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  • From: Dave Washburn <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] G. Geroux and the Name
  • Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:29:32 -0700



On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Rolf,
 
While I have already conceded at least a level of plausibility to some of your argumentation, I find that the questions you bring up in this post to be rather weak.
 
You ask: "When Jesus opened the book of Isaiah and read from chapter 61, the normal thing to do was to read the Hebrew text, including YHWH, as it was written. Why would he do something abnormal, not pronouncing YHWH, when this would have been against everything that is said about God and his name in the Tanakh? Luke reported the incident. If Jesus pronounced the name, why would Luke do what would have been abnormal and delete the proper name and substitute it with an appellative when the text Jesus quoted had YHWH?"
 
I see no evidence from the Gospels was Jesus was an iconoclast simply for the sake of being an iconoclast.  If there was already a practice in place of using various circumlocutions rather than pronouncing the divine name (and there is evidence in the Gospels of Jesus using other circumlocutions), and if this practice was established for the purpose of enhancing reverence for God, it would not seem abnormal for Jesus to have adopted the practice himself.

I quite agree. We don't know whether Jesus read from the Hebrew or from a Greek translation, as was done in some synagogues at that time. And really, it doesn't matter. Claiming that he "normally" would have sounded the Name out loud is assuming what you're setting out to prove, because we also don't know for sure that he would have done any such thing. Rolf assumes this would have been the norm, then argues that it was. That's circular reasoning in a nutshell.
 
 
You ask: "When someone translates a text, the normal procedure in connection with proper names is to transcribe them in accordance of the stock of phonemes of the target language? According to Archer/Chirichigno, Romans 15:11 quotes Psalm 117:1 where YHWH is found? Why would Paul in this verse not follow the normal quoting procedure and use the proper name of God?"
 
I don't know if something special about this particular citation that you're trying to capitalize on -- there are a number of others you could have chosen.  In any case, I see no reason why, if there was already a practice in place of using various circumlocutions for the divine name, it would have been abnormal for Paul, who was still a card-carrying Pharisee (Acts 23:6), to respect that practice and do the same himself.

Paul also grew up in the Dispersion, so he was a fluently Greek-speaking Jew. That's probably part of the reason he considered himself the apostle to the Gentiles, because he knew their language and culture better than the Judea-born apostles. When writing to Gentile congregations, he would have had no reason at all to make a big deal out of The Name because it would have been meaningless to his recipients. KURIOS, they would have understood. YHWH in Hebrew or phonetic pronunciation would have sounded like gibberish to them. Paul wasn't stupid. He knew how to adapt his message to the ears of his listeners, and had no problem doing so again and again as we see in Acts.
 
>
>You ask: "Do you believe that the original manuscript of Romans 15:11 contained KS, or was KS first introduced in manuscripts of Romans >in the second century CE?"
 
>I believe that Paul would have written KYRIOS, and that later copyists, would have introduced the KS abbreviation, perhaps influenced by >some LXX practices.  Remember that these nomina sacra were used to abbreviate names and titles for Jesus as well.  I think it is more >likely that the autographs had IHSOUS, and that later mss used IH or IS.

It's my understanding that the main reason the short forms arose was to save precious parchment/papyrus space. And it was a legitimate concern. What did Paul write? Most likely, KURIOS. Again, Paul was a Jew of the Dispersion and knew Greek well. He also knew how to talk to members of Greek culture on their own level (cf. Acts 17, Mars Hill). Paul preached again and again and again ad nauseam against legalism, against putting too much emphasis on names, dates, objects, what have you. Do we really suppose he would have thrown all that out the window for the sake of this one name, a name that he sees being fulfilled in Jesus?

Yigal is correct: this is a non-issue. It makes me wonder if people can find anything more meaningless to fight about.

--
Dave Washburn

Check out my Internet show: http://www.irvingszoo.com

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