The immediate response to MW’s book was summary dismissal and ridicule. The entire premise is quite clearly antithetical to Christianity, MW’s own personal intentions notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, even more apostate men than MW quickly stumbled across his blasphemy. John Thomas and the Christadelphians, a Unitarian sect was thrilled with MW’s “new Christology” as it helped them amplifying their own proto-Zionist dispensationalism.

The publication records show MW’s “Yahveh” spelling took off in the 1880s, peaking around 1890, and then rapidly falling off again by 1900. The trivially variant spelling “Yahweh” which we take for granted today lingered in the background, until exploding this century.

So what are we to make of all this?

Firstly, the behavior of un-translating God’s “I am” back into some particular ancient sound has at most six centuries of history. The idea of replacing the Word with some specific noise is a novelty without theological warrant.

Secondly, the specific genealogy of the <2 century-old “Yahweh” is 100% evil. A philologist briefly flubs an unimportant academic question. A man who denies the Inspiration of Scripture uses that error to read back into Scripture words that are literally absent. But of course these tactics always appeal to indolent Christians who revel in snatching shiny baubles off the ground and carrying them into their churches and hearts, where they are baptized as sound doctrine, against all reason, history, or Scriptural warrant.

Nobody cares what they meant when they came up with a plainly novel, extra-Christian idea.

“Oh that sounds nice, and isn’t it pious! Why this just feels so authentically Judeo-Christian”.

Yes, yes it does. And that is the real root of the problem.