We have seen in Ruth 2.4 that the name of God (Yehovah) was openly pronounced by Boaz and the reapers. We also saw that the Mishnah recommends that we greet one another using God’s name (Berachot 9.7). According to the book “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence ” by Nehemiah Gordon, p 69, some say “Yahweh” was his name and that is how to pronounce it. However, “that is based on a second-hand Samaritan tradition reported by a 5th century Christian author named Theodoret of Cyprus who didn’t know Hebrew and was writing in Greek.” So, just how did the idea that one cannot pronounce the name of God come about? To get a good understanding of this ban we want to quote again from the book “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence” by Nehemiah Gordon, pp 93-98, giving us a proper understanding of what happened and why this ban is still followed by Rabbinic Judaism today. This will be a long quote but we need it to get the proper context.
“The gaunt Galilean preacher drags a large wooden beam down the center of the narrow village street. One end of the beam weighs heavily on his right shoulder causing him to hunch over. The other end scrapes the ground, cutting its way through filth. The preacher’s left eye is swollen shut from an earlier beating. Villagers line the street, some shouting curses at the preacher, others weeping over his plight. A Roman soldier steps out of the crowd, swinging a whip through the air. The whip cracks as it breaks the sound barrier, sending a small startled dog fleeing down the side-alley.”
“The whip comes down hard on the preachers back, spraying the bystanders with droplets of blood. A passerby is pressed into service to help carry the heavy beam. When they reach the top of the hill just outside the village, the preacher collapses. Two Roman soldiers secure him to the wooden beam as a satisfied centurion looks on. The soldiers plant one end of the beam in a small hole hewn in the rock and raise the other end with ropes. Today’s execution is a rabbi. His name: Hanina ben Teradion. The method of execution: burning at the stake. The crime: speaking the name of the Jewish God in public.”
“When I came across the story of Hanina ben Teradion, I couldn’t believe it. The Talmud relates that the Romans executed this rabbi sometime between 130 and 138 CE during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, who issued a series of decrees designed to eradicate the Jewish faith. Rabbi Hanina was martyred during these persecutions after speaking the name of God in public, as the Talmud reports: ‘They (Romans) brought forth Rabbi Hanina ben Teradion and asked him, “Why did you engage in the study of the Torah?” He answered, “Because the Lord my God commanded me.” They immediately sentenced him to be burned…They sentenced him to be burned because he used to pronounce the name the way it is written…(Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 17b-18a)'”
“The Romans executed Rabbi Hanina for publicly teaching the Torah. During his illegal sessions, Rabbi Hanina ‘used to pronounce the name the way it is written.’ This transgression earned him a particularly vicious mode of execution, as the Talmud further relates: ‘They took hold of him, wrapped him in a Torah scroll, surrounded him in bundles of branches and set them on fire. They also brought tufts of wool, which they soaked in water, and placed them over his heart, so that he would not expire quickly (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 18a).'”
“The story of Rabbi Hanina puzzled later rabbis. By the 3rd century, the pronunciation of God’s name had become a secret and they couldn’t understand why this martyred rabbi would speak it publicly a hundred years earlier. They believed it acceptable for Rabbi Hanina to speak God’s name in the secrecy of a private Torah teaching but not in a public lesson. According to these later rabbis, it was God who was offended by this and who sentenced Rabbi Hanina to be burned alive at the hand of the Romans (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 18a).”
“The later rabbinical explanation notwithstanding, there was no disputing that Rabbi Hanina ‘used to pronounce the name the way it was written,’ meaning he spoke the name of Yehovah in public on multiple occasions. Another rabbinical source corroborated that it was commonplace in the period of the Hadrianic persecutions for Jews to pronounce the Tetragrammaton (Midrash Psalms on Psalms 36.7 {8}). Evidently, the Romans wanted to put a stop to this, so they made an example of Rabbi Hanina.”
“I was a little confused why the Romans would care about a Jew speaking God’s holy name until I came across an early rabbinical report about the Greek persecutions during the time of the Maccabees, three hundred years before Hadrian: ‘The Greeks made decrees to eradicate Israel, ordering them to deny the kingdom of heaven, to declare that they have no portion with the God of Israel, and to not mention the heavenly name on their lips (Scholion on Megilat Ta’anit, 3rd of Tishrei).’ I knew Hadrian patterned his anti-Jewish decrees after those of the Greeks and he must have also banned speaking God’s heavenly name as the Greeks did.”
“I was shocked to learn that the ban on speaking God’s name started out as a Roman decree. I needed to know when the rabbis adopted this Roman ban and why. I eventually discovered that the earlier rabbinical teaching against speaking God’s name dated to shortly after Rabbi Hanina’s martyrdom. This new ruling appeared in the name of Abba Saul, one of the rabbis to survive the Hadrianic persecutions (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10.1). I couldn’t believe this was a coincidence. Here, I have to humble myself as a Karaite Jew and give credit to the rabbis for something they brilliantly accomplished. One of the ways the rabbis preserved the Jewish people during millennia of persecution was by adapting to the changing circumstances of foreign occupation and dispersion. This is a survival strategy I have mixed feelings about, but I can’t deny it worked.”
“An early example of this strategy is the teaching that a rabbinical court should never impose the death penalty more than once in seventy years (Mishnah, Makkot 1.10). This teaching was supported by a series of interpretations that made it virtually impossible to sentence someone to death in a rabbinical court. These rulings coincided with the Roman subjugation of Judea, which stripped the rabbis of the authority to carry out the death penalty (Ethics of the Fathers, 1.9; Mishnah, Makkot 1.10). Other famous examples are the Calendar Reform of Hillel II in 359 CE and the ‘Takanot of Rabbenu Gershom’ in the 10th Century, both of which adapted rabbinical law to the limitations imposed by despotic rule.”
“The rabbinical ban on using God’s name in public may have a similar adaptation. After the martyrdom of Rabbi Hanina, the rabbis had to make a choice between losing an entire generation of Jewish leaders or adapting to the Roman prohibition against speaking God’s name. In private, the rabbis continued to ‘transmit the four-letter name to their disciples once in a seven year period (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 71a).’ However, in public, in earshot of Roman collaborators, they replaced God’s name with Adonai (Lord).”
“The ban on the name put the kohanim, the Aaronic priests, in a difficult position. God commanded them to place his holy name over the people during the Priestly blessing, but the rabbis forbade them to speak it. They eventually found an ingenious workaround through a unique hand gesture Mr. Spock used to make in the old Star Trek series, but with both hands. This was more than a coincidence. The actor who played Spock was a Jew who saw the kohanim display this in the synagogue as a child. He even combined it with his own Vulcan version of the Priestly Blessing: ‘Live long and prosper (Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, 1966-1969)!’ I chuckled when I thought about this. In the most abstract terms, this really was the basic message of the ancient Hebrew blessing from the Book of Numbers, long life and prosperity.”
“What the Jewish actor who played Spock didn’t know was that his character was proclaiming the holy name of Yehovah all over the universe through his Vulcan greeting. The idiosyncratic way of holding the hands he saw in the synagogue was actually a cipher for God’s holy name. One of the earliest sources to mention it explains, ‘the priest would form the letters of the Tetragrammaton with his hands (Bachya ben Asher, Biur Al Ha-Torah, volume 3, page 34).'” When I first read this I thought it was far-fetched until I found a diagram of the way the kohanim hold their hands during the Priestly Blessing in an old Hebrew Book. It had two of the letters of God’s holy name inscribed on each of the wrists, and I could see how the strange way of holding the fingers corresponded to the letters of the Tetragrammaton. It formed the letters Yod-Hay-Vav-Hay about as well as the modern ‘OK’ hand gesture forms the letter ‘K.’ If you don’t know what that is supposed to mean, you’d never figure it out. Of course, that is exactly the point. Using this cryptic sign language allowed the Aaronic priests to place God’s name on the people despite rabbinical prohibition to speak it (Shabbathai Horowitz, Shefa Tal, Hanau 1612, page 15).”
“When I discovered that the rabbinical ban on God’s holy name was instituted as a protective measure against Roman persecution, I felt like I uncovered a great secret that I needed to share. I decided to approach a young rabbi I knew and hear his opinion. I met him at his synagogue in Jerusalem and started to tell him about the Romans executing Hanina ben Teradion for speaking God’s name. He stopped me midway through and told me he knew all about it. I then told him about finding God’s name with a full set of vowels in the Aleppo Codex. ‘The true pronunciation of God’s name is Yehovah!’ I announced excitedly. The rabbi leaned back in his chair and responded with a single word” ‘Peshita.’ In Aramaic this literally means ‘simple,’ but in Talmudic jargon it is a sarcastic way of saying, ‘Obviously, Sherlock.’ After a long pause, he asked me never to speak the Almighty’s name in his presence again. ‘Men greater than either of us established the tradition of not speaking Hashem’s name,’ he told me assuredly, ‘and only men greater than us can change it back.'”
“I was amazed at how profoundly the rabbi epitomized the difference between a rabbinical and a Karaite worldview. He did not dispute the Scriptural or historical facts but deferred to the authority of the rabbinical sages. From my perspective, this was not about authority; it was about truth. When I shared this thought with him, he snapped back that I was being extremely arrogant. I chuckled when he said this and I nodded my head in agreement. I suppose he was right in a way. It was a little arrogant of me thinking I could decide for myself how to live by Scripture even when it ran contrary to generations of Jewish tradition.”
There is a lot more information on the name of God in his book and we recommend that you get “Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence” by Nehemiah Gordon if you want to know more about the name of God and how it is pronounced, and how it is tied in with the Priestly Blessing. We also recommend that you go to You Tube and search for his video teachings on the name of God. Just go to You Tube, type in “name of God Nehemiah Gordon” and it should take you to numerous videos. In Part 3, we will pick up again the the Book of Ruth.
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