On the Ineffable name

Fossum notes in his The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord that Moses is imaged as one vested with God's name. In being vested with the divine name he is regaining the glory which had lost in the garden. Moses is vested with God's name on his ascension to Mount Sinai. This was seen as a heavenly enthronement and a restoration of divine glory.
The idea is compared with an idea of Jesus recieveing the divine name as described in the Gospel of Philip. Here the Father gave the Son his name which is exalted above all (Fossum, 1985, 95). Fossum asserts "The secret name which is given to Jesus is identical with the Name of the Father obviously is the proper name of God. Jesus is then believed to have been vested with the name of God.
However there is a disagreement as to when this investiture took place. J. Quispel inn"Gnosticism and the New Testament", , in J. P. Hyatt, ed., The bible in modern scholarship, Nashville &New york , 1965.;p 266
Quispel believes the crowning took place at baptism. This is based on his understanding that the "Valentinians thought that at that moment the Name of God descended upon Jesus... . ibid p.52
This is interesting because in the period names and baptisms were definitely connected. For example the disciples were baptising people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Paul took precautions so that no one would think they were baptised in his name:
Paul says to the Corinthian Church Were you baptised in the name of Paul. I thank God that i baptized none of you, but crispus and Gaius; Lest any should say that i had baptized in mine own name." Menander the disciple of Simon Magus who is supposed to be the disciple of John the Baptist baptised people in his own name. The baptism of Jesus however was performed by John the Baptist. The pertinent question is in which name would John baptise in? We need only look at his credentials to see. He came to prepare the was of Yaua. He came as a prophet. Now if John was a true prophet, and few seems to have doubted that at the time, he could only have come in the name Yaua. For the Torah stated very clearly that a prophet had to speak in the name of Yaua, and if he came in the name of another god he was to be put to death. John the Baptist came preparing the way of Yaua and therefore if he baptised in any name it had to be that of John. Do we have evidence of other in the period baptising in the name of Yaua. the answer is again affirmative although late. There is a toseftah which relates a dispute between Pharisees and a Morning bather or hemerobaptists. In this dispute there is a disagreement as to when the name Yaua should be spoken during the baptism process. Whether before the person entered the water or afterwards. The Article in Jewish Encyclopedia on the Hemerobaptists relates:

Division of Essenes who bathed every morning before the hour of prayer in order to pronounce the name of God with a clean body (Tosef., Yad., end; the correct version being given by R. Simson of Sens: "The morning bathers said to the Pharisees: 'We charge you with doing wrong in pronouncing the Name in the morning without having taken the ritual bath'; whereupon the Pharisees said: 'We charge you with wrong-doing in pronouncing the Name with a body impure within'"). In the time of Joshua b. Levi (3d cent.) a remnant still existed, but had no clear reason for their practise (Ber. 22a). The Clementina speak of John the Baptist as a Hemerobaptist, and the disciples of John are accordingly called "Hemerobaptists" ("Homilies," ii. 23; comp. "Recognitions," i. 54); similarly, Banus, the teacher of Josephus ("Vita," § 2), was a Hemerobaptist. Hegesippus (see Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl." iv. 22) mentions the Hemerobaptists as one of the seven Jewish sects or divisions opposed to the Christians. Justin ("Dial. cum Tryph." § 80) calls them simply "Baptists."

According to the Christian editor of the "Didascalia" ("Apostolic Constitutions," vi. 6), the Hemero-baptists "do not eat until they have bathed, and do not make any use of their beds and tables and dishes until they have cleansed them." This obviously rests upon a misunderstanding of their true character. Epiphanius ("Panarion," i., heresy xvii.) goes still further, and says that the Hemerobaptists deny future salvation to him who does not undergo baptism daily.

Thus we see that according to this evidence both the Pharisees and the Hemrobaptists used to speak the name Yaua. They did not only speak it but spoke it every day. The Pharisees do not appear to have any ritual behind the unterring of the name, whereas the Hemerobaptists believed one should be immersed or baptised before using it. The Clemintina of the second and third century place John the Baptist among the hemerobaptists. Although this can not be taken as conclusive it does support the belief among the Valentinians that Jesus recieved the name of God at baptism. For John here is said to be in a group who specifically immersed themselves so that they could utter the name Yaua. As we have already noted John the Baptist was considered a prophet and just a glance through the masoretic text indicates that thought the Law and the Prophet all prophets came in the name Yaua. The mantle of the name Yaua is then seen as descending on Jesus at the baptism. This has other evidence in the New Testament to support this position.
Firstly we know that Jesus himself claimed to come in the name of his Father. he like John was called a propeht by his contemporaries. They even comapred him with Jeremiah and Elijah or one of the prophets. This being the case what we find conspicous about all these with whom Jesus was compred is that they came in the name Yaua. Jesus pictured John the baptist as Elijah. Elijah was expected to return because of the prophecy of Malachi. An earlier prophecy of Malachi is applied to John by the Gospel of Mark: Behold I sen my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee".











JEWISH" SECTS IN 1ST CENTURY PALESTINE
Nasaraeans, Ossaeans, Hemerobaptists, Sadducees, Scribes, Pharisees, and Herodians

In the Talmud Rabbi Jonathan says "there had arisen 24 parties of heretics". He blaims these for causing the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Many make the mistake of thinking that Palestine was entirely "Jewish" in the times of Yeshu the Nazorean , and that he (Jesus) was raised as a "Jew". There were in reality many diverse groups in and around Palestine, and Yeshu (Jesus) belonged to the Nazorean Sect that rejected the Jewish law of Moses, the Jerusalem Temple, and the Old Testament Scriptures. "He shall be called a Nasorene!" (Matthew 2:23)

Epiphanius, writing in 375 A.D. mentions Seven Jewish Sects of which the Nazoreans are one. Josephus simplified these to three groups (Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes). The Nasorean sect that Yeshu (Jesus) belonged to was not really "Jewish" in the modern sense of the word.

The ancient historian Josephus tells us that there were 3 sects of Judaism at the time of Christ:

"For there are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of whom are the Pharisees; of the second the Sadducees, and the third sect, who pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essenes."(Wars of the Jews by Josephus)

Josephus further elaborates on this third Essene Philosophy by saying that it is divided into two separate Orders:

"Moreover, there is another Order of Essenes (Nasaraeans?) who agree with the rest as to their way of living and customs and laws but differ from them in the point of marriage."(Wars of the Jews by Josephus)

The ancient Christian historian Epiphanius, in his Panarion, speaks in more detail of the Jewish sects, saying that there are seven in all:

Sadducees, Scribes, Pharisees, Hemerobaptists, Ossaeans, Nasaraeans and Herodians."(Panarion 1:19)

Epiphanius links the Hemerobaptists with the Scribes and Pharisees and the Ossaeans (Essenes) with the Nasaraeans. From this information we may deduce that the two Essene branches, spoken of by Josephus, were the Ossaeans and Nasaraeans. The Ossaeans encouraging celibacy and the Nasaraeans insisting on marriage. The Nasaraeans are the northern branch of Essenes based on Mount Carmel (with a smaller Temple in the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem). As mentioned earlier, it was to this northern Essene group that the promises were made:

"He (Messiah) shall be called a Nasorean."(Matthew 2:23)

Epiphanius goes on to say:

"The Nasaraeans - they were jews by nationality - originally from Gileaditis (where the early followers of Yeshu-Maria fled after the martyrdom of James the Lord's brother), Bashanitis and the Transjordon . . .They acknowledged Moses and believed that he had received laws - not this law, however, but some other. And so, they were jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference between the Nasaraeans and the others. . . (Panarion 1:18)

After this (Nasaraean) sect in turn comes another closely connected with them, called the Ossaeanes. These are jews like the former . . . originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea (Damascus, where the Teacher of Righteousness took those spoken of in the Damascus Covenant), Moabitis and Arielis, the lands beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea. . . Though it is different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only by forbidding the books of Moses like the Nasaraeans. (Panarion 1:19)

The Ossaeans seem to have produced at least one prophetic figure accepted by both the Ossaeans and the Nasaraeans. This was Elxai who may have given his name to the ancient Elkasite sect. Epiphanius is our source on this Ossaean prophet named Elxai, who is said to have insisted on matrimony and introduced into their oaths and worship the substances of salt, water, earth, bread, heaven, aether and wind; with 7 witnesses: sky, water, holy spirits, angels of prayer, the olive, salt and earth. "(Similar substances play a strong role in the Essene Gospel of Peace and in the Rba Ginza, the book of rituals used by the modern Nasaraean / Mandeaen sect of southern Iran who claim to be direct descendants of John the Baptist and the Nasoreans.)

"The man called Elxai joined them later, in the reign of the emperor Trajan, after the Savior's incarnation . . . He wrote a book by prophecy. . . By designating Salt, Water, Earth, Bread, Heaven Aether, and Wind as objects for them to swear by in worship. But again he designates seven other witnesses. . . Sky, Water, Holy Spirits, Angels of Prayer, the Olive, Salt and the Earth. He has no use for celibacy, detests continence and insists on matrimony. . . he confesses Christ by name . . He bans burnt offerings and sacrifices, as something foreign to God and never offered to Him on the authority of the fathers and Law . . . he rejects the Jewish custom of eating meat and the rest, and the altar. . . "

Four sects. . . have made use of him (Elxai). Of those that came after him, Ebionites and Nazoraeans. Of those that came before his time and during it, the Osseaens and the Nasaraeans." (Panarion 1:19)

Gospel of Philip: Codex II of Nag Hammadi Library:
One single name is not prnounced in the world. It is exalted above all,[namely] the Name which the Father gave the Son . For the Son would not become Father unless he put on himself ...the name of the Father . Those who have this Name know it, but they do not speak it, whereas those who do not have it do not know it [But nevertheless speak about it (?)] (54:5ff)


Jarl. E. Fossum: The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord (Tubingen 1985, 94)
The possession of the glory was concieved of as sharing God's own Name, i.e the divine nature.

Baba Bathra 75b on Is 43:7

"Everyone one who is called by My Name, him have I created , formed , and made that he should also share my glory"

Fossum 1985, 95
Smith, pp 478ff., argues that the naming with God's Name here implies the restoration of the divine glory, which Adam had lost at the fall. In the future world, the Messiah and the righteous will be anmed with God's name and partake in the divine kabod.