Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Doug Belot" <dbelot AT bigpond.net.au>]

In regards to the name of God , if your a NT believer then it is quite 
seimple ,
John 17:6 and 17:26 tell us that Jesus "explained" , manifested His fathers 
name to them , so they , the apostles certainly knew what name it was.

How did they pronounce the name , the baptism account s of Acts 2:38 , 10:48 
and 19:6 will tell you , for they were told to baptise in the Fathers name , 
somewhere in the translation alterations we have lost this name that was 
revealed by Jesus in the years he was on earth.

But we know that we are told to baptise in the Fathers name , check out what 
name was used in the Baptisms and there it will be.

doug belot


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 10:44 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] adonai "my Lord" or "the Lord"


One more thing that should be taken into account here: the Jewish tradition
that during the Second Temple Period, the Name of God was considered to be
too holy to actually ever pronounce. This is why the name YHWH was vocalized
"Adonai" in the first place. According to (later) rabbinic sources, the
Tetragramaton was said aloud by the high priest only once a year, during the
Yom Kippur service. After the destruction of the Temple, the true
pronunciation was lost. (Remember - such vocalizations such as Yahweh,
Jehovah etc. are modern reconstructions, not ancient traditions.) So it
stands to reason that the transcribers of the Septuagint and the
(post-Destruction) authors of the NT, not having a "pronounceable" name,
simply translated the accepted Hebrew vocalization - Adonai.

Yigal Levin

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Rolf Furuli
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 10:51 AM
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] adonai "my Lord" or "the Lord"


Dear Stephen,

When we discuss translation, we need to apply the
rules of translation. The rule which relates to
the rendering of YHWH in English translation, is
that a proper name in Hebrew which refers to a
particular person or place should be transcribed
into English in accordance with the stock of
phonemes of English and not substituted with
anothr word. The only situation where translators
can consider deviating from this, is where there
is a play of words in connection with the name,
and this is more important that the reference.
Tthis is not the case with  YHWH, so to
substitute this name with "the Lord" is a blatant
violation of a fundamental rule of translation.

I have recently completed a study of the use of
divine names in *all* the Dead Sea Scrolls, both
in biblical and- non-biblical manuscripts. The
substitute for YHWH that was used at Qumran was
)EL and not )DNY. The word )DNY  was used in the
non-biblical scrolls 71 times while )EL occurs
667 times. Only in  one or two instances *may*
)DNY be used as a substitute for YHWH. But this
is absolutely not certain, because in the
biblical manuscripts we sometimes find YHWH where
MT has )DNY and we find )DNY where the MT has
YHWH.  There is absolutely no clear evidence that
YHWH was substituted by )DONY in writing or in
pronunciation in the 1st and 2nd century B.C.E.,
or even in the 1st century C.E.

On the basis of this there is an acute problem
regarding KURIOS in the NT. If )DNY (=KURIOS) was
not used as a substitute for YHWH when Jesus was
on earth, then it must have been the NT writers
who invented the use of KURIOS instead of YHWH.
And why should they, when the Tanakh several
places (e.g. Exodus 3:15) says that YHWH should
be used as a reference to God for ever. And, when
Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth  according to
Luke 4:17, 18 read from the prophet Isaiah where
YHWH is found, why should he substitute the
proper name of God with something else? Even if
this was the custom, for which there is no clear
evidence, why should he, who condemned the
commandments made by men that violated the law,
follow such a superstitious custom?

The writers of the NT often quoted from the LXX,
and interestingly the few fragments of the LXX
that we have from the 2nd and 1st centuries
B.C.E. and the 1st century C.E. all contain the
name in some form- either in archaic Hebrew or
Aramaic script or as the Greek phonetic
transcription IAO.  So no KURIOS in this version
either.

Then we come to a very interesting point.  In the
UBS and other Greek texts of the NT we never find
YHWH but only KURIOS. However, we do not have the
autographs of the NT manuscripts, and there is
strong evidence that , as far as the writing of
God´s name is concerned, the NT text was tampered
with between 75 and 125 C.E. How so? As already
mentioned, the text of the LXX, as late as the
1st century C.E. contains YHWH and not the
substitute KURIOS. But in the oldest C.E. LXX
manuscripts that we have (from the middle of the
2nd century C.E. or a little later) we find the
substitute KS (or, a few times QS) with a
horizontal bar above where YHWH previously was
written. This shows that the LXX text was
tampered with in the period I have mentioned, and
the name of God was substituted by something
else. In the oldest NT manuscrips from the same
period ( the middle of the 2nd century ) we also
fin KS in quotes from the OT (and in other
instances) where YHWH is found in Hebrew. The
same tampering pattern is evident both regarding
the LXX and the NT, And it is obvious that KS, QS
and several other nomina sacra were not found in
the NT autographs. Thus, the NT text has been
tampered with as well!  And because the LXX
originally had YHWH and this was changed to KS,
it can be argued that the substitution KS in the
NT also is a substitution of YHWH. When we also
keep in mind that there is no evidence that YHWH
was substituted by )DNY among the people in the
days of Jesus, a good case can be made for YHWH
being found in the NT autographs, at least in the
quotes from the OT.

A discussion of this is found in the article
"Divine names" in "The Anchor Bible Dictionary."
A different view can be found in M. Rösel. The
Reading and Translation of the Divine Name in the
Masoretic Tradition and the Greek Pentateuch."
JSOT 31, 2007: 411-428. For those who Read
German, I refer to  M. Rösel's doctoral
dissertation: "Warum Gott "Herr" genannt wird?"
2000. Tübingen.  The intersting thing here are
the great problems he has to find evidence for
his main theory, that YHWH was substituted by
another word.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

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