Hebrew Voices #36 – The Name and New Discoveries

The Name and New Discoveries is an exciting interview I had with a fellow alumnus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I shared some new discoveries about the pronunciation of God's holy Name, talked about the "Yehu'ah" theory, and considered whether the English name "Jesus" has any connection to the Greek deity "Zeus". Join me for this raw conversation with Doug Hamp of The Awakening Report. I look forward to reading your comments


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Hebrew Voices #36 - The Name and New Discoveries

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Lema’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon with Hebrew Voices. This week I want to share with you a raw, unscripted interview I did with Doug Hamp. He invited me to come on his program to talk about the name of God. We ended up having a great conversation on a wide variety of topics. Here’s my discussion with Doug Hamp.

Doug: Hello, welcome to the Awakening Report. I’m your host, Doug Hamp. We have a special guest today, Nehemia Gordon. He is going to share with us his perspective on the name of God. I’m very excited to have him. He is a fellow graduate of the Hebrew University, and I think he’s probably quite a bit smarter than me. [laughing] He holds a master’s degree in Biblical Studies and a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. That’s also where I went. That was pretty cool to discover that.

He’s worked as a translator on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and as a researcher deciphering ancient Hebrew manuscripts. He’s a prominent figure in the Karaite Jewish community. Gordon has written two popular books on the Hebrew origins of Christianity and is active in inter-faith dialogue. He speaks at synagogues and churches around the world and leads groups of pilgrims and visitors on tours of biblical sites. Welcome with me, Nehemia Gordon.

Nehemia: Shalom, it’s great to be here.

Doug: Yeah, it’s really awesome. It’s good to have a fellow alumnus from the Hebrew University. That’s pretty cool. Now, you went there, you studied in the Hebrew Faculty. I studied at the Overseas…

Nehemia: I found out we took the same course with Chanan Eshel, who was one of the most brilliant scholars I’ve ever encountered in my life – historical, geography and the Land of Israel, or something like that, it was called. It was one of the most interesting classes I ever took.

Doug: That was one of the most, yeah.

Nehemia: What I loved about Chanan Eshel is he was always, “Let’s look at the evidence and then we’ll make a decision based on the evidence.” A lot of what I encountered in academia was, “We’ve got this thesis we want to prove. How do we prove it?” Which is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do! So Chanan Eshel was one of those few people who really was, “Let’s look at the evidence and then we’ll figure out what it is,” and that’s easy. [laughing] It’s not easy, because you’ve still got to…

Doug: Yeah, you’ve still got to decipher…

Nehemia: …decipher events, decipher what’s important, and what’s not important. I studied in the Hebrew faculty. I did a double major of Biblical Studies and Archaeology. My master’s is just in Biblical Studies.

Doug: Neat. That’s awesome. And I appreciate that; evidence-based research is what we should be doing. That’s what we demand from the harder sciences. Biblical studies et cetera are sometimes considered “soft sciences”.

Nehemia: Think about this. If you went to the doctor and the doctor said, “We know we’re supposed to give you this medicine. We don’t have proof of it, but we’re going to take this study.” And actually, they do that in science.

Doug: They do that, yeah.

Nehemia: They’ll say, “We’re going to ignore all the studies that fail.” I think they just passed a law in the US, or maybe in England, that in order for a study to be valid it has to be registered. Then they have to share the results even if they don’t like them. They used to be able to ignore the results, even a few years ago. That’s what I find happening in a lot of historical studies and biblical studies as well, is people will ignore the stuff that doesn’t fit what they want to argue. They call it in politics – I learned this in US history in eighth grade – it’s called “gerrymandering”. You want to win a district in an election so you have a district that’s some ridiculous shape, so you get the votes.

So people would gerrymander the evidence of whatever they want. I’ve seen that with all kinds of things, but definitely in biblical studies that happens, as well. Not just from people of faith. It happens, I would say, even more so with academic scholars who are coming…

I didn’t realize this, it took me years to fully understand this, but one of the real big problems with publishing something in a peer review journal is, every time you’ve got to come up with something new that no one’s ever said before. If you’re dealing with truth, hopefully you’re not coming with something new that no one’s ever said before. You might be, but more often than not you should be coming up with what, to people, has been obvious for thousands of years and shouldn’t be different.

I’m a Karaite Jew, which is a strictly Old Testament Jew. I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. My father was a rabbi. He taught me sitting on his knees that Moses received two separate and distinct revelations. One was the Written Torah and the other was the Oral Torah, and growing up I just couldn’t accept this Oral Torah. I said, “I just want to follow the word of God,” which is the written Scriptures, what Jews call the Tanach, Christians call it the Old Testament.

But the truth is, if you look at what the Tanach says versus what the Rabbis say, there’s still an 80 to 90 percent overlap, and it’s on those 10 to 20 percent where all of the effort and energy is sometimes invested. Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing. Sometimes it’s something very, very small, where we actually agree on the interpretation, but we don’t necessarily agree on how to implement it today in the 21st century. That’s where things get complicated.

The point is that most of what Jews have historically said is pretty accurate, meaning the way they’ve interpreted the Bible. Like I said, it’s probably that 10 to 20 percent where we have some issues, and I go and say, “What does the Bible say?” That’s my approach.

Doug: What do you think as far as the Oral Law? Obviously, we have a very long tradition, but how far back does that go?

Nehemia: You really want to go down that rabbit hole?

Doug: [laughing] Maybe just a little bit.

Nehemia: Did you ever study with Israel Levine in the Archaeology Department at Hebrew University?

Doug: No, I didn’t study with him.

Nehemia: He gave a great class about the history of the synagogues. One of the things he argued is that the synagogues are a continuation of ancient sanctuaries which became basically illegitimate because of what’s called the “Josianic Reform”. Long story short, in the Tanach you have this thing called High Places. The High Places were destroyed by Josiah, and when they were destroyed, we find out this very surprising piece of information in the Book of Chronicles, that the priests of the High Places don’t disappear, and they don’t accept Jerusalem as the one true place of worship which is commanded by Leviticus 17 and Deuteronomy 12.

Instead they say, “We’re going to continue in our cities to perform some of the ceremonies of the High Places.” I’m paraphrasing, obviously. So it’s very possible that some of the traditions in the Oral Law go back to these High Places, and when the Rabbis say we have these traditions that go back to very early times in Jewish history and the history of Israel, they might not be wrong in some instances. That sounds crazy, but I could give you examples of things that continue, traditions that are maintained. I’ll give you a really simple example.

In the Mishna it says that tying a red string around your arm is forbidden magic. Now, if you go to Jerusalem today and you go to the Western Wall, there will usually be old ladies who will have this red string, and they’ll give it to you, and it’s free, except they want money, and you’ll tie the red string around your hand and it’ll bring you good luck.

Now, wait a minute. It’s says in the Mishna, written around the year 200, that this is forbidden magic. Today, if you ask any religious Jew, he’ll tell you, “Oh, no. It’s a very holy string.” It’s some kind of thing that’s wrapped seven times. This spool of string is wrapped seven times around the Tomb of Rachel. All kinds of blessings are made over it.

There’s even a story where Ashton Kutcher, the famous actor, had one of those red strings because he’s into Kabbalah. He had one of those red strings on his arm, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars brushing it out of the Hollywood movie that he was in. Because he refused to take it off because it brought him a good blessing. So there you have an example of a tradition that’s 2,000 years old. 2,000 years ago, the Jewish establishment understood this is superstition and therefore forbidden by Deuteronomy 18. The called it “darkei ha’Amori”, “the ways of the Amorites” or magic, superstition.

Today, it’s accepted that we have an ancient tradition of doing this, and I come along and say, “This is forbidden, not only by the Written Torah but by the Oral Torah it’s forbidden!” And people laugh at me. They say, “You’re telling us something from some book, even if it’s our book.” They literally laugh at me in the face when I tell them, “This is forbidden.” And I show them in the book, they don’t care. “My rabbi did this, his rabbi did this. This has been done for centuries.” I don’t doubt it’s been done for centuries.

So my point is that here we have an example of something which is proclaimed to be Jewish tradition and actually goes back to something that even according to the Oral Law is a forbidden superstition. I suspect many of the traditions in the Oral Law go back to the High Places. Many of them may be very, very old, and what I mean by that is, you look at the Book of Judges, we have this great story about this priest at a High Place who has a silver statue, and he’s apparently the grandson of Moses. I say “apparently”, are you familiar with the hanging Nun? We’re talking about the name, but this is a great, great topic.

Doug: Go for it.

Nehemia: There is one passage in Judges where it mentions that he is Yonatan the son of Menashe. But if you look at Judges 18:30, “Then the children of Dan set up for themselves the carved image. And Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Menashe and his sons were priests of the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of his land.” If you look in the manuscript it says Menashe, but the Nun us hanging halfway as if it was into the word, and if you take out the Nun it doesn’t say Menashe, it says Moshe.

So this is the grandson of Moses, and he’s involved in a High Place, and not only is he involved in a High Place, the very fact that he’s descended from Moses is his claim to legitimacy. He’s saying, “Look, you’re reading in the book that my grandfather is telling me it’s forbidden to have a statue of the God of Israel, a silver statue? My grandfather wrote that book. Who do you think you are?” That’s the conversation that went on back then. So it’s very possible that some things in the Oral Law go back to the High Places.

Doug: Now, when you say the “Oral Law” you’re suggesting that the things in the Oral Law were written against some of things, is that what you’re suggesting?

Nehemia: Oh, no. That some of the actual traditions in the Oral Law go back to the High Places. There might be things against the High Places. It’s interesting, because if you look in the Talmud… By the way, when we say “Oral Law” today, what we really mean, because it’s not oral anymore, so what we mean is the Talmud, the Mishna, and there maybe a few other things that we can throw in there. Not all of the Midrashim even, but the earlier ones. That’s generally what we talk about when we say the “Oral Law” today. If you ask Orthodox Jews, they’ll throw the Zohar in there, as well. But that’s an anachronism.

So no, I think there may actually be things in this Oral Law that go back to the High Places, and according to the Rabbis, the High Places before the time of Solomon were permissible. Where does it say that in Leviticus 17 and Deuteronomy 12? Leviticus 17 talks about bringing all sacrifices to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and Deuteronomy 12 talks about bringing your sacrifices only to the place where God chooses to put His name. There was only ever one place like that. It was first the Tabernacle, wherever that happened to be, and then it was the Temple in Jerusalem.

Like I said, this is a major digression. We want to get to the name, but I think it’s important. One of my issues when it comes to the name is that it’s the Rabbis who forbid us to speak the name. I grew up that we don’t speak God’s name. In your community – I’m assuming I know what your community is, and I guess I don’t really – but in your presumed community, there are tremendous differences…

Doug: [laughing] It’s Messianic.

Nehemia: You’re Messianic, okay. I was assuming that. In your community there are a hundred different theories of how to pronounce the name, and people will pronounce it in those different ways. In the Jewish community, people don’t pronounce the name. It’s forbidden. I grew up with this idea that this was absolutely completely forbidden.

Later, I find out that well, yeah, it’s forbidden now, but when the Messiah comes it will be permissible again. In fact, everybody will say the name when the Messiah comes. That’s actually right there in the Talmud. That wasn’t something that was taught in the synagogue. When I studied Talmud as a kid it was very specific passages. There were vast passages. But if the Talmud is – and I’m guessing off the top of my head – if it’s 1,000 pages, then the average Orthodox Jew who has a very advanced education won’t read more than 200 of those pages. The other 800 pages - I don’t know if that’s the exact number. I’m pulling a number out of the air. It is probably something in that neighborhood.

Maybe they’ll read 200. Even 50 pages would be considered quite good. So who knows what’s in this other 950 pages, right? It turns out this is one of the statements in those pages. Today, it’s quite easy to search these things with computers and the internet. I have a database that cost me like $1,000 where I can search not all of Rabbinical literature, but a large percentage of it - in Hebrew, of course.

Doug: There are 2,711 pages in the Babylonian Talmud.

Nehemia: There you go, okay.

Doug: Included in the Gemara.

Nehemia: The Gemara includes the Mishna. It’s inclusive of it. Isn’t Google amazing? So of the 2,700 pages, I would guess that a very educated Orthodox Jew might read 200 of those pages. But that would be a Yeshiva education. That’s an advanced education. Think about that. I’m bad at math, but that’s less than 10 percent. What’s in the other 2,500 pages? It turns out one of the things that’s in there is that the prohibition to speak God’s name is not from the Torah. The prohibition to speak God’s name is from tradition, and it’s a relatively late tradition.

There’s a rabbi named Hanina ben Teradion who was burned at the stake by the Romans during the Hadrianic persecutions, meaning roughly sometime around 135, 138 (CE), some time in that neighborhood. We don’t know the exact year. He was burned at the stake by the Romans for speaking the name of God the way it’s written, or it says, “According to its letters,” meaning he spoke the name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

Of course, the problem is, once the tradition really took hold sometime after that… By the way, what we’re saying is, 100 years after Yeshua of Nazareth, there was a Rabbi burned at the stake for speaking the name. That’s corroborated by other sources, which is incredible.

Doug: Why would the Romans burn this guy at the stake?

Nehemia: They didn’t want the Jews to circumcise their children, they didn’t want the Jews to observe the Sabbath, and they certainly didn’t want the Jews calling upon the name of their God. If we can get everybody to say “God” then we can all pull a bait and switch and say, “It’s the same God.”

Doug: Ah, clever.

Nehemia: If we get everybody to say, “Theos” or “Domini…”

Doug: Domini, or something.

Nehemia: Deus, in Latin. But in the Eastern Roman Empire and Israel it would have been Theos, which is the Greek word. If we get everybody to say the same word, and it’s a generic word… If I say “Zeus”, if I’m a Greek – God forbid [laughing] – and I go to India and I say, “Hey, I worship the same god as you and his name is Zeus.” They’ll be like, “Wait a minute. No, our God’s not called Zeus.” But if I go to the people in India and I say, “We worship the same god and his name is God, we happen to call him something, and you call him something else.” That was a very popular idea in the Eastern Roman Empire at the time. And the Jews were considered backward that they said, “No, we’re the only ones who worship the true God, and He has a name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.” So they made this ruling forbidding Jews to speak the name the way it was written.

It turns out this is actually a prohibition originally by the Romans. Then the Rabbis have some internal reasons to forbid it, as well, but these things line up around the year 150 or 200. By 250 the name is…

Doug: It’s a goner.

Nehemia: It’s well-entrenched that you don’t speak the name. I wouldn’t say it’s a goner, but it would be very unusual, I think. I’ve found documents where there’s a rabbi in the 15th century who got in trouble because he was speaking the name according to its letters. The same thing the rabbi in the Hadrianic persecutions did, who was burned at the stake by the Romans. I found a document which has never been published and it’s never been translated into English, and I’m going to release this in a study soon, God willing. It describes this sage, and he’s rebuked by a rabbi because he speaks the name according to its letters. Well, wait a minute - that means he knew how to speak the name.

The assumption is that Jews didn’t know the name, and so if you go and look at scholarship, if we go to our alma mater, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and ask scholars, “How was this name pronounced?” First, they’ll say, “We’re not really sure,” but the best evidence we have comes from four major types of sources. We’ve got Christians writing in Greek. We have Pagan sources – and by “Pagan” I actually mean Pagan, meaning people who worshipped Horus, and that kind of thing. Usually they wrote magical texts, and amulets, good luck charms and things like that. One of the names they used in those good luck charms is the name of the God of Israel. But they’re writing in Greek. Then you have Gnostic sources writing in Coptic, which is translated from Greek, which is translated from Hebrew, or maybe from Aramaic and then from Hebrew. Then you have Akkadian sources, which are really the weakest of the sources because we don’t really know how Akkadian was pronounced. We can reconstruct Akkadian, but we don’t have a tradition of how it was pronounced.

So they’ll look at any source in the world, but they won’t look at the Jewish sources because the assumption is, the Jews didn’t know the name. But if you ask the Jews, they certainly think they know the name. They won’t speak it. I’m not one of these people who say, “If you don’t speak the name the exact way that I speak it, which is Yehovah, then you are going to be cast down into the pit of hell!” I think that’s utter nonsense. In fact, we have a passage in Psalm 44, I brought this passage in my book, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, I want people to go read that Psalm tonight.

Psalm 44 talks about God looking at our hearts – and I’m paraphrasing – looking at our hearts, I think it says “kidneys” if I’m not mistaken [laughing], and examining what’s really in our heart even if we call upon the name of the wrong god, of a foreign god, He’ll accept that from us if our heart is in the right place. It’s describing there a situation where Israel’s in exile and turning to God, and we don’t even remember… It’s not that we don’t know His name - we’re calling on the wrong name! If this is the context of Babylon, we’re calling on Marduk or whoever.

Doug: It’s verse 20, it says, “If we had forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to a foreign god, would not God search us out for He knows the secrets of our heart?”

Nehemia: Right. And again, I think it Hebrew it says “kidneys”, but whatever. What verse is that?

Doug: That’s 20 and 21. No, it’s actually “lev”, so it’s the word lev.

Nehemia: Oh, it is?

Doug: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. Because a lot of times it will talk about searching out your mind. Oh yeah, it’s “ta’alumot lev”, it’s “klayot”, which is… they didn’t think of the brain like we do. Anyway yeah, so it’s lev. Okay, so it’s the hidden things of the heart is what it says, “talumot lev”. It’s beautiful.

Anyway, the point is, if we call Him the wrong name, He’ll have mercy on us. So if we call Him the right name and we mis-pronounce it, I don’t think He’s going to reject us and cast us down to the pit of hell. I think He will accept our prayers - I believe. I think that’s consistent with that verse and pretty much everything else I read in the Tanach.

My name is Nehemia. There are people who call me Neheemia, and Nehemyah. I say, “Oh, that’s fine. Just don’t call me baldie.”

Doug: [laughing] There you go.

Nehemia: Calling upon the name of the Creator of the Universe, you know the name of God appears in the Hebrew Bible 6,827 times. So it appears more than all of the titles combined. We have these wonderful, beautiful titles, “Elohim”, which is God. And I have no problem with saying “God”, which is the English translation of Elohim. Sometimes I’ll encounter the word police, and the word police will say to me, “Oh, no. You can’t say ‘God’! God is the name of a Norse deity.” I’m like, “I speak English. Ani yachol ledaber itcha be’Ivrit im ata rotzeh, aval ata lo tavine oti.” You actually do understand me! Okay.

But I could speak the entire conversation in Hebrew, and then I’ll say, “Elohim”. If I’m speaking English I’m going to say, “God” and “Lord”, which is a translation of Adonai. Technically, Adonai is “my great Lord”. So we have these beautiful titles that appear somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 times. It’s complicated, because how many of those Elohims refer to foreign gods? I don’t think anybody’s ever counted. My guess is somewhere around 2,500 times that God is called by these various titles. Maybe it’s 3,000. The name itself is in the Aleppo Codex 6,827 times and the Leningrad Codex, 6,828 times. That’s more than all the titles combined – actually twice as many times as all... So this is an important name!

You’re coming from a New Testament perspective, and from a New Testament perspective – which I can only speak as a researcher about the New Testament, I’m not a Christian, I’m not a Messianic Jew. But from the New Testament perspective, I think you have some really strong evidence that it’s an important name. You have this talking about Yeshua saying, “I came in the name of my Father,” again, I’m paraphrasing. And there’s this incredible passage I was discussing recently with someone, John 10… to me, and this is one of these passages that you read and you don’t really pay that much attention to - or at least, what the ramifications are for this particular topic.

Everyone will dissect this, looking at a different issue, and I’m looking for the passage where he talks about teaching his disciples in his father’s name. Help me out here. “My father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of…” No, that’s not it. It’s somewhere around there. Let’s see...

Well, it’s very important, and so what people will do is they’ll perpetrate this anachronism. Anachronism is when you project something back in time from the wrong time period. One of my favorite examples is from the movie, History of the World Part 1, which dates me. There’s this scene where I think it’s Richard Pryor, and he’s walking in the Roman forum with a boom box, [laughing] which the young people don’t know what that is. It’s like an iPod or a cellphone, but it’s a giant thing that people would hold up to their ear. In ancient Rome they didn’t have boom boxes, that makes it an anachronism. People who project this prohibition to speak God’s holy name onto Yeshua of Nazareth, I believe that’s an anachronism, and that’s a whole side track that I don’t know if we want to get down.

Doug: I would like to, actually, but it’s John 10:25, “In my Father’s name they bear witness of me.”

Nehemia: No, that’s not the one.

Doug: Well, three strikes and I’m almost out here. [laughing]

Nehemia: Yeah, well it’s my fault. I should have the verse off the top of my head before I brought it up. No, I was reading this with a Messianic, and he was like, “This proves it.” I’m like, “Wow, I hadn’t really thought of that.” Now I’m looking in my computer program at all the places in both the Old and New Testament where it says the word “name”. I’ve got to find it, because now that I brought it up.

Doug: You’ll find it before the end of this show, so that’s the…

Nehemia: Right. Maybe it’s not John 10. I could be in the wrong…

Doug: It says, “I’ve come in my father’s name and if you didn’t receive me, if another comes in his own name,” that’s John 5. In John 12, “Father, glorify your name.” Maybe that’s it?

Nehemia: Anyway, it’s in there somewhere, I’m pretty sure. But we definitely have this idea of him coming in his father’s name. How do you do that if the name isn’t spoken? Now, here’s where people get kind of strange in your community, because you’ll have people say, “The name of Jesus isn’t Jesus. It’s Yehushua.” Why is it Yehushua? Because the father’s name is Yehua, and we have to have that Yehua inside the name Yehushua. Which maybe you can explain that to me, because I have no idea…

Doug: I need to speak here. I don’t know where you got that, but they have their sources…

Nehemia: It really sounds like a series of non-sequiturs to me. Here’s what they’re missing. There are many names in Hebrew which are compound names. We like to call them in scholarship, “theophoric names”. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s the name of a person who has the name of his God in his name.

What’s an example of that? I’ll give you an example which has nothing to do with the God of Israel, which shouldn’t be controversial. The second king of Israel, most people think it’s David, but actually the second king of Israel is the son of Saul, whose name is Ishboshet, which means “man of shame”. But his friends didn’t call him Ishboshet, that would have been a nasty thing to call him. It’s intended to be such in the Book of Samuel. His friends called him, we know from Chronicles, Eshbaal, which means “man of Baal.” That’s a theophoric for ish, which is man, and Baal, which is the name of the Pagan deity – not the name of the Pagan deity, it was the title of the Pagan deity. The name of the Pagan deity was Hadad, but the Canaanites believed that was an ineffable name. They weren’t allowed to speak the name of God, it was too holy to speak, so they called him “Lord”, which is an interesting thing.

We talked before about traditions coming from the High Places. Who knows? They didn’t call Hadad by his name, they called him Baal, and there’s a King of Israel called “Man of Baal”. Theophoric names are, for example, Joseph is “Yehovah yosif”. “Yehovah will add”, supply. It’s a blessing. So the man walks around his whole life named Yosef, and he’s carrying the name of the Creator of the Universe, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, in his own name, in the name Yosef.

Doug: Or Yehoshafat, right? That’s another good one.

Nehemia: It means “Yehovah judges”. Yehoyada, “Yehovah knows”. These are all kings. Yehoram is “Yehovah is on high”, or “Yehovah is lifted up”. I don’t remember the exact number, but there are a bunch of names like this. There are also names that have the theophoric element, meaning the name of the God at the end. For example, we have Yishayahu, is “Yehovah saves”, which is the same name as Yehoshua. The only difference is, you take the Yeho- and the yoshia, and that’s Yehoshua, and if you switch them around you get Yishayahu.

Now, wait a minute. Why is it Yeshayahu? If some of the people that we’re encountering on the Internet - let’s put it that way - if they made up the rules of Hebrew grammar, so the name Joshua is Yehushua, and the Isaiah should be Shuayahu, right? That’s now how Hebrew works! The name Isaiah is Yeshayahu, not Shuayahu. [laughing] It’s just not how it works. And the name Joshua isn’t Yahushua, it’s Yehoshua. Why is that? There are all kinds of rules and some of them, quite frankly, are arbitrary, but there is a certain amount of consistency in some of these rules.

If you look at those rules, all of the names that begin with Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey begin with Yeho, and there are some exceptions, like Judah, which I’ll get to in a minute. And all the names that end in Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey are yahu at the end.

What’s an exception? By the way, the yeho truncates to yo. And so Joseph is Yosef, but the full form of Joseph appears in the Tanach at least as Yehosef, which is “Yehovah yosif” or Yosef, “Yehovah will add”. There’s an exception, Judah. Why is Judah an exception? Because it’s “Yehovah odeh”. The name should have been Yehodeh, or Yeho’odeh, right? Hebrew doesn’t like that.

Many languages, including Hebrew, have this process called dissimilation. It’s the opposite of assimilation. Dissimilation is where you have two similar sounds and it creates a difference to avoid having two similar… So Yeho’odeh becomes Yehuda. Yeshua’s an example of that. Yeshua, the full form of the name Yeshua is Yehoshua, which is simply Joshua. In Second Temple times the letter Hey was not pronounced, or it was pronounced in a much softer way by many Jews. So Yehoshua became Yoshua, and Hebrew doesn’t like this o-u cluster, so Yoshua, by dissimilation, becomes Yeshua.

There’s another name like that, by the way. Yehu, who was king of Israel, the full form of his name which never appears, is Yehohu, which means, “He is Yehovah”, and Yehohu becomes Yohu, and Hebrew doesn’t like that o-u cluster, so it becomes Yehu, and Yeshua. Those are the same exact examples of dissimilation. Sorry, guys. That’s very technical, that concept.

Doug: To help people to understand some basic English ideas, we have things to help us understand words a little bit better. An apple – you don’t say, “a apple,” because the a-a doesn’t work in English. We’d say, “an apple.” That’s a crude example.

Nehemia: That’s dissimilation. It’s an interesting question, “a apple”. That might be what that is. But let’s be honest, what do Americans really say? If we’re speaking in everyday speech we might say, “an apple”.

Doug: I would say what’s wassup? Wassup, you know?

Nehemia: Wassup, right. Some of those forms have already entered the dictionary, like “don’t” from do not, and “can’t” from can not. But then other ones haven’t entered the dictionary, so we call that slang. The idea of a dictionary is relatively modern. In ancient Hebrew, there’s no such thing as slang. Everything is slang. Everything is just the way people speak, right?

And so you have things like that. You have Yehoshua turning into Yeshua. So for example, you have a figure in Second Temple times, he’s a High Priest. He’s Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, and he’s called Yehoshua ben Yehozadak. In another place in the Tanach he’s called Yeshua ben Yozadak. So both his name and his father’s name are truncated, and that’s because the Hey was weakened and hence dropped. They call it “syncope” if I’m not mistaken, in these fancy Latin words for these Hebrew concepts. They didn’t know what it was called, they knew how to speak. You could say they spoke wrong, but everybody spoke that way, so what made it wrong? [laughing]

Doug: [laughing] Yeah, that’s the thing. They weren’t checking their grammar books. They weren’t checking their dictionary. They were just talking.

Nehemia: Because grammar books didn’t exist. And dictionaries didn’t exist. What most people don’t realize until they study a language in a university – and you know this, you told me you studied Assyrian at Hebrew University, so you know this - dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, they describe what scholars find. It wasn’t that somebody in ancient Israel was writing the book of Nehemia, my favorite book, and said, “I’m looking for a word that means such-and-such. Let me go look in the dictionary.” No, on the contrary. He wrote what he wrote, and then later, when we go and we look, we say, “What does this word mean in its context?” They don’t always get it right. You look in the Brown-Driver-Briggs dictionary and you can’t assume their definition is correct. Their definition is the end process of them interpreting the verse. And here’s the problem - people who don’t realize that, they’ll go to the Brown-Driver-Briggs – or let’s be honest, the Strong’s Concordance…

Doug: [laughing] Thank you.

Nehemia: They’ll go the Strong’s Concordance and they’ll say, “Now that I got the meaning from the Strong’s, let me go interpret the verse.” And that’s backwards! That’s the tail wagging the dog! That’s the opposite of the very man who created the Strong’s Concordance. What he was supposed to do - I’m not sure he actually did this – but what he was supposed to do was go to the verse, figure out what the word means in all the different verses – and it might have four different meanings – and then you give the definition in your lexicon. And I say I’m not sure he did that, because sometimes it sounds like he pulled the definition out of thin air, especially in the lexicon.

So that’s a very important distinction. Are we talking about the name yet? I’m not sure. But I’m going to let you lead the conversation.

Doug: We’re getting there, and I definitely appreciate that because these are some of the things that are on my mind. I’ve tried to share some of the things you were saying, I’ve shared these in my own way with people, especially about the name Yeshua - that one drives me nuts, that you have to say, “Yashua” or all these variations that they come up with. I’m like, “You know, that’s just not right.” Then of course, the whole thing about Yehua... I’m like, “You know, guys…?”

Nehemia: I want to make a sharp distinction here. You studied at Hebrew University so you understand this. The reason there’s a question about how to pronounce the name of the Father, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, is because Jewish tradition going back 1,800, 1,850 years, had a prohibition to speak that name. And the name was preserved, but it was preserved underground. When somebody spoke up like in the 15th century and actually spoke it, he was publicly condemned. That’s how we know it, because we have the letter of condemnations, that’s kind of cool.

The name Yeshua, which is a shortened form of Joshua, of Yehoshua – and how do I know that? Because Joshua, the son of Nun, and Joshua the son of Yehozadak, two figures in the Bible, are called “Yehoshua” and “Yeshua”. So that’s not even a question. So the name Yeshua, which is short for Yehoshua, isn’t a matter of dispute. There’s never been a question about how that name was pronounced, because it was a name people had. I’m actually doing some genealogy, it’s one of my little hobbies that I’m working on recently. I’ve been able to trace my ancestry back to King David, which is pretty cool.

But I’ve found I had an ancestor who I always was told his name was Yehoshua, and it was - his name was Yehoshua. But it’s written in the documents as Yeshua. So people always had that name, so there was never a question how to speak that name. So when people come along and say, “The true name of…” they’re Messianic, so we’ll say “of the Messiah, is Yehushua”. It’s like, “Why do we need to make up a new name where a name has existed for thousands of years?” There happened to be a man from Nazareth. Of course, you would say it wasn’t “happened to be”, I don’t want to get in the middle of that. My point is that his name was Yeshua, which is a very common name at the time, and if you would have asked any ancient Israelite, “How do you pronounce his name?” he would have said, “Yeshua”. He would have done a little Ayin thing.

Doug: Yeah, exactly, of course.

Nehemia: It would have been Yeshua. It wasn’t a question, and it isn’t a question today! [laughing]

Doug: For some of the listeners, again, sometimes a prophet is not appreciated in his own city. But this whole idea that the name “Jesus”, the English name Jesus, is an abomination, because it’s actually from “Hey Zeus”, or any one of these stupid variations. I pull my hair out, too. I’m like, “You guys. Are you serious? Come on.” Just address that. Maybe they’ll listen to you if they don’t listen to me.

Nehemia: All right, let’s back up. The name Yehoshua became Yeshua in Second Temple times, and that was because the letter Hey, there were Jews who didn’t pronounce that letter, or they pronounced it in a very soft way, and Yehoshua became Yeshua. Okay, yoffee. Now we’ve got that far.

Then you come along to Greek times, and there are Greek Jews up in the Galilee. In Greek there’s no “sh” sound. Yeshua became Yesua. In Greek, pretty much every name ends in “on” or “eus”, right? Joseph becomes Josephus. Yesua becomes Yesus, and there are people named Yesus who have nothing to do with the man from Nazareth. Why do I say that? Meaning the man in the New Testament, Yeshua of Nazareth? There are people named Yeshua who are also called Yesus, and there’s this amazing ossuary – an ossuary is a bone box – it was discovered in Israel in the ‘70s or ‘80s and it was published by this guy named Rahmani. I have a little book called The Naming of Jesus in Hebrew Matthew, I bring you a little reference there. On one side of the ossuary it says, “Yeshua”. When they would bury somebody, they would let the body decay, and then they would crawl into the tomb about a year later and collect the bones and put them in a box. That was called “second burial”. The box used for second burial to put the bones in is called an “ossuary”. It was considered an honor specifically for a son – we can’t even imagine this today – but it was specifically considered a blessing and an honor for the son to collect the bones of his father.

We have hundreds, maybe thousands of these ossuaries, certainly hundreds of them have names on them of who’s buried in them. One of the ossuaries has the name Yeshua on one side in Hebrew, and on the other side it says, “Yesus”. Why does it say Yesus, which is Jesus? There’s no J in ancient Greek, so in English they wrote it with a J. When it was originally written as a J in English, nobody pronounced it “Jesus”. They pronounced it “Yesus”, like in Greek.

Over time, people who didn’t know Greek and Latin forgot and so they started pronouncing it “Jesus”. But Yesus was the name of some guy who died in Jerusalem and he’s buried in this ossuary that was discovered by archaeologists, and it’s not Yeshua of Nazareth, I’m not saying that. On the contrary, it’s just some guy. It was a very common name, and his name was Yesus.

Did you hear the controversy a few years ago about the other ossuary that said, “Yeshua, son of Joseph?” So what they didn’t mention – I don’t think they mentioned it, to be fair, maybe they did mention – but certainly in the news media they didn’t mention that were two ossuaries from the Second Temple period that say, “Yeshua, the son of Joseph,” [laughing] because it was such a common name!

I just found out there’s another guy named Nehemia Gordon. He spells his name the same way I do. And that’s not a common name. So imagine if your name is John Smith, well of course there’s another John Smith in Jerusalem. So Yeshua bar Yosef or ben Yosef was like John Smith. It was such a common name. Maybe it wasn’t quite John Smith, but Yeshua was probably one of the most common… Simon, Yeshua, Joseph. Those were among the most common names, to the point where, for example, when you read the Mishna and you hear something Rabbi Yosef said, Rabbi Joseph, you don’t know who that is. There are 10 guys named Rabbi Joseph. Judah was a common name. There were a bunch of different historical figures named Yeshua.

The point is that this was such a common name, there was never a question how to speak it. The name Yesus in Greek, there’s no theological negativity there, or connotation. It’s simply the Greek form of Yehoshua, and it comes from the fact that the Greeks don’t have a “sh” sound. They make it “s”. They don’t have what’s called the “ayin”. I won’t get into that complicated thing, but there’s a letter in Hebrew that most English speakers can’t pronounce. That’s the last letter of Yeshua, and so Yeshua becomes Yeshu, which then becomes Yesus. It’s just very simple.

When they first wrote that in the English Bible, they were copying it from the German, and in the German, to this day when you have a J, the J is pronounced “y”. When Germans write Jehovah they don’t pronounce it “Jehovah”. They pronounce it “Yehovah”, and when they write “Jesus” they pronounce it something like “Yezus”. My German is kind of rusty, but something like that but the J is pronounced as a “Y” in German. The point is, Jesus has nothing to do with the Zeus. Did you study Greek in your studies?

Doug: Yes, yeah. I did.

Nehemia: There’s a letter in the Greek alphabet called “Zeta”. I was taught to pronounce it “Zeta”, as a combination of D and Z.

Doug: Yeah, me too.

Nehemia: I don’t know where they got that. The modern Greek, I don’t think they pronounce it that way. Anyway, there’s a letter Zeta, and Zeus is spelled with a Zeta, and Yesus is spelled with a Sigma. So the two words have nothing to do with each other. One is an S and one is a Z, or the equivalent of the English of S and Z.

So it’s ridiculous to say that Yesus means “o hail Zeus”. Only in the made-up Messianic language, not in a real language that has ever been known and studied and spoken by ancient people.

Doug: We don’t do that at my Messianic congregation, so don’t worry. [laughing]

Nehemia: Okay.

Doug: Particularly with Yehovah...

Nehemia: So maybe it’s not fair to blame it on Messianic, because there is a movement called the “Sacred Namers”, I think they’re the ones who came up with this. But it’s not based on any solid scholarship. I can’t even say it’s based on unsolid scholarship. It’s completely plucked out of thin air.

Doug: I don’t know where they got it. It’s just a made-up thing.

Nehemia: They got it from the fact that Jesus sounded to somebody like Zeus. But Zeus wasn’t even Zeus, it was Zeos, or Zevs in some dialects of Greece, and so that had nothing to do with Yesus. I mean, it’s ridiculous. Or even “Easus” is probably how it was pronounced. Easus and Zevs have nothing to do with each other. It’s ridiculous.

Doug: Yeah, I love this how you’re bringing out all these great insights into the language. Getting back to the word Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, or Yehovah, I completely agree with you. I wrote a very short paper based on your research. When I read your paper… I counted 39, you might have counted a little bit differently, but I counted 39 different places where…

Nehemia: In the Leningrad Codex, you’re talking about?

Doug: Yes.

Nehemia: As of today, you’re hearing it for the first time, public – literally for the first time. If we would have done this interview yesterday, I would have told you to, “To date we’ve found the name Yehovah with the full vowels in five Masoretic manuscripts.” People will say, “I bought a Bible at the bookstore, and in the Hebrew it has the full vowels, Yehovah.” Okay, I’m not so impressed by that. I want to see it in the ancient Hebrew manuscripts.

We have a class of manuscripts that begin in around the year 800 and go up to around the year 1250 and they’re called “Masoretic manuscripts”. There are about 50 or 60 of them – I say 50 or 60, because it depends which ones you include. It’s always like that. But there’s roughly 50 of 60. Some of them are very difficult to get a hold of.

As of yesterday, we had found the name Yehovah with the full vowels in five of those Masoretic manuscripts - the Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex, Cairo Codex of the Prophets, Damascus Crown, and the Hebrew Union College Number One Manuscript. Today, we found it in the sixth manuscript. Literally, today, and I won’t even take credit. I’ve been communicating with somebody from your community, in fact, who wrote to me, and he had done this amazing work where he went through one of these manuscripts and found the name many, many times in the Damascus Crown.

I said, “Hey, would you like another project?” I sent him a link to one of the key manuscripts of the Masoretic texts, the British Library Oriental 4445, which I’ve been hearing about for 25, 30 years, and never saw until about a week ago. How are you going to get a photo? Are you going to go to the British Library? I learned about a week ago that I can find it online. It’s been digitized, scanned by the British Library! We’re living in this amazing period!

So I write to this gentleman and I say, “Would you be willing to go through - I know it will take you months - but would you be willing to go through and find places that have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey with the full vowels, Yehovah?” And it only has the Torah, by the way, but there’s still something like 200 pages, I don’t know. There’s a lot. Two days, maybe, two or three days. He found two cases that definitively have the name Yehovah with the full vowels.

Doug: Wow.

Nehemia: So as of today we have six manuscripts, and I’ve decided I need to look for more, which in the past it didn’t really occur to me, but now there’s so much that’s been digitized online, I would be shocked if we don’t find it.

Now, imagine that. He looks through the entire Torah. I don’t know off the top of my head how many times the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey appears in the Torah, but it’s got to be at least in the hundreds. I don’t know that it’s in the thousands, maybe you could check for me. He finds it two times in the entire Torah. Now, maybe he missed one or two, but it can’t be more than a handful of times in the whole Torah.

The point is that the scribes, number one, knew the name, and number two, were intent on hiding how to pronounce that name. Every once-in-a-while they slipped up and they put in the full vowels. Most of the time they left out the full vowels. The name is unreadable, because there’s a missing vowel in the Masoretic text, and out of those x-number of times in the Torah, maybe there’s a few more he missed, I’m willing to admit that, the guy was skimming. So let’s say there’s 5 or 10, which I doubt there are. But he found two instances out of hundreds, maybe thousands in the Torah, which means their goal was to hide this name, and every once-in-a-while they slipped up and let the name be known.

Now what happened is, over time, especially when they got to printing, then they started putting that missing O. The O is the missing vowel. Then they started putting it in all the time, especially in the Rabbinic Bible of 1524, there it appears not everywhere, but most of the time.

Doug: Just to let you know, I found it 161 times in the Torah.

Nehemia: Oh. That’s it? Now you’ve challenged me. I’ve got to go see… this will take too long…

Doug: Just doing a quick search here.

Nehemia: How did you search it, out of curiosity?

Doug: That’s with no Vavs on it, or anything like that. That’s only going to be just the name.

Nehemia: In my… No, that didn’t work.

Doug: If I do another search when it has the Vav or any other thing, it could include the...

Nehemia: I’m using Accordance.

Doug: That’s 1,555 times.

Nehemia: Exactly what I’ve found in Accordance. Oh, and to be fair, there were some pages in the Oriental 4445 which were from a later period, because there were missing pages, and some guy in the 1500s decided to fill them in. So I say, don’t look in those pages. We don’t really care what’s in the 16th century. We want to see what’s in this 10th century manuscript. 1,555 in the sections you checked, let’s say there were 1,000. I don’t know the exact number. It’d be worthwhile to go check that number.

So he only checked in the original pages, not in the pages that were supplemented in the 16th century. So we have it in six manuscripts, which is pretty cool. And what’s really cool to me is we have access to these manuscripts today, we have people around the world who care, who are willing to spend their own time, energy and effort to try to find God’s holy name. What an amazing blessing this is. Halleluyah!

Doug: There are some people who would say that the fact that the Jews were so meticulous about copying the text, the suggestion that they were deliberately hiding this, or they missed it, or whatever excuse you want to give them, it seems really far-fetched. What would you say to that?

Nehemia: First of all, there’s no question that the way the name normally appears in the Masoretic text is with a missing vowel. I have not heard a satisfactory explanation of why one of the vowels is missing. The common explanation you’ll find, I think it’s in Gesenius and his Hebrew Grammar, is that the vowels in Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey are the vowels of the word “Shema”, which is the Aramaic word for Hashem, meaning “The Name”. But there’s no evidence for that, he made that up. He was looking for a word that fit into that slot. We don’t have a Jewish source that would suggest that, that would corroborate that. That’s number one.

Number two is, they were very, very, very meticulous. If we’re saying there are 1,000 instances of the name in this Oriental 4445 manuscript in the British Library, and only two of them have the full vowels, that’s pretty meticulous! If you look at human DNA it has genetic mutations… I’m talking about the DNA in my body and your body, because most mutations aren’t going to cause a problem. There are mutations in any person’s DNA, meaning it replicates with more mutations than what these scribes produced in copying the name. That’s actually really impressive, the level of accuracy.

Having said that, I can show you, for example, I was looking at this today, there’s one passage in the Leningrad Codex where it says, “Adonai”, and in the very same verse, it’s in Psalms 60-something, in the very same verse in the Aleppo Codex it says… Oh, I’m sorry, I got that backwards. In one of them it says, “Adonai”, and the other it says, “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey”. That’s a huge difference. That’s not a small difference. Oh, so it’s in the Leningrad that it says, “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey”, and in the Aleppo it says, “Adonai”. That’s why I say there are 6,827 in the Aleppo and 6,828…

So if I search right now in Accordance in the entire Tanach, I’m going to find 6,828 that’s because a Accordance is based upon the Leningrad, and there I got 6,828. But if I were to actually go and look at that specific passage in Psalms, I can pull it up if you really want to know where it is. If I look at that specific passage in the Aleppo, which I did, I looked it up, and I even posted a photo side-by-side of the exact passage with the Aleppo and the Leningrad on my Facebook page a few years back. I was looking through my files today and I came across that image.

So Imagine that - the difference between the word Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey and Adonai is a huge difference. We’re not talking about vowels. We’re talking about four consonants that are different! That can happen. Especially when there’s a word that’s been copied over and over and over, and here’s a really important point. We have six manuscripts that usually the name is missing a vowel, except every once-in-a-while it has the full vowels, and those full vowels are Yehovah. Those full vowels are never Yahweh.

Doug: That’s true.

Nehemia: Those full vowels are never “Yehua”.

Doug: That’s right.

Nehemia: Look, my friend Keith Johnson, he pointed out that there are places where it has the vowels Yehovi, because the scribe was indicating to pronounce the name there as Elohim. He said, “There’s more evidence in the Hebrew language for pronouncing the name Yehovi than there is for Yahweh.” And he’s right.

Now, one of the pieces of evidence, I don’t think I’ve ever publicly brought before, so this is breaking news.

Doug: Go for it.

Nehemia: Recently, I’ve been working on research where I’ve found the name in six Masoretic manuscripts as of this morning, or it has been found. I didn’t find it, somebody else found it. It’s been found in six Masoretic manuscripts with the full vowels, Yehovah, and a few months back I started doing some research – even before that, five years ago. Someone sent me an email and said, “You wrote this book, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, saying that the name is Yehovah. Did you know that’s what the Rabbis say, too?” I said, “I didn’t know that. What do you mean? The Rabbis don’t know how to pronounce it. Everybody knows that, and if they do know how to pronounce it, it’s a secret.”

It turns out it is a secret. But every once in a while, in the tens or hundreds of thousands of pages in Rabbinical literature, the secret slips out. I’ve found 11 Rabbis to date who say that the vowels of the name are Yehovah.

Doug: Wow. That is huge, yeah.

Nehemia: So you’ve got six Masoretic manuscripts, and I’ll be honest with you - one Masoretic manuscript has more weight for me than a million rabbis. Don’t misunderstand me. That, for me, is the key information. However, here we have evidence from the Rabbis of how to pronounce the name, and no rabbi I’ve been able to find pronounces it “Yahweh.” Now, I have found rabbis who have proposed other pronunciations, specifically, there was a rabbi in the 12th century named Rashbam who said that the true pronunciation is “Yehiveh”. It’s based on the analogy of Yihyeh. There’s another rabbi who says it’s something like “Yehovahey”, or some really silly thing like that. But there’s a rabbi who says that.

So you have these minority opinions of these individual rabbis. I’ve found three alternative opinions, and in each case, I’ve only found one rabbi who said that alternative opinion. But I’ve found 11 rabbis who say it’s “Yehovah”. When they say it’s “Yehovah”, they’re not proclaiming it from the rooftops. They are hiding it. They are doing everything they can to hide it. I’m working on this study, I’m trying to compile all this. When I got to 11, I said, “Okay, I need to back up. I’m going to call this Ten Rabbis Speak Out on the Name, because that sounds better than 11.

Because 10 in Jewish tradition is a minyan. It’s a prayer quorum. We have 10 rabbis – actually 11 – 10 rabbis who say the name is “Yehovah”, and one of them, it turns out… Remember I told you I was doing this genealogy thing? I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been doing this research, sometimes I won’t be able to get to bed until 5:00 in the morning, because at 3:00 in the morning I’ll be shaking, I’m so excited with some of the things I’m finding. I’m not kidding. It’s just so exciting, some of these sources I’m finding, these Rabbinical sources. At one point a few weeks ago, I decided to put down those sources because my head was spinning. I literally couldn’t see straight at one point, because I was staring at the screen 18 hours a day, reading these sources, and I decided I’m going to go work on my little genealogy project. While I’m working on the genealogy project, I find out I’m descended from this rabbi who’s one of the 11 rabbis [laughing] who says the name is Yehovah.

Doug: Oh, my goodness.

Nehemia: I’m like, “Wow, this is amazing.” That rabbi specifically says in his letter, “You need to hide this letter. It’s very difficult to put these things in writing, so when you get this letter, hide it in a pure and holy place.” I realized, wow. I’ve talked in the past about the sins of my ancestors in hiding God’s holy name. But I meant “ancestors” in the very vague sense, the Jewish people. Now I find out that literally my ancestors, who I could trace back the names in each generation to get back to that ancestor – it’s not just “I know I’m descended from the Maharam of Lublin.” I can show you now, after doing all this research, how I’m directly descended from that rabbi, and he personally was involved in hiding the name. So I really feel I need to atone for the sins of my ancestors for hiding the name.

Doug: That is powerful. That is very powerful.

Nehemia: It really is. It blew me away. I’m trying to work on my little genealogy project and it sucked me back in. [laughing]

Doug: That’s almost something that brings you to one of these tears moments, where you’re like, “Oh, my goodness. This is amazing.”

Nehemia: I’ll tell you the last few months while I was doing this research, I have been shaking, I’ve been in tears, I’ve been where I couldn’t go to sleep. There was this one situation where I found out about a book written in the 13th century, and I was so excited about this, I couldn’t sleep. So I called up a friend in Israel and I begged this friend. I said, “Would you please go to a bookstore, buy the book and overnight it to me?”

Overnight in Israel usually takes three days, so I said, “I’m not going to sleep for three days until that.” I barely slept for three days. And it didn’t disappoint. It turns out it’s a book called The Book of the Divine Name, and it was a book written in 1225, it wasn’t published until 2004 because it was being kept secret, meaning it was only copied by hand for 800 years. It has some really exciting stuff in it, that it looks like we don’t have time to get into. But I am working on this study that tentatively is called Ten Rabbis Speak Out on the Name, or on the Tetragrammaton. I don’t know what I’m going to call it, but it’s really exciting stuff.

Doug: So, if you have a few more minutes…

Nehemia: Sure.

Doug: There are a lot of questions in the chat room here. I’d like to maybe get to a couple of them. First of all, many people say, “Thank you for coming on.” They appreciate that. One person is saying, “The Yehua Brigade have made big assumptions,” that’s for sure. [laughing]

Nehemia: What now? Oh, the Yehua people made big…? So what the Yehua people do – and this is how it was explained to me – they take the name “Judah”, which is Yehova odeh, which becomes Yehuda by dissemination, and they say, “Let’s take out the Daled and it becomes Yehua.” Why would you do that? By what principle of the Hebrew language would you do that? I don’t know.

Doug: Right. This is from a man, one guy is saying that it’s Yehuda, it’s pretty clear.

Nehemia: Yeah, Yehuda is like Yeshua, there’s no dispute about it. I’ve got an ancestor named Yehuda, I’ve got an ancestor named Yeshua. These are names people had as part of a living linguistic tradition. They never disappeared.

Doug: “So the question then is Yehuda, is that proof that it should be Yehua?” That’s one of the questions asked.

Nehemia: I wish I could come up with an example in English of where you take out a letter. [laughing] I can’t think of an example in Hebrew, that’s for sure. I don’t even know what the example is. I mean, you take out a letter and then you get the remaining vowels? I mean, by what principle would that… First of all, Yehua has an Aleph in it. Yehua clearly has an Aleph that’s pronounced in it. Unless they want to say it’s a furtive patach, like Mashiach, but then Yehuda doesn’t have a patach, it has a kamatz, and I hope we’re not confusing people. But it’s two completely different vowels!

It doesn’t even make sense. It’s not just taking out the Daled, it’s taking out the Daled, shifting one of the vowels over to the left, and changing that vowel. [laughing] It’s a lot going on there! What justification is there for doing that?

Doug: Yeah. He says that his statement is absolutely true, that the father’s name is spelled exactly like Judah without the Daled. “You guys are drawing conclusions about that fact, not me,” is what he says. That’s from Adrian.

Nehemia: Absolutely, we’re drawing conclusions based on the consistent rules of the Hebrew language as it was spoken and written for thousands of years. What he’s saying has nothing to do with the Hebrew language. It’s a rule he just made up, that you can take out… and help me out here with the rule in English - I wish I had an example in English - where you take out a letter and then you end… It just doesn’t work that way in Hebrew. I don’t know about English.

I’ll give you an example. The word “Israel”, Yisrael. If I want to say, “He will ask” in Hebrew, how do I say, “He will ask?” I say, “Yisha’al.” Now, if I take out the Reish of Yisrael, I get then Yis’ael. And so “he asks” should be “Yisael” and not Yisha’al. That’s 100 percent true. The word “he asks” is spelled the exact same way as Israel without the Reish. It’s not pronounced that way! That doesn’t even make sense. I don’t know, is that too complicated an example?

Doug: No. And I think what happens is that people get very attached emotionally and theologically to these ideas. Something I’ve tried to tell my students is that guys, if our theology disagrees with the Bible, then we should throw out our theology. And we’re just talking grammar here, we’re just talking grammar, we’re talking academics. And whatever His name is, it’s fine. But the evidence points us to Yehovah. That’s where the evidence is. That’s where the rules of the Hebrew grammar, the dikduk, the grammar shows us that this is what it is.

Yahweh, or Yaveh, however you want to say it, that is not reflected in Hebrew. Yahua is not reflected in Hebrew.

Nehemia: At least Yahweh is potentially a Hebrew word. Yehua isn’t even potentially a Hebrew word. [laughing]

Doug: Exactly, right. Do you happen to think that it’s based on haya, hoveh, yihye?

Nehemia: Oh, absolutely! There’s not even a question about that. That’s the really cool thing, I was recently doing an interview with a Samaritan. It’s a guy named Binyamin Tzedakah. I do this podcast called Hebrew Voices, and I have a such a backlog of episodes I need to edit. Maybe I should do this thing where I get somebody on and we talk live, I don’t know. We talked for six hours, and I’ve got to edit that down to an hour, probably a series of hour podcasts.

I interviewed him maybe a year ago, and he’s the top Samaritan scholar. He’s written 107 books. If I wrote that many books, I don’t even know that I’d be able to keep track of that many. How does he even know he wrote 107 books? Anyway, so he wrote 107 books, he’s the top Samaritan scholar, and in the interview he tells me… I say, “How do you guys pronounce the name of God, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey?” He says, “We don’t pronounce the name today, and we’ve never pronounced the name.”

I say, “Okay, you never pronounce the name. What about in the time of Aaron and Moses?” He said, “In the time of Aaron and Moses we did not pronounce the name. Today, we call God ‘Shema’”, which is the Aramaic name for ‘the name’, “and in ancient times we called Him ‘Asham’,” which is the Samaritan Hebrew pronunciation of Hashem. They have a slightly different dialect of Hebrew. We could go on a whole rabbit trail there, 2 Kings 17, the Samaritans coming in, worshiping a God named Ashama.

Anyway, he said, “While we don’t pronounce the name, I can tell you what it means. And what does it mean?” Binyamin Tzedakah says to me. He says, “It’s haya-hovey-yihyeh.” He that was, He that is, and He that is to come, or He will be.

So you have Samaritans saying that. You have Jews saying that. You even have that in the New Testament. In the Book of Revelation you have three or four passages where it refers to the One who was, the One who is, and who is to come, and sometimes it changes the order, but that doesn’t matter. So you have three different sources unanimously agreeing that the name has the meaning of, “He that was, He that is, and He that is to come.” What does that mean in Hebrew? It means, “He has always existed, He exists now, and He always will exist.” That’s why that’s combined in the New Testament with alpha and omega, first and last, meaning He’s not a God who has come into being at some point and then will cease to exist. He’s eternal. It’s basically the Hebrew way of saying “eternal”.

Now, this actually creates a problem for the name Yahweh, because Yahweh is based on the Hebrew verb “haya”, either the pi’el form or the hiphil form, depending who you ask. It would mean in the hiphil, “He that causes to be.” Okay, but that verb never actually exists in the history of the Hebrew language in that form. You could create a new form. I should say, I don’t know what form existed that wasn’t written down, meaning if two Israelites were having a conversation in ancient times and they wanted to say, “He will cause to exist,” then maybe they would have said “Yahaveh”. But if they ever had that conversation, it was never recorded. We have no evidence that anybody ever used the verb haya to be in the hiphil form, and scholars admit this is a hypothetical form. The reason that especially the German school was attracted to this specific form is that it fit their theology, that the name of God should mean, “He that causes to be”. He is the creator God, right? Genesis chapter 1 begins with the creation - although in Genesis chapter He’s not called Yehovah, [laughing] he’s called “Elohim”, but whatever. That would have been a good time to explain that.

When He does explain His name, He says, “Eheyeh asher eheyeh,” which means, “I will be that which I will be.” That’s the translation of Eheyeh asher eheyeh, meaning He’s explaining the meaning of His name as derived from the root haya, to be. That’s actually the standard explanation. I’m not clever, I didn’t come up with something new. This isn’t like I have to write an academic paper so I’ve got to come up with a new idea.

No, basically, most Jewish scholars who have dealt with this in the past, going back over 1,000 years, maybe 2,000 years, have agreed that Eheyeh asher eheyeh is the explanation of the name, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. The Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey means haya, hoveh, yihyeh, He was, He is, He is to come, He will be.

Doug: Awesome. I think that’s fantastic. We’ve got a number of other questions here. I’m not really sure that some of them are…

Nehemia: Give me some hard ones! I’m not promising to answer. Give me a hard one.

Doug: This is not so much an academic question. Some people are concerned that you don’t believe in Jesus, and so maybe we shouldn’t be talking. Let me say before you say anything - we don’t always agree with everybody that we speak to. I consider Nehemia a great scholar. I think he loves the work.

Nehemia: Don’t you know in 21st century America, if you find someone to punch them in the face and not talk to them, that seems to the new policy that’s being instituted after eight years. Anyway, I’m sorry I interrupted you, I’m Israeli. Go ahead.

Doug: You probably know more about the New Testament than many Christians that I’ve bumped into, and I want to glean what I can from you. I think that’s awesome. Insofar as Jesus is part of this, he’ll speak to you when the time is necessary. But I think this idea that the only conversation that we can have with a non-Christian is about, “Hey, you’ve got to believe in the name of Jesus,” I think that is really missing the point here. Especially for a show like this, we’re talking about a specific topic, and we should stay on that topic.

I know that Nehemia’s been around. He’s been around a lot of Christians, so I’m sure he’s gotten the Gospel on many different occasions.

Nehemia: More times than you have! [laughing]

Doug: Yeah, exactly. So go ahead, whatever you want to say.

Nehemia: I don’t think it’s a hard topic. I think it’s an important topic to bring up. I don’t want to sweep that under the rug. Let’s go back to Yehua. Let me share a story. I got this email a few years back from a guy who writes to me and he says, “How dare you say the name is Yehovah? God personally told me in a vision that His name is Yahuahshi.”

I’m a little bit embarrassed because I wrote back to him and I said, “That’s actually really funny.” I thought he was joking, and he was not joking. He was dead serious. I shouldn’t have mocked him. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t.

This is an important point. If God has told you personally His name is Yehovaheh or Yohuvuhu, then who am I to say that’s not His name? I’m telling you, based on the evidence, based on the information that we have, based on solid logic, language and reasoning, what I believe the name is. I don’t have a recording from God speaking to Moses at the burning bush. All I have is the evidence. If you have God speaking to you directly, telling you the name is something else, well don’t listen to me. You should go call Him that name, once you’ve discerned that’s truly God speaking.

So that’s completely valid. From a theological perspective, if you believe that… And I’ll encounter people who will say, “Nehemia, Yeshua never spoke the name, and we know he never spoke the name because the New Testament was written in Greek, and every letter we have the Holy Spirit, and therefore when it says in the Greek that Yeshua said, “Lord”, that’s not in the translation from the Hebrew Yehovah, and therefore they don’t want to speak the name. I don’t have a problem with that. That’s not my theology. But if you believe that every letter of the Greek New Testament is exactly what was revealed by the Holy Spirit – I don’t know the exact doctrine – and it probably varies, but was revealed by God – let’s put it in those terms – in that original language that we have today, or it was preserved by God so that every single letter is perfect, and therefore instead of Adonai he said “curios” in Greek, he said “Lord”. Who am I to argue with that? That’s a theological position.

And I have theological positions. I believe there’s a Creator of the Universe, and I believe He’s one, and I believe He chose the people of Israel. I’ll admit those are theological positions that I think happened that correspond to history. But these are my theological positions, and I think it’s important to be aware of what are my theological positions that I bring with me to the table, and what are the positions that I’m deriving from the text – and usually it’s a combination, and it might be 80-20. But I think it’s important to be aware of that. That’s extremely important.

I’m very upfront with people. I’m not a Christian. I’m not a Messianic. I’ve had people literally pray over me many, many times, that God would reveal His Son to me. And I’ve prayed for God to reveal His Son to me. I continue to pray that. I want to know the truth. I want to know who God has chosen as his Son to be the Messiah over the world, or a Messiah over Israel, that will bring peace to the world. May that be soon, Amen.

Doug: Amen.

Nehemia: Can I get an amen?

Doug: I agree with that.

Nehemia: Can we get the amen…

Doug: Amen! Amen! Here’s a question from Arthur. He says, “I know you are not there, but how was the language pronounced before the 10th century Masoretes invented the vowel markings, the nikkudim?”

Nehemia: I like that he said “vowel markings” and not the vowels, because that’s a very common misunderstanding. That the Masoretes invented the vowels, which is ridiculous. Every spoken language by definition has vowels and consonants, verbs, adjectives, various other things. The only language that doesn’t have vowels is sign language, as far as I know, this doesn’t have vowels – or it doesn’t have to have vowels. But every spoken language has to have vowels.

The question is when were the vowels written down? There’s a whole library written, debating when the vowels were written down. I’m not going to hash out that debate here. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the vowels were written sometime… and it wasn’t in the 10th century by the Masoretes. The more accepted scholarly opinion is sometime around the year 600 is when you have the Masoretes, between 600 and maybe 800, 900 is when, according to mainstream scholarship, which I can debate, but it’s not worth doing that for this purpose – they had a reading tradition, and that reading tradition was written down sometime between 600 and 900 or so.

So how were the vowels pronounced before that? The same way they were pronounced after it. Because what they wrote down was a reading tradition that was fixed at a very early time in history. What do I mean by a very early time in history? I can prove to you that the vowels were fixed by around the year 90. How do I know that? I bring some of this in my book, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. By the way, I have an 18-hour DVD series, or a YouTube series now, that you can watch online for free, called The Open Door Series. It’s nine hours of me teaching, nine hours of Keith Johnson. A lot of it is on the name, but on other things too, and I’m pretty sure I share this there. I think, I don’t know, it’s nine hours. So guys, go check The Open Door Series, and my podcast, Hebrew Voices, and my website, nehemiaswall.com or nehemiaswall.com.

But… what were we talking about?

Doug: We were answering a question there. Another one, somebody just wanted some clarification…

Nehemia: No, let me answer to that. I can prove to you that by around the year 90, the vowels were written down. And there’s this great story about the Rabbis interpreting a certain passage. They interpret the passage contrary to the vowels. They say, “Don’t read it this way. Read it this other way.” It shows you that the reading was fixed by around the year 90. Now, whether it was written down or not, that’s a matter of debate. But that the vowels were fixed by a reading tradition that even the Rabbis didn’t have the authority and the ability to change, I think it’s a fact.

What’s interesting is that for the purposes of interpretation they read it with the altered vowels. But go to any synagogue in the world today, and they read it with the original vowels. This is very embarrassing to the Rabbis - that in every synagogue in the world they read the verse and the vowels don’t match the way the verse is interpreted. This is in Leviticus 23, it’s in my book Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence.

Doug: You’re talking about the kri and the ktiv, is that what you were talking about? What is this that you’re…?

Nehemia: No, I’m talking about a method of interpretation called “al tikreh”, which translates as “read it not”. What they do is, they’ll take a word – in this specific example it says, “Eleh mo’adei Yehovah asher tikru otam bemo’adam.” “These are the appointed times of Yehovah which you will proclaim them in their appointed times.” They say, “Don’t read it otam, them, read it atem, you.” And what it ends up doing is changing the meaning from, “These are the appointed times of the Lord, or Yehovah, which you will proclaim in their appointed times.” It changes it to, “These are the appointed times of the Lord which you yourselves shall proclaim.” It’s the crux of the entire Rabbinic calendar for years.

Go to any synagogue in the world, go to any printed Bible, and the original vowels are still there. So they didn’t even have the authority to change the vowels. If they could have changed the vowels they would have, and then nobody could have questioned it. In fact, the Karaite Jews questioned it and they said, “Wait a minute. That’s not what it says in the Bible.” And it’s interesting, because this is a story told in the Mishna and it becomes the most quoted Mishnaic passage in Karaite Jewish literature. In fact, it’s even quoted in my book, [laughing] because it’s an example where the Rabbis are interpreting the verse openly. They’re admitting, they’re saying, “This isn’t what it says. But for the purpose of interpretation, we needed to say something else.” And then that specific example, al tikreh, it’s an issue of the vowels. The vowels were fixed by the year 90, possibly before that.

Doug: Wow. I did not know that. That was really quite a lesson. I did not know…

Nehemia: They may not have been written down, but they were clearly fixed in some form, and there are other examples I bring in my book, which are a little bit more technical.

Doug: That’s fantastic. It was really great, really good stuff.

Nehemia: Incidentally, for the purposes of the name it’s irrelevant. Even if the vowels were not written down, people knew how to speak God’s name. My book, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, the reason I called it that is there’s a passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Kedushin 71a, which says roughly, “Rabbis transmit the name to their disciples once every seven years, and some say twice every seven years.” There was a debate of how to do it. They knew what the name was, they agreed it had to be kept secret, but they didn’t want the secret to be forgotten. So they would whisper it to their disciples every seven years.

So whether the name was written down or not with vowels isn’t even that important. When the vowels finally were written down - at least for this purpose it’s not that important – when the vowels finally were written down, it was with the vowels that they knew the name to be pronounced. Again, they usually left out one of the vowels because they didn’t want people like me pronouncing the name.

Doug: So this started because of the Romans not wanting them, so this is after the Bar Kochba revolt that…

Nehemia: Well, it’s one of the things that triggered the Bar Kochba revolt, actually.

Doug: Saying the name or not saying the name?

Nehemia: Not saying the name, meaning the Roman injunction is one of the things that triggered the Bar Kochba revolt. There was an internal reason as well, and that internal reason is actually what the Mishna explains, although you have to read the context, and most people don’t. The internal reason is that people were using the name to heal, and the Rabbis perceived that as magic. According to Deuteronomy 18, magic is forbidden.

So the original injunction in the Mishna says, “Abba Saul says also he who proclaims the name according to its letters.” What does “also” mean? The context, they had been talking about reciting verses over the sick, and specifically the verse, “I am Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, your healer.” What people were doing is they were saying, “Ani Adonai rof’echa,” I am the Lord, your healer.” Then some people were saying, “Ani Yehovah rofecha,” I am Yehovah, your healer.” So that’s what Abba Shaul is coming to forbid.

This isn’t my discovery. This is… Like, for example. Orbach wrote the famous book, The Sages, which I’m sure you encountered at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It’s this massive fat book, two volumes. The second volume is just the footnotes. [laughing] He explains this in one of his three-page footnotes -that if you look in the context and the other sources, this is a prohibition not to speak the name in the year 150 under Abba Shaul. The prohibition was as part of a healing ritual. That was the original prohibition from the Rabbinical perspective.

The Romans had their own things, which they then imposed on the Jews. But from the Rabbinical perspective, the issue was speaking in what they called the “magical incantation”. This is very interesting, because you have the name written in magical texts - I mentioned that a little bit at the beginning. Some of them are Pagan magical texts, so you had some Pagan in Egypt who heard the Jews using the name to heal. He said, “Oh, that’s a good name. I should use that,” and he wrote it down, but he’s writing it in Greek, so they wrote it in something like 60 different ways in Greek. [laughing]

Doug: Okay. So it wasn’t necessarily Jews who were using the name “to heal”, but it was…

Nehemia: Oh, it was definitely Jews. It was definitely Jews who believed in Yeshua, and then, by extension, it was the non-Jews who had heard those two groups using it.

Doug: They were using the name “Yehovah” as saying, “Yehovah, ani Yehovah rofeh, I am the Lord, your healer. I am Yehovah, your healer.”

Nehemia: Which is a verse in Exodus, “I am Yehovah, your healer.”

Doug: Yeah, that’s really amazing. So here they’re using the name as God said, “I am your healer”, so do these things in My name. They’re doing it.

Nehemia: Right. You could imagine that somebody was sick and they didn’t have medicine, and he was lying there in bed, and a healer would come and would pray for him and with him and say… I don’t know what he would say. “May Yehovah heal you as it is written, ‘I am Yehovah, your healer.’” The Rabbis consider that to be a magical incantation, therefore forbidden, and as a result they therefore forbade speaking the name.

What’s interesting is, they never forbade the name, and this is in the Talmud. They never forbade the name for teaching. Specifically, they talk about, “You have to speak the name when you teach your disciples how not to do magic.” [laughing] That’s the interesting context there. They say, “When you’re teaching them about the laws of magic in that context, you’ll speak the name and say, ‘This is how the name is pronounced. You must not say, ani Yehovah rofecha.’” Which is pretty cool.

So the prohibition was never 100 percent. It only applied to people like me and you, not to the elite rabbis. Really.

Doug: And what do you think – the fact that is now being uncovered, that the name is resurging, even some of it’s weirder reforms. What do you think is the significance? Is there a theological or…

Nehemia: Oh, absolutely.

Doug: …end times kind of significance?

Nehemia: To me, this is the fulfilment or the ending of a curse. We have a curse in the Tanakh, a curse of exile. It’s in Jeremiah 44. We never found the John 10 verse. I’m disturbed by that. I’m going to find it and send it to you. It’s probably not John 10, it’s somewhere else. Or maybe somebody who is watching this video in years to come could post it in the comments, that would be nice. He talks there about teaching his disciples in his father’s name, or something like that.

Anyway, so Jeremiah 44. The story of Jeremiah – a lot of people don’t realize this – Jeremiah is this prophet in Israel, and the Babylonians conquered Judea in two or possibly three waves. The first wave, depending on how you count them, is in 597. The final wave is in 586. There may have been an earlier wave, according to some, under Jehoiakim. By the time they’re done in 586, they’re only leaving the peasants and some of the lower aristocracy.

So the Jews decide they’re going to kill this man named Gedalia, who is a cousin of the last king, or from the line of the king. He’s some distant cousin of the king. The Babylonians leave him as a governor and he’s assassinated, and then the Jews realize, “We’re in a lot of trouble. The Babylonians are going to come and slaughter us all. It was bad enough our kings revolted.” They go down to Egypt and they take Jeremiah with them as a captive.

So a curse is placed upon the Jews of Egypt. It’s in Jeremiah 44:26. Let me read it to you in the King James version. “Therefore, hear the word of the Lord…” and Lord there is Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, “All Judah who dwell in the land of Egypt, behold I have sworn by my great name,” says the Lord, or says Yehovah, “that my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt saying, ‘the Lord God lives.’” In Hebrew it says, “chai Adonai Yehovah, as the Lord Yehovah lives.”

So there’s a curse placed upon the Jews who went into exile, and the curse was that they would not be able to speak God’s holy name. That curse came to pass. Now, the curse originally is just about Egypt, but apparently it spread throughout the entire Jewish world, the entire diaspora world of all 12 tribes, that they were cursed and that they were not able to speak God’s name. I believe what’s happening now in our times is that God is breaking this curse, that He wants His name to be spoken. As He’s gathering His people in, and there are no longer any Jews – there might be three Jews left in Egypt, if even that – as He’s gathering His people in from Egypt, gathering His people in from the exiles, it is now. And now doesn’t just mean 2017, it’s a process that’s been going on really for decades, since the last century, and possibly even since the 19th century. It’s a gradual process of the restoration of the Hebrew language, a return to speaking Hebrew not just as a literary language, but as a daily living, spoken language. That has brought about a resurgence of knowledge and information about His holy name.

If I wanted to find His name in the Aleppo Codex just 100 years ago, let me go to the Aleppo Codex and see, is His name ever written with the full vowels? That opportunity didn’t exist. Now I can go to archive.org and download the entire Aleppo Codex and have it on my laptop, and search page after page and see, okay, what does it really say? Are these really the vowels of Adonai? Well, quite clearly, they’re not the vowels of Adonai, so what is going on here?

Imagine that. We live in this age where I can send an email to somebody who doesn’t even think like me, who has a different faith, who thinks more like you and who’s coming from a New Testament perspective, and I can say, “Hey, here’s a link to one of the most important manuscripts in the world in the British Library. Can you go and look and find if it has Yehovah with the full vowels?” And he’s able to do it on his computer, sitting from... I don’t even know where he lives. [laughing] I have no idea in what country, I’ve never spoken to him. I’ve only exchanged emails. But he sent me the photos and the references, and I’m like, “This is amazing!”

Doug: It is amazing.

Nehemia: So we live in a time which has such blessing, where we can hash out some of these issues and get to the answers, and we don’t have to live in ignorance. 100 years ago, all I could do was pray to know God’s name, and unless I was really lucky to be in on a secret, the best I could do was say, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. The best I could do. Maybe the best I could do is say, “Yahweh”, or “Yahaveh”, in Hebrew.

Doug: That is so powerful, that this curse is ending. I think that’s huge! I think that there’s a curse ending in many, many ways. This one is another incredible piece…

Nehemia: It’s part of the curse of exile. It’s part of the process of exile ending, is that we’ll no longer be barred from speaking His name, even if we want to speak his name.

Doug: That’s amazing. By the way, Fabio Hert, he helps us out here. He says it’s John 5:43.

Nehemia: Okay, can we open that up now?

Doug: It says, “I am come in my father’s name and you receive me not. If any other should come in his own name you will receive him.” Is that the one?

Nehemia: No, that’s not it. [laughing] But it probably is John 5 and not John 10, I don’t know.

Doug: We’re trying. I didn’t find it in John 10 otherwise. Just to let you know.

Nehemia: All right. And maybe I dreamed that verse, maybe it doesn’t really exist.

Doug: [laughing] That’s amazing. This is so exciting. This is really exciting - to hear that the curse has been lifted, or that it’s lifting, shall we say.

Nehemia: Then there’s the promise to the nations, Jeremiah 12:16. He says, “It shall come to pass…” I’m paraphrasing from memory. “It shall come to pass that they learn the way of My people to swear in My name the way they taught My people to swear by Baal, then it shall be built in the midst of My people.” It’s a promise to the nations! If you learn to swear the name Yehovah, rather than the name of your deities, in the name of Baal, in the name of the Lord, then you’ll be built in the midst of His people. This is a promise to the nations, and Isaiah 56, of course, has the blessing to the nations of joining themselves to Yehovah, who love His name.

So I do see this in prophetic terms, and I’ll admit that’s a theological way of looking at it. If I shared that at Hebrew University, I’ll get funny looks, because that’s not the academic side of the equation. But to me, that’s an important side. If you want to disregard that because you have a different theology, I have no problem with that. That’s got nothing to do with me.

Doug: The point here is that academically, we search these things out to just discover what is the truth. As an academician, you try not to be emotionally invested in whatever the outcome it.

Nehemia: That’s absolutely correct.

Doug: Because you’re trying to discover what it is. That’s all you’re trying to do. What is the evidence? Where does it leave me? And whatever it is is what it is. Then you let that become your foundation of truth. Truth is always what we want our foundation to be. And whatever truth is, is what truth is. We can’t change that. That’s the exciting thing about it. Rather, we so often start with our theology and we try to make that the truth.

Nehemia: My friend Keith Johnson, we wrote a book together, A Prayer to Our Father on the Hebrew Origins of the Lord’s Prayer, he likes to say, “There is information and there is inspiration, and when you combine those two you get revelation.” I really like that idea, that’s pretty cool. So I don’t want to disregard the inspiration. If somebody had a dream in which God appeared to them, they believe, and said to them that His name is Yehuvaheh, then they should not listen to anything... It doesn’t matter what the rules of the Hebrew grammar are. It really doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what 11 rabbis preserved throughout history. It doesn’t matter, because God told you directly it was Yehuvaheh. Was that really God? I don’t think so. But that’s not for me to say about somebody else’s dream.

Doug: Sure, I get that.

Nehemia: I didn’t have that dream, let me put it that way.

Doug: I could probably keep you here all evening, but I just want to thank you for coming on. We’ve gone half-an-hour over, and I really appreciate it. It was awesome to get into some of these questions as well. There are more, and some people we’re not going to please, no matter what we say about Yehuda, et cetera. You guys, what Nehemia did for us, or Nehemia did for us, is that he helped us to understand what the text actually says, he brought us some incredible resources, what we call “corroborating resources”, or “corroborating sources”.

As he clearly said, the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, is what he goes by. That is second to none. But then, it’s good to have these other sources which corroborate that evidence, that help us to understand, and that’s always a good idea. In fact, I was debating a guy on the topic of the Nephilim, and I don’t know where you stand on that, but I brought in some extra biblical sources to say, “Look, this is what people have always thought.” He said, “Oh, you’re using Gnostic sources.” I’m like, “Wait a second. I don’t believe that these sources are in any way equal to the Bible. The Bible is everything to me. But so that you know that I’m not just being crazy, I’m not making things up, I’m going to show you some historical sources.”

And that’s what Nehemia’s done for us here, is he’s brought in a bunch of extra biblical, historical sources. No matter what you think of the Rabbis, no matter what you think of the Talmud, you have 11… or 10, 10 plus 1…

Nehemia: 10 sounds better.

Doug: Well, 10 plus 1 is very biblical, right? 10, yay, 11! Then you have some very powerful witnesses that are saying, “No, this is how we have been pronouncing it. This is the tradition that’s come down from our fathers of how this name has actually been pronounced.” And you have it in six manuscripts. So this is very powerful evidence that the name is Yehovah. Again, if you want to say, “Lord,” if you want to say, “Jehovah”, if you want to say, “Yehua”, all right, that’s fine. We’re not going to get into the name police and say, “You’ve got to say it the right way.”

But if you’re at all interested in what Hebrew grammar actually dictates, and what the evidence is, and what the sources and the corroborating sources actually show us, then the name is Yehovah. And I think it’s so powerful, because as you’ve clearly pointed out, Nehemia, the curse is being lifted. Maybe it’s already done, but at least we’re in that process of this name curse being lifted, and people are beginning to discover it, and I so completely agree with you. I’m like, “Look, God’s name is powerful. There’s power in the name. God’s name is a strong tower.” I’m like, “How can Lord be a strong tower? God knows who you’re talking about. But my goodness, the name must be powerful.” So the name of the Lord, the name Yehovah, is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and they are saved. That’s what we want to do. So there’s something special about it, something exciting about it, and something supernatural.

I just want to thank everybody. I want to thank you, Nehemia, for joining us. Thank you everybody in the chat room for all of your good questions.

Again, stay in the word. The word the Bible has, the answers, thankfully God is way smarter than any of us.

Nehemia: Amen.

Doug: He’s going to keep showing all of us everything that we need to know. He’s going to show us Christians what we need to know, and He’s going to show the Jews what they need to know and He’ll work it all out. Thankfully, He’s awesome, and we’re just along for the ride. Again everyone, God bless and have a good evening.

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  • Edward says:

    Shalom y’all!!

    The elusive mystery verse in John that came to my mind while listening to this great discussion on The Beautiful Name of YeHoVáH is John 17:6 where Yehoshua says in prayer to Our Father (paraphrasing) that He revealed His Name to the ones that were given to Him.

    Yehoshua doubles down later in verse 26 that He revealed The Name of the Father and promised that He will reveal it, which seems like what is happening in this generation!!

    The end, goal and purpose is that we may be one אחד in love אהבה !!

    יהוה טוב
    הללו יה

  • Rajesh says:

    I follow to gordon and I always use that name of yehowah iam from India in telugu bible wrote that name. Gordon sir thanks for researching living Israel EL EL HASHEM
    YEHOWAH
    Thank you

  • CE says:

    I have another question, concerning ‘amen’. So I noticed you say it often while teaching, but I was told it comes from ‘amen rah’, from when the Israelites were in Egypt, but in other places it is spelled different and I’ve read that it is a hebrew word meaning ‘so be it’. We stopped saying it in prayer a few years ago choosing to either say, so be it or similar. What do you know about this? What are your opinions regarding the history and usage? Thank you,

  • Camo says:

    Yehovah Elohim = The TWO ELOH of John 1:1—-As The Creator DUO!
    The Reconstruct of 3999-4000AM resulted in the Aliases/Alter Egos of EL The Father & EL The Son / Yeshuah of Nazareth / Yeshuah Ha Meshiach…….Necessary in order to redeem Mankind.

  • YAM says:

    Please understand that I am new learner of ancient Hebrew. Doesn’t a “cholam vav” not pronounce the vav? Qamets on the “cholam vav” doesn’t seem usual to me as I read the Mikra. I am not familiar with any examples of this. Thanks for your help in advance. This study seemed to be related to this but I didn’t hear any specific discussion of Yehō’ah. Shalom

    • YAM says:

      I think my mistake might have been thinking the cholam is over the vav rather than the hey. With the cholam over the hey the pronunciation would be Ye-Ho-VaH or Yehovah. Is that right?

  • Christopher Bradley says:

    I enjoy your website, you have solved a great mystery in a lot of people’s belief system and that’s the name of God

  • Devorah Gordon says:

    Hi Paul,

    Nehemia talks about that in Hebrew Voices “A Disastrous Misunderstanding of the Name Yehovah”
    https://www.nehemiaswall.com/disastrous-misunderstanding-yehovah

    Jerusalem Devorah

  • David Hernández says:

    The verse that you need is John 17:26 “And I have made your Name known to them…”

  • Joseph Cartwright says:

    The ancient Hebrew Mathew 28:9 states, Yeshua met them and said ” Yehovah saves you.”

  • Judith Feller says:

    We are so blessed in these days to have such in-depth teaching as yours – thank you Nehemia! I would like more information on the vowel pointings. How are they pronounced? Every time I heard you pronounce YHVH’s name it was so fast that I couldn’t hear what the second vowel sound was. Yehovah, Yahovah, and Y’hovah are the 3 possibilities I came up with. Would you please clarify s-l-o-w-l-y how you pronounce the most important name in the world. Thanks and many blessings from Australia.

  • Chaim ben Ramon says:

    So I loved the podcast.

    A couple of points that were missed in regards to how many people mispronounce the name of God. First is that many pronounce God’s name as “Yahuah” and Y’shuah of Nazareth as “Yahshuah” Because they incorrectly assume (or were taught) that Yah (the poetic form of God’s name) is simply a shortened version of YAHuah.

    Second is that there are people that believe that the pronunciation of Yahuah or Yehuah are derived from the misunderstanding that a name like Yeshiyahu gets the “yahu” from Yahuah. I even heard that this understanding was first put forth by one of the elders, a woman from a large messianic community in Utah (whose name escapes me). She claimed that this was revealed to her in a dream.

  • Nehemia, I am still sad for your decision to retire from orchestrating your aviv search and sending out aviv and new moon info, but of course, Yah gives, and he takes away. I hope he will provide a replacement of your caliber, or perhaps even more.

    In spite of our occasional disagreements, I greatly appreciate your unique perspective on scripture and history.

    Since the beginning of my walk in torath yhwh some 40 years ago; I was yearning for the jewish community that would be true to the mosaic imperative; and rejoice to have made your and the karaite community’s acquaintance since your visit to Harrisburg PA with M Rood, 2004 or 5.

    Shalom and Yah bless, and yes, you are still on my (admittedly very small) donation list!

  • Nehemia, did I hear you say that the promised end-time moshiach would be the son of God? I thought that son-of-god theory was a later elaboration on the Christian claim that Jesus was moshiach, died to pay for the sins of others, would return to establish righteousness on earth, etc etc. The whole pagan theory of vicarious atonement which is totally contrary to TANACH. I see nothing in TANACH which indicates that YHVH Almighty God has, had, or needs any son, that is, any single person infused with deity. To the contrary, The Most High declares through Jeremiah (31:9) “For I am ever a father to Israel, Ephraim is My first born.”

    And further to the discussion about the name and the removal of the curse of not pronouncing the name, see Zech 13:9 “…they will invoke Me by name….” and at Zech 14:3 “then YHVH will come forth and make war on those nations….” I put those prophecies together to mean that WHEN Israel calls on YHVH by name, that at that time He will fight for Israel. Even further, by extension of ancient prophecy to these end times in which we are living, if the USA is Ephraim, which I pray is the case, I pray that we will be the instrument of God’s wrath on the enemies of Israel.

  • auntganny says:

    Enjoyed listening very much to this Interview! Did I understand correctly that there were two places where the full name of YEHOVAH was written with the vowels or was it 11? However, can you tell me the references where the name was written with the vowels by the writers? THANKS SO MUCH!!! I look forward to hearing more of your research.

  • Lanna says:

    Thank you brother Nehemia for all you do! I thank YHVH for the information He has shown us through you.Blessings to you!

  • Ron Colling says:

    Nehemia, I have a question about the six manuscripts where the vowel markings have been discovered for YHVH. Has there been any overlap of the locations between the manuscripts or have they all been in different locations?

  • Thomas Garza says:

    The more I watch and listen to these videos, the more silent I am becoming. Now, if I could only go back in time and erase all those ” listen to me, I know the Bible” chats where I was polishing my ignorance.

    • Pam Reardon says:

      Thomas, I don’t enjoy reading “comments”, and rarely ever do, but I was heartened when yours caught my eye. Yours is, no doubt, the wisest comment post I can remember ever seeing and I agree with you 100%. Blessings

    • if only, most all of us and especially those of us with extra letters behind our names, seems like it takes pounds of evidence to change an ounce of our presumptive beliefs,

  • Peggy Sanders says:

    Phenomenal, Nehemia! Probably the best discussion on His name that I’ve heard yet.

  • Nicely done discussion / interview!

    If you are looking for a particular spot, I have a summary on the PureBible forum.

    Nehemia Gordon and Douglas Hamp
    Nehemia Gordon: How to Pronounce YHWH in Hebrew The Awakening Report
    https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/permalink/1245007722257781/

    Hopefully, you will follow up with Douglas with a session along the line of “Have you been Praying to Jupiter”?

    And then I will have a question or two then about the Jove==Yahweh understanding.

    Thanks!

  • UKJ says:

    Hmm,

    Jn 17:6 “I have manifested thy name” unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

    In my view , this establishes a much bigger understanding of the name of the Father, in a much more intimate way..as it speaks about the “Eternal”

    Jn 17:2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

    The Eternal Father gives eternal life, through the Son who acts as the in between, just like the High Priest acted as the in between, between Jehovah and the people of Israel on the Day of Atonement. Wow, if this doesn’t connect the dots between the name and the “Eternal”, nothing will..

    imho.

    • UKJ says:

      Maybe I should explain the dots, “The high priest on the day of Atonement declared the sins of Israel to Jehovah asking for forgiveness for the nation.

      The Son of Jehovah has been doing the same and is doing away with Satan, the enemy of his Father.

      The dividing line between the people and the Eternal Father , caused by the temptation in the garden of Eden, has been broken and the healing process for the children of Jehovah can begin, which would include the first children Adam and Eve and their descendants. ( if Israel can be forgiven, so can Adam and Eve )
      The purpose for mankind can once more reach its destination back to the Garden of Eden as of being in reach of the Tree of Life.

      Has God done away with his nation Israel? As Paul has written in..

      Rom 11:1 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, [of] the tribe of Benjamin.

      The name Jehovah has been , and is being revealed to and for mankind as a promise of “eternal life” through the Son , back to the Eternal Father, creating a family relationship, imho.

  • Janice says:

    Really enjoyed the dialogue. It’s always good to hear and know two people can be respectful even if they don’t always agree on everthing. Thanks much gentlemen.

  • Krzysztof says:

    Nehemia, what is the name of the codex found in the british library that you mentioned?
    Thank you very much in advance.

    Yehovah be with you!

  • Carolynn Willis says:

    Nehemiah, can you explain to me why we know that the vav says the v sound instead of it being a waw with a w sound? I thought someone said there was no v sound in ancient Hebrew. Is this true? Thank you so much for all of your research and wisdom. We sure enjoy what you have to teach.

      • Just Someone says:

        Dear Nehemia, I really appreciate your work and I consider you a great scholar. However, with all respect required, I would like to discuss your interpretation of Pslam 44.
        You state that “EVEN if we would have forgotten your name and call upon a pagan name, you would still mercifully accept us because you know our hearts anyways”.
        When reading Psalm 44 (as you encouraged us to do), there came a different interpretation to my mind: IF we would have forgotten your name and call upon a pagan name, you would find out for sure, because you even know the secrets of our hearts.
        Unfortunately, I don´t speak Hebrew (yet). I am reading an exact German translation of the Masoretic text. So maybe I got it wrong …

        However, there might be a reference that supports my reasoning: Proverbs 16: 1-2 : Humans usually deem their deeds as correct, but YHVH evaluates their true motivation.

        In general, I think the correct pronunciation of the holy name is of very great importance: Words actually do have power, but it´s not the word by itself that matters. It´s the underlying sound-wave and the corresponding interaction (resonance) with the universe. So its the frequency and vibration of uttering the name YHVH that holds the power! Or as Nicola Tesla said: “If you want to understand the universe, you need to think of energy, frequency and vibration”. Makes sense if you compare it to Genesis (and God SAID … ). These are the fundamental building blocks that are governed by the principles of SACRED GEOMETRY, which in turn was designed through wisdom/ Sophia (the first thing of YHVH´s creation, cf. Proverbs 8 (esp. 22-31)) . This is the true essence of God, an all-encompassing power that binds the universe together; ALL IS ONE, AND ONE IS ALL. We are all connected to everything, comparable to the concept of the Force in Star Wars movies (“I am one with the Force. The Force is with me”). Eventually, with this in mind, the meaning of YHVH (is, was, will be) makes perfect sense, as it emphasizes YHVH´s all-encompassing, omnipresent power and presence.

        All the best to all of you.

      • William Clark DeLashmutt says:

        Shalom and boker tov from my side of the world. I went to your page to get this but I need to log in. I am signed up with my email address but where do I get the password? Thanks.

  • Renee Evans-Hicks says:

    Nehemia, did you ever find the Scripture you were looking for? I think the passage you were referring to is in John 17:12 and 17:26. In the prayer Yeshua prayed in the garden, just before He was arrested.: BTW: Thanks for this episode. It was so livening and informative.

  • Amanda says:

    John 17 Yeshua talks about revealing the Fathers name.

  • Kevin George says:

    Would hat verse in John be John 17:6?

  • little key says:

    About the book of divine name, tell us more about it. who is the author of the book…

  • Oswald Mattos says:

    Just heard your, as usual, superb podcast. Ref. John’s Gospel regarding the Name of the Father, perhaps you are looking for John 17:6 (KJV) ? – Regards Oswald.

  • Erin Hunter says:

    Study and meditation reveal a HUGE problem with how many twisted ways mankind has been learned in Scripture. Personally, I have learned that it is my responsibility to seek YHVH for His directives and keep fellowship with believer’s and He will bring truth!
    Shalom to all and may we grow up a tender plant for all eyes to see!!!

  • mike barukh says:

    …also…here in nz the natives (maoris) have a saying…”ya egg” which means ‘you idiot’
    but to say it in their language its ‘ya hua’
    so when i hear people say ye hua or whatever …its really ugly.
    my name is michael (eng)miguel(esp) mikhail(rus) etc but i prefer to be called meekha-el which is true to form…and why not..we like to call a spade a spade.
    the latest evidence says the name of the Most High is YHVH (He Who IS , Was, and Is To Come…thats what matters and so lets declare that name against all other usurpers (alla) (krish)(budd) etc.
    names are very important..my friends are gay…that is gaye,but their name has been hijacked by some homosexuals representing the abomination..they need support to reverse this unholy distinction by way of petition.

  • Pam Reardon says:

    Nehemia, I am so grateful for your ministry. Blessings.

    Perhaps on the interview you may have been referencing some of my favorite verses???????

    John 17: 6 “I have revealed Your Name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours, and You gave them to Me, and they have guarded Your Word

    John 17:26 “And I have made Your Name known to them, and shall make it known,a so that the love with which You loved Me might be in them, and I in them.”

    • Those are the verses! We found them 2 minutes after the interview ended! LOL!

      • Pam Reardon says:

        Yes, I was quite sure that was what you were looking for but I was not listening live. Thanks again for all you do to bring truth.
        Now, may I ask? I’ve been looking for a scripture also. I think it’s in Exodus or Deut???? It says something to the extent that we must not practice pagan worship rituals and say we are doing it for YHVH. I know there are many verses condemning pagan worship practices but, as you said, “I may have dreamed it”, but I am so sure there is a verse that admonishes us not to do these things and then try to convince YHVH that “in our hearts” (ha ha) we are not doing it for the wrong reasons but for HIM.
        I know it’s there somewhere. Maybe.

        • Just Someone says:

          Hi, maybe this verse is interesting to you:
          Proverbs 16: 2 : Humans usually deem their deeds as correct or appropriate. However, YHVH will judge us in the end.
          Therefore, it is important to achieve a wise heart. How? Job 28:28: Wisdom is to fear YHVH (i.e. be humble with regard to His perfect concept of creation and hence obey his instruction towards a righteous life, the Torah), and insight is to avoid evil things. That´s basically all that YHVH asks from us in order to achieve higher consciousness. But it must stem from a pure heart and must be genuinely desired from your soul (Deut. 6: 4-6). Important reference to this: Isiah 29: 13-14: Although being very conservative and seemingly keeping the Torah, ancient and modern day Jews fail to do all this from their heart. It´s tradition, constructed by the Rabis and Pharisees, that perverts the true essence of the Torah – the instruction from YHVH to us humans as a key to a righteous (perfect) life. Isiah 58 is another very interesting reference to this context. Shabbat Shalom. Love, Peace and Harmony – from a pure heart 😉

        • Evan Doan says:

          Deut 12:29-32

    • Mike says:

      My thoughts exactly ! John 17

  • mike barukh says:

    great interview and good to see visually rather than audibly
    so how is it that some so-called “palestinians’ are named ibn josef, ibn oded etc..clearly israeli names??
    are these people israelites and don’t know it ? or will they have to change their names to survive?

    • Yoseph is a Hebrew name. Yusuf is an Arabic names. I’m pretty sure there is no Arabic named “Oded”, since Arabic has neither an O or E vowels. Hebrew has 7 vowels + Sheva (so you could call that 8), whereas Arabic has only 3. The most common Palestinian surname (their equivalent to “Smith”) is al-Masri “the Egyptian”.

  • Frank McKinley says:

    Very good video. The name problem is perpetrated by the sacred name sub-sects of which (and I know many) cannot speak Hebrew, and worse will not even listen to Nehemia. These Sacred name folks are no better with the Greek. Not all Messianic have that name problem.

    • Signing on as a grateful “sacred namer”, at least give us credit for trying to get to the bottom of Yah’s pronunciation as early as the 1940’s. We are (at the very least) the pioneers of this movement. I am still doubtful that 300 years of masoretes could have made ANY errors of leaving in the text a name they felt important to hide. Ten generations of professional scribes missing their goal of hiding the true pronunciation? Too far fetched for me.

      • Chaim ben Ramon says:

        Maybe they just didn’t actually want to completely suppress it while looking as thought they did?
        Sharing responsibility for conceivably losing something like how to speak God’s name to history could weigh on the conscience of a scribe no doubt.