Regardless of the name used to identify God, He is Who He is and changes not. I believe that He knows the heart and soul of man so He knows when a human sincerely seeks Him regardless of the name used. In other words, I don't believe that someone who says Jehovah instead of Yaweh will be penalized in some way, shape, or manner. I believe that when I say "Jesus Christ" He knows that I'm referring to Him and nobody else.
I would agree. RandomVariable suggests not using Elohim, for example. My guess is he says that because Elohim is more general where YHWH is quite specific. Elohim can be used to refer to any god and indeed the Old Testament uses Elohim to refer to many different gods
as well as the Hebrew God. I tend to imagine, however, that if one were to use Elohim in reference to the Hebrew God that God is probably smart enough to figure that out and won't be offended.
But there are things that get lost when you fail to differentiate sometimes. Most often translators have used "God" for "elohim" regardless of whether the text suggests that what is being referred to is the Hebrew God or another god. Occasionally that has led to some problems in interpretation.
As well I think a strong argument can be made that reading an English translation can cause people to miss some really beautiful concepts and some particularly funny ones as well. The reverent language that has traditionally been used when translating the Bible has caused some great things to be lost. I'll give you a couple examples.
First (and one of my favorites) is the story of Rebekah seeing Isaac for the first time. Usually it's translated that Isaac was in the field meditating, although in reality what it actually says he was doing no one knows. The word in Hebrew has never been found anywhere else so it's a mystery. For whatever reason they decided he was meditating instead of sowing, or reaping, or taking a stroll, or whatever. And usually it's translated that Rebekah saw him and "alit from" or "got off" her camel. Well that's not quite what it says in Hebrew. In Hebrew it says "u'thphl" or literally "fell off". Some later versions say she "fell off her camel onto her ass", the pun there being obvious and would have had people rolling in the aisles over that one. But because that story would have been vulgar by later translators thousands of years later, the language was toned down. But because of that we miss the humor in the story; that whatever it was that Isaac was doing in the field it so shocked and amazed Rebekah (either in a good way or a bad way - it doesn't really say) that she flat out fell off her camel and landed with a thud. Because of that we tend to overlook that these stories sometimes had great humor in how they were written, and perhaps even that humor is a part of faith.
A second example would be in the New testament where Jesus says (paraphrasing because it depends in which version you read) "I have come, repent, and spread the good news". It's the "good news" I want to focus on because it Greek it is written "euangelion". Technically the translation is correct. It literally means "good news", but it was a specific type of good news used in Greek speaking ancient culture. An "euangelion" was the good news
of victory over an enemy. So during war, for example, an army would go out to face the enemy from a town and they win the battle and a runner would be sent to race through the streets of the town screaming "EUANGELION! EUANGELION!".....you know...."GOOD NEWS! VICTORY IS OURS! WE HAVE WON!" Today when we hear someone say "oh let me tell you the good news" it sounds kind of corny. We kind of roll our eyes and murmer "yeah, yeah, whatever", but it reality it was a
powerful statement Jesus was making. He was saying "
because I am here the battle is already won!" WHOA! What a difference!
So I get what you are saying. I get what RandomVariable is saying. I think there is something to be said for trying to stay as true to the original spirit of the stories as possible and that means really getting into the Greek and the Hebrew, and studying history, and ancient cultures in order to understand the context of what all this meant to people in antiquity so we can put it into the proper perspective today.
