Josh’s Thoughts

A few days ago in this post I wrote about how I plan to spend some time studying the Names of Christ this summer, in an effort to get to know Him better. Before I start getting into the Names of Christ, I thought it would be good to explain a little bit more about why I decided to study His Names.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the reason that I am doing this is to get to know the Christ behind all the theology. But some might be wondering why I choose to do this by studying His Names and titles. After all, a Name is just an identifier, right?

Well, that’s the way that it is today, but that’s not the way that it was in biblical times. Today we use names for identification and nothing more. For instance, my name is Joshua Spiers, and people call me Josh or Joshua. If I am in a place where there are several Joshua’s, then people might call me Spiers, or Joshua Spiers. If things got really confusing then people could identify me by my full name: Joshua Michael Spiers.

Today parents pick names for their children that have meaning to the parents, but those names ultimately serve only as a way of identifying the person. Many people probably could not even tell you the meaning of their names.

But in Bible times it was very different. A name wasn’t meant to just to identify you, it was meant to tell other people something about you. In other words, your name said something about the type of person that you were. This wasn’t always the case, of course, but it was very common.

For instance, Jacob’s name literally means “heel grabber” [1]. He was named this because he was holding onto his twin brother’s heel when he was born (Gen. 25:26). In another Bible passage a man’s name is Nabal, which means “fool” [2]. Once again, people’s names didn’t always represent who they were, but the practice was very common. The point is that names meant something in Biblical times; a name was more than a way of identifying a person, it was a way of finding out something about them. This practice was so important that Nelson’s Illustrated Manner’s and Customs of the Bible (an excellent book about biblical cultures) says, “Jewish people believed that they must first know a person’s name before they could know the person themselves” [3].  

So let me ask this question: If a person’s name was so important in ancient times, then how much more important was the name of a god? If ancient cultures believed that a person’s name said something about who they were, then wouldn’t they believe the same thing about the names of their gods? Interestingly enough, archaeology confirms that this is exactly the case. One study Bible says that “In ancient times a ‘name’ represented the actual nature or essence or power of the person or god that it designated” [4]. Catch that? People believed that knowing the name of a god told you something about that god’s power.

So it’s obvious from all of this that a name carried extreme importance in biblical times–especially when it was the name of a god. This explains the exchange between Moses and God in front of the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-22). When God told Moses to go to Egypt and demand the emancipation of the Israelites, one of the questions that Moses asked God was: “I will tell the people of Israel that the God their ancestors worshiped has sent me to them….But what should I say, if they ask me your name?” (13 CEV). In other words, Moses wanted to know the Name of God. Judaism was not a formal religion yet, so Moses only knew Jehovah as someone Who his ancestors worshiped. Moses wanted to know Jehovah personally, so He asked for His Name! God’s response was very important. He replied, “I am the eternal God….So tell them that the LORD, whose name is ‘I Am,’ has sent you….This is my name forever, and it is the name that people must use from now on” (14 CEV).

It is obvious that this exchange was of supreme importance. God revealed Himself in a very personal way to Moses, and He did so by giving Moses His Name. The Name was never meant to simply identify God (although it served that function as well), but the Name that God gave Moses was designed to identify who God was, and to say something about Him.

Now that I’ve explained all of this it might make more sense why I have decided to get to know Christ better this summer by taking the time to study His Names. The most important Name is, of course, “Jesus,” which basically means “Salvation of Yahweh [Jehovah]” [5]. However there are hundreds of other Names that describe Jesus as well.

The first name that I am studying is from Rev. 3:14. In this passage Jesus calls Himself “the Amen.” The next post that I make about the Names of Christ will be looking at this Name and talking a little bit about what it means.

(Rev 3:14 CEV) This is what you must write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: I am the one called Amen! I am the faithful and true witness and the source of God’s creation. Listen to what I say.

References:

1. J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1995). 446.
2. Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen and H. Wayne House, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999). 1 Ki 18:22-23.
3. J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1995). 446.
4. The Open Bible : New King James Version, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998, c1997). Ge 1:1.
5. J.I. Packer, Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Nelson’s Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1995). 446.