I Don’t Care How Dorky You Think It Looks, You Have To Wear the Name Tag

When I first read Everett Fox’s translation of the Torah, I was surprised to learn that God had a proper name. Fox used only the consonants, as in the Hebrew: YHWH. The vowels traditionally printed in Hebrew Bibles are actually the vowels for the Hebrew words equivalent to “the Lord.” Mistakenly pronouncing them together, the translators of the King James Bible produced “Jehovah.” The original vowels are unknown, but the best guess, on grammatical grounds, places an “a” before the first “h” and an “e” before the second “h.”

But when did the Israelites learn this name?

From the burning bush, God rehearses his history with the patriarchs. 

“I am YHWH. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but my name, YHWH, I did not make known to them.” (Ex. 6:2-3, my translation)

Well, that was easy! Israel learns God’s name on Mount Sinai.

Except… Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all use YHWH’s real name in Genesis.

“Some time later, the word of the Lord (YHWH) came to Abram in a vision. He said, ‘Fear not, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.’ But Abram said, ‘O Lord God (YHWH), what can you give me, seeing that I shall die childless, and the one in charge of my household is Dammesek Eliezer!’ Abram said further, ‘Since you have granted me no offspring, my steward will be my heir.’ The word of the Lord (YHWH) came to him in reply, ‘That one shall not be your heir; none but your own issue shall be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ And he added, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ And because he put his trust in the Lord (YHWH), He reckoned it to his merit. Then He said to him, ‘I am the Lord (YHWH) who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to assign this land to you as a possession.’ And he said, ‘O Lord God (YHWH), how shall I know that I am to possess it?’” (Gen. 15:1-8, NJPS)

God answers this question by having Abram perform an eerie covenant ritual by sacrificing several animals, cutting them in two, and walking between the pieces. But it is clear that Abram knows YHWH’s name, without previously having been told it. In fact, he knew it even earlier, at Gen. 14:22, and uses it three more times later (22:14; 24:3, 7). YHWH uses it out loud four more times (3 with Abraham (18:14, 19; 22:16) and once with Jacob (28:13).

Oh, and Abram’s wife Sarai knew it. (16:2, 5)

Abraham’s nephew Lot knew it. (19:13-14)

And Abraham’s servant Eliezer. (24:12, 27, 35, 40, 42, 44, 48, 56)

And Abraham’s brother Laban. (24:31, 50-51; 30:27; 31:49)

And Abraham’s son Isaac. (26:22, 25; 27:7, 27)

And Isaac’s enemies, the soldiers of Abimelech. (26:28-29)

And Isaac’s son Jacob. (27:20; 28:16, 21; 30:30; 32:9; 49:18)

And Jacob’s wife Leah. (29:32-33, 35)

And Jacob’s wife Rebekah. (30:24)

Did anyone not know YHWH’s name before YHWH “revealed” it to Moses?

This contradiction is a different sort of side effect of the combining of sources we’ve talked about before. The source that says God was only known as El Shaddai is known as the Priestly Source, because of its special concern for the role of priests in Israel. It was also our blue source in the Flood story.

The other source, spread out in the various citations above, is called the Yahwist, because, alone of the four sources in Torah, it believes that people knew and used YHWH’s name from almost the very beginning, starting with Adam and Eve’s grandson, Enosh (Gen. 4:26). The other three sources think Israel learned it from God, who first told it to Moses on Mount Sinai.

The editor, once again, has made no effort to cover up this contradiction. They’ve woven their sources together with as light a hand at interventions as was possible.

At some point we have to think about habits of reading—which is a term I’m substituting for “genre.” When we read a how-to manual, we have one habit of reading. When we read a history book, we have a related but distinct habit of reading. We expect to be able to believe what we’re being told, if the author is competent. (Reading an incompetent author requires a different habit of reading, and even though the genres may seem outwardly similar, our habits of reading are really quite different.)

As I’ve said earlier, a set of instructions or a history book with this many contradictions would be nonsense. But it also doesn’t seem that the author is incompetent. The care the editors have taken to combine these texts does not bespeak incompetence, but a refusal to produce a document whose genre could be said to be “how-to” or “history.” Maybe we need to come up with a completely new habit of reading for the Bible.

It should be a habit that takes the Bible seriously, as a cultural artifact and touchstone, if nothing else. It would be a habit that is not bothered by contradictions—a habit not unrelated to the reading of poetry.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Walt Whitman

Yet it’s not the same as poetry, at least as poetry is usually understood in modern Western contexts, as the pure expression of an individual. The Bible is clearly corporate. It contains multitudes in a way that most individual books don’t, even Whitman’s. It’s a little like a collection of fairy tales, but those tolerate contradictions too well to be a real parallel, and lack the long thread of connection.

The great epics—Gilgamesh, the Iliad and the Odyssey being the ones I know best—have too much consistency. Homer may occasionally be said to “be caught napping,” resulting in a contradiction, but he certainly did not employ a method of editing and collection that was certain to result in contradictions. Nor was he clearly aware of them as he worked, as the biblical editors certainly were.

For the same reason, the Bible isn’t like a novel, with (usually) a single viewpoint driving it. It’s more like a collection of essays by different authors on a single topic. Contradictions between the authors are no problem. This would be a nonfiction parallel. But maybe we need to combine it with a fiction parallel. Hear me out: the Bible is a little like a long-running comic book. Different teams of artists and writers have worked on it at different times, in stages, throughout its history. Sometimes the collaboration is going really great; sometimes the quality of the material is, well, variable. Everyone has their favorite runs. Some writer-artist runs completely rethink the characters, retcon past events, and produce an almost new mythology, yet one still inseparable from the original vision. (Yes, that means the New Testament might be the Bible’s “The Dark Knight Returns.”) 

And there are still different habits of reading, just with comic books. There are the fans of only one particular run, who ignore the rest of the series and all the crossovers. There are the completists who are determined to close every plot hole in every book and reconcile each issue with every other issue. There are readers who find something to identify with so strongly that their whole identity changes. And there are casual fans who drop in from time to time.

Maybe there are more biblical fundamentalists than comic book completists. I haven’t crunched the numbers. But there are a lot more people trying to read the Bible as a how-to book than are trying to read Superman like that. The difference is the immunity to irony that fundamentalists have. They really see no difference between the Bible and their own lives.

At least the fanboys know better.