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The Shem ha-Mephorash (Hebrew: שם המפורש), meaning the Distinguished Name (sometimes also the Explicit Name or the Preeminent Name), is the ineffable or secret true name of God according to Jewish tradition. The term originated in the early Rabbinic literature of the Tannaitic period (c. 10–220 CE) and originally referred to the actual pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (lit. 'the four-lettered') YHWH (Yahweh or Jehovah, the proper name of the Jewish God).

Pronouncing the Tetragrammaton had been taboo at least since the second century BCE, and as a consequence the divine name had become surrounded by much mystery and awe. A great creative power similar to that of the world-creating Word (Logos) was often ascribed to it, leading to worries about its magical use among the early Rabbis, who treated it with much circumspection. In subsequent centuries several speculations arose with regard to the Shem ha-Mephorash, which in late antique and early medieval Judaism came to be represented as a great secret that the Rabbis would only very selectively teach to their disciples. [something about the early speculations on 12-lettered, 42-lettered, and 72-lettered names]

[paragraph summarizing section on medieval Kabbalah and angel magic]

[paragraph summarizing section on Christian Kabbalah]

[paragraph summarizing section on Goetia]

[paragraph summarizing section on afterlife in 20th-century occultism]

Theology of the Name
After the destruction of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE, a new theology evolved which sought to replace anthropomorphic conceptions of God with the more abstract notion of a God being present in the world through his attributes, such as his Voice and his Name. Rather than sitting enthroned in the inner sanctuary of the temple, God now came to be seen as utterly transcendent, and the divine presence in the temple not as the presence of God himself but as the presence of the divine Name which the believers could address in prayer. This new way of thinking, often referred to by scholars as Name theology, likely developed as a way to disassociate God from the destroyed temple and to justify the continued use of the temple ruins as a direction of prayer. It is especially apparent in the recurrent references to the temple in the Deuteronomistic (6th-century BCE) redaction of the Hebrew Bible as "the place which the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there" (e.g., Deuteronomy 12:11), or "the place which the Lord your God will choose to put his name there" (e.g., Deuteronomy 12:5).

Given this new way of thinking about divine transcendence and immanence, the Name of God also came to be seen as one of the primary ways in which he exercises his authority and power in this world. For example, the angel sent by God to Moses to guard him in Exodus 23:20–21 is said to act with God's authority because the divine "Name is in him". In return for obedience to God, Deuteronomy 28:10 promisses that "all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the, and they shall be afraid of you." Throughout the Hebrew Bible, as well as in the slightly later apocryphal literature, the presence of the Name in people, angels or things is invoked to signify the presence of divine power.

The Name as the creative Word of power
At least from the 2d century BCE on, the name of God also came to be associated with the world-creating Word or Logos. For example, the Prayer of Manasseh 1-3 (second or first century BCE) addresses God thus: "O Lord Almighty, [...] who shackled the sea by your word of command, who confined the deep and sealed it with your terrible and glorious name [...]" The Book of Jubilees (c. 150 BCE) 36:7 speaks about ""[...] the glorious and honored and great and splendid and amazing and mighty name which created heaven and earth and everything together". The Book of Parables (part of 1 Enoch, c. 50 BCE – 100 CE) 69:13–27 mentions a secret name carried by the archangel Michael that was used in the oath (i.e., the Word or Logos) by which the world was created:

"And this is the number of Kasb’el, the chief (executor) of the oath which he revealed to the holy ones while he was (still) dwelling in the highest in glory. His name was (then) Beqa; and he spoke to Michael to disclose to him his secret name so that he would memorize this secret name of his, so that he would call it up in an oath in order that they shall tremble before it and the oath. He (then) revealed these to the children of the people, (and) all the hidden things and this power of this oath, for it is power and strength itself. [...] By it the earth is founded upon the water; from the hidden places of the mountains come beautiful waters, from the beginning of creation; and forever! By that oath, the sea was created; [...] And by that oath the depths are made firm; [...] By the same oath the sun and the moon complete their courses of travel, [...] And by the same oath the stars complete their courses of travel; [...] All these believe and give thanks in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits; they glorify with all their might, and please him in all this thanksgiving; they shall thank, glorify, exalt the Lord of the Spirits forever and ever! This oath has become dominant over them; they are preserved by it and their paths are preserved by it (so that) their courses of travel do not perish. (Then) there came to them a great joy. And they blessed, glorified, and extolled (the Lord) on account of the fact that the name of that (Son of) Man was revealed to them."

The 'oath' which is here said to have been used to create the world most likely refers to the word yehî (Hebrew: יהי, YHY, "let there be"), spoken several times by God in Genesis 1. This word in turn closely resembles the divine Name YHWH (Hebrew: יהוה) itself, and later Rabbinical sources such as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Targum Neofiti do indeed explain the Tetragrammaton YHWH as "the one who spoke and the world was". Similarly, Rabbinical interpretations of Genesis dating back to the 3d century CE and recorded in Genesis Rabbah regard the Hebrew letters Yod (Y) and He (H), both common abbreviations of the Tetragrammaton YHWH (the letter H separately and the combination YH, pronounced as Yah), as the means by which God created the world.

The Name/Word as angelomorphic divine hypostasis
The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE – c.  50 CE) sharply distinguished between God, whom he conceived as unutterable being itself (the "I Am that I Am" from Exodus 3:14) which cannot be named in words, and God's powers, to which any name of God properly refers. For Philo, these powers were all centered in God's world-creating Word (Logos), which he personified (hypostasized) to the point of calling it "the second God". Among other things, Philo identified this Word with the Angel of the Lord and with the Name of God:

"But if there be any as yet unfit to be called a son of God, let him press to take his place under God’s First-born, the Word, who holds the eldership among the angels, an archangel as it were. And many names are his for he is called: the Beginning, the Name of God, Word (of God), the Man after His Image, and ‘the One that sees’, namely Israel."

The idea that the Word of God represents an immanent and active hypostasis distinguishable from the wholly transcendent God himself, as well as the idea that the power of this Word belongs to the one who carries the divine Name, is a common feature of many Jewish texts dating to the period of c. 200 BCE – 100 CE. Apart from the Book of Parables (1 Enoch) and Philo of Alexandria mentioned above, other examples include Ezekiel the Tragedian's (2d century BCE) identification of the angel who spoke to Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3:4 as the "divine Word", the identification in Wisdom of Solomon (1st century BCE) 18:14–16 of the destroying angel with "your all-powerfull Word", and the Apocalypse of Abraham's (late 1st century CE) depiction of the angel Yahoel (later identified in 3 Enoch with Metatron) as the instrument of God's "Power though the medium of his Ineffable Name in me" (the angel's name itself consists of Yah and el, both Hebrew names of God).

It would also become central to early Christian views on Jesus. For example, John 1

The growing interest in the power of the divine name during the late Hellenistic period is perhaps best reflected by the many early Christian references to the name of God as invested with a great creative and sustaining force. For example, in the The Shepherd of Hermas (c. 150 CE) it is stated:

"The name of the Son of God is great, and cannot be contained, and supports the whole world. If, then, the whole creation is supported by the Son of God, what think ye of those who are called by Him, and bear the name of the Son of God, and walk in His commandments?"

Taboo on pronouncing the Name
During the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE), several Jewish groups developed a taboo on pronouncing the Tetragrammaton YHWH. This development, perhaps originally inspired by the second/third Commandment (Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain) and related Biblical restrictions on profaning the name of God, is already visible in the increased use of alternative names for God in the later books of the Hebrew Bible, such as the use of the name Elohim (lit. 'Gods') in the late editorial revisions of Psalms, in Ecclesiastes and in Daniel, as well as in the use of the name Shaddai ('the Almighty') in Job. The Greek Septuagint (2d century BCE) systematically replaced the Tetragrammaton with the term Kyrios ('Lord', from Hebrew Adonai, lit. 'My Lords', another Jewish name for God), a convention that is still observed in most Bible translations today.

It is generally assumed that from the 2d century BCE onward, the great majority of observant Jews started to avoid the use of the Tetragrammaton entirely. Its use was largely restricted to the priestly blessing performed by the priests in the Temple in Jerusalem, whereas in the synagogues the name Adonai was used instead. Rabbinic sources record that at first, all priests in the Temple pronounced the Tetragrammaton in their daily blessings, but that from the death of Simon the Just (fl. either c. 300 BCE or c. 200 BCE) onward, only the High Priest was allowed to pronounce it once a year at Yom Kippur, referring to God as ha-Shem (lit. 'the Name') throughout the rest of the year.

Concurrently with the taboo on pronouncing the proper name of God, a tradition evolved which ascribed an extraordinary, magical power to this name. Thus, the Jewish historian Artapanus (late 3d or early 2d century BCE) recounts that in the meeting between Moses and Pharaoh, the Egyptian king asked Moses about the name of his God, whereupon Moses whispered the name into Pharaoh's ear, making him fall down and faint. Understood in the context of the more widespread Hellenistic idea that the power of a deity is conferred on those who know its true name and know how to invoke it, knowledge of the divine name came to be seen as dangerous and liable to abuse. Given the powerful nature of the divine name, the early Rabbis would later teach that it must be kept secret at all times.

Development of the term Shem ha-Mephorash in early Rabbinical Judaism
Despite the taboo on pronouncing the proper name of God, there were some periods in which it was extensively used, such as during the Bar Kokhba revolt (c. 132–136 CE), which saw its adoption as a shibboleth distinguishing Jews from Jewish Christians, who used the word Adonai in their greetings instead. Nevertheless, early Rabbinic Jews generally continued to observe the taboo, increasingly referring to God merely as ha-Shem ('the Name'), or sometimes as Shem ha-Mephorash (lit. 'the Distinguished Name', 'the Explicit Name', or 'the Preeminent Name'), as Shem ha-Meyuḥad (lit. 'the Extraordinary Name'), as Shem ben Arba' Otiyyot (lit. 'the four-lettered name', i.e., the Tetragrammaton), or simply as Yod He Waw He (spelling out the letters YHWH). Though the term Shem ha-Mephorash was sometimes used in the sense of an explicit or distinct pronunciation of the name YHWH (most probably, 'Yahweh'), for example when specifying that blasphemy only takes place when the divine name is clearly and fully pronounced, more often it was used interchangeably with the term Shem ha-Meyuḥad to mean the most excellent name of God, "distinguished" from all other names by being unutterable.