sotto voce

Greek was the language, or a language, of most Judaism, possibly the usual language of Jesus and the disciples, and certainly of all the NT writers.

aa5874

The writer called Josephus contradicts you. There is really no evidence that Greek was the language of Judaism. There is no evidence at all anywhere that the anonymous authors were Jews.

At the age of 53 Josephus still had difficulty pronouncing Greek words.

Antiquities of the Jews 20.11.2

tanya

Thank you Diogenes, the OP references an article in the Huffington Post, authored by a "famous" faculty member at Yale University, Professor Collins. His position is quite distinct from my own, and I sought to clarify one point that separates us:

YHWH.

I claim, perhaps in error, though, I have yet to read on the forum, how I have erred, that the Christians enforced removal of YHWH from the LXX, replacing it with "kurios", a translation of "adonai", "lord", in English. I claim this was done, to compel equation of Jesus with YHWH, in harmony with John's Gospel. For me, the single most important document retrieved at Qumran, was discovery of Hebrew text with YHWH, rather than adonai, as is found in all extant copies of LXX. I provided, in post 2 of this thread, two illustrations of how the LXX changes YHWH into "kurios".

Though I am not absolutely positive, I do believe that Professor Collins would dispute my contention that the Christians obliterated the name YHWH, deliberately, to enable focus on Jesus. My point then, is that the LXX is an unreliable source of information, for it has been forged, and thus represents a fraud.

Yes, all languages change over time. That fact does not explain the deliberate omission of YHWH, and substitution with "kurios", Greek equivalent to the Hebrew "adonai".

Question: Did the Jewish prohibition against saying/writing YHWH, in Hebrew, begin before or after Constantine? I will pose the question differently: Where is the evidence that Jews were denied an opportunity to speak the name of their deity, prior to the arrival of Constantine? How would such a prohibition assist in transmission of the Jewish religion from one generation to the next? I can readily perceive the advantage of an alien force, like the Roman occupation army, demanding an end to utterance of the name of YHWH, but I detect no benefit to the practitioners of the Jewish religion to enforce such a demand on believers. Perhaps this question is addressed in one of Philo's many works?

Yes, well, now we have hit the nail on the head, right? Here is a distinguished member of the forum, claiming that Kurios was found in the Septuagint before the arrival of the Christians. Let me see, then. Hmm. Oh? Which manuscript would that be, I wonder? Can you please furnish a link, to corroborate that opinion, i.e. an ancient Greek text, dated before the second century, CE, in which one finds, written, for example, in Deuteronomy, "kurios", not YHWH in Hebrew letters?

How shall we interpret that observation?

Did the late third/early fourth century author, Jerome, intend to indicate disappointment, that there yet remain some few manuscripts, which have not yet been changed from YHWH to "kurios"?

Or, should we look at this evidence, as an indication that the process had only recently begun, and was hence, incomplete? Alternatively, perhaps Jerome seeks to explain that most of the oldest manuscripts had already been changed, when recopying a new version? Of course, it is also possible, that the original LXX, contained "kurios", rather than YHWH, on orders, not from the Roman occupation army, but rather, from the Ptolemeic successors to Alexander, and that a few of the manuscripts, had then been copied, by rebellious Jewish scribes, who defied the political forces, and inserted YHWH, back into the text, in harmony with the Hebrew original text of 2200 years ago.

I did not suggest that YHWH disappeared from Judaism. I suggested, in contrast to Professor Collins, that the Christians manipulated, and forged, the LXX, by replacing YHWH with Kurios. I also claim, lest there be any misunderstanding, that the Jews were compelled by the Occupation Roman Army, before, or after, Constantine, to cease saying, or writing, "YHWH". I claim this because of numerous ancient manuscripts which leave the name YHWH, blank, rather than insert "adonai". To me, this is a form of protest, not a sign of "respect". The Greek scribes, in my view, faithfully translated the Hebrew manuscripts, which had deliberately included a blank space, rather than disrespectfully change YHWH to "adonai", a term employed for mere humans.

Well, the main point is, once again, thanks Toto, for this link, very instructive, at least for me.

Diogenes the Cynic

Christians did not remove YHWH from the LXX. Jews typically used diacritical marks in the Hebrew (basically vowel indicators) to alter the written Tetragrammaton to read as Adonai instead of as YHWH (this works in Hebrew letters). That diacritical circumlocution was translated into the LXX as Kurios, and Christians inherited the LXX. Christians themselves never had anything to do with translating compiling or editing the LXX and Christianity has never had any prohibition on the use of the Tetragrammaton. They originally just used a translation of the Tanakh which preserved an artifact of Jewish circumlocution. Jews didn't like to even write the word YHWH so they inserted marks to turn it into Adonai. This altered spelling got translated intact as Kurios into Greek. The alteration was done in Hebrew before it was translated.

Zwaarddijk

The LXX was translated way before the niqqud were invented, so your argument kind of fails simply for that reason.

The same habit of reading the tetragrammaton as Adonai may have been in place already by the time of Jesus, but this is difficult to establish with any great certainty. Given the approach taken by some movements of Judaism to Biblical law, it is of course possible that the commandment not take the Lord's name in vain had been extended to something along the line of what we can see in later Judaism. (Even then, it's not unlikely that at least some movements in 2nd temple Judaism didn't adhere to that rule in such a strict form. In medieval Judaism, it is well established that the Karaites did pronounce the name in prayers at least.)

The vowel marks inserted into it were not inserted so as not to write the tetragrammaton, but so as to guide the reader not to accidentally pronounce it.

The Torah scrolls used in synagogue services do not, for instance, contain niqqud at all, and in bibles for private use, they're not included to make the name any less holy or anything.

Bingo the Clown-O

Except 4Q120 is Greek and uses IAW for the divine name.

Zwaarddijk

We only know one sect of Judaism to have gone to great lengths at avoiding uttering the tetragrammaton - the Pharisees. We have reason to think the scrolls at Qumran do not represent the Pharisees very much.

This isn't a problem.

Diogenes the Cynic

So what? I didn't say they did it in every single instance without exception, I said they did it "typically."

Zwaarddijk

There does seem to be an idea in some Jewish writings of old that writing it in non-Hebrew alphabets is less problematic. At some point, it seems the idea may have been that writing it in paleo-Hebrew wasn't problematic, for instance.

Bingo the Clown-O

So what?

Tov disagrees. He says that the Greeks originally wrote the divine name as IAW.

http://www.emanueltov.info/docs/book...publ.books.pdf

So who should I believe?

You or Tov?