Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Timothy,

 

Allow me to interject into this conversation, just for the purpose of clarifying in my own mind what the issue is.  I'm a little confused as to what you are advocating.

 

You said:  "It is not clear to me what you mean by "perilous" but I think you help me along in my observation that there is something special going on in these clunky phrases that include κύριος ο θεός. And the fact that the Tetragrammaton appears in the MT where the hand of the scribe/translator is applied at these points should draw our attention. BDAG and other great minds intimate that κύριος seems to have the status of a personal name - יהוה. If there is truth in this, if it has such a meaning then what is wrong in translating as such?

 

It seems to me that by this last reply you are confusing two different issues: (1) what was originally in the LXX texts, (2) how κύριος ought to be understood and translated in the phrase κύριος ο θεός.  Addressing these two issues separately:

 

(1) There is no self-evident reason for arguing that κύριος in the Greek text must be representative of some kind of transliterated form of the tetragrammaton in an earlier Greek text.  It is just as, if not more, likely, that the LXX translators, from the very beginning, used κύριος rather than some transliteration.  Or in other word, the "clunkiness" was there from the beginning, already reflecting the practice in Judaism of replacing the Yahweh with Adonai.

 

(2) The BDAG discussion you reference, probably means no more than that the writers and readers of the LXX and NT understood that Yahweh lay behind the word κύριος.

 

But perhaps I'm not quite understanding what you're saying.

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

Jerry Shepherd

Taylor Seminary

Edmonton, Alberta

jshepherd53 AT gmail.com