From: Rolf Furuli (furuli@online.no)
Date: Sat Dec 25 1999 - 14:07:11 EST
Dave Hindley wrote:
Solomon Landers said:
>>But does not all of this imply that Jesus and the head religious leaders
of the Jews in Jerusalem were speaking Greek, or thinking in Greek? And how
likely is that? The Hebrew of Exodus 3:14 does not translate literally into
EGO EIMI hO WN, that would be "Ani Hawayah." Rather, it says "Ehyeh asher
Ehyeh, "I will be who I will be," (Botterweck, TDOT, vol. 3, p. 381; Propp,
The Anchor Bible, p. 204) which is something else.<<
If the account used by the author of Mark (or Luke) was circulated in the
Jewish diaspora, it would more than likely reflect influence from the LXX
over that of the Hebrew when it comes to a choice of circumlocution for the
Name. I am not trying to make any assumptions about the provinence of the
source, only that it could be construed, like the LXX, render a *form* of
the Name by means of the phrase EGW EIMI hO WN. That is why I said "however
transformed the present passages are due to the tendencies of the authors
of Mark or Luke." Perhaps I should have said "however transformed the
present passages *may be* due to the tendencies of the authors of Mark or
Luke".
>>In addition, the divine name YHWH was not uttered as a "circumlocution"
on the Day of Atonement. That was the one day it was uttered as a "shem
hammeforash," or distinctive name in its true letters, by the high priest
in the temple, according to the Mishnah and Talmud.<<
I am not saying that a circumlocution was substituted for the Divine Name
when the HP utters the name on the day of Atonement, only that the source
used by the author of Mark (and/or Luke) recorded an utterance, by Jesus,
of the Divine Name by means of a circumlocution. It is what I would expect
from a 1st century Jewish source, whether composed in Judea (in Hebrew or
Aramaic) or the Diaspora (in Greek).
In Luke the HP may have uttered an indirect circumlocution when asking his
question of Jesus, and Jesus (in either account) may then have uttered the
actual Name in his response. The author of the hypothetical source (a court
transcriptionist if this represents a historical event, or a Jewish author
of a tract making charges against Jesus) used by the author of Mark chose
to represent by a more direct circumlocution.
That my suggested meaning of the phrase EGW EIMI as used by the author of
Mark (and/or Luke) is problemetic is not necessarily fatal. If we were to
exclude from consideration all interpretations that are problemetic, we'd
be forced to throw out a good part of Christian dogma! However, let's not
take a theological detour here. I only offered "circumlocution for the
Divine Name" as an alternative to the positions outlined in my initial
post. No challenge to Christian doctrine is intended.
Dear Dave,
Some information regarding the "use" of the divine name in the days of
Jesus may be important when circumlocutions are discussed:
(1) All fragments of the LXX from the second and first centuries BCE and
first century CE (the last from 50 CE) of portions where the tetragrammaton
is found in the Hebrew text, has one of three forms of the name. It is
written either as YHWH in old Hebrew characters, in square Aramaic
characters, or as the Greek phonetic transcription IAW. The first LXX
manuscript with KURIOS is from c. 150 CE.
(2) There are no *proofs* that the divine name generally was viewed as
ineffable in the days of Jesus, or that pronunciation of it was punished by
stoning, although it is likely that a fear against pronnouncing it was
spreading. The rabbinic material and the Talmud is ambiguous and do not
give any dates. The Qumran sect did not pronounce the name (see The Rule
of the Community, VI,27-VII,2) but the Pharisees and the Hemerobapstistae
evidently used the name when the Qumran sect did not.
This should give us reason for caution when a phrase in the NT is suggested
to be a circumlocution for the divine name (if we by this mean that a word
is used *instead* of the tetragrammaton). For example, "heaven" is used in
Matt 21:25. Luke 15:18,21; 20:4 where we would have expected YHWH or
'EHOHIM. However, we find "heaven" in the book of Daniel (4:25,26) as well,
a book that also has several examples of the use of the tetragrammaton. So
what is viewed as a circumlocution could have been used *together* with the
divine name. When the best "circumlocutions" can be doubted,how much more
passages such as John 8:58 where there is no clear reference to God or
anything connected with him!
Regards
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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