I AM, Page 3

This matter of the “name” of God is another cogent demonstration that the documentary hypotheses⁴ of the Old Testament (and of the New) is the spurious offspring of the leading theology of the last two centuries. This is pointedly illustrated by the erroneous assumption that merely the awesome sounding “Yahweh” is the “name” intended by the Mosaic account rather than the mysterious phrase “I Am.” Later in this essay (following the discussion on the sound “AUM”), we will return to “Yahweh” to look strictly at its meaning absent the juxtaposition of the expository “I Am” in Ex 3,14. But for now, we must preliminarily pursue a somewhat different path of analysis.

Much confusion has arisen among the scholars by the statement in Ex 6,2-3 that such “name” was not known to or used by the Hebrews before the time of Moses. Yet, clearly the term “Yahweh” appears much earlier in the book of Genesis (162 times according to 1 ZC 74). It first appears in Gen 2,4b, and in Gen 4,26 we are told, “At that time [when Adam and Eve were bearing their children] men began to call upon the name of the LORD.”

In Barc’s Exodus, App. II, we read:

On the basis of certain phenomena in Genesis and especially on the apparently obvious interpretation of Exod. 6:1-3 . . . it has been widely held for nearly two centuries that the use of Yahweh for Israel’s God began in the time of Moses, even though this theory is in contradiction to Gen 4:26 and much of the usage of Genesis. This has in turn led to a variety of theories as to the origin of the name.

More extensively, in 1 AB 37-38, we read, in regard to Gen 4,26:

An acute problem is posed, lastly, by the laconic notice at the end of the chapter. The clause reads, “It was then that the name Yahweh began to be invoked”; not “the name of Yahweh,” since the emphasis is precisely on the personal name and not on its eventual substitute “the Lord.” But this statement is directly at variance with Exod iii 14 (E) and vi 3 (P), which indicate that the name Yahweh had not come into use until the time of Moses. Yet J employs this very name throughout Genesis; and the present passage ascribes the usage to very ancient practice.

To be sure, some critics would attribute vss 25-26 to P, in view of the fact that vs 25 speaks of “Adam” (instead of “the man”), as is P’s custom (see v 1ff.), aside from mentioning Elohim; cf. Noth, Uberlieferungsgeschichte..., p. 12, n. 26. In that case, however, the divergence from Exod vi 3 would be that much more perplexing. (There is, of course, nothing new in J’s use of Elohim; cf. ix 26f.) Everywhere else, each documentary source is consistent on this point; it is only their joint testimony that gives rise to difficulties. A plausible solution may be in sight, nevertheless. Even though J traced back the name Yahweh to the dim past, while E and P attributed the usage to Moses, both views may be justified depending on the point of vantage. The worship of Yahweh was in all likelihood confined at first to a small body of searchers under the aegis of J. When Moses set out to fashion a nation out of an amorphous conglomerate of sundry ethnic and tribal elements, he had to concentrate on three major features of nationhood; a territorial base, a body of laws, and a distinctive religion. The last was normative in more ways than one; it was necessarily the faith of the same forefathers who had already tied it to the Promised Land, with Yahweh as its fountainhead. To that extent, therefore, Yahweh revealed himself to Moses: and it is this personal revelation that both E and P celebrate. To J, however, who chronicled the progress within the inner circle of the patriarchal pioneers, the personal participation of Yahweh had been the dominant fact from the start.

Little can be said in this connection about the etymology of Yahweh. The fact that attempts to solve the problem are still being made all the time is proof that none of the preceding efforts has carried sufficient appeal. All such ventures start out with the Bible’s own explication in Exod iii 14. Yet that name gloss should not be adduced as a technical etymology. It is manifestly a case of symbolism no less than the instances in Gen ii 23, iv 1, xi 9, and many other passages. On this score, at any rate, the name of Yahweh is constantly taken in vain.

Perhaps the most unequivocal indication that the intended name of God was “I Am” and not “Yahweh” is to be found in Revelation. Not until Steiner expounded upon that mysterious book (in The Apocalypse of St. John [ASJ] and Reading the Pictures of the Apocalypse [RPA]), in the light of his basic anthroposophic teaching, was there any treatment that carried with it significant force of reason and clarity of meaning. The chart depicted in I-1 is taken from the ASJ lecture cycle, in which we learn for the first time (along with RPA) that the letters to the angels of the seven churches refer to the seven Cultural Eras in the present post-Atlantean Epoch (see I-25, I-19 and I-24). (We also see that the seven seals, trumpets and bowls of wrath deal with progressively subsequent stages in humanity’s evolution, reflected in I-1; see the Commentary.) Let us look, then, at these unequivocal passages (emphasis added):

Rev 2,17: “. . . To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him who receives it.”

Rev 3,12: He who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God; never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

Rev 19,12-13: (12) His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but himself. (13) He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.

The church in Pergamum, to whose angel Rev 2,17 is addressed, is clearly identified to Moses’ Chaldo-Egyptian era. This we can see by its reference to the “hidden manna” (see “Manna”). And the “new name . . . which no one knows except him who receives it” is a clear reference to “the I Am,” for as Steiner often said in reference to the above passages, the only name that is known to no one but the one who receives it is “I Am.” There is simply no one else in all creation who could ever utter that name with reference to the one who carries it except that person alone. It is a clear reference to the Ego that the human being progressively receives during Earth evolution (see I-72). The “white stone” (2,17) is a contra-distinction to the original “stone tablets”—which referred not to actual rock, but to the nature of the human brain, which was developing, i.e., hardening, “rocklike,” as the natural result of the process of ever-increasing densification brought about by the Fall (Gen 3) whereby humanity was given access to the “tree of knowledge” but deprived of its prior access to the “tree of life.”