Sing unto God . . . by his name JAH. – Psalm 68:4 (KJV)
Through the centuries, there has been much discussion over the correct pronunciation of God’s Name. Of course, this uncertainty arose because of the Jewish reticence from ancient times to pronounce the Great Tetragrammaton: YHWH. These four letters are all consonants with no vowels supplied in the ancient Hebrew language. The vowels were supposedly passed down orally through an esoteric tradition among the Aaronic priesthood and perhaps the Hebrew prophets. We are led to believe that no one really knows today how it is properly pronounced.
Having a new covenant name for God in the person of Jesus Christ, Christian theologians have been indifferent to the Tetragrammaton and have contented themselves with translating it as “Jehovah” when they encountered it in the Hebrew text, or just following the Septuagint with LORD as do Jewish Rabbis.
In more modern times, Messianic enthusiasts – Christians who want to be all things Jewish but to still embrace Jesus as their Savior and Messiah – have insisted that we drop the “Jehovah” and “LORD” nomenclature and instead use the the name, “Yahweh.”
I, too, am indifferent on the correct pronunciation because I happen to believe that if God was worried about it, He would have made it a prominent part of biblical revelation. Mankind constitutes a world with hundreds of languages; I would surmise that dialects and enunciation would make it impossible for it to be pronounced the same worldwide.
I happen to believe that a correct pronunciation would require the sounding of all four consonants, which neither Jehovah nor Yahweh satisfy. Perhaps, Adolph Ernst Knoch came the closest in suggesting as much when he rendered the Tetragrammaton with the four vowel sounds: ee-ah-oo-ah.
Regardless, what is more important is to ask what kind of being are we addressing when we use such words of appellation?
The world of magic is one which believes that the proper invocation of names is critical for it to work. Knowing the name of a deity or demon constitutes power over that being. If the magician fails to pronounce the magic word correctly, he will not successfully summon the entity nor compel it to do the desired work or miracle. People who worry about the correct pronunciation of God’s Name – as are the Jews (whose leaders from the time of the Pharisees onward indulged in these superstitions) – fall into the same Cabalistic trap. They view prayer as if they were practicing magic.
Jesus told His followers to pray in His Name, but never did teach them how to say it. “Yeshua” in the Hebrew and “Yay-soos” in the Greek, we either have a human’s name in the former (Joshua) or we have an appeal to the Greek god “Zeus” in the latter (“Yah is our Zeus”). “Zeus” meaning “savior” – it’s given etymologists fits.
It is not out of a desire to “dumb down” the world into its lowest common denominator that I take issue with followers of “the Name.” It is rather to affirm faith in the baptismal formula: “In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). We presume that the Divine Name comprehends these three persons.
We keep coming back to the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity in our discussions because it is the foundation of social order. The formula contains a familial nomenclature and I have spent my entire writing career trying to explain why it is essential to relational theology.
Whatever is comprehended within the “Name of Jesus” as an historical person revealed to us in the Gospels, we are taught that in Him is revealed the Godhead. As within the name of “Jehovah” or our “Yahovaha,” “Jesus” is the revelatory name which embraces the Three Persons of the Trinity. You cannot have the Son without the Father, nor the Father without the Son. And while the place of the Third Person is not always obvious – it is a necessary inference.
Later this month, a new Pesher is scheduled which provides an analysis of the Trinitarian doctrine of Sir Isaac Newton and his assistant, William Whiston. In their day they were accused of Arianism, but they retorted that the language of the Nicene Creed was deficient and resulted in modalism (i.e. Sabellianism). Relying upon the Greek language which is not the language of Divine revelation as is the Hebrew, it could not express the Hebrew concept of the min – “the same substance in kind” – but degraded into the insufficient nomenclature of Greek metaphysics – ” of the same substance” (homoousios). The semi-Arians could not do any better – “of like substance” (homoiousios) – as a compromise with the Arians, “of different substance” (heteroousios). Each term could be twisted heretically.
With the former Hebrew expression, we can have a genuine three persons in our “godkind,” just as we can have three fishes in “fishkind”, or three cows in “cowkind”, or three people in “humankind” – different persons but the same substance. With the Greek homoousios, we have a monad, a singular substantial blob, the same divinity as the Gnostics.
While the Nicene Creed brilliantly guards us from such a conclusion, yet in failing to appeal to the language of revelation – either because as Greeks they were unaware of the Hebrew nomenclature or perhaps they felt it “primitive,” preferring their philosophical expressions – they left the gates of doctrine wide open.
Historic Christianity has failed to produce a true, relational theology. It is mired down in metaphysics. Somehow, it has failed to fulfill the final charge of Old Testament revelation found in Malachi:
He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. – Malachi 4:6
Are we still cursed?
— JWS, 3/3/26
