Over the past few years, I have gotten a lot of emails, comments on the YouTube page, and comments on TikTok concerning the Name of our Father, some of the comments were shared with love and others have not been so loving. The claim they are making is that YAHWEH is not the Name of our Father, that I’m worshipping a false mighty one and some even go as far to say that the name belongs to Satan. This is a serious accusation, and it must be discussed because blasphemy is not to be taken lightly, please see Leviticus 24:10-14. This message is not coming from a place of judgment as I have brothers and sisters who call our Father by another Name. I’ve always said that once we trust in YESHUA and keep the commandments of the Torah, then we ALL brothers and sisters in the Body of Messiah. However, since the comments are increasing it is best for me to address the issue on why I call our Father YAHWEH and will continue to, versus having to continually address it through emails and comments.. So, when these claims are being made against our Father in heaven then I must share the truth.
As, I explained in my testimony video, the first thing YAHWEH did was show me His Name and once I called up the Name of YAHWEH and YESHUA versus saying “Jesus” and “God,” He responded with a supernatural experience and that night changed my life forever because I know it was a true encounter from our Creator. However, I know that my personal experience will not mean anything to the majority, so what I’m going to do is list proof from research concerning His Name and leave links for them all to be viewed and studied at your leisure. Prayerfully this will shed some light on the issue and address the comments I have been getting, always with love. Here are the 7 points:
1. Hebrewgospels.com has a 15 part series/study confirming the Name of YAHWEH, they have extensive knowledge in Hebrew language and their work dispels the lies about the pagan origins that many say are behind His Name, they expose teachings of a teacher who is reading Hebrew from left to right versus right to left, and they back up everything they present by breaking down His Name using Hebrew grammar and rules that the western reader is unfamiliar with and they test every argument that arises by using the oldest Hebrew manuscripts. I’ll leave a link for the videos, and I would highly recommend you watch the entire 15-part teaching because they do not take any short cuts and explore every possible angle from a Hebraic perspective and have come to one conclusion. Here is a direct quote on their website concerning His Name: “As for pronunciation, the ONLY grammatically possible pronunciation, from which all abbreviations/contractions can be formed, is ‘Yah-weh.’
Video: https://youtu.be/FatR_eE6zMU
Website: Discover the Pronunciation of the Creator's Name, YHWH | HebrewGospels.com
2. One of the oldest proofs of the Name of YAHWEH is from what we know as the Soleb inscription, located in modern day Sudan and written in Egyptian Hieroglyphics dated to 1,500 BC which is over 3,400 years old. In a book written by Donald Redford a “Secular scholar,” which means he is someone who has no bias concerning The Name of our Father, writes in his book titled “Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times”, writes “For half a century it has been generally admitted that we have here the Tetragrammaton. The Name of the Israelite God, ‘YAHWEH’; and if this be the case, AS IT UNDOUBTEDLY IS, the passage constitutes a most precious indication of the whereabouts during the late fifteenth century B.C. of an enclave revering this God.”
Joel Kramer, visited this site to confirm what was written in this book and he and all scholars have agreed as to what the Egyptian Hieroglyphs say. This is a quick break down and I’ll leave the videos below as he does a way better job of explaining it: The first hieroglyph says “land”, the second row of 3 hieroglyphs says “Shazu” which translates as Nomads. The third row contains 4 hieroglyphs (The first is a “Y”, the house is pronounced as “ah” the noose/rope is a “W”, and the bird is “Eh”, which is pronounced as YAHWEH! All together the inscription reads: Land of the Nomads of YAHWEH! At the end of 1,500 BC the children of Yisra’el were nomads as they were wandering in the wilderness, so it matches the scriptural chronology.
Videos: https://youtu.be/jlCBKSRlgD8
https://youtu.be/yXIo5Cp7_jc
3. In 2019 Dr. Scott Stripling and his team found an ancient discovery which is a folded tablet known as the “Curse Tablet,” dating to the late Bronze Age, during the time of Joshua. The inscription not only shows the authenticity of the scriptures, but it also reveals the Name YAHWEH in the Ancient Hebrew Otiot pictograph script before the Paleo Hebrew. The tablet says:
“Cursed, Cursed, Cursed--
Cursed by the (EL) GOD YAHWEH
Cursed, Cursed, Cursed
Cursed you will surely die,
Cursed by YAHWEH--
Cursed, Cursed, Cursed.”
The curse tablet represents a binding document, a covenant between the Israelites and the ELOHIM of Yisra’el and the only question the researchers have is whether Joshua wrote this himself or a scribe. This account is found in:
Joshua 8:30-35
“Then Joshua built an altar to YAHWEH ELOHIM of Yisra’el in mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of YAHWEH commanded the children of Yisra’el, as it is written in the book of the Low of Moses (Deuteronomy 27:1-9), an altar of unhewn stones upon which no man has lifted up any iron instrument; and they offered thereon burnt offerings to YAHWEH, and sacrificed peace offerings. And he wrote there upon the stones of the altar a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Yisra’el. And all Yisra’el and their elders and their scribes and their judges stood on the side of the ark, and on that side the priests and the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of YAHWEH, the natives as well as the sojourners; half of them toward mount Gerizim, and half of them toward mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of YAHWEH had commanded, and they should bless the people of Yisra’el as before. And afterward Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and the cursing’s, according to all that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua did not read before all the congregation of Yisra’el and before the women and the little ones and sojourners who were among them.”
Videos: https://youtu.be/zjqmUTN1RTE
https://youtu.be/VDD92qp_lfQ
4. The Aramaic English New Testament says on page 4, footnote #11 “YHWH Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, pronounced YAH-WEH is the Name of the Most High ELOHIM. ““To vocalize the Name YHWH, breathe in slowly while saying “YAH”, then breathe out while saying “WEH”. Andrew Gabriel Roth the translator of the Aramaic English New Testament has a 2-hour video breaking down the Name of our Father here:
https://youtu.be/9ZFP02mAHlQ
5. Encyclopedia Britannica writes, “Although Christian scholars after the Renaissance and Reformation periods used the term Jehovah for YHWH, in the 19th and 20th centuries biblical scholars AGAIN BEGAN to use the form YAHWEH. Early Christian writers, such as St. Clement of Alexandria in the 2nd century, had used a form like YAHWEH, and this pronunciation of the tetragrammaton was NEVER REALLY LOST. Many Greek transcriptions also indicated that YHWH should be pronounced YAHWEH.” Link to the entire article is here: Yahweh | YHWH, Adonai, Elohim, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica
6. The Samaritans who are from the Northern Kingdom of Yisra’el whose ancestry is that of Ephraim and Manasseh call our Father “Shehmaa” which means “The Name”, just as Jews say “Hashem” which also means “The Name”, but that doesn’t mean that neither of them knows His Name, they choose not to say His name out of tradition. And this article is proof of that:
In an article written on April 28, 2006 states “I came across an interesting article by James A. Montgomery, scholar of Samaritanism, called Notes From the Samaritan Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1906) , pp. 49-54. The article concerns a witness to a 19th century Samaritan pronunciation of the tetragrammaton. At the outset, Montgomery mentions that 5th century Church theologian Theodoret preserved in writing a Samaritan pronunciation of the tetragrammaton. It was as follows: Iota-alpha-beta-epsilon (edit: evidently I can't use Greek characters in blogger) or Iota-alpha-beta-alpha-iota (Yabe or Yabai). Of course the usual caveats about transliterating Hebrew into Greek apply (Greek doesn't share the same consonants, so many of them are simply ignored--like the ה (Hey) in this case-- or transposed into what the transcriber considers to be the closest match). What is interesting is that the ו (waw) is written with a beta, which would mean that to Theodoret's ears the ו(waw) was pronounced as a consonant and probably like how we pronounced the letter v and not w. Montgomery then notes that Samaritans actually tended not to pronounce the tetragrammaton at all, like Jews, but rather they substituted the word shema (in the sense of שם, the Name, just as we say השם, Hashem). This fact is readily confirmed by perusing articles on the web site by and about the Samaritans.
It seems that in the early 1800s French scholars who were carrying on a correspondence with Samaritans were trying to get them to tell them how the word was pronounced, which they were reluctant to do. But in a letter to Silvestre de Sacy one of them spilled the secret: he wrote in vocalized Arabic characters something like Ya'-ha'-waw-ha' (again, can't do Arabic, apparently) which is Yahwa or Yahwe in English. De Sacy himself apparently didn't notice the potential signifigance of this--he hadn't been asking anything about the pronunciation.
It was later noticed, and compared by scholars with Samaritan rhyming hymns. To one scholar, Emil Kautzsch, these rhymes suggested that the final consonant was Yahwe, rather then Yahwa. (It is interesting to note that Kautzsch cited the rhymes found in R. Wolf Heidenheim's Bibliotheca Samaritana. R. Heidenheim is the one Grade A maskil who is cited as a source in Artscroll's Stone Chumash). Other scholars pointed out that other rhymes favored the other pronunciation, with an a at the end. So no conclusion could be drawn, especially since in the popular Samaritan pronunciation the consonants of the tetragrammaton would be read shema, which means that the rhymes probably were meant for that word.”
This article was inconclusive on whether it’s YAHWEH or YAHWA and there are no other variations mentioned. As written in the article James Montgomery the Samaritan scholar said it was “YABE” with the “B” pronounced as a “V” which would make it YAH-VEH which is closer to YAH-WEH.
Article: On the Main Line: How do Samaritans pronounce the tetragrammaton, י-ה-ו-ה?
7. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible records a note in Genesis 22 which says “Since, according to the Bible itself, the Name YAHWEH-----translated “LORD” in most modern editions of the Bible----was later revealed to Moses in the book of Exodus (3:13-15), students of the Pentateuch have long debated the use of YAHWEH in the book of Genesis. A common solution suggest that an early author/editor indiscriminately used the term in his copying of the text. 4QGen-Exod----sure to fuel the debate afresh---“replaces” the term YAHWEH in Genesis 22:14 with more common Hebrew term for God (ELOHIM).” So, one of the oldest translations of the scriptures says His Name is YAHWEH the only thing that was debated amongst scholars is whether His Name was revealed in Genesis or Exodus. Also, in a book titled “The meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls”, written by James VanderKam and Peter Flint on page 94 and 95 concerning the portion about the Samaritan Pentateuch writes “The variant readings in group 8 specifically Samaritan features, including the defense of ELOHIM’s honor of Moses and other ancient heroes; legal differences from the Masoretic Text; and specifying Mt. Gerizim rather than Jerusalem as the center for worshipping YAHWEH.” The sources in this section are not teachings on the Name, but shows that these scholars and researchers who studied the scrolls or translated them called our Father YAHWEH!
8. As a bonus the Native-American Indians know His Name and here are some beautiful worship songs that will put you in the mood to worship and dance with all your heart:
https://youtu.be/WGith7HpfQw
https://youtu.be/FbAxWfR_gZE
https://youtu.be/Gj2W6npsG-w
I pray that this was helpful and as always may our Father YAHWEH bless you all in YESHUA’s Name!