Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Stephen Shead <srshead+bh AT gmail.com>]

Dear Rolf,

I have heard these arguments before, and am utterly unconvinced by them. The
fact is, there is not a single shred of manuscript evidence for the theory
as far as the NT itself is concerned - it is a whole lot of clever
conjecture and supposition based on a couple of LXX fragments, but that
conjecture flies in the face of the most concrete evidence of all: the NT
MSS themselves.

On top of that, I find any conspiracy theory saying that the NT MSS were
"tampered with" (and there are several such apostasy / conspiracy theories
out there on different topics, with different theological agendas) very
difficult to swallow, given the historical reality of the way in which the
NT texts were copied and propagated. There simply was no centralised control
of a set of canonical "Scripture" documents, since the NT canon was a long
way off being established, and the early Christian church was not a
homogenous, tightly organised body. And the process of copying did not
happen through official ecumenical bodies which could control their
contents. It was a much more ad hoc process of people making rough (often
rushed) copies of their known/favourite letters etc. as they moved from one
place to another. I simply cannot see how such a thorough and comprehensive
"tampering" was possible - especially since the evidence suggests that a
large percentage of the early Christian church would have been very unhappy
with such a change anyway. So the idea that such a theological rewriting
could have occurred without leaving any evidence of the original is, in my
mind, impossible.

I am aware that this discussion is outside the scope of the list. I felt it
was appropriate to reply once (albeit briefly), but I personally will not
continue this branch of the discussion.

(And Yigal, thank you for the note about the vocalization "Adonai" for YHWH
in the Second Temple period. I think this is correct, and is a perfect fit
with the substitution of "kurios" in the NT.)

Regards,
Stephen Shead
Sydney, Australia

---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:51:15 +0100
> 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
>