Biblical Hebrew Forum

[GregStffrd AT aol.com]

In a message dated 08/24/2001 8:04:50 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
dan.wagner AT netzero.net writes:

<< Thanks for this post. This is extremely interesting and surprising. Has 
anybody who has studied the evidence disagreed with you (re: modification of 
LXX from original tetragrammaton)?  >>


Dear Dan:

I have studied the same material, for both the LXX and NT, and agree with 
Rolf's views. Of course, some might be inclined the think that this is due to 
my religious affiliation, but I present the facts to speak for themselves. 
Religion can always be thought to account for someone's view of a matter, but 
ultimately the facts either support or deny the view advanced. 

I am working on a second book which will be out this October and which also 
contains information on this subject. But I believe the evidence is strongly 
in favor of the belief that the pre-second century CE LXX and NT mss 
contained a form of the divine name. It is interesting to note that the time 
during which any removal of the divine name would have (assuming it did) 
taken place, would have occurred during the same period of time that the 
divine name was removed from the LXX, namely, near the end of the first 
century or the beginning of the second. 

Also, it should be remembered that the LXX was considered inspired Scripture, 
on par with the Hebrew text, and that the NT docs did not come to be 
considered as part of the inspired canon (at least not as we know it today) 
until well into or sometime after the second century. So, it should not 
surprise us to find that those who felt comfortable in changing the LXX had 
no reservations about similarly treating the NT (assuming that they did so). 

Still, the LXX mss. evidence shows that all pre-first century CE mss. 
contained a form of the divine name. We can therefore argue based on this 
mss. evidence that where the NT authors quoted the OT they either quoted the 
divine-name containing Hebrew text or LXX versions. Whichever they quoted, 
the divine name would have been part of that quotation per the mss. evidence 
we have to date for the source material. For more, I suggest you consider 
Rolf's book and my books: http://www.elihubooks.com.

Best regards,

Greg Stafford