In the summer of 1978, I took a summer course in Biblical Hebrew at Harvard Divinity School. One of the questions that interested me was the Hebrew name of God. This word was clearly a central part of Hebrew theology and practice for more than 2000 years. I wanted to try it as part of my daily spiritual practice. The first thing my instructor told me was that no one is sure how to pronounce that Name today. He said that while the King James Bible used the word Jehovah, this pronunciation was almost certainly wrong.

Looking further, I found that a few hundred years before the time of...