Yahweh

Yahweh was the national God of the kingdoms of Israel (Samaria) and Judah, with origins in the Canaanite religion. In the oldest biblical literature he is a warrior deity who leads the heavenly army against Israel’s enemies.
From the 9th into the 6th centuries BCE the Yahwistic religion separated itself from its Canaanite heritage and Yahweh became the main God of the of Israel and Judah. Over time the royal court and Temple in Jerusalem promoted Yahweh as the God of the entire cosmos. By the end of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE), the very existence of foreign gods was denied, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the cosmos and the one true God of all the world. During the Second Temple period, speaking the name of Yahweh in public became regarded as taboo. Jews began to substitute the divine name with the word adonai (אֲדֹנָי‬), meaning “Lord.”

Mercy of God

The Name of God Is Mercy

“The name of God is mercy,” so says the current Pope, who is seriously big on the mercy thing. Just in case you are wondering, I am a self-confessed, practicing Catholic. Although, given my various misfit mystic musings on this blog and elsewhere, there would be more than a few among my Catholic brethren who

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The Roar of In-Between

Don’t Leave Before The Miracle Happens

I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. (Ps 38:8). This does not sound like the sort of spiritual blessing that anyone would put their hand up for. When we think of the spiritual life there an innate desire for comfort and ease, the sort of heavenly places

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New Soul On Offer

Spiritual Heart Surgery For Moon Howlers

If, like me, you regularly howl at the moon, you might just be suffering from a severe case of what the Hebrews called hard-heartedness.  In my last post I identified the emphasis that Aristotle, the father of western philosophy, placed on the heart, as the “seat of the soul and the source of reason”. When

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