Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Dear James, Rolf and Edward,

I have no inclination to respond to all your counter-arguments, which
continue to depend on supposition, and which run counter to virtually all
the evidence. You still have not refuted a single piece of my argument.
(Incidentally, Rolf, my email to you was offlist. I'm not sure why you
posted your reply to the list.)

However, I will respond to some specific points which are new or which may
be misleading.

1. James and Edward (via a quote from Prof. McRay) brought up the PIPI
phenomenon (a Greek non-word written to look similar to the Hebrew YHWH).
However, PIPI does not occur in a single NT manuscript - it only appears in
LXX manuscripts. It therefore provides no evidence for anything to do with
the NT transmission process.

In fact, it strengthens my point! In the case of the LXX, there is a wide
variety of representations of the divine Name in the extant MSS. Variations
include YHWH in both paleo and square Hebrew script, the abbreviated form ZZ
with a horizontal line, Greek IAW, PIPI, and of course, KURIOS / KS. And the
variety of forms continues in documents from the Common Era, after the
apparent replacement of the tetragrammaton with KURIOS / KS. This is what
one would expect: once people start changing the written form of the Name
for the sake of Greek speakers, various solutions emerge and continue to pop
up through the textual landscape. So if the tetragrammaton was originally in
the NT autographs, how is it that we don't see a similar variety somewhere
in the thousands of extant NT MSS?

2. James, you wrote:

[JC] Also, Stephen, it seems plausible that the few occurences of KS you
manage to find not referring to YHWH can be either copyist error or, as Rolf
suggests just a way of abbreviating KYRIOS that first started out as a
replacement for YHWH and was then used more generally as a contraction for
KYRIOS.

[SS] James, I am astonished! You have publicly misquoted what I said in
private correspondence, so as to change the facts entirely.

To correct the record: In the two early NT manuscripts I talked about, every
single KURIOS reference to Jesus uses the nomen sacrum KS!!!! In fact, in
one MS (P66) every KURIOS reference uses the short form KS, even when
referring neither to YHWH nor Jesus; and in the other MS (P46, a large
portion of Paul's letters), there are only 4 full-form KURIOS occurrences -
all of them plural and clearly referring to other "lords". How is this "the
few occurrences of KS you manage to find not referring to YHWH"??

3. With regard to my comments about the importance of the debate to the
argument of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Edward wrote:

[EA] Actually, this is not true. If manuscripts were found that could be
verified as the autographs, and it had the Tetragrammaton as KS, and this is
actually what the authors wrote, it would not have one iota affect on their
doctrine, or their position. Let us just say that the writers of the
Christian Greek Scriptures decided to set aside the Tetragrammaton to be
different than their Jewish counterpart and place KS in the text, it would
not change a thing, because KS is simply a representation of what actually
occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures.

[SS] You too have raised the nomen sacrum KS as if it provides evidence for
something. OK, let me rephrase it: The claim that the NT autographs
contained an unambiguous representation (whether in Hebrew or Greek) of the
Hebrew divine Name, which thus clearly distinguished YHWH from Jesus, is
crucial to the Jehovah's Witness argument against the mainstream Christian
understanding of Jesus.

Actually, an appeal to "KS" does not change things at all, because in
general the early NT manuscripts use the form KS with reference both to YHWH
(in quotes, for example) and to Jesus. That is, in the extant manuscript
evidence, there is no distinction in the forms used to refer to YHWH and
Jesus, even where there is a distinction between these and other "kurioi".

4. Finally, Edward wrote:

[EA] The Witnesses are not pressed (my word not yours) by the need of a NT
Tetragrammaton as their foundational piece to keep their doctrine of Jesus
and Jehovah being two different persons. If I am not mistaken, this is the
position of orthodox Christianity as well.

[SS] I'm sure you'll be able to find a counter-example of an "orthodox"
Christian scholar. But actually, I would say that this is definitely NOT the
position of orthodox Christianity. Rapid summary: YHWH the "one God" of the
Hebrew Scriptures does not simply equate to the Father of the NT, but rather
to the triune God. I will not pursue this further.

Stephen Shead
Sydney, Australia