I am not sure if anyone has previously mentioned the name the C's used for this session (apologies if they did and I missed it):
Q: (L) And who do we have with us this evening?
A: Nomendei of Cassiopaea.
Q: (Joe) The name of God, or the names of God...
(Scottie) That's unusual.
As Joe rightly points out, Nomen Dei means in Latin "the Name of God". As Scottie mentions, the use of such an appellation is highly unusual. What could be the significance of this? The fact that the C's used Latin here might implicate the Roman Catholic Church since it is perhaps the only institution in the world that still uses Latin as its official language (all of its official pronouncements are still written in Latin). However, the name of God is also relevant to the Jewish faith where it was considered so sacred that it was forbidden for Jews to even use it.
On this basis, I did a little research on line and came across a letter dated 29 June 2008 from Cardinal Francis Arinze, who is the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which he wrote to the presidents of all the conferences of Catholic bishops worldwide, prohibiting use of the term Yahweh in the liturgy, particularly in hymns and Psalm translations.
In his letter, he states the following:
By directive of the Holy Father, in accord with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments deems it convenient to communicate to the bishops’ conferences the following as regards the translation and the pronunciation, in a liturgical setting, of the divine Name signified in the sacred tetragrammaton, along with a number of directives.
In accordance with immemorial tradition, which indeed is already evident in the above- mentioned Septuagint version, the name of almighty God expressed by the Hebrew tetragrammaton and rendered in Latin by the word Dominus, is to be rendered into any given vernacular by a word equivalent in meaning.
Notwithstanding such a clear norm, in recent years the practice has crept in of pronouncing the God of Israel’s proper name, known as the holy or divine tetragrammaton, written with four consonants of the Hebrew alphabet in form הךהי, YHWH. The practice of vocalizing it is met with both in the reading of biblical texts taken from the lectionary, as well as in prayers and hymns.
It occurs in diverse written and spoken forms, for example, Yahweh, Yahwè, Jahweh, Jahwè, Jave, Yehovah, etc. It is therefore our intention, with the present letter, to set out some essential facts which lie behind the above-mentioned norm and to establish some directives to be observed in this matter.
2. The venerable biblical tradition of Sacred Scripture, known as the Old Testament, displays a series of divine appellations, among which is the sacred name of God revealed in the tetragrammaton YHWH הךהי. As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of Sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: Adonai, which means "Lord."
The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the so-called Septuagint, dating back to the last centuries prior to the Christian era, had regularly rendered the Hebrew tetragrammaton with the Greek word Kyrios, which means "Lord." Since the text of the Septuagint constituted the Bible of the first generation of Greek-speaking Christians, in which language all the books of the New Testament were also written, these Christians, too, from the beginning never pronounced the divine tetragrammaton. Something similar happened likewise for Latin-speaking Christians, whose literature began to emerge from the second century, as first the Vetus Latina and, later, the Vulgate of St. Jerome attest. In these translations, too, the tetragrammaton was regularly replaced with the Latin word Dominus, corresponding both to the Hebrew Adonai and to the Greek Kyrios. The same holds for the recent Neo-Vulgate which the Church employs in the liturgy.
3. Avoiding pronouncing the tetragrammaton of the name of God on the part of the Church has therefore its own [rationale]. Apart from a motive of a purely philological order, there is also that of remaining faithful to the Church’s tradition, from the beginning, that the sacred tetragrammaton was never pronounced in the Christian context nor translated into any of the languages into which the Bible was translated.
II. Directives
In light of what has [just] been expounded, the following directives are to be observed:
1. In liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the tetragrammaton YHWH is neither to be used nor pronounced.
2. For the translation of the biblical text in modern languages, intended for the liturgical usage of the Church, what is already prescribed by n. 41 of the Instruction Liturgiam authenticam is to be followed; that is, the divine tetragrammaton is to be rendered by the equivalent of Adonai/Kyrios; "Lord," Signore, Seigneur, Herr, Señor, etc.
3. In translating, in the liturgical context, texts in which are present, one after the other, either the Hebrew term Adonai or the tetragrammaton YHWH, Adonai is to be translated "Lord" and the [word] "God" is to be used for the tetragrammaton YHWH, similar to what happens in the Greek translation of the Septuagint and in the Latin translation of the Vulgate.
For those not familiar with the tetragrammaton YHWH, which consists of the sequence of consonants Yod, Heh, Waw, and Heh (the Hebrews had no vowels), it is frequently depicted visually as follows:
The word Tetragrammaton comes from the Greek
tetra, meaning "four," and
gramma, which means "letters."
After the
Babylonian Exile (6th century BC), and especially from the 3rd century BC onwards, Jews ceased to use the name Yahweh for two reasons. As Judaism became a universal rather than merely a local religion, the more common Hebrew noun
Elohim (plural in form but understood in the singular), meaning “
God”, tended to replace Yahweh to demonstrate the universal sovereignty of Israel’s God over all others. At the same time, the divine name was increasingly regarded as
too sacred to be uttered; it was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word
Adonai (“My Lord”), which was translated as Kyrios (“Lord”) in the
Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures.
However, the C's have a different take on the name Yahweh:
Q: (L) Who was Yahweh.
A: Fictional being.
Q: (L) Who was the god that spoke to Moses on the mount?
A: Audible projection of Lizards.
Q: (L) Did Moses at any time realize that he had been duped by the Lizzies?
A: No.
If the C's are right, then the Jews have been unwittingly worshipping Lizard beings masquerading as God since the inception of their faith, recalling here that the C's have confirmed that Abraham and Moses were in fact one and the same person.
There have been a few references on this thread to the Ra 'Law of One' channellings. As noted above, the Jews eventually forbade the use of the divine name Yahweh in synagogue rituals and used the Hebrew word "Adonai" instead. It is curious to note then that Ra invariably finished all the channelling sessions by referring to "Adonai". Just taking one example at random:
"I am Ra. You are doing well, my friends. I leave you in the love and the light of the One Infinite Creator. Go forth, then, rejoicing in the power and the peace of the One Creator. Adonai."
What puzzles me though is why the Catholic Church in the form of Cardinal Francis Arinze should make such a big deal out of the use of the name "Yahweh". If you ask most ordinary Catholics who is "the Lord", they would say "Our Lord Jesus Christ", who they regard as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (the triune God), rather than Yahweh. None of them would readily connect "the Lord" to "Adonai".
So just what were the C's trying to convey by using the name "Nomendei"? Is their a hidden message here? Does it relate to something that may happen in our near future? Does it involve Israel or the Catholic Church?
Any thoughts?
) but reminds me of Hurtbult’s work somehow, the name of the book is The Road to Character by David Brooks. You might also want to check that one out.
