????????? One thing is clear. The WTBTS is not consistent when changing kurios to Jehovah. Well, they do consistently change it to suit their doctrine, so at times it makes no sense because the context shows that Jesus is being spoken of.. I think if they could change every single mention of kurios to Jehovah they would. They probably hate all the verses that actuall has kurios and then Jesus. That is the only thing stopping them from adding Jehovah even more...
Yet another Septuagint manuscript using the divine name found
by slimboyfat 38 Replies latest watchtower bible
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mP
Satanus
The jews were not monotheists, they believed in many gods. Monotheism means you only believe in one god. The bible acnowledges many other gods, supposedly they were monolarists.
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Vidqun
Slimboyfat, a few years back the Awake! published a photo of a Greek OT MS with something that resembles the Tetragrammaton. I wrote to them, explaining what was on the photo was yhyh, and not the Tetragrammaton. As far as I know, the mistake was never corrected.
yhyh is the replacement of the Tetragrammaton that Aquila used in his Greek translation. Very few of those MSS survived. Most well-known of them is found as a column in Origen's Hexapla. As a Jewish proselyte, he would have avoided the Tetragrammaton for various reasons. This is the replacement of the Tetragrammaton in some of the Aramaic Targums with Tiberian vocalization.
Aquila’s version, made round about 130 A.D., is remarkable for its Old Hebrew lettering of the Divine Name in the midst of the Greek text. Put into square character, what Aquila wrote was yhyh, Jâh-Jâh [cf. yâh of MT and Greek ’Iá of Aq, Sym, Theod, and Quinta of Origen’s Hexapla], the popular substitute for yhwh "Yahweh" the ineffable Name, the very naming of which was regarded as blasphemy as far back as the third century BC, if the LXX at Lev. xxiv 16 represents current public opinion.... By the time the Mishna was compiled (c. 190 A.D.) the pronunciation had become practically JeJâ as the form yeyâ shows....
The recovery of a purer Ben Asher Text by KAHLE [KITTEL, Biblia Hebraica (Third Edition, 1945)] reveals that the Divine Name was earlier pointed yehyâh, that is with the vowels of JeJâ and not those of 'Adhonâi. It seems to me that this vocalization supports the implication of Aquila and the Mishnaic form, namely, that in the first two centuries A.D. at least, if not later, the Divine Name was uttered JehJâh or briefly JeJâ. [i]
[i] N . Walker , “ The Writing of the Divine Name in Aquila and the Ben Asher Text ” , Vetus Testamentum , vol . III, No. 1, January, 1953, pp. 103, 104 .
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slimboyfat
This is the famous Paul Kahle quote the Watchtower is fond of using:
We know that the Greek Bible text [the Septuagint] as far as it was written by Jews for Jews did not translate the Divine name by ky'rios, but the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters was retained in such MSS [manuscripts]. It was the Christians who replaced the Tetragrammaton by ky'rios, when the divine name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more. (The Cairo Geniza, pp. 222, 224.)
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slimboyfat
yhyh is still four letters, which is what Tetragrammaton means, and it represents the divine name also, so I can't see the problem calling yhyh a Tetragrammaton.
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Vidqun
No, I disagree.
The letters of the Tetragrammaton are YHWH. YHYH is called a Quadriliteral.
1.1.3 The Origin of the Hebrew Quadriliteral YHYH Here two explanations seem to be feasible, both working in tandem to give rise to the form yhyh:
1) In some of the earlier MSS the Tetragrammaton is found, written with archaic Hebrew letters. A clear distinction is made between yodh and waw. But in many later MSS it had been written with Hebrew square letters. Often, among these, no discernable distinction is made between yodh and waw. This becomes clear when one studies the Tetragrammaton in the different MSS of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
a) In time, yodh and waw, occurring at the beginning of a word are used alternatively (cf. primae Yôd of Gesenius-Kautzsch)
b) Later, according to Harris, a waw beginning a word or syllable would change to yodh (as in the pe-waw verbs and the verb itself)
c) Bruce M. Metzger discusses the Tetragrammaton in letters from Nahhal Hhever’s “Cave of Horror”. He writes: “As is the case with manuscripts from Qumran, the scribe does not clearly distinguish the shape of yod from that of waw.”
2) First century Hebrew scholars might also have been influenced by yâh yâh of Is. 38:11. This is the only occurrence of the duplication of yh (=Jâh) in the Hebrew Bible. The scribe of DSIa would abbreviate it as yh. Later the Hebrew quadriliteral yhyh would be used in place of the Tetragrammaton in Aquila’s Greek version. Preformative y + MH hyh > yhyh (Origen’s Hexapla; some Aquila MSS).
A similar form, JeJâ, would appear in the Aramaic Targums with Tiberian vocalization, which is clarified by Walker: Aquila’s version, made round about 130 A.D., is remarkable for its Old Hebrew lettering of the Divine Name in the midst of the Greek text. Put into square character, what Aquila wrote was yhyh, Jâh-Jâh, the popular substitute for yhwh “Jahweh”, the ineffable Name, the very naming of which was regarded as blasphemy as far back as the third century B.C., if the LXX at Lev. xxiv 16 represents current public opinion.
For one can imagine that, as a Gentile convert to Judaism, Aquila was careful not to trap his Greek-speaking Jewish readers into uttering the Name “according to its letters”. By the time the Mishna was compiled (c. 190 A.D.) the pronunciation had become practically JeJâ as the form yeyâ shows.
The later Greek form II I II I [PIPI] was used to transcribe Aquila’s Old Hebrew form of yhyh, and, in the opinion of CERIANI [CERIANI, Monumenta sacra et profana, II, p. 106 ff., quoted in SWETE, O.T. in Greek, p. 39, n. 4.], this was first done either by Origen or Eusebius. II I II I does not represent the Tetragrammaton, as is generally held, but yhyh, so that there is no justification for supposing that any identity of form of square character yodh and waw in the first century was involved.
Actually, apart from stone inscriptions at Dura and on a Galilean synagogue (NSI, No. 148B), Manuscript evidence of their identical form is lacking. They are quite well differentiated in the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah (DSIa), and whoever was responsible for the present LXX reading of Dan. ix 2, to wit THGH [tei gei], apparently noticed the stroke to the left characteristic of yodh and pictured it by T as against waw.
Had Aquila written the Name exactly as spelt in the text before him, those who transcribed his text would surely have written II Y II I, for as has been pointed out consonantal waw was consistently rendered by upsilon in the transliteration of Hebrew personal names in the LXX [See N. Walker, The Meaning of Moses (1948), pp. 8 – 11].
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yourmomma
I think there is a fair chance the JWs are right that the substitution of YHWH/IAO with kurios was a Christian innovation dating to the second century CE.
are you for real or am i misunderstanding? Your position is that some Sept. contain the Divine name, or are you suggesting that the grand JW conspriacy theory that somehow all of the original NT manuscripts had the Divine name removed and replaced with kurious? or is it somewhere in between?
this is something I have researched heavily, as have others (who would do a way better job than me), so when I see a JW make the claim, I just dismiss it as JW's being JW's, but when I see a person like you make it, it makes me pause because you are a respected poster.
So maybe your argument is somewhere in the middle? Or are you going full force conspiracy, which when you break it all down would in fact require time travel for "Christendom" to pull this off. Of course, I guess when you have Satan at your disposal, anything is possible!
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Terry
Just finished the article. Thank you for the link!
Larry Hurtado mentions on his blog:
–I tend to think that the reverential practices are such as to add up to Jesus being worshipped, although Dunn and I agree that the reverence given to Jesus was typically expressed with reference to God (the Father), and Jesus was not reverenced as if he were a god in his own right.
–I think that the practices we see in NT texts = treating Jesus in ways that in that setting would be taken as treating him as divine. -
dropoffyourkeylee
I think there is a fair chance the JWs are right that the substitution of YHWH/IAO with kurios was a Christian innovation dating to the second century CE.
I am reading it differently. I think Hurtado, as well as the source he mentions by Martin Rösel, is saying that the LXX 'autographs' if you will, contained kurios, but the substitution of the Hebrew-letter tetragrammaton was done later by copyists. Maybe I'm just not getting it
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Terry
Perhaps more precisely we can wonder what significance the name Yahweh had for converted pagans who embraced the jewish messiah?
The anointing of a christ would have a different mythical context for pagan greeks than it would for messianic jews.
After 66 c.e. and the disruption and dispersal of Jews from Jerusalem the Judaic center of worship vanished as an influence.
Who would be left to create pressure points of understanding for shaping christianity (the divine name being only one aspect)?