Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

Re the NT evidence, one thing you are missing is that Matthew has not simply
preferred "kingdom of heaven" in his own writing, he has in many places
changed "kingdom of God" in his presumed underlying sources into "kingdom of
heaven", as witnessed in parallel passages in Mark and Luke. Or, less
probably, "kingdom of heaven" was original and Mark and Luke changed it to
"kingdom of God".

Another clear NT example of "heaven" being used in place of "God" is Luke
15:18,21, where the returning Prodigal Son confesses his sin "against
heaven".

I guess we can only speculate on the reasons for these changes.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Wagner [mailto:dan.wagner AT netzero.net]
> Sent: 23 August 2001 18:59
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: traditions regarding tetragrammaton?
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Stabnow <dstabno AT lifeway.com>
> To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 8:51 AM
> Subject: Re: traditions regarding tetragrammaton?
>
<snip>
>
> Regarding "kingdom of heaven" (mostly Matthew) vs. "kingdom of
> God" (common elsewhere in NT), do we really have any evidence
> that this was intended to avoid the word _theos_ with Jews, or
> was it simply diversity of authors' preferences? Why would
> Matthew not want to say "kingdom of God" when he used _theos_ in
> plenty of other contexts? And why avoid "kingdom of God" which is
> not the same as "kingdom of Yahweh" anyway? I don't see that this
> NT evidence (mostly just in Matthew) is very strong. Am i missing
> something?
>
> Dan Wagner
>
>
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