Is It Wrong to Use God’s Name?

IN the Hebrew Scriptures, often referred to as the “Old Testament,” God’s name appears almost 7,000 times in the form יהוה (read from right to left). That is to say, God’s name is represented by four Hebrew letters Yohdh, He, Waw, and He, commonly transliterated YHWH.

In antiquity, the Jews came to have the superstitious idea that it was wrong to use God’s name. As a result, they refused to pronounce it, and in their texts, they began to use substitute expressions for it. Many Bible translators, however, have rendered the name “Yahweh,” or “Jehovah.” Among the translations that do so is the Catholic Jerusalem Bible. According to this translation, when Moses asked God how he should respond if the Israelites were to ask him who had sent him to them, God replied: “You are to say to the sons of Israel: ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name for all time; by this name I shall be invoked for all generations to come.”​—Exodus 3:15.

While praying, Jesus said regarding his own use of the divine name: “I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known.” And in what is commonly known as the Our Father prayer, Jesus said: “Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy.”​—John 17:26; Matthew 6:9, JB.

It might come as a surprise, then, to learn that in his recent book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI had this to say concerning the use of the divine name: “The Israelites were . . . perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of God, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities. By the same token, recent Bible translations were wrong to write out this name​—which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable—​as if it were just any old name.”

What do you think? Is it right or wrong to use God’s name? If Jehovah himself says: “This is my name for all time; by this name I shall be invoked for all generations to come,” can anyone rightly contradict him?

[Picture on page 30]

Jesus used the divine name in prayer