Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff Allen) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Jewish Wisdom Message-ID: Date: 5 Oct 89 03:59:55 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: WINCO Computer Engineering, INEL, Idaho Lines: 50 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article ken%pyr@gatech.edu (Ken Hall) writes: > >It is good for Christians to read and understand Jewish thought. With which I agree. Then he includes a lenghty article discussing the Torah. This article left me with a question. Every time the article mentions God, it is written like this: >G-d Why? Does this relate to not pronouncing or writing God's name? That would seem to only apply to the tetragrammaton (YHWH), and not to the title `God' (Elohim). I always thought that Jews had no problem with saying `Elohim,' but to attempt to say the tetragrammaton would be blasphemy. So can anyone explain why the article Ken quoted so deliberately avoids writing `God'? Curiously yours in Christ, -- Geoff Allen \ Since we live by the Spirit, {uunet,bigtex}!pmafire!geoff \ let us keep in step with the Spirit. ucdavis!egg-id!pmafire!geoff \ -- Gal. 5:25 (NIV) [Probably one of our Jewish readers can give more detail. But there is a Jewish tradition of "building a fence around the Law", i.e. of voluntarily following rules stricter than those that are directly commanded, simply to make sure that they never get close to a real offense. I'd guess that this is involved. Certainly YHWH was too holy to be pronounced. But you need to be careful to some extent even with lesser words such as the English "God". The commandment against taking the name of the Lord in vain would apply even to the English form. So there's a long-standing Jewish tradition to avoid using any version of the word God at all. You can see this in the NT. It's fairly common for things that are probably intended as references to God to be expressed in passive voice, with the subject omitted. E.g. the beatitudes show this in a couple of says. "they shall obtain mercy" almost certainly means "God will have mercy on them". And "kingdom of heaven" certainly means the "kingdom of God". It was common to use "heaven" instead of "God". Of course the NT doesn't do this consistently, but you at least see some sign of the tradition there. In rabbincal writing, you run into various ways of avoiding direct uses of "God", things like "the Holy One, blessed be He". Before making fun of this tradition, consider its effectiveness. It is very common to hear Christians using the word "God" in casual expressions: "God, it's hot!" You certainly don't hear such things from Jews (at least not those who practice the traditions). --clh]