Ajbrown141

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Spider-Man

Good research and nice distinction in your edit about power & responsibility. Kudos! --Tenebrae 00:29, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Exodus and YHWH

Hi unknown editor. Re your request for more on the line about the name YHWH and it's revelation in Exodus: First, YHWH in Hebrew has no obvious meaning - the word for God is "elohim", and the meaning of that is quite clear, but YHWH isn't clear at all. (It's usually vowelled Yahweh, tho that's actually only an informed guess, but I'll use that from now on).

Anyway, at Exodus 3 Moses meets God in the burning bush on Sinai (actually the text says it's "the mountain of God, Horeb", but it's usually taken as identical with Sinai). They have a long and involved conversation, God tells Moses to go to Pharoah and demand that he release the Israelites, Moses replies that the people won't believe him, "they'll say [to me], 'What's God's name?' What will I say to them?" God then replies: "I am who I am - say I Am has sent you." Then he says: "Say this: YHWH, your fathers' God Abraham's God, Isaac's God, the God of Jacob, has sent me." (This is Exodus 3:14 and following verses).

Then at Exodus 6, Moses is back in Egypt, he's confronted Phraoh once already and failed, and is despairing, and God comes and says to him: "I am YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, and I was not known to them by my name, YHWH." That's at the opening of Exodus 6, but Exodus 5 needs to be read first.

So, from Exodus 6 it seems that no-one before this moment had heard of God as Yahweh, only as El Shaddai (which, like Yawheh, is a name, not a general word meaning "God"). Yet clearly God has already told Moses his name earlier, at Exodus 3. Also clearly, people in Genesis knew the name Yahweh - look at the very end of Genesis 4. So what to make of it? One theory is that what's revealed at Exodus 3 isn't God's name, but his nature - "I Am." That still leaves Genesis 4 as a problem, and frankly I haven't read any solution to it. (It goes wider than Genesis 4 - many times in Gensis you'll find characters mentioning Yahweh by name.)

I hope this helps with whatever you're doing on Sunday, but I think that if this is a real problem for you, you better get some face-to-face help from a pastor on Saturday :) PiCo (talk) 15:33, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

--- Hi AJBrown, nice to met you :).

It's getting a bit late here for me - 2 in the morning, and I'm up because I can't sleep. Anyway, if you have a practical problem with this on Sunday, I think you need more expert help than I can provide. I was taking what I wrote from Richard Elliot Friedman's "The Bible With Sources Revealed" - I don't know if you'll be able to lay hands on it, but he discusses this in a footnote on page 128 (paperback edition - the footnote to Exodus 6). The whole question is a well-known one in biblical studies and is discussed by many leading authorities - I'd be surprised if Robert Alter didn't deal with it in his study of the Five Books, which is a classic in the field (he's probably more notable than Friedman). I recall reading a very good study of the meaning of the Exodus 3 passage, in which the author sets out his view that here Yahweh is revealing his nature (I Am) rather than his name (Yahweh) - unfortunately I can't remember who that was. I take it you're aware that Yahweh is a sort of pun, in Hebrew, on "I Am That I Am"? There's a question whether the author of Exodus (Moses or whoever else) was saying here that Yawheh actually means I Am, or just that it sounds like I Am. If he meant the first, he was wrong - Yahweh doesn't derive from the Hebrew for I Am. What it does derive from is a mystery - no-one knows what the name means for sure. Well, I'm no expert, and if you have this thing to do on Sunday, your best bet is your pastor, not Wikipedia. Good luck :) PiCo (talk) 16:01, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me know how Sunday turns out PiCo (talk) 07:08, 15 August 2009 (UTC)