Hmm... in ancient Abrahamic religious tradition, Yahweh was 'he who must not be named'.

[DarkTirade]

I wonder what J.K. Rowling was going for when she thought up Lord Voldemort? :evilgrin:

[tismyself]

1. must not or should not

Respect, reverence, fear - a mixture? I don't know. I'm not so sure I'd want to have God drop in for a visit, I don't think I could deal with it really.

[DarkTirade]

6. He didn't seem to mind dropping by back in that whole Garden of Eden thing

but he also got pissed off and kicked them out of their home, which is a lot nicer than Voldemort would have been.

[coyotespaw]

2. Hast... err...

never mind...

[elshiva]

3. Yahweh is literally "I will be what I will be" or "I am that I am"

or something like that. Jews don't use the name Yahweh when talking about God, it's usually Lord.

[DarkTirade]

7. Right, they don't (and can't) really use the name.

Just titles.

[old mark]

4. "Yaweh" is a made-up name - by christians.

the Hebrew bible uses YHVH - as an umpronouncable subsittute for the name of god, written as G_d. The idea is that paper or writing surfaces may be destroyed and is is disrespectful to destroy the name of god. I just found that it has been decided that writing the name og god on a cumputer screen is acceptable, because it is not permanent, but printing that name off the screen is not good.

"Yaweh" is just stupid christian nonsense, thinking the really know something about the bible.

mark

[DarkTirade]

8. Yes, but my point is that the name of god is unpronounceable, unsayable, ect.

He can't be named.

That, and when I posted this it was getting late and I was getting loopy. :P

[Orsino]

5. Names-as-power may be even older than that.

And Rowling was probably inspired by more modern fantasy such as Tolkien's. That gimmick probably owes more to Sauron than to Yahweh.

[DarkTirade]

9. Actually, Sauron was inspired by the idea of a fallen angel

from Judeo-Christian mythology. :) Go fig.

[Orsino]

12. I was referring to the injunctions against saying his name...

...or of uttering the language of Mordor.

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. No, it's modern Jewish tradition not to use God's name.

In ancient days, before the Temple was destroyed in Jerusalem in the 560s BCE, it appears that the name of God - YHWH - was used and vocalized.

But, after the destruction, the name stopped being used; not to be used again until there was another true temple. Whether they used God's name during the time of the second temple, I don't know, but I have a feeling that they didn't.

After the temple was destroyed, saying YHWH was replaced with saying Adonai - YHWH is still in the text, but when a reader comes across it, the reader says Adonai instead.

Around 1000 CE, the Masoretes took the Hebrew texts and pointed them with vowels (Hebrew being a consonant only written language); for YHWH, they vowelized it with the vowels for Adonai, and thus was created the confusion that God's name is Yahovah (or, as spelled in German, Jehovah, which spelling was then carried straight into English with a change in pronunciation of that first letter from "y" (as they do in German) to "j" as we do in English).

And so yet one more thing to laugh at the Jehovah's Witnesses for. They don't even have God's name correct. At least, probably not - we have no idea, actually, what vowels should go with YHWH.

[DarkTirade]

11. Interesting.

I knew Jehova (and even Yahweh for that matter) were just bastardized versions of YHWH, but I didn't know the whole history behind it.