[b-hebrew] YHWH is Aramaic?
Harold Holmyard
hholmyard at ont.com
Thu Jun 29 09:46:58 EDT 2006
Awohili at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 06/28/2006 8:40:26 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
> hholmyard at ont.com writes:
>
> 1) There is no strong reason to think that God has a name like
> Ralph to
> distinguish him from others, since there is only one God.
>
> No, but that is not the only reason to have a name. A name expresses
> essence and qualities and purpose, especially a self-given name.
> There is no evidence in the Scriptures that YHWH is a name that man
> gave to God. It appears to be that it is the name that God gave to
> Himself and revealed to humanity over 6,000 times in the Hebrew text.
HH: Exactly. Yahweh is a name with meaning, not just an empty name. God
gave it to convey meaning, truth about himself. I am confused. Somebody
wondered why God couldn't just have a name. I assumed that mean a name
without a particular meaning. For example, my name is Harold. It is a
family name, and my parents were not thinking of what the meaning of
"Harold" was. I simply had it because my grandfather did. I was
objecting to God having a name like that. If God invents a certain name
for Himself to convey a quality such as self-existence, that is
different than what I assumed was being proposed. Of course God has a
name in that sense.
>
> And even though monotheists believe there is only one true God,
> there have been other entities worshiped throughout human history from
> which YHWH has to be distinguished.
HH: True, but what I understand as being proposed was that God had a
name from some other sphere and simply communicated it to mankind. No, I
believe the name Yahweh is one that he invented in order to convey a
certain idea of himself to mankind.
Yours,
Harold Holmyard
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