The Holy Name of God: A Biblical Perspective

What if the God who spoke from the burning bush and the Jesus of the Gospels are revealed by one and the same saving Name?

The Holy Name of God: A Biblical Perspective traces that single, unbroken revelation from the Hebrew Scriptures into the Gospel: Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God who declared "I AM WHO I AM" to Moses, and Yahshua, the Son to whom the angel said, "You shall call His name Yahshua, for He will save His people from their sins." Far from two names or two gods, Scripture presents them as one Name in two moments of revelation — the Father who reveals, and the Son in whom He is revealed.

Written by a Coptic Orthodox priest with over three decades of pastoral ministry, this book combines and completes two of the author's earlier works, Yahweh: The Hebrew Name of God and Yahshua: The Hebrew Name of Jesus, into a single, unified study. Across twenty-five chapters, it walks the reader through the Tetragrammaton and its pronunciation, the Hebrew names built upon it (Yahweh-Shalom, Yahweh-Rapha, Yahweh-Tsidkenu, and more), the meaning and mission carried in the name Yahshua, and how that Name traveled from Hebrew into Greek, Latin, and English — sometimes illuminated, sometimes obscured, in the crossing.

The book does not stop at etymology. It follows the Holy Name into covenant history, into the worship and festivals of Israel, into the sacraments, prayer, and liturgy of the Church, and into the witness of the early Church Fathers, who saw in Jesus not a rival to the God of Israel but His own saving presence drawn near. It considers the majesty, holiness, and unchanging character ascribed to God's Name; the seriousness with which Scripture guards it from misuse; and what it means, today, to call upon that Name in prayer — including the ancient practice of the Jesus Prayer and its living witness in the Orthodox tradition.

Readers will come away with a clearer grasp of a question that runs quietly beneath the whole of Scripture: how has God chosen to make Himself known, and what does that revelation ask of those who call upon Him? This is not a book that asks readers to change how they worship or how they pray. It does not argue that salvation depends on pronunciation, or that faith is reduced to phonetics. Its purpose is devotional and educational — to restore, for a generation many centuries removed from Hebrew and Aramaic, some of the depth and richness carried in the name of Jesus, a richness that familiarity can quietly wear away. The one confession at the heart of both Testaments remains: Yahweh saves — revealed, embodied, and accomplished in Yahshua.

Written in a voice that is pastoral as much as scholarly, drawing on Scripture, the Hebrew and Greek text, the Church Fathers, and the author's own decades in parish ministry, The Holy Name of God: A Biblical Perspective is for any reader who has ever wondered what is really being said, every time Scripture says "the Name of the Lord" — and who wants to meet, in that Name, not an abstraction, but the God who saves.

Order from Amazon