Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Stephen Shead <sshead.email AT gmail.com>]

Dear Rolf,

>> On this list we are discussing Hebrew and not Greek. But your question can be relevant for this list for three reasons...

A fourth reason is that you included the claim in your post - and I considered the statement rather mischievous, especially your use of "evidence", without anything to back it up. So I wanted to check whether you actually did have some hard data from some NT MS that I wasn't aware of - and if not, I didn't want the claim to slip through uncritiqued.

And you continue to use terms like "evidence", "sound philological methods" and "corrupt text" where there is no evidence (as normally understood), only the same astounding reasoning I have heard before from Jehovah's Witnesses - astounding because of the extreme historical improbability of such a whole-sale change with no trace left in even early MSS.

The evidence: textual variety in the LXX (and, as per Martin's reply, I think your analysis of the LXX is also simplistic); textual uniformity in the NT. And none of the standard criteria of textual criticism would lead us to emend the uniform witness of the thousands of NT MSS. I have no complaint if you keep using your argument - but please present it as "despite the fact that we have no direct evidence in the NT MSS...". Otherwise, your language of "evidence" is misleading.

Best regards,

Stephen Shead.

---

The text of the Tanakh in some places is corrupt, or at least not understandable.  One example is Hosea 5:2.  In such cases, the task of the philologist is to try to restore the "original" or older text. The  translation of the Tanakh into Greek probably started in the third century BCE. Only a few fragments of the LXX or a LXX-like text dated from the 2nd, 1st century BCE and to 50 CE have been found, but none of these fragments have KURIOS instead of YHWH. But they have the tetragram in old Hebrew and Aramaic script, and the Greek phonemic transcription IAO. Between the last fragment with of Job with the tetragram from around 50 CE and the oldest LXX-manuscript there are one hundred years. What do we find in this manuscripts and in the LXX-manuscripts that were copied in the next two or three hundred years? Where YHWH occurs in the MT we find the so-called nomina sacra KS, supposed to be an abbreviation for KURIOS. On the basis of the older manuscripts we know that between
 50 and 150 CE God's name was removed from the LXX manuscripts and replaced by KC. Thus, the LXX manuscripts from the 2nd century have a corrupt text, as far as the name of God is concerned.

The oldest manuscripts of the New Testament are from the second century CE, and they have the same corrupt text as the LXX; they have KS in quotes from the Tanakh where MT has YHWH.  Many other places we also find KS. No one would argue that the NT autographs had KS, so the task of the pholologian is to find which word in the autographs that had been replaced by KS. In the LXX, YHWH or IAO were written down to 50 CE, and after that they were replaced by KS. When the same replacement occurred in NT manuscripts, it is logical that God's name in one form occurred in the NT autographs, but later was removed.

In the first part of the 20th century, it was universally believed that the original LXX contained KURIOS, and that was the reason why the NT writers used KURIOS instead of  YHWH. This view was abandoned in the second part of the 20th century when LXX manuscripts with YHWH or IAO were found. The most important argument used today in favor of KURIOS  rather than YHWH in the NT, is that the Jews in the last centuries BCE ceased using and pronouncing YHWH and used )DNY  instead. The problem with this argument is that there is absolutely no evidence in favor of it!!! The only group of which I am aware, who used a substitute for YHWH, was the religious order, possibly Essenes, that lived at Qumran. However, the substitute they used was not )DNY but )L.

I have studied all the divine designations in the DSS, and I found the following numbers: YHWH 317; )LHYM:380; )L: 667; )DNY: 71; four dots:27. Of the 71 examples of )DNY, all, or most are titles, and not substitutes for YHWH. Only two or three could possibly be substitutes, but they could be titles as well. In the Tanakh we also find )DNY as a title, and not as a substitute for YHWH. The great numbers of the word )L indicate that this was the substitute used for YHWH. A great number of the DSS were copied outside Qumran by other groups than the Qumran order. If we take )L as evidence for substitution and the occurrence of YHWH, with a few exceptions, as evidence for use, several other groups outside Qumran continued to use YHWH while the Qumran order used a substitute. If we compare the dates of the DSS manuscripts, we see that YHWH was still used in the middle of the 1st century CE. There is also evidence from the Rabbinic literature that several groups continued to use the
  name, and there is no conclusive evidence against this in the Mishnah. There is also evidence in Syriac manuscripts that both the Old Hebrew and Aramaic tetragrams were used in CE.

When the argument that )DNY was used as a substitute for YHWH in BCE and the 1st century CE is invalid, there is nothing left to justify the use of KURIOS in the NT autographs. There is no place in the Tanakh saying that YHWH at some time should cease to be pronounced and used. But there are several places which say that God's name should be used to time indifinite. Therefore, when the NT writers quoted the MT or the LXX (which also had the name), they had no reason to substitute God's name with KURIOS, but they would quote what was written in the Hebrew text.

You asked: "In which NT manuscript do we find YHWH? The answer, as you know is that YHWH is not found in nay NT manuscript. And there is a reason for that, namely, that the extant NT manuscripts have a corrupt text where Gods name should occur. Therefore, we must use sound philological methods to restore this corrupt text.

SUMMARY:

TEXTUAL CRITICISM: I argue that the reference to the context is not enough to make an emendation in the text. When the text is corrupt, a Bible translator must try to restore the original text. All texts of the LXX and NT from the 2nd century onward are corrupt as far as the name of God is concerned. To claim that KURIOS occurs in the LXX without a qualification is misleading. The qualification must be that all LXX fragments up to 50 CE do not have KURIOS, so the original word is not KURIOS.

DIVINE NAMES IN THE LXX: Some manuscripts give evidence that the substitute )L was used, other manuscripts give evidence that YHWH  was used. No evidence in favor of )DNY as a substitute is found in the DSS or elsewhere.

THE TANAKH AS A BASIS FOR THE NT: The evidence is that the NT used the Tanakh as a source for quotes and references in the normal way without deleting anything from the texts that was quoted. The Tanakh uses YHWH more than 6,000 times, and I am not aware of any reason why the writers should not quote faithfully, but should substitute YHWH with KURIOS.


I recommend the article, "The Tetragrammaton in the New Testament," by G. Howard, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary," 1992.



Best regards,


Rolf Furuli
Stavern
Norway