Names of God in Judaism in the context of "Zohar"

In Christian iconography, Christ Pantocrator (Ancient Greek: Χριστὸς Παντοκράτωρ, lit. 'Christ the Almighty') is a specific depiction of Christ. Pantocrator or Pantokrator, literally 'ruler of all', but usually translated as 'almighty' or 'all-powerful', is derived from one of many names of God in Judaism.

The Pantokrator is largely an Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic or Eastern Lutheran theological conception and is less common under that name in Latin Catholicism and Western Lutheranism. In the West, the equivalent image in art is known as Christ in Majesty, which developed a rather different iconography. Christ Pantocrator has come to suggest Christ as a benevolent, though also stern and all-powerful, judge of humanity.

In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Traditionally, Judaism holds that God—that is, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites—delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah. Jews believe in a monotheistic conception of God ("God is one"), characterized by both transcendence (independence from, and separation from, the material universe) and immanence (active involvement in the material universe).

God is seen as unique and perfect, free from all faults, and is believed to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and unlimited in all attributes, with no partner or equal, serving as the sole creator of everything in existence. In Judaism, God is never portrayed in any image. The names of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible are the un-pronounced Tetragrammaton (Hebrew: יהוה, romanized: YHWH) and Elohim. Other names used to refer to God in traditional Judaism include Adonai, El-Elyon, El Shaddai, and Shekhinah.

Blasphemy refers to an insult that shows contempt, disrespect or lack of reverence concerning a deity, an object considered sacred, or something that is considered inviolable. Some religions, especially Abrahamic ones, regard blasphemy as a crime, including insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, speaking the sacred name in Judaism, and blasphemy of God's Holy Spirit is an eternal sin in Christianity. It was also a crime under English common law, and it is still a crime under Italian law (Art. 724 del Codice Penale).

In the early history of the Church, blasphemy "was considered to show active disrespect to God and to involve the use of profane cursing or mockery of his powers". In the medieval world, those who committed blasphemy were seen as needing discipline. By the 17th century, several historically Christian countries had legislation against blasphemy. Blasphemy was proscribed speech in the U.S. until well into the 20th century. Blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales in 2008, and in Ireland in 2020. Scotland repealed its blasphemy laws in 2021. Many other countries have abolished blasphemy laws including Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Norway and New Zealand. As of 2019, 40 percent of the world's countries have blasphemy laws on the books, including 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, or 90% of countries in that region.

El Shaddai (Hebrew: אֵל שַׁדַּי, romanized: ʾĒl Šadday; IPA: [el ʃadːaj]) or just Shaddai is one of the names of God in Judaism. El Shaddai is conventionally translated into English as God Almighty, as Deus Omnipotens in Latin, and in Arabic: إله الشديد, romanized: ʾIlāh Ash-Shadīd.

El means "God" in the Ugaritic and the Canaanite languages. The literal meaning of Shaddai, however, is the subject of debate. Some scholars have argued that it came from Akkadian shadû ("mountain"). The Deir Alla Inscription contains shaddayin as well as elohin rather than elohim. Francesca Stavrakopoulou suggested translating this as "shadday-gods," taken to mean unspecified fertility, mountain or wilderness gods.

There are various names of God and many titles that refer to God, many of which enumerate the various qualities of a Supreme Being. The English word god (and its equivalent in other languages) is used by multiple religions as a noun to refer to different deities, or specifically to the Supreme Being, as denoted in English by the capitalized and uncapitalized terms God and god. Ancient cognate equivalents for the biblical Hebrew Elohim, one of the most common names of God in the Bible, include proto-Semitic El, biblical Aramaic Elah, and Arabic ilah. The personal or proper name for God in many of these languages may either be distinguished from such attributes, or homonymic. For example, in Judaism the tetragrammaton is sometimes related to the ancient Hebrew ehyeh ("I will be"). It is connected to the passage in Exodus 3:14 in which God gives his name as אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh), where the verb may be translated most basically as "I Am that I Am", "I shall be what I shall be", or "I shall be what I am". In the passage, YHWH, the personal name of God, is revealed directly to Moses.

Correlation between various theories and interpretation of the name of "the one God", used to signify a monotheistic or ultimate Supreme Being from which all other divine attributes derive, has been a subject of ecumenical discourse between Eastern and Western scholars for over two centuries. In Christian theology the word is considered a personal and a proper name of God. On the other hand, the names of God in a different tradition are sometimes referred to by symbols. The question whether divine names used by different religions are equivalent has been raised and analyzed.

Jehovah (/dʒɪˈhoʊvə/) is a Latinization of the Hebrew יְהֹוָה‎ Yəhōwā, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יהוה‎ (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. The Tetragrammaton is considered one of the seven names of God in Judaism and a form of God's name in Christianity.

The consensus among scholars is that the historical vocalization of the Tetragrammaton at the time of the redaction of the Torah (6th century BCE) is most likely Yahweh. The historical vocalization was lost because in Second Temple Judaism, during the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE, the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton came to be avoided, being substituted with Adonai ('my Lord'). The Hebrew vowel points of Adonai were added to the Tetragrammaton by the Masoretes, and the resulting form was transliterated around the 12th century CE as Yehowah. The derived form Iehovah first appeared in the 16th century. The form Jehovah began to printed following a 17th-century development leading J to become a separate letter for printing the consonantal I.

Names of God in Islam (Arabic: أَسْمَاءُ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلْحُسْنَىٰ, romanized: ʾasmāʾu llāhi l-ḥusnā, lit. 'Allah's Beautiful Names') are names that each contain Attributes of God in Islam, which are implied by the respective names. Some names are known from either the Qur’an or the hadith, while others can be found in both sources, although most are found in the Qur’an.

Allāh is the Arabic word referring to God in Abrahamic religions, thought to be derived by contraction from al-ʾilāh, which means "the god", (i.e., the only god) and is related to El and Elah, the Hebrew and Aramaic words for God. Whether or not Allah can be considered as the personal name of God became disputed in contemporary scholarship. In Islamic usage and indoctrination, Allah was the God's most unique, proper name, and referred to as Lafẓ al-Jalālah (The Word of Majesty). Those who claimed that Allah was the personal name of God also denied that this name was a derivative name. Some Muslims may use different names as much as Allah, for instance Rabb, Rahman or "God" in English. The Quran refers to the attributes of God as "most beautiful names".

A universal formulation of principles of faith, recognized across all branches of Judaism, remains undefined. There is no central authority in Judaism in existence today, although the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish religious court, could fulfill this role for some if it were re-established. Instead, Jewish principles of faith remain debated by the rabbis based on their understanding of the sacred writings, laws, and traditions, which collectively shape Jewish theological and ethical frameworks.

The most widely recognized existing version is the 13 principles outlined by Maimonides. He stressed the importance of believing that there is one single, omniscient, transcendent, non-corporeal, non-compound God who created the universe and continues to interact with his creation and judge souls' reward or punishment. Other principles include the future emergence of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, and the principle that God revealed his laws and 613 mitzvot to the Jewish people in the form of the Written and Oral Torahs.

Sheol (Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל‎ Šəʾōl, Tiberian Hebrew: Šŏʾōl) in the Hebrew Bible is the underworld place of stillness and darkness which is death.

Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few—often brief and nondescript—mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life. The implications of Sheol within the texts are therefore somewhat unclear; it may be interpreted as either a generic metaphor describing "the grave" into which all humans invariably descend, or an actual state of afterlife within Israelite thought. Though such practices are forbidden, the inhabitants of Sheol can, under some circumstances, be summoned by the living, as when the Witch of Endor calls up the spirit of Samuel for King Saul.