Why Don't Christians refer to god as yahweh

[Rev. Rye]

Here's the thing; The Hebrew Alphabet is, for the most part, without vowels; to get an idea as to how to properly pronounce the words, it really has to be spoken aloud. The thing about "YHWH" is that Jews tended to be very cautious about saying the name; the interpretations of the third Commandment (second if you're Catholic) have varied wildly, from the common understanding of "don't use God's name unless you're talking directly to or about him" to "don't swear an unfulfilled promise in God's name" to the particular extreme of "don't use God's name at all unless absolutely necessary." Hence, the most spoken term for God, Hashem, translates to "The name." Eventually, it reached the point that "YHWH" only got spoken aloud at a ceremony that took place only once a year, and at the Temple in Jerusalem. That temple was destroyed in 70 AD, so, the ceremony hasn't happened since. And since then, those who knew for sure what the correct pronunciation died off.

And on to why the Christians let it die out, slowly, the Jewish roots of Christianity became less and less relevant to the point that Jews were consistently seen as being the bad guys in the Jesus story, even if saying something like "The Jews killed Christ" made as much sense as saying "White people killed John Lennon." So, even if they did remember it, do you really think they'd have kept it alive?

And, interesting thing, in my experience, the people most likely to refer to God as Yahweh (the currently accepted transliteration of his proper name) tend to be the ones least likely to serve him. It kind of reminds me of how, on Oz, the only people who get the pronunciation of Vern Schillinger's name right are the ones who hate him the most.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-OAi7Tz718