Month: July 2020

God’s Personal Name

God has a personal name. The terms “God” and “Lord” are simply descriptions. When I was growing up and mostly a reader of the King James Bible, I thought that this personal name was “Jehovah”. It wasn’t until I got to seminary that I discovered that this wasn’t even a word, much less a name. But more about that later.

In order to discuss this topic, we need to realize some things about the Hebrew language. The language has been around for about 4000 years, but until about a thousand years ago, it was written with only consonants. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is a consonant. When the language was spoken, you could hear the vowels, but only the consonants were written down. Native speakers understood what vowels were to be used in various words. In the middle ages a group of scholars, the Masoretes, developed a system for identifying vowels in and around the letters by using various dots and lines. This will be significant later.

When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3, he told him to tell the Israelites that his name was “Ehyeh”, which translates as “I am” or “I will be”. In the next sentence God gave Moses a different name, that he said would be his name forever. That name is the one that is most commonly recorded throughout the Hebrew Bible.

This name that God gave Moses is composed of four letters in Hebrew. It is sometimes referred to as the tetragrammaton (four letters). The first letter is the “yodh”, which is equivalent to the ‘Y’ sound in English (not a ‘J’) as we saw in last week’s post. The second and fourth letters are both a “hey”, which sounds like the English letter ‘H’. The third letter is one that has varied in sound over the years. In older times it was apparently pronounced as a “W”, but in more recent times and in modern Hebrew is usually pronounced as a ‘V’. So putting them all together, we get a series of consonants: YHWH or YHVH.

Sometime before the second temple period, the time of Jesus, Jewish tradition had decided that, based on the command not to take God’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7), it would be better not to speak this name at all. The custom became that when reading the biblical text in Hebrew, when you encountered the divine name, you would say “Adonai”, the Hebrew word for “Lord”. In order to remind readers of this, when the Masoretes added vowels to the text, they used the vowels of “Adonai” inserted into the tetragrammaton. This isn’t really pronounceable, but if you try, it comes out something like “Yehovah”. That’s how we get that word, the consonants of one word with the vowels of another.

This is well-known in Jewish circles, but there is another strong piece of evidence for it. When the divine name occurs in the Hebrew text alongside the actual word “Adonai”, then the divine name is to be pronounced “Elohim”, the Hebrew word for “God”. In these cases the Masoretes put the vowels for “Elohim” around the tetragrammaton. Trying to pronounce it as written would come out something like “Yehovee”.

When referring to the divine name in English, Jews will typically use an “evasive synonym”. Sometimes it will be “HaShem”, which is Hebrew for “the name”. Sometimes they will say “Almighty” or “heaven” or something else. It’s interesting that in the New Testament gospels where Luke refers to the “kingdom of God”, Matthew refers to the “kingdom of heaven”. This may be a similar evasive synonym.

In most of our English translations, when the divine name occurs, it is rendered as “LORD” in all capital letters. This is to represent the Hebrew pronunciation of “Adonai”. In the rare places where the divine name occurs alongside the real Hebrew word “Adonai”, the name will be rendered as “GOD” in all capitals. This is to represent the Hebrew pronunciation of “Elohim”. This is what happens in the King James translation. Others may represent it in other ways, such as “Sovereign LORD”. This particular structure happens a lot in Ezekiel (e.g. Ezekiel 3:11; 4:14).

Some scholars have decided that they know how the name was pronounced, and they write it out and encourage people to say it. As far as I am concerned, any pronunciation is only a guess. We can be pretty sure that the first part is pronounced “Yah”, as that word occurs alone as a short form of the name (e.g. Psalm 122:4), as well as in names of individuals (e.g. Abijah, Adonijah, Elijah) and the compound word “Hallelujah” (Hebrew for “Praise Yah”). But any vowels that might be included in the remainder of the name are totally unknown.

Should we try to pronounce the name? As I see it, our best example in this regard is Jesus, and there is no indication in the gospels that he ever pronounced the name. It would have been unacceptable in his Jewish context, but if the name was intended to be pronounced, it seems that he would have taught regarding that. And the example of Jesus is good enough for me.

Bible J-Names

There are many names of individuals and places that that begin with the letter ‘J’ in our English Bible translations. We can all think of a bunch of them: Jerusalem, Judah, Jeremiah, Jonathan, Jacob, Joshua, Jeroboam, and Jesus for starters.

A case can be made that these are very poor transliterations for these names. There is no letter in Hebrew that remotely resembles the ‘J’ sound in English. Nor is there in Greek, nor even Latin. Where, then, do we get all these names that start with, or even include, a ‘J’?

It’s interesting that in the 1611 version of the King James Bible, these names all had an ‘I’ instead of a ‘J’. The ‘J’ was first introduced later. It seems to be the result of the familiarity of the early translations into German.

These names in their original Hebrew form invariably begin with the Hebrew letter “yodh”. It is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the “jot” of Matthew 5:18, and it looks something like an apostrophe. It is often used to designate a vowel, like a long ‘i’ or ‘e’, but when it begins a word, it is pronounced as a consonental ‘y’. When it’s transliterated into Greek, a “iota” is usually used to replace it.

Based on that background, you would think that it would be transliterated into English with a ‘Y’, or at least an ‘I’. In German the ‘y’ sound is represented by the letter ‘j’, but even in German there is nothing like the English ‘j’ sound. Apparently these names became so well-known with the ‘J’ spelling in German that English translators kept the ‘J’ when recording them in English, at least after a certain point in time.

Let’s consider for a moment the name of the person most of us know as “Jesus”. There is no chance that he was addressed this way by his contemporaries. In the Greek of the New Testament his name is rendered something like “Iesous”. The culture in which he lived was more likely Hebrew or Aramaic. In that culture his name would have been “Yeshua”, or perhaps “Yehoshua”.

The person whom we know as “Joshua”, the successor of Moses, is recorded in the Hebrew Bible as “Yehoshua”, a word that means “the LORD saves”. His name was originally “Hoshea”, but was changed by Moses (Numbers 13:16). Interestingly, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, he is transliterated as “Iesous”, the same Greek word as “Jesus”. This accounts for the confusion often accompanying the King James reading of Hebrews 4:8, “For if Jesus had given them rest…”, when it’s actually referring to Joshua. The names are the same in the Greek.

Why then was “Yehoshua” transliterated as “Iesous” in Greek? It seems that in later Jewish history the name was typically shortened to “Yeshua”. We have it occurring in that form a number of times in Ezra and Nehemiah (e.g. Ezra 2:2; Nehemiah 3:19). It’s easier to conceptualize “Iesous” as a transliteration of “Yeshua”. There was no letter in Greek representing the “sh” sound, so they used a sigma. Greek masculine names typically ended in “-us”, so they tacked that on.

It makes more sense for the man from Nazareth to be named Yeshua rather than Jesus in at least one other passage. The word “yeshua” by itself in Hebrew means “salvation”. In Matthew 1:21 Joseph is told by the angel that “you are to give him the name Yeshua, because he will save his people from their sins.” The word “Iesous” has no such meaning in Greek; it’s simply a transliteration of the Hebrew name. The more we thnk of Jesus as Yeshua, the more likely we are to place him in his correct cultural context with the correct meaning for his name.

Saul as Church

King Saul, the first king of Israel, is an interesting character. Even more interesting are the parallels that his life has with the Christian church throughout its history.

There was a man in the first century who was named after King Saul, and was of the same tribe, Benjamin. He was called “Paul” when among Greek-speaking people, but among Hebrews he continued to be called “Saul” (Shaul). We probably know him as the apostle Paul. His teaching is what the church relies on for most of its doctrine, and he is often thought of as the father of the church.

In the beginning, Saul, son of Kish, was God’s choice for king of Israel. Samuel had been the leader of Israel as a judge and prophet, but his sons were not good men. So the people demanded a king. At some level God was displeased with this, since the people were rejecting his leadership in raising up judges. But the kingship had been predicted way back in Deuteronomy 17, so it seems to have been God’s ultimate plan for the nation.

God specifically told Samuel to anoint Saul as king over Israel. At that time Saul was humble and not eager to accept the kingship. When the Urim and Thummim were used to narrow down the proposed king to only Saul, he was hiding because he didn’t want the role. The Spirit of God had come on him and he prophesied with a procession of prophets.

Saul’s first actions as king seemed to be righteous ones as well. He summoned the people to help rescue the city of Jabesh Gilead from the Ammonites. God blessed him and his people with victory.

But Saul’s righteous standing didn’t last long. After just a short period of time he decided to go against the God-ordained process of worship by offering up burnt offerings that only the priests were authorized to do. As a result, God rejected him from passing the kingship to his heirs and sent Samuel to anoint another person, David, to be the king whose dynasty would last forever.

In a similar way, the followers of Jesus, the church, in the first century were chosen by God and faithful to him. They worshiped in the temple and attended synagogues on the Sabbath. When Gentiles turned to God, they became identified with covenant Israel (Rom. 11:17) and began living the lifestyle that God had instructed his people (I Cor. 7:19).

But in the late first and early second centuries that changed. The Roman empire instituted an onerous tax on Jews, the Fiscus Judaicus. The way people were identified as Jews was by their lifestyle; did they live like Jews?

The Gentile followers of Jesus knew that they were not Jews and didn’t see any reason to pay the tax. So they distanced themselves from Judaism as much as possible. They started defining their religion in opposition to Judaism. They established new days of worship (Sunday) and rejected the Sabbaths and festivals commanded in scripture.

They even rejected the law of God as given through Moses and claimed that it was obsolete, despite both Jesus (Matt. 5:17) and Paul (Rom. 3:31) insisting that was not the case. Over time they established a theology in opposition to God’s law, basing it on misunderstood portions of Paul’s epistles.

They also set themselves in opposition to God’s people Israel, despite Paul’s warning in Romans 11 not to do so. By the time of the church councils in the fourth century, they were saying terrible things about Jews. And it’s common knowledge that much of the anti-Semitism throughout history has come from Christians.

In the same way that Saul hounded David, God’s anointed, for the rest of his life and tried to destroy him, the church has hounded Jews, the people of David’s greater son, the Messiah, and tried to destroy them. Eventually Saul was killed and David became king, even as the Son of David will become king of the Jews in God’s kingdom at the end of the age.

Saul’s misunderstanding, and that of the church, has been tragic. We need to repent, as Jesus preached, and embrace the people of Israel and the faith of Israel, even as we claim to embrace the Messiah of Israel.

Treasures New and Old

We have seen in a previous post how the primary message of Jesus during the time of his teaching on earth was the topic of the prophesied kingdom of God, referred to in Matthew as the kingdom of heaven. The Jews were expecting this kingdom, and Jesus’ message was that the kingdom was being offered, and he was the anointed king (Messiah) to reign over it. The idea of the Kingdom was not new; the prophets talked about it extensively. But the revelation of Jesus as the king was new.

In Matthew 13 Jesus gives a lot of parables, similes, about the kingdom of heaven. Near the end of the long chapter, he says this: “Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old” (Matt. 13:52). New treasures as well as old. Both the old and the new are considered treasures. The new treasure is the teaching about the kingdom, specifically the identity of the king. The old treasure seems to be something that was already in the possession of the teachers of the law, namely Judaism and the law itself.

We saw in our inaugural post how Jesus denied that his message was mostly new. He pointed out that you don’t fix an old coat with a new patch because that would tear the coat. He also used the metaphor of wineskins and wine, something that was universally acknowledged as being better when it’s old. (Luke 5:36-39)

Jesus’ teaching was Judaism, according to the Hebrew scriptures. But a part of his message was new, the fact that he was the culmination of the prophecies and hopes of Israel.

It’s a shame that most of the self-identified believers in Jesus in our day have discarded the old treasures that he was talking about, the Law of God. A read-through of Psalm 1, 19, or 119 will show how much of a treasure the psalmist considered God’s law to be. The church today, like the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2:4, has forsaken its first love, God’s law. When we regain that love and also understand the teaching about the end-time kingdom of God, ruled by Jesus, we will again be the church that God intended, with both new and old treasures in our possession.

Colossians 2

In the second chapter of his epistle to the Colossians Paul writes some things that have been drastically misunderstood by many interpreters in the history of the church since its drift in the second century. These people think that Paul is speaking against the law of God and claiming that it came to an end at the cross. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s take a look and see what Paul was actually talking about.

First, he warns his readers against “the rudiments” or basic principles (stoicheia) of the world. (2:8) It’s not entirely clear what he’s referring to, but he uses the same phrase again in 2:20 and in Galatians 4:3. The phrase is thought by some to refer to the law, since it’s used in Galatians in a way that could be seen as parallel to his discussion of the law. We’ll take up that passage in a later post. But in Colossians 2 he gives enough description that it’s clear he isn’t talking about the law.

When he first mentions it in 2:8, he describes it as “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition.” There is no way that Paul would talk about the law in these terms. The law was clearly from God, not from men. Again in 2:22 he describes them as “based on human commands and teachings”, which is clearly not true of the law. It seems instead that what he is referring to is something like the Greek philosophy of asceticism, which favors denying yourself physical pleasures. Paul clearly denounces this philosophy.

In the bulk of the passage, Paul has two issues in mind, two obstacles that the Colossians face that have both been overcome by Christ’s work on the cross. They are both enumerated in verse 13. The first is the fact that these Colossians are Gentiles, not members of God’s people, Israel. “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh…” (KJV) He mentions two ways in which they were dead, and one was their uncircumcision.

Throughout the New Testament the idea of circumcision is used as a kind of shorthand for being Jewish (or for conversion to Judaism). Throughout the Old Testament Gentiles are referred to as uncircumcised, and that’s the sense that is used here. “Flesh” here means the actual skin, physical circumcision, not some supposed reference to a sin nature.

But though these people in Colossae have the disadvantage of being Gentiles, Paul explains the solution through Christ. “In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ” (2:11 KJV). Here Paul is talking about a spiritual “circumcision”, accomplished through faith in Christ, that makes these Gentile believers one with the covenant people of Israel.

Paul uses other metaphors for this process in other epistles. In Romans 11 he compares it to wild olive branches being grafted onto a cultivated olive tree. In Ephesians 2 he alludes to the same metaphor of circumcision, but describes them as once being far away (from Israel and the covenants) but being brought near (Eph. 2:11-13). In Eph. 2:16-21 he uses the metaphor of a building, made of Jews and Gentiles, and in Eph. 3:6 he says that “through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promise of Christ Jesus.” The metaphors are many, but the underlying truth is that Gentile believers become identified with the covenant people of Israel through their faith.

We need to keep this context in mind when we analyze Paul’s instructions in verse 16 and following. When these Gentiles who are newly identified as part of Israel begin living according to God’s instructions, they will be criticized by surrounding pagan Gentiles for “living like Jews”. But Paul tells them not to pay any attention to these criticisms. The things he mentions: eating and drinking, festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths, are all part of God’s instructions to his people for how to live. And Paul points out that they are foreshadowings of the future kingdom of God when the law will be the rule of life (Isaiah 2:3) and Jesus himself will be the enforcer.

The other obstacle that Paul mentions in verse 13 is their actual sins, which Paul mentions at the end of the verse with the word for transgressions or trespasses. Throughout the New Testament sin is defined as a transgression of the law. (I John 3:4; Romans 7:7) All, including the Colossians, are transgressors of God’s law, and therefore sinners. It is that sin and the guilt for it that was nailed to the cross. Some translations obscure this dynamic, but the KJV says, “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” (2:14)

It’s ridiculous to think that the law was done away and nailed to the cross. Besides both Jesus (Matt. 5:17) and Paul (Rom. 3:31) affirming the continuity of the law in the strongest possible terms, the termination of the law would mean that nobody since Christ would have any guilt for sin. That is certainly contrary to the intent of all scripture. It’s clear that what was nailed to the cross was the guilty verdict against us, occasioned by the law, of course, because the law defines sin.

If we understand Paul, clearly described in Acts, as a Torah-observant Jew, we won’t be tempted to misread isolated instances in his epistles as opposition to the law or claims that it was done away. That’s not what Jesus taught, and it’s not really what Paul taught either.