A Simple Introduction to the Name and Titles of our Creator and His Son
Andrew Leach
As I was thinking about it over the past few weeks, it occurred to me that many of the things that I take for granted as a result of my background, probably don’t appear nearly as simple to those who were not raised in this lifestyle, as they seem to me. So in an attempt to be of assistance to the body of Yeshua while hopefully avoiding the personal agendas that so frequently muddy this topic I will endeavor to give a simple overview of the names and titles of the Father and Son as used in the scriptures.
The first and easiest resource available to us is in the introduction to the NIV Bible.
It states…
“ In regard to the divine name YHWH, commonly referred to as the Tetragrammaton, the translators adopted the device used in most English versions of rendering the name as “LORD” in capital letters to distinguish it from Adonai, another Hebrew word rendered “Lord”, for which small letters are used. Wherever the two names stand together in the Old Testament as a compound name of God, they are rendered the “Sovereign Lord”.
So, to put this in perspective, Yahweh is the proper name of the creator of the universe and in most translations of the Old Testament (because the Hebrew is very consistent) if the translators were making any attempt to create a literal translation they would translate “YHWH” as “the LORD”.
It is when we get into the titles of Yahweh that the waters start to get somewhat muddied.
The most common title used in the Old Testament is “God”, this is the word that the translators chose to use to replace the Hebrew word “Elohim”. The literal translation of “Elohim” is simply “mighty one”, and this word was used to refer to Yahweh, pagan gods, and even on occasion, men.
“Adonai”, another common title used in the Old Testament, is described in the Zondervan NIV concordance as “Sovereign, a title of the one true God with a focus on his majesty and authority”.
Another common title is either “the LORD Almighty” or “the LORD of Hosts”. These are both translations of the same Hebrew word “Saba”, which means “ the Almighty, with a focus on great power to conquer or rule”.
There are many other less common titles used throughout the Old Testament, but the point I attempt to make with this is if you intend to use only Hebrew when you are referring to Yahweh’s titles you will need a very thorough understanding of the original Hebrew texts to be consistent.
Now we arrive at the New Testament. This creates a whole new set of challenges. There are at least three languages used or referenced in the New Testament, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. Because of the mixture of languages and the fact that the main language used (Greek) was originally a pagan language, the translators were left with a much more challenging situation.
There are four names and titles of interest in the New Testament, God, Lord, Christ, and Jesus. The Greek words that exist in the original texts are as fallows.
Theos = God
Kyrios = Lord
Christos = Christ
Iesous = Jesus
Jesus is easily seen to be an anglicized version of the Greek translation of the name Yehoshua or Yeshua.
The word Christ is also an anglicized version of a Greek translation of a Hebrew word, namely Messiah. The literal translation of this word is “anointed one”.
Where things get more involved is with the words Theos and Kyrios. Theos is a generic term for a god or supreme being as the Greeks understood that idea, and Kyrios literally means lord, ruler, or master. These titles are both used in reference to Yahweh and Yeshua in the New Testament and the only way to accurately distinguish who is being referred to is by careful observation of the context.
A good general rule of thumb is that if the text is referring to the Father, the English word God frequently should be read as Yahweh, and Lord as a title such as Elohim, or Adonai. Where you have to pay special attention is anywhere there is a quote from the Old Testament, because there are times it will not wind up being returned to its original form. There are also places where a direct replacement of words would have you place a title such as Elohim before the name Yahweh, this structure is almost non existent in the Old Testament, where the title generally follows the name, and will require some adjustment to maintain fidelity to the intent of the text.
No matter how many rules or systems you develop there are always texts that simply don’t fit the pattern, a quick example of this is found in Luke 2:23NIV where it says “the Law of the Lord” almost every time this particular phrase is used in this type of context in the Old Testament it says “ the Law of Yahweh” in the Hebrew, so I suspect it would not be proper or correct to read this as “ the Law of Elohim”. My only point is this; there is no substitute for familiarity with the whole of scripture to understand the finest nuances of the New Testament.
If the text in question is referring to the Son it would seem prudent to simply translate the word Lord in its literal meaning of master, or perhaps, as we return to the understanding that the English word lord is a title and not a name we may even be able to use it in its proper context of which this could be one.
The word “God” poses some challenges of which Acts 20:28 NIV is a good example. Depending on your theology this text could refer to the Father or the Son. I don’t happen to believe Yahweh ever died so my theology left me scrambling for a proper substitute until I discovered that as a result of their biases the translators chose to not use what they admit in the foot notes is a more literal reading that clearly makes reference to Yahweh’s Son. So in order to read this text and have it make any sense at all requires “fixing” more than one word. Once again, the only sure way to consistently make sound decisions on what to use where is through an intimate familiarity with the scriptures.
The one other instance it is necessary to mention is in the Christian music and literature we are blessed to enjoy. It is important to remember that because of the churches inconsistency in the ways they have chosen to translate the names into English, and the confusion created by the theological biases that are presented in church teaching and translation (Acts 20:28 is a good example), you can not use the same rules to insert the Hebrew names in place of their English counterparts as you do in the scripture with good results. For example, the hymns frequently confuse the Father and Son if you try to do a direct literal interpretation of what the author wrote. I don’t believe there was any deliberate intent on the part of the writer in most instances, it simply goes to show a lack of scholarly study on the part of many believers and forces us to study out the intent of the author of any given work, and then decide if we are in agreement with the heart of what is written.