Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rev. Bryant J. Williams III" <bjwvmw AT com-pair.net>]

Dear Rolf,

As you well know the following:

KS is an abbreviation of KURIOS.
QS is an abbreviation of QEOS.
PNA is an abbreviation of PNEUMA.

Each of these abbreviations would be used to distinguish between lord = 
master, sir, Lord versus LORD, Lord (adonay); god versus God; wind, breath, 
spirit versus Spirit. These would have used in the 2nd Century AD by 
Christian scribes making more copies of the Greek Old Testament (GOT) and the 
LXX (BOTH subsumed by scholars under LXX). The best examples of this 
phenomena would have been the Great Codexes Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus and 
Vaticanus. And this would make sense since they were addressing the 
predominately Gentile, Greek speaking members of the church. The Greek texts 
found in the DSS would make sense since it is found within Hebrew/Aramaic 
speaking area of Palestinian Judaism.

See http://www.lib.umich.edu/reading/Paul/nominasacra.html for a list of 
abbreviations found in P46. These abbreviations for the Nomina Sacra would be 
for strictly Chrisitan purposes, but some abbreviations would be found in 
non-literary papyri. Most of these abbreviations were used more for speed in 
writing than for readability, but also to make a distinction between a 
regular use of a word and the use of the word as a holy word. See also 
http://www.skypoint.com/members/waltzmn/NominaSacra.html.

Now, getting back to the purpose of this list.

YHWH is found 6828 times in the Tanakh. The question is when did the use of 
Adonay in Qere begin to be used as a substitute for YHWH? I do not think that 
any one really knows. It would be based on conjecture, etc. Since the GOT was 
first translated in Alexandria during the reign of Philadelphus Ptolemy ca 
250 BC, it would be easy to see that KURIOS was used to translate YHWH. And I 
have shown that sometimes YHWH was left untranslated when Adonay YHWH was 
found in the Hebrew Text especially in Ezekiel which has Adonay YHWH 217 of 
317 found in the Tanakh. That still does not answer the question since 
pronunciation and the use of Adonay in Qere would not be known. We have only 
WRITTEN documents. We have no MP3 that is able to produce the original, 
accurate or any other pronunciation ancient or modern scholarship's attempt 
of the Tetragrammaton, PERIOD. We can only draw conclusions based on the 
written documents. We can draw inferences based on secondary material, but 
that is, at best, educated guesswork, i.e. speculation.  Until we have more 
evidence in either direction all we can do is agree to disagree, but the 
predominance of the evidence leans against your position.

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III