout, unless
otherwise noted).'" Since the Jews
over the centuries made the oral tradition of interpreting the law a hedge or
fence around the actual written law of the Torah to help ensure the latter
wasn't violated, the same practice was adopted here. To play it safe, they decided never to say the Name--YHWH--even
though the inspired scriptures contain this name time and time again,
demonstrating the falsity of this tradition.
WHY
CHRIST MUST NEVER HAVE SAID "YAHWEH" DURING HIS MINISTRY
The result of this prohibition was
that Christ and the apostles surely never used "Yahweh" in their
public preaching, at least among the Jews in the first century. If they had, the common people would have
reviled them, and the Scribes and Pharisees would not have had to wait long to
execute them all. Remember that when
Christ was on trial, the Sanhedrin sought, and got, various false
witnesses in order to accuse Him (Mark 14:55-59; Matt. 26:59-61). Had He said the name "Yahweh" any
time during His public ministry, sentencing Him to death would have been easy. Consider when He quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 and
applied it to Himself and His ministry (Luke 4:18-21) when he first began
preaching, and visited the synagogue at Nazareth. Had He said "Yahweh," instead of "the Lord,"
it is incredibly unlikely His audience's reaction would have been this positive
(v. 22, NASB): "And all were
speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling
from His lips; and they were saying, 'Is this not Joseph's Son?'" Instead, being shocked at what they would
have heard, many would have called Him a blasphemer, and surely someone would
have said He should be put to death.
The silence of the New Testament on
this score is deafening, especially when considering the Scribes and Pharisees
were looking for ANY flimsy charge to accuse Christ with, that neither He nor
His disciples could have publicly used the Name--Yahweh. Of course, Christ Himself would not have
believed it was wrong to say "Yahweh," especially since He was Yahweh
in the flesh Himself (John 1:1, 14; I Cor. 10:4, 9; I Timothy 3:16). But, in order to be able to effectively
evangelize and witness to the Jews, He simply could not have used the Name,
because of the shock it would cause, and the distractions that would create
against Him effectively communicating His message to the world--the Gospel. Since neither He nor His disciples used
"Yahweh" then, Christians should not see it as a requirement for
salvation to use "Yahweh" today.
TRANSLATING
THE YHWH AS "THE ETERNAL"
But now, what does "Yahweh" mean? What would be a good translation for
this name, instead of attempting to transliterate a word with a long-forgotten
pronunciation into modern languages such as English? The name "Yahweh" comes from an archaic form of the
verb "to be" in Hebrew, although its exact derivation is
disputed. Some scholars suggest this name
originally meant "He causes to be," others, "He exists,"
and one has simply, "He who is."
One suggested derivation maintains "Yahweh" means
"Was--Is--Will Continue to Be."
The tie between "Yahweh" and the Hebrew verb referring to
existence is clearly made in Ex. 3:14-15.
After Moses saw the burning bush, he wanted to know God's name in order
to proclaim it to the enslaved children of Israel in Egypt: "And God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I
AM.' And He said, 'Thus you shall say
to the children of Israel: 'I AM has sent me to you. . . . The Lord
[YHWH] God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is
My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.'" Some modern translators of the Bible,
especially in the French language, bring out this main meaning for
"Yahweh" by translating its meaning, instead of just leaving
it up to the reader to guess its meaning after reading the transliteration
"Yahweh." In English, Moffatt
translated it "the Eternal," and Fenton "the Ever-living,"
in their translations of the Bible.
Since the basic meaning has been preserved for YHWH, but the exact
pronunciation has been lost, it is evident that what matters to God more is
what this name for Him means. Otherwise,
if the sound was what matters as a condition for salvation, He would have
ensured its preservation.
SOME
IMPLICATIONS OF THE NAME'S MEANING
Yahweh is the personal, covenant name
of the God of Israel who visits and intervenes for His people to save
them. It points to God as the Creator,
as the self-existent One who inhabits eternity, who has existed into the
infinite past, who is actively involved in the lives of His people presently,
and who will always exist into an infinite future. As Jesus, who was the Yahweh of the Old Testament, described
Himself (Rev. 1:8): "I am the
Alpha and the Omega [the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet], the
Beginning and the End . . . who is and who was and who is to come,
the Almighty." Since everything in
the universe depends on God for its continued existence, the existence of
everything else pales in comparison to His Being. All of humanity matters only to the extent God cares about its
continued existence (Isaiah 40:15, 17):
"Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket and are counted as
the small dust on the balance . . . All the nations before Him are as
nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and
worthless." To the Eternal,
disputes over how and whether to pronounce one of His names are trivial by
comparison with us Christians today learning more about His magnificence,
power, and authority, which the meaning of this name points to.
"JEHOVAH"
AS AN INFERIOR TRANSLITERATION OF YHWH
Another, more common and traditional
transliteration for YHWH than Yahweh is "Jehovah." This form of the divine name was largely a
mistake by Roman Catholic scholars during the Middle Ages, who could read
Hebrew only imperfectly. It resulted
from the vowels points for Adonay ("Lord") or Elohim ("God")
placed by the Masoretic scribes between the letters for YHWH being taken for
the actual vowels for Yahweh. At
that time, the letter "J" originally sounded like a "Y," so
this form was originally pronounced "Yehovah." Traditionally, this form has been attributed
to the Confessor of Pope Leo X (1513-22), Peter Galatin. However, it has been found earlier, such as
in Raymond Martin's "Pugio Fidei" (1270). Although it is more familiar to the general public, and is found
in the New World Translation and the American Standard Version, it is an
inferior transliteration of the divine name to "Yahweh" from a
scholar's viewpoint. Both
"Yahweh" and "Jehovah," as transliterations, suffer from
the problem of clouding the meaning of YHWH from English speakers, which
is why an actual translation like Moffatt's "the Eternal" is
superior. The connection of YHWH to
God's self-existence in the Hebrew is largely lost when it is not translated,
but only transliterated, into English.
"ELOHIM"--THE
HEBREW WORD FOR GOD
Another name for God, which appears
well over two thousand times in the Old Testament, is "Elohim." Literally meaning "Mighty Ones,"
this word normally appears in a plural form, although the singular
"Eloah" is also used. This
word is translated "God" in Gen. 1:26: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to
Our likeness . . .'"
However, normally this word for God is used in a singular construction. Hence, we have Elohim creates, makes, says, not
Elohim create, make, say. The root word
"El" was used to refer to various false gods of the nations which
surrounded ancient Israel, as well as in Hebrew itself. The discoveries made by archeologists at
Ugarit, an ancient Canaanite city found in modern Syria, prove this. The Canaanites who lived in this city (c.
2000-1200 b.c.) used a language highly similar to ancient Hebrew, such as in
their myth about the struggle between the gods Baal and Mot. A form of "El" used routinely in
Arabic today is the Muslim word for God, "Allah."
IS
IT A SIN TO USE THE WORD "GOD" BECAUSE PAGANS DID?
This leads us to one of the great
fallacies behind the view that Christians today should only use the Hebrew
names for God. It is said that because
the English word "God" was used for pagan gods by our ancestors
centuries ago, this word should never be used to refer to the one true God, the
Eternal. What this claim ignores is
that the word "Elohim" and its various forms are repeatedly used in
Scripture to refer to false gods time and time again. "Elohim" is used 240 times to
refer to pagan gods, "El" 15 times, and "Eloah" five
times. Once, in Isaiah 57:5 (KJV),
"El" is translated "idols." When the Philistines celebrated their victory over Samson, the
word "Elohim" was applied to their god, Dagon by the inspired Hebrew
writer of this account (Judges 16:23).
Furthermore, as the Ugarit discoveries imply, where its treasure trove
of clay tablets is dated around 1400 b.c., the Semitic word "El" had
been in use in the Middle East to refer to false gods long before Moses was
born. By the same reasoning used to ban
the English word "God," "El" should not have been used by
the writers of inspired Scripture. The
fact that "El" and "Elohim" were used time and time again
in the Old Testament to refer to pagan gods, and the root word "El"
was used by pagans to refer to their gods around the time the Torah was
completed by Moses, conclusively proves God does NOT prohibit the use of words
in other languages referring to Him that also have been used to refer to false
gods. What matters is not the sound or
marking that represents a concept as a word, but what the user means by
the word in question when he says or writes it. Hence, the English word "God" is a perfectly fine way
to refer to the Almighty, as well as to false gods such as Woden, Thor, Vulcan,
Zeus, etc.
THE
OLD TESTAMENT WAS ALSO WRITTEN IN ARAMAIC
Furthermore, it is often forgotten
that some parts of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic, the language
which began to replace Hebrew for the everyday speech of ancient Israelites,
especially after returning from the Babylonian captivity. Jesus and His disciples conducted their
ministry in Aramaic, which was one of the main languages in common use in Judea
in the first century A.D. Greek also was used in Judea by many average people,
not just the wealthy, well-educated, or well-traveled. These parts of the Old Testament were
written in Aramaic: Ezra 4:8-6:18;
7:12-26; Daniel 2:4b-6:18; Jeremiah 10:11.
Scattered Aramaic words show up elsewhere also. Now--did the writers of Scripture use Hebrew
words for God when they used Aramaic?
No, they did not! Seventy-eight
times God inspired Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezra to use the Aramaic word
"Elah," not the Hebrew "Elohim." Here God clearly granted permission men to use words referring to
Him in languages other than Hebrew.
Furthermore, 16 times "Elah" is used to refer to pagan gods,
showing once again God allows the same word to be used about pagan gods that is
used to refer to Him. To say God only
allows Hebrew words to be used about Him clearly contradicts the Old Testament.
THE
WITNESS OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
However, the strongest proof against
the idea that God requires us to use Hebrew words about Himself is the New
Testament, which was written in Greek.
The Greek word for Lord, "Kyrios" is used to refer to God some
665 times in the New Testament, while "Theos," meaning
"God," is used some l,345 times.
Worse yet, in a number of places, where New Testament writers quote the
Old, the Greek word for Lord, "Kyrios" is substituted for the
Tetragammaton, YHWH. For example, note
Matt. 3:3: "The voice of one
crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths
straight.'" The Hebrew text for
Isaiah 40:3 has YHWH for "the Lord," while the Greek has
"Kyrios." When Christ entered
Jerusalem, the crowds surely did not say "Yahweh" when quoting Ps.
118:26, but: "Blessed is He who
comes in the name of the Lord!" (Matt. 21:9). They would have regarded it as blasphemy, as shown earlier, to say
"the Name." When Christ
quoted Ps. 110:1 to refer to Himself, He certainly did not say
"Yahweh," otherwise the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes could have
demanded on the spot his execution (note Luke 20:41-44). Paul was no different: He substituted "the Lord" for the
YHWH when quoting from the Old Testament (see I Cor. 1:31; Rom. 4:8; 9:23; II
Cor. 3:17). Clearly, the Holy Spirit,
by allowing "Kyrios" to be substituted for "Yahweh" in the
New Testament, decisively demonstrates that the old Jewish tradition of
substituting "the Lord" for "Yahweh" is not a sin in God's
sight, even though it was originally based on an erroneous interpretation of
Lev. 24:11, 16. Hence, although
"the Lord" is definitely not the best standard translation for YHWH
in English, as opposed to "the Eternal," the text of the New
Testament decisively proves it is not a sin to translate YHWH as "the
Lord."
WAS
THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT GREATLY CORRUPTED?
The fundamental error of the
"Sacred Names" teaching is that it comes up with a preconceived idea
based on certain Old Testament passages.
Then, when this idea is decisively refuted by the Greek New Testament,
the text of the latter must be rejected as false, instead of rejecting the
teaching that is contrary to it. Hence,
when such scriptural facts as those mentioned above are presented, the normal
reply is that the New Testament's text has been corrupted. Some unknown scribes centuries
ago--presumably in the early second century--systematically edited out every
Hebrew word that referred to God, and replaced them with Greek words. The principal problem with this claim is
that absolutely no evidence whatsoever exists for it. There are no records of such editing occurring, nor is there a
single Greek New Testament manuscript (out of some 5309 ones known to exist)
with the YHWH or another Hebrew name for God appearing in it even once. These unknown, unproven editors must have
been VERY good at their job! Or, maybe
they were not so perfect, because they left in the Greek in James 5:4 the
transliterated word from Hebrew for "hosts"--"sabaoth"--while
supposedly changing the YHWH to "the Lord"! After all, with the Greek manuscripts increasingly being
preserved by gentiles, who had no tradition of substituting "the
Lord" for "Yahweh," or any notion of using "Elohim"
for "God," it is unlikely they would have even thought of doing such
editing. On the other hand, suppose the
early church, when it was mainly Jewish, had routinely used Yahweh (which is
very unlikely) and Elohim, and had been inspired to use these words in the
Gospels and Letters. Those who came
right after them in the Jewish Christian community certainly would not have
changed their minds, go back to a traditional Jewish mind-set, and start
editing out everything their spiritual fathers had just placed in the New
Testament. They revered the word of God
too much to handle it so carelessly.
Furthermore, Christ assures us His
words, as part of the New Testament, would be accurately preserved: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but
My words shall not pass away" (Matt. 24:35). To insist the New Testament was so massively corrupted, that all
the hundreds and hundreds of places "God," "Jesus,"
"Christ," "Lord," etc. appear in the Greek New Testament
are false interpolations by unknown editors, denies Jesus' assurance His words
would not pass away. If one really
believes such massive changes were made in the New Testament text, then one has
to wonder what else may have been changed! As it is, with fragments of manuscripts and quotes from early
Catholic church writers going back to the early second century A.D., and
complete (or nearly complete) manuscripts appearing in the fourth and fifth
centuries A.D., the time gap between the events that are recorded in the New
Testament and the earliest preserved manuscript fragments (c. 90 years or less)
is likely the smallest of any anciently preserved historical writings. The idea that all the Hebrew names for God
were edited out of the New Testament demonstrates a lack of faith that God
would preserve His Holy Word for us accurately enough that no basic doctrines
would be lost. As it is, it requires
much greater faith to believe the Hebrew names were there to begin with!
WHY
THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS NOT ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN ARAMAIC
While some attempt to dodge this
bullet by saying the whole New Testament was originally written in Aramaic or
Hebrew, this is plainly contradicted by the witness of ancient manuscripts, the
grammatical structure of the Greek, and the writings of the early Catholic
church writers. True, one can find a
few of the latter who say Matthew or Hebrews was originally written in Aramaic
or Hebrew (by which they may have meant Aramaic). Church historian Eusebius (ca 260-339 A.D.), citing the earlier
writings of Papias, and Jerome (ca 374-419 A.D.), the translator of the Latin
Vulgate Bible from Hebrew and Greek, both said Matthew was originally written
in Hebrew, but that he later translated it into Greek. Eusebius also said that Paul wrote Hebrews
(something which has been argued about for centuries) in Hebrew, but that Luke
translated it into Greek. However,
fundamentally what matters is what was preserved down through the ages as the
original, from which other translations were made. In the case of both Matthew and Hebrews, if they were originally
written in other languages, the Greek is all that remains for us today. Furthermore, noting the case of Matthew's
Gospel in particular, the Greek cannot be easily translated back into
Aramaic. Its Greek is too smooth, and
and contains word plays possible only in that language. It becomes difficult to believe it was
originally written in another language.
It is easily proven that the New
Testament was not originally written in Aramaic, but rather the early Aramaic edition
of the New Testament, which has been translated into English in the Lamsa
Bible, is a translation from the Greek.
There are at least a dozen cases where the Greek has quotes from the
Aramaic, but then translates it. If the
Aramaic had been the original language, there would have been no need to add
statements that translate the Aramaic into Greek. Since there are such cases in the Aramaic version of the New
Testament, the original language of the New Testament must have been
Greek. For example, consider Christ's
cry to God while being crucified (Mark 15:34):
"And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying,
'Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?' which is translated, "My God, My God, why
have You forsaken Me?" The Aramaic
version of the New Testament contains the part "which is translated, 'My
God, My God, why have you forsaken me?," which is simply absurdly
unnecessary if it was the original language that the Holy Spirit inspired the
New Testament in.
"MESSIAH"
AND "YAHSHUA" AS THE HEBREW NAMES FOR JESUS CHRIST
Another point of attack by those who
insist Christians must use Hebrew names for God is that "Christ" and
"Jesus" are unacceptable.
Christians should say "Messiah" and "Yahshua"
instead, though they disagree among themselves as to the best transliteration
for the Savior's name. The word
"Christ" comes from the term, "the anointed one," and has
the same meaning as the Hebrew word "Messiah." The English word "Jesus" comes
from the Greek word "Iesous," which appears over 910 times in the New
Testament. It means "Yahweh is
salvation." The name
"Joshua" comes from the exact same Greek word, and has the same
meaning (see Hebrews 4:8). Here,
concerning Jesus' name, the same mistakes are made, based on the same
preconceived ideas developed by misinterpreting certain Old Testament
passages. Since the New Testament does
refer to our Savior using Greek terms and not Hebrew ones, there is nothing
wrong today in using either the Greek terms, or their translation into
English. The Bible simply does not
prohibit translation of His names into other languages. One has to read such an idea into certain
Old Testament passages, and then totally ignore all the evidence in both the
Old Testament's Aramaic and the New Testament's Greek against it.
THERE
IS MORE TO GOD'S NAME THAN PRONUNCIATION!
But now--what does it mean to do
something "in the name of the Lord"?
It does not merely mean vocalizing the sounds of God's name! A name, as Vine's says, stands
"for all that a 'name' implies, of authority, character, rank, majesty,
power, excellence, etc., of everything that the 'name' covers." Very often, it means to do something by the
power or authority of God. For example,
consider part of Jesus' prayer for his disciples and the church in John
17:11-12: "Holy Father, keep
through your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We
are. While I was with them in the
world, I kept them in Your name."
Note the crudely literal interpretation of Jesus' words, which nobody
believes, would say that "I kept them in Your name" means they were
called "God" or "Holy Father" while on earth. Instead, what Jesus means is that He kept
them and protected them under the Father's authority. Or, consider this Old Testament example (Micah 4:5): "For all people walk each in the name
of his god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord [YHWH] our God forever and
ever." This passage says that to
"walk in the name" of a god or the true God is to be guided and
identified by one's worship of that God.
It does not necessarily mean so much pronouncing the word that stands
for that God. A "name" could
mean acknowledging or confessing something about God, such as when someone is
baptized in the name of Jesus (Acts 8:16), one is accepting Him as Savior. There is a whole lot more to "the name
of God" than correctly pronouncing one of his names right!
THE
ARTIFICIAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN "NAME" AND "TITLE"
Normally, at this point, those who
teach God should only be called by Hebrew names will draw an artificial
distinction between a "name" and a "title." Hence, in "Yahweh Sabaoth" (i.e.,
"the Lord of hosts"), or "Yahweh Elohim," the part that is
a name is "Yahweh," while the words translated "Hosts" or
"God" are titles. The
principal problem with this distinction is that it is made nowhere in the Greek
or Hebrew words translated "name."
Even in English, this distinction is not watertight, as the Random
House Unabridged Dictionary states:
"Name, title both refer to the label by which a
person is known. Name is the
simpler and more general word for appellation . . . A title is
an official or honorary term bestowed on a person or the specific designation
of a book, article, etc." For
example, consider how the titles of English aristocrats are treated in literature
and historical writing. Often the
"titles" becomes their "names." Arthur Wellesley was the English general who defeated the French
Emperor Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, with the aid of the
Prussians under Blucher. However, most
people don't know him by that name.
They call him "The Duke of Wellington," or simply
"Wellington."
Hence, while one can call
"Lord" and "Christ" titles, and "Jesus" the name,
two or three of these are often combined in a compound form to which something
was done or said "in the name of," such as in Acts 8:12; 16:18; I
Cor. 1:10; 5:4, 6:11; I Thess. 1:12; 3:6.
In some cases, "Christ" is evidently called a "name"
in scripture: "'Let everyone who
names the name of Christ depart from iniquity'" (II Tim. 2:19; compare I
Pet. 4:14). Similarly, the compound
form "Lord of Hosts" is called a "name" in Jeremiah 10:16,
46:18; 48:15. Three names/titles
appear, evidently combined into a compound name, in Amos 4:13: ". . . The Lord [YHWH] God of
hosts is His name." In Amos 5:27,
one finds: ". . . says
the Lord [YHWH], whose name is the God of hosts." Ps. 48:10 says: "According to Your name, O God, so is Your praise to the
ends of the earth." Even in Ex.
3:15, "Yahweh Elohim" is the complete name of God mentioned, not just
"Yahweh," depending on where one places the commas and/or articles in
English.
WHY
CHRISTIANS NEED NOT SPECIFY WHICH GOD THEY ARE PRAYING TO
For ancient Israelites in their
culture Canaanite deities such as Chemosh, Molech, Dagon, Baal, Astoreth, and
Asherah were rivals against Yahweh for their affections. However, today it is not necessary for a
Christian to strongly emphasize the difference between his God and the pagan
gods by using the distinguishing name "Yahweh." After all, what really matters is the intent
of the heart and who one is thinking of praying to, not the noises one makes
when addressing God in some language.
Jesus, in his model prayer, did not start it off using "Yahweh,"
or even "the Lord," but simply, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed
be your name" (Matt. 6:9). God
knows who His children are even before they start praying to Him. Hence, it is not necessary to use a name
that specifically distinguishes the true God from the false, since we as
Christians are directing our prayers towards the true God to begin with, and
would not dream of praying to some false god.
THE
NEED FOR CLEAR COMMUNICATION WHEN EVANGELIZING
Furthermore, Christians need to use
the time-honored language of their surrounding culture in order to make
communication of the Gospel's message easier.
After all, suppose someone totally ignorant of the Bible's contents
suddenly encounters such words as "Yahweh," "Elohim,"
"Yahshua," etc. routinely in a magazine that is attempting to
evangelize him. He may throw it away in
confusion instead of continuing to read the message that is supposed to help
save him. In order to communicate with
the world, one has to approach it initially on its terms. Hence, Paul came to the Jews as a Jew, but
approached the gentiles as a gentile (I Cor. 9:19-22). When he dealt with the pagan Greeks on the
Areopagus in Athens, he approached them by referring to an altar with the
inscription, "To an unknown God."
He did not use such Hebrew words as "Yahweh,"
"Elohim," or "Yahshua," or else his audience, which was
almost totally ignorant of the true God and did not know Hebrew, would have
tuned him out completely. Similarly, as
the silence of controversy on this point in the New Testament strongly implies,
neither Jesus nor his disciples used "Yahweh" during His
ministry. By using it, Christ would
have drowned out anything else he said or done, including even His miracles.
"Theos"
is merely the generic word used for God or the gods in Greek. It need not
refer to any one particular God any more than the English word "God"
does. And this is also true of "Elohim," which is used hundreds
of times to refer to pagan gods in the Hebrew Old Testament. Furthermore,
pagan Canaanites, such as those at Ugarit in their tablets, used the word
"El" to refer to their pagan gods around the time that Moses
completed the Torah (c. 1400 b.c.) It's an easy inference to conclude
that pagans used the word "elohim" for their gods for centuries
before God inspired Moses to use this word in the Torah. So then, what's
the difference? If the Greek word "theos" and the Hebrew word
"elohim" (or its derivatives) were both used by pagans before the
Bible was written, why is one privileged and the other condemned?
Now
Jesus taught (Mark 13:31), "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words
will not pass away." Well, if the Sunday keeping church edited out
all the Hebrew references to God's name in the Greek New Testament, His words
indeed pass away. That then leads to another disturbing thought:
What else did they monkey with, if they made hundreds of such changes in the
sacred text? Furthermore, if it's a condition to salvation to say the
specific words "Yahweh" and "Yeshua," nobody was saved for
a period of roughly 1800 years. After all, the Sacred Names teaching is a
relatively recent invention (from the 1930's, I believe). If what matters
is the specific sound/word that someone makes with their voice, rather than the
Person to whom they refer to using that standard sound/word in their native
language, then "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be
saved" (Romans 10:13) was null and void for nearly two millennia.
Who in the Sunday-keeping or even Sabbath-keeping Christian world called God
“Yahweh” from the time of the Edict of Milan until (perhaps) a few centuries
ago, after the hybrid term "Jehovah" was devised as a transliteration
of the YHWH? If the view of the Sacred Names' teaching is correct, then
the gates of hell did indeed prevail against the true church (Matt. 16:18),
since the true church (presumably Sabbath-keeping) certainly did not uphold
this teaching during the Middle Ages (c. 476 A.D. to 1453 A.D.) or long
afterwards. And, of course, nobody really knows exactly how the Jews did
pronounce the Tetragammaton, so it's folly to claim that trying to reproduce
exactly that sound is a condition to salvation.
To
a believer in the Sacred Names teaching, he feels that he MUST use
"Yahweh," or else lose salvation. However, Jesus and the early
disciples did not uphold such a view, especially since had they used
"the Name," they would have been swiftly arrested and then
executed. For example, on another occasion, Jesus didn't want to be taken
before His time. So that's why He didn't initially plan to go to the
Feast of Tabernacles, and later went privately, not publicly (John 7:8,
10): "Go up to the feast yourselves; I do not go up to this feast
because My time has not yet fully come. . . . But when His brothers had gone up
to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as it were, in
secret." Obviously, Jesus didn't feel a need to create maximum
offense among His fellow Jews in order to teach the Gospel. The silence
about this controversy in the Gospels is excellent proof that Jesus never used
the YHWH in public addresses, such as the one described in Luke 4. In
this case, it's not an issue of whether Jesus had fear or not, but of what
really happened. The hometown crowd simply could not have reacted
initially the positive way that they did if they had just heard "the
Name" spoken. In this case, it's necessary to drop the assumption
that Jesus "had" to publicly say "Yahweh" at every
opportunity.
Neither
did Paul aim to put unnecessary stumbling blocks before others when
evangelizing. It's inconceivable that when he would first enter a
synagogue (such as in Acts 13 at Pisdian Antioch) that he would have used
"The Name" without causing such offense that he would have been
promptly thrown out. He explained his methods of evangelism thus (I Cor.
9:19-23): "For though I am free from all, yet I have made myself
servant to all, so that I might gain the more. And to the Jews I became as a
Jew, so that I might gain the Jews. To those who are under the Law, I became as
under the Law, so that I might gain those who are under the Law. To those who
are outside Law, I became as outside Law (not being outside law to God, but
under the law to Christ), so that I might gain those who are outside Law. To
the weak I became as the weak, so that I might gain the weak. I am made all things
to all men, so that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the sake
of the gospel, so that I might be partaker of it with you." So Paul
would trim his sails in order to persuade people to be saved. And
uttering "The Name" obviously wasn't part of the Gospel package, or
else he couldn't have gotten in more than one brief speech in any synagogue in
the Diaspora.
THE
NEW TESTAMENT WAS WRITTEN IN GREEK, NOT HEBREW OR ARAMAIC
We
can easily prove that the New Testament was originally written in Greek, not
Hebrew. While some attempt to dodge this bullet by saying the whole New
Testament was originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew, this is plainly
contradicted by the witness of ancient manuscripts, the grammatical structure
of the Greek, and the writings of the early Catholic church writers. True, one can find a few of the latter who
say Matthew or Hebrews was originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew (by which
they may have meant Aramaic). Church
historian Eusebius (ca 260-339 A.D.), citing the earlier writings of Papias,
and Jerome (ca 374-419 A.D.), the translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible from
Hebrew and Greek, both said Matthew was originally written in Hebrew, but that
he later translated it into Greek.
Eusebius also said that Paul wrote Hebrews (something which has been
argued about for centuries) in Hebrew, but that Luke translated it into
Greek. However, fundamentally what
matters is what was preserved down through the ages as the original, from which
other translations were made. In the
case of both Matthew and Hebrews, if they were originally written in other
languages, the Greek is all that remains for us today. Furthermore, noting the case of Matthew's
Gospel in particular, the Greek cannot be easily translated back into Aramaic. Its Greek is too smooth, and and contains
word plays possible only in that language.
It becomes difficult to believe it was originally written in another
language.
It
is easily proven that the New Testament was not originally written in Aramaic,
but rather the early Aramaic edition of the New Testament, which has been
translated into English in the Lamsa Bible, is a translation from the
Greek. There are at least a dozen cases
where the Greek has quotes from the Aramaic, but then translates it. If the Aramaic had been the original
language, there would have been no need to add statements that translate the
Aramaic into Greek. Since there are
such cases in the Aramaic version of the New Testament, the original language
of the New Testament must have been Greek.
For example, consider Christ's cry to God while being crucified (Mark
15:34): "And at the ninth hour
Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?'
which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" The Aramaic version of the New Testament
contains the part "which is translated, 'My God, My God, why have you
forsaken me?," which is simply absurdly unnecessary if it was the original
language that the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament in. The New
Testament was written mostly after c. 50 A.D, which is past the time period
described in Acts 10 and even 15.
The
New Testament was written in Greek in order to reach the gentile masses outside
the chosen people's homeland. Although the routine, everyday language of
Jesus and His disciples was surely Aramaic, they also must have known other
languages as well. Increased evidence
has come to light in recent years that Hebrew still was a language in
common, everyday use in Judea in the time of Roman rule. Consequently, McDowell and Wilson say there
are "good indications" that Jesus and His disciples were
trilingual. Hellenistic influences had
penetrated deeply into ancient Judea, and Greek was the lingua franca of
the eastern Mediterranean during Roman rule.
Much like English increasingly became late in the twentieth century,
Greek was the language of "default" for educated people of different
nationalities. They used Greek to
communicate when encountering each other abroad or in their home territories,
when neither person knew the native mother tongue of the other. (Similarly today, English is the accepted
language for air traffic controllers at major international airports,
regardless of their location or where the jet airliners land or take off). Consider the witness of the ancient Jewish
historian Josephus (c. A.D. 37-100) who said learning the languages of other
nations, including Greece, was "common, not only to all sorts of freemen,
but to as many of the servants [slaves?] as pleased to learn them." Some evidence indicates that Jesus Himself
spoke Greek. For example, in John 21,
Jesus used two different words for love, and two different ones for know. Neither of these pairs can be replicated in
Aramaic or Hebrew. Nor can the word
play on the word for "rock" or "stone" (petros/petra) in
Matt. 16:18 be reproduced in either of these Semitic languages. He took advantage of a diminutive word in
the Greek for dogs that were household pets, not strays or wild dogs, when
conversing with the gentile Greek-speaking Syrophoenician woman in Mark
7:24-28. (Here He softened His use of a
traditional Jewish term of contempt, "dogs," for gentiles).[1][1] Pontius Pilate could well have questioned
Jesus in Greek, since few non-Romans in Judea spoke Latin, and it’s unlikely
Pilate would have known the local languages of the despised and conquered
subject race he ruled in the name of mighty Rome. Hence, Jesus, befitting a Jew raised in AGalilee of the Gentiles@
(Isa. 9:1), could converse with people of both Jewish and gentile
backgrounds. ( [1]For
the two lists of words, evidence that Jesus could have spoken Greek, and general
evidence for the overall Jewishness of the Gospel accounts, see McDowell
and Wilson, He Walked Among Us, 233-61; Flavius Josephus, Antiquities
of the Jews, 20.11.2 (264), The Works of Josephus, trans. William
Whiston (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers,
1987), 541. See also Philip Edgcumbe
Hughes, "The Languages Spoken by Jesus," in New Dimensions in New
Testament Study, eds. Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenny (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House,
1974), 127-43; S. Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish
Palestine in the II-IV Centuries C.E. (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942).
AVERAGE
PEOPLE IN FIRST-CENTURY JUDEA OFTEN SPOKE GREEK
There's
additional evidence for average people speaking Greek in first-century Judea. France notes that the texts from Qumran’s caves were in all three languages (Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew), although Hebrew strongly predominated. Davies
deduces that the post-A.D. 70 ban against teaching Greek to one's son found in
the Talmud (b. Sotah 49a) implied that this practice had been common
previously. But even later in the
second-century, Judah the prince contended:
"Why (use) the Syrian language [i.e., Aramaic] in the land of
Israel? Either the sacred language or
the Greek language." The ossuaries (stone boxes containing bones) that archeologists have discovered from
the general time of Jesus indicate that Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew were all spoken in the Holy
Land. Stambaugh and Balch observe that two-thirds of these inscriptions found in Palestine were in Greek only, while one-tenth were bilingual inscriptions in
Greek as well as Hebrew (or Aramaic).
Mostly fairly average people had the inscriptions placed on ossuaries'
outsides, not the highly intellectual and literate whose writings have been
preserved down through the ages. Since
these weren=t official notices posted by the governing authorities, but were
the languages chosen by average people to honor and commemorate their own dead,
they indicate Greek penetrated everyday life in Judea beyond just trading with
foreigners and speaking with officials.
The Hasmonaean rulers (originating in the Maccabees) issued coins only in Hebrew until Alexander Jannaeus had coins minted with both Hebrew and Greek writing. Although a Jew, his grandson used only Greek on his coins, as did the Herodian
princes and Roman procurators over Judea. Even a
letter possibly written by the leader of the A.D. 132-35 Jewish revolt against Rome, Bar Kokhba, reads: "Now this has
been written in Greek because a desire has not been found to write in
Hebrew." Even a patriotic Jew
leading a revolt against the hated gentile conquerors of Rome may have been willing to use a gentile tongue! As Stambaugh and Balch remark, "Whether
more Greek or Aramaic was spoken in Palestine is debated." Furthermore, a number of towns, cities, and
areas in Judea were primarily made up of Hellenized Jews, such as Hippus, Julius, Sepphoris, Tiberias, Gadara, Scythopolis, and
Caesarea Philippi. Although Jews
presumably predominated in these cities, they would have spoken Greek instead
of Aramaic or Hebrew. According to
Davies, because so many Jews (over 200,000) had been killed in Palestine in the
thirty years preceding Herod's capture of Jerusalem (37 b.c.), their gentile neighbors had become relatively more numerous
even in the Holy Land itself. A
continual campaign of Hellenization generally put Judaism on the cultural defensive even in its homeland. The city of Zion itself, Jerusalem, had
Hellenistic synagogues. Both the Shema and the Eighteen Benedictions could be spoken in Greek. It was even claimed that the Torah could be best translated into Greek, which wasn't even a Semitic
language. Since it=s perfectly
plausible that average Jews such as fishermen could speak Greek, it's no
surprise the apostles and disciples wrote the New Testament in Greek in order to communicate with others in the wider community of
the eastern Mediterranean about Jesus and His teachings. (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kamma 82b-83a, Sotah 49b, as cited in McDowell and Wilson, He Walked Among Us, 207, 216, 236; France, The Evidence for Jesus, 145-47; the possible statement by Bar Kokhba appears in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, "The Languages of Palestine in the First Century A.D.," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 32 (1970), 514, as cited in
John E. Stambaugh and David L. Balch, The New Testament in Its Social Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 87; W.D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some
Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London:
SPCK, 1958), 5-6.) Therefore,
your citation of Josephus about the Jews not caring much about Greek simply
isn=t historically accurate.
There’s
simply no reason to insist that speaking a particular language’s word for God
or the Creator is a condition to salvation, especially when the true God wishes
to be worshipped by all peoples (cf. Mark 11:17; Matt. 28:19; Romans 11:25;
16:26; cf. Romans 9-11 and Acts 10-11 generally), not just by His original
chosen people of Israel. Especially at
this point in God’s plan, God doesn’t love the Jews (or Israel in general) any
more than the Greeks, the Chinese, the Asiatic Indians, etc. The chosen people’s language isn’t any more
privileged at this point than any gentile language: We shouldn’t imitate a key error of the Muslims, who generally
think that they have to worship God in Arabic (i.e., the language of the
Koran), not their native tongues.
"Theos"
is merely the generic word used for God or the gods in Greek. It need not refer to any one particular God
any more than the English word "God" does. And this is also true of "Elohim," which is used
hundreds of times to refer to pagan gods in the Hebrew Old Testament. Furthermore, pagan Canaanites, such as those
at Ugarit in their tablets, used the word "El" to refer to their
pagan gods around the time that Moses completed the Torah (c. 1400 b.c.) It's an easy inference to conclude that
pagans used the word "elohim" for their gods for centuries before God
inspired Moses to use this word in the Torah.
So then, what's the difference?
If the Greek word "theos" and the Hebrew word
"elohim" (or its derivatives) were both used by pagans before the
Bible was written, why is one privileged and the other condemned?
PEOPLE
HAVE CHANGED THEIR NAMES WHEN IMMIGRATING TO DIFFERENT COUNTRIES
One
of the basic mistakes of those advocating the Sacred Names teaching is to
assume that people don't change their names when know more than one language
and work with people in more than one language. Read carefully H.L. Menken’s book, “The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English
in the United States” in the chapter dealing with given/first names. A number of immigrants historically have
chosen to change their first names in order to fit in better with the
prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture in decades gone by, before the ideology of
multiculturalism had any influence.
Years ago, I knew teenagers who moved from Argentina to the
United States. Their names in Spanish were "Roberto" and
"Jorge." Yet they were willing to accept be called
"Robert" and "George" in English. This broad
generalization that a person's name never changes language to
language simply doesn't hold up in my own personal experience nor in
America’s own historical experience. Furthermore, this
translation occurs in Scripture as well. Notice Acts 9:36:
"Now in Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha (which is
translated in Greek is called Dorcas); this woman was abounding with deeds of
kindness and charity, which she continually did." So she was called
by both names, one Greek, and one Aramaic, which meant the same thing
("Gazelle," a type of animal). If this woman was willing
to be called by two different names that meant the same thing
in different languages, why would God be any different?
Roberto
and Jorge allowed themselves to be called by either their Spanish names or
their English names, just like Dorcas/Tabitha did. Of course, I doubt
that they legally changed their names after immigrating to the U.S.A. But
the principle remains that people indeed do change or vary their names
depending on what culture they are in, even when those names (sounds/words)
have the same original meaning or reference in physical reality.
Furthermore, Scripture doesn't need two witnesses, since any one text is
infallible, inerrant, and God-breathed, unlike fallible, often deceitful human
beings. Notice the principle of John 8:14 concerning Jesus' own witness
of Himself: He didn't need the Father to affirm His words, since they
were infallible and inerrant without corroboration by anyone else. The
case of Paul/Saul is also of interest as well, one being his customary Jewish
name, the other being his customary Greek name.
To
summarize, "text should determine doctrine," not "doctrine
determining text." That is, the Sacred Names teaching was developed
a priori (before experience) based on a preconceived idea that only the Hebrew
or Aramaic names of God are acceptable, and that all the Greek ones for God
must be pagan. Then when the Greek text even goes so far as to substitute
"Kyrios" for "Yahweh" in quotes from the Old Testament, the
text is called wrong, not the doctrine itself. I stand with the text, not
with a priori doctrines that are immediately falsified when the Greek text is
examined. The Sacred Names Paradigm is falsified by the Greek text as it has
been preserved. So then when this is obviously true, the Sacred Names
teacher calls the Greek text wrong, not his doctrine. Of course, we could
come up and invent all sorts of other doctrines if we could do this with
anything in Scripture that contradicts our beliefs: Just call the text
wrong, corrupted, etc., and then we will be right every
time! Furthermore, the Hebrew and Aramaic use the word
"Elohim" or derivatives of it to refer to pagan gods also. So
why is that language as it refers to God any more "holy" then?
The
Greek text two verses (Acts 4:10) earlier doesn't transliterate to
"Yahsua," but much better to "Jesus." The specific
sound of the word we use to refer to the Savior isn't important compared to
whom we referring to by a standard use of English.
The
best refutation of the Sacred Names doctrine comes from the crowd's reaction to
Jesus' quotation of Isaiah 61:1-2 in Luke 4:18-19. Notice that the Greek
word for "God" and "Lord" is "YHWH" in the
original Hebrew, as opposed to the Greek text. If Jesus had said
"Yahweh" (or however it was originally pronounced), the crowd would
have not reacted this way (verse 22): "And all were speaking well of
Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His
lips." Instead, they would have been shocked, and would have
demanded His immediate execution. If Jesus and/or His disciples had made
a point of speaking "Yahweh" during their ministry, there would not
have been a need to bring up false charges to have Him convicted before the
high priest (Mark 14:56-59): Just mention that He said "Yahweh"
once, and then "case closed!" No further discussion would have
been necessary if Jesus had uttered "the Name." This inference
I consider totally crushing to the Sacred Names teaching. Jesus and His disciples
would have been put to death (or threatened to be put to death) for saying
"the Name," yet this issue never is mentioned once in the New
Testament.
THE
BASIC ERRORS SUMMARIZED
Fundamentally, the error committed by
the doctrine that Christians must use the Hebrew names for God is a
preconceived idea that is read into, and gained from, certain Old Testament
scriptures that God must be called certain names in one language. Then, when the Greek New Testament's text
contradicts this teaching, the text of the New Testament is called wrong,
instead of this teaching! It denies
that the Holy Spirit placed its sanction on the substitution of the name
"the Lord" for the tetragammaton YHWH when the New Testament makes
citations from the Old. It assumes,
without proof, and against the witness of the Old Testament itself, that it is
a sin to use a word referring to the Creator that also has been used about
pagan gods. It says it is a sin to
translate or use other words that refer to the true God other than Hebrew ones
without citing any specific commands in Scripture concerning this, and against
the witness not only of the Greek New Testament, but also the Aramaic portions
of the Old Testament. Furthermore, it
turns certain particular noises made by human mouths and squiggles made by
human hands into a condition for salvation.
It confusedly exalts the sounds and sights of the symbol for a word over
and above the meaning of a word itself, which is what really
matters. Translating YHWH as "the
Eternal" or "the Ever-Living" is superior to transliterating it
"Yahweh" or "Jehovah" because it brings the core meaning of
this name for God to the normally otherwise uninformed English speaker's mind,
instead of letting it guess and grope for the meaning. For in the end, what matters in God's sight
isn't what we say, including pronouncing His name in a certain manner,
but what we do while serving him in faith: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the
kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven"
(Matt. 7:21).
Eric Snow
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