In the name of God!
…but what was that name again?
“Don’t use the lord’s name in vain!” This rebuke always confused me because I never knew god’s name to use it in vain. I have come to find out over the years that this paradox is very much by design.
Elohim, El shadai, Yahweh, Adonai and Hashem are all names used by both ancient and modern people to describe God. Yet a description is not a name. Elohim simply means God, El Shadai means God of the mountains, Yahweh is an acronym in Hebrew, Adonai is an honorific that means “lord”. Hashem is a vague statement that just means “his name”. We, people born and raised in the shadows of the major Abrahamic religions, have a conundrum; what name shall we invoke, when we raise our praise up into the heavens? To my surprise in my research I found out that this is a conundrum that we have inherited from our ancient ancestors. The following article will explore how and why God’s true name came to be hidden from humanity and how following this mysterious rabbit hole brings us closer than we thought we could ever be to our ancient ancestors.
In the beginning…the hidden nature of power
The concept of a concealed name goes back to Ancient Egyptian practice; in ancient Egyptian mysticism names held power, especially over the individuals who held them. Therefore Egyptians tended to have many names and titles. This is certainly true of the Pharaohs and the rest of the cultural elites of that society. Ramses the Great, for example, was also known as Usermaatre( this was his throne name and therefore probably how he was known in his lifetime) and Ka-Ra. The idea behind all these names is to protect the individual from black magic and the curses. It’s interesting to note that the Egyptian goddess of magic, Isis, invoked the power of names in her associated mythology. In one such myth; she extorts Ra’s true name(the supreme deity of ancient Egypt) name from the injured god in exchange for her healing assistance (UCL.ac.uk, 2003). This demonstrates the perceived importance of names, and the importance of keeping that knowledge secret, in Ancient Egyptian society.
Perhaps we are dealing with more than just a need to protect an individual from supernatural forces here. Throughout the ancient near east that language of power is often combined with the language of secrecy. Amun, the most important of the ancient Egyptian gods, has a name which literally means, “the hidden one”(memphis.edu, 2024). This provides a second illusion between perception of power in Ancient Egypt and forbiddenness. Names of individuals had to be kept secret, to deny anyone else power over that individual. The chief god of Egypt was a remote figure, his name literally confirming his clandestine nature. A fact that I keep coming back to, is that the name of “Amun” and the abrahamic utterance at the end of prayer; “amen”, are virtually the same word. The language of ancient Egypt and that of ancient Israel contained no vowel sounds. So the words basically are the same, even though in the modern context they mean different things. In the context of the Ancient Near East; that was an utterance of power. I do think the ancients would have been able to see the irony between the chief creator god who was hidden and the invocation at the end of prayer to another God who was essentially hidden from the prayer.
Name, names or descriptions?
People familiar with the Hebrew bible may at this point highlight the fact that the god of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph) does in fact name himself. In the book of Moses god identifies himself as Yahweh, and furthermore he states that the fore-mentioned patriarchs knew him as well, by the names of “Elohim” and “Elshadai”. Yet the proverbial devil lies in the detail. It is worth looking at the linguistic element that those two names have in common, “El”. This happens to be a generic term referring to gods all over the ancient near east. Later it came to be associated with the Canaanite creator god, El. “Elohim” actually appears to be a plural noun, yet the Hebrew bible does use it as a proper noun. Elshadai simply means “God of the mountains”. So both of these names appear to be more of a description than actual names.
I am
The name Yahweh, as we shall see, does not help us out either in terms of trying to find a concrete name for God. The origin of the god of the abrahamic religions is beyond the purview of this article, but it is necessary to delve a little into the subject. Scholarly opinion on the subject posits that Elohim worship and Yahweh worship originated as two separate traditions that later merged into one cult (Jaquet, 2019). In other words, two groups of people came together and combined their beliefs into one. I think this was possible because there does appear to be parallels between the two traditions. Yahweh, is not a name. In the study of the Hebrew bible it is called the tetragrammaton; we should think of this as an acronym. This acronym employs the Hebrew letters “Yod”, “Hay”, “Waw”, “Hay” or YHWH. Overtime the acronym started to be rendered how it was pronounced; first Yahweh and then (much later) Jehovah. The acronym comes from a statement of existential intent; “Ehye aser ehye", or “ I will be what I will be” (Jaquet, 2019). Sometimes this is also changed to I am what I am, but that particular translation came later.
So what does this all mean?
We tend to approach the study of people who lived thousands of years ago with an attitude of disbelief. We tend to believe that the world has changed so much and there’s absolutely nothing we could have in common with these people. Yet like us they had faith, even blind faith. Faith literally in hidden forces that they could not name. That it’s not so different from modern society. The ancient Canaanites are long gone, and yet offshoots of the cult of their local deity dominate the spiritual lives of millions around the world. We like to think that modernity has evolved humanity past our ancestors, but all around the world Christians, Jewish people and Muslims all practice a slightly modified pre-bronze age religious tradition. Almost all of them still invoke the name of the hidden ancient Egyptian creator of God at the end of the prayers.
