ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some early rabbinic traditions regarding the linguistic nature of creation and how it relates to naming and the Name of God. The Jewish concept of creation is not based on clearly-defined ontological states of being and non-being, but rather is related to emergence from mere potentiality into actuality; objects which subsist in potentiality are awaiting the calling of their names, the act which brings them into the presence of the namer, and therefore into reality. Scholem located the beginnings of Jewish language-mysticism at the point where the creative word used in Genesis became identified with God's Name. The Name is, perhaps, the source of the Oath's power, but this does not make the Name itself the agent of creation any more than petrol is an agent of travel. Further, the early Christian identification of Christ as the manifest Name of God, often appears alongside an assertion that creation occurred through Christ.
