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Tetragrammaton in the New Testament
The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BC to 135 AD), Aramaic (10th century BC to 4th century AD) and modern Hebrew scripts. Archaeologists have discovered papyrus fragments of works which were later included in the canon of the New Testament dating as far back as the middle of the second century. Of all 5,000 extant manuscripts, none contains the Hebrew ???? (the Tetragrammaton), the Paleo-Hebrew ( 
One of the most ancient fragments, the papyrus codex designated Chester Beatty Papyrus No. 2 P46, is dated prior to AD 200 and contains nine of the Apostle Paul's letters. In the Chester Beatty Papyri, we find ?? and sometimes ?? with a horizontal bar above them in citations of the Hebrew Bible where the Tetragrammaton occurs in the Hebrew text. These are abbreviations for kyrios (?????? "lord") and theos (???? "God") normally known as nomina sacra ("sacred names"). The abbreviations may not have been part of the autographs but may have been substituted as a shorthand some time later. An alternative thesis has been advanced that YHWH would have been present in NT autographs only to be substituted by the nomina sacra. An article by George Howard in the March 1978 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review set forth this thesis that YHWH appeared in the New Testament and that "the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New Testament and its replacement with the surrogates kyrios and theos blurred the original distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Christ."[1] His position was included in his article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, where he stated: "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."[2] This thesis has not found wide acceptance, and Howard has qualified it: "my theory about the Tetragrammaton is just that, a theory. Some of my colleagues disagree with me (for example Albert Pietersma). Theories like mine are important to be set forth so that others can investigate their probability and implications. Until they are proven (and mine has not been proven) they should not be used as a surety for belief."[3]
Jehovah and the Greek Old TestamentOld Testament is a term (credited to Tertullian) used to describe the Hebrew Bible. The ancient translation of the Old Testament into Koine Greek is called the Septuagint, which continues to be the official version of the Old Testament for the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day. The Septuagint was translated prior to the birth of Jesus. He and the Apostles quoted extensively from it.[4] This is no surprise, since the New Testament was itself most likely written in Greek (see Aramaic primacy for the counter-argument). Some copies of the Septuagint from the latter centuries BCE, which are translated from lost Hebrew texts, leave a blank space where the Tetragrammaton would have been; other represent the divine name by ???; others use
The Septuagint was the preferred Greek translation of the Jewish Bible among Christians (and Jews up until the school of Jamnia and the Masoretic recinsion) at the time of the writing of the New Testament, and continued to be until the Reformation (the Vulgate being primarily a translation of the Septuagint). At least some, but not necessarily all, of the copies available at that time still contained the Tetragrammaton. It is not possible to determine whether or not the writers of the New Testament made use of copies that included the Tetragrammaton. (Revista Biblica) When Saint Jerome, a Roman Catholic Doctor of the Church made his translation of the Old Testament into Latin, he switched from the Septuagint of the Early Church to the Masoretic.http://www.geocities.com/r_grant_jones/Rick/Septuagint/spfathers.htm He translated from a Masoretic Old Testament and brought YHWH into texts officially adapted by the Western Church. This use of the Masoretic did not affect the Eastern Churches and the bulk of the late Roman Empire's population who spoke Greek, not Latin. It is stated that Origen included the Tetragrammaton in his Hexapla in the 3rd Century AD. Origen's Hexapla was a comparison in side-by-side columns of separate versions of the Old Testament: Hebrew, Aramaic, Samaritan, and Greek translations. Jesus quoted numerous times from the Old Testament, including his replies to Satan during his temptation in the wilderness. "Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" (Matthew 4.7). Here as elsewhere, the quotation is taken from the Septuagint.http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/comparisons.htmlhttp://www.geocities.com/r_grant_jones/Rick/Septuagint/splist1.htm Babylonian TalmudA passage in the Tosefta Shabbat 13:5 quoting Tarfon is sometimes cited to suggest that early Christian scriptures contained the Divine Name. It reads: "The 'Gilyon[im]' and the [Biblical] books of the Judæo-Christians ["Minim"] are not saved [on the Sabbath] from fire; but one lets them burn together with the names of God written upon them." The Jewish Encyclopedia defines the word Gilyonim in the Talmud as referring to the Gospels in the time of Tarfon.[7] Another reading suggests this is a reference to Torah and not the Gospels. [8] Hebrew Versions of the New TestamentOver the centuries various translators have supported the inclusion of the Tetragrammaton in the New Testament when translating into Hebrew Versions of the New Testament. One of the earliest of these versions is the Gospel of Matthew translated by Shem-Tob ben Isaac Ibn Shaprut in 1385. ReferencesSee also
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