Tetragrammaton in the New Testament
Encyclopedia
The Tetragrammaton
(Greek: τετραγραμματον, "four-letter word") is the quadriliteral, typically unvocalized, Hebrew
designation יהוה identifying the God of Israel
throughout the Hebrew Bible
, composed of the Hebrew letters yodh
he
waw he
, written Right-to-left
in Hebrew, and transliterated YHWH or YHVH in English
. It occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew Masoretic Text
critical editions of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
.
The Tetragrammaton does not occur in any extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, but is found in some English and many Hebrew translations. Extant Greek
New Testament manuscripts contain the Greek word Kyrios (Lord) in Old Testament quotes where the Hebrew has Yahweh
.
and today comprise the New Testament
date as early as the second century
. One of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts, Papyrus Chester Beatty II
, i.e.
46, is dated to ca. 200 AD and contains portions of nine of the Pauline Epistles
. In this early manuscript, nomen sacrum
contractions ΚϹ and ΘϹ occur where the Greek word kurios ("LORD" or "Lord") occurs. Similar nomina sacra contractions occur for IHCOYC ("Jesus") contracted to IC and XRICTOC ("Christ"), contracted to XC.
, Philo
, the Greek Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha
, and the Jewish inscriptions. The only exceptions are magical papyri, where the name was used for magical purposes.
, Shabbat 13:5, quoting Tarfon
is sometimes cited to suggest that early Christian writings or copies contained the Tetragrammaton.
Laurence Schiffman views this as a discussion of whether to rescue section of the sifre minim (Hebrew language texts of Jewish-Christians) containing the tetragrammata from a house fire. Another interpretation suggests this is a reference to Torah and not the Gospels.
scroll at the synagogue in Nazareth
(Luke 4:17–19 reading Isaiah 61:1).
However a few English translations of the Bible
, do incorporate the Tetragrammaton into the New Testament.
appears 7,210 times—including 237 times in the New Testament—in the New World Translation
(NWT) published by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and used by Jehovah's Witnesses
. As of March 2011, the Watch Tower Society
has published more than 165 million copies of the NWT in 91 languages. Jehovah's Witnesses propose that the authors of the New Testament writings retained the Tetragrammaton in their quotations of the Old Testament without substituting it with Kurios
("Lord").
has produced various "Sacred Name Bibles". The Sacred Name Movement considers that using the Hebrew Tetragrammaton within an English Bible translation emphasizes the Semitic
nature of the name. In 1993, the Institute for Scripture Research (ISR) published The Scriptures, the first English translation to incorporate the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton instead of a generic title (e.g., The LORD) or a conjectural translation (e.g., Yahweh or Jehovah). The Besorah, which is a plagiarized version of the ISR's The Scriptures '98 (TS98), also incorporated the Tetragrammaton, uniquely using Paleo-Hebrew script
rather than standard Hebrew script. More recently, the Restored Name King James Version (RNKJV), an anonymous, internet-based Sacred Name translation adapted from the King James Version (KJV), transliterates the Tetragrammaton as YHWH wherever it appears in the Old Testament.
. One of the earliest Rabbinical translations of Matthew is mixed in with the 1385 critical commentary of Shem-Tob
. He includes the Tetragrammaton written out or abbreviated 19 times, while occasionally including the appellative HaShem (השם, meaning "The Name"). Most modern Hebrew Bible translations also use YHWH in quotations from the Hebrew Bible, however Israeli Christians do not necessarily pronounce the name.
New Testament manuscripts contain the Tetragrammaton, one scholar, George Howard
, has suggested that the Tetragrammaton appeared in the original New Testament autograph
s. Howard claimed that the Tetragrammaton 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." Howard revised his article for in inclusion in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, where he 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's theory has not been publicly supported or advocated by any other scholar. Howard has 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."
Though Albert Pietersma, as most scholars, does not accept Howard's theory, he 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 Diatesseron 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.
Tetragrammaton
The term Tetragrammaton refers to the name of the God of Israel YHWH used in the Hebrew Bible.-Hebrew Bible:...
(Greek: τετραγραμματον, "four-letter word") is the quadriliteral, typically unvocalized, Hebrew
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
designation יהוה identifying the God of Israel
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
throughout the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, composed of the Hebrew letters yodh
Yodh
Yodh is the tenth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Yud , Syriac and Arabic...
he
He (letter)
He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
waw he
He (letter)
He is the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician , Aramaic, Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic . Its sound value is a voiceless glottal fricative ....
, written Right-to-left
Right-to-left
A language is described as right-to-left if writing starts from the right of the page, and continues to the left. Right to left scripts are:* Arabic alphabet - used for Arabic, Persian, Urdu and many other languages....
in Hebrew, and transliterated YHWH or YHVH in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. It occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew Masoretic Text
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...
critical editions of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, or ', is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes...
.
The Tetragrammaton does not occur in any extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, but is found in some English and many Hebrew translations. Extant Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
New Testament manuscripts contain the Greek word Kyrios (Lord) in Old Testament quotes where the Hebrew has Yahweh
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
.
New Testament manuscripts
None of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament contain the Tetragrammaton. Papyrus manuscripts of writings which were eventually canonizedDevelopment of the New Testament canon
The Canon of the New Testament is the set of books Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For most, it is an agreed-upon list of twenty-seven books that includes the Canonical Gospels, Acts, letters of the Apostles, and Revelation...
and today comprise the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
date as early as the second century
Christianity in the 2nd century
The 2nd century of Christianity was largely the time of the Apostolic Fathers who were the students of the apostles of Jesus, though there is some overlap as John the Apostle may have survived into the 2nd century and the early Apostolic Father Clement of Rome is said to have died at the end of the...
. One of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts, Papyrus Chester Beatty II
Chester Beatty Papyri
The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri or simply the Chester Beatty Papyri are a group of early papyrus manuscripts of biblical texts. The manuscripts are in Greek and are of Christian origin. There are eleven manuscripts in the group, seven consisting of portions of Old Testament books, three...
, i.e.
46, is dated to ca. 200 AD and contains portions of nine of the Pauline EpistlesPauline epistles
The Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents...
. In this early manuscript, nomen sacrum
Nomina sacra
Nomina sacra means "sacred names" in Latin, and can be used to refer to traditions of abbreviated writing of several frequently occurring divine names or titles in early Greek language Holy Scripture...
contractions ΚϹ and ΘϹ occur where the Greek word kurios ("LORD" or "Lord") occurs. Similar nomina sacra contractions occur for IHCOYC ("Jesus") contracted to IC and XRICTOC ("Christ"), contracted to XC.
Tetragrammaton and the Greek Old Testament
Older Jewish manuscripts of the Septuagint often had the letters YHWH or a space, within the Greek text. The majority of surviving copies have Kyrios, as do other Hellenistic Jewish texts such as JosephusJosephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, Philo
Philo
Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria....
, the Greek Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha
Apocrypha
The term apocrypha is used with various meanings, including "hidden", "esoteric", "spurious", "of questionable authenticity", ancient Chinese "revealed texts and objects" and "Christian texts that are not canonical"....
, and the Jewish inscriptions. The only exceptions are magical papyri, where the name was used for magical purposes.
Babylonian Talmud
A passage recorded in the Hebrew ToseftaTosefta
The Tosefta is a compilation of the Jewish oral law from the period of the Mishnah.-Overview:...
, Shabbat 13:5, quoting Tarfon
Tarfon
Rabbi Tarfon or Tarphon, , a Kohen, a member of the third generation of the Mishnah sages, who lived in the period between the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Bethar .-Origins and character:...
is sometimes cited to suggest that early Christian writings or copies contained the Tetragrammaton.
Laurence Schiffman views this as a discussion of whether to rescue section of the sifre minim (Hebrew language texts of Jewish-Christians) containing the tetragrammata from a house fire. Another interpretation suggests this is a reference to Torah and not the Gospels.
English versions of the New Testament
Most English Bibles, even those such as the Jerusalem Bible which has Yahweh in the Old Testament, do not use Yahweh in the New Testament, since the Greek New Testament manuscripts have already rendered YHWH in Old Testament quotes as Lord. The New Testament records the reading Lord (presumably Adonai) for YHWH even, for example, when Christ reads the IsaiahIsaiah
Isaiah ; Greek: ', Ēsaïās ; "Yahu is salvation") was a prophet in the 8th-century BC Kingdom of Judah.Jews and Christians consider the Book of Isaiah a part of their Biblical canon; he is the first listed of the neviim akharonim, the later prophets. Many of the New Testament teachings of Jesus...
scroll at the synagogue in Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
(Luke 4:17–19 reading Isaiah 61:1).
However a few English translations of the Bible
English translations of the Bible
The efforts of translating the Bible from its original languages into over 2,000 others have spanned more than two millennia. Partial translations of the Bible into languages of the English people can be traced back to the end of the 7th century, including translations into Old English and Middle...
, do incorporate the Tetragrammaton into the New Testament.
The New World Translation
The rendering JehovahJehovah
Jehovah is an anglicized representation of Hebrew , a vocalization of the Tetragrammaton , the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible....
appears 7,210 times—including 237 times in the New Testament—in the New World Translation
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1961; it is used and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. Though it is not the first Bible to be published by the group, it is their first original translation of...
(NWT) published by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and used by Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
. As of March 2011, the Watch Tower Society
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania
The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania is a non-stock, not-for-profit organization headquartered in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States. It is the main legal entity used worldwide by Jehovah's Witnesses to direct, administer and develop doctrines for the religion...
has published more than 165 million copies of the NWT in 91 languages. Jehovah's Witnesses propose that the authors of the New Testament writings retained the Tetragrammaton in their quotations of the Old Testament without substituting it with Kurios
Kurios
Kurios is a Greek word that may apply to God, lord, master, or guardian. In ancient Greece, a woman could not enter into a contract herself and arrangements were made by her guardian or Kurios...
("Lord").
Sacred Name Movement
The Sacred Name MovementSacred Name Movement
The Sacred Name Movement is a movement within Adventism in Christianity, propagated by Clarence Orvil Dodd from the 1930s, that claims to seek to conform Christianity to its "Hebrew Roots" in practice, belief and worship. The best known distinction of the SNM is its advocacy of the use of the...
has produced various "Sacred Name Bibles". The Sacred Name Movement considers that using the Hebrew Tetragrammaton within an English Bible translation emphasizes the Semitic
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
nature of the name. In 1993, the Institute for Scripture Research (ISR) published The Scriptures, the first English translation to incorporate the Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton instead of a generic title (e.g., The LORD) or a conjectural translation (e.g., Yahweh or Jehovah). The Besorah, which is a plagiarized version of the ISR's The Scriptures '98 (TS98), also incorporated the Tetragrammaton, uniquely using Paleo-Hebrew script
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet , is an abjad offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet, identical to the Phoenician alphabet. At the very least it dates to the 10th century BCE...
rather than standard Hebrew script. More recently, the Restored Name King James Version (RNKJV), an anonymous, internet-based Sacred Name translation adapted from the King James Version (KJV), transliterates the Tetragrammaton as YHWH wherever it appears in the Old Testament.
Hebrew Versions of the New Testament
Over the centuries, various translators have inserted the Tetragrammaton into Hebrew versions of the New TestamentBible translations into Hebrew
-Hebrew Bible:The Hebrew Bible is almost entirely in Hebrew. The few sections that are in Aramaic are in a form of Biblical Aramaic and in square-script which are effectively intelligible to Hebrew readers and do not require translation...
. One of the earliest Rabbinical translations of Matthew is mixed in with the 1385 critical commentary of Shem-Tob
Ibn Shaprut
Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut of Tudela was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, and polemicist. He is often confused with the physician Shem-Ṭob ben Isaac of Tortosa, who lived earlier...
. He includes the Tetragrammaton written out or abbreviated 19 times, while occasionally including the appellative HaShem (השם, meaning "The Name"). Most modern Hebrew Bible translations also use YHWH in quotations from the Hebrew Bible, however Israeli Christians do not necessarily pronounce the name.
Other views
Although none of the extant GreekKoine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
New Testament manuscripts contain the Tetragrammaton, one scholar, George Howard
George Howard (Hebraist)
George Howard is an American Hebraist, noted for his theories of Hebrew-language origins to the New Testament - including the possible use of the Tetragrammaton in the New Testament, and possible Hebrew origins of Matthew...
, has suggested that the Tetragrammaton appeared in the original New Testament autograph
Autograph
An autograph is a document transcribed entirely in the handwriting of its author, as opposed to a typeset document or one written by an amanuensis or a copyist; the meaning overlaps with that of the word holograph.Autograph also refers to a person's artistic signature...
s. Howard claimed that the Tetragrammaton appeared originally in the New Testament and that "the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New Testament and its replacement with the surrogates κυριος
Kurios
Kurios is a Greek word that may apply to God, lord, master, or guardian. In ancient Greece, a woman could not enter into a contract herself and arrangements were made by her guardian or Kurios...
and θεος
Theos
Theos may refer to:*Theos is the Greek word for "deity, god"; see god , names of God*Theos is a UK public theology think tank*THEOS is an earth observing satellite launched in 2008 by Thailand...
blurred the original distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Christ." Howard revised his article for in inclusion in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, where he 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's theory has not been publicly supported or advocated by any other scholar. Howard has 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."
Though Albert Pietersma, as most scholars, does not accept Howard's theory, he 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 Diatesseron 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.
See also
- Papyrus Rylands 458Papyrus Rylands 458Papyrus Rylands 458 is a copy of the Pentateuch in a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. It is a papyrus manuscript in roll form. The manuscript has been assigned palaeographically to the 2nd century BC and it is the oldest known manuscript of the Greek Bible...
- Papyrus Fouad 266Papyrus Fouad 266Papyrus Fouad 266 is a copy of the Pentateuch in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. It is a papyrus manuscript in scroll form. The manuscript has been assigned palaeographically to the 1st century BC. The manuscript has survived in a fragmentary condition...
- Names of God in JudaismNames of God in JudaismIn Judaism, the name of God is more than a distinguishing title; it represents the Jewish conception of the divine nature, and of the relationship of God to the Jewish people and to the world. To demonstrate the sacredness of the names of God, and as a means of showing respect and reverence for...
- Names of God in ChristianityNames of God in ChristianityThere are various names of God in Christianity. Some names refer to one person of the Trinity, while others refer to the entire Trinity. There are a number of names that can refer either to God the Father or to the entire Trinity, and often "God" is used directly. Many other terms, such as "The...
- Assemblies of YahwehAssemblies of YahwehThe Assemblies of Yahweh is a nonprofit religious organization with its international headquarters in Bethel, Pennsylvania. The organization developed independently out of a radio ministry begun by Elder Jacob O. Meyer in 1966...
External links
- Greek text – Complete Greek text of the Septuagint hyperlinked to Strong's concordance.
- Brenton's – The standard English translation of the Septuagint (hard copy has Greek in column)
- The New Testament and the Septuagint – Instances where the New Testament quotes the LXX against the Masoretic Hebrew
- The New Testament and the Hebrew OT – Instances where the New Testament agrees with the Masoretic Hebrew meaning
- Names in the Septuagint and Masoretic – A table of the older Greek names with the newer Masoretic renditions, in the Old Testament
- The Septuagint Online – Comprehensive site with scholarly discussion and extensive links to texts and translations
- Article for the thesis by Matteo Pierro in a Catholic Magazine: "Rivista Biblica", n. 2, April–June 1997, p. 183-186. Bologna, Italy
- Article against the thesis by Carmelo Savasta in a Catholic Magazine: "Rivista Biblica", n. 1, 1998, p. 89-92. Bologna, Italy
- God's Name and the "New Testament", an article by the official web-site of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
- The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures, a downloadable book.