Group - Names of God in Judaism

In Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title. It represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relation of God to the Jewish people. To show the sacredness of the names of God, and as a means of showing respect and reverence for them, the scribes of sacred texts took pause before copying them, and used terms of reverence so as to keep the true name of God concealed. The various names of God in Judaism represent God as he is known, as well as the divine aspects which are attributed to him. The numerous names of God have been a source of debate amongst biblical scholars. Some have advanced the variety as proof that the Torah has many authors (see documentary hypothesis). It is also held that the only "name of God" in the Tanakh is Yahweh (the English rendering of YHWH). Whereas words such as Elohim (God), El (mighty one), El Shaddai (almighty God), Adonai (master), El Elyon (most high God), Avinu (our Father), etc. are not names, but titles, highlighting different aspects of YHWH, and the various roles which He has. This is similar to how a man may be called by his name, or by 'Dad', 'Husband', 'Boss', 'Sir', 'Son', etc, but his personal name is the only one that can be correctly identified as his name. In the Tanakh, YHWH is the personal name of the God of Israel, whereas the other words are titles which are ascribed to Him. The most important and most often written name of God in Judaism is the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God, AKA , YHWH or Yahweh. "Tetragrammaton" derives from the Greek prefix tetra- ("four") and gramma ("letter", "grapheme"). The Tetragrammaton appears 6,828 times (see 'Counts' in the Yahweh article) in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia edition of the Hebrew Masoretic text. This name is first mentioned in the Book of Genesis (2.4) and in English language bibles is traditionally translated as "The LORD".