99 Name Attributes are not the same as the One YHVH Unspoken

Since Judaism is the oldest, and Islam is the youngest, of the Abrahamic religions you might think that Jews should have the most names for God’s personal character traits, and Islam the least; but that is not the case. The average Muslim knows more about Islam’s 99 Arabic names of God’s attributes than Jews know about Judaism’s 70 Hebrew names of God’s attributes because most Muslims believe that the 99 names have a limit that cannot be added to; which Jews never thought. God’s Attributes were unlimited.

Seeing that the Christian church had fallen into more than a dozen usually fighting sects the early Muslim scholars tried to enhance unity by limiting God’s attributes to a fixed number. Islamic scholars thus indicated that God should not, and indeed cannot, change or develop any new Devine attributes in the future. But this also limits God’s future ability to develop new attributes to deal with new challenges.

Judaism did not fall into this mistake because God told Prophet Moses that YHVH was his unique name. The name of God (YHVH), is the Hebrew name which God used to identified Himself to Prophet Moses at the burning bush and on Mount Sinai (Exodus 3:14). This attribute name is not pronounced in Hebrew, but. a variety of words and expressions to indicate YHVH are used: Adonai (my Lord), haKadosh Baruch Hu (the Blessed One), haMakom (the Place) HaTzur (the Rock), and many more.

Yahweh is the name that was first made known at the burning bush of Prophet Moses (Exodus 3:13-16; 6:2-8). In Hebrew it means, “I WILL BE WHATEVER I WANT TO BE-BECOME” i.e. I am a Dynamic God of potentials. It is the name most distinctive of God as the God of Israel (יהוה), a combination of the four letters (YHWH) with the vowels of ‘Ǎdhōnāy, transliterated as Yehōwāh but read aloud by Jews as ‘ădhōnāy). “

If a rose by any other name would still smell the same; would God be any different with a different name? Polytheistic religions have many names for their gods because they have many gods. Yet monotheists who worship the one and only God still have many names for their one God. Monotheists call the one God by many different names because we believe that the Divine is not an impersonal, universal force or power like gravity: but rather the Divine One is a multifaceted personality.

YHVH is an unique, disembodied, undying, always creative personality, who cares about the whole created world. We even use a pronoun of gender, although God includes both genders, because we do not wish to refer to the Divine One as ‘it’.

Because the Jewish tradition reaches back more than thirty five centuries; it is not surprising that Jews have used many additional ‘names’ (70) for God over those many centuries.

The word God in English is not a name of the one God like Allah or YHVH. It is the generic term used for any and every deity, similar to the West Semitic root word EL as it is found in Sumerian and Akkadian Ellil-Enlil; Hittite and Hurrian Ellel, and Hebrew El-Elohim. The words El, Elah, Elohei and Elohim are all pre Abrahamic west Semitic generic terms for a God or for many Gods. In these various forms they appear almost 3,000 times in the Hebrew Bible.

But for Jews, the most important unique personal name of the one God is the name that God himself reveals to Moses at the burning bush: YHVH, which appears more than 6,800 times in the Hebrew Bible.

In Exodus 3:13-15, Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”.

Ehyeh is the verb “to be” future tense singular and means I will/could/might/may be/become who I may-could-will-be-become i.e. Ehyeh is a God of Potentialities, A God of Possibilities, The Living God of Becoming and Transforming, the One who can and will liberate Israel from bondage in Egypt.

Unfortunately, the Greek and Latin translations of this verse were influenced by the Greek philosophical idea that God was similar to a permanent ideal form (like an equilateral triangle) or an unmoved mover; and is not similar to a living personality. Since the Greeks thought God must be a static unchanging being. they mistranslated “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh’ as ‘I am who I am’ rather than its plain Hebrew meaning of ‘I will be whatever I should be to redeem you” i.e. God Almighty

The Torah continues, “And God said, “You must say this to the Israelites, “I am” (the usual false translation for God’s self revealed name) has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, Ehyeh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation.’ (Exodus 3:13-15)

When Jews speak of God in the third person, God’s name is pronounced Yehyeh and written YHVH– “the One who causes being and becoming, the One who brings potentials into existence.”

The name YHVH was spoken publicly for almost a thousand years, from the time of Moses, throughout the centuries of the 1st Temple of Solomon. But it was ultimately replaced by Adonai (Lord) before the 3rd century B.C.E., because God’s actual Holy name was eventually considered too holy to speak audibly. In later centuries even the substitution Adonai was considered too holy to utter; and pious Jews till this day do not use any name for God at all (except in prayer); but say only HaShem–the name (of God) when speaking about the one and only God.

Then there is Hagar’s feminist name for God. One name of God that very few Christians, Jews or Muslims even know, much less use today, is a name that I believe will become more important in the future as Christians, Jews and Muslims learn more about each other’s religions. This name, El Ro’ee, only appears twice in the Hebrew Bible and, as far as I know, is not used at all in the Talmud or Midrash as a Divine appellation.

Prophet Abraham’s wife Hagar/Ha-jar uses El Ro’ee as a her special name for God. El Ro’ee means A God Who Sees Me. It also becomes the name for a well (Zamzum?). “Then she (Hagar) called the name of YHVH, who spoke to her, El Ro’ee, ‘You are a God who sees me’; for she said, ‘Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?’ Therefore the well (where this happened) was called Beer-laHai-roee; the well of the Living One (Al-Hayy) who sees me. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael…” (Genesis 16:13-15)

Neither Sarah nor Hagar/Ha-jar are mentioned by name in the Qur’an, but the story of Ha-jar’s exile from Abraham’s home is traditionally understood to be referred to in a line from Ibrāhīm’s prayer in the Qur’an (14:37): “I have settled some of my family in a barren valley near your Sacred House (Kaaba)”

Muslim tradition relates that when Hā-jar ran out of water, and Ismā’īl, an infant at that time, began to die; Hā-jar panicked and ran between two nearby hills, Al-Safa and Al-Marwah repeatedly searching for water. After her seventh run, Ismā’īl hit the ground with his heel and miraculously caused a well to spring out of the ground called Zamzum Well. It is located a few meters from the Kaaba in Mecca.

Perhaps these two Torah names of God, El Ro’ee and Hai (Hayy) Ro’ee; which are Hagar’s names for God, which mean A Self-reflecting God or A God Who Sees Me, and the name for the Zamzum well ‘Beer-laHai-roi’; the well of the Living One (Hayy) who sees (mirrors) me; can help bring Christians, Jews and Muslims, who all share respect for Prophet Abraham and his family, to see each other better and thus become closer together in the future.

That would be an excellent example of the power of God’s name to cause future seemingly impossible transformations in all kinds of people and places.

The meaning of God’s name YHWH, is central to Jewish theology. The name YHWH, which, occurs repeatedly in the book of Genesis, is only introduced formally in Exodus 3:13, in direct response to Prophet Moses’ request for it at the burning bush. Exodus 6:3 corroborates its unprecedented disclosure to Moses: “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shad-dai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My (deepest) name YHWH.”

The Torah’s first communication of YHVH to Moses uses the root “to be” in the future tense of ehyeh asher ehyeh (Exodus 3:14) “I will/may/can be who I will/may can be” and not the wide spread erroneous present tense of “I am who I am.”

YHWH conveys a relational being in a partnership of reciprocity with Israel. It connotes a God of endless becoming, as the imperfect I will be indicates, a deity who will be elusive, continually shaped and reshaped by the respective partners with whom he/she/but not it establishes a relationship. Other divine names then derive naturally in this respect from the core relational name YHWH. They correlate to various dimensions of God such as compassion, mercy, or justice, which are all manifest in relationships.

Rashi captures this God of relationship by fleshing out the meaning of ehyeh asher ehyeh as, “I will be with them during this affliction as I will be with them during their (future) oppression by other kingdoms.” For God provides the comfort, assistance, and empathy expected of any partner in a meaningful relationship. ‍

Kabbalists use ehyeh asher ehyeh to push this interactive mutuality between God and human beings even more by employing new words, so that the Name ehyeh asher ehyeh can become I will be what you will be אהיה אשר תהיה.

Rabbinic and mystical interpretations of an evolving, impressionable, at times suffering, God, emerge more naturally from the original sense of a personal interventionist God subject to emotions and affectation in the Hebrew Bible as well as its rabbinic glosses.

The difference between the personal intimate name of God the believer uses in prayer and when reciting his or her holy scripture, and all other names; is a measure of the believers piety and love of the God of his or her own religion.

When Christian believers speak about Jesus they are referring to the “Divine Son of God” who connects them to God the father. When Jews or Muslims speak about Jesus they are referring not to God, but only to a man of God.

Indeed, Paul and his followers converted Jesus the Jewish prophet into Jesus the totally personal Devine Son of God; and this may be why the Qur’an uses “We” and not “I” when speaking to Prophet Muhammad so when he repeated God’s words, no one should think he was a son of God.

When Jews do not utter the name YHVH they are referring to the God who made a covenant at mount Sinai with the descendants of their ancestors; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel. Neither Christians or Muslims connect to God this way.

When Muslims use the word Allah they mean the one God they worship and adore; who sent Prophets, speaking their own language to every nation and tribe in the world, and sent Prophet Muhammad to proclaim the Qur’an in Arabic. This is the same one God; who sent Jesus to proclaim the Gospel and Moses to proclaim the Torah. Neither Jews nor Christians connect to God in this very universal way.

Thus, for Muslims the word Allah is both a generic for the one God of all monotheistic religions; and a special personal Islamic name when spoken with devotion and love by a Muslim.

As an American Reform Rabbi, I can understand why many Muslims would object to Christians using the word Allah in the context of saying that Jesus is the son of Allah. Another word for Divinity is needed. On the other hand, one could say that Allah spoke to Jesus as the Qur’an itself states, “Allah said: Jesus, I will take you back and raise you up to Myself…” (3:55)

If people of good will use the generic aspect of the word Allah only in a monotheistic context, and use another word for a trinitarian or polytheistic context, we can have more light and less heat in our own religious lives.