Tetragrammaton in The New Testament - Other Views

Other Views

Although none of the extant Greek New Testament manuscripts contain the Tetragrammaton, scholar George Howard, has suggested that the Tetragrammaton appeared in the original New Testament autographs. Howard claimed that the Tetragrammaton may have appeared originally in the New Testament and that "the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New Testament and its replacement with the surrogates κυριος and θεος blurred the original distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Christ." In the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Howard states: "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." Howard in a personal letter stated: "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."

Along with Howard, David Trobisch and Rolf Furuli both have written on the how the Tetragrammaton may have been removed from the Greek MSS. In the book Archaeology and the New Testament, John McRay has also written of 'the possibility that the New Testament autographs may have retained the divine name in quotations from the Old Testament.' Robert Baker Girdlestone stated in 1871 that if the LXX had used "one Greek word for Jehovah and another for Adonai, such usage would doubtless have been retained in the discourses and arguments of the N.T. Thus our Lord in quoting the 110th Psalm,...might have said 'Jehovah said unto Adoni.' Since Girdlestone's time it has been shown that the LXX had the Tetragrammaton, but that it was removed in later editions.

Though Albert Pietersma, along with most scholars, do not accept Howard's theory, Pietersma has stated concerning the Septuagint: "It might possibly still be debated whether perhaps the Palestinian copies with which the NT authors were familiar read some form of the tetragram."

Tatian's Diatessaron shows some variance in applying Kyrios to YHWH, but this may be because of dependence on the Peshitta. The consistency in rendering of YHWH as Kyrios in all NT references would be difficult to explain if there were not already either an established tradition to read Kyrios where YHWH appears in a Greek manuscript, or an established body of texts with Kyrios already in the Greek.

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