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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] adonai "my Lord" or "the Lord"
  • Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:58:03 +0100

Dear Stephen,

I do not intend to continue this discussion, because its focus is the NT rather than the OT. But allow me a few points. You have the right to be unconvinced and deem something as being impossible. But something needs to be said about that which you call "concrete evidence."

1. We do not have the original NT manuscripts, We have a fragment or two possibly being older than 150 C.E., but most manuscripts are younger.

2. In these NT manuscripts we find the so-called nomina sacra-two letters with a bar above, such as KS for the name of God and QS for "God".

This is the concrete evidence-there are no old NT manuscripts either with YHWH or KURIOS.

The next step is to interpret the concrete evidence. We do not need any conspiracy or apostasy theory in this interpretation. What must be said to be certain is that the nomina sacra in the LXX manuscripts are not original. If you do not like the word "tamper," we may use "change" instead. Some time in the period between the last LXX manuscript we have (1st centurry C.E.) and the LXX manuscripts from the 2nd century C.E., the name of God (YHWH) was removed from the LXX manuscripts and was substituted by KS. While scholarly consensus does not necessarily represent the truth, I have never heard any scholar say that the nomina sacra were found in the NT autographs. This is very unlikely! So in the same period when God's name was removed from the LXX, the word used in the NT autographs with reference to God was removed, and it was substituted with KS. You cannot just refer to "the NT MSS themselves," as if this solved the issue once and for all. What we must do is to ask the question: "Which word was found in the NT autographs where we in our NT manuscripts find KS?"

One of the real experts on nomina sacra is L. W. Hurtado ("The Origin of the nomina sacra: A proposal". Journal of biblical Literature 117 (1998): 1-14; The Earliest Christian Artifacts Manuscripts and Christian Origins, 2006). He suggests that the nomina sacra was a Christian innovation based on the Jewish gematria, which involves ascribing religious significance to the numerical value of alphabetic characters. For example, Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6.278-80) wrote that the 318 servants of Abraham (Genesis 14:14), written with the Greek letters (TIH) foreshadowed Jesus on the cross (T= cross and IH (ie) referred to Jesus). Hurtado (2006:114. 115) suggests that IH (ie) representing Jesus was the original nomen sacrum. The value 18 in Hebrew is YOD Het, which also means "life". Thus the Greek IH referred to Jesus as "the life". If this is correct, it does not represent any conspiracy theory, but it shows how non-Christian viewpoints rather early started to influence the Christian faith.

The main reason why I mentioned the NT manuscripts in the first place, was to show that if KURIOS was used as a substitute for YHWH in the NT, this must have been an invention of the NT writers themselves, because there is no evidence that YHWH in the time of the writing of the NT was substituted by YHWH. But such an invention is unlikely, because the Tanakh says that this should not occur. As a matter of fact, we have no manuscript evidence showing how the name of God was written in the original NT.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




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






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