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Yahweh and Baal: Which is “Lord”?Posted by Scott Haile under Wisdom literature (OT), Torah, language | | |
From time to time I like to write up explanations for biblical words that I think get used in incorrect (yet interesting) ways. My previous posts have dealt with the words Calvary and helpmeet. Here I’d like to discuss two proper names for deities in the Old Testament, and why I think English translations may obscure rather than clarify their sense. The names are Yahweh and Baal. First I need to explain the distinction between a few Hebrew words. Several of them may be familiar. Note also that several of the words can function either as a common noun or as the proper name of a deity. SOME HEBREW NAMES FOR GOD(S) AND LORD(S) El is the Hebrew word for “god,” a cognate of the Arabic name Allah, used by Muslims. El could be a simple noun (similar to the lower-case god in English), but it was also the proper name of a Canaanite deity (similar to our upper-case use of the word God as a name). Hebrew has no upper or lower case letters, so the distinction must be determined from usage and context. Elohim is, grammatically, just the plural of El, but it was used as another name for God. In the OT, Elohim is typically translated simply as “God,” such as in Genesis 1:1. Yahweh is the primary name of the God of Israel. Other names such as Shaddai were used as well, but Yahweh was the most distinctive. In most English translations, Yahweh is translated “LORD” (see below), either in all capital letters or with small caps. Adon is the Hebrew noun meaning “lord” or “master;” in the vast majority of cases it is used with a first person possessive prefix, spelled adonai (”my lord”). Either form could be a polite or submissive way of addressing either a human superior, or God. Jehoveh is not a real Hebrew word at all, but rather is a later Christian misunderstanding of the name Yahweh. The reasons are complicated (maybe I’ll explain them in a later post), but the important point is that certain Hebrew letters can be transliterated into English in different ways, so that the Hebrew letter yod (spelled “jot” in Matt 5:18 in the KJV) shows up in English as either Y or J, and the Hebrew letter waw can be translated as either W or V. So then, the vowels of Yahweh were misunderstood by (much) later English translators as Yehowah, which they wrote as Jehovah. It works fine as a traditional name, but it isn’t really Hebrew. Baal is a Hebrew word meaning owner, husband, or lord. It could also function as a proper noun referring to a Canaanite storm and fertility god: Baal was venerated for causing thunder and lightning, and for giving the rain that fertilized crops. YAHWEH AND BAAL What is interesting to me here is that Yahweh is at its core a proper name, whereas Baal was originally just a common noun (”lord” or “owner”) that came to be used as a proper name later in antiquity. Yet modern translations represent the Hebrew Yahweh with English LORD — a word that is not explicitly a proper noun — while they transliterate the Hebrew Baal as a word in English that appears to be only a proper name. The result is an ironic swapping of the representation of the two names: in the Hebrew Yahweh is a proper noun and Baal comes from a common noun, yet the English translations suggest just the opposite. Bruce Metzger, editor of the NRSV, explains one rationale behind the translation of Yahweh, writing in the preface of the NRSV: The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom the true God had to be distinguished, began to be discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church. Now, in most cases, the NRSV (correctly, in my opinion) avoids altering the wording of OT passages to make them fit Christian interpretations. A famous example of this is Isa 7:14, where the NRSV translates “young woman” instead of “virgin,” since the former is more a accurate rendering of the Hebrew even though the latter is the meaning of the later Greek translations used especially by Christians. It’s true that the early Christians used Greek translations of the OT that had the word “Lord” (Greek Kyrios) instead of the proper name “Yahweh,” yet modern translators should hardly feel bound to every convention that the ancients used — this is the whole point of going back to the original Hebrew, rather than just using the Greek Septuagint or the Latin Vulgate. MAKING (NON)SENSE OF TEXTS It seems to me that the position advocated by Metzger (who was actually somewhat of a conservative) leads readers to make assumptions that are basically what the ancient Israelites were opposing when they wrote the name Yahweh in their texts instead of just El or Adonai. This is not to idealize the Israelites, who committed plenty of idolatry. Yet Yahweh wasn’t used by other peoples, and the very use of the name served as a claim that the gods worshipped by surrounding nations weren’t the same. Christians may prefer to worship God under the name “God,” a name that can be used by English-speaking adherents to any religion. Yet it is worth remembering that our Old Testament also uses a special name for God that cannot be universalized so readily. In many places the OT text goes out of its way to emphasize God’s particular name. A good example is Psalm 18:31, which the NRSV translates, “For who is God except the LORD?” With this translation, the verse can come across as redundant or even virtually meaningless, especially when read out loud. One can still make sense of it, but it lacks the force that it has when translated more literally: “For who is God besides Yahweh?” Metzger may be right that Christians should not imply that other gods are real, yet the rhetoric of Psalm 18:31 depends on the assumption that people who were around at that time generally assumed there were other gods. You have to be able to talk about other gods in order to insist that they aren’t real; if we obscure the language that allows for talk of other gods, then we present a text to English readers that obscures the argument the author was making. Exodus 3:13-15 is practically ruined by the obscuring of the name Yahweh. When God (in the burning bush) sends Moses to Egypt, Moses worries that the elders of Israel may ask the name of the God who is sending him. God’s response, as the NRSV translates it, is: Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you”: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations. Here the translation “the LORD” makes the text almost unintelligible for those who aren’t paying close attention. Instead of the proper name Yahweh, we get the generic “The LORD,” even though the whole point is that Yahweh is a proper name. It would make far more sense in texts such as these to simply transliterate the name Yahweh. THE PAYOFF This may seem a small point, and I will admit that the stakes are relatively low. Yet my conviction is that we should let different biblical texts make their different points, rather than smoothing them over based on our theology. We may decide, especially from the New Testament, that we should use the generic names “God” or “the Lord” in our own prayers or sermons. But we have an enormous collection of texts in the Old Testament that use the proper name Yahweh, and I’m an advocate for translating texts so that their original sense is clear. Granted, there are settings where Christians might avoid saying the divine name out loud in respect for Jews who are present. Yet the Jewish avoidance of speaking the name of Yahweh is not commanded in Scripture, and so I see no reason for Christians not to use the name Yahweh, just as we readily say the name Jesus — as long as we use both names with reverence. Most English translations still use small caps to identify the divine name in the text, so it is not difficult to substitute the name Yahweh while reading OT texts aloud, for example in church. And there is a theological payoff. The pluralistic leanings of Western society can lead us to assume that all peoples essentially worship the same God. No doubt this is at least partially true, yet the use of the name Yahweh reminds us that much of Scripture is not content with using a generic name for God — which is what Baal would have sounded like to ancients. Instead, Jews and Christians worship a particular god, who chose a particular people, and told them to call him by a particular name. We may have reasons for disagreeing with the language used by the Scriptures, but if we are going to continue reading them, we should translate them in the sense their authors intended. For more information on the names Yahweh and Baal, see their entries in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (now published as the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary), edited by David Noel Freedman. |
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
This reminds me of a story I heard a guy tell. He said that whenever he meets someone who says “I don’t believe in God,” he responds by saying like, “Which God do you not believe in, because I may not believe in him either.” I thought that was interesting and would probably make a lot of sense to the Old Testament world. Thanks for this perspective.
August 24th, 2008 at 7:49 am
An excellent article. You may not have made clear to your readers, however, that the translation of YHVH as “Lord” in English Bibles is not arbitrary, but the direct result of the early Jewish convention (preceeding the time of Jesus) to not read YHVH out loud and instead substitute Adonai (”My Lord,” as you noted). At issue was the rising use of God’s proper name for magical purposes (for example, still to this day, the Tetragrammaton appears on Tarot decks), itself an extension of the Biblical emphasis on the symbolic and constructive nature of names. Add that to the prohibition against using God’s name “in vain” (Ex. 20:5). Jews simply built a “fence” around that prohibition by taking God’s name out of common usage and replacing it with “My Lord.”
August 24th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
@Micah: It’s hard to distinguish gods when there are so many different belief systems, with no real way to confirm which one is right. This is why I’m so skeptical when someone appears to have invented a god to their liking, if it doesn’t also line up with Scripture. Otherwise, it seems to me we’re probably just wishful thinking. I’m kind of like some of the ancients were–if you have a theology that’s ancient, I’m much more likely to take it seriously than something that came along more recently.
But it’s also trick to draw lines. Christians can say we worship the same God as the Jews, since we believe Christ fulfills God’s intentions. But can Jews say they worship the same God as Christians–that is, a triune God? And can Christians say we worship the same God as Islam, when they believe explicitly that Jesus was not divine?
@Geoffrey: Good point–thanks for clarifying that for readers, plus there are some points there I didn’t know about.
I notice you mention the “fence” that ancient Rabbis, and apparently ancient Pharisees before them, built around biblical commandments in order to assure that they didn’t transgress any of them. I find this an interesting topic, and I’m going to try to get together a post about this practice, and how Jesus seems to have reacted to it, in the next couple of weeks.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
@ Micah and Scott: I don’t think the issue is belief in different gods, but in how much God reveals himself in different religious and philosophic systems. If a person says “I don’t believe in God,” I find that I can often times get this person to admit that creation was initiated by something and something keeps creation in existence. Both of these are ancient understandings of God (so you should be more likely to accept them, Scott) that Greeks like Aristotle espoused and were later appropriated by theologians like Thomas Aquinas who thought that the mind was capable of coming to some rational understanding of God even if they didn’t have any faith in God per se. Thomas said that we could know God through reason as the Unmoved Mover, the First Efficient Cause, or the Only Necessary Entity Among Contingents. We need only our minds to reach such an understanding of God. But God in His goodness has revealed himself to the Hebrews and continued to reveal himself (so we believe as Christians) in the person of Jesus Christ. I don’t think that it is right to say that Yahweh is a different God, but rather a more perfect (meaning more complete) revelation of God than is found in either philosophical systems or other religions. So yes, I think that Jews can say they worship the same God as Christians, but Christians can say that God is more perfectly revealed in the triune-form that we worship. Because this more perfect revelation of God has a name, Yahweh, I agree that we should use it when we read Scripture. Do you think that we should use “Baal” to refer to Aristotle’s generic understanding of God?
August 26th, 2008 at 10:40 am
The point I was trying to make was that many people who say they don’t believe in God have misconceptions about God that I, myself, don’t believe in. For example, someone might say, “I don’t believe in God because he is a mean old man who fires lightning bolts at those who displease him and delights in divine child abuse.” I could with all honesty say that I don’t believe in that God either. I believe that the God who is revealed through the scriptures and through Jesus Christ is a very different God than that.
Beth, I agree that we can find some helpful common ground with people from different religious or philosophic systems. But I guess that I am skeptical that all systems have been used by God to reveal himself. Some systems may even seek to do the opposite.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
On a side note, I came across a passage in Justin Martyr (a 2nd century church father) where he insists that God has no name:
But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given. For by whatever name He would be called, He would have to have as His elder the person who gave Him the name. But these words Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord, and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions…“God” is not a name, but an opinion implanted in the nature of men of a thing that can hardly be explained.
The thing is, Justin’s Old Testament was the Greek Septuagint (which always translates Yahweh as Lord, and he doesn’t seem to have known Hebrew (in one of his writings he completely garbles an explanation of a Hebrew word), so he may not have known that the name “Yahweh” was used of God in the OT–he seems to have thought God was simply called “Lord” in all those passages. If he did know the name, he certainly ignored it here.
This highlights how much Jews and Christians came to be influenced by Greek thought: in the Greco-Roman world it was commonplace for philosophers to assume that Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, etc., were just stories that pointed to a true God who would not have had a specific name. The Hebrew Scriptures have the same practice in some places, but the name Yahweh was clearly seen by at least some part of the tradition as referring to the specific god they worshipped.
Justin uses the line or reasoning that led (as Geoffrey pointed out in his comment above) to people thinking they could have control over a god if they knew the god’s name. In other words, Justin can’t accept that God has a name, because he can’t accept that anyone would have the authority to give God a name. The Hebrew scriptures, however, do not seem to agree with his conclusion.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
@Beth: I agree with Micah, that other religions can actually be human systems that do not reflect any special revelation, but that simply say wrong things about God — so for example, Islam would insist that God does not exist in a triune form and that Jesus was not divine.
The difficulty is, how do we decide what God’s “identity” is, when God exists in an incorporeal form? A human can have one identity, while doing any number of different things. But with God, it seems that most of what we know are deeds and character attributes. We can’t point and say “that God right there;” instead, we have to say, “the God who did (or does) such-and-such.”
To say that a pagan and I both worship the Unmoved Mover seems to me to say only that we’re both monotheists, which we already knew anyway. Your position seems to say that we all worship the same God as long as we’re all monotheists, yet surely God’s values reflect his being. If someone worships a monotheistic god who has vastly different values than my god, wouldn’t it be fair to say we’re actually worshipping different gods altogether? (Though at least one of us will presumably be worshipping a phantom.)
At the very least, when we talk of “the triune God who is revealed in Jesus Christ,” it seems to me we’re clearly talking about a different God than the Muslim God who is most certainly not triune.