Tetragrammaton in the New Testament

The Tetragrammaton (Greek: τετραγράμματον, "four letters") is the quadriliteral, typically unvocalized, Hebrew theonym יהוה identifying the God of Israel throughout the Hebrew Bible, composed of the Hebrew letters yodh he waw he, written right-to-left in Hebrew, and transliterated YHWH English. It occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew Masoretic Text critical editions of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.

The Tetragrammaton does not occur in any extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Extant Greek New Testament manuscripts contain the Greek word Kyrios (Lord) in Old Testament quotes where the Hebrew has the Tetragrammaton.

Greek Old Testament

Earliest copies of the Septuagint and other greek translations has the Tetragrammaton written in Hebrew instead Κυριος.[1] 4Q120 has IAW rather kurios. Patrick W. Skehan suggest that greek reading IAW is more original than Kurios. [2] IAO can be seen a transliteration of Hebrew YAHO (יהוה). According Larry Hurtado, in greek manuscripts "dating from ca. 3rd century CE and later, 'Kyrios' (LORD) is used rather frequently".[3]

Septuagint LXX

Earliest copies of the Septuagint used the Divine Name,[1] as shown in manuscripts found, either Tetragrammaton, (e.g. Papyrus Fouad 266b, POxy 3522, POxy 5101), Trigrammaton (4Q120) or different forms of the Divine Name (LXXP.Oxy.VII.1007), with the exception of Papyrus Rylands 458, where there are blank spaces (lacuna) instead of the Tetragrammaton where some scholars, such as C. H. Roberts, believe that contained letters.[4] According to Paul E. Kahle, the Tetragrammaton must have been written in the manuscript where these spaces appear.[5] However, the vast majority of surviving copies from around the 2nd or 3rd century CE onwards have Κυριος ("Lord"),[6] or Θεος ("God"),[7][8] where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to substituting Adonay for YHWH in reading the original. Some later manuscripts from 5th-century to 9th-century show the Tetragrammaton (e.g. Codex Marchalianus, and Taylor-Schechter 16.320).

Kaige translation

Main article: Kaige

The Kaige translation include the Tetragrammaton, (an example is the mss. 8HevXII gr, composed by fragments 8HevXII a, 8HevXII b and Se2grXII). The Papyrus Fouad 266 has corrections towards masoretic text.

Translation by Aquila, Symmachus and Teodotion

In the first half of the second century CE, the formerly Christian Jewish proselyte Aquila of Sinope made a new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, in which he represented God's name by the Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew ( as found in mss. AqBurkitt and AqTaylor).[9] In earlier Greek copies of the Bible translated in the 2nd century CE by Theodotion and Symmachus the Ebionite, the Tetragrammaton also appears (e.g. P.Vindob.G.39777).

Hexapla

Main article: Hexapla

Origen's Hexapla provides—among other translations—the text of the Septuagint and translations of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion; an example of this text is the mss. Ambrosiano O 39 sup. and the Taylor-Schechter 12.182. The Tetragrammaton appears in its columns.

Dead Sea Scrolls

The tetragrammaton appears in biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in Jewish magical papyri, where the name was used for magical purposes.

Other texts

Hellenistic Jewish texts such as those of Josephus and Philo, and the Greek Old Testament pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, and the Jewish inscriptions use Kurios where the Hebrew has YHWH. According Norbert H. Kox, Flavius Josephus knew well how the Divine Name was to be pronounced as it reads in Antiquities of the Jews.[10] James Royce concluyed that Philo knew and read Greek biblical manuscripts in which the Tetragrammaton was not rendered by Kurios but in Palaeohebrew o aramaic script.[11]

New Testament manuscripts

None of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament contain the Tetragrammaton.[12]:77 The Tetragrammaton is one of the seven names of God that Jews teach can never be erased. A passage recorded in the Hebrew Tosefta, Shabbat 13:5, quoting Tarfon is sometimes cited to suggest that early Christian writings or copies contained the Tetragrammaton.[13]

Shabbat 13:5
— A. The books of the Evangelists and the books of the minim they do not save from a fire [on the Sabbath]. They are allowed to burn up where they are, they and [even] the references to the Divine Name that are in them.[14]

This same source quotes Rabbi Jose the Galilean (who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries of the common era): “one cuts out the references to the Divine Name which are in them [the Christian writings] and stores them away, and the rest burns.”

Laurence Schiffman[15] views this as a discussion of whether to rescue section of the sifre minim (Hebrew language texts of Jewish-Christians) containing the tetragrammata from a house fire. Another interpretation suggests this is a reference to Old Testament Torah and not the Gospels.[16]

Even so, early Christian proselytes may have retained the ineffability of the Divine Name and applied it to the Logos as the material revelation of YHWH to mankind. However, it is also possible the written rendering of the name "Jesus" would have carried the same prominence and authority to first century Jewish Christians as the Divine Name (YHWH) would have carried in ancient Judaism.[16]

Other views

Although none of the extant Greek New Testament manuscripts contain the Tetragrammaton, scholar George Howard has suggested that the Tetragrammaton appeared in the original New Testament autographs,[17] and that "the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New Testament and its replacement with the surrogates κυριος and θεος blurred the original distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Christ."[17] In the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Howard states: "There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, Yahweh, appeared in some or all of the OT quotations in the NT when the NT documents were first penned."[17]:392

Along with Howard, David Trobisch and Rolf Furuli both have suggested that the Tetragrammaton may have been removed from the Greek MSS.[18]:66–67[19]:179–191 In the book Archaeology and the New Testament, John McRay wrote of the possibility that the New Testament autographs may have retained the divine name in quotations from the Old Testament.[20] Robert Baker Girdlestone stated in 1871 that if the LXX had used "one Greek word for Jehovah and another for Adonai, such usage would doubtless have been retained in the discourses and arguments of the N.T. Thus our Lord in quoting the 110th Psalm,...might have said 'Jehovah said unto Adoni.'"[21] Since Girdlestone's time it has been shown that the LXX contained the Tetragrammaton, but that it was removed in later editions.[22]

Wolfgang Feneberg comments in the Jesuit magazine Entschluss/Offen (April 1985): "He [Jesus] did not withhold his father's name YHWH from us, but he entrusted us with it. It is otherwise inexplicable why the first petition of the Lord's Prayer should read: 'May your name be sanctified!'" Feneberg further notes that "in pre-Christian manuscripts for Greek-speaking Jews, God's name was not paraphrased with kýrios [Lord], but was written in the tetragram form in Hebrew or archaic Hebrew characters. . . . We find recollections of the name in the writings of the Church Fathers".

Though Albert Pietersma, along with most scholars, does not accept Howard's theory, Pietersma has stated concerning the Septuagint: "It might possibly still be debated whether perhaps the Palestinian copies with which the NT authors were familiar read some form of the tetragram."[23]

Tatian's Diatessaron shows some variance in applying Kyrios to YHWH, but this may be because of dependence on the Peshitta.[24] The consistency in rendering of YHWH as Kyrios in all New Testament references would be difficult to explain if there were not already either an established tradition to read Kyrios where YHWH appears in a Greek manuscript, or an established body of texts with Kyrios already in the Greek.[25]

Matthew originally written in Hebrew

According some Church Fathers, the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew language.

Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language and characters for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed. Who translated it after that in Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Moreover, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this volume in the Syrian city of Beroea to copy it.
— Jerome: De viris inlustribus (On Illustrious Men), chapter III.[26]
He (Shaul) being a Hebrew wrote in Hebrew, that is, his own tongue and most fluently; while things which were eloquently written in Hebrew were more eloquently turned into Greek.
— Jerome, 382 CE, On Illustrious Men, Book V
Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.
— Against Heresies 3:1
The first is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a tax collector, but afterwards an emissary of Yeshua the Messiah, who having published it for the Jewish believers, wrote it in Hebrew.
— Origen circa 210 CE, quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 6:25
The epistle to the Hebrews he asserts was written by Paul, to the Hebrews, in the Hebrew tongue; but that it was carefully translated by Luke, and published among the Greeks.
— Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes, referred to by Eusebius in Eccl. Hist. 6:14:2)

Hebrew versions of the New Testament

Over the centuries, various translators have inserted the Tetragrammaton into Hebrew versions of the New Testament. One of the earliest Rabbinical translations of Matthew is mixed in with the 1385 critical commentary of Shem-Tob. He includes the Tetragrammaton written out or abbreviated 19 times, while occasionally including the appellative HaShem (השם, meaning "The Name").[27]

English versions of the New Testament

Most English Bibles, even those such as the Jerusalem Bible which has Yahweh in the Old Testament, do not use Yahweh in the New Testament. This is because the Greek New Testament manuscripts are quoting the Septuagint, where the Hebrew word YHWH is translated by kyrios. Therefore, the New Testament uses Greek kyrios for YHWH even, for example, when Christ reads the Isaiah scroll at the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:17–19 reading Isaiah 61:1).[28]

However, a few English translations of the Bible do use "Jehovah" in the New Testament. For example, William Newcome, in what is sometimes known as "Archbishop Newcome's new translation", has the name "Jehovah" a few times where the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, such as Matthew 22:24.[29] The first complete Bible printed in America[30] by John Eliot, although not in English, frequently uses "Jehovah" in the New Testament.[31]

The New World Translation

The rendering Jehovah appears 7,216 times—including 237 times in the New Testament—in the New World Translation (NWT) published by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and used by Jehovah's Witnesses.[32] Jehovah's Witnesses say that the authors of the New Testament writings retained the Tetragrammaton in their quotations of the Old Testament without substituting it with Kurios ("Lord").[33]

Sacred Name Bibles

Main article: Sacred Name Bibles

In 1993, the Institute for Scripture Research (ISR) published The Scriptures,[34] the first English translation to incorporate the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton instead of a generic title (e.g., the LORD) or a conjectural transliteration (e.g., Yahweh or Jehovah). The Besorah[35] and ISR's The Scriptures '98[36] also incorporate the Tetragrammaton, using Paleo-Hebrew script rather than Hebrew square script. More recently, the Restored Name King James Version (RNKJV),[37][38] an anonymous, internet-based Sacred Name translation adapted from the King James Version (KJV), renders the Tetragrammaton as YHWH where it appears in the Old Testament.

The Divine Name King James Bible, published in 2011, uses Jehovah in 6,972 places where the capitalized LORD and GOD appeared in the Authorized King James Version. Jehovah appears in parentheses in the New Testament portion of this Bible where Old Testament quotes are cross-referenced. The Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition (1981) renders the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh in both the Old and New Testaments. The Emphatic Diaglott (1864), by Benjamin Wilson, renders the divine name as Jehovah in eighteen instances in the New Testament. The Original Aramaic New Testament in Plain English (2010), by David Bauscher, renders the divine name as Jehovah over 200 times in the New Testament.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Crawford Howell Toy, Ludwig Blau. "Tetragrammaton". Jewish Encyclopedia.
  2. ↑ Skehan, Patrick W. (1957). The Qumran Manuscripts and Textual Criticism,: Volume du congrès, Strasbourg 1956. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 4. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 148–160.
  3. ↑ Larry Hurtado. "The Divine Name and Greek Translation". Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  4. ↑ Sidney Jellicoe (1968). The Septuagint and Modern Study. Eisenbrauns. pp. 271–2. ISBN 0-931464-00-5.
  5. ↑ Paul E. Kahle (1959). The Cairo Geniza. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 222. ISBN 0758162456..
  6. ↑ T. Muraoka. A Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint. Peeters Publishers 2010. p. 72.
  7. ↑ T. Muraoka. A Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint. Peeters Publishers 2010. p. 56.
  8. ↑ :E. Hatch, H.A. Redpath (1975). A Concordance to the Septuagint: And the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament (Including the Apocryphal Books) I. pp. 630–648..
  9. ↑ Aquila - Jewish Encyclopedia
  10. ↑ Norbert H. Hox (2008). The Holy Cipher: Who Changed God's Name?. Lulu.com. pp. 58–59. ISBN 0615161421.
  11. ↑ Robert J. Wilkinson (2015). Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century. Brill. p. 85. ISBN 9004288171.
  12. ↑ George Howard The Tetragram and the New Testament Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 96, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 63-83
  13. ↑ Shabbat 13:5 reads: "The Gilyon[im] (i.e., gospel books) and the books of the minim (i.e., Jewish heretics) are not saved [on the Sabbath] from fire; but one lets them burn together with the names of God written upon them." The Jewish Encyclopedia (1910) defines the word Gilyonim in the Talmud as referring to the Gospels in the time of Tarfon.see Ludwig Blau, 1910 JewishEncyclopedia.com - GILYONIM
  14. ↑ Jacob Neusner Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine 2008 p99 ; Also in Neusner Persia and Rome in classical Judaism 2008 p14
  15. ↑ Jeremy Cohen Essential papers on Judaism and Christianity in conflict
  16. 1 2 Daniel Boyarin: Border Lines—The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, pg. 57
  17. 1 2 3
    • First published in The Tetragram and the New Testament Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 96, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 63-83
    • Expanded in "The Name of God in the New Testament" Biblical Archeology Review Vol. 4 No. 1 March 1978.
    • Included as "Tetragrammaton in the New Testament" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume 6, Edited by David Noel Freedman Anchor Bible: New York. 1992 ISBN 978-0385261906
    Journal of Biblical Literature Howard, George, Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978
  18. ↑ David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford University Press: 2000) ISBN 9780195112405
  19. ↑ Rolf Furuli The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation: With a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses Elihu Books, 1999 ISBN 9780965981446
  20. ↑ McCray, John, Archaeology and the New Testament Baker Academic (1 February 2008) ISBN 978-0801036088
  21. ↑ Synonyms of the Old Testament p.43
  22. ↑ The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (1984, Volume 2, page 512) says: "Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX [Septuagint] translated the tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Heb[rew] characters in the G[ree]k text. This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the O[ld] T[estament] in the first centuries A.D."
  23. ↑ Al. Pietersma, "Kyrios or Tetragram: A Renewed Quest for the Original LXX", De Septuaginta. Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on this Sixty-fifth Birthday, Benben Publications, 1984, p. 87.
  24. ↑ Robert F. Shedinger Tatian and the Jewish scriptures: a textual and philological p137
  25. ↑ David B. Capes Old Testament Yahweh texts in Paul's christology, Volume 47 p41
  26. ↑ Translation from the Latin text edited by E. C. Richardson and published in the series "Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur," 14. Leipzig. 1896. pp. 8, 9.
  27. ↑ "Questions From Readers". The Watchtower: 30. 15 August 1997.
  28. ↑ Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament,1997 p. 32 "records the episode of Christ's reading from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth, he quotes Is 61:1–2."
  29. ↑ An attempt toward revising our English translation of the Greek Scriptures
  30. ↑ Library of Congress
  31. ↑ Luke 1
  32. ↑ "THE WATCHTOWER (STUDY EDITION)". Brooklyn, New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. December 2015.
  33. ↑ New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (with references). Brooklyn, New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. 1984. pp. 1564–1566.
  34. ↑ The Scriptures, First Edition (1993) ISBN 0-620-17989-9
  35. ↑ The Besorah of Yahushua
  36. ↑ http://www.isr-messianic.org/
  37. ↑ http://www.eliyah.com/Scripture
  38. ↑ http://yahushua.net/scriptures

External links

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