Bahā’-Allāh the Tetragrammaton: Some Aspects of Judaism and the Bahā’ī religion

            Abstract

The Persian messianic claimant Mīrzā Ḥusayn `Alī Bahā’-Allāh (1817-1892), founder of the Bahā’ī religion and one time follower of the Sayyid `Alī Muhammad the Bāb (d. 1850), came to write thousands of Arabic and Persian alwāḥ or scriptural Tablets to  Iranian and other Middle-Eastern Jews from his various places of imprisonment in Ottoman Turkey (Edirne, 1863-68) and Palestine (Acre-Haifa, 1868-92). These alwāḥ very largely date from the time of the Persian Jewish conversions to the Baha'i religion in the 1870s and 1880s.  While there seem  to have been very few sporadic Jewish conversions to Bābism during the lifetime of the Bāb and in the decade or so following his martyrdom (July 9th 1850), most notably in the Persian province of Khurasan (Turbati Haydari, Mashad, etc), it was not until Bahā'ī missionaries began to teach Jews in Iran and Iraq from around the time of Baha'-Allah's declaration in the early -mid. 1860s, that Middle Eastern Jews began to be addressed in weighty Tablets (alwāḥ) by the founder of the Baha'i religion. He lovingly called them to service and faith within the inclusive Bahā'ī religious universe of discourse which presupposed a full acceptance of all the major Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as the religion of the Bab).

            Bahā’-Allāh claimed to be the manifestation of the personal God of Israel, who revealed his Name to Moses on Sinai. He claimed to be the tetragrammaton, Y-H-W-H. This he related to long-secreted Islamic al-ism al-a`ẓam, the Greatest Name of God which is personified in his Logos-Reality as the radiant divine Beauty-Glory, the Arabic word Bahā’.

            A copy of the important Tablet of Bahā’-Allāh to a certain Khalīl (translated from the Persian (+Arabic text) printed in the opening section (Pt.1) of Ishrāq Khāvarī ‘s compilation Mā'idih-yi āsmanī   (vol. 4:38-44), will be distributed and commented upon as it bears on the theme of Bahā’-Allāh the tetragrammaton, Y-H-W-H.