Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

Hi Stephen,

may the moderators correct me if I'm wrong but I don't see this discussion
to be particularly off topic. We are investigating when and why people
stopped pronouncing the name YHWH in the tanakh. The witness of the growing
Nazarean sect is a valuable line of evidence.

You raise some points about the transmission of the NT documents which are
not entirely correct. It is historically quite clear that a number of NT
documents were considered canonical by many as early as Marcion (85-160 CE)
who held only a version of the Gospel of Luke and the Pauline epistles as
canonical and caused quite a fuss about it. It was perhaps his influence
that sparked debates which would rage for a few more centuries about what
was and was not to be considered god-breathed.

It is also quite clear that by the time of Constantine's reforms there were
a number of competing editions of gospels and acts and epistles flying about
in circulation and many felt the need to clear up the matter of what could
and could not be trusted. It is also clear that Constantine, through
Eusebius, ordered the first 50 codices to be compiled. If we are to trust
the theory that the Codex Sinaiticus is one of these 50 (and this is quite
likely so given the age of the community at St Catherine's) or a copy of one
of them then it is furthermore quite clear that by this time kyrios had
completely supplanted whatever was in the originals.

Rolf has already pointed out to you that older MSS contain KS. How else
could this be interpretted than a direct acknowledgement that the
corresponding Hebrew MSS contained YHWH?

James Christian

2009/12/21 Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>

> 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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