MUSINGS ON THE NAME OF DEITY
Mormons are authoritatively instructed that the Godhead consists of three distinct beings; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Brigham Young, in one of his most noted Tabernacle talks, as recorded in the Journal of Discourse , said, "This earth was created by three distinct characters, Eloheim, Yahovah, and Michael, these forming a quorum . . . perfectly represented in the Godhead as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." (JD 1:51).
Latter-day Saints are also taught that it is Jehovah who is by delegation God of this earth and God of the Old Testament.
Hebrews of the Old Testament reverently (or superstitiously) refused to utter the name of Jehovah, (except once a year when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies), or to use it in writing. What is more, the Hebrew alphabet contained no vowels, the name of God being thus represented by the four consonants YHVH. Later scribes came to insert apostrophes to show where vowel sounds should come to make reading easier. As time went on, because of the infrequent use of the name, it became uncertain exactly which the correct vowel sounds were. This did not matter much in Hebrew, since the Holy Tetragram, as it came to be called, was customarily represented in written texts by four asterisks, or substituted by the world "Adonai", a word referring to the secular title "Lord".
When European translators, faced by uncertainty regarding the correct way to pronounce the name of the Hebrew (and now Christian) God, encountered the Tetragram, they came up with the form JEHOVAH -- though most scholars, Christian and Jew, have long agreed that JAVEH probably more correctly represents the Hebrew original. This is interesting because this form of the name of God closely reflects His name in several other of the more important civilizations of the Mediterranean basin: the JOVE (pronounced virtually identically) of the Greeks, and JUVPATER (God the Father), the JUPITER of the Romans, as the name has come down to us.
ELOHIM, for religious scholars of most denominations, is just an alternative name for God, being a derivative form of the word ELOI, employed by Jesus both in his prayer at Gethsemane and as he hung on the cross just before giving up his spirit to death (see Mark 15:34), and a variant form of the Arabic form Allah. Latter-day Saints, however, based on the teachings of Joseph Smith, take this word to be an entirely different name title applied to Jesus' (Jehovah's) Father, the Lord God of Heaven -- he who presides over the Council of Gods and who delegated the creation of the world and its governance to his son Jehovah and Jehovah's brother Michael.
In support of this, Joseph Smith reasonably maintained that the "HIM" ending of this name of God is both the plural and the emphatic form in Hebrew grammar. ELOHIM is thus to be interpreted either as "the Gods", i.e. the Council of Gods, or "the God of Gods (or Lord God, he who presides over the Council)", depending on context. The English language with which most of us are most familiar also uses the plural form, or repetition, which is much the same thing, for emphasis -- as in "very, very good"; or as in "a big, Big, BIG, earthquake".
In several languages, (including Hebrew, though Hebrew is not of the Indo-European group), indicate the vocative case with an "O" as the final, or penultimate, sound of the syllable. Even English, an example of a language employing an analytic rather than a synthetic approach to declension and grammar, preserves this "O" as a separate word wherever the vocative is called for, as in "O, say can you see", "O let us rejoice", and in prayer form as "O, God . . .". Thus Jesus' "Eloi, Eloi" can be interpreted as the vocative "O, God, Oh God".
Since a similar form of address was taught to Adam when he was expelled from the Garden (see Moses 5 ff.), the redundant form carrying the additional meaning of "hear the words of my mouth", it can be assumed that the repetitive form of Eloi used by the Savior similarly carries the grammatical pleading "please listen, I really mean it" -- just as an injured child is so understood when he cries out "mom, mom!", i.e. "Listen up, I need you".
Some languages, particularly Latin-based ones, employ a special form for nouns directed at specific cases or when one is directly addressing an individual. In Romanian, for example, "spital" means hospital: "Spitalul" means "the, this, or that" hospital. An "l" or "ul" being added to a personal noun when one is speaking directly to the individual in question. Thus if one were talking to someone named Mark, he would be addressed as Markul, whereas speaking of him or about him to a third person, he would be just Mark. A like convention appears in Old Norse (and contemporary Icelandic). Speaking to a gentleman (duom) in Romanian, one would say "domnul X", .as one would say in somewhat archaic, but super-polite English "your Lordship". In French (and Spanish) the third person is employed and the "l" is placed before the noun, as in "Le capitain desire?" (the captain wishes?)
To introduce another element of linguistics before attempting a synthesis of what has been said, it is astonishing how similar the common terms for father and mother are around the world. In a language as distant from Indo-European as Chinese, the terms for mother is "Mu mu" and for father is "Fu fu" ("f" being in "language drift" a common replacement for "b" or "p". In Italian, Spanish, and French the equivalent terms are variants of "Papa" and "Mama(n)".
Now for the synthesis. In perhaps the greatest ritual prayer, a form of which has descended through the ages, devotees are taught to say "Pale . . ., pale . . ., pale . . .". It take no more than the brief linguistic sketch provided above to understand that this must be the Adamic equivalent of a most pleading, direct address to God in which the prayer is initiated by intimately calling God "Father", though in the most respectful terms the language permits. In the form the invocation has come to us, the word is commonly pronounced "pail", either a reflection of frontier English, or possibly a reversion to Adamic pronunciation, though the more likely correct form would be something like "Pah-l". The "P", elided with the "Ahl", may well be an Adamic form of Father -- which has come down in vaious forms as the familiar name Papa or Pa or, in German Opa. F and P are regularly interchanged in all Indo-European languages.
The "Ale" of this ancient prayer is most clearly a variant form of ELOI or ALLAH and, as such, should possibly be pronounced A-leh; though this, too, may reflect a return to correct Adamic pronunciation. Either way, this highly ritual introduction to prayer provides a fascinating parallel to the introduction to the LDS sacrament prayer, given by revelation (D&C 20:77-79), which commences, "Oh God (vocative case) the Eternal Father" (the evident English language equivalent of the Hebrew (or Adamic?) emphatic plural version of God's name, indicating the priest pronouncing the prayer is addressing the Great Elohim in the politest form the language affords.
Putting the two terms together, we arrive at something like, "Oh Father God, I plead with you to hear the words I'm speaking to you."
As a closing thought, it is interesting to note that both the American Indians and the Beduoin tribesmen of the Middle East and North Africa -- each being a people of Abrahamic descent -- have preserved a form of this ritual prayer for their most solemn tribal ceremonies, engaging in what is called by anthropologists the "ullulation", the attempt to approach to God directly at times of greatest social importance by rapidly moving the tongue against the soft palate, emitting the sound "al-al-al-al . . ." , i.e. "Allah (or El) hear my words, I'm speaking to You in my need".
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