Why is the name of God important?
Judaism in Five Minutes - Sarah Imhoff
James A. Diamond [+]
University of Waterloo
James A. Diamond holds an endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Waterloo. His principal areas of research include biblical exegesis, medieval and modern Jewish thought and philosophy, Maimonides, and rabbinics. He has published widely on all areas of Jewish thought in many leading peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as Harvard Theological Review and Journal of Religion. His books include, among others, Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (Cambridge University Press) and Jewish Theology Unbound (Oxford University Press).
Description
There are a host of different names for God in the Hebrew Bible including Elohim, El, Adonai, Shaddai, Zevaot, and, notably, Yahweh (YHWH), the four-letter name singled out as the Tetragrammaton, or the unpronounceable “articulated name.” Though all are translated into English as “God” or “Lord,” they come to signify very different notions of God in the rabbinic, mystical, and philosophical traditions that developed in post-biblical Judaism. Divine names thus have become conceptually foundational for Jewish thought and theology.