Thank you slimboyfat, the little I could read online from your links is excellent -- and, if I may remark, diametrically opposite to the thrust of WT theology: the theme of the "divine name" (with Yhwh in the background) is indeed essential to both Pauline and Johannine Christologies; in both cases its function is to ascribe divine dignity (whatever that means) to the Son, never to distinguish "God" from the Son as in JW usage.
I understand Gieschen's argument in particular about the importance of the divine name for early Christianity is very much at odds with JW Christology. Among those who see the divine name as having continued significance for the early Christians it appears that significance can be interpreted in two opposing ways. Either the emphasis on the divine name in the NT transferred divine prerogatives from the God of the Old Testament to Jesus, (as Gieschen, Hurtado and others would argue) or it served to underscore a distinction between Jesus and God, a distinction that was later lost as Christianity moved further away from its Jewish roots. Thus Howard concludes his article on the tetragram in the NT for the Biblical Archaeology Review:
These examples are sufficient to suggest that the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New
Testament and its replacement with the surrogates kyrios and theos blurred the original distinction
between the Lord God and the Lord Christ, and in many passages made it impossible to tell which
one was meant. This is supported by the fact that in a number of places where Old Testament
quotations are cited, there is a confusion in the manuscript tradition whether to read God or Christ
in the discussion surrounding the quotation. Once the Tetragrammaton was removed and
replaced by the surrogate “Lord”, scribes were unsure whether “Lord” meant God or Christ. As time
went on, these two figures were brought into even closer unity until it was often impossible to
distinguish between them. Thus it may be that the removal of the Tetragrammaton contributed
significantly to the later Christological and Trinitarian debates which plagued the church of the early
Christian centuries.
Whatever the case, the removal of the Tetragrammaton probably created a different theological
climate from that which existed during the New Testament period of the first century. The Jewish
God who had always been carefully distinguished from all others by the use of his Hebrew name
lost some of his distinctiveness with the passing of the Tetragrammaton . How much He lost may be
known only by the discovery of a first century New Testament in which the Hebrew name YHWH still
appears.
Trobisch agrees with this perspective. Discussing the removal of the tetragram from 2 Cor 3:16-18 in particular he wrote:
As I already indicated, the extant Greek copies of the Jewish Bible from the first century deliberately avoid representing the tetragram with KURIOS. Instead, they use various techniques when they note the name of God, often writing the tetragram in Hebrew letters (see the previous chapter for more on the tetragram). This is what the exemplars Paul used probably looked like. In their effort to standardise the way the name of God was noted, the editors of the Canonical Edition might have introduced the nomina sacra. What worked fine for the Old Testament, however, created ambiguity in numerous New Testament passages that was not present in the traditional material.
Paul sometimes bases his argument on a quote from the Jewish Bible and carefully makes a distinction between JHWH and Christ. After the nomina sacra are introduced, however, both may be represented as KS and may be interpreted as synonymous by the readers. The meaning of the passage may thus change considerably. [Footnote: This is how Howard, "Tetragram," 78, explains the large number of variants in passages with nomina sacra. Of interest in this context, see P. Winter, "Some Observations on the Language in the Birth and Infancy Stories of the Third Gospel," NTS 1 (1954-55): 113. Winter observes that KURIOS in Luke 1-2 represents the tetragram, whereas in the rest of the Gospel it refers to the person Jesus. He raises the question of whether this constitutes a good criterion for reconstructing an older written source, possibly in Hebrew.] I want to demonstrate the shift using the passage quoted from 2 Corinthians. The text continues, "But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." It can easily be documented that Christian readers tend to interpret "Lord" as a reference to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Assuming that 2 Cor 3:16 alludes to the wording of Ex 34:34, and assuming that the exemplar that Paul used contained the tetragram, it may safely be concluded that the following verses contained the tetragram as well. [Footnote: It is not very likely that Paul would have avoided the tetragram to please his Gentile audience. He assumes that his readers are familiar with the Jewish Bible in Greek. As I have demonstrated, the extant exemplars preserve the tetragram in one form or another.] If KURIOS is preceded by an article, the word probably refers to Christ, but in all other instances Paul's original letter showed the tetragram:
2 Cor 3:16-18 (own translation)
But when one turns to JHWH, the veil is removed. Now the Lord [Christ] is the Spirit [of JHWH], and where the Spirit of JHWH is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of JHWH as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from JHWH, the Spirit.
According to this reconstruction, identifying Christ as the spirit of JHWH established the connection between JHWH and Christ. Turning to JHWH in the Old Testament is the same as turning to Christ now. Because the "names of God" are represented by nomina sacra, the readers of the Canonical Edition arrive at the same conclusion faster. For them 2 Cor 3:16 means that as soon as Jews turn to the Lord (Jesus), the veil is removed from their reading of the Old Testament.
The editors did not mind this misrepresentation of Paul. [Footnore: Howard, "Tetragram," 78-82 gives additional examples for the confusion of Christ and JHWH in the New Testament: Rom 10:16-17, 14:10-11; 1 Cor 2:16, 10:9; 1 Pt 3:14-15; Jude 5.] The effect on Christian readers - that Jesus and JHWH become synonymous - was probably intended. David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament, (Oxford University Press: 2000) pages 66 and 67.
Other scholars such as John Ziesler who do not follow Howard in assuming the presence of the divine name in the original NT nevertheless observe that Paul's arguments in particular often rely upon a careful distinction between Jesus and YHWH when making use of OT passages containing the divine name.
The more we examine how the use of 'Lord' developed, the more important it is to understand what such lordship meant, both in relation to the people over whom it was exercised, and in relation to the one Lord, Yahweh. A point that has often mistakenly been made is that, because in the Septuagint kurios was the Greek replacement of the sacred name YHWH which was never spoken, Adhonai being used instead, therefore when early Christians called Jesus kurios, Lord, they were granting him the same status as Yahweh. If pressed, this argument proves too much, suggesting that Jesus was Yahweh, an equation never entertained in the early church. Moreover, it now appear that kurios replaced YHWH only in Christian copies of the Septuagint, for the few fragments we possess of Jewish copies put YHWH into its rough equivalent in Greek characters and do not use kurios for the purpose. That leaves the question of what a reader in a Greek-speaking synagogue actually said, and he may well have said kurios because he would not utter the sacred name, and would need some Greek replacement. Moreover Paul himself writes kurios in Old Testament quotations while reserving it for Jesus when he is not quoting. Yet to say that he can use the same title for both God and Jesus, without thereby equating the two, is to restate the problem, not solve it. John Ziesler, Pauline Christianity, (Oxford University Press: 1990) pages 38 and 39.
Ziesler also wrote an interesting commentary on Romans where he notes the careful distinction made between YHWH and Jesus in Romans 10.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pauls-Letter-Romans-Testament-commentaries/dp/0334022967/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240622776&sr=1-1
Howard argues that original use of the tetragram makes sense in most of the NT, citing examples from the Gospels, Paul, and the Catholic letters. From the sections into which the NT is traditionally divided only Revelation is not considered, from what I can remember. It's a shame you don't have access to Howard's full article from the Journal of Biblical Literature because it goes into some detail looking at various passages, and their textual variants, considering whether an original tetragram would make sense in the context. A shorter presentation of Howard's argument that was published in the Biblical Archaeology Review can be read online here.
http://lareopage.free.fr/BARIV1031978.pdf
Gieschen argues that the divine name continued to central to Christian theology well into the second century CE. This strikes me as problematic if accompanied by the view that the Christian Bible in this early period did not contain the divine name in any form and its substitution by kurios was indistinguishable from other instances of kurios. In such a situation how exactly was the sacredness and distinctiveness of the divine name supposedly maintained? A Christian writer from the middle of the second century is assumed to have 'remembered' that the divine name is central to the Christrian message about Christ despite the fact Christians are assumed not to have written, read or spoken the name during their hundred year history to that point.
