One feature of Judaism is that the name of God is so holy that it shouldn’t even be spoken — ‘YHWH’ in particular. The Hebrew alphabet only has consonants (with a few sort-of exceptions) and you ‘just know’ from knowing the language which vowels to use. Modern Hebrew still works this way. (A system that obviously works for them!) In English some have added vowels to turn YHWH into “YaHWeH”. And ‘JeHoVaH’ is another English-ization of YHWH with its own curious history.
Part of the problem is that YHWH in Hebrew looks like a misspelled form of the verb ‘to be’ — it’s a lexically problematic word, so what vowels do you add? As you can imagine this is an area of considerable debate in the Hebrew scholar community. My only point is that YHWH is not a settled and straightforward word even in the original Hebrew. Meanwhile, when Jews read their Scriptures, and come to the sacred name YHWH, instead they say ‘ADONAI’ (‘Master’), ‘HASHEM’ (‘The Name’) or ‘ELOHIM’ (another name for God).
Some Jews go so far as to say that even the generic word ‘God’ shouldn’t be used either. And we see an artifact of this in the New Testament! The Gospel of Matthew clearly has Jews as its primary audience, and it always refers to ‘The Kingdom of Heaven”, whereas the other three gospels refer to “the Kingdom of God”. (Note: in the Greek it’s always “the Kingdom of the Heavens” — plural ‘heavens’. l don’t understand why translators invariably translate it as singular when it’s plural in the Original.)
A particularly interesting body of ancient literature is the “Jewish Magical Papyri’. These were written during the Second Temple Period: the first temple that Solomon built was destroyed when the Babylonians conquered Israel (c. 600 BCE), and a second one was built when the Jews returned to Israel (c. 500 BCE) until it was destroyed again by Titus in 70 CE. Thus Jesus lived in the Second Temple Period. Although magic was forbidden by Levitical law in the Hebrew Bible, it was widely practiced in the late Second Temple period, and is particularly well documented after the destruction of the temple into the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries C.E. Jewish and Samaritan magicians appear in the New Testament (see the Acts of the Apostles), and also in the works of the Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37 CE to c. 100). The idea of Jewish magic was to use the name of God — especially YHWH — in magical incantations for healing and such — amulets with magical inscriptions were especially popular. One of the ways they transliterated Hebrew YHWH into Greek was IAŌ — iota, alpha, omega. One wonders if there’s a connection between this and “I am the Alpha and Omega” in the Book of Revelation.
The Septuagint was an important translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek done around 300 BCE. In it they ‘translate’ YWHW sometimes using the Greek word for ‘Lord’ (KURIOS), sometimes by putting the Hebrew word YHWH (“יהוה”) in the Greek text (which would make Psalm 23 begin “יהוה” is my shepherd, I shall not want.”), and sometimes as IAŌ.
My point is that the ancients had a deep reverence for the name of God, and held it in special awe and mystery. Something we don’t really do today in Christendom. I wonder if our more casual use of the name of God has something to do with our modern egalitarian idea that ‘everyone is equal’ — “all men/[& women] are created equal”, and without thinking about it we apply that same notion to our relationship with God as well. After all, in the view of some, God works for US: His ‘job’ is to make us healthy, wealthy, and happy — if only we have enough ‘faith’. (And if you’re not healthy, wealthy and happy, well that’s YOUR fault for not having enough faith. Let’s see: in this view, if things are going well, God gets the credit. But if not, WE get the blame! Nice!)
I wonder if ‘paradox’ is a better approach. Truly God is closer to us than our own breath. But S/He is also the creator of a Cosmos that will forever exceed our comprehension. It is tempting when confronting paradox to want to pick one side, run with that, and ignore the other. But that always gets us in trouble — closing our eyes to a big swath of Reality always does. Better, methinks, is to hold both sides of that seeming contradiction — God is both Intimate and Infinitely Beyond Us at the same time. And chalk up the seeming contradiction to the profound finiteness of our human minds