Maybe this will help.
I am sorry I don't have Greek and Hebrew fonts in my computer and so you will see some blank spaces in my article below. The whole point of my article, even though it doesn't actually say it, is that since the Gospel of Matthew may have been first written in the Hebrew language of his day, it may very well have contained God's Name where he quoted the O.T. Remember he was writing to the Jews of his day.
THE DIVINE NAME
The Tetragrammaton, or Tetragram, is a term denoting the mystic and indescribable name of God, written in Hebrew Bibles as , that is YHWH, YAHWEH (Hebrew spelling) JEHOVAH (English spelling) with the vowels inserted. Why is it some of us may not have ever heard or seen Gods name before now? Maybe because to Jews it was, and still is, considered blasphemous (irreverent) to pronounce the Name; thus, when reading the Hebrew Scriptures it was their custom to substitute the word ADONAI (Lord). You may say "but we are not Jewish, we are Christian. So, is that why we didnt know Gods name?" That is probably one of the reasons. However, there is more to the story.
To start our research, lets read what Dr. Harry M. Orlinsky, a Jewish scholar-translator stated, "We do know that several centuries before the turn of the Era, the Jews had stopped pronouncing the Tetragrammaton and substituted the name Adonai,or "Lord" for it. That is why the Septuagint had already rendered YHWH by ho kurios, the Lord." (1) In agreement, Tracy Early, a Christian, stated, "When the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint was made about 200 B.C., it used LORD where Gods name appeared in the Hebrew manuscripts." (2)
The above idea has long been taught, namely, that the Hebrews completely removed the four letters, YHWH (the Tetragrammaton), in 280 B.C. when translating the Septuagint from the Hebrew into Greek and replacing it with KYRIOS (Greek meaning LORD). Tradition teaches this was done because the Jews believed they would commit blasphemy if they mispronounced Gods personal name. Evidence exists that it was not until early in the common era that the Divine Name, YHWH, came to be regarded by the Rabbis as too sacred to pronounce, substituting ADONAI, Hebrew meaning LORD, when reading the scriptures aloud containing YHWH. Thus, in time, the scribes replaced YHWH with ADONAI in 134 places when copying the O.T. Scriptures.
The Greek Septuagint, though, did not substitute the Divine Name, YHWH with Lord. The following evidence favors this view.
1. The non-biblical Hebrew documents such as the so-called Lachish Letters (named after the ruins where they were found) showed that the Divine Name (Hebrew rendering) was used in everyday common correspondence in Palestine during the latter part of the fifth century B.C.
2. The Elephantine Papyri, which were documents from a Jewish Colony in upper Egypt dating in the fifth century B.C., also contained the Divine Name despite the fact these documents are secular in nature.
3. The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave II (3) , located near the Dead Sea, dated between 200-300 B.C. and written in modern Hebrew (Aramaic the Hebrew after the captivity by the Babylonians) still retained the Divine Name, using the ancient palaeo-Hebrew . Why? They were afraid of doing dishonor to their God by changing the "form" of His name. In time though, they did begin to use the modern Hebrew (square) letters to represent Gods personal name, .
4. The Dead Sea Scroll of St. Marks Monastery, Isaiah Manuscript (4) , dated approximately 200 B.C., used the Divine Name throughout.
5. The Masoretic Text in use today, the Biblia Hebraica (5) , which has been passed down through time with great care, still uses the Divine Name 6961 times in the Old Testament Scriptures.
The above evidence shows that the Hebrews used the Divine Name before and during the time the Greek Septuagint Translation was being made.
The Greek Septuagint Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (also referred to as LXX after its seventy translators) was begun about 280 B.C. when Greek was the common language of the people. The incomplete copies of the Greek Septuagint we have today do not use the Divine Name, using either Kyrios (Greek for LORD) or Theos (Greek for GOD) substituted in place of the Divine Name. Importantly, these copies date back only to the fourth (4th) century of our Common Era.
However, more ancient copies from the B.C. period, in fragmentary form, have been found with proof that the earliest copies of the Septuagint did contain the Divine Name. The Cairo Papyrus, P. Fouad Inv. 266 (dated 100 B.C.) draws our attention to this very important fact. W.G. Waddell (6) published them to make known that in this papyrus scroll fragments the Divine Name was written as the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) in Hebrew square letters.
Other fragments of Papyri, which have been reproduced in America, contain the Tetragrammaton. Commenting on one of these, Dr. Paul E. Kahle states, "The Papyrus containing fragments of Leviticus II-V were written in a hand closely akin to that of Papyrus Fouad 266, characterized, as already mentioned, by the fact that the name of God is rendered by the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew square letters ( ) not by Lord as later in Christian MSS (manuscripts) of the Bible." (7) The Leviticus fragments are dated from the end of the first century B.C. to the opening years of the first century C.E.
Other fragments, such as the Leather Scroll of Numbers and the Greek Text of the Minor Prophets (fragments of a roll of the Twelve Prophets in Greek, found in a cave, Nahal Hever, near Engedi in the Judean Desert, dating from about 50 B.C.-50 C.E.), contains the Divine Name in the form of the Tetragrammaton. In addition, a modification of the palaeo-Hebrew letters occurs in a papyrus fragment of Genesis (P.Oxy. 1007), dating from the latter part of the third century C.E.
Based on this evidence Dr. Kahle stated, "We now know that the Greek (Septuagint) Bible text, as far as it was written by Jews for Jews, did not translate the Divine Name as Kyrios, but used the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters. Thus, Gods name in the form of the Tetragrammaton was retained in this MSS. Later, the Christians replaced the Tetragrammaton with Kyrios, when the Divine Name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more..." (8) So great was the desire to preserve intact the sacred name of God that Hellenistic Jews copied the actual letters of the Tetragrammaton in the midst of the Greek text.
When, did the Christians replace the Divine Name in the Greek Septuagint? There is evidence to show when. It had to be centuries after the death of Jesus. For example, in Aquilas Greek Bible, dated 128 C.E., the Divine Name appeared in Hebrew letters. Also, the well-known scholar Origen produced his "Hexapla" around 245 C.E., which was a six-column reproduction of the Old Testament, it contained a Hebrew text which included five Greek texts.
On the evidence now known, Professor Waddell informs us, "In Origens Hexapla... the Greek Versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and LXX (Septuagint) all represented YHWH by ; in the second column of the Hexapla the Tetragrammaton was written in Hebrew Characters." (9) Many other scholars believe that all the column used the Tetragrammaton written in Hebrew characters. Origen himself stated that, "in the most faithful manuscripts the name is written in Hebrew characters."
As late as the fourth century, Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate, stated in his Prologus Galeatus, that in the preface to Samuel and Malachi, "We find the four-lettered name of God in certain Greek Volumes even to this day expressed in the ancient letters." Jerome also stated in a letter written at Rome in 384 C.E., "when coming upon these Hebrew letters in copies of the Septuagint, certain...ones, because of the similarity of the characters... were accustomed to pronounce PiPi (mistaking them for the Greek characters )."
Tradition should not credulously be accepted. In the face of the above evidence it can be asked, "Who removed the Divine Name YHWH from the Septuagint and when? The evidence indicates that it was the early Christians around 350 C.E. or later, by which time the congregations had become far removed from the teachings of the early Church. Therefore, notwithstanding, the fear of misusing the Holy Name, these later Christians removed the Divine Name from all copies of the Septuagint and other manuscripts they reproduced and passed on through time to us. In conclusion, the Tetragrammaton is not found in any of the early Catholic English translations and many Protestant translations as well. Hopefully, this explains why many of us today are not familiar with those Hebrew letters, YHWH, in the form of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.
1. Orlinsky, Dr. Harry M. The Rage to Translate (Part 1). Bible Collectors World, Vol. 7, Issue 2 & 3, April - Sept. 1991, p.23.
2. Early, Tracy Good News from the Old Testament. Christian Herald, February, 1977, Vol. 100, No. 2, p.12.
3. Sanders, J.A. The Psalm Scroll of Qumran Cave II, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1965.
4. Burrows, Millar The Dead Sea Scroll of St. Marks Monastery, Vol. 1, the Isaiah Manuscript and the Habakkuk Commentary. New Haven: American School of Oriental Research, 1950
5. Kittel, R.D. Biblia Hebraica New York: American Bible Society, 1970.
6. Waddel, W,G, "The Tetragrammaton in the LXX", Journal of Theological Studies, XLV, 1944, pages 157-161.
7. Kahle, Paul E. The Cairo Geniza. New York: F.A. Praegar, 1959. (page 222, 224.)
8. Kahle, p.222.
9. Waddell, pp. 158-159
Edited by - bchamber on 20 August 2002 17:54:4
