> Imagine if you time traveled back to that time and asked random people in the fertile crescent, who or what do you worship? They technically couldn't answer

> Imagine if you time traveled back to that time and asked random people in the fertile crescent, who or what do you worship? They technically couldn't answer that because their beliefs told them not to say that word The tradition of not pronouncing the name YHWH is specific to rabbinic judaism and was not a feature of either temple judaism as practiced in the era of King David nor religions in the fertile crescent. Rather the opposite, as names of Gods were loudly and proudly proclaimed. We know this because of poems (which were sung outloud) composed that contain names of gods in such a way as proper pronounciaton is required for the songs to have the right rhythm and meter. (This is also how modern scholars believe the correct pronounciation is "Yahweh", e.g. that the vav was a "w" sound and the yod was a "y" sound.) In fact the very idea of a name that could be written but not spoken presupposes a tradition of reading and writing texts -- something practiced by Masoretes and Pharisees -- rather than a service consisting of songs and spoken ceremonies as performed in actual temples. It is a question as to which extra-levitical sects initially began this tradition of omitting the name in spoken pronunciation sometime during the second temple period, as it was most likely related to them not being priests and thus not considering themselves worthy to say the name, but when the priestly service ended and the temple was destroyed, guardianship of law passed to rabbinical groups focused on working with texts, and then no one was considered worthy to say the name and thus it became a general prohibition even though the royal singers singing the psalms loudly sang "Yahweh" in almost every song in daily service. But this practice of omitting the name was not shared by other semitic groups in the region, nor is it present in Arabic cultures. So let's not backpropagate that relatively modern scholarly tradition to religious practices in the fertile crescent during the dawn of civilization.