The Holy of Holies: 
On the Constituents of Emptiness 


Mitchell Stephens     Professor of Journalism     New York University

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ML says:

Not quite right: it is well known that after earlier being said freely, the tradition arose (perhaps around 300 BCE) that it was to be read aloud in a substituted form —
“my lord” – instead of the pronunciation of the letters as written.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/name/
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=165&letter=T

DCM says:

Wasn’t there to be incense that would provide representation of the cloud?

And did not the name of a thing represent the essence itself in many ancient cultures, particularly in Mesopotamia and particularly in Israel? Hence the ban against using the name of God in an unworthy manner–declaring a prophecy or truth by his name (or authority–as if given direct knowledge) and later simply by speaking his name (or making your words authoritative by invoking his authority in using his name)? You make some good points but you don’t always seem to give justice to the traditions.

As (apparently) Yuri Gagarin discovered when finally humans arrived in “space”!

Tom says:

If the term in the original language (Hebrew?) could denote “word” rather than (or in addition to) “name”, then one could speculate that the “word of the Lord” inhabiting the chamber was the Commandments, i.e. the Ark.

mcvicker says:

This is fascinating. Cf the ‘dominion’ over the planet, the animals and all things that God bestows upon Adam simply by giving him the power to name these; by naming, domesticating. Thus, to build a house for the name of the Lord is a symbolic way (as you’re gonna say later on) to domesticate (literally to make ‘at home’), to make present, to make visible for our limited field of vision [or, to contain/delimit] what is ‘not’… what is vast and w/out limit. And by doing so, presumably to discourage ‘doubt’…?

mcvicker says:

delete the apostrophe, last line, in ‘heavens’

Jay says:

should be “he has bulit is,”