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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2021
Divine names are linguistic objects that underlie the grammar of religious language. They serve as both representations and presentations of the divine. As representations, divine names carry information pertaining to God’s nature or actions, and his unique will, in a manner that adequately represents him. As presentations, divine names are believed to somehow effect divine presence in proximity to the believer, opening a path of direct connection to God. This paper seeks to analyze the interaction between presentation and representation concerning divine names in major trends within Judaism and Islam, from the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an to medieval theological debates. It aims to demonstrate how central currents within both traditions shaped the intricate relation between divine presentation and representation through the prism of divine names. Whereas positions in philosophy of language focus on either the representational or the presentational functions of proper names, Jewish and Islamic theologies suggest ways to combine the two functions with regard to divine names.
The author wishes to thank HTR’s anonymous readers for their insightful comments and rigorous inquiries. Additional thanks go to Avishay Bar-Asher, Meir Bar-Asher, Yoav Ashkenazy, Rainer Kampling, Menachem Lorberbaum, Uri Shachar, and Yonatan Weinberg.
1 See, e.g., Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (trans. Carol Cosman; Oxford’s World Classics Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 25–46, 221–29; Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (trans. Rosemary Sheed; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996) 388–409; Michael B. Hundley, Gods in Dwellings: Temples and Divine Presence in the Ancient Near East (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013) 12.
2 William James, Variety of Religious Experiences (1902; repr., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Emil L. Fackenheim, The God Within: Kant, Schelling, and Historicity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy (trans. J. W. Harvey; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926). For updated discussions of these topics, see Robert H. Thouless, An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Andrew R. Fuller, Psychology and Religion: Eight Points of View (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994); Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology (ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Brendan Sweetman; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Arnold J. Mandell, “Toward a Psychobiology of Transcendence: God in the Brain,” in The Psychobiology of Consciousness (ed. Julian M. Davidson and Richard J. Davidson; Boston: Springer, 1980) 379–464.
3 Arthur A. Vogel, Body Theology: God’s Presence in Man’s World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973); Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being: Hors-texte (trans. Thomas A. Carlson; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Jonathan Garb, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Religion and the Body: Modern Science and the Construction of Religious Meaning (ed. David Cave and Rebecca Sachs Norris; Leiden: Brill, 2012).
4 Some exceptions are extant, e.g., Robert J. Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God; From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Tzachi Weiss, “On the Matter of Language: The Creation of the World from Letters and Jacques Lacan’s Perception of Letters as Real,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 17 (2009) 101–15; Naomi Janowitz, Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
5 Henri-Dominique Saffrey, “New Objective Links between the Pseudo-Dionysius and Proclus,” in Neoplatonism and Christian Thought (ed. Dominic J. O’Meara; Studies in Neoplatonism: Ancient and Modern 3; Albany: SUNY Press, 1982) 369, n. 29: “Language in composing the names of the gods expresses their nature and makes them present intellectually.”
6 See Moshe Idel, “Torah: Between Presence and Representation of the Divine in Jewish Mysticism,” in Representation in Religion: Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch (ed. Jan Assmann and Albert I. Baumgarten; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 197–235, at 230, 235.
7 Cf. Idel’s argument (ibid., 205–35) that for various medieval thinkers the Torah is conflated with God.
8 For a general comprehensive survey on divine names in Islam, see Daniel Gimaret, Les noms divins en Islam (Paris: Cerf, 1988); Louis Gardet, “al-Asmāʾal-Husnā,” Encyclopédie de l’Islam, 714–17. For a general survey on the meaning of YHWH in the Jewish tradition, see Haim H. Ben- Sasson, Understanding YHWH: The Name of God in Biblical,Rabbinic, and Medieval Jewish Thought and Philosophy (Jewish Thought and Philosophy; trans. Michelle Bubis; Palgrave Macmillan: 2019). Charting a comprehensive history of the concept of divine names would necessarily view ancient Jewish notions as origin and Islamic as development. Such a history would focus on the details and aim to expose causal relations within both traditions and between them. See such discussions in Yonatan Negev, “The Islamic Concept of God’s Greatest Name (ism allāh al-aʿẓam): A Comparative Study of Sunni and Shīʿi Sources” (MA thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2017) 7–17.
9 See Marion, God without Being, 1–52.
10 For similar articulations of the role of proper names within Muʿtazilite philosophy of language, see Sophia Vasalou, “ ‘Their Intention Was Shown by Their Bodily Movements’: The Basran Muʿtazilites on the Institution of Language,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (2009) 201–21, 209. Cf. positions by medieval commentators Rashbam and Abraham Ibn Ezra in Martin Lockshin, Rashbam’s Commentary on Exodus (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 37–38; Abraham Ibn Ezra, “Sefer ha-Shem,” in Yalkut Abraham Ibn Ezra Reader (annotated texts with introductions and commentaries by Israel Levin; New York and Tel Aviv: Matz, 1985) 427.
11 See Aristotle, Categories and De Interpretatione (trans. J. L. Ackrill; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) 16a3–16a26.
12 Gottlob Frege, “Sense and Reference,” The Philosophical Review 57 (1948) 209–30.
13 Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1980) 48–49, 75–78, 106–7.
14 See Moshe H. Segal, “El, Elohim, and YHWH in the Bible,” JQR 46 (1955) 89–115. Second Temple literature shows a heightened sensibility to the sacredness of YHWH. See Joseph Heinemann’s elaborate discussion of this phenomenon in Prayer in the Talmud (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1977) 77–78. Cf. Bilha Nitzan, Qumran Prayer (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 106–12, 313 (n. 10, 16); Joseph M. Baumgarten, “A New Qumran Substitute for the Divine Name and Mishnah Sukkah 4.5,” JQR 83 (1992) 1–5; Steven T. Byington, “אדני and יהוה,” JBL 76 (1957) 58–59.
15 See TDOT 7:136.
16 The fact that it appears so often throughout the Bible indicates, however, that, at the latest when the corpus was edited, the Hebrews’ worship centered on a divine being whose proper name was YHWH. See, for example, Martin Leuenberger, “Jhwhs Herkunft aus dem Süden. Archäologische Befunde-biblische Überlieferungen-historische Korrelationen,” ZAW 122 (2010) 1–19; TDOT, 5:502.
17 See, e.g., Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1995) 61; Roland de Vaux, “The Revelation of the Divine Name YHWH,” in Proclamation and Presence: Old Testament Essays in Honour of Gwynne Henton Davies (ed. John I. Durham, J. Roy Porter; Louisville: John Knox, 1970) 48–75.
18 All Hebrew Bible quotations are from JPS Tanakh 1917.
19 Latin Christianity, which followed the canonized Septuagint and Vulgate, established a highly metaphysical understanding of these verses. In other Jewish translations into the Greek, such as Thedotion’s, the metaphysical ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν of the Septuagint is abandoned in favor of ἔσομαι (ὅς) ἔσομαι that is far closer to what we suggest here. See Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton, 68–74. See also Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung (Berlin: Schocken, 1936) 135–67, 184–210.
20 As implied by Rashbam, n. 10 above.
21 Cf. Q 17:110; Q Ţā-Hā 20:8. All citations are from the Oxford World’s Classics edition, 2005.
22 Gerhard Böwering, “God and His Attributes,” EQ 2:316–31.
23 Compare to Ibn al-ʿArabī’s rendition of “likeness,” e.g., Futûhât, 2.408,11,28 (William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination [Albany: SUNY Press, 1989] 50).
24 Following Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian apophatic convictions. See Ilaria Ramelli, “The Divine as Inaccessible Object of Knowledge in Ancient Platonism: A Common Philosophical Pattern across Religious Traditions,” JHI 75 (2014) 167–88. For a survey of the essence-attribute debate among the various Islamic theological schools, see Binyamin Abrahamov, “Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on the Knowability of God’s Essence and Attributes,” Arabica 49 (2002) 204–30. Nader El-Bizri (“God: Essence and Attributes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology [ed. Tim Winter; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008] 121–40) marks the appearance of these theological trends and the ensuing theological paradoxes as early as the 7th cent. CE. See also Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (trans. Emile Marmorstein and Jenny Marmorstein; London & New York: Routledge, 1994) 1–16, 75–162.
25 Precise verb usage here varies in different editions.
26 Sunan Ibn Majah, Book of Supplication, 10 (Hadith 3861).
27 See TDOT 7:136.
28 See Haim H. Ben Sasson and Moshe Halbertal, “The Name of God and the Quality of Mercy” (Heb.), in Festschrift for Yehuda Liebes (ed. M. Niehoff, R. Meroz, and J Garb; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute Press, 2012) 53–69.
29 See Mek. d’Rabbi Ishmael, Jethro 11; Mek. d’Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 20:21; Sipre Zuta 6:27; m.Soṭah 7:6; t.Ber. 6:22; t.Ta‘an. 1:11; m.Yoma 3:8; 4:2; 6:2; Sipra Acharei Mot 2:4; t.Ber. 3:22; t.Mak. 5:9; m.Soṭah 1:4; m.Mak. 3:6; Sipra Kedoshim 3:6; m.Sanh. 7:8; Mek., Tractate Nezikin, 5; m.Sanh. 10:2; m.Ta‘an. 3:9; m.Sanh. 7:5; Sipra Emor 14:14; cf. m.Sanh. 10:1; Lev. Rab. 32; Ecc. Rab. 3:11:3; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 11:12, 211; Deut. Rab. 10:10; Sipra Kedoshim 2:6; Sipre Zuta Nasso 6:27; m.Zebaḥ. 4:6; cf. Sipra, Dibbura di-Nedava, 14; Sipre Num., 143; Sipra, Dibbura di-Nedava 2; Mek. d’Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 12; m.Tamid 7:2; Sipre Num. 39:25; t.Ber. 6:20; m.Šebu. 4:13.
30 Sifpre Deut. 26:24. Cf. Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (trans. Reuven Hammer; Yale Judaica Series; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) 49. Full citation: “Whenever Scripture says YHWH, that is the measure of mercy, as it is said: ‘YHWH, YHWH, God, merciful and gracious’ (Exod 34:6). Whenever Scripture says Elohim, that is the measure of judgment, as it is said: ‘the cause of both parties shall come before God\Elohim’ (Exod 24:8), and it is said: Thou shalt not revile God\Elohim [nor curse a ruler of thy people] (ibid., 27).” My analysis follows that of Ben-Sasson and Halbertal, “The Divine Name,” 53–69.
31 On mercy within rabbinic tradition, see m. ’Abot 2:13; t. B. Qam. 9:11; Mek. d’Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 3:6; Sipre Num. 77:134; Sipre Zuta 12; Sipre Deut. 29, 326; t. Ber. 4:16; m. Ketub. 9:2. Cf. Seneca, Clem. book 2, 3:1–2.
32 This shift is connected to the contemporary philosophical and theological atmosphere, and especially to the rising influence of Aristotelian and Neoplatonist ideas, which gradually made their way into the world of Jewish philosophy and exegesis. As far back as Plato’s Parmenides, we find the argument that the One from which all being emanates cannot be perceived by the mind, nor can it be described or named; Plato, Parm. (Fowler ed., vol. 12, 142a): “ ‘Then the one has no name, nor is there any description or knowledge or perception or opinion of it.’ ‘Evidently not.’ ‘And it is neither named nor described nor thought of nor known, nor does any existing thing perceive it.’ ” Several scholars have noted the influence of this text, especially via Proclus’s interpretation, on early Christian theology. See, for example, Dirk Westerkamp, “Naming and Tetragrammatology: Medieval Apophatic Philosophy and Its Double Helix,” in Jewish Lifeworlds and Jewish Thought: Festschrift Presented to Karl E. Grozinger on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (ed. N. Riemer; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012) 110–24, at 110–11; Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 167–70. On the philosophical sources of Pseudo-Dionysus, see Westerkamp, “Naming and Tetragrammatology.”
33 See b.Ber. 33b; y.Ber. 9:1.
34 The integration of Neoplatonist thought into monotheistic theology spread further than the ancient Greek-speaking world, first to Christianity and later to Islam and Judaism. See Richard Walzer, Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, 1–12; Cristina D’Ancona, “Greek into Arabic: Neoplatonism in translation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 10–31.
35 See, e.g., Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013) 191–248; Shlomo Pines, “Dieu et l’Etre selon Maimonide. Exégese d’Exode 3,14 et doctrine connexe,” in Celui qui est. Interprétations juives et chrétiennes d’Exode 3, 14 (ed. A. de Libera and E. Zum Brunn; Paris: Cerf, 1986) 15–24; Gershom Scholem, “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbalah” (trans. S. Pleasance), Diogenes 79 (1972) 59–80; Diogenes 80 (1972) 164–94; Moshe Idel, “Defining Kabbalah: The Kabbalah of the Divine Names,” in Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies (ed. RA Herrera; New York: Lang, 1993) 97–122.
36 See Gardet, “al-Asmāʾal-ḥusnā.”
37 Duncan B. Macdonald, “Allāh,” EI1.
38 The primary division of divine attributes, prominent Ash‘arism and other schools, involves two main categories—action-related (ṣifāt al-afʿāl) and essential (ṣifāt al-dhāt). See also El-Bizri, “God: Essence and Attributes”; Joseph Van Ess, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Century of the Hijra (vol. 4 of A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam; Leiden: Brill, 2016) 476–511; Daniel Gimaret, “Muʿtazila,” EI2; Harry A. Wolfson, Philosophy of the kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) 112–234, remains one of the most penetrating discussions on the topic of divine attributes in Islamic theology.
39 On the origin of the names—divine or human—see Gimaret, Les noms divins, 37–50. El-Bizri, “God: Essence and Attributes,” 121–38.
40 See Ibrahim Madkour, “La logique d’Aristote chez les Mutakallimun,” in Islamic Philosophical Theology (ed. Parviz Morewedge; Albany: SUNY Press, 1979) 58–69.
41 Abrahamov, “Knowability of God,” 204, suggests Gahm ibn Safwan (d. 746/129) as the first theologian to reflect on the question.
42 On tawḥīd and the Shahāda, see William H. Chittick, “Worship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, 222.
43 See G.R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 66–87.
44 See Abrahamov, “Knowability of God,” 205, n. 4.
45 Baṣran Mu‘tazila, and see Vasalou, “Their Intention”; Werner Diem, “Arabische Grammatik und Islamische Theologie oder ‘Wie gewaltig ist doch Gott!,’ ” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 164 (2014) 609–52. See also the discussion below on understanding names and attributes as signs of acts, the latter comprehensible to human cognition.
46 E.g., Abū ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God (trans. David B. Burrell and Nazih Daher; Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1995) 37; Abrahamov, “Knowability of God,” 209.
44 Allāh is an exception, but may be also descriptive and relational. This might be related to its possible identification with the Greatest Name; see Negev, God’s Greatest Name, 26.
48 See Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998) 9–10; see also idem, “The ‘Bi-la Kayfa’ Doctrine and Its Foundations in Islamic Theology,” Arabica 42 (1995) 365–79.
49 R. Bachya ben Joseph ibn Paquda, Duties of the Heart (trans. Dabiel Haberman; 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1996) 1:63–160.
50 Abraham Ibn Daud, The Exalted Faith (trans. Norbert M. Samuelson; Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses 1986) book 2, 233.
51 Maimonides adopts the core of Avicenna’s differentiation between essence and existence. For both thinkers, existence is an accidental addition to essence. Essence, in line with Aristotle, is both a concrete individual thing and the universal “what” that defines its true being (e.g., a human being’s essence as a rational animal). The fact that a specific essence—a form—was brought to actuality in a specific matter to create an individual substance is what Maimonides refers to here as “accidental.” This event happens due to an agent outside of the essence—i.e., God—who caused informed matter of all kinds to be as it is, and causes existence by his will, thus reinforcing its “accidental” nature. Existence in all things other than God, then, is what “happens” to the thing, from the outside, and does not simply latently exist in the thing’s essence. In God’s case, “existence is not merely actual but necessary” (Alexander Altmann, “Essence and Existence in Maimonides,” BJRL 35 (1953) 294–315, esp. 303). For an in-depth discussion of Avicenna’s views, see Fazlur Rahman, “Essence and Existence in Ibn Sina: The Myth and the Reality,” Hamdard Islamicus 4.1 (1981) 3–14; Altmann, “Essence and Existence,” 295–97. See also Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences (ed. Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine; Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science; Boston: Springer, 2000) 173–226; Yossef Schwartz, “Über den (missverstandenen) göttlichen Namen. Sprachliche Momente negativer Theologie im Mittelalter,” in Kultur nicht Verstehen. Produktives Nichtverstehen und Verstehen als Gestaltung (ed. Juerg Albrecht et al.; Zurich: Edition Voldemeer, 2004) 149–60.
52 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (trans. with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines, introductory essay by Leo Strauss; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969) 148. For opposing readings of Maimonides’s position on divine names, see M. Narboni, Be’ur le-sefer Moreh nebukim (Om Press, 1946).
53 See Negev, God’s Greatest Name, 20; on essential views of the most beautiful names within Shiʿism, see Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam (trans. David Streight; Albany; SUNY Press, 1994) 30–31, 44–45. On the concept of divine self-disclosure and its connection to the most beautiful names in Sufi traditions, see Sawai Makoto, “The Divine Names in Ibn ʻArabī’s Theory of the Oneness of Existence” (MA thesis, American University in Cairo, 2014) 20–34.
54 See Negev, God’s Greatest Name, 20; Amir-Moezzi, “Shiʿite Doctrine,” EI 3; idem, “Aspects de l’imamologie duodécimaine I. Remarques sur la divinité de l’Imam,” Studia Iranica 25 (1996) 193–216.
55 Najm al-Dīn Ahmad ibn 'Umar Kubrā, Fawā'ih al-jamāl wa fawātih al-jalāl, 82, paragraph 16.
56 See Haim H. Ben-Sasson, “The Name of God and the Linguistic Theory of the Kabbalah Revisited,” JR 98 (2018) 1–28.
57 Abul Ela Affifi, The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din-Ibnul Arabi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939).
58 Sarah Stroumsa and Sara Sviri, “The Beginnings of Mystical Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra and His Epistle on Contemplation,” JSAI 36 (2009) 201–53. Supporting views abound: see, e.g., M. E. Marmura, “Al־Ghazālī,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, 137; Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (3rd ed.; New York: Columbia University Press, 2004) 253–61.
59 On the intellectual connections between Halevi and Ibn al-ʿArabī and their affiliation with mystical philosophy, see Stroumsa and Sviri, “Beginnings of Mystical Philosophy,” 211: “The neoplatonic world-view of Ibn Masarra is typically Andalusi, as can be seen from a comparison with such writings … from later periods, those of the Muslim authors al-Batalyawsi and Ibn Tufayl as well as of Jewish authors such as Ibn Gabirol and Judah Ha-Levi. This type of Andalusi ‘mystical philosophy,’ which owes so much to neoplatonism, culminated in the highly sophisticated oeuvre of Ibn al-Arabi, an oeuvre which weaves together mysticism with philosophy and in which neoplatonic notions and structures are undeniably present.”
60 See Daniel Lasker, “Rabbi Judah Halevi as a Biblical Exegete in the Kuzari” (Heb.), in A Word Fitly Spoken: Studies in Mediaeval Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an presented to Haggai Ben-Shammai (ed. M. Bar-Asher et al.; Jerusalem; Magnes, 2007) 179–92, at 190; Warren Z. Harvey, “Judah Halevi’s Interpretation of the Tetragrammaton” (Heb.), in Word Fitly Spoken, 125–32; Yochanan Silman, Philosopher and Prophet: Judah Halevi, the Kuzari, and the Evolution of His Thought (SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion; Albany SUNY Press, 2012) 103–5, 173–82, 187–96.
61 Yochanan Silman, “Judah Halevi’s Interpretation of the Tetragrammaton” (Heb.), in Word Fitly Spoken, 125–32; idem, Philosopher and Prophet, vii–ix.
62 On Halevi’s Arabic sources, see Ehud Krinis, “The Arabic Background of the Kuzari,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 21 (2013) 1–56.
63 See Silman, Philosopher and Prophet, 134–36, 226, 326–28.
64 Ibid., 327.
65 A slight change in translation from Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld’s rendition: “This is as if one asked: Which God is to be worshipped, the sun, the moon, the heaven, the signs of the zodiac, any star, fire, a spirit, or celestial angels, etc.; each of these, taken singly, has an activity and force, and causes growth and decay? The answer to this question is: ‘The Lord,’ just as if one would say: A. B., or a proper name, as Ruben or Simeon, supposing that these names indicate their personalities.” Whether the name YHWH was coined by humans, as implied from section 4 of the Kuzari, or rather is a transcendental name coined by God Himself remains an open question. Cf. Kuzari 2:2, 83: “All names of God, save the Tetragrammaton, are predicates and attributive descriptions, derived from the way His creatures are affected by His decrees and measures.”
66 Kuzari, 4:3, 202.
67 Exod. Rab. 3:6: “R. Jacob b. R. Abina in the name of R. Huna of Tzippori: God said to Moses: ‘Tell them, in this servitude I will be with them, and in the continuing servitude I will be with them!’ Moses said to God: ‘I should tell them this? An evil is sufficient in its time.’ God replied: ‘No: Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: “Ehyeh has sent me to you.” I am [only] revealing this to you, but not to them.’ ”
68 Originally חקיקת אלדיאת. See Joshua Blau, Dictionary of Mediaeval Judaeo--Arabic Texts (Heb.) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006) 230.
69 Originally אלחאציר, which should be literally rendered “the Present.”
70 Kuzari, 4:3.
71 Ibid.
72 Al-Ghazālī on Condemnation of Pride and Self-Admiration: Kitab dhamm al-kibr wa’l-‘ujb, Book XXIX of The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyā’ ‘ulũm al-dīn) (trans. Mohammed Rustom; Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2018) 47. Far from being trivial, this close connection between knowledge and worship, between addressing God and investigating his nature, provoked ongoing heated debates. Muʿtazilite thinkers insisted that legitimate use of human reason concerning God’s simplicity and transcendence results in a necessary denial of any descriptive content in the names, whereas Sunni traditionalists, particularly Hanbalites, embraced Qur’anic anthropomorphisms and rejected the notion that human reason may be applicable to investigating divine names and attributes. Yet even within the different schools of kalām, and certainly among Muslim philosophers, the negation of all rational speculation about the meaning of divine attributes and names was mostly rejected. Al-Ash‘ari himself argued that knowledge is necessary for proper worship, as it safeguards the correct aiming of human worship to its true divine destination. At the crux of this debate lies the tension between knowledge of the names, on the one hand, and knowledge of their concordant attributes, on the other. See El-Bizri, “God: Essence and Attributes,” 121–40.
73 Chittick “Worship,” 229–30.
74 Al-Ghazālī, Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names, 44. Elsewhere, al-Ghazālī argues further in favor of the possibility of a contemplative seeing of God by human beings. On this, see Binyamin Abrahamov, Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism: The Teachings of al-Ghazâlî and al-Dabbâgh (New York and London; Routledge, 2003) 63–68. See also al-Ghazālī’s distinction between a mithāl (image) and mithl (resemblance). God does not have a mithl (a perfect resemblance), but God does have a mithāl (a sufficient resemblance); A. Hughes, “Imagining the Divine: Ghazālī on Imagination, Dreams, and Dreaming,” JAAR 70 (2002) 33–53, esp. 42–43.
75 For the difference between idolatry as erroneous representation and idolatry as inappropriate representation, see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (trans. Naomi Goldblum; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) 37–50.
76 Far from being miraculous or spectacular, those signs are found in abundance throughout all avenues of life and the cosmos, from the human soul to innate nature. The Qur’an asserts this point on numerous occasions, for example: “Another of His signs is that He created spouses from among yourselves for you to live with in tranquility: He ordained love and kindness between you. There truly are signs in this for those who reflect. Another of His signs is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the diversity of your languages and colours. There truly are signs in this for those who know” (Q Rum 30:21–2). Cf. Q Hud 11:99: “It is He who sends down water from the sky. With it We produce the shoots of each plant, then bring greenery from it, and from that We bring out grains, one riding on the other in close-packed rows. From the date-palm come clusters of low-hanging dates, and there are gardens of vines, olives and pomegranates, alike yet different—watch their fruits as they grow and ripen! In all this there are signs for those who would believe”; Q Fuṣṣilat 41:53: “We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” Cf. Q 2:164. See Annemarie Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994) 1–45, 154–56; See also Binyamin Abrahamov, “Signs,”EQ 5:2–11.
77 See the elaborate discussion in Michael Ebstein, Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Ismā īlī Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2014) 94–96: “It is important to remember that in Ibn al-Arabi’s mystical-metaphysical worldview, creation is a product of the Divine names, a locus for their manifestation.”
78 See Wa’el B. Hallaq, “Ibn Taymiyya on the existence of God,” AcOr 52 (1991) 49–69.
79 In Ibn al-ʿArabī, the term ‘reality’ (haqīqa) denotes a divine archetype for created things. These “realities” find expression in divine names. For example, the reality of life as we know it in our world is the divine name “Alive.” See Chittick, Sufi Path, 134–39.
80 Ibn al-‘Arabī, Futûhât, 2.541–11 (Cairo, 1911). See Chittick’s discussion in Self-Disclosure of God: The: Principles of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Cosmology (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998) 11.
81 Compare Ibn al-ʿArabī’s assertion that the divine names are nisab, relationships with the cosmos. See Ibn al-Arabī, Al-Futūhāt al-Makkiyya (vol. 8; Beirut 1999) 14 and onward.
82 See Ibn al-ʿArabī, Futūhāt, 2.558. Cf. Qaiser Shahzad, “Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Contribution to the Ethics of Divine Names,” IS 43 (2004) 5–38.
83 As Negev, God’s Greatest Name, 19, n. 67, mentions, this concept was attributed in Hadith (most probably inauthentic) to the Prophet, and used extensively later. See also Gimaret, Les noms divins, 24–25. This concept strongly resonates with a midrash homily from Sipre Deut. 49, and was later developed by Maimonides in his Code (De’ot 1:6) as well as in the Guide (iii, 52). However, as a result of the clear distinction between God’s attributes and his single proper name YHWH, the equivalent to akhlāq in Maimonides is less connected to the issue of divine names and divine representation in comparison to Islamic thought. On akhlāq in Abraham Maimonides, see Nathan Hofer, “Training the Prophetic Self: Adab and Riyāda in Jewish Sufism,” in Ethics and Spirituality in Islam: Sufi adab (ed. Francesco Chiabotti et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2017) 325–55.
84 See Negev, God’s Greatest Name, 21; Al־Ghazālī’, Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names, 47–50.
85 Al־Ghazālī’, Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names, 54.
86 Ibn al־‘Arabī, Futûhât 1.176.7. See further discussion in Ebstein, Mysticism and Philosophy, 163–64.
87 See Binyamin Abrahamov, The Sufis’ and Ibn al-Arabī’s Attitudes Towards the Pillars of Islam (Jerusalem: Idra Publishing, 2019) 165–76. I thank the article’s anonymous reviewer for this helpful point.
88 See Gardet, “al-Asmāʾal-Husnā”; Gimaret, Les noms divins, 37–50; Mustafa Shah, “Classical Islamic Discourse on the Origins of Language: Cultural Memory and the Defense of Orthodoxy,” Numen 58 (2011) 314–43.
89 See for example Ibn al-‘Arabī, Futûhât, 2.232.28: “He is not named except He has named himself. Even if it be known that a name designates Him, since conditionality (tawqīf), in ascribing is to be preferred.” Cf. Ozgur Koca, “Said Nursi’s (1876–1960) Analysis on the Exegetical Significance of the Divine Names (asmȃ al-ḥusnȃ) Mentioned in the Qur’an,” The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 14 (2015) 43–55. See also El-Bizri, “God: Essence and Attributes,” 121–40, esp. 130, quoting al- Ash‘ari: “The face is an attribute that God ascribed to Himself and only God knows its significance.” As already implied in scholarship, tawqīf might have developed as a rationalist set of regulations, against those who applied more liberal policies on the legitimacy of invoking God by names that do not originate in Scripture. Yet their enduring theological significance goes beyond traditional restrictions of using noncanonical divine names. See Negev, God’s Greatest Name, 20 and passim.
90 According to this notion, the Qur’an’s inner (and esoteric) meaning (bāṭin) functions on a level ontologically other than the outer (or exoteric) one (ẓāhir), in which the straightforward meaning of the text is decisive. Whereas the straightforward meaning of various names entails likeness between earthly and divine attributes, when referring to God, those attributes in fact mean something wholly different, known to God alone.
91 See Paul A. Hardy, “Epistemology and Divine Discourse,” in The Cambridge Companion, 289–300.
92 The question of whether human beings are permitted to denote God by names that attest to his perfections yet were not sanctioned directly by God is a matter of stark controversy. Al-Ghazalī’, for example, sanctioned the use of such names; Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names, 177–81. See Gimaret, Les noms divins, 37–50, for a comprehensive survey.
93 Self-naming refrains from viewing divine names as divine self-manifestations as some mystical positions, especially within the Shiʿa, maintained.
94 Recall Q Baqarah 2:31–33: “He taught Adam all the names [of things], then He showed them to the angels and said, ‘Tell me the names of these if you truly [think you can].’ They said, ‘May You be glorified! We have knowledge only of what You have taught us. You are the All Knowing and All Wise.’ Then He said, ‘Adam, tell them the names of these.’ When he told them their names, God said, ‘Did I not tell you that I know what is hidden in the heavens and the earth, and that I know what you reveal and what you conceal?’ ”
95 See Ibn al-ʿArabī, Futûhât 2:326.12, quoted and analyzed in Chittick, The Sufi Path, 180; idem, “The Divine Roots of Human Love,” Journal of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society 17 (1995) 55–78. Cf. the mystical aspect of divine love with relation to divine names in Schimmel, Deciphering, 104.
96 See Makoto, The Divine Names, 20–34.
97 Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Futûhât, 2:309.17, and compare 3:162.23: “God possesses Nondelimited Being, but no delimitation prevents Him from delimitation. On the contrary, He possesses all delimitations, so He is nondelimited delimitation.” See also Claude Addas, “The Experience and Doctrine of Love in Ibn ‘Arabi,” Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society 32 (2002) 25–44.
