Postulant Lesson 6

Please read the article Yahweh and come back to this page to answer the following questions. Please note that the article you are about to read is written by a Jewish scholar with a PhD.  He is not just spinning partly formed theories and most significantly, he is NOT speaking from the Christian point of view regarding the god Yahweh.  He is speaking from the inside--as a Jew whose family has never stopped revering Yahweh, being direct descendants of those original children of Israel.

Remember, you are leaving our website to go read the article, so be sure to hit your go-back button to return here when you're done the reading.

YHVH written in the ancient Hebrew, while the rest of the text (Psalm 119) is written in the more modern Hebrew of the day, which was the time of Yeshua, for this is a fragment of a Dead Sea Scroll. See http://www.eliyah.com/yhwhdss.html for more details and more scrolls.

Cut and paste the following questions, insert your answers, and email them to the Mystery School, with "AOM Postulant 6" in the subject line.

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l.  In ancient days, names had power.  They still do today, actually.  But why is that?  What is it about knowing a secret name that could be dangerous (or helpful)?

2.  YHVH is also called the __________________  and in Hebrew is called the Shem ______________ .

3.  When Jews encounter this word YVHV while reading, what do they say instead?  Do they ever say the word Yehovah or Jehovah?

4.  The name holy name YHVH occurs in the Bible approximately how many thousand times?  

5.  Name the two evil entities the article lists that God-the-Father battles it out with in Talmud and Midrashic literature.

6.  At the original encounter between Abraham and YVHV-God, a covenant was made, what two commandments were required of Abraham (then called Abram or Avram) ?

7.  The descendants of Abraham are not supposed to view themselves as better than other nations, but as ____________ ?

8.  List the names of the Gods whose temples existed alongside the worship of Yahweh.

9.  True or False.  There were other gods who had special relationships with Yahweh such as spouse, son, daughter, etc.

10.  The tribes had banners with totem animals representing gods.  Name a few of these here.  Extra Credit:  Get out your Bible and look in Genesis 49 for the list of these special totem animals and list them here. Some of them are unclear, the animal was not listed or was later edited out.  Just write "unclear" for those.

11.  True or False:  The serpent god was so revered that his statue was right in Yahweh's temple for years.  [Note: The serpent god was a symbol of knowledge and immortality because the snake sheds its skin and grows it back. The snake is also a symbol of formless chaos first taking form, that is first manifesting into creation out of chaos, because the snake is almost formless--with no legs and such, and seems to be an otherwordly chaotic creature. So it came to symbolize these concepts of chaos given form.  But your question is, was this god honored in Yahweh's great temple?]

12.  True or False:  Other gods were allowed to be worshipped right alongside Yahweh until the time of Isaiah.

13.  Describe Isaiah's veiwpoint.

14.  The ancient world viewed their gods based on locality, believing that each god belonged to a specific mountain, temple, river, or city. How did being uprooted and forced to live "out of town" in Babylon for 70 years change the nature / personality of Yahweh?

15.  When was the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) compiled into a complete book?

16.  What does the phrase Hokhmat-ha-Tseruf mean, and what was did this study contain?

17.  It is not enough to merely mention God's magikal name(s), you have to ___________ them.

18.  Fill in the blanks:   "The _______ mentioned in the Torah are the ________ for anything a person needs in the world."

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