From: kmesserschmidt@canberra.com
Date: Mon Sep 28 1998 - 07:41:52 EDT
> Matthew's Gospel was eventually translated into Greek. Would God's
> name have appeared in these Greek writings?
> Well, some very old fragments of the Septuagint Version that actually
> existed in Jesus' day have survived down to our day, and it is
> noteworthy that the personal name of God appeared in them. The New
> International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page
> 512) says: "Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the
> compilers of the LXX [Septuagint] translated the tetragrammaton YHWH
> by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the
> tetragrammaton written in Heb[rew] characters in the G[ree]k text.
> This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the O[ld]
> T[estament] in the first centuries A.D." Therefore, whether Jesus and
> his disciples read the Scriptures in Hebrew or Greek, they would come
> across the divine name.
...
> In later copies of the Septuagint, God's name was removed and words
> like "God" (The
áos') and "Lord" (Ky'riáos) were substituted. We know
> that this happened because we have early fragments of the Septuagint
> where God's name was included and later copies of those same parts of
> the Septuagint where God's name has been removed.
> The same thing occurred in the "New Testament," or Christian Greek
> Scriptures. Professor George Howard goes on to say: "When the Hebrew
> form for the divine name was eliminated in favor of Greek substitutes
> in the Septuagint, it was eliminated also from the New Testament
> quotations of the Septuagint. . . . Before long the divine name was
> lost to the Gentile church except insofar as it was reflected in the
> contracted surrogates or remembered by scholars."
Can someone confirm or deny this? Or how would I search for it
in the archives?
Kevin Messerschmidt
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