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. 4Q120 has IAW rather kurios. Patrick W. Skehan suggest that greek reading IAW is more original than Kurios. 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".

Septuagint LXX

Main article: Septuagint manuscripts § Treatment of the Tetragrammaton in Septuagint manuscripts

Earliest copies of the Septuagint used the Divine Name, 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 (LXX^{P.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. According to Paul E. Kahle, the Tetragrammaton must have been written in the manuscript where these spaces appear. However, the vast majority of surviving copies from around the 2nd or 3rd century CE onwards have Κυριος ("Lord"), or Θεος ("God"), 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. Aq^Burkitt and Aq^Taylor). 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. 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.

New Testament manuscripts

Main article: New Testament manuscripts

None of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament contain the Tetragrammaton. 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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, 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." 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."

Along with Howard, David Trobisch and Rolf Furuli both have suggested that the Tetragrammaton may have been removed from the Greek MSS. 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. 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.'" Since Girdlestone's time it has been shown that the LXX contained the Tetragrammaton, but that it was removed in later editions.

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."

Tatian's Diatessaron shows some variance in applying Kyrios to YHWH, but this may be because of dependence on the Peshitta. 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.

Matthew originally written in Hebrew

Main article: Hebrew Gospel hypothesis

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.

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

Main article: Bible translations into Hebrew

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").

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).

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. The first complete Bible printed in America by John Eliot, although not in English, frequently uses "Jehovah" in the New Testament.

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. 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").

Sacred Name Bibles

Main article: Sacred Name Bibles

In 1993, the Institute for Scripture Research (ISR) published The Scriptures, 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 and ISR's The Scriptures '98 also incorporate the Tetragrammaton, using Paleo-Hebrew script rather than Hebrew square script. More recently, the Restored Name King James Version (RNKJV), 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

• Assemblies of Yahweh
• Names of God in Christianity
• Names of God in Judaism
• Papyrus Fouad 266
• Papyrus Rylands 458

External links

• The divine name in the New Testament Le nom divin dans le Nouveau Testament
• Greek text – Complete Greek text of the Septuagint hyperlinked to Strong's concordance.
• Brenton's – The standard English translation of the Septuagint (hard copy has Greek in column)
• The New Testament and the Septuagint – Instances where the New Testament quotes the LXX against the Masoretic Hebrew
• The New Testament and the Hebrew OT – Instances where the New Testament agrees with the Masoretic Hebrew meaning
• Names in the Septuagint and Masoretic – A table of the older Greek names with the newer Masoretic renditions, in the Old Testament
• The Septuagint Online – Comprehensive site with scholarly discussion and extensive links to texts and translations
• Article for the thesis by Matteo Pierro in a Catholic Magazine: "Rivista Biblica", n. 2, April–June 1997, p. 183-186. Bologna, Italy
• Article against the thesis by Carmelo Savasta in a Catholic Magazine: "Rivista Biblica", n. 1, 1998, p. 89-92. Bologna, Italy
• The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures, a downloadable book.