"Save me by Name of the God of Israel defend thee; "I Thy Name; "2 "Some trust in chariots, but we will remember the Name of the LORD; "3 "The Name of the LORD is a strong tower; "4 "I will put My Name upon the children of Israel; "5"He shall build a house for My Name; "6 "Where I record My Name I will come to thee; "7" Why should My Name be polluted;"8 "Not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain ;"9 "Provoke Him not, My Name is in Him." 10 There is no need to multiply quotations where almost every leaf will furnish similar expressions. The few that I have cited will establish fully the high place attached to "the Name" among the writers of this portion of the Bible. Nor did this cease with them; it still continued to the times of the New Testament. "The Name," or "in the Name," occurs almost as often in the Gospels and Epistles as in the Prophecies and Psalms; and, although here connected with the person or the acts of Jesus, it is used with the same reference to a Divine pre-eminence, carries the same dignity of Lordship with it, and expresses in the New Testament, as in the Old, an ACTING PERSONALITY and POWER, such as can really belong to none but the Divine. "There is none other Name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved;"11" Father glorify Thy Name; "12 "I have manifested Thy Name; "13 "In My Name cast out devils;" 14 "The devils are subject to Thy Name; "15 "Do a miracle in My Name; "16 "Might have life through His Name; "17 "Hallowed be Thy Name; "18 "Baptize into the Name." 19 The peculiar use thus made of the Divine Name was not, as it is usually regarded, a mere form of speech, or mode of Oriental Rhetoric; but was, in fact, the expression of two elements of thought, neither of which, from our modern point of view, is very easy to appreciate, though both were universally accepted by the Jews, and enter deeply into the whole Biblical conception of the nature of God's revelation of Himself, and the medium by which that revelation was to be effected. The FIRST of these concerns the WORD itself which was regarded by the Hebrews as distinctively "the Name." This was the WORD given by the Lord to Moses at the burning bush,20 which was to be "His Name forever, and His memorial unto all generations." This WORD the Jews con 4 Prov. xviii: 10. 9 Ex. xx: 7. 5 Num. vi: 27. 10 Ex. xxiii: 21. 15 Luke x: 17. 1 Ps. xx: I. Ps. liv: 1. 3 Ps. xx: 7: 62 Sam. vii: 13. 7 Ex. xx: 24. 8 Is. xlviii: 11. "Acts iv: 12. 12 John xii: 28. 13 John xvii: 6. 14 Mark xvi: 16 Mark ix: 39. 17 John xx: 31. Ex. iii: 15; vi: 3. 17. 18 Matt. vi: 9. 19 Matt. xxviii : 19. sidered as wholly different from all other words; they felt towards it the same awe and reverence as to God Himself; it was possessed, in their opinion, not only of especial sanctity, but of intrinsic power, so that its use could work great wonders; it could summon spirits, control the elements, bring deliverance in time of danger, and exercise a mastery over the Laws of Nature. In accordance with these opinions, they gave it a variety of titles significant of its distinguished attributes. Among these are Ha Shem, the Name; Shemma Rabba, the Great Name; Shem Hammaphorash, the Name of Manifestation; also the Tetragrammaton, or Name of four letters; the Quaternion; the Ineffable Name; the Omnific Word; and many others of like import,-all in some way expressive of an inherent distinction and supremacy belonging to the WORD, which was "the Name" above all other words and names whatever. To understand how this came to be, and what it really involves, we must present an outline of the history of this WORD; and as a starting point for this must understand the second of the elements above alluded to as entering into the Jewish notion of THE NAME. This was the high importance and significance that were attached to names, and giving names, among nearly all the ancient peoples, and especially the Hebrews. With us a name has rarely any actual meaning or design; it is not intended to convey any thought, attempts no definition, has no relation to character or condition, and is, in truth, only a sort of trade mark to designate this or that individual for general convenience. Among most of the ancients, at least in their earlier ages, it was very different; their names were mostly given with the direct intention to describe the person, or to express some fact or feeling or anticipation identified with him. Adopting a quotation of Dr. Liddon, "the connection between name and thing, especially in the Old Testament, is very close, and wholly different from our modern thought, in which the name has dwindled to a mere conventional sign; there the Name is the thing itself so far as this can come into expression and be represented by a Word." Bishop Patrick 2 says, "In the Scripture name means essence." Keil on the same passage remarks, "the name denotes the nature." This is also the opinion held by Plato, in the Cratylus.3 "This giving of Note on p. 50 of his Bampton Lecture, from "König Theologie de Psalmen," p. 260 2 On Judges xiii. 18, "my name is secret," or in the margin and th Septuagint, "wonderful,' 3 Jowett's Plato, Vol. I. pp. 629, 661. names can be no such light matter as you fancy, or the work of light or chance persons; things have names by nature. And all the names we have been explaining were intended to indicate the nature of things." The Koran, following undoubtedly some Jewish tradition, attributes a high significance to the naming of the animals by Adam, asserting that "God taught Adam the names of all things, and then proposed them to the angels; they answered, We have no knowledge but what Thou teachest us, for Thou art knowing and wise;' and when Adam had told the names, God said, 'Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of heaven and earth?'" And Philo expresses the thought very clearly in reference to both Adam and the Names in the books of Moses generally.2 "In the history of Moses the names he affixes to things are the most conspicuous energies of the things themselves; so that the thing itself is of necessity its name, and is in no respect different from the name imposed on it." The feeling thus widely prevalent as to the import and value of all names was greatly intensified in most of the religions of antiquity with reference to the names of certain of their gods. There was a mystery and power ascribed in many cases to these names, which showed the influence of some deeply rooted sentiment about the Names of supernatural beings, that was very similar to the feelings previously referred to among the Hebrews in reference to the WORD which they regarded as distinctively "the Name" of God. Thus, Plato says in Philebus,3 "My awe in naming the gods is always beyond all human feeling and expression." Bunsen speaks of this feature in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.4 The mystery of Names, the knowledge of which was a sovereign virtue, appears to have existed not only in Egypt, but elsewhere. In early Roman History, the hidden and secret name of the city was one of the fatal things of Rome. The Book of the Dead itself is filled with allusions to the power of the name of different deities; thus ch. cxxv., "I have known thee, O thou great God, I have known thy Name. I have known the Names of the forty-two Gods who are with thee in the hall of two truths. Let not evil be done in the land of Zuttu, because I have known the Names of the Gods who are with thee." Ch. xli. is "Of the Festival of the Names of the Gods," and bears title "The Book of preparing to know the Names of the Gods of the South and North Heavens." Ch. xlvi., and several of those following, relate to the passage of the soul into 1 Sale's Koran, ch. 2, p. 5. "Yonge's Translation of Philo, Vol. I. pp. 44, 189. 4 Egypt's Place in History. Vol. V. 147. the presence of Osiris, in which it travels through many gates and apartments, each of which is to be entered only by knowing and giving the Name of the God who stands guardian there. While, in clxviii., it says of Osiris, "The Osiris is born like a word." Still later in Egyptian history we learn from Herodotus,1 that some one of these names had become so peculiarly secret that it was not allowable even to mention it. The Avesta of the Parsees shows that they attached a like value to the Name of some of their higher Gods. It implies that only those who addressed the Deity by his true Name would be accepted.2 Mithra utters the words, speaking thus, “If men would bring offerings addressed to me by Name, I will come." Again, "With offerings by Name, with fitting speech, O strong Mithra, will I offer." Certain words, and especially certain Names of Ahura-Mazda, can overcome the evil spirits, and defend the pure man from the "powers of Darkness."3 "Then spake Zarathustra, Tell me then the Name, O pure Ahura-Mazda, which is thy greatest and best; which is the most efficacious for prayers, the most victoriously smiting, and healing," &c. Ahura gives in response some seventy-two names, among which, as rendered by Haug,4 are "Ahmi, I am; I am wisdom; I am knowledge; I am Ahura, the living; Ahmi-yut Ahmi-Mazda, I am who I am, the Creator;" and it concludes, "Who mentions and speaks these my Names, such a man the points of the Drukh's-souled will not injure, and he will take upon himself the Names to be a support and wall against the invisible Drukhs, the wicked." The creation of the world is also referred to the words of Ahura,5 "Teach Thou me, Mazda-Ahura, from out thyself, from Heaven, through thy mouth, whereby the world first arose." Among the Hindus, as early as the Vedas, there was a Divine Name of transcendent dignity and power, concealed under "the mystic syllable Aum or Om." This is by some6" referred to a triad" of the chief Gods; being composed of the initial letters of their Names; by others it is regarded as a form of an archaic word, meaning "That," which was the designation of the Eternal Power which was ever passing out to manifestation in the illusive world of sense; and, according to the Bhavagad-Gita, was the Divine reality that was impersonate in Krishna. This same word, invested too with a like 1 Rawlinson's Herodotus, II. 219. 2 Spiegel's Avesta, translated by Bleek. Vol. III. 65, 60. 3 Spiegel, Vol. I. 92, III. 22-these are called Dævas and Drukhs. 4 Haug's Essay on the Zend language. Spiegel's version is slightly different, but he has among his titles "I am called the ruling with Name." 5 Spiegel, Vol. II. 82. Hardwicke's "Christ, and other Masters," 124. mysterious charm, has passed over into the Buddhist worship; and in the formula "Om mane padme Houm," is the universal prayer of all the Thibetan and Magnolian Buddhists." The meaning of this is "O God, the jewel in the Lotus, amen." The Lotus is the emblem of Buddha, to whom the prayer is addressed; but, says a recent writer,2 "the great force of the formula lies in Om, the sacred syllable of the Hindus, which ought never to be pronounced, and which denotes the absolute, the Supreme Divinity." The Greeks and Romans had less perhaps of this mysterious symbolism of mere words than any others of the ancient nations. But Bunsen refers3 to the secret Name of Rome, which we are told 4 were the Names of the "penates which were concealed, that, in case of a siege, the enemy might not summon the Tutelar God of the City by prayers and charms." And the unsettled controversy about "the Tetractys," to which Pythagoras attributed so much importance, and which he used as the most solemn form of oath, for both himself and his disciples, implies at least that the meaning of the word was hidden from the common knowledge, and that the reality embodied in it was Divine. These references might be very much extended, but those here given cannot fail to show a profound and widely diffused sentiment among the ancients that there were mysterious and peculiar powers belonging to the Names of certain divine or superhuman beings; and also that, as was remarked with reference to the Hebrews, these powers, and the peculiar efficacy of "the Name," were in the WORD itself which was the Name, and not in any title which this word conveyed, or any meaning that might be expressed by it. Thus Origen,5 speaking of "the nature of powerful Names," some of which are "used by the learned among the Egyptians, or the Magi, and by the Indian Brahmans, and others in different countries," says that the "Names treated with so much reverence by the Hebrews are not applicable to any ordinary created things, but belong to a secret Theology which refers to the Framer of all things." And adds, in conclusion, “that those skilled in the use of incantations relate that the utterance of the incantation (ie., speaking its efficacious name), in its proper language, can accomplish what the spell proposed to do; but, when translated into Gobat and Huc, Travels in Tartary. 2 "The abode of snow," in Littell, No. 1,618, p. 688. 3 Ante, p. 533 4 Jurieu's History of Doctrines, II. 40. 5 Origen in Ante-Nicene Library, I. 421, 423. The whole discussion is extremely curious in this connection. |