When Moses asked God at the burning bush, who He was: “God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM: This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I AM has sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14) All the Jews then KNEW WHO Moses was talking about.
When Jesus was asked who He was, He said that He, also, was the “I AM.” (Mark 14:61-64) “Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I AM,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. “You have heard the blasphemy.”
Jesus was claiming to be the same “I AM” who spoke to Moses in the burning bush – that is why they crucified Him. We know He was claiming to be Yahweh or Jehovah God of the Old Testament because the high priest tore his clothes and stated that Jesus had blasphemed – which is to say that you are God.
Jehovah is an English reading of (Hebrew) יְהֹוָה, the most frequent form of the Tetragrammaton יהוה, which is the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. It is Tyndale’s (1530) erroneous, direct phonetic transliteration.
By long tradition, in modern Jewish culture the Tetragrammaton is not pronounced – the full name of YHWH being too sacred for utterance. Instead the above vocalization indicates to the reverent Jewish reader that the term Adonai (Lord) is to be used. In places where the preceding or following word already is Adonai, the reading Elohim is used instead, indicated by a different vocalization of the Tetragrammaton. It is generally agreed therefore, in line with Jewish teaching, that יְהֹוָה is a “hybrid form,” created when the Jews added the vowels of Adonai to the consonants of YHWH. [this works in the Hebrew, with slight modifications, but not in English]
Early English translators, unacquainted with Jewish tradition, read this word as they would any other word, and transcribed it as Jehovah. This form was widely used in the translations of the Protestant Reformation, and although it was later regarded by both Jews and Christians as a mispronunciation, it has nevertheless found a place in Christian usage.
God has MANY names. Check out this website:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Names_of_G-d/El/el.html
