The Law: Was it so Hard

[liamconnor]

Protestant branches of Christianity present ancient Judaism as an impossible religion in which members are always in despair because they can never obey the law. Out of this assessment arises the value of Christianity: The Jewish Law is impossible to fulfill; but good news, one does not have to fulfill it!

Question: Is the Jewish Law really that hard? I have read the O.T. several times. I have read much of Rabbinic Law. None of it seems terribly hard.

[JehovahsWitness]

The other thing they mentioned was that Jesus came to reveal God's name.

This I think is a strawman argument. Jehovah's Witnesses have never claimed Jesus "revealed" God's name. Are you perhaps mixing one of my posts with that of another writer?

[JehovahsWitness]

The reason being that identification isn't enough.
[...] Again, this has nothing to do with identification or establishing God's identity. It is much more than that.

Thank you for your post, I'm having problems however following the logic . Are you saying that the total elimination of the Divine Name from the bible is justified because it didn't "identify God enough"?

... fallen angels, demons, and even damned people have no problem identifying God and establishing God's identity.

What they are incapable of doing is knowing who God is, or rather as Paul points out being known by God. When one has an acute awareness that God is moving in and through them and that their life is no longer their own, they "know God" and know who God is.

Are you saying because the demons know God and choose not to worship him, people should not know God's name? Are you saying because "knowing" someone involves more than simply being aware of their name, this is a good reason for the elimination of the name from the bible and worship ? Should we not also remove the name JESUS from the bible for similar reasons?




JW

[JehovahsWitness]

He is speaking figuratively as the law has no actual name. He's pointing out that he has been given the authority to detain, arrest and bring criminals to justice by the legal system.

Are you suggesting that God actually didn't reveal his personal name in scripture but that it was "figurative" and that, like "the law" God doesn't actually HAVE a personal name? Is that your point?

[bluethread]

I am here to challenge any view that I see as unscriptural and highlight what the bible has to say in general, as to the import of God's name and the place it should hold in pure worship, in particular.


JW

OK, so why isn't it used by the Apostles. In fact, Yeshua is not recorded to have told us to use the term when we pray. Both Matthew and Luke record Him as telling us to say, Pater hogiazano to onoma sou(father, holy is your name). He isn't even recorded as using it in the garden or at the execution. In the garden, He is recorded as using the term Pater(father) and at His execution He uses the terms, Eli or Eloi, and Pater. So, what does all of that say about the import of YHWH and it's place on worship?

[JehovahsWitness]

So, what does all of that say about the import of YHWH and it's place on worship?

You tell me!

• What do you think it says? That there is a division between the Hebrew bible and the Christian bible? That the contents of the latter render null and void the previous? That God's name has expired its use? Been superceded by an alternative title? That we should praise God's name without ever mentioning it?

You tell me what you believe all of this means; I'd be most interested in hearing your conclusions. And then you can go back to explaining how important it is not to mispell the name of ... ABRAHAM

[shnarkle]

The other thing they mentioned was that Jesus came to reveal God's name.

This I think is a strawman argument. Jehovah's Witnesses have never claimed Jesus "revealed" God's name. Are you perhaps mixing one of my posts with that of another writer?

I wasn't refering to you specifically, but to a group of JW's who had begun to drop by occasionally to share their message with me. They dropped off a number of booklets, pamphlets and brochures for me to read. I was referring specifically to their brochure "Good News From God"; specifically to page 5 where it states:

"Jesus made God's name known when he taught people about God. Read John 17:26" This is referring to where the gospel writer Jesus say: "I have made your name known".

My argument is simply that Jesus and John could not be suggesting that Jesus was revealing or making known Jehovah's name, but rather Jehovah's authority (e.g. "For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;
27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. John 5:27).

This theme occurs a number of times in a number of the gospels. His authority is questioned by the Jeiwsh authorities, and the texts indicate that he spoke with authority.

Sorry if it seemed that I was refering to you specifically. I was only going by what those who visited me presented me with.

[shnarkle]

The reason being that identification isn't enough.
[...] Again, this has nothing to do with identification or establishing God's identity. It is much more than that.

Thank you for your post, I'm having problems however following the logic . Are you saying that the total elimination of the Divine Name from the bible is justified because it didn't "identify God enough"?

No, I'm trying to point out that the Name identifies Who God is, but that identification isn't enough to actually know who God is.

... fallen angels, demons, and even damned people have no problem identifying God and establishing God's identity.

What they are incapable of doing is knowing who God is, or rather as Paul points out being known by God. When one has an acute awareness that God is moving in and through them and that their life is no longer their own, they "know God" and know who God is.

Are you saying because the demons know God and choose not to worship him, people should not know God's name? Are you saying because "knowing" someone involves more than simply being aware of their name, this is a good reason for the elimination of the name from the bible and worship ? Should we not also remove the name JESUS from the bible for similar reasons?

I'm just pointing out that name recognition isn't enough to know God. Jesus , Ppaul etc. aren't suggesting that recognizing God's Name is sufficient either.

[shnarkle]

He is speaking figuratively as the law has no actual name. He's pointing out that he has been given the authority to detain, arrest and bring criminals to justice by the legal system.

Are you suggesting that God actually didn't reveal his personal name in scripture but that it was "figurative" and that, like "the law" God doesn't actually HAVE a personal name? Is that your point?

No, the parallel I'm drawing is only insofar as when someone says, "Stop in the name of the law" they are literally saying "stop by the authority invested by the law". When Jesus says "in my name" he is pointing out that it is by his authority. This is explicitly stated in scripture. The only difference being that when he uses the word "name" he is speaking figuratively about his authority.

[shnarkle]

Do you think, then, that folks have made an idol out of Jesus?

An idol out of Rabbinic tradition?

An idol out of the Law?

An idol out of the Torah?

An idol out of the Bible?

An and idol out of the "blood"?

I suppose all of those things could be considered "idols" or they, like the name of God, can be embraced as links to the Divine.

One can look at all of these things, or some anyway, as tangable gifts from an Almighty and invisible God, as ways for His finite creatures to embrace Him and relate to Him.

Well said. I would agree with everything you said, but I also think it is important to note that even though people have made an idol out of Jesus, there is something to be said for the way these texts present this idea of not just Christ, but humanity in general. In other words, Christ is place in a position between God and the world. He's placed in effectively the same position as Adam, but with different results.

He's the image of God, or the icon of God. Paul uses the word in the first chapter of Romans when he says: "And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image (Greek: "eikon") made like to corruptible man, " The difference being in the icon God creates verses the one we create.

We create an idol (Jesus) to worship as God whereas Christ is the icon that mediates or manifests God to the world. Christ invites us into that immediate location as well. When that happens we see the transcendent value of God in each other. We are all icons of the divine.

This is not to say that one must be a Christian to experience this phenomenon. I'm just using the nomenclature generically or non denominationally.

[shnarkle]

God's personal name is more than a label, it represents the Person himself?

The problem I have with this way of thinking is that a label is a representation. Moreover, God is not a person. Most definitions of the word begin with "a man, woman, or child...etc." God is none of those (e.g. "God is not a man...etc." Num. 23:19).

Modern Hebrew is in fact a relatively new language and doesn't claim to fully reflect is original root pronunciation, much less if it is further filtered through the variety of English accents. The question is then, how important is pronunciation?

This isn't something I would normally take issue with, but there is something about the hard 'j' sound that I find interesting. We all know that it doesn't really exist in the Hebrew except in rare instances, but from what I can see the only instances where it does exist is when engaging in derision e.g. "Jezebel", for Isabel; or "Jezreel" when mocking Israel. Given that this is the only place I can find this phenomenon I find it a bit disturbing that the only major places where we find this is in God's name and the name of his only begotten Son. Just a coincidence?

Did Jesus insist on one particular PRONUNCIATION?

• Even in Jesus' day the Jews had moved from speaking ancient Hebrew to their modern vernacular Aramaic and Greek. They translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek and it is probably from that translation (the Septuagint) that Jesus and the first century bible writers quoted. The point is that even in speaking Hebrew, Jesus would not have been pronouncing names (including the Divine Name - YHWH) as it was originally pronounced.

Perhaps, but he would have known enough to not pronounce it with a hard 'j' sound.

For those of us that believe that Jesus existed before Abraham,...etc."

Well, I'm not one of those who believe this and can find nothing from the texts to indicate this idea. When Christ states: "Before Abraham was, I AM", he isn't necessarily referring to himself, i.e. "Jesus". I say this because of the introduction to John's gospel indicates as much when it states:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made....14 And the Word was made flesh,..."

Nowhere in the texts does it state that it was Jesus in the beginning, and the incarnation plainly points out that this is when Jesus was "made". So while there is no disputing that Jesus is the word, Jesus was not the word until he was made.

Because the MEANING of a word is not changed by translation, alternative pronunciation or transliteration (compare Acts 2:7-11)[/list].

Not necessarily with regards to translation. For example there are three words in the Greek that are translated into one single word in English; that word is "hell". In the Greek "hades" means "unseen", but the Hebrew "Sheol' is translated into Hades in the Greek so we can safely assume that Hades is synonymous with "the grave". Gehenna is the name of the garbage dump outside Jerusalem and also used metaphorically by Christ to picture the torments of condemnation. Then there is the Greek Tartaroo which is transliterated to Tartarus, but translated to "hell" as well. Tartarus is where those spirits who sinned "in the times of Noah" are kept. So these three words do not have the same meanings at all, yet they are all translated to "hell"

TRANSLITERATION DOES NOT CHANGE MEANING

I agree.

• There are those that insist that "Jesus" has no meaning. This is ludicrous! Jesus (an English transliteration from the Latin)

No, it is a translation. Jesus sounds nothing like the Latin so it cannot be a transliteration.

has the same meaning as "Yeheshua"

That's debatable. I've seen two separate interpretations and neither one has the same meaning as Yeheshua. The first is from the Greek, ie seus which is Ie + Zeus or "the son of Zeus". The second one escapes me at the moment, but suffice to say it had nothing to do with the Hebrew meaning.

It makes no difference how many stages that transliteration goes through, the word itself retains its original meaning

Strictly speaking a transliterated word doesn't go through any stages because it's always the same word. However this obviously doesn't hold true with word plays e.g. "prophet" and "profit" etc. which leads to a significant problem when it comes to translation(a notable exception would be the story of Baalam). The examples are seemingly endless e.g. Adam "knew" his wife; my "finger" is fatter than my father's thigh; let the "dead" bury the dead; etc.

... so Petros means stone, Peter means stone, Pierre means stone, Pedro means stone...

These aren't transliterations. They are translations.

CONCLUSION: Since Jesus did not support the notion of insisting on a particular pronunciation of names or words,...etc."

This is a non sequitur. This isn't an issue that arises in the first place. In other words, no one pronounces the words or name incorrectly for Jesus to correct them. To assume people were doing this is the Argument from Silence.