ב"ה
It's late, after 5 AM here but I think this is a question which deserves to be answered and I'm gonna just bang out the gist of it here.
Reason plopping down (this will be a mix of why Jews don't and why Messianic Jews don't.
There is a lot of misunderstanding of passages such as "by my name" or "for my name's sake" etc. There are Hebrew idioms at play which have to do with a range of meanings from "my power" to "my esteem".
The
underlying drive is a desire to sanctify G-d's name; it's a respect issue on the one hand and a holiness issue on the other. Check back often as I'm sure tomorrow I'll add more to this list as I remember reasons.
Reasons Jews / Messianics do not pronounce out loud the Tetragrammaton
(4 letter name of G-d) :
- Holy (Kadosh) in Hebrew suggests "set apart, not easily accessible". Sabbath is "holy" because it is not the other 6 days... it's "special", we torah keepers treat it differently than other days. G-d's 4 letter name is also holy. So we do not treat it like a regular name like Bob, or Bill (no offense guys). Instead we often substitute הקדוש ברוך הוא"Hakadosh barukh hu"(the Holy One blessed be He) which I find beautiful. We may also say "Adonai" (lit: "My L-rds") or אל שדי "El Shadai"or when not praying simply השם "Ha-shem" (THE Name).
- Hebrew numbers-even the way we write numbers in the bible using Hebrew letters, avoids writing G-d's name or a short version of it. For example, א the 1st letter is 1. ב the 2nd letter is 2. this continues until we reach 11 which is 10 + 1 (א+י). When we hit the number 15 which should be yod plus heh (part of G-d's name), the bible instead changes the scheme for that number to be tet (9) + vav (6) thus avoiding writing a number which would look like His name.
- Nobody is 100% sure how to say the name. Most who learn Hebrew a bit blunder over the name thinking they know how to pronounce it only to find it occurs elsewhere with different vowels! Is His name pronounced differently? I've had Hebrew roots guys make the claim "seems not so important if we say it exactly right since it's even different in different places in the bible"... knowing just enough Hebrew to be dangerous... (I've explained in a different post the spelling stuff, and this is gonna be a long post anyway so ask if you wanna know the why).
- In Yeshua's day, the Greek Septuagint had been in use for centuries already and in the entire Greek Old Testament the name of G-d is never transliterated. Instead, we find only κύριος Kurios "L-rd", obviously substituting אדוני "Adonai" for the Tetragrammaton (4 letter name of G-d).
- Of the 5800 Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament, there are only 2 fragments which have the Name in them (they occur in Hebrew letters). I think these were copies for Jewish believing communities who could be "trusted" with the name. Why was the early church so careful not to include the divine name in the new scriptures? Instead they wrote the Greek equivalent of "Adonai" (my L-rd) [κύριος Kurios].
- For 2600 years Jews have not said this name aloud except in this circumstance: we are told by the talmud that when the chief priest would enter in to the holy of holies on יום כיפור "Yom Kippur" (the day of atonement) the holiest day of the year at the holiest place on Earth, by the holiest person on Earth (not just a priest but a high priest [so let's not get into "but we are all priests no?"]) they would tie a rope around his ankle so that if he had a sinful thought when he uttered the name of G-d, and G-d struck him dead, the other priests could drag him out of the room without risking their own lives entering in.
- The biblical text itself as preserved by the Masoretes, composed of both Pharasaical and Karaite Jews, intentionally pointed (wrote vowels) the name the way it is supposed to be read. In the bible we have "ketiv" (how words are written) and "qere" (how they are to be read). Often the margin will show that a certain word in the text is written differently than how it is to be read. This gets a little complex, you can read about the "masorah" if you want to know more on this. Any way the idea is that the "masorah" the textual tradition and the way Jews had entire books of the bible memorized (by singing) sometimes differed from the text. We may have a verse memorized as "Elohim" (G-d) and the text says "the name". In these cases the text is pointed with the vowels for Elohim under the tetragrammaton. This preserved the written text (where sometimes zealous scribes saught to make clear to Israelites it's not any of the אלוהים Elohim "gods" we are talking about here, it's THE NAME so as scrolls were copied they evolved to have the name written in certain places where it had previously said Adonai or Elohim.
- Our fathers taught us not to say it aloud, and we must honor our fathers. Certainly it is not a sin to not say the Name so we obey our fathers.
- It is disrespectful to call your father by his first name. Imagine how your siblings would look at you if you said to your father, "Hey Frank what do you think about ...?" How much more so our heavenly father who is far holier than your Earthly dad.
- The Messiah Yeshua taught us how to address G-d the Father, He taught us to say "Abba, Father who is in heavens..." If the Messiah himself addresses G-d as "Father" and teaches us to do so, why in the world is it suddenly so important now to pronounce the divine name? What was Yeshua missing there? If "Abba" is good enough for the literal son of G-d, then it's good enough for me as a mortal son.
I know I left off tons so please, if this is an issue you find interesting check back later as I'll update this list. For now I think this is substantial enough to at least help people understand why Jews and Messianics don't say the holiest name on our impure lips. We
sanctify His great and mighty name; we do not make it common/ordinary (meaning of profane in Hebrew), but we make it Kadosh, special and different.
Shalom, please don't anyone be angry by this post
, I'm not out to make any of you wrong, I'm just trying to share with my Hebrew roots brothers / sisters why Jews and Messianics behave this way.
שבוע טוב