{UAH} The Yahweh Fraud (I and II)... Ogunsola

Jim,

To the philosopher a name is an artificial sign consisting in a certain combination of articulate sounds, whereby a particular class of people are to designate one thing and distinguish it from all others. If the name conveys an idea, it is merely because of a wholly artificial relation once arbitrarily established between the name and the thing it stands for.

Primitive people, using a language as it is handed down to them without inquiring into its origin, are included to make much of names. This is true of the old Semitic peoples, especially of the Hebrews. All Hebrew names were supposed to bear a significance, as originally individual subjects were called by a name expressive of some characteristic, e.g., Edom, red; Esau, hairy; Jacob, supplanter. They were carefully and solemnly selected, especially personal names.

So intimate was the relation conceived to be between the individual and his name, that the latter came frequently to be used as an equivalent of the former: "to be called" meant "to be", the name being taken to be equal to the object, nay, identical with it. Nothing is more eloquent of this fact than the religious awe in which the Hebrews held the name of God(see JEHOVAH). Similar notions prevailed with regard to all proper names. Nor were the Hebrews an exception: all Semitic peoples, and, to some extent, all primitive peoples shared the same belief. This is why the study of these names is looked upon by students of history as a sort of key to the knowledge of the religious and social conditions of these peoples.

With that in mind, I think the only True God worth worshiping by the whole world no matter the local people or any particular ethnicity call him, (Lubanga, Riisoddene, Namugereka, Jehovah, Lugaba, Katonda we Butonda, Yahweh, Allah, El Elyon, Orisa, name it, ...), has to meet this description:

That God must transcend all creatures.  We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God - "the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable" - with our human representations.  Our human words always fall miserably short of the mystery of God. (para. 42, CCC)

If you read the two previous articles I sent you about this very issue, you would notice that Moses' question to God about his name, implies that there were already many different gods out there known and worshiped by even some Israelites.  And Moses wanted God to identify himself among many.  The name (I AM WHO AM or I AM WHO I AM, I AM HE WHO IS) Moses was given, still remains a mystery as God himself does. Also since a name or names can signify ownership and control, one can successfully argue that God's name signifies a rebuke to Moses. Thus "I AM WHO I AM" something like the refusal of a name.  For nothing in heaven and earth can contain the attributes of God since all of them receive their existence from Him.  This is so, because after the revelation of his name, God goes on to describe himself, " I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  And we all know who the God of Abraham was.  The only true God who instructed Abram to leave the land of his kinsmen (the land of idolaters) to a new and distant, perhaps undefiled land where he could worship Him. 

Paul Mugerwa