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August 9, 2008 Printable/viewable PDF
format for browsers that do not support Greek character End Notes The Name of the Lord Is it a small thing—a matter of little consequence—to call
the angel Gabriel a liar? Apparently it has become so for Sabbatarian
Christians who have bit into the poisonous mushroom of the sacred names heresy. Luke records, In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from
God [J@Ø 2,@Ø] to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin
betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. … And he
came to her and said, ‘Greetings, O favored one, the Lord [Ò 6bD4@H] is with you. … Do not be afraid, Mary, for
you have found favor with God [2,è]. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and
bear a son, and , you shall call his name Jesus [[0F@Ø< – hIesoun, with the
“n” for the case ending, the superscript “h” for the
rough breathing or aspiration on the “I”]. He will be great and will be called the Son of
the Most High [LÊÎH ßR\FJ@L]. And the Lord God [6bD4@H Ò 2,ÎH] will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob [["6ã$] forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end.” (1:26–27, 30–33) In what language
did Gabriel speak to Mary, considering that the Pastor writes to Timothy,
“All Scripture is breathed out by God [2,`B<,LFJ@H—God
breathed] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
training in righteousness, that the man of God [J@Ø 2,@Ø] may be competent, equipped for every good work”
(2 Tim 3:16–17)? Is the Gospel of Luke not Scripture? Luke addresses his gospel
to “most excellent Theophilus [1,`N48,]” (Luke 1:3) a Greek-named lover of God and probably a personified
euphemism for every lover of God; so it is not reasonable to assume that
Luke’s gospel was initially written in Hebrew then later translated into
Greek, when Greek was the lingua franca
of 1st-Century CE Asia Minor. If the Gospel of
Luke is Scripture, then “in Scripture” the Lord’s name is /[0F@ØH– hIesous /, when in the nominative case (e.g., Luke 2:52).
Of course, if the Gospel of Luke is not Scripture but the Gospel of Matthew is,
then consider how Matthew begins his gospel: “#\$8@H (,<XF,TH [0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø LÊ@Ø )"LÂ* LÊ@Ø U$D"V: — A
record of genealogy of Jesus Christ son of David son of Abraham”
(1:1). The Son of David is still named Jesus, the Christ. But if the Gospel
of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew are not Scripture, then perhaps the Gospel of
John is. But John records, “Philip found Nathanael and said to him,
‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote,
Jesus [[0F@Ø<] of If all of
Scripture is God-breathed and if the
Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John all identify the Son as [0F@ØH/<, how the Septuagint rendered “Joshua”
into Greek, and if a person chooses to reject what God has breathed out because
Mary, perchance, did not hear Gabriel speak in Greek but in Aramaic or Hebrew
(Jesus’ first language was not Hebrew but Aramaic), and if the unbeliever
rejects the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John because each inscribes the Son
of Man’s name as [0F@ØH/<, then this person is left with the Gospel of Mark,
which begins, “UDP¬ J@Ø ,Û"((,8\@L [0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø— The
beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ” (1:1). The doubter who
does not believe that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are
God-breathed Scripture, but are spurious translations of a lost or never
written Hebrew text must ask him or herself: did Mary hear the words of Gabriel
as sound waves bumping against her eardrums, or were Gabriel’s words
heard in her mind? She doesn’t say, but for her to hear words with her
ears, Gabriel would cause air molecules to bump into one another and thereby
form sound waves when he spoke. Angels, however, don’t breathe air. They are not of this physical world, and
Gabriel’s words did not come from this world but from God. So were not
Gabriel’s words heard as the Father’s words were heard when He
said, “‘?âJ`H ¦FJ4< Ò LÊ`H :@L Ò •("B0J`Hs ¦< ð ,Û*`60F" — This
is the son of me the beloved in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17).
John the Baptist heard the Father’s words, but did anyone else? Were the
words the Father uttered like when He answered Jesus: “‘I have
glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd that stood there
and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has
spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake,
not mine’” (John 12:28–30). The crowd heard sound—as If Scripture is
God-breathed, then did the Father speak in Hebrew or in Greek when His divine
breath [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] descended as a dove to light on His beloved Son?
If He spoke in Hebrew, then Matthew did not record His words as Matthew
recorded the Aramaic words of the crucified Son of David on an equally
important occasion: “/84 084 8,:" F"$"P2"<4p J@ØJz §FJ4<s 1,X :@Ø 2,X :@Øs Ê<"J\ :, ¦(6"JX84B,H —Eli, Eli lama sabachithani?
This means, God my, God my, why me have you forsaken?”
Matthew would not have needed to translate the Son of David’s utterance
if his gospel would have been originally written in Hebrew, for Hebrew and
Aramaic are closely enough related that a 1st-Century Judean would
have understood the utterance. A Greek would not have understood and would need
the translation. If ever the Father
spoke in Hebrew in the 1st-Century CE, that occasion is not recorded
in canonical Writ. If Jesus were ever called by a Hebrew name, that occasion is
not recorded in Holy Writ although it is probable that He was known to Aramaic
speakers by the Aramaic shortened form of /Joshua/,
just as I am known by a shortened (simplified) English form of Keyser, a low-German spelling of Caesar … am I any less a
descendant of Caesar because my name
is Kizer, with a close approximation
of the Latin pronunciation of Caesar
retained? Is not my surname an ancient contraction of a naming phrase derived
from a descriptive title (a sar was a prince or king)? Is it not an Americanized
spelling of the German expression for “king,” as in Kaiser Wilhelm
I or II? But Kizer and Caesar don’t appear to be the same
name, and in Americanized English, they are not pronounced the same. But they
are the same name, and neither misspelling nor mispronouncing the name changes
that reality. If Scripture is
God-breathed and if the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are
scriptural, then the name by which disciples in the 1st-Century knew
the Son of God was [0F@ØH/<. To say otherwise is to call all of the gospel
writers plus the angel Gabriel liars, not something easily overlooked when
judgments are revealed especially when those who call Gabriel a liar are quick
to cite Peter saying, Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit [B<,b:"J@H (\@L — breath
holy], said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are
being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what
means this man was healed, let it be known to all of you and to the people of
Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth [[0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø J@Ø ;".TD"\@L], whom you crucified, whom God [Ò 2,ÎH] raised from the dead—by him this man is
standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone [@âJ`H ¦FJ4< Ò 8\2@Hs Ò — this
is the stone, the (Christ)] that
was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there
is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given
among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:8–12) The no other name by which men can be saved is
[0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø J@Ø ;".TD"\@L; it is not by the name of the Joshua [in Greek: [0F@Ø] that led When moving
between languages, especially languages using differing alphabets, translation
and transliteration does not always permit a linguistic object assigned to an
icon in one language to be represented by an appropriate linguistic icon in another
language. For example, in Greek Zeus is Theos
[2,ÎH], the most high of the Greek pantheon,
collectively the Theoi.
But Hermes is also Theos. So is
Poseidon Theos. In fact every male
deity of the pantheon is, in nominative case usage, /Ò 2,ÎH—the
god/. So the Hebrew icon /אלהים—Elohim/, which is structurally plural, cannot truly be
translated into Greek as /Ò 2,ÎH—the Theos/,
but cannot be translated as theoi either. There is no case-ending construction of
“2,-” in Greek that permits Elohim to convey the plural quality of the Hebrew icon that takes
singular verbs when “the Logos—Ò 8`(@H” who was “2,ÎH” (John 1:1) speaks for the conjoined YHWH; for this Tetragrammaton conceals
through the physicalness of the creation the
marriage-like relationship that had two entities functioning as one
deity, the reason why Elohim is
plural and the God of Israel is not represented by the singular /Eloah/. And dropping all case endings
when translating “2,-” into English will not work, for who is the The? So
moving from a Semitic language to an Indo-European language then from one
Indo-European language to another will require the type of wisdom not
evident when a disciple calls Gabriel a liar. In Greek, the icon
phrase /Son of the Most High God/
rendered as a name will be [0F@ØH, which as those holding the sacred names heresy
are quick to tell everyone means /son of Zeu-/, but this is only partially true at best, for the
Septuagint renders the name of Joshua,
son of Nun, as [0F@Ø — his given name was “הושע–Hoshea” — meaning “YHWH is salvation.” After the 5th-Century
BCE, no thinking Greek believed that the gods of the pantheon were real. In
fact, when Homer inscribed The Odyssey
(ca 7th-Century BCE), the gods were not real entities with real
power that must be feared or respected, for Odysseus would not have lied about
what Zeus had done if he, Odysseus, believed the Zeus could inflict harm on him
for attributing to this phantom fictional exploits. The gods and goddesses of
the pantheon had become storytelling devices that enabled a still mostly oral
culture to discuss the hypothetical, thereby permitting the assignment of
socially taboo actions to non-real agents so that hypothetical situations could
be discussed. The pantheon was to 7th-Century BCE Greeks what Coyote
was to 19th-Century CE Intermountain Native American tribes and what
Raven was to Alaskan Natives, with the landscape of the pantheon similar to the
landscape of faery
for northern Germanic tribes through
at least the 10th-Century CE. So [0F@ØH forms a close approximation of /Immanuel/, the Septuagint’s
rendering of /עִמָּנוּאֵל/ meaning /God
with us/; for to be humanly born as the Son
of the Most High is having God with
us, the hermeneutical logic that permitted Matthew to declare that the sign
given Ahaz pertained to the Logos entering His creation as His only Son. The prophet Isaiah
records, Again the Lord [YHWH]
spoke to Ahaz, “Ask a sign of the Lord [YHWH] your God [Elohim]; let it be deep as Sheol or high
as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not
ask, and I will not put the Lord [YHWH]
to the test.” And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too
little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord
himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin [young woman] shall conceive
and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey
when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy
knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you
dread will be deserted. The Lord [YHWH]
will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house
such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from
Judah—the king of Assyria. (7:10–17) The sign given Ahaz was the desolation of the land, not just the land of Judah
but the land of Ephraim and the land of Syria—the sign given Ahaz was not a virgin/young woman giving
birth, but the timing for the coming Assyrian invasion that would empty Syria
and the kingdom of Samaria and nearly empty the kingdom of Judah. However, the
“sign” also had a spiritual application just as Assyria spiritually
represents death in the same way that The young woman
that was already pregnant when Isaiah spoke the words of the Lord would not
bear a child many years in the future but within the year, and before this
child is old enough to know to refuse evil and to choose good, the Assyrians
would pass throughout the land, even to surrounding Jerusalem … before
the Body of the Son of Man is old enough to know to refuse evil and to choose
good, Death shall pass throughout the
land, surrounding even heavenly Jerusalem, a city that Death will bring to the brink of starvation, a city gripped by a
famine of the Word, a city that will be emptied as earthly Jerusalem was
emptied because of Israel’s sins, a city emptied by infant baptism (it
does no good to “baptize” a child before this child is born of
spirit). So while physically minded Israelites debate about whether the LXX
accurately rendered / When AJ@8,:"^@H M48V*,8N@H commissioned scholars to translate the LXX, he
expected these scholars to understand Scripture—and these scholars had
more understanding than most of those who have come behind them. They
apparently recognized the dual referents employed, and their hermeneutics
caused them to translate the spiritual referent into Greek when both referents
could not be rendered by the same word [linguistic icon]. When
“Immanuel” is treated as a naming descriptive phrase, and when [0F@ØH is read as a naming descriptive phrase, the phrases
convey the meaning of God is with us as
His Son. So when [0F@Ø is coupled to “Immanuel,” it becomes
linguistically evident why [0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø J@Ø ;".TD"\@L is the only name by which men can be saved. But
again, it isn’t proper utterance of the name that saves, but the
particular Nazarene [J@Ø ;".TD"\@L] identified as the “Christ” that saves
by covering disciples with His righteousness while these younger sons of God
learn to walk uprightly as men and not shamble along as beasts to be sacrificed
when the temple is dedicated. The naming phrase [0F@ØH is a linguistic icon to which meaning must be
assigned, with this meaning becoming which of the many men named [0F@Ø is the Christ or the Savior, the promised Son of
David. When “the
whole earth had one language and the same words” (Gen 11:1), every person
could speak to every other person and be understood. But this language in which
Noah spoke to his sons was not to long survive; for before the The Tower of Babel
incident is framed by the genealogy, of Noah and of Shem, so when the confusing
of languages occurred can only be scripturally reckoned by when the earth was
divided in the days of Peleg (Gen 10:25), or in the
days of Noah’s great-grandchildren, a hundred years after the Flood (cf. Gen 10:25; 11:11, 12, 14, 16 —
for Peleg to be named for the division would suggest
the division occurred near the time of his birth) the earth was divided by God
confusing the languages. … The mason who held a brick in his hand held
the same brick regardless of what the brick was called after God had confused
languages so that humankind could not “‘understand one
another’s speech’” (Gen 11:7). What changed was not the
“things” that words represented, but the linguistic icons used to
identify these things. The sound or
inscribed images/icons were divorced from their previously assigned “meanings.”
So the division of the earth came about through the separation of utterance
from object; from the separation of the icon or symbol or word used to
mimetically represent a “real thing.” And this separation of sound
or inscribed symbol from a real thing is of tremendous theological
significance; for the Logos [Ò 8`(@H], or the
Word, who was 2,ÎH separated from the Father [JÎ< 2,`<] to enter His creation as His only Son (John 1:14;
3:16). It is the
separation of linguistic icons from linguistic objects at the Tower of Babel
that forms the shadow and type of Yah
entering His creation as His only Son, leaving behind in heaven the One whom He
will later identify as His Father and His God (John 20:17). The division of the
earth in the days of Peleg is a type of the division
of words that comes from separating sound or symbol from meaning (a real thing
in this world). This division also foreshadows the division of Because the Lord [YHWH] confused languages at Babel by
separating sound images from linguistic objects, allowing many sound images to
represent the same linguistic object, no sound image has priority over any
other sound image in representing the linguistic object: there is nothing in
Genesis 11 that favors proto-Eber utterances over proto-Joktan utterances—and the sons of both separated from
each other according to their languages (again Gen 10:31). They uttered
differing sound images for the same linguistic objects. They uttered differing
sound images for God when they prayed to Him, and Hebrew was not then the
language in which Moses spoke with Yah.
Therefore, because God is one [“one” being a sound image
representing two primary linguistic objects, singleness and unity] and is not
many gods but represented by many sound images when languages were confused at
Babel, there is no “one” correct pronunciation of His name or His
Son’s name. There is,
according to Peter, only one name by which men can be saved: [0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø J@Ø ;".TD"\@L. But this one name is not any uttered sound
that has no meaning until one is assigned to it. To say that an uttered
sound—a thing of this world—saves men is blasphemy. Can the deaf
mute then not be saved? That is the argument made when a person attaches
significance to how the name of the Son of David is uttered. It is, however,
only the object of this uttered sound ([0F@Ø OD4FJ@Ø J@Ø ;".TD"\@L) that saves the Elect, with this
“object” having a new name that no man knows (Rev 19:12). The argument made
against using the letter “J” to represent the sound made by a Greek
speaker when this speaker uttered the aspired vowel /hI/ is the nonsensical posturing of ignorance masked as
feigned scholarship. The following two linguistic icons have identical
pronunciations: /gaol/ and /jail/. They both have the
same linguistic object, the county lock-up where petty criminals are
incarcerated. But one spelling is preferred over the other for convenience
sake, and preferred because it better represents how Americans have been taught
to pronounce the /g/ sound since the
/ga-/ combination in “gaol” should have a hard /g/ sound because of its Latin origin, but has instead has the /dz(e)/ sound that is now best represented
by the /ja-/ letter combination. Likewise, the /[0/ letter combination can be represented by the /yah/sound or by the /jo/ sound, but is perhaps best
represented by the /dze/combination
that is in turn represented by /je/spelling.
Therefore, [0F@Ø minus the case ending will be /Jes-/ or /Jeez/ instead of /Yah-shu/. Now
following customary English practice on inscribing Greek masculine names with
the /us/ ending as in “Odysseus” since English does not use
gender case endings, /Jes-/ becomes “Jesus,” the name
by which most of Christendom knows its Savior. The importance of
what happened at the Much foolishness
poses as intelligence in this post modern era of the endtime Church …
whenever importance is attached to the things of this world—and this
includes how the names of the Son and the Father are pronounced or
mispronounced—then the person is far from God. The person’s mind is
set on the things of the flesh (such as the movements of the tongue and lips),
and this person cannot please God. Unfortunately, this person usually also
carries the name of the Son in vain, taking from a physically circumcised
people utterance that was too sacred for even Jesus to publicly speak when here
on earth. * * * "Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved." * * * * * [ Archived
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