Biblical Hebrew Forum

[bhebrew AT shields-online.net]

Dear Rolf,

I\'ll try and be brief because this really is crossing beyond B-Hebrew 
territory into other realms. Your claims are not convincing for a number of 
reasons:

1. There are numerous circumlocutions employed in the NT to avoid using the 
divine name (e.g. Phil 2:9, etc).

2. There are no extant MSS of the NT which employ any form of the 
tetragrammaton. No fragment, no scrap. Nothing.

3. The argument that the use of the nomina sacra KS in early NT MSS indicates 
that they were altered proves nothing about what was in the autographs. The 
fact that there are no extant MSS which preserve the tetragrammaton is the 
only concrete evidence.

4. There are quite a few Hebrew MSS among the DSS sectarian literature which 
consistently use adonay and never use Yhwh (e.g. 4Q526, 4Q527, 4Q507, 4Q459, 
4Q521, 4Q437, 4Q435, 1Q34bis, 4Q410, 4Q577, 1QSb, 4Q504, 4Q432, 4Q508, 4Q428, 
4Q392, 4Q384, 1QHa, 4Q200, 4Q509, 4Q434, 4Q506, 4Q269, 1QM). This suggests an 
avoidance of the tetragrammaton in literature composed at the time. This, in 
conjunction with the use of special forms in copies of biblical manuscripts 
(where the desire to avoid using the tetragrammaton would be offset by the 
desire to preserve the text) suggest that in a translation (such as the LXX) 
the translators could easily have felt that the latter constraint was less 
binding and so felt at liberty to employ kyrios for the divine name.

5. You\'ve represented Pietersma\'s arguments in an overly reductionistic 
fashion.

6. What you fail to note is that there are (at least on Pietersma\'s count) 
only 3 extant LXX MSS dated earlier than 50CE which provide any evidence over 
the writing of the divine name. Given the questions Pietersma raises and 
strong evidence that substitutions were common at the oral level, this is 
rather scant evidence from which to derive such a dogmatic position as you 
seem to have.

Regards,

Martin Shields.