Dear Rolf, I\'ll try and be brief because this really is crossing beyond B-Hebrew territory into other realms. Your claims are not convincing for a number of reasons:
1. There are numerous circumlocutions employed in the NT to avoid using the divine name (e.g. Phil 2:9, etc). 2. There are no extant MSS of the NT which employ any form of the tetragrammaton. No fragment, no scrap. Nothing. 3. The argument that the use of the nomina sacra KS in early NT MSS indicates that they were altered proves nothing about what was in the autographs. The fact that there are no extant MSS which preserve the tetragrammaton is the only concrete evidence. 4. There are quite a few Hebrew MSS among the DSS sectarian literature which consistently use adonay and never use Yhwh (e.g. 4Q526, 4Q527, 4Q507, 4Q459, 4Q521, 4Q437, 4Q435, 1Q34bis, 4Q410, 4Q577, 1QSb, 4Q504, 4Q432, 4Q508, 4Q428, 4Q392, 4Q384, 1QHa, 4Q200, 4Q509, 4Q434, 4Q506, 4Q269, 1QM). This suggests an avoidance of the tetragrammaton in literature composed at the time. This, in conjunction with the use of special forms in copies of biblical manuscripts (where the desire to avoid using the tetragrammaton would be offset by the desire to preserve the text) suggest that in a translation (such as the LXX) the translators could easily have felt that the latter constraint was less binding and so felt at liberty to employ kyrios for the divine name. 5. You\'ve represented Pietersma\'s arguments in an overly reductionistic fashion. 6. What you fail to note is that there are (at least on Pietersma\'s count) only 3 extant LXX MSS dated earlier than 50CE which provide any evidence over the writing of the divine name. Given the questions Pietersma raises and strong evidence that substitutions were common at the oral level, this is rather scant evidence from which to derive such a dogmatic position as you seem to have. Regards, Martin Shields. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
