Hi, Subject was: Re: [b-hebrew] G.Gertoux and the Name...
The goal here is to go through the logical construct of Rolf, in two parts. The first part is how he makes the well known contraction: kurios --> KS .. proposing one special type of historical contraction bypassing kurios, going from YHVH --> KS All the Philip Comfort quotes are online: Encountering the Manuscripts (2006) Philip Comfort http://books.google.com/books?id=nPVHbSscCwYC&pg=PA200 Lots of similar and usually complementary material could be given from Larry Hurtado, Dirk Jongkind and many others. For simplicity, this post is working mostly with Comfort. Rolf >... because we do not have the NT and LXX autographs we do not know >whether they contained the YHWH in some form or not. Steven We do not know if they might also contain five extra chapters. Essentially, everything we know about the autographs comes from the apographa and ECW discussions of the apographa. Anything that claims to be autographic that is not in the copies ... must jump over a very high evidentiary bar. Rolf >Then I have presented the arguments I think would illuminate the issue. ... >FACT >1: All the known LXX fragments up to 50 CE has YHWH or IAO. FACT >2: The LXX manuscripts from the second century CE has KS. FACT Steven Sounds fine. I will point out that the terminology "LXX" has multiple meanings, even in scholarship circles. In a sense, GOT (Greek Old Testament) is much more accurate for texts that definitely do not have pre-Christian lineage (i.e unrelated to the Aristeas story). Thus, LXX fits much better for DSS manuscripts than for the later Egyptian papyri that are mixed with New Testament material. Or for Vaticanus, Sinaiticus or Alexandrinus or the later Greek Orthodox manuscripts. However, since scholarly conventions are contradictory (there was a paper on this) LXX is used for those materials. This leads into the problem of readers thinking these texts have a confirmed lineage to pre-Christian-era texts because of the flawed nomenclature. Rolf >3: Someone deleted the name of God from the LXX manuscripts between >50 CE and the second century CE. Steven Not necessarily. And in general a major conceptual error of improper extrapolation. Many new GOT translations were made by the 2nd century, due to the Christian movement. New translations by those familiar with the NT (which can include offbeat groups like the ebionites.) Those new Greek texts would likely utilize the same conventions as in the NT conventions. (Philip Comfort covers this in one quote below). btw, contra some comments, so far I do not see an real evidence for the idea expressed that the OT nomina sacra must have come first. Since our extant earliest nomina sacra mss are about the same time for NT and OT and Christians would have a smidgen more emphasis around 75-125 AD in the NT. If anyone has any idea why that though of OT first is occasionally expressed, share away.) Rolf, you simply have not shown any copying lineage from the mss in (1) to those (2), thus the conclusion (3) is logically flawed. To have any pizazz, you would have to show a specific textual lineage involving either Jewish copyists or Christian copyists who made the switch, yet the evidence tends to support a rather sharp distinction in the textual lineages. Here is a quote by Robert Beckwith explaining the dual Jewish and Christian aspects of LXX texts, moving from the apocrypha issue to the textual lineage issue. The original grounds for the Alexandrian canon hypothesis were the comprehensive manuscripts of the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a pre-Christian Jewish translation, and the larger manuscripts of it include various of the Apocrypha. Grabe's edition of the Septuagint, where the theory was first propounded, was based upon the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus. However, as we have seen, manuscripts of anything like the capacity of Codex Alexandrinus were not used in the first centuries of the Christian era, and since in the second century AD the Jews seem largely to have discarded the Septuagint in favor of revisions or translations more usable in their controversy with the church (notably Aquila's translation) there can be no real doubt that the comprehensive codices of the Septuagint, which start appearing in the fourth century AD, are all of Christian origin." (Roger Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 1985, p. 382 - also in Formation of the Hebrew Bible, 1990.) The area of Christian and Jewish origins of GOT manuscripts is a bit complex. However, for your claim #3 to even have the possibility of being a valid construct, you would have to show that the LXX manuscripts with KS were direct copying descendents of early pre-Christian manuscripts. Beyond that, the 50 AD swivel date is also rather telling, since it would be almost exactly the beginning point of Christian copying of the LXX. So either what was involved (e.g. at 125 AD) is best understood as one or more of these three: 1) new translations of the GOT by those familiar with the NT - using Christian nomina sacra conventions 2) Christian conventions from the NT, including the nomina sacra, applied to OT manuscript copying. 3) 2-step copying .. YHVH-->Kurios--KS In other words, in #1 your whole thesis does not apply. In #2 your emphasis is wrong. You are using changing in OT copying to make difficult almost to absurdity claims of different original NT texts (see part #2 planned of these posts). When a far more Ockham-friendly explanation is that the NT techniques and understanding of abbreviations were applied to the OT. "it could have dawned on some early Jewish-Christian scribe and/or a Gentile Christian scribe familiar with the special orthography, while making a copy of an Old Testament Greek text or putting together several Old Testament messianic proof texts (called "testimonial", to come up with a special way of writing the divine name kurios in Greek. The result was KC, a contracted form, using the first and last letters of kurios." Comfort p. 209 Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (1995) Henry Y. Gamble http://books.google.com/books?id=2aEJfsXY57cC&pg=PA77 "The contracted forms of theos and kyrios probably derive, as G. Howard supposes, from Gentile Christians who, lacking the support of the Jewish tradition for retaining the Tetragram in (Greek) Christian copies of Jewish texts, adopted instead clearly designated contractions of Greek equivalents "out of deference to the Jewish Christians, to mark the sacredness of the divine name which stood behind these surrogates."The principle, used at first with respect to texts of Jewish scripture, would have been extended under christological warrants to the further names, Jesus and Christ, in Christian documents." (quoted also by Comfort). This is one of the examples where the concept is right, although I question the order. The contractions could easily have occurred simultaneously in OT and NT, or in NT first. The only argument I can see for OT first, would be if the **only contraction** in a text is YHVH --> (Kurious) --> KS. However my understanding is that if you have one contraction, you have four or more. (I am happy to be corrected on this from anyone super-familiar with the data.) And Rolf, your logic attempted above basically ignores the well-known issue of discontinuities in the Greek GOT copying. New copyists, new texts, new attempts. Origen in his Hexapla worked with three distinct Greek translations that did not even exist at 50 AD. Rolf > This led to a corrupted text. Steven No, this was a text with a different textual convention, and very likely represented a different lineage of translation.. English translations today often have LORD for the Hebrew YHVH. You might, following your doctrinal position, consider those as corrupted. However that would be circular to your group's conventions and claims, which you say you are ignoring. Origen referred to texts with kurios and with the Tetragram, and did not consider kurios as a corruption, and kurios was the form he consistently used in his own writing. Philip Comfort points out that the abbreviations were designed precisely to maintain clarity (NT primarily, presumably also at times in the OT): Making a name a nomen sacrum desecularized the term, lifting it to sacred status. For example, scribes could differentiate between "the Lord" and "lord"/"sir"/"master" by writing KC or KTPIOC (plene), and they could distinguish between "Spirit" (the divine Spirit) and "spirit" (the human spirit) by writing the first as a nomen sacrum and any other kind of spirit as pneuma (in plene). The term pneuma in ordinary, secular Greek meant "wind," "breath," or "spirit." Writing it as a nomen sacrum signaled that this was the divine Spirit. Scribes also uplifted the ordinary terms "cross" and "crucify" by making them nomina sacra. In this written form, they signaled Jesus' cross and crucifixion, the means by which all Christians are saved from sin. - Comfort, p. 204 Comfort also points out that there would be clarity among the scribes about the usage, flattening your idea that in the NT, and only in kurios, and maybe theos (in the NWT and George Howard iteration of the theory) there was a special hidden Hebrew source for the Greek abbreviation. "The inclusion of certain titles and exclusion of others is significant, for it shows that there was some kind of universal recognition among Christian scribes as to which terms were to be written as a nomen sacrum and which ones were not. This points to an early standard or what could be called an early canon for acceptable and non-acceptable nomina sacra. - p. 205 Rolf >4. The NT manuscripts from the second century CE contain KS, Steven All Greek NT manuscripts contain kurios or KS, there are no exceptions. Similarly they contain theos or QS, pneuma or PNA, etc. Rolf > as do the LXX manuscripts. Steven Avery No surprise there. Often the same "Christian" (including gnostic Alexandrian) copyists would do NT and OT. Think Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, principle GOT manuscripts. Rolf >REASONING 1: The letters KS were not in the NT autographs (no one >has argued in favor of that), Steven Avery It is considered possible by writers like Larry Hurtado and : Philip Comfort "perhaps some of the autographs themselves" p. 202. "A few other terms may have been written as nomina sacra in the original writings or, at least, in the very earliest copies the Greek" p. 204 Rolf >and this shows that the NT text has been changed. Steven Actually, over time, about 15 words were changed in the NT (count by Larry Hurtado, The Origin of the Nomina Sacra: A Proposal 1998) , that were subject to abbreviation. At least four immediately, in the earliest NT texts. Any theory has to look at all of these, and even P46 had nine contractions. A good chart is at: Nomina Sacra in P46 http://www.lib.umich.edu/reading/Paul/nominasacra.html Your theory would have to state why the kurios ones are so totally unique, and only here KS does not represent its Greek longer version source Kurios.. Even putting aside the weird situation that your progenitors in this theory, like George Howard and the NWT, can include theos as from a Tetragram source (you have not gone that route, yet, in this conversation, apparently). And the NWT decides they can be selective to doctrine (euphemistically called context) in claims about which kurios and theos usages are utilized. Leading to a number of documented major inconsistencies. Now, since there was such a consistency of usage of Greek word-->abbreviation, the onus is on the person who says that one of the 15 is : not ... Greek word--> Greek abbreviation (true for multiple Greek words) is ... Hebrew word-> Greek abbreviation (conjectural emendation concept, why would the ks abbreviation for kurious not be used for kurios?) Especially as an overbar was generally placed, specifically to show the Greek abbreviation. "it is easy to spot any of the nomina sacra on the page of a Greek New Testament manuscript (see on pages 140 and 148) or a Christian Greek Old Testament manuscript (see photo of Ezekiel on p. 173) by looking for the overbars. The special written forms of the nomina sacra would not be enigmatic to Christian readers; they could easily decipher them, in fact, these forms would heighten their importance in the text and prompt the readers (lectors) to give them special attention when reading the text aloud to the congregation." Comfort, p. 204 "The nomina sacra are also present in Greek Old Testament manuscripts and other Christian writings produced by Christians... One of the main reasons we know that the Old testament manuscripts are Christian manuscripts and not Jewish is the presence of nomina sacra in the text ... with the Greek text. Christians used KYPIOC (kurios = Lord) in place of ... (YHWH) and wrote it in nomen sacrum form. Many Greek Old Testament manuscripts produced by Christians display this nomen sacrum. This can be seen in all six second-century Greek Old Testament manuscripts noted above." Comfort, p. 200-202 Note, this distinction of Jewish and Christian manuscripts on the basis of the nomina sacra has been accused of being circular. However, it is also sensible. The circular point only reduces it from a fully factual distinction to a likely theory that matches well the evidences. e.g. P. Oxyrhynchus 3522 includes the Hebrew script in the Greek, it is 1st century, and there is no reason to consider it relevant to the 1-2 possibilities above. Comfort gives a few examples on p.208, adding the Habakkuk ms from Kirbert Mird and the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Naval Hever. These are the no-contraction manuscripts. And since they do not have KS as a contraction, they do not have other nomina sacra contractions. And in a Christian OT the nomina sacra will go far further than KS. Nomina Sacra - Bob Waltz http://www.skypoint.com/members/waltzmn/NominaSacra.html "Vaticanus (B) abbreviates Qeos Kurios Ihsous Cristos pneuma (generally only these, although the Old Testament sometimes abbreviates anqrwpos as well as Israhl Ierousalhm) " Another point of interest: "The suspended form of abbreviation was very common in both documentary and literary works from the first century BC on into the second century AD. McNamee wrote, "Methods of abbreviation throughout [this] period covered are the same in literary as in documentary papyri. The most common means was suspension, in which one or more letters were omitted from the end of a word." Comfort, p. 203 The point here is that there is nothing surprising about the phenomenon. Kathleen McNamee's work is Abbreviations in Greek Literary Papyri and Ostraca: Supplement, with List of Ghost Abbreviations and lists 450 abbreviations in Greek literature. Granted, the contractions are one type of abbreviation. On page 206 Comfort goes into depth on the kurios phenomenon, I would substitute Jehovah or Yehovah where Comfort has "Yahweh". Overall, we can see that the proposed evidence from silence boils down to a form of special pleading by Rolf, there really is nothing very complex. The fact that an event is remotely conceptually possible (especially if you look at evidences in a skewed manner designed to somehow work towards the initial goal) is far from any type of substantive evidence that this event did happen. (Remember, in this case, about seven events, representing the seven NT authors who are all supposed to have done this never-seen type of original writing in a dozen or so books.) In the subsequent planned post, we will look a bit more at the back-end, which is the complete refutation of the special pleading Hebrew text embedded in the Greek autographs proposal, and then redacting and vanishing. The fact that scribal habits and textual transmission are totally against this idea. (Along with auxiliary considerations like the total inconsistency of position of the variety pack of 'Hebrew text in the Greek autographs' proposals.) Rolf > But we do not know what was written in quotes from the Tanakh > where YHWH was found in the quotes. Steven The normative presumption of any Greek text, letters, gospels, ECW writings, is that an original Greek writing is written with Greek letters. Any idea against this must jump over a very high bar of evidence. Such as showing apographic writings with the Hebrew text embedded. Or at least showing ECW discussions of the phenomenon. The classic case is Origen, who was very aware of the phenomenon of the Tetragram in Greek OT writings. And Origen gives us a thunderous silence about any idea at all of NT writings, by even one author (e.g. Matthew) having a single embedded Tetragram. That silence extends to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and others. And of course Jerome, who worked with ancient Hebrew and Latin and Greek manuscripts, in consultation with the Jews in Israel and working with the library in Caesarea. However, Origen is especially important because of his special note of the Tetragram being in OT manuscripts, so his evidence is not an evidence from silence, but an evidence relating to exposition. Rolf >REASONING 2: Because what was substituted by KS in the LXX was YHWH, Steven This was shown to be a conjectural presumption above, since the KS texts come from Christian lineage, and do not have any shown direct lineage from earlier Greek texts. Even if they did have such a lineage, it would simply be common Christian writing convention applied to the copying process, and it would likely be a two-step, YHVH --> Kurios --> KS. So we have a double fail in this claim. Rolf Furuli > it is likely that what was substituted in the NT was YHWH as well. Steven Since the base logic is flawed, this is GIGO. Rolf >Corroborating this likeliness is that the Tanakh says that YHWH >should be used as God's name for ever. If there still is something >to which I have not responded regarding manuscript data, please tell >me what it is. Steven You have refused to discuss scribal habits, the seven or so distinct individuals all doing this unique and unheard of process in the ancient NT autographic literature. Unheard of in the ECW and apocryphal writings as well as NT writings. Rolf, you have consistently refused to discuss the redaction process that then weeded out your proposed NT emendation. Which is totally unscholarly, since your theory demands the redaction process, so you must related to the humongous difficulties. And you have not discussed the thunderous ECW silence about your proposed phenomenon. As to the manuscript data, in the NT you have none, the data is 1000s to 0. You also do not discuss the missing groups of variants in the NT manuscript data when your proposed emendations were redacted out of the textlines, completely and fully, vanishing with a trace or even a mention. ie. This should have created a rather wild variant situation. You do not discuss the NT manuscript data, you only discuss a proposed emendation to the text by discussing OT data, and even that is based on flawed logic, as shown above. The theories are so cumbersome and at base unscholarly that they clearly have to be largely influenced by your own doctrinal considerations. A group you support printed a text with hundreds of New Testament emendations of Jehovah into the NT text. We understand that you are not defending their emendations here. In this venue, you try to cherry-pick what might be considered the lesser absurd group of the hundreds of emendations, a type of foot-in-door approach. The group of OT quotes and references. Ironically, even that group is still implemented inconsistently in your group's text. To make the proposal you still have to skew the historical OT process. And more significantly, you have to avoid a full-discipline approach that also discusses scribal habits, the fact of multiple authors and books, the NT proposed redactions back to the current text, precisely which variants are involved and why. And what the manuscript evidence for those variants shows. What would be expected in any sensible analysis would be a wild differentiation of variants in any verse where the proposal actually occurred, as Greek and Latin and Syriac texts all puzzled over the phenomenon of the Hebrew embedded and began to redact it out. Overall, in sum, you simply do not discuss the NT manuscript and textual data, which is where your proposal occurs. Shalom, Steven Avery Bayside, NY _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
