Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jay Childs" <selectjay AT hotmail.com>]

Rolf,

Wait, if the Qumran sect did not use the tetragram, then what are the Phoenician characters I am seeing on some of the DSS in the middle of the Aramaic script?  It's not YHWH?

 

Jay

>From: Rolf Furuli

>Reply-To: Rolf Furuli

>To: Biblical Hebrew

>Subject: Re: traditions regarding tetragrammaton?

>Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 17:13:01 +0200

>

>>----- Original Message -----

>>From: David Stabnow

>>To: Biblical Hebrew

>>Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 8:51 AM

>>Subject: Re: traditions regarding tetragrammaton?

>>

>>

>>>

>>> If the one LXX MS reflects the original (which would make sense

>>>in

>>> context), the others are attempts to mitigate the language

>>>regarding the

>>> Name.

>>

>>Interesting point, since i think the LXX itself may be evidence of

>>translator with "traditions" to protect the name YHWH since it

>>usually kurios rather than a transliteration. It seems like i

>>recall

>>someone posting here within the past few months and saying that

>>originally LXX (and NT!) MSS had a transliteration of Yahweh but

>>that later scribes replaced it with kurios. Does anyone know of

>>evidence for this? It would not seem likely to me, since we have

>>some pretty early LXX MSS evidence (some pre-Christian), which i

>>don't think have a transliterated name.

>>

>>The fact that both LXX and scribal evidence in MT and DSS all seem

>>to point to influence from these "traditions" would seem to

>>indicate

>>that they were late and not original at the time of composition of

>>the HB.

>>

>>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

>>

>

>

>Dear Dan,

>

>

>I once wrote a thesis entitled "The tetragrammaton and its

>substitutes in the days of the second temple". Here are some points:

>

>All the LXX manuscripts from the second and first centuries B.C.E

>and

>the first century C.E have the tetragrammaton, either in old Hebrew

>script, square Aramaic script, or as the phonetic transcription IAW

>(

>indicating pronunciation). In the Chester Beatty Papyrii from 150

>C.E. the tetragrammaton is changed to KURIOS. While the Qumran sect

>and other groups did not use the tetragrammaton, other groups did,

>and we know nothing to which extent it was used by the people in the

>days of Jesus. The numerous claims that it was not used at all in

>the

>first century C.E. are unsubstantiated.

>

>In discussions about the tetragrammaton we should differentiate

>between "alternative words" and "substitutes". Different titles and

>designations are used for God both in the OT and the NT, but they

>are

>not "substitutes" for YHWH. Only if people were afraid of using YHWH

>and used another word instead can we speak of a "substitute". The

>use

>of "heaven" and "the power" in the NT where we would have expected

>YHWH do not necessarily represent a use of substitutes. We find the

>word "heaven" referring to God in the book of Daniel, where we also

>find the tetrgrammaton. A basic problem for the substitution theory

>YHWH -> )A:DONFY -> KURIOS is that the Qumran sect did not use

>)A:DONFY as asubstitute for YHWH but they used )EL as a substitute.

>It is extremely difficult to correlate the KURIOS of the NT with

>)A:DONFY. But a strong case can be made for the view that the KURIOS

>of NT is a *translation* of more than one Hebrew word, something

>which corroborates with the view that KURIOS was not original in

>the

>NT.

>

>George Howard has made quite a good case for the view that the

>tetragrammaton originally occurred in the NT (See his article in The

>Anchor Bible Dictionary), and that it was replaced by KURIOS just as

>was the case in the LXX in the second century C.E.

>

>

>

>

>Regards

>

>Rolf Furuli

>

>University of Oslo

>

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