Theos-Talk Archives (March 1995 Message tl00023)

To Sarah,

Thank you for your prompt and detailed response.

Oh dear.  _yod, k, vav, k_ could spell all sorts of things.  Is
the _k_ a Chet, a Kaph, or a Qoph? All are sometimes
transliterated as _k_ in English.  THe ref I gave from Exodus 6
is (obviously :)) Biblical.  Throughout Hebrew scripture this
word is _always_ spelt YHWH - no hidden meaning anywhere, except
in the very nature of the word itself.

Devout Jews never pronounce it, and that includes Kabbalist Jews.
The stricter 'Hasidim Kabbalists (I use 'H for Chet) would not
teach anything to goyim (non-jews).  Being Israeli may count for
something, but I never heard this odd explanation in nigh on 40
years of study, which has necessarily involved contact with
Jewish and Christian Kabbalists - in fact I have a copy of the
'Hasidic _Tanya_ which is a kind of holy study book for them, and
includes the doctrines of the four worlds and ten sephiroth,
etc., etc.  They use the convention, even in English, of
rendering the divine name as G_d.

The way you tell it your teacher was into the "magical" aspect(s)
of Kabbalah, although the idea of letters and sounds having
special holy meaning is pretty ancient in eny event - viz., Hinud
mantras.

Here in England we do nit use Webster's dictionaries, but more
often Chamber's or the Oxford Dictionary in all its forms.
However, one of the best source books is the ~Hebrew and
EnglishLexicon of the Old Testament~ edited by Brown, Driver and
Briggs - a well know scholarly reference in theological and
academic circles.  I go to this, as the Hebrew language of true
Kabbalah dates from O.T.  times, and could even have originated
in Egypt before the Exodus.

I have come across the "Yehoshua" myth many times in my studies,
but there is _no_ scholarly or Hebrew Kabbalist teaching which
can be made to support this idea, which in essence tries to hook
Jesus uo the the deity so that some sorts of Christian occultists
can claim the "Jesus is Lord and God" idea as Kabbalistic.

The name of Jesus probably originates in his Galiliean birth in
Aramaic speaking Galilee, where a dialect form of Aramaic was the
language of the day, as was a southern version of the language
further south in Judea.  Hebrew was not spoken at all, except
perhaps among lawyers as a "legal" language, much as Latin is
sometimes used in English law today.  His name therefore derives
from the Aramaic, not the Hebrew, though the fact is more or less
academic, as in either language "Jesus" means "He saves." It is
spelt, in either language _yod, shin, ayin_ and is pronounced in
Aramaic, "Ishoo." We render the Hebrew ditto as "Joshua." But
then we also call Jacob "James." :-).

The name YHWH is frequently contracted to YH, and there is no
way, except in human imagination, that the name of Jesus can
legitimately be derived from it.  YH is often rendered "Yah" in
English.  In Hebrew texts, the divine name is sometimes only
implied b the use of the H alone, with // in front of it (to the
right, as Hebrew is written right to left).

The substitution of J for Y in English renderings of Hebrew is
very old, and is to be found thus in the King James Version of
the 16th century.  This may be because in earlier centuries we
had no letter J in English, only the letter I followed by K.
Hence, in some inscriptions, INRI being used as shorthand for the
words written above the cross of crucifixion, being Latin
shorthand for I(esu) N(azarene) R(ex) I(udae).  The English
alphabet derives from Latin.

You can say, if you like, that Jesus is a title, but you cannot
say that it is not a name! Most names in antiquity were also
titles, in that they were intended to be descriptive of the
function attributed to that person.  "Sitting Bull" is the title
_and_ the name of a well-know N.  American Indian - I got his
picture on line from the Smithsonian :-).

As it seems to be "long posting" time, when Jesus taught to love
God and Neighbor etc., he was quoting directly from O.T.
scripture, namely Deuteronomy and Leviticus, where these
teachings first appear.

Returning to the four-letter word, Brown, Driver and Briggs give:

I.  YHWH is .  .  .  given Ex 3:12-15 as the name of the God whi
revealed himself to Moses at Horeb, and is explained thus: ...
"I shall be with thee" which is then implied in AHYH AShR AHYH "I
shall be the one who will be it."

It is noteworthy that this entry is placed not placed under a
category of words beginning with Yod, but under Chet, as HWH is
the three-letter Hebrew root from which YHWH is derived.  HWH is
a verb meaning "to become" - so G_d can be described as a state
of [eternal] becoming.  THis would fit the Kabbalist idea of
creation by emanation - very much a theosophical concept in
antiquity, just as it is now.

I do agree that there are deeper "Kabbalist" teachings in the New
Testament, for a Paul the Apostle tells us, he "sat at the feet
of the rabbi Gamaliel," who is honored in at least one Kabbalist
tradition as being in their "line of succession." There is more
on this in my work, ~The Nazarenes~ which you should be able to
download by ftp from the theos archive if John Mead has posted it
there yet.

If you did stray from the main point, that's fine by me - this is
a discussion list, after all!

Very besy wishes,

Alan.