“Sacred” Names like Yah and False Deities

A common name used by the Sacred Name community for the God of the Bible is Yah. The only source of evidence for this as the potential name of God comes from the Masoretic Text (7th-10th century A.D) in Psalm:

68:4: Sing to God! Sing praises to his name! Extol him who rides on the clouds: to Yah, his name! Rejoice before him! -World English Bible

68:4: Sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him. -KJV

However, in the Septuagint (about 250 B.C) Lord is given as the name for God:

 68:4 (67:4) Sing to God, sing praises to his name: make a way for him that rides upon the west (the Lord is his name) and exult before him. They shall be troubled before the face of him,

If you look up the word for Jah in Strong’s Concordance you get the idea that this is in fact God’s name. However, Strong’s concordance is based partly on the King James Version which used the Masoretic Text for the Old Testament. Therefore word’s defined by Strong’s Hebrew are based on the Jewish or Masoretic definition. Strong’s defines the word Jah in Psalm 68:4 as “the sacred name”:

Strong’s H3050:
יהּ
yâhh
yaw
Contracted for H3068, and meaning the same; Jah, the sacred name
KJV Usage: Jah, the Lord, most vehement. Cp. names in “-iah,” “-jah.”

H3068  is Yehovah/Jehovah, which we will come back to later.

Psalm 68:4 is the only verse that Yah/Jah is used for the name of God in the Masoretic Text.  In other verses the word Lord is used similar to the Septuagint or in a few cases the Tetragrammaton.

Who is Yah?
Many may be surprised to learn that Scholars have found that Yah/Jah are the same name as, Iah, Aah, who are all the same god of the crescent moon in Egypt:

“It is interesting that the earliest references to the name Yah (Yaeh) refer to the moon as a satellite of the earth in its physical form. From this, the term becomes conceptualized as a lunar deity, pictorially anthropomorphic but whose manifestations, from hieroglyphic evidence, can include the crescent of the new moon, the ibis and the falcon, which is comparable to the other moon deities, Thoth and Khonsu“.-touregypt.net

Iah- ( Egyptian: Jˁḥ, transliterated as Yah, Jah, Jah(w), Joh or Aah [2]) is a god of the moon in ancient Egyptian religion. His name simply means moon. By the New Kingdom he was less prominent as a moon deity than the other gods with lunar connections, Thoth and Khonsu. –wikipedia

See E.A. Wallis Budge Hieroglyphic Dictionary Vol. I. p.29b

As you can see, Aah is also known as Iah and Yah or Thoth and Khonsu. As shown in the picture above this is the same as Yahreach (H3394 below) or Yerach (H3391 below) in Hebrew which means moon:

The Hebrew word for moon is Strong’s H3394:
ירח
yârêach
yaw-ray’-akh
From the same as H3391; the moon
KJV Usage: moon.

And for the Month is Strong’s H3391:
ירח
yerach
yeh’-rakh
From an unused root of uncertain signification; a lunation, that is, month
KJV Usage: month, moon.

Yah, Thoth, Ian, or Lah is also associated with Yarikh another moon god of the canaanites:

“Early in Canaanite religion, the male moon-god, “Yerach,”  (H3391 hebrew word for moon/month above) was the chief god of the pantheon. And the female sun-god, “Shamash,” was his cohort. Later, these were changed to Baal and Ashteroth. ” To judge from Canaanite place-names of the earliest period, such as Jericho and Beit-Yerach, as well as from Non-Semitic personal and place names of the 2nd millennium BC, the cult of the sun-god and moon-god (or goddess) was at its height in very early times and steadily declined thereafter” (W.F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 92, also p. 83).” (emphasis mine)

So Yerach was a canaanite moon god who became Baal in Babylon and Judaism. We know that Ashteroth or Asherah has been found in ancient text and archeology to have been Yahweh’s consort and Yahweh is in fact Baal, not the true God of the Bible.

Some scholars assert that the Hebrew name Yahweh is in fact the same moon deity, Ioh who again is Yah/Jah/Aah, etc:

“Röth derives the Hebrew name [Yahweh] from the ancient moon-god Ih or Ioh.” -Die Aegypt. und die Zoroastr. Glaubenslehre, 1846, p. 175

Therefore, Yarik the canaanite moon god likely came from egypt once being called Yah and the Jews carried this over into their worship of the true God of the Bible who does not have a human name. Yah, Yahweh, Yarik are all linked to Baal and not our God of the Bible. This would explain why physical Israel was constantly scolded for their backsliding and sacrificing to idols throughout the Old Testament, not just at the creation of the Golden Calf.  And this is why the Jews use new moons (from Babylon) to mark their months. In the King James Version (Masoretic/Hebrew text) new months are called Chodesh:

חדשׁ
chôdesh
kho’-desh
From H2318; the new moon; by implication a month
KJV Usage: month (-ly), new moon.

Brown-Driver-Briggs’ Hebrew Definitions
חדשׁ
1. the new moon, month, monthly
a. the first day of the month
b. the lunar month
Origin: from H2318
TWOT: 613b
Parts of Speech: Noun Masculine

However, in the Greek version of the Old Testament the month is simply called month and has nothing to do with the moon. Perhaps the sacred name community are reviving names of ancient false deities based on some corruption of the Masoretic Text from the 7th to 10th century by the Masoretes. Many refuse to use the Greek Septuagint, because believe that the modern used Jewish version of the Bible is superior when it is in fact much newer than the Septuagint and does not match Jesus’ quotes of the Old Testament nor Prophecies that he fulfilled. Hpwever, it seems that the Masoretic Text was altered in order to skew verses about Jesus or to have our Savior appear to have misquoted the Old Testament. This results in not only calling the God of the Bible by the name of an  ancient Egyptian god of the crescent moon,  but by the name of Baal and other possibly false deities whom that were carried over from Babylon along with certain month names and the Babylonian calendar.

In the Septuagint God does not have a name. He is simply called Lord or I AM. In the New Testament, Jesus never calls God by a name. He simply refers to God as Abba or Father. When Jesus does use the name for God in reference to himself he says “I AM”.  The Church Fathers likewise never used a name for God. In fact, they stated that God does not have a human name. Sacred Namers believe that we should call God by a human name to receive favor or to understand God better.

For more on the Hebrew Roots Movement and God’s Name see God’s Name in the Early Church Fathers

and Does the Tetragrammaton reveal God’s Name?

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/yah.htm#ixzz2xlL4MylN

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iah

http://yahwehism.com/html/yah.html