Sacred Name Movement
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The Sacred Name Movement (SNM) is a movement within
Adventism Adventism is a branch of Protestant Christianity that believes in the imminent Second Coming (or the "Second Advent") of Jesus Christ. It originated in the 1830s in the United States during the Second Great Awakening when Baptist preacher Will ...
concerned with emphasizing the use of the Hebrew name of God. Influenced by
Clarence Orvil Dodd Clarence Orohrelle Dodd (February 5, 1899 – December 25, 1955), often known as Clarence Orvil Dodd and C. O. Dodd, was an American author and magazine editor and an elder of a particular Church of God (Seventh Day) denomination church in Salem ...
, the movement considers the use of God's name as important as the Jewish festivals. SNM believers also generally observe many of the
Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...
laws and ceremonies such as the
Seventh-day Sabbath The seventh-day Sabbath, observed from Friday evening to Saturday evening, is an important part of the beliefs and practices of list of Sabbath-keeping churches, seventh-day churches. These churches emphasize biblical references such as the ancien ...
, Torah festivals, and ''
kashrut (also or , ) is a set of Food and drink prohibitions, dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to halakha, Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed ko ...
'' food laws. The movement also rejects the doctrine of the Trinity as unbiblical.


History

The Sacred Name Movement arose in the early 20th century out of the
Church of God (Seventh Day) The Churches of God (Seventh Day) is composed of a number of sabbath-keeping churches, among which the General Conference of the Church of God, or simply CoG7, is the best-known organization. The Churches of God (Seventh Day) observe the Sabba ...
movement. The movement was influenced by
Joseph Franklin Rutherford Joseph Franklin Rutherford (November 8, 1869 – January 8, 1942), also known as Judge Rutherford, was an American religious leader and the second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. He played a primary role in ...
after he changed the name of the main branch of the
Bible Student movement The Bible Student movement is a Millennialist Restorationist Christian movement. It emerged in the United States from the teachings and ministry of Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916), also known as Pastor Russell, and his founding of the Zion' ...
to
Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination that is an outgrowth of the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. The denomination is nontrinitarian, millenarian, and restorationist. Russell co-fou ...
in 1931. C. O. Dodd, a member of the Church of God (Seventh Day) who began to keep the
Jewish festivals Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' (, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed by Jews throughout the Hebrew calendar.This article focuses on practices of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism. ...
(including Passover) in 1928, adopted sacred name doctrines in the late 1930s. To promote his views, Dodd began to publish ''The Faith'' magazine in 1937. American religious scholar
J. Gordon Melton John Gordon Melton (born September 19, 1942) is an American religious scholar who was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is currently the Distinguished Professor of American Religious History with the I ...
wrote, "No single force in spreading the Sacred Name movement was as important as ''The Faith'' magazine." People who had dealings with the Sacred Name Movement in the 20th century, such as
Herbert W. Armstrong Herbert W. Armstrong (July 31, 1892 – January 16, 1986) was an American evangelist who founded the Worldwide Church of God (WCG). An early pioneer of radio and television evangelism, Armstrong preached what he claimed was the comprehensiv ...
, sharply criticized it saying that the Sacred Name Movement consisted of 'small', 'splintered' and 'divided' groups doctrinally. After the death of C. O. Dodd (an early Sacred Name pioneer) in 1955, those using the Sacred Name are reported to have become even more confused in doctrine, since the shepherd had disappeared. Little has amounted from the Sacred Name Movement. The
Assemblies of Yahweh The Assemblies of Yahweh is a nonprofit religious organization with its international headquarters in Bethel, Pennsylvania, United States. The organization developed independently out of a radio ministry begun by Jacob O. Meyer in 1966.''Histo ...
, which is not part of the Sacred Name Movement, came in to being because of the need to have a doctrinally sound, harmonious, organized and unified worship. The Preamble to the original ''Statement of Doctrine'' of the Assemblies of Yahweh produced in 1969 reads as follows: The Sacred Name Movement spurned the Assemblies of Yahweh. To this day, the Sacred Name Movement is very divided on doctrine despite holding 'unity conferences' every year.


Sacred Name Movement

Below are a list of Sacred Name Movement groups: * Assembly of Yahweh (Michigan) * Shalom Assembly of Yahweh (Illinois) * Yahweh's Restoration Ministry (Missouri) * Assembly of Yahweh 7th Day (Texas) * Yahweh's Assembly in Messiah (Missouri) * Yahweh's Frystown Assembly (Pennsylvania) * Congregation of Yahweh (Florida) * Congregation of Yahweh Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel) * Yahweh's Assembly in Yahshua (Missouri)


Sacred Name Bibles

Angelo Traina Angelo Benedetto Traina (January 22, 1889 - November 4, 1971) was a biblical scholar, best known for his emphasis on what he called restoring "Semitic proper names to their Aramaic and Hebrew forms". Life Traina was born in Sicily into a Cat ...
, a disciple of Dodd, undertook the production of a Sacred Name edition of the
Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
, publishing the ''Holy Name New Testament'' in 1950 and the ''Holy Name Bible'' in 1962, both based on the
King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English Bible translations, Early Modern English translation of the Christianity, Christian Bible for the Church of England, wh ...
, but with some names and words changed to Hebraic forms, such as "
God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...
" to "
Elohim ''Elohim'' ( ) is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural in form, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly but not always the Go ...
", "LORD" to "Yahweh" and "
Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
" to "Yahshua". Other Sacred Name Bibles have since been produced, and most Sacred Name Movement denominations use a Sacred Name Bible.


See also

* Christian views on the Old Covenant *
Christian Zionism Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christianity and Judaism, Christian context, espouses the return of the Jews, Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 ...
*
Ebionites Ebionites (, derived from Hebrew , , meaning 'the poor' or 'poor ones') as a term refers to a Jewish Christian sect that existed during the early centuries of the Common Era. Since historical records by the Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and ...
*
Holy Name of Jesus In Catholicism, the veneration of the Holy Name of Jesus (also ''Most Holy Name of Jesus'', ) developed as a separate type of devotion in the early modern period, in parallel to that of the ''Sacred Heart''. The ''Litany of the Holy Name'' is ...
* ''
Imiaslavie ''Imiaslavie'' (''imyaslavie'', , or 'name-glorification'), among critics also known as ''imyabozhie'' () or imyabozhnichestvo (), "deification of the name", and also referred to as onomatodoxy () was a mystical-dogmatic movement in Russian Ort ...
'' *
Judaizers The Judaizers were a faction of the Jewish Christians, both of Jewish and non-Jewish origins, who regarded the Levitical laws of the Old Testament as still binding on all Christians. They tried to enforce Jewish circumcision upon the Gentile ...
*
Messianic Judaism Messianic Judaism is a syncretic Abrahamic religious sect that combines Christian theology with select elements of Judaism. It considers itself to be a form of Judaism but is generally considered to be a form of Christianity, including by ...


References


Sources

* * {{Christianity and Judaism Adventism Christian belief and doctrine