Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>]

Dave:

see my comments below

On Jun 18, 2013, at 11:00 AM, b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Rolf <rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no> wrote:

Dear Doug,

The problem is that none of the oldest NT manuscripts, from the second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries contain the same word as the one that was written in the NT autographs where the name of God occurs.

You don't know this. It's pure speculation. They abbreviate the word KURIOS, but it's still the same word. This is more circular reasoning.

What Rolf is suggesting is not speculation, it is inference.  Neither is it circular reasoning.  The fact that the NT mss have KS is a bonafide conundrum.  At least as it concerns the Gospel of Matthew, and at the very least the sayings of Jesus.  If there is one clear aspect of Jesus' teaching is that he intentionally exposed man-made traditions which were in direct violation of the Torah.  He taught his disciples to disregard them at every turn in full view of the Pharisees.  (For the moderators' sake: I am not making a faith statement just an argument from what is commonly accepted and unambiguous).  These "traditions of the fathers" as they were so-called were well-intentioned.  No one doubts that the Rabbis had the welfare of the people in mind, but their effect was to destroy the original intent of the Torah.  This was the central teaching of Jesus against these teachers.  In this light, one can't help but ask whether the tradition of concealing the name of God doesn't fall under "traditions of the fathers" that supplant the law of God, and if so  

 

These manuscripts have KS, which is a later substitute for God's name. No one knows with certainty how God's name was written in the NT autographs, and therefore we must sift the evidence and find how God's name  most likely written.

But that's the problem. There's no evidence to sift. It all uniformly reads KS/KURIOS. The so-called earliest LXX manuscripts have nothing to do with how it was written in the New Testament, especially since, as I already pointed out, those mss aren't consistent among themselves, and even appear to use the archaic letter forms to further obfuscate the name and make it even less pronounceable. Throw in the fact that they were produced most likely by a very narrowly-populated, separatist group that had a major mad-on for the mainstream Temple cult, and the value of those mss for telling us anything about NT scribal practices diminishes to nothing. In other words, for determining what was in the NT, they're meaningless.

This part of the argument baffles me.  The fact that the extant NT mss all have KS says nothing about the first century.  They just speak to the fact that in the second century Scribes put KS for God's name.  That's all.  There is no more evidence in these mss for KYRIOS than for YHWH or IAO.  And it doesn't matter if there is one MS or 5000 MSS.  Until we find MSS from the first century with KYRIOS, we cannot speak of the newer documents as evidence.  The scant evidence (OT Greek mss BCE) that Rolf has presented speaks more to the issue than the silence of the first century autographs.  The argument may be weak, but as an inductive argument, it is cogent.

 

Therefore, your question should be reformulated: "What is the evidence in favor of YHWH in the NT autographs,

There is none.
 

and what is the evidence in favor of KURIOS?

All of it.

Problem solved.

-- 
Dave Washburn

Jonathan Mohler

Baptist Bible Graduate School

Springfield, MO