What is the real name of the God of the Hebrew Bible? Did God tell Moses His real name? If yes, did Moses record it? If yes, then what is this name? This post answers these questions.
What is the greatest invention that humans have ever made? Is it fire, wheel, or language?
Obviously, it cannot be the wheel because the Cult of the Skull people and the people of the Ubaid, Halaf, and Samarra cultures could create livable settlements without it. Also, the Sumerians invented it circa 3500 BCE when they had already established themselves in ki-en-gir so humans can survive without the wheel. This leaves us with two choices: fire and language. Fire was discovered, not invented. Only concepts are invented. Observations, including physical and incorporeal observations, are discovered. So, we are left with language as the greatest invention that humans ever made. This is the conclusion reached by Daniel Everett in his groundbreaking work in linguistics, How Language Began: The Story of Humanity’s Greatest Invention.
Human Speech
Was language invented ex nihilo or was it a de novo development?
Language develops from speech. This means that without speech, there could be no language, but speech can exist without language. So, let us consider speech.
The baby is born with about 100 muscles located in the tongue, pharynx, larynx, and skull (primarily in the mandible and maxilla) that finely control air movements through the vocal tract so as to produce sound. These muscles are called muscles of speech production because they fine-tune sound production so that unique sets of sounds are produced. These are the muscles that allow a 3-month-old baby to make sounds that are recognized as cooing sounds and different cry sounds. At 6 months, these muscles and the neurological system have developed to an extent that the baby can babble and gurgle. At 12 months, the baby can speak single or double syllables e.g ma and dada. These single- or double-syllable sounds are speech. Speech is basically the distinct human sounds that can be recognized as syllables. It is for this reason that stuttering, lisping, and cluttering are classified as speech disorders because the speakers cannot utter distinct syllables. Muteness is the inability to make a speech.
Speech is intelligible because of words that the speaker and the hearer can understand. Comprehensible speech is the basis of verbal communication. This means that one can utter distinct syllabic sounds such as ki, en, and gir without passing any idea if the hearer does not understand the meaning of those 3 syllables. This speech is described as incomprehensible. If you say, ki en gir to a non-Sumerian, your speech will be incomprehensible to the listener, but if you say the same to a Sumerian, (s)he will understand that you are talking about their homeland in Mesopotamia. The speaking of a syllable is called the pronunciation of a syllable, and is the basis of language. Therefore, language can only exist after speech has been acquired. This gives us the answer to the question raised above. Language is a de novo human creation. De novo creation means that something complex is built from simple units. In language, these units are words.
A syllable is given a meaning in different languages e.g Ma means land in Sumerian and mother to English speakers. Syllable(s) that express a single idea is called a word. Assigning a word to an object is called naming the object. The word used to identify an object is the name of that object.
At this point, I can describe language as the communication system created by the structured use of words to express ideas.
So far, we know four vital facts:
- Speech is the first phase of language development.
- Human learning begins by being taught the name of objects, ideas, and emotions. This means that human beings cannot know something that has no name. Therefore, name not only gives identity to a thing (e.g object, idea, or emotion), but it allows it to be known and be acknowledged as existing (or will exist [e.g afterlife or second coming of Christ] or have existed [for past thing e.g extinct animals and people such as Sumerians, Elamites, and Hurrians]).
- Names can only be understood by a person who has acquired speech (even if [s]he is mute or has speech disorders).
- Humans can express ideas verbally through words.
Now, let us consider the account of the creation of man (Adam Ha-Rishon) and the giving of the Torah (Matan Torah in Hebrew) in the Hebrew Bible? In both events, the God of the Torah (HaShem) spoke to a Man – Adam and Moses respectively.
Concerning Adam, the fact that HaShem could speak to him means that he had already acquired speech because it is part of normal human development. His next task was to name things, and the Talmudic commentary to Genesis 2:19 explains that Adam named the animals. These are the names that God and the angels came to call these animals. Therefore, God did not name animals but allowed Adam to name them so that he can take possession of them (which is similar to parents naming their children). This gives naming the attribute of possessing the named.
Was the First Human created in the Bible a Man or an Androgyne?
Who named Adam? In Genesis 1, there is no mention of Adam being given a name. In fact, God did not create a male human, but an androgynous human in the image of God as it says in Genesis 1:27 “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them“. The androgynous nature of the first human created is confirmed by God himself in Genesis 1:28 “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number'”. So, was the first human to reproduce and fill the world with androgynous humans?
In the Talmudic commentary to Genesis 2:19, God said “Let us make Adam”. So, we know that Adam was named by God, but this Adam was an androgyne, not a male. Also, the words “God created mankind in his own image” imply that the God of the Torah is genderqueer because He is both male and female, which explains the use of the plural pronoun them to identify the first created human being. The Talmud explains that Adam was created with two faces – a male face at the front and a female face at the back. However, the Talmud cautiously avoids confirming whether this androgyne had two reproductive systems which would confirm that Adam was a hermaphrodite (which God confirms by the words ‘Be fruitful and increase in number’).
To resolve the issue of non-binary genders, the Talmud developed the concept of 8 gender identities. The first four identities are male (zachar), female (nekevah), intersex (tumtum), and androgynous (which the Talmud describes using the Greek term androgynos, which is interesting as all the other 7 identities have non-Greek names). The other four identities are transgender identities. They are trans male (saris hamah), trans female (aylonit hamah), transsexual male (aylonit adam), and transsexual female (saris adam).
For now, let us take Adam as the name of the first human. Genesis 2 states that Adam named the first woman (Genesis 2 does not mention Lilith who is the first female). Therefore, Adam named Eve. Now, here are some questions: Did Adam know the name of God? If yes, who told him? Did God tell him? Also, did Adam ask God about His name?
Another important person that God spoke to directly and even showed His back to is Moses (Exodus 33:23). Why did God choose a person (i.e Moses) with a speech disorder (i.e stutter) as his messenger? As a human being, Moses wanted to know the name of God, and only God could give him the answer. So, did God tell Moses His real name? If yes, did Moses record it? If yes, then what is this name?
God Gives His Name in a Different Language
In 2012, Simon & Schuster, an American publishing company published a book titled The Real Name of God: Embracing the Full Essence of the Divine. The author of this book is Rabbi Wayne Dosick, an ordained Rabbi, former president of the San Diego Rabbinical Association, and graduate of the Hebrew Union College. This proves that he has an advanced level of knowledge about Judaism so we can learn from him the real name of God according to Judaism.
Rabbi Dosick explains that the real name of God is not YHVH – a name that appears 6823 times in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is made up of the Torah (Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (21 Books of the Prophets), and Ketuvim (13 Books of Scriptures); and these collections are collectively designated as Tanakh. Unlike the Christian Bible which divides the Books of the Prophets into 5 Books of the Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations [whose author is regarded to be Jeremiah], Ezekiel, and Daniel) and 11 Books of the Minor Prophets; the Nevi’im groups the prophetic works into two: 4 Books of the Former Prophets and 17 Books of the Latter Prophets. This is one of the differences between Tanakh and the Christian Old Testament. Also, the Christian Old Testament spells YHVH as Yahweh.
Rabbi Dosick clarifies that the real name of God of the Torah is not Jehovah nor HaShem nor Elohim nor El nor Adonai nor even the Ein Sof of the Kabbalah. So, what about the 72 names of God?
The 72 Names of God
In Exodus 14 – which narrates the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea by the Ancient Israelites – there are three verses that have the exact number of Hebrew letters. Also, these verses follow each other sequentially. Which verses are these? These are verse 19, verse 20, and verse 21. Because these 3 verses follow each other, they can be arranged in 3 rows with verse 19 in the first row, verse 20 in the second row, and verse 21 in the third row.
Each verse has 72 letters. Therefore, each of the aforementioned rows has 72 letters. If a row is split into 72 cells, a letter can be assigned to each cell. Now, when the 3 rows are stacked together, there are 72 columns, with each column being made up of 3 cells. Now, we reverse the order of letters in the second row. This is called Boustrophedon, and was first used by Greeks during the transitionary phase when they were changing the Greek script from right-to-left (RTL) to a left-to-right writing system. So, why is Boustrophedon important in this case? The reason is simple: it is to ensure that if one traces a line from the first letter of verse 19 to the last letter in this verse, then the line will continue smoothly to the first letter of verse 20, and upon reaching the last letter of this verse, the line will transition smoothly to the first letter of verse 21. This traced line takes the shape of an S (because Hebrew is written from right to left). This line represents the figure of a snake whose head is located at the first letter of the first verse and the tail terminates at the last letter of the third verse, but I will not go into this topic for now.
The next thing to do is to add the theophoric name El at the end of each 3-letter column. Now, we have 72 columns with each column made up of a 5-letter word ending with the letters –el. Each 5-letter word is a name of an angel. Therefore Exodus 14:19-21 gives us 72 names of Angels. These are the 72 names of the God of the Torah. Sefer Raziel HaMalakh – which Orthodox Jews believe that it offers protection against house fires – states that prophets used these 72 names to perform miracles. In the Sefer ha-Zohar ‘s commentary of Parashat BeShalah, the 72 names of the Hebrew God are written down.
In Kabbalah, these 72 names of God can be invoked to perform miracles including splitting a body of water (it is stated that Moses used combinations of these 72 names of God to split the Red Sea), resurrecting dead people, healing the sick, attain financial success, and protecting a person from evil forces. For instance, our second column spells the name of the second angel who is responsible for healing the sick, the sixth angel (whose name is spelled in our sixth column) is responsible for blessing a person if he is invoked during Torah reading in the synagogue during the Shabbath, and the eighth angel (whose name is spelled in our eighth column) is responsible for protecting a person from evil forces. The Talmud in Sanhedrin 43a accuses Jesus the Nazarene of practicing magic. According to Jewish oral traditions, Jesus used to write the 72 names of God on a parchment which he thereafter tied to his inner thigh so that he can perform miracles such as walking on water.
Hidden Name of God – The 216-Letter Name
There is a long hidden name of God of the Torah, and it is called the 216-letter name. This name is obtained by concatenating the three verses of Exodus 14:19-21 so that the 72 letters of each verse are joined together to create a 216-letter word which is called the Hidden Name of God (of the Torah). In Apotheosis and the Christ, I explain that this 216-letter name is important in ushering in the messianic age, and early Christians knew about this name and used it to justify their argument that a Greater God – who they called Greater Yahweh – had transcended the God of the Matan Torah.
In verse 47 of Sefer Ha Bahir, the most important name of the Hebrew God is Shem HaMephorash. So is this the real name of God?
There are also 10 names of God associated with each sephirot of the Kabbalistic Etz ha-Hayim (Tree of Life). These 10 names are:
- Eheieh: It is associated with the sephirot of Kether/Crown.
- Jehovah is associated with Chokmah/wisdom.
- Jehovah Elohim is associated with Binah/Understanding.
- El is associated with Chesed/Mercy.
- Eloh is associated with Gevurah/Judgement.
- Eloah Va-Daath is associated with Tiferet i.e Splendor, Beauty, and Balance.
- Jehovah Sabaoth is associated with Netzach/Eternity.
- Elohim Sabaoth is associated with Hod/Glory.
- El Chai is associated with Yesod/Foundation.
- Adonai he-Aretz is associated with Malkuth/Kingdom.
It turns out that none of these 10 names is the real name of the Hebrew God, though Eheieh is related to the real name of God that Rabbi Dosick reveals.
For now, it is incumbent to know that none of the aforementioned 72 names of God nor YHVH nor Shem HaMephorash nor the 216-letter name of God is mentioned by Rabbi Dosick as the real name of God of Matan Torah.
So, what is the real name of God according to Rabbi Dosick? Rabbi Dosick reveals that the real name of God is Anochi . This name is interesting because it is an Egyptian name, not a Hebrew name. So, why should the God of the Hebrew Bible have an Egyptian name as His real name? Who gave God this name? Why should God even have a name at all?
Does God need a Name?
As mentioned previously, human beings cannot know something that has no name. This means that only ideas and objects that have a name exist in human reality. If something does not have a name, then it does not exist. However, naming is language-dependent i.e the same object has different names in different languages. This means that different languages describe the same thing differently. So, is Anochi the best description of God of the Hebrew Bible as compared to the Hebrew names that Jews use?
As I explain in the Holy Sumerians: De Novo Theogenesis, every invention (including language) comes with a penalty, and this penalty is something that is lost when the invention is made. In this case, naming something fixes how it is going to be described, which means that some of the essence of the named thing is lost if it is not included in the description.
In De Novo Theogenesis, I explain that when the Sumerians introduced time into reality, eternity was lost and anxiety emerged as inseparable from human consciousness because humans now became human beings who understood that death is assured with the passage of time. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger dedicates his magnum opus, Being and Time, to explaining how time is the essence of mortality, and the fear of mortality is what separates the authentic man from the inauthentic man. Nonetheless, each authentic or inauthentic man possesses a being called sein that makes him a human with a being or a being with a human body or simply a human being. I will not focus much on Heidegger’s ideas of dasein and the das man because I explain them in Time and Knowledge.
Theosein
The reason I have mentioned this great work is so that I can answer the question: How is sein related to time and anxiety?
Heidegger explains that sein exists when man realizes that he has life because he is present in the world. Basically, sein exists when it acknowledges that his/her life depends on his/her physical existence on earth. The downside of this knowledge is that it is the basis of anxiety. Anxiety emerges when sein realizes that its time in this world is limited, and it cannot exist as a human being without the human body. The sein is genderless.
To me, sein allows me to describe the human being as a human body with a sein that are existing (both body and sein) in the present time in this world. The body allows the sein to search for a meaning of its existence in this universe. Heidegger uses a neologism to describe this search for meaning and the associated contemplation and insights obtained by the sein, and the neologism is mineness. Without the body, the sein cannot search for a meaning of its existence (assuming that it can exist in a disembodied state).
I love Heidegger’s concept of sein for two reasons. The first is that it names a being that requires matter and energy to exist while maintaining its distinctness from matter and energy. As I explain in Consciousness and Gnosis, the scientific study of consciousness has been hampered by the materialist consensus in neurophysiology that consciousness is an epiphenomenon that emerges from the biochemical reactions that underlie neurophysiology of the brain. Sein allows me to explain consciousness as distinct from matter, even though consciousness is not the sein.
Secondly, sein allows for the bonding of idealism and materialism through the medium of dialectical materialism.
Idealism states that only ideas exist and matter (or materiality) is a product of ideas. This is congruent with Neoplatonism’s concept of Hypostatis of Matter. In materialism, only matter (and energy) exist and all things are made up of matter, with energy needed for actions to be realized. In dialectical materialism, being and existence are the same, i.e if a being loses part of its existence, then it loses its state of being e.g if a living cow is killed, then it loses its original state of being a living cow and now becomes a dead cow (and no sane person can describe a dead cow as having life [which is the lost part of existence]). Therefore, we can separate the human soul into two – the soul and the human being, and the soul that is inside the human being is the human soul. This means that the soul is not sein. Also, this allows for an explanation of how the soul can be transferred across bodies – which is the focus of the Kabbalistic work Sha’ar HaGilgulim (the Gates of Reincarnation) that is based on Lurianic Kabbalah.
In philosophy, the study of being is called ontology. It has different specialties, and the specialty of concern for now is ontotheology, a term that was invented by Immanuel Kant. Ontotheology studies the being of God. This is where Heidegger’s idea of sein becomes important.
Does God have an equivalent of a sein? If yes, then God is a being that can contemplate about itself. This being must be able to name itself. Otherwise, it has to be named in order for it to be known by human beings. However, being named means that the entity that names God ends up possing God. This is why God did not allow Moses to name Him. In turn, Moses asked God for His name and God gave an answer.
At this point, we can consider that God has an equivalent of sein, and I call this sein the theosein. If this theosein is unchanging and eternal, then Moses wanted to know its self-identity or self-name i.e the name that the theosein had given itself. According to Rabbi Dosick, the theosein of the only God has its autonym (self-identity). This autonym is Anochi.
Who is Anochi?
Initially, I expected Rabbi Dosick to explain the Egyptian word Anochi. The reason for this is that it is the word that HaShem (the Jewish God) used when identifying himself to Moses in Exodus 20:2 “I am — Anochi — the L-rd your G-d who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” (This translation is based on Chabad exegesis as documented in the Tanya and the writings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe). Moses is an Egyptian name (his Hebrew name is Tovia) so it is interesting that the name that God gives himself is an Egyptian name. Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (who is the Lubavitcher Rebbe) asks:
(Why) “Anochi, the word that denotes G-d’s Essence, is of Egyptian origin?”.
In Torah and Tanakh as Libels against Accomplished Civilizations, I explain that the Hebrew Bible makes libelous claims against Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian (non-Semitic) civilizations. One instance of the Torah’s libelous nature is found in the Oral Torah (the Babylonian Edition of the Talmud) in Pesachim 87 where it describes Ancient Egypt as an “abomination of the earth” and relegates the Ancient Egyptian language to the lowest rank among all the 70 languages that the Torah claims exist on earth. Interestingly, Hebrew itself contains many loan words from the Ancient Egyptian language. Moses is an Egyptian name pronounced as Moshe, and was usually suffixed to a theophoric name e.g Thutmoshe, which means “Thoth is born”.
At this point, we cannot state that Moses wrote the wrong name. The reason for this is simple: all the letters in Anochi are different, and its syllables are distinct and reveal no repeating syllables that could be associated with a stammered word. Maybe, this is one of the reasons that HaShem chose a stutterer to be his messenger.
According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe – as documented in Volume 3 of Likkutei Sichos – the God who gave the Torah to Jews named himself Anochi so as to introduce holiness into the language spoken by Ancient Egyptians. How true is this? Did this holiness serve Egyptians or Jews? Let us consider an event that is recorded in Tanakh and in Egyptian records. It concerns pharaoh Shishak (who is historiographically regarded to be pharaoh Shoshenq I) who waged a war against the Kingdom of Judah and defeated it and then proceeded to sack Jerusalem.
According to 2 Chronicles 12:1-12, pharaoh Shishak was engaged in what we presently call regime change which saw the pharaoh ally with King Jeroboam of Israel in an effort to overthrow King Rehoboam of Judah. During the Egyptian invasion, HaShem instructs prophet Shemaiah (an Aramaic name) to inform the people of Judah that Shishak is His (HaShem) agent and He (HaShem) approves the actions of the Pharaoh. “When Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, he carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace” states 2 Chronicles 12:9.
According to Rabbi Alexandri, a Jewish Scholar and one of Amoraim who developed the Talmud, the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem by pharaoh Shishak was justified because it contained Egyptian wealth – which Israelites had taken out of Egypt during the Exodus – that the pharaoh was ordained to return back to Egypt (Pesachim 87b, Babylonian Talmud). The Jewish scholars and sages who developed the Talmud are collectively referred to as Chazal. This collective term can apply to Rabbi Alexandri. So, Chazal affirm that the wealth that Israelites took out of Egypt ended up getting returned back to Egypt. However, there is a problem. The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is not a proven historical fact, and as Peter Leithart explains in The Abraham Myth, this exodus likely never happened. On the other hand, it is a proven fact that pharaoh Shishak sacked Jerusalem and looted its treasures. So, which God helped the Egyptians loot the wealth of Judah? Is it HaShem or is it Anochi?
Rabbi Shaul Yosef Leiter, quoting the Midrashic commentary on Parashat Shemot, states that “not adopting Egyptian names was one of the three merits for which the Jewish people were redeemed. They went out of Egypt with the same names they entered with”. This is interesting because the last passage of Beshalach Siman 1 in Midrash Tanchuma states that HaShem or Anochi killed 80% of Hebrews during the Plague of Darkness, with Chazal stating that it is possible that only 2% or even 0.2% of all the Israelites in Egypt were redeemed (by the Hebrew God). So, we can safely assume that adopting Egyptian names is one of the sins that the non-redeemed Israelites were killed for. It is also clear that HaShem would have denied Israelites redemption if they had adopted Egyptian names en masse. Is it not an irony that HaShem chose a person with an Egyptian name – Moses – to lead the redemption? Is it not an even greater irony that HaShem identifies his essence with an Egyptian name? So, why punish Israelites for having Egyptian names? Miriam and Moses were not punished for having Egyptian names. In fact, Moses was given that name by the daughter of the Pharaoh.
In his book, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event, the American philosopher – John David Caputo – introduces the concept of weak theology. Caputo uses weak theology to explain that the God of the Jews is weak and unstable. Weak theology allows for approaching the Epicurean Paradox from a postmodern theological viewpoint. As explained in The 13 Types of Evil, a special type of evil that the Kabbalah calls the anti-creation evil emerged when Ein Sof decided to create the cosmos, and it is an evil that now exists independently of Ein Sof. This means that the God of the Hebrew Bible is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent in the universe.
This idea that HaShem is not what He describes himself in the Hebrew Bible has also been expressed by orthodox Jews. In February 2017, Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo – an Orthodox Jewish philosopher – held a lecture whose theme was (the Jewish) “God is not good and the Torah is not moral But God exists and the Torah is divine”. This was an acceptance that the divinity of the Jewish God and the Torah are not tied to morality. In other words, Judaism is not a moral religion, and the Jewish God is neither good nor moral. This approximates the attributes of immorality, ignorance, and egoism that the Gnostics have ascribed to the Jewish God, Yahweh, whom they have equated with the Demiurge whom they named Yaldabaoth i.e Being (or sein) of Chaos. Does this explain why Yahweh was quite unpopular in Ancient Israel just as is the case with Modern Israel where most Jews do not worship Yahweh? It should be noted that Judaism only flourishes in exile, and I can describe it as the Religion of the Exile. Regarding morality, it can be proved that Yahweh lies.
In Against Prophecy, I explain why all the prophecies made in the Bible are unreliable and at worst, false. This includes the failed prophecies that were made by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel (who likely never existed as the Biblical scholar, Professor John J. Collins, explains in Daniel: With an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature). What is interesting is that the Book of Daniel prophecies that Israel would be a world power, which proves that the Hebrew Bible is a political tract geared towards propelling Jews to world domination. However, this depends entirely on getting people to believe in Yahweh (as Jewish scholars blame their lack of power on people refusing to make Yahweh their only God).
So, if Yahweh is not moral and not good, why should people consider him the only God for Humanity? Also, what role has Yahweh assigned Jews to play with regard to humanity? Are Jews really the teachers of humanity or should people study the non-Semitic religions that Judaism originated from? In the 13 Types of Evil, I consider the issue: can Yahweh be redeemed and be made moral? I relate this to the statement that Classical Gnostics made that Yahweh sinned and fell; and for this reason, Yahweh is in need of salvation. So, if Yahweh sinned, what was His state before sinning?
Anochi Revealed
With this understanding, I expected Rabbi Dosick to describe Anochi as the Perfect Form of Yahweh, and thus relate Anochi to the Aristotelian idea of the Actus Purus.
Actus Purus is a philosophical argument which states that God exists in absolute perfection because He is pure act i.e he does not have any potential because all potentials have been actualized (that is, all potentials have been turned into actions). Actus Purus was popular with philosophers of Christian Scholasticism who used this idea to justify the existence of an incorporeal God of the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Islam, and Roman Catholicism.
As I explain in the Theoretical Impossibility of Describing the Only God, the idea of actus purus introduces logical inconsistencies and unsound arguments because it limits God to simultaneously exist within and outside time, and thus have to simultaneously exist as a living and dead God. I have explained the meaning of soundness and consistency in logic in the Introduction to Symbolic Logic.
Anochi is not the actus purus according to Rabbi Dosick.
Rabbi Dosick describes Anochi as a compound noun made up of two nouns – Ano and Chi. Rabbi Dosick explains that Chi means indeed i.e proof of certainty. So, Anochi can be read as “Ano is the certainty”. He also explains that Chi is derived from a Semitic language, and its meaning is “I” which is a first-person possessive pronoun. Regarding Ano, Rabbi Dosick states that it is derived from An, a non-Semitic word of Sumerian origin. He translates Anochi as I-Source, which means that An stands for the source of God. Therefore, the real name of God can be reduced to only one noun – An.
This is quite interesting because An is the name that Sumerians gave their God of the Sky. This was a radical book written by an ordained Jewish rabbi who explained that Yahweh is just one of the attributes of the real God who he calls An. If this is the case, then I can state that Yahweh represents the attribute of ego. This means that Yahweh is the ego of Anochi.
Still, as a person who has studied Sumerian history, I can state that An was not the ultimate God of the Sumerians. To begin with, Sumerians called themselves the children of En-Lil, i.e they called En-Lil their Father. Also, in the theogony of Sumerian Gods, both An and En-Lil are created, with En-Lil being born to An. So, did the Sumerians have a God that was not created? The answer is yes.
The uncreated, unbegotten God that created all the other Gods in the Sumerian pantheon has a name: Namma or Nammu. Nammu is a Goddess whom Sumerians called the Goddess Before Days (which can also mean the Ancient of Days). Nammu is the non-created deity that appears in Genesis 1:2 as the deity who was “hovering over the surface of the waters”.
To wrap up, we know that An is a created God, not the uncreated God. So, to me, Rabbi Dosick has not yet found the real name of the Uncreated God, but he has revealed that the God of the Hebrew Bible (YHVH) is a Created God.
