What other ancient Greek Manuscripts contained the divine name?

yaddayadda

The Society in appendix 1a of their 'Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures' refers to Nine other Greek manuscripts as containing the divine name, and they quote from Jerome as referring to certain 'Greek volumes' containing the Tetragrammaton.

Can anyone shed any light on what these Greek manuscripts and volumes are and their dates of writing?

Here is what the Society says in full:

" From the photographs of 12 fragments of this papyrus roll our readers may examine these occurrences of the Tetragrammaton in such an early copy of LXX. Authorities fix the date for this papyrus as the first century B.C.E., that is, about two centuries after the LXX was begun. This proves that the original LXX did contain the divine name wherever it occurred in the Hebrew original. Nine other Greek manuscripts also contain the divine name. - See NW Ref. Bi., PP. 1562-1564.

Did Jesus Christ, and those of his disciples who wrote the Christian Greek Scriptures, have at hand copis of the Greek Septuagint with the divine name appearing therein in the form of the Tetragrammaton? Yes! The Tetragrammaton persisted in copies of LXX for centuries after Christ and his apostles. Sometime during the first half of the second century C.E., when Aquila's own Greek version was produced, it also showed the Tetragrammaton in archaic Hebrew letters.

Jerome, of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings, said: "And we find the name of God, the Tetragrammaton [inserted], in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters." Thus down to the time of Jerome, the chief translator who produced the Latin Vulgate, there were Greek manuscripts of translations of the Hebrew Scriptures that still contained the divine name in its four Hebrew charactors. "

Obviously the appearance of the tetragrammaton in this very early copy of the Septuagint doesn't prove that the 'original' LXX contained the tetragrammaton, nor does it categorically mean that Jesus and the writers of the NT had at hand the LXX with the divine name, as the Society contends. The most it could mean is that the original LXX could have contained the tetragrammaton and Jesus and the NT writers could have had at hand an LXX with the divine name in it (and my personal view is that it was likely they did). But my concern is just to know more about these 'nine other Greek manuscripts' the Society refers to (as I don't have a NW Reference Bible) and the 'certain Greek Volumes' that Jerome refers to.

Much thanks
Yadda

moggy lover

Hi, Yaddayadda, here are the ten mss mentioned by BRef on pgs 1563, 1564:

1: LXX P Fouad 266. Dated to the 1C BC contains 117 fragments of the book of Deuteronomy, where the DN is written in square Hebrew characters in 49 different places. This is one of two mss of the ten mentioned that were written in the BC era and may thus have been in circulation when the NT was being written

2: LXX VTS 10a, dated to the end of the 1C AD loo late for the 70s when the Nt was being written. Contains the DN in ancient Heb characters in 20 seperate locations in Jonah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zeph ann Zech

3: LXX EJ 12. Contains just one fragment of Jonah, where the DN is written in ancient Heb script. Dated to the same period as no 2

4: LXX VTS 10b, dated to the mid-first cent AD contains the DN in three places in Zech, written in ancient Heb

5: 4QLXX Levb, one of the scrolls found among the dead sea in cave 4, has been dated to the 1st C BC. The second of the two mss written in the BC era, contains the DN in Greek letters IAO. It is a fragment of Lev 3, and 4. The DN occurs in Greek, twice. Could have been in circulation when the NT was written, thus the writers would have access to Greek texts in which the DN was written differently.

6: LXX P Oxy vii 1007, dated to the end of the 5C AD or early 6C AD. Contains the Tetragram in two places: Gen 2:8, 18 and written as ZZ with a horizontal line through the centre. These fragments were discovered in Oxyrinchus, Egypt, and published in 1910

7: AQ Burkitt, dated to the 3C AD contains a fragment of the OT Translation of Aquila and published by F Crawford Burkitt in 1898. Contains the DN as written in ancient Heb

8: Aq Taylor, a fragment of the same work as no 7, but containing different portions of the OT. Published by C Taylor. It is also a later fragment than no 7, since this one is dated to the 5C AD. The DN is written in ancient Heb, but a differnt script, enabling scholars to date this differently to no 7

9: Sym P Vindob. G 39777, dated to the Third or Fourth centuries AD, this mss contains a representation of a Greek translation of the OT done by a Christian Ebionite convert to Judaism. Contains the Tetragram in archaic Heb characters. The fragments cited in BRef contain portions of Pss 91-103

10: Ambrosian O 39, dated to the 9C AD contains the DN in recognizable Heb script. Contains portions of Pss 18-36

Hope this helps

Cheers

aniron

Interesting to note that they are all parts of the Old Testament where you would expect to find the Divine Name.

Not one is of a New Testament manuscript.

Now if these manuscripts where using the DN well into the "Christian era" 3rd -6th Cent AD.

We can ask why wasn't the DN in any Christian Greek Manuscript of the same period?

Why didn't the writers of the Christian text, being Jewish, not use the Divine Name.

If it was still being used freely in the OT manuscripts.

yaddayadda

My opinion is that the Society is probably justified in inserting 'Jehovah' in the New Testament wherever the bible writer is directly quoting from the Hebrew Scriptures, despite the lack of any extant copies of NT manuscripts that contain the divine name. But they have gone too far in adding 'Jehovah' in other places in the NT.

yaddayadda

ps - Thank you very much Moggy Lover for those references.

Jringe01

If a New Testament writer was quoting from the old and was quoting a section that had the divine name would they not have included it? I know there were prohibitions against speaking the name in Jewish society but writing it???

At the very least if it's a quote then it should appear in the NT as a part of the quote? In this instance I agree with the WTS putting the name in the NT when it's part of the OT verse the NT writer is quoting. However by their own admission there are places they inserted the name where it was not there originally (when the NT was written). It's in the reference bible if I recall. That's more dodgy, open to speculation and interpretation.

yaddayadda

I agree Jringe. But I would say they should not have inserted 'Jehovah' at all in the NT in those places where they are not quoting directly from the OT.

If they have faith that Jehovah has preserved his word accurately they must assume that Jehovah never intended his name to go where there is no evidence whatsoever that it was ever there in the first place.

Narkissos

Romans 10:13 is a formal OT quotation. However, Paul here must have used kurios because this is the very keyword of the passage -- with anything else than kurios Paul's argument makes no sense at all and there is no point whatsoever in quoting Joel as a prooftext (that confessing Jesus as kurios brings salvation).

This sufficiently demonstrates that the "quotation" criterium does not work.

Of course the word kurios is not equally essential to other OT quotations in the NT. But you must have better reasons than this negative one to overrule the overwhelming material evidence -- namely, that no ancient Greek NT manuscript has any form of the Tetragrammaton. Especially if you hold, as JWs do, that the NT was correctly transmitted and that the common application of textual criticism on the oldest Greek manuscripts is the sure way to the "original text".

lovelylil

The WT added Jehovah in the NT in place of Jesus because they wanted to deny the divine nature of Christ. Lilly

Doug Mason

To decide if the source being quoted by the NT writer may have contained the Hebrew Tetragram, you would have to know if the Hebrew scripture being quoted was from the MT or the LXX. The WTS puts "Jehovah" at allusions, etc., not just at direct quotations, sometimes placing the Name in the mouths of people. It does appear that the Christians developed their own set of sacred abbreviations, named Nomina Sacra, which owes nothing to the use of the Tetragram. Why did the WTS not use the Hebrew letters for YHWH in its NT text? It would appear as incongruous in an English work as the Hebrew letters would appear in a Greek work. No wonder the Greeks thought the word was "pipi" -- because they didn't know what the Hebrew letters meant. Why did the WTS omit certain NT references that by their rules should have had the Tetragram? Probably the best that the WTS could have claimed as an authority was their reference J20. Doug Melbourne

What other ancient Greek Manuscripts contained the divine name?

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