Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Stephen,

Se my comments below.


> 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.)

I did not understand that you wrote to me offlist. The address was to 
my E-mail, but,  on the cc-line was written 
"b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org."  Moreover, you also made comments to 
Yigal in the post, so I believed it was also addressed 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?

A physician should not only count the eyes of the patient; s/he 
should also examine them. Time and again you have been counting 
manuscripts without making a quality evaluation.

In B.C.E. and the first part of the 1st century C.E. the only ways 
God's name was written in the LXX was as YHWH in Paleo-Hebrew or 
Aramaic characters, not as PIPI or ZZ. There is no evidence for a 
substitution of God,s name in this time period.

The word KURIOS as a reference to God was unknown in Egypt in the 
third century B.C.E. According to Foerster in the "Theological 
Dictionary of the New Testament, III:1049, "KURIOS is never used of 
gods and rulers prior to the 1st century B.C /in Egypt/." So, KURIOS 
as a divne reference was, as far as we know, unknown  to the LXX 
translators.

As for the word PIPI, it is evidently a Greek rendering of YHWH 
written in Aramaic script. There is evidence that the tetragram may 
have occurred in the original Syriac Peshitta.  Around 600 C.E. Paul 
of Tella made his Syro-Hexapla translation. It is an extremely 
literal translation of Origen's Hexapla, where we find the tetragram 
in the Greek text. The rendering used instead of YHWH in the Peshitta 
manuscript that we know is Marya. In the main text of Syro-Hexapla we 
find Marya, but in the marigins of several manuscripts we find PIPI 
and HEHE, which evidently represent YHWH in Aramaic and Paleo-Hebrew 
script respectively. On this basis we may infer two things, namely 
that LXX copies with the tetragram in Aramaic and Paleo-Hebrew still 
existed when the Peshitta was being translated, and that the 
tetragram may have occurred in the original Peshitta, just as it 
occurred in the original LXX.

As for the continuous use of God's personal name, we see it was used 
by Aramaic-speaking Jews living
at Elephantine in Egypt in the 5th century B.C.E, and in the Wadi 
Daliye Papyri from Samaria (4th century B.C.E.).

I will also refer to the dissertation of E. E. Shaw, "The Earliest 
Non-mystical use of IAW" 2002. He gives a lot of evidence showing 
that Iao was used over much of the Greek-speaking world from the 
second century B.C.E. and through the first centuries C.E. He shows 
that the name was used by  Diodorus Siculus (1st century B.C.E.), 
Marcus Terrentius Varro (116-27 B.C.E), Herennius Philo of Byblos 
(64-141), Valerius Maximus (first part of 1st century C.E., by the 
emperor Gaius Caligula (12-41 C.E.) and by others. It is found in the 
Jewish sources, "The Apocalypse of Abraham," The Ladder of Jacob," 
and "The life of Adam and Eve." The name is also found in Syriac and 
Ethiopic sources.

This is just a sketch of the evidence, and there is a lot more. But 
it shows clearly that the name of God was extensively used in the 
ancient word in B.C.E. and an the first centuries C.E.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo




> Stephen Shead
> Sydney, Australia