The Lord's Prayer: "Hallowed Be Thy Name" (part 1)

Had someone told me this before? I don't think so and yet, again, this seems one of those very obvious, logical pieces of information that I should know somehow. Thank heavens that Joseph Ratzinger presents these ideas so logically and simply that I can remember and absorb.

But in the world of Moses' time there were many gods. Moses therefore asks the name of this God that will prove his special authority vis-a-vis the gods. In this respect, the idea of the divine name belongs first of all to the polytheistic world, in which this God, too, has to give himself a name. But the God who calls Moses is truly God. and God in the strict and true sense is not plural. God is by essence one. For this reason he cannot enter into the world of the gods as one among many; he cannot have one name among others.

God's answer to Moses is thus at once a refusal and a pledge. He says of himself simply, "I am who I am" -- he is without any qualification. This pledge is a name and a non-name at one and the same time. The Israelites were therefore perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of God, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities. By the same token, recent bible translations were wrong to write out this name -- which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable -- as if it were just any old name. By doing so, they have dragged the mystery of God, which cannot be captured in images or in names lips can utter, down to the level of some familiar item within a common history of religions.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

More of this will follow tomorrow.