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In the Mail: A Letter From God?
By Ken Horn | April 7, 2008
We get lots of mail in the TPE office. We still get traditional snail mail, though a lot of people communicate via email or fax.
Today I got a six-page typewritten letter that was signed “YHWH.” Those four letters are what biblical scholars call the tetragrammaton, which simply means a four-letter word.
But the tetragrammaton is a specific four-letter word. It is the name of God in the Old Testament, the one revealed to Moses in the book of Exodus. We have to guess at the full word since ancient Hebrew did not include vowels (those were added later). We know Yahweh as the closest we can get to this word. It is translated “Jehovah” in older translations.
So did I get a letter from God? Of course not. I will accept that God can give words to people. What I will not accept, however, is the presumption of someone signing God’s name to his letter.
Actually, it turned out good for me that it was signed that way. I didn’t have to read the whole letter.
