The Unlawful Prohibition On Saying The Name of God

Discover the Power and Meaning Behind God’s Name – A Journey into the Heart of Faith.

There is power in His Name.

Yes, God has a Name, and it is יהוה‎ . The standard English pronunciation of that name is “Yahweh”. Why is it, then, that most people who worship the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, do not call Him by His Name?

Most Jews know, while many Christians do not know, that there is a prohibition among Jews not to speak God’s Name. That is the primary reason why so many people today do not say it, both Jews and Gentiles.

But, what if the adversary of God is the one trying to get people not to invoke His Name?

After all, Peter said it in Jerusalem when he preached the very first gospel message, echoing the prophets, “And it shall come to pass that whoever shall call upon the name of יהוה‎ shall be saved.” Acts 2:21 where Peter is quoting the prophet Joel.

If the prophets said that Salvation itself is by calling upon the Name, יהוה‎ , then what happened? Why are the Rabbis telling people not to say it? And why does the whole world comply?

The first recorded answer to that question, from any written source, is the Talmud. The first time any Jewish person ever wrote down the notion that no one should say the name was in Tractate Berakhot 33a in the Talmud. That tractate, and thus that mandate, was not written until the 5th Century A.D. This is part of the Babylonian Talmud, which was completed in 500 A.D. 

In the tractate mentioned, it is instructed that one should replace the Name of God when reading scripture or speaking, by saying either “Adonai” [My Master, which is used in scripture to refer to God] or “HaShem”, which means ‘the name’. And our Jewish people still do this today, complying with Talmudic Rabbis who reject Yeshua.  In another tractate, Sanhedrin 56a, they go so far as to say that the death penalty should be given to anyone pronouncing it inappropriately. If they had the authority to do so today, we would be stoned, or worse. Pay heed, this mandate was written 500 years after Yeshua’s ministry.

The mandate not to speak His Name is in fact the overturning of God’s instructions, for those who comply:

“And God said moreover unto Moshe, “Thus shall you say unto the Sons of Israel, ‘ יהוה , the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me unto you; this is My Name forever, and this is My memorial unto all generations.” ~Exodus 3

“Zikaron”, or ‘memorial’ in the verse above, is a spoken remembrance of The Name, as “zikaron’ is from the root ‘zakhar’, which means ‘to remember by speaking, to call to mind’.

The Talmud is the writing down of oral “law”, claim the Rabbis. The Mishnah is actually the first writing down of oral tradition, and that happened in the early third century, after Jerusalem was attacked again in 132-137 A.D. and the people of Israel were finally scattered to the four winds. The concern in 200 A.D. by a Rabbi still in Jerusalem was that all knowledge of Temple worship would be lost if it was not written down. 

Yehudah HaNasi [Judah the Prince] was the first to write what eventually came to be called the “Mishnah”, and then others also began to write. The Mishnah, or the ‘repeating’ or ‘study’, was not a ‘second law’ as it was originally written down. Later Rabbis gave it that name, “The Second Law”, in order to give it and the Talmud they were writing the perceived authority they needed to usurp God’s Torah.  Later, other Rabbis outside of Israel began to write down their own opinions about “Jewish Law”, which came to be called “Gemara”. The Aramaic word ‘gamar’ is the root of “Gemara” and it means “to complete”; so, those Rabbis felt they needed to finish writing down other opinions about what they came to call Jewish “law”, giving their traditions-turned-law more weight than God’s own Torah. Then, in the fourth and fifth centuries, [300s-400s up to 500 A.D.], other Rabbis wrote the original “Talmud”; there were two projects undertaken to do so, one in Jerusalem and the other in Babylon a little later, so even today we have the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. They are similar, but the Talmud Bavli [Babylonian] is more ‘complete’. It is then when the Mishnah came to be called “The Second Law”.

So, yes, according to later Jewish ‘law’, it was not permissible to speak God’s Name, since it was written in a Tractate of the Talmud in the fifth century; but, is that actually God’s law?

Of course, the Jewish people would tell you it is God’s law not to say His Name! Because, in their minds, the Talmud is God’s divine law. The Rabbis have said that they have told God what the interpretation of His Law is, and they believe they have authority to alter it, reinterpret it in every generation, and to add to it! In spite of the fact that God said neither to add to it, nor to detract from it. “You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish from it, that you may keep the Commandments of  יהוה  your God, which I command you.” ~  Deut 4:2

In the Talmud, in Berakhot 7a, one sees a supposed quote from God:

“The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: ‘My children have defeated Me! My children have defeated Me!'” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 7a)

This is referring to a Rabbinic Halakhic debate [Halakhic is a Talmudic term meaning ‘how one walks’, especially concerning a Rabbi’s particular teaching], and in it, a Rabbi is basically telling God how the scriptures should be interpreted. This now popular principle is rooted in the idea that the oral law (Torah she’be’al peh) is meant to be interpreted and applied by human authorities, and that God has entrusted only the rabbis with the responsibility of making these legal decisions. Mind you, for the one who trusts in Yeshua, these men do not have His Spirit, as they have rejected Yeshua as the Son of God and the Messiah, the Savior of Israel. There are at least four other places in the Talmud where the Rabbis assert their authority over God: Berakhot 19b, Talmud Bavli Yoma 86b, Bava Metzia 59b, and Sanhedrin 89b. Therefore, the rabbis’ rulings are not seen by them as mere interpretations, but as authoritative and divinely guided decisions, and their decisions are thus above what the Torah says! Thus, God is defeated.

So, according to Jewish Rabbis, they have the authority to interpret orally handed down ‘commands’, which by the first century were only beginning to have the weight of “law”, though they had not as yet claimed that they were law; those strong traditions later needed further elucidation, since the Rabbis rejected the Messiah, and so Talmud was born. The Rabbis retrofit their authority over all previous writings, including God’s Word itself. They were doing this in the time of Yeshua officially, though they had not written a new ‘law’ yet, and our Master excoriated them for it [which we will address later in this article]. They gave ‘customs’ the weight of law.

But, the actually written-down mandate not to say His Name was not even written until 500 A.D. So, when did our Jewish people actually stop saying the Name of God?

They would like to tell you that it was always this way! But it was not. Look in the Tanakh, the “Old Testament” scriptures, and you will see that Israel said His Name all the time. The prophets wrote down what they said, and 7,000 times His Name is used, most of the time spoken.  Not only so, but Israel was instructed to declare it, and informed that it was how Israel would address their God, forever! [See Exodus 3:15, above].

So, what happened?

The Talmud may give us a clue! In Tractate Berakhot 63a, there is a story about a Rabbi named “Akiva”. He was a revered Jewish sage while Judea was under Roman rule. This is just after the rebellion of Bar Kokhba. The Romans had done just as the Greeks had, finally, and made the teaching of the Torah and the recitation of The Shema [Deuteronomy 6:4-9, where the Name יהוה‎ appears three times] illegal. The Roman ruler Hadrian is the one who made the decree to suppress Jewish religious practice, including using God’s Name publically. Note, if they were NOT saying it publically, but only in the Temple on Yom Kippur, why would Rome have to make a law against it in the Second Century? [130’s A.D].

It was said that Akiva would recite The Shema in public in rebellion against that Roman law. The Romans arrested him and tortured him, combing his skin with iron combs as he recited The Shema, saying God’s Name. His final words were reportedly the first words of The Shema, which Yeshua freely quoted in Jerusalem between 30-33 AD as seen in Mark 12: “Hear, O Israel, יהוה‎ is our God, יהוה‎ is One”.

So, Akiva is supposed to have been martyred for saying The Name. In Tractate Berakhot 61b, they report that he was also wrapped in a Torah Scroll and wire, and burned. So, perhaps the motivation of Jewish people NOT to say The Name was after his death, so that they would not die for saying it. That is likely the case. And why did it take so long to write the story? The event occurred in 136-137 A.D., but it wasn’t written down until the fifth century. Is it accurate? Probably some of it is. It would appear, though, that the mandate not to say God’s Name actually came from Rome in or before 136 A.D.! Again, why would Rome have to make a law against it in the Second Century, if no one was saying it? Rome did not like the names of other gods! Jews were saying it in the 2nd century A.D.!

Some say that the mandate not to say it came before this, however. They cite the only other mentions of The Name in 1st Century Jewish literature [other than the Aramaic NT] in regard to saying it: The Mishnah, and Josephus. 

In the Mishnah, written in 200 A.D., in Tractate Yoma 6:2, it only says what the High Priest said on Yom Kippur in the Temple: “And the high priest recited the confession over the goat: ‘O יהוה‎ ! I have committed iniquity, acted perversely, and sinned before You—I and my household, and the children of Aaron, the House of the priests. O יהוה‎ ! Forgive the iniquities, perversities, and sins which I have committed, acted perversely in, and sinned before You, I and my household, and the children of Aaron, the House of the priests. As it is written: ‘Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions and all their sins.'” The Mishnah does not report that no one else ever said the Name of God.

It is only LATER, TALMUDIC tradition that said that the Name was not said outside the Temple, and only in the Temple on Yom Kippur! The Mishnah does not mention a prohibition to say it, at all! And this was the earliest writing of Jewish customs EVER. The notion that it was otherwise forbidden is a later imposition over the Mishnah.

People also cite Josephus. He was a Hellenist Jew [favored Greek rule and culture]. He wrote a history of the Jews for the Emperor of Rome, shortly after Rome destroyed the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D. in his “Antiquities of the Jews, Book 3, Chapter 7, Section 6, he writes this about the Name: we read,

“Now the High Priest has this name [יהוה‎] engraved on the plate, which he wears on his forehead, and when he goes into the inner part of the Temple, he takes off his ordinary clothes and puts on sacred garments, and when he performs the functions of the priesthood, he recites the names of the various parts of the sacrifices, but the Name of God itself is not to be spoken outside of the Temple.”

He also writes in “Antiquities of the Jews, Book 11, Chapter 7, Section 4”: 

“The High Priest, upon entering the Holy of Holies, would utter the sacred name of God, but only in the Temple, and with great reverence, and no one else was permitted to say it.”

Josephus was not citing the Torah. It is very important to note that. He is mentioning Jewish custom! And it was only the High Priest that would only say the Name on Yom Kippur in the Holy of Holies! Not all of Israel! The Pharisees, as Josephus used to be, won the day historically, and so their ideas were presented as the accepted interpretation of history. The Pharisees may have indeed begun themselves not to say the Name, along with the other customs they were creating that violated scripture, but that cannot even be concluded from Josephus. “A matter shall be established by two or three witnesses.”  What is glaringly absent, however, is any other 1st century support that no one said the Name outside the Holy of Holies.

Jospehus had been a Pharisee in his early days as a priest in the Temple services. It is entirely possible that the Pharisees had begun to try to put the prohibition on speaking God’s Name because of Roman rule, but that Israel, the common Jewish people, had not as yet complied.  In fact, many of them would probably have been defiant, like Akiva was in the 2nd century.  There is nothing encoded into any kind of written Jewish ‘law’ at this point, and so whether or not they should say it was merely a matter of opinion. By the time Josephus wrote this, the Temple had been destroyed, he was compliant with Rome, who had mandated that no one say it, and he may have embellished things, if only for his own safety! We cannot conclude from his scant mentioning of the Name that what he says was actually the norm of the day, even for only the High Priest! There is no second witness in history at that time to support this notion.

We know from our sources [NT] that the Jewish Rabbis, mostly Pharisees, in the time of Yeshua, were already making ‘laws’ of their own, and violating God’s law. If we are going to say that we trust Yeshua and His rulings on things, we must acknowledge that the Rabbis of Yeshua’s day, and thus all the later Rabbis who rejected Him, had gone into error:

“Then there gathered to Him Pharisees and Scribes who had come from Yerushalayim.  And they saw some of His Talmidim [Disciples] eating bread with their hands unwashed, and they reproached them.  For all the Religious Jews and the Pharisees, unless their hands were washed carefully, would not eat, because they strictly observed the tradition of the elders.  Even the things from the market, if they were not washed, they would not eat. And there are a great many other things which they have accepted to obey, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper utensils, and the beddings of dead men.  And the Scribes and Pharisees asked Him, “Why do your Talmidim [Disciples] not walk according to the traditions of the elders, but eat bread with their hands unwashed?”  He said to them, “The Prophet Isaiah well prophesied about you, O hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.  And they worship me in vain when they teach as doctrines the commandments of men.’  For you have ignored the commandment of God, and you [religious Jews and Pharisees] observe the tradition of men, such as the washing of cups and pots and a great many other things like these.”  He said to them, “You certainly do injustice to the commandment of God so as to sustain your own tradition.  ….  So you dishonor the Word of God for the sake of the tradition which you have established; and you do a great many other things like these.” ~ Mark 7 

What many fail to recognize is that what was still seen as ‘strong custom/tradition’ in the first century, as shown above, was later interpreted as ‘law’, as the Rabbis said when they told God how the cow eats the cabbage, saying that God said ‘My children have defeated Me! My children have defeated Me!’ Baloney! The Rabbis finally had to tell everyone that they are the final arbiters over the Torah, and most Jews today still believe it, including, sadly, most of our Messianic Jewish brothers. 

Many Messianic Jews are very, very lax about keeping the Sabbath and the other customs of Yeshua, especially in regard to how they worship, but they are very stringently observant of not saying God’s Name, though the Scriptures instruct us to say it, and in the NT Scriptures, from the Aramaic, we learn that Yeshua and all His followers did say The Name. Aramaic uses “Mar-Yah” as the Name יהוה‎ . The scholars who agree are few in number, but they are there.  The Aramaic texts demonstrate that they did.

First century Jewish religious leaders clearly had ‘customs’ that they did not consider ‘law’, but that they were trying to enforce over everyone. We have the testimony of Mark, and similar testimony in Matthew 15, Luke 11, and John 7, that they were violating God’s law to teach their ‘customs’. John records that Yeshua told them, “Did not Moshe give you the Torah? And yet none of you obeys the Torah. Why do you want to kill me?” Yeshua was in the Temple speaking to religious Jews, and telling them that they were not keeping the Torah! They still do not keep the Torah; they keep the laws that later Rabbis created from ‘customs’ of 1st century Pharisees, and they have robbed all of those who believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of the sanctity and power of the Name of God.

Does this mean that we, the Messianic Peshitta Fellowship, and in particular Mikdash Meh’at, demand that everyone say God’s Name all the time, or imply that they are not saved if they do not? No!

Today, most people refer to our Messiah as “The Lord Jesus Christ”. They take comfort in that Name, as well they should. But, the understanding of who Yeshua is, is weak and often distorted, because they do not realize that His Name is יהוה‎ Yeshua HaMashi’akh, where “Lord” does not ‘translate’ well. It actually ‘replaces’ the Name of God. He is Yahu’ah [יהוה] Yeshua the Messiah.

In the Aramaic scriptures previously mentioned, the name Mar-Yah is used instead of יהוה‎ , where Mar-Yah is Aramaic, but יהוה‎ is Hebrew. Some scholars, though not all, agree that Mar-Yah is the only equivalent to the Name יהוה‎ from any other language, and that the Aramaic Peshitta texts use it exclusively to represent the Sacred Name of God: יהוה . If you peruse our site, you will find that we believe in the primacy of Aramaic. The use of Mar-Yah is one of the reasons we believe this. If you compare the original Peshitta and/or our translation to the Greek translation, you will see that where the Aramaic uses Mar-Yah and where the Greek uses ‘Kyrios’ is not identical. There are far, far fewer times where Aramaic uses only “mar”, which is the exact equivalent of ‘Kyrios,’ both of which mean ‘lord’. One who studies it judiciously will see that it is very meaningful when someone says “יהוה‎ / Mar-Yah” in the Aramaic NT scriptures. A translator coming from Greek to Aramaic would not have used such precision; there would have been no guidance linguistically to do so, as Kyrios simply means ‘lord’; whereas Mar-Yah means יהוה‎ . 

Scriptures do call God, יהוה‎ , as “Adonai”, which is the Hebrew for “Lord”. In a King James bible, and other good bibles, the name is represented in the OT as “LORD”, all capital letters, but most people are not aware of that. 

What other support is there that the Name was spoken, or at least that there was no sweeping prohibition against saying it in the first century when Yeshua ministered? [Since that is who we follow]

The Dead Sea scrolls were written in the 2nd Century BC to the 1st Century AD. They contain the Name of יהוה‎ , in places where it would have been spoken, as well as just used in reference. The texts, like the “War Scroll (1QM)” and the “Temple Scroll (11QTa)”, suggest that these communities still used The Name verbally and freely. So, there was no universal avoidance of its use in Judea in the first century, as Rabbis insist. 

Philo of Alexandria wrote extensively about the nature of God in the 1st Century AD [20 BC-50AD], and there is no evidence in his works that there was a specific mandate against using His Name.

The Aramaic NT shows us that our teacher, Yeshua, used it publicly, and often; the disciples used it. It was not until the 2nd century that saying the Name of יהוה‎  was forbidden, and then only by Rome, and that law defied by a Pharisee Rabbi, according to Rabbis.

The 5th Century Talmud is not the first time disobedient Jewish religious leaders rejected God’s Name and replaced it with “lord”. Though for different reasons and under different circumstances, the Jewish false prophets of infamy directed the people of Israel not to say His Name:

“How long shall this be? Is it in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies, and the prophets of the deceit of their own heart? That think to cause My people to forget My Name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers forgot My Name for ‘Lord’.” ~ Jer 23

The ‘dreams they tell every man to his neighbor’ must have been very similar to the Talmudic notions of Rabbis telling God what their laws are, and that they supersede His. 

In this verse, since they are in Israel before Greek influence, the word there for ‘lord’ is ‘baal’.  That is also an equivalent of ‘Kyrios’. Several of the other actual prophets of God chided Israel for the same thing, showing that the teachers of Israel were teaching the people error [Jer 2, Hosea 2, 1 Kings 16, 18, and Zeph 1]. Our Jewish people have chosen to replace His Name today with “Adonai”, which is another ‘title’ for God, but not His Name, and it also means ‘lord’. But, most of them choose actually to blot out His Name with “HaShem”, which is not a name, but means only, “The Name”. Either way, they are editing the very scriptures when they read, as directed by the Talmud, defying God’s mandate not to add to nor take away from His Torah. They do to God’s Name what we do to Haman’s name on Purim!

We see this as dishonest, and defiant. God is the one who, over and over, instructs His People as to what His Name is, and that they were to address Him by that Name, as we see happened thousands of times through the centuries in the age of the Prophets, and not to forget His Name! In fact, it was written in stone concerning His Name: “I am יהוה‎ your God”. 

But, the Rabbis say that when He said, “You will not take the Name of  יהוה  your God in vain; for  יהוה  will not hold him guiltless who takes His Name in vain,” that He meant for them not to say it! But, the preponderance of evidence in the following scriptures shows us the practice of righteous men calling on His Name and declaring it, even among the nations! And so do later sources show us that it was permissible, and honorable to declare God’s Name. It was used by the apostles in the preaching of the Gospel. The commandment in Exodus 20 meant simply not to misuse it, and even some good, Jewish English translations of The Torah say exactly that.

For those of us who serve the Messiah, it is most important to emulate Him. When Yeshua uttered the Shema to the Rabbis, saying His Name, He was not chided for it, but in fact was told that He was correct! ~ Mark 12:32

It was not until nearly 500 years later that the Jewish practice of not saying His Name was actually encoded as law into Jewish halakha, and thus enforced by unbelieving Rabbis upon the Jewish people, keeping them in their stupor of blindness.  A study into the third and fourth century congregations of Messiah remains to be done, to see if they said His Name; in the Aramaic communities they likely said His Name as Mar-Yah, which is closer than any other rendering in other languages. Rome was bent on wiping out all other names of gods other than their pantheon, but Constantine wasn’t Roman: he was from the Balkan area, his mother was Greek, but he lived in Egypt and adopted all forms of Greek and Egyptian theologies, before hijacking the congregations and forcing believing communities in the world to change the way they worship. He blotted out all Judaic customs in the Messianic congregations, and it is likely then that any use of His Name was done away with, favoring the greek Kyrios and then later the Latin “Dominus”, both of which mean “lord”. And thus, the English speaking world calls Him only “Lord”. 

Yeshua, as Messiah, had the very Name of God bestowed upon Him, as Peter teaches the first Jewish believers in Yeshua: “Therefore  let  all  the House of Israel  know assuredly that God has made this very Yeshua, whom you have executed, both  יהוה  and Messiah.” ~ Acts 2:36 This is why Paul says that the Name that is above every name is יהוה , and not “Jesus”: “He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the stake; therefore, God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Yeshua every knee should bow, of those in heaven, of those on earth, and those under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that He, Yeshua HaMashi’akh, is  יהוה  , to the glory of God His Father.” ~ Phil 2

It is important to explain that “Yeshua” is actually a common man’s name, and that there are many people named “Yeshua/Jesus” today: any English person named “Joshua” is so named; any Spanish person named “Jesus” is so named. But only one man is named “ יהוה Yeshua the Messiah”. That is the name that is above every name, and people should know it! 

Yeshua is our Rabbi, and our best example. We have zero doubt that He will declare the Name of God His Father, bear it in His person and on His apparel, since He is our High Priest, and His Name will be known in all the earth! To hide it now, or blot it out willfully, is disobedience.

Here is an important message about God’s Name: We MUST PRESERVE His reputation!

More about His Name