What is God's Name
It had been a good EA degree, and the degree team was right on track. The Worshipful Master smugly informed the new brother that the floor was his to give the lodge his thoughts about the degree. The new brother rose and smartly gave the correct signs. “ Worshipful Master and my new brothers. I am proud and pleased to be one of you. Not meaning any criticism but you may have forgotten something, or maybe it comes in a later degree. You told me to enter the Lodge in the name of God, then you never told me what that name was!”
They never spoke
God’s name because they didn’t know it. God is not God’s
name just as human is not your name. God is derived from the old
Teutonic form gudo, which means that which is
worshipped.
For
thousands of years man has wanted to know God’s name, as
having such a sacred word would be the source of great power. In
Genesis 32: 22-32 we learn that Jacob wrestled with God all night
on the banks of the Jabbok River. When the dawn came Jacob asked
for God’s name, but was refused it. Instead God gave Jacob a
new name, Israel, which means wrestles with God.
Likewise in
Exodus, Moses speaks to God who appeared in the form of a burning
bush. Once again, Moses asked God for his name, but was only
given “I am what I am,” which is reasonable since God
had no parents to give him a name. God told Moses to tell
the people that “I Am” or YHVH sent him to lead them
out of Egypt. “This is My eternal name, and this is how I am
to be recalled for all generations” (Exodus 3:14-15).
Biblical Hebrew
had no written vowels, but spoken vowels could be indicated by a
series of dots within the Hebrew letters. Since the
tetragrammaton (YHVH) was considered ineffable, the vowels from
the word Adonai, or Master, were placed under it to remind
readers to say Adonai instead of YHVH, the true pronunciation of
which is now lost but was probably YaHVeH or Yahweh in English
(there is no “W” sound in the Hebrew alphabet)
A sixteenth
century German Christian scribe, translating the bible into Latin
for the Pope and not knowing the foregoing, put the vowels from
Adonai into the tetragammaton obtaining YiHoVaH and
pronounced the word Iehovah which became Jehovah in the late 17th
century.
So Yahweh and Jehovah are probably the closest we come to “I am (YHVH)” but are not the true name of God, if he has one, which is still unknown to man and Masons.
Some of the appendant bodies of Freemasonry have names they give to God, one of which is indeed the tetragammaton (YHVH), but another uses an entirely different name which is for an allegorical purpose and did not come from a latter day burning bush!
The Worshipful Master, after a long pause, answered the new brother as follows, “ We do not assign any names for God other than The Great Architect of the Universe, and that is the name of God in which you entered.”
“ Thank you Worshipful Sir,” the youngest EA replied, “ I will also look forward to attending Lodge regularly so I can learn the secrets, arts, parts, and points of the hidden mysteries of Freemasonry, which I have been obligated to conceal and never reveal!”
May the Blessing of Heaven be upon you
And your knowledge of our hidden
mysteries abound
Gunnar C. Carlson Jr.
Grand Chaplain