<a href="https://biblicalmissiology.org/blog/author/jspan/" target="_self">John Span</a>

John Span

Dr. John Span is a senior lecturer at Mukhanyo Theological College in South Africa. His PhD studies investigated the CAMEL Method of outreach to Muslims. His mentors have challenged him to think theologically, especially in the area of missions to Muslims and he desires to inspire others to do the same. He is a founding member of Biblical Missiology as well as the Southgate Fellowship and blogs regularly at the CRCNA Network.

4 Comments

  1. Sam Osborne

    When Hebrew was only oral and had not yet become set down in text what did reference of God sound like to those early preliterate Jews. Thomas Cahill in his historic recount of such early times points out that attempting to utter reference to God by name was out of reverence done in whisper but one time a year in sound of the spirit of the great wind, Y—H—W—H. When things started getting writ down for the eye to pretend it could see, reverence went out the window disturbing thin air in cacophony that disrupted moments of being embraced in silent moments by the Wisdom of Awe

  2. John Span

    Hello Prophetic Explorer:
    You asked why I referred to The Great I AM as Yahweh and not as Jehovah. Thank you for this question.
    The name by which God revealed himself to Moses was YHWH in Hebrew. In order to make it easier to say people have added some vowels.
    I am sure you know that words in Hebrew and Arabic are made of consonantal roots, so the word for peace is sh-l-m and we add vowels and make it
    into the common word, shalom.
    If you add the vowels ‘a’ and ‘e’ to YHWH you get Yahweh.
    If you make more changes, by changing the consonants then you can arrive at J–instead of Y, and
    V instead of W and add an ‘o’ sound you can arrive at Jehovah.

    In some languages, if you make that many changes, you lose the sense of the original word, and that is the reason why I believe it is preferable to use YHWH or Yahweh.

  3. Prophetic Explorer

    Yahweh was represented by the calf, that is a historical fact. Why are you calling the God of the bible Yahweh, when His name is Jehovah?

  4. Phil S

    Exodus otherwise known as How the Hebrews murmured, complained and moaned their way out of Egypt, ha ha. Despite the description in the HB I’ve always considered that Aaron literally had the golden calf (or filthier a horned molech?) in a tent on stand-by and that he was more than willing (for filthy lucres sake, thus the gold collecting) to blow the dust off it and wheel it out (with a fanfare) for the masses. Don’t forget YHWH (it seems to me) euthanised him (for this despicable crime), I mean, bearing in mind how he died is effectively brushed under the carpet by HB standards (Numbers 20:28)…

    Just my tuppence worth.

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