THE NAMES OF THE ONLY GOD...the GOD of Abraham

Those who say that there is no God believe so totally by faith. There is no evidence proving that there is no God. The Bible says that God's creation itself gives testimony that He exists. And believers see that evidence quite easily...because they are willing to see & acknowledge it.  But, even when willing, mankind has interpreted from happenings of nature and mankind a "higher Power" as God or god(s) in extremely different ways based primarily on the fundamental operation of the ancient-to-modern-times suzerainty-concept treaty between unequals (presumed covenant between mankind and god[s]):

1. The Greeks: gods were fickle, jealous, and often vindictive & treating of humans with malice.
   
2. The Norse: gods were violent & angry.
   
3. The Canaanites: gods were bloodthirsty, demanding killings of first-born.
   

Jews, Christians, and Muslims have the blessing of having identified and related to the only true God. Disturbingly, even within these faiths, the characteristics of God seem different:

1. Islam: The Islamic writings & highly publicized modern practices of a numerous (many say) minority seem to describe a god...Allah...with attributes which are unlike those of the God of Abraham since the coming of Jesus). Allah seems angry and desirous that followers brutalize errant believers as well as unbelievers.
   
2. Judaism: The Jewish view is of YHWH who calls out for right relationships which seem to be bound up in strict rule and ritual following and with severe punishments for rule-breaking.
   
3. Christianity: The Christian view of God is so divided in defensiveness of precise definitions and beliefs that it takes over 30,000 denominations with churches whose member-defenders squabble endlessly over what interpretation of Scripture is correct. Jesus is clearly about right relationships & love. But, prior to the Protestant Reformation of (between 1517-1648), there was much violence against nonbelievers & errant citizens. In early Protestant Christianity, there was violence between denominations that became a major "pushing" factor toward European emmigration to North America.
   
4. The God revealed by Jesus: since mere mortals so quickly confuse and blur the truth of Who God is, He sent Jesus to set the record straight. And Jesus taught the apostles the truth which then was set down by men under Divine inspiration in the New Testament: God is mankind's Father who is filled with love, mercy, and grace for His creation; He is NOT a hanging judge! He is NOT a sin-stained deity!
   
5. Other gods: As with the examples above, all other "gods" than the One described by Jesus are figments and creations within the minds of man. In fact, mankind knowingly and inadvertently creates idols, and "worships" countless gods, of such as power, sex, money, work, atheism, etc. (all of those things which a human can put faith in).
   

This one true God revealed Himself to Abraham and chose the children (descendants...became the Israelites, the Jews) of Abraham as His own. The subsequent first Christians were Jews, and Gentile Christians came thereafter into the fold. As noted below, God Himself declared that His proper name was Yahweh. Being an ancient Jewish capitol offense to misuse the name of God, Yahweh became [ by the time...460BC... of the return from the Babylonian exile] a non-utterable name (Zechariah 24:16) which was denoted in writings as YHWH (old Hebrew has no vowels); and, when this tetragrammaton was read in Hebrew, it was spoken as Adonai.

While we moderns have traditionally used the spoken name Jehovah in place of YHWH, more recent studies indicate that Yahweh is the correct name. The name Yahweh has been found to be unique to Israel and has not been verified as the name of any other deity outside of Israel.

As to Jehovah, beginning at 70 AD with the fall of Jerusalem followed by the Bar-Kochba Revolt of 135 AD and the dispersion of the Jews from The Promised Land away out to the four corners of the world, the speaking of Hebrew fell away except as to religious matters. By the Middle Ages, to aid those not fluent in the reading of Hebrew, the Masoretes (scribes) began to introduce a system of vowel markings to aid in making correct vowel sounds in a language (Hebrew) which did not classically contain vowels. To remind that YHWH was pronounced Adonai, they initially scribed "YaHoWaH", the aoa helping to remember Adonai. Since the "Ya" created some controversy over fear that the initial pronunciation would resemble Yahweh...the unutterable name..., eoa began to substitute for aoa: JeHoWaH. This later became Jehovah. And, Rev. Tony Evans points out a modern teaching example: "Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have ransomed me, O Lord (Jehovah), God (El) of truth (Emeth)...Psalm 31:5.

The table below reflects the triune nature of the One True God, so that names of Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in the table.

A small, helpful book for more insight is Names of God, Nathan Stone, Moody Press, 1944. And The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, Merrill F. Unger, 1988, Moody Press, was a resource. And the teacher notes from Focus On The Family's wonderful faith lessons video tape series (1995, 1996), "That The World May Know", featuring teacher and historian, Ray Vander Laan, was a resource. Additional info came in 2017 from (1) material distributed at my daughter's church, (2) some Wikipedia information (Wikipedia also has a page, Names of God in Judaism and Names of God (all world religions) and in a Christianity overview), and (3) from a 2017 30 day email prayer series by Rev. Tony Evans of Dallas, Texas (Betty & I visited his church on a weekday years ago).

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[posted 30 August 1998; latest addition/update 15 December 2018]