The Name Of God, Follow Up

Q. What does it mean to you that God’s name hasn’t been spoken on Earth for 1700(+) years? Who decided this?

A. No one decided to stop using the name of God.  The Jewish people were forbidden to say the name except for one day each year on Yom Kippur and were never allowed to write it down.  After the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD the Yom Kippur ceremony in which His name was spoken could not be held.  Since it was forbidden to speak it any other time or to write it at any time it was eventually forgotten.

No one alive today knows the ancient name of God.  We only know His 4 initials from Hebrew Scriptures. They are either rendered JHVH or YHWH.  The Hebrew alphabet contains no vowels and so to make them pronounceable translators artificially inserted some to form Jehovah or Yahweh.  Therefore neither of these renderings is God’s actual name.

Philippians 2:9-11 tells us that during the Age of the Church the name of Jesus is to be the name above every name. His is now the name by which we know God.