In the Hebrew scriptures, many names are ascribed to God, which could be seen as attributes. However, Maimonides believes that all these names describe actions of God. The only name of God which actually attempts to describe the ‘essence’ of God — such as it is — is the Tetragrammaton YHWH. He speculates that in the Hebrew language “of which we have now but a slight knolwedge”, the name may have signified something along the lines of “absolute existence” with no other signification. This might explain the sacredness of the name, which of course cannot be pronounced except in the Holy of Holies in the Temple.

In ordinary language, we have no good way of referring to God in his capacity as existence qua existence; instead, we make do with attributive names because ordinary people find it difficult to conceive of something without attributes.

Maimonides seems to link the many legends associated with the name of God — e.g., that the ancient sages knew its pronunciation, and transmitted it across the generations by teaching it to a distinguished disciple every seven years, or that there was an additional twelve-letter name and forty-two-letter phrase in addition to YHWH — to the idea that in the present day, most people are unaware of the true knolwedge of God that is contained in this name. This true knolwedge consists in the fact that God is pure and simple existence, and not a substratum of attributes. Thus, the knowledge that has been lost — the pronunciation of YHWH and the identity of the 12 or 42 letters — is not just some letters but Metaphysics itself: the “secrets of the Law”.

This understanding of the nature of God’s name ties well with the story of Moses’ conversation with God, in which God replied to Moses’ question about his name with the phrase Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh”, I am that I am (Exodus III.14). This phrase is rendered in Hussein Atay’s Arabic edition as ana hua al-ka’in أنا هو الكائن, but in modern translations of the Old Testament it appears usually as ahyah allazi ahyah ‘أهيه الذي أهيه’ which is closer to the original Hebrew.

Maimonides’ explanation for this name elaborates an Avicennan conception of God: God is pure existence, existence-as-subject and existence-as-predicate. The structure of the sentence uttered by God contained within it an intelligible ‘proof’ or demonstration of the nature of God. This sentence

is, therefore, the expression of the idea that God exists, but not in the ordinary sense of the term; or, in other words, He is “the existing Being which is the existing Being,” that is to say, the Being whose existence is absolute (al-wajib al-wujud الواجب الوجود ). The proof which he was to give consisted in demonstrating that there is a Being of absolute existence, that has never been and never will be without existence (لم يعدم ولا يعدم) … God thus showed Moses the proofs by which His existence would be firmly established among the wise men of His people