The LORD and the Lord: an interactive online study
Psalm 145:17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.
Links for Further Study:
I. Other biblical studies on the Old and New Testament Phrases:
This site contains a series of teachings on many of the Old Testament names of God. In the process Old Testament phrase 1 (angel of the LORD) and Old Testament phrase 19 (the LORD of Hosts) are discussed in tremendous detailed.
This web page: BIBLES with a FORM of GOD'S NAME (http://web.archive.org/web/20040606042729/hector3000.future.easyspace.com/yhwh.htm) lists a number of Bibles that have translated Hebrew Tetragrammaton as "Jehovah." The New World Translation seems to be the only major English Bible translation that has substituted "Jehovah" for "Lord" in the New Testament.
II. The Nomina Sacra (the Sacred Names: special abbreviations in the oldest manuscripts):
Nomina Sacra in P46. This portion of the University of Michigan’s website on P46 explains the role of the nomina sacra, or “sacred names,” in dating manuscripts. Scholars tend to place manuscripts with fewer occurrences of the nomina sacra at an earlier date.
Medieval Writings: Nomina Sacra. (http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/scripts/abbreviation/nomina.htm). A wonderfully illustrated article explaining the reverence attached to the use of sacred names in the transmission of the scripture. Although, this site deals primarily with the Latin and Medieval abbreviations for sacred titles, the religious beliefs connected to the uses of abbreviations for divine titles are made extremely plain.
Review of Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament. (http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/Trobisch2001rev-x.html). .This review of Trobisch's book is replete with rare and important observations. Of special importance is note #4 that ends with this conclusion, "The upshot is that since the notation of nomina sacra does not appear to have originated with authors of the autograph texts (my emphasis), their presence reflects 'a conscious editorial decision made by a specific publisher' " A second interesting note is #11 which discusses the tradition of sacred name abbreviations as it is related to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. Trobisch seems to conclude that the early scribes of the New Testament copied the word "kurios" (Greek for "lord") to replace the abbreviations for Jehovah found in the Hebrew text. He seems to conclude that the use of KY was the original designation for "lord" when used with the "Lord Jesus Christ." That is an odd conclusion since the Greek Septuagint uses KY as the substitute for the tetragrammaton. Still, he reaches an important conclusion that, over time, as more sacred name abbreviations were added to the New Testament, the distinctions between KY for LORD and KY for Lord became blurred. Hence, the need for this website. Man’s work has muddied the clarity of the sacred scriptures, but the truth of His word lives forever.
The Absence of the Nomina Sacra in P52: P52 is perhaps the oldest fragment of the New Testament in extant today. From the missing papyrus and words (the lacunae) between its two pieces of the Gospel of John, Christopher Tuckett argues that Jesus was written in full and was not abbreviated. This would mean that the nomina sacra tradition (at least for Jesus) began late in the second century AD, a century after the death of Paul.
The Presence of the Nomina Sacra in P52: Larry Hurtado responded to Christopher Tuckett’s claim (above) by arguing that the nomina sacra for Jesus was, probably, used in the missing section of the P52 fragment. The original articles by each author are available online; however, the reviews linked above each have similarly clear graphics that makes a comparison of the two discussions very manageable.
III. The Expression of YHWH in the Transmission of the Greek Old Testament.
In general, based on the evidence available, the Hebrew scribes before the Christian era represented the Tetragrammaton in their Greek translations using either four Aramaic letters (slanted) or four Hebrew letters (square). There is one Judean work at Qumran in which Jehovah is expressed by way of the three Greek letters IAO. Additionally, the ancient evidence suggests that Hebrew scribes used rolls or scrolls to transmit the Old Testament text. Additionally, their Greek translations did not include the nomina sacra for either Jehovah or Elohim.
The translations of the Greek Old Testament that are dated to the Christian era (2nd century AD and later) are found on codices (primitive books) rather than scrolls. The translations found in the codices express Jehovah with KY and, in general, also use the nomina sacra to express Theos (or God). The timeline suggests that these changes occurred as Christian scribes began making copies of the Septuagint for Christian readers.
There is in extant, one Christian era manuscript fragment that seems to bridge the gap between the two eras of scribal transmission of the Old Testament. This fragment, POxy 656 (or Goettingen #905) uses the nomina sacra KY to express only the Tetragrammaton but uses kurios, written in full, to express the Hebrew word that means lord (adon). Most importantly, Theos, is also fully written out. This means that the only nomina sacra used by this Christian translator was KY to express Jehovah.
All of this, together, suggests that the earliest Christian copies may have used KY in place of the Tetragrammaton’s four letters. Since the Hebrew roots that supply the meaning of Jehovah in the Old Testament were not accessible to Greek speaking Christians, it would make sense to move away from the special lettering required to write this Hebrew title for God. Hence, is a simple way, both what was said (in synagogues) for Jehovah “Lord” could be read and Greek, and, what was to be read, Jehovah, was distinguished clearly from the other uses of the Hebrew word adon, or lord. As time went by, the uses of additional nomina sacra increased as part of a religious tradition, perhaps in the same way modern versions such as the King James use italics and extra capital letters to express nuances of both the Greek and Hebrew texts.
Ultimately, if a similar beginning and later expansion of the use of the nomina sacra took place in the New Testament manuscripts, the occasional confusion about which use of kurious refers to Christ Jesus and which refers to Jehovah can be explained because KY came to represent both Jehovah and Lord.
Here is a link to a surviving fragment of Origen’s Hexphala: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//earlylxx/images/genizah/hexapla2.jpg. Line 2 of Symmachus’ text, as transmitted by Origen, contains the Tetragrammaton expressed with the Greek letters PIPI. This emulation of the Tetragrammaton may have been pronounced as read in Greek, sadly in some Christian churches.
Additionally, here are three records compiled by the University of Pennsylvania of early manuscript transmission of the Tetragrammaton in the LXX via a use of Nomina Sacra abbreviation.
Wikipedia presents a complete list of the variety of expressions for the Tetragrammaton found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the earliest manuscripts of the Septuagint.
IV. The Search for First Century Manuscripts
A. Herculaneum: The Villa de Papyri
"In search of Western civilization’s lost classics" documents the one known site where first century manuscripts almost certainly can be found but have not yet been fully excavated. There is a possibility that there could there be biblical manuscripts such as Hebrew or Greek versions of the Old Testament. There is even a remote possibility that New Testament church epistles from the first century could be part of this subterranean library of antiquities.
"The unknown treasures of the Villa of the Papyri" explains how much more of the Villa de Papyri is left for archeologists to uncover. All modern excavations of this subterranean palace have revealed what has been duplicated at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. However, there is evidence that this is only a quarter of what may still be uncovered.
