Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi Dave,

I think I'm starting to see your issue now. You might want to look into the
history of translating the bible by Christians. I'm sure you are aware of
the basic history of the Christian church:

1) Small Jewish sect with activities in Galilee and Jerusalem
2) Influence spread to synagogues in the diaspora
3) Beliefs accepted by non-Jewish Greek speaking citizens in towns with a
synagogue
4) Illegal and persecuted religion that spread throughout the Roman empire
5) Constantine recognises the Christian faith and gets involved in its
affairs
6) Joint Catholic-Orthodox church for about six centuries
7) The church splits into East and West, Orthodox and Catholic
8) Luther rebels against the Catholic Pope, Erasmus tries to keep the peace,
The Catholic church splits and the Protestant movement begins
9) Various Protestant movements in various countries join in in denying the
Pope's authority and reforming the church (many reformations suggested but
most Protestant churches end up being almost identical to the Catholic
church)
10) Currently we have many different Christian movements claiming in some
way to be a return to the correct and original state of the Christian church
while both the Catholic and Orthodox churches maintain an uninterrupted
tradition of some kind.

Translation and transmission of the Christian bible has largely been
influenced by various stages of the development of the Christian church.
Perhaps the most relevant stage to your search is when Constantine got
involved with the Church. At this stage he ordered 50 bibles to be printed
in Greek. The Codex Sinaiticus is a strong candidate of being one of these
bibles or at least a copy of one of them. The monastery it was kept in dates
back to at least the days of Justinian and there may have been a smaller
monastery in its place before the current model was built back in the sixth
century. In these old codices we already see Kyrios and Theos in the place
of the tetragrammaton and the Greek traditions of the OT where universally
accepted by the Christian church.

It was only in the time of Jerome that we start to see the Christian Church
turning back to the Hebrew tradition of the OT with claims that it was
superior to the Greek one. This is perhaps most evident today in the
different versions of the canon. The Orthodox Church to this day includes
texts not present in the MT with the Greek traditions as its basis.
Protestant churches, in general, reject these texts following Jerome's
return to the Hebrew tradition.

I would start my search in this period and trace back if you are interested
in translating Yhwh and finding out why modern translation use LORD or GOD.

James Christian

On 29 June 2010 13:45, <davedonnelly1 AT juno.com> wrote:

> On Mon Jun 28 08:39:56 EDT 2010 ,
> Yitzhak Sapir yitzhaksapir at gmail.com  replied to my comment shown
> below:
>
> "Hopefully other members of b-Hebrew will respond to your Posts,
> as I occasionally look on in Awe".
>
> Yitzhak Sapir replied:
>
> >>>
> While perhaps I should be flattered, I would much prefer it if you took
> an active part in this discussion.  I'm not sure if other members have
> any input of their own to add (beyond what was discussed in the last
> few days and in fact in all that has been posted on the subject on the
> list).
>
> But I really want to know if the answers above solve all your
> questions.  Are you still skeptical, and if so, why?"
> >>>
>
> Yitzhak,
>
> I have decided to drop out of any further discussions on this issue.
>
> I will probably look for a new Christian Bible that I can live with,
> that uses "The LORD" and "GOD" when translating variants of "YHWH".
>
> While I am still somewhat skeptical about this method of translating the
> variants of YHWH,
> this method seems to be the rule and not the exception in Christian
> Bibles.
>
> I thank you for the information that you have provided me with on this
> issue,
> in your various posts to me.
>
> Sincerely Yours,
>
> Dave Donnelly
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