God’s Name and Christendom
WHILE the church service proceeds in many of Europe’s religious buildings, attenders may chance to look around them and examine the ornate furnishings, the intricate carved work, the frescoes and murals that embellish walls and ceilings—mementos of the Baroque Period of European art. Observant ones will note many symbols and try to figure out what they all mean. There is one symbol among them that may well be puzzling. What can it be?
Often it occupies the most exalted place in the scheme of decoration, so it must be representative of something or someone quite important. It looks like a word of four letters—but, to most people, very strange letters. Frequently the four letters are framed in a triangle that is set amid a brilliant sunburst, either painted or sculptured. What is the meaning of this mysterious symbol that is not even mentioned during church services?
Well, the dictionary has a word for it, a word from the Greek language meaning “four letters.” It is “Tetragrammaton.” It is defined as “the four Hebrew letters usually transliterated YHWH or JHVH that form a biblical proper name of God.” Does it not seem rather odd that there is a Biblical proper name for God and yet clergymen have very little, if anything, to say about it?
PERHAPS IN YOUR CHURCH
Many churches and cathedrals, particularly those dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and even earlier, feature this divine name in Tetragrammaton form. Perhaps it is to be found in your church. Why not look around and find out?
The church at Steinhausen, Germany, for example, has a fresco on the ceiling depicting angels and clouds, the central position occupied by a triangle framing the four-letter name. And far above the altar of the Catholic Basilica in Gossweinstein, Frankish Switzerland, the same symbol appears amid a gilded sunburst. Other locations in Germany where God’s proper name appears in Hebrew lettering are: the Basilica at Ottobeuren; the parish church of St. Trudpert, Minstertal; the Catholic Church at Vilseck, Oberpfalz; the monastery church of the Benedictines at St. George, Isny, Allgäu; the palace chapel of Zeil Palace, near Leutkirch, Allgäu; the Lorenz Church in Kempten, Allgäu.
Since God’s personal name was important enough to be placed in such prominent positions when those churches were built, why is this four-letter Hebrew word not explained to parishioners? Why, in fact, is it usually studiously avoided by clergymen? Is there something embarrassing about this name to modern theologians? Could their tendency to shy away from this subject be due, as some claim, to the fact that the original vowel sounds with which the name was pronounced in ancient Hebrew are no longer known? No, that can hardly be accepted as an adequate reason, for then all of the other proper names in the Hebrew Scriptures would have been dropped—names such as Abraham, Joshua, Melchizedek, and so on. Can you imagine a history without names?
Netherlands clergyman Hellmut Rosin admits that ecclesiastics had to make a decision, in face of the more than 7,000 occurrences of God’s personal name in the original Scriptures. The choice before them, according to this religious spokesman, was ‘to take this sacred name seriously or view it as only a matter of historical interest.’
That some clergymen of an earlier era did take it seriously is obvious. Inside the dome of the Nordlingen Church, Germany, this name dominates the scene. In a ceiling mural of yet another church at Salem, near the Boden See, Moses is depicted at the burning thornbush, and the Tetragrammaton serves as the symbol of God’s presence. Still other occurrences of the name are to be seen in the monastery church in Schöntal, in a church at Waldenburg, twenty miles from Stuttgart, in the monastery of Speinsharth in Kemnath/Bayreuth, Bavaria, and in the Evangelical Church at Fürstenau.
In Strasbourg’s cathedral church, to the left of the clock, is a circle containing three words, one under the other: the Tetragrammaton, and the word for “God” in Greek and in Latin. And not only in Germany, but in Roman Catholicism’s own homeland there are examples of the four-letter divine name. On the facade of the Basilica of St. Victor in Varese it appears prominently in the pediment over the main entrance. Even in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome there are at least two occurrences of the name.
Is it not to be expected, then, that Catholics should know something about this personal name of God—a name so prominent in church decoration? Yet the experience of a visitor to the cathedral in Toledo, Spain, indicates that this is by no means the case. In this church the artist El Greco included the four-letter Hebrew name in one of his famed murals. The visitor was erroneously informed by a tour guide, a professor from Barcelona University, that these four letters stood for “Gloria Maria” in cryptographic Latin.
HOW DOES CHRISTENDOM EXALT GOD’S NAME?
Christendom’s churches, Catholic and Protestant, have made free use of the Bible’s book of Psalms in their liturgies. Yet her parishioners must often be in doubt about who is the subject of their formal praise songs, the Lord Jesus Christ or the Father of Christ Jesus. Throughout the original text of the Psalms the four-letter Hebrew name of God appears more frequently than in any other Bible book, and the underlying theme of the Psalms is powerfully expressed in the words of Psalm 34, verse 3: “O magnify Jehovah with me, you people, and let us exalt his name together.” But worshipers in Christendom’s churches sing about an anonymous “Lord.”
Instead of magnifying the name of the Sovereign God, clerical policy has been to keep silent about the divine name. In fact, theologian Johann D. Michaelis, whose eighteenth-century translations of the Hebrew Scriptures frequently have the German form “Jehova,” admits that his “friends insisted that I not at all insert this foreign word.” Who those “friends” were he does not say, but in response he told them that ordinary integrity as a translator demanded that he reproduce the proper name of God just as other proper names, such as Abraham, Isaac and Joshua, were reproduced.
Meantime, renovation of religious buildings has scarcely kept pace with the brainwashing of Christendom’s divinity students. In the cathedral at Grenoble, France, can be seen an example of the four-letter name, though it is upside down; also in Switzerland, in the Jesuit church at Einsiedeln, in the canton of Schwyz, it appears high up in the ceiling. And in St. Martin’s Church at Olten, Switzerland, in the prominent place usually occupied by the Tetragrammaton, church decorators have placed the name JEHOVAH, spelled out in full.
There can be no doubt that ecclesiastical respect for the One “whose name alone is JEHOVAH” (Ps. 83:18, AV) has greatly diminished. Queen Elizabeth I of England, for example, as titular head of the English Catholic Church, ascribed to Jehovah, rightly or wrongly, deliverance from the Spanish Armada, for her commemorative medal declares: “יהוה [not ‘God’ or ‘LORD’] blew with his wind and they were scattered.” But under her successor, King James, religious dignitaries who undertook the translation of the English Authorized Version Bible determined to follow superstitious custom and uniformly insert “LORD” or “GOD” in almost every occurrence of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.
Nonetheless, visitors to St. Nicholas Chapel, on England’s Isle of Wight, can still see the Tetragrammaton in a prominent place on the ceiling. And in the royal city of Edinburgh, over the entrance of the choir room of St. Mary’s Cathedral, the name “JEHOVA” appears in an inscription dated 1614. Also, the city of Plymouth has, on its municipal coat of arms the legend: “The name of Jehovah is the strongest tower.” (Prov. 18:10) Even Westminster Abbey, London, is not without its specimen of the four-letter Hebrew name of the Creator.
King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway (1588-1648) was another monarch of Christendom who professed recognition of Jehovah. On Copenhagen’s Round Tower, on Købmagergade, completed in 1642, he arranged for a rebus inscription that may be translated: “May true teaching and righteousness guide, Jehovah, in the heart of the crowned Christian IV.” Elsewhere in Denmark are to be found examples of prominent use of the Tetragrammaton: above the altarpiece in St. Paul’s Church on Bornholm; in churches at Tønder and Møgeltønder; on the outside gable of the Holmens Kirke (Dockyard Church) in Copenhagen.
King Christian also accorded to the four-letter Hebrew name of the Creator a prominent place on the ceiling of the hall at Frederiksborg Castle, Hilleröd. Also, one of his coins, dated 1644, bears the inscription “יהוה Justus Judex” or “Jehovah the righteous Judge.”
In Sweden, in the Church of St. Mary, Hälsingborg, the Tetragrammaton appears in a rail before the altar. In Finland it is to be noted over the west door of St. Charles Church in Helsinki, as well as in Kuopio Cathedral, the new church in Kauhajoki, East Bothnia, in an old church in the market town of Lohja, and in Oulu Cathedral in the north.
As part of the religious decoration of the Baroque Period the Tetragrammaton symbol found its way across the ocean to the Americas. In St. Paul’s Chapel, Trinity Parish, New York city, a structure completed in 1776, the four Hebrew letters of the divine name appear immediately above the altar. Also, they are to be noted at the center of the arch above the altar, in a gilded, wooden cartouche depicting the rays of the sun. Also, in Trinity Church on Wall Street, in stained-glass windows above the altar, appear letters that are representative of the divine name.
But now, Christendom’s representatives are prepared to forget about God’s own personal name. The inspired Word of God, on the one hand, declares: “Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.” (Rom. 10:13; Joel 2:32) But modernist clergymen share the attitude voiced by a Canadian cleric: “The name that people give to God is also unimportant. He is not likely to listen to their prayers less carefully because they address him as ‘Allah,’ or even, like the North American Indians, as ‘Manitou.’” They ignore the fact that it is not a question of what the people name God, but rather the name that He himself announces as his own personal one.—Isa. 42:8.
THE MYSTERY MAINTAINED
So the policy of keeping quiet about the sacred name is followed throughout Christendom. The significance of that four-letter symbol that dominates so much of church decoration remains a mystery to most churchgoers. Perhaps they view it as just one more of the mysteries of their religion—something they will never be able to fathom. While they repeat the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “hallowed [or sanctified] be thy name,” few worshipers—whether in the church at Palafrugell-Gerona, Spain, or in Belgium’s huge Arlon Cathedral, or in Luxembourg’s churches at Differdange and Dudelange, or in the Cathedral Church of St. Charles in Vienna, Austria—are aware of the relationship of that symbol on their church walls and the prayer they are voicing.
Of course, modern clerics have particular reason, so they think, for maintaining a ban on God’s own personal name as regards their religious services. This is the era of ecumenism, when stress is laid, not on what one believes, but on how far one is prepared to yield on Bible principles in order to achieve a deceptive union of religionists with divergent views. To Bible-forsakers the God of the Bible, under his own chosen name, Jehovah, is too stern, too much of a disciplinarian, too intolerant of lies, hypocrisy and moral delinquencies—a God who demands of his worshipers exclusive devotion.—Nah. 1:2.
Thus, in producing modern Bible translations, Christendom’s theologians and translators prefer to drop the Tetragrammaton or the more understandable Jehovah or Yahweh, and substitute some more neutral-sounding expression such as “Lord.” However, the Bible assigns no other name to the true God, though it does describe him under various titles. It has only one personal name for God—a name that he himself proclaims and that we should not ignore.—Ex. 34:5-7.
CHRISTENDOM’S FAILURE
The failure of Christendom to magnify God’s own personal name is one of the powerful indications that she has outlived her usefulness. Even in the face of so many examples of where the sacred name was at one time the object of higher regard, clergymen today have banished the name from their formal services. They cavil about the form of the name, whether it should be Jehovah, Yahweh, Yahve, and so on, and in the end decide to forget about it and substitute the vague title “Lord.”
But this failure on the part of ecclesiastics is not allowed to pass unnoticed. Long ago the God of the Bible declared: “My name will be great among the nations.” (Mal. 1:11) He has raised up witnesses in this time of the end loudly to proclaim his name and fame to the ends of the earth. Those Christian witnesses of Jehovah are fully aware of their responsibility to follow faithfully in the steps of the chief Witness, Christ Jesus. They keep ever mindful of the fact that during his ministry on earth Christ Jesus ‘made his Father’s name known to his disciples.’ (John 17:26) They, too, as dedicated slaves of the Most High God, must make known the personal name of the true God as well as his grand purposes toward man and the earth.
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The Tetragrammaton on the facade of the Basilica of St. Victor, Varese, Italy
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The name JEHOVAH on the ceiling of the St. Martin’s Church, Olten, Switzerland