Tetragrammaton in the New Testament

Archaeologists have discovered papyrus fragments of works which were later included in the canon of the New Testament dating as far back as the middle of the second century. Despite the fact that there are no autographs surviving until today, it is worth mentioning that of all 5,000 extant New Testament manuscripts none contains any form of the Hebrew יהוה (Tetragrammaton).
One of the most ancient fragments, the papyrus codex designated Chester Beatty Papyrus No. 2 P46, is dated about to AD 200Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament: History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age, Walter de Gruyter, 1995 p. 23. ISBN 3110149702, 9783110149708 and contains nine of the Apostle Paul's letters. In the Chester Beatty Papyri, we find ΚC and sometimes ΘC with a horizontal bar above them in citations of the Hebrew Bible where the Tetragrammaton occurs in the Hebrew text. These are abbreviations for kyrios (KYPIOC "lord") and theos (ΘEOC "God") normally known as nomina sacra ("sacred names"). Some scholars propose that such space-saving abbreviation was very common throughout costly, ancient manuscripts. Other scholars believe that this practice was based on the Hebrew consonantal writing, especially related to the extreme care for the word יהוה (YHWH).
For centuries, scholars rejected the idea of the existence of the Tetragrammaton in the copies of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). During recent decades, though, a number of very ancient manuscripts have been discovered using some form of the Tetragrammaton into the Greek text.See the article Greek Old Testament manuscripts that include the Tetragrammaton. As a matter of fact, the oldest extant copies of the Greek Old Testament include the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew or Greek. Similarly, a newer thesis has been proposed that the pious Jewish authors of the New Testament used the revered name YHWH and did not replace it with a surrogate like "Lord". As a result, the Tetragrammaton was present in the New Testament autographs. Later on it was substituted by the nomina sacra.
George Howard set forth this hypothesis that YHWH appeared originally in the New Testament and that "the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New Testament and its replacement with the surrogates kyrios and theos blurred the original distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Christ."Howard, George, Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978. The weight of this position led to its inclusion in the article of the Anchor Bible Dictionary, where it is stated: "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."Freedman, D. N. 1996, c1992. "Tetragrammaton in the New Testament". The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Doubleday: New York. 6:392. As it is a relatively recent thesis on an ever-changing field of study, it has not yet found wide acceptance, and Howard has qualified it: "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."Letter from Howard, 9 January 1990 Even though Albert Pietersma does not accept Howard's theory, he has stated: "It might possibly still be debated whether
perhaps the Palestinian copies with which the NT authors were familiar read some form of the tetragram."Al. Pietersma, "Kyrios or Tetragram: A Renewed Quest for the Original LXX, De Septuaginta. Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on this Sixty-fifth Birthday, Benben Publications, 1984, p. 87.
==Jehovah and the Greek Old Testament==
Old Testament is a term (credited to Tertullian) used to describe the Hebrew Bible. The ancient translation of the Old Testament into Koine Greek is called the Septuagint, which continues to be the official version of the Old Testament for the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day. The Septuagint was translated prior to the birth of Jesus. He and the Apostles quoted extensively from it.Septuagint This is no surprise, since the New Testament was itself most likely written in Greek (see Aramaic primacy for the counter-argument); all the earliest surviving manuscripts are written in Greek.
Some copies of the Greek Old Testament from the latter centuries BCE, which are translated from lost Hebrew texts, leave a blank space where the Tetragrammaton would have been; other represent the divine name by ιαω; others use (Paleo-Hebrew alphabet which borrows from Phoenician alphabet); and other variations are evidenced in early manuscripts. The 'Textual Mechanics' of Early Jewish LXX/OG Papyri and Fragments A notable version using is the version by Aquila of Sinope.Swete's Intro to the OT in Greek, chapter 2.6.5: "The Tetragrammaton is not transliterated, but written in Hebrew letters, and the characters are of the archaic type ([script not available], not יהזה); cf. Orig. in Ps. ii., καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀκριβεστάτοις δὲ τῶν ἀντιγράφων Ἐβραίοις χαρακτῆρσιν κεῖται τὸ ὄνομα, Ἐβραικοῖς δὲ οὐ τοῖς νῦν ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀρχαιοτάτοις—where the 'most exact copies' are doubtless those of Aquila's version, for there is no reason to suppose that any copyists of the Alexandrian version hesitated to write ο κς or κε for יהזה‎" 
The Septuagint was the preferred Greek translation of the Jewish Bible among Christians (and Jews up until the school of Jamnia and the Masoretic recinsion) at the time of the writing of the New Testament, and continued to be until the Reformation (the Vulgate being primarily a translation of the Septuagint). 
When Saint Jerome, a Roman Catholic Doctor of the Church made his translation of the Old Testament into Latin, he switched from the Septuagint of the Early Church to the Masoretic. He translated from a Masoretic Old Testament and brought YHWH into texts officially adapted by the Western Church. This use of the Masoretic did not affect the Eastern Churches and the bulk of the late Roman Empire's population who spoke Greek, not Latin. 
It is stated that Origen of Alexandria included the Tetragrammaton in his Hexapla in the 3rd Century AD. Origen's Hexapla was a comparison in side-by-side columns of separate versions of the Old Testament: Hebrew, Aramaic, Samaritan, and Greek translations. 
Jesus quoted numerous times from the Old Testament, including his replies to Satan during his temptation in the wilderness. "Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" (Matthew 4.7). Here as elsewhere, the quotation is taken from the Septuagint.
== Babylonian Talmud ==
A passage in the Tosefta Shabbat 13:5 quoting Tarfon is sometimes cited to suggest that early Christian scriptures contained the Divine Name. It reads: "The 'Gilyon[im]' and the [Biblical] books of the Judæo-Christians ["Minim"] are not saved [on the Sabbath] from fire; but one lets them burn together with the names of God written upon them." The Jewish Encyclopedia defines the word Gilyonim in the Talmud as referring to the Gospels in the time of Tarfon.JewishEncyclopedia.com - GILYONIM Another reading suggests this is a reference to Torah and not the Gospels. Daniel Boyarin: Border Lines - The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, pg. 57
== Hebrew Versions of the New Testament ==
Over the centuries various translators have inserted the Tetragrammaton in the New Testament when translating into Hebrew Versions of the New Testament. One of the earliest Hebrew versions is the Gospel of Matthew translated by Shem-Tob in 1385, which bears the circumlocution 'ha-Shem' (meaning "The Name"), a surrogate for the Tetragrammaton written out or abbreviated 19 times.The Watchtower, 15 August 1997, page 13
== English versions of the New Testament ==
Some English Sacred name Bibles have used the Tetragrammaton in the New Testament. The ISR The Scriptures in 1993 was the first translation to use the Hebrew letters for the Tetragrammaton in stead of The LORD or a transliteration e.g. Yahweh. The Besorah, http://www.thebesorah.com/ which is a plagiarized http://besorah.synthasite.com/ version of the ISR The Scriptures 1998 editionhttp://www.isr-messianic.org/ has done this using the Paleo-Hebrew script. The Restored Name King James Versionhttp://www.eliyah.com/Scripture/ has used the more modern Hebrew script to write it. The use of the Tetragrammaton in a Semitic alphabet within the English text is a graphic way of showing that it is a Semitic word. The name Jehovah is in the text of the New World Translation's New Testament; the complete edition is available in 79 languages, with portions translated into more than 400 languages.
== References ==
==See also==
* Dead Sea Scrolls
* Hebrew Gospel of Matthew
* Jehovah, an English vocalization of Hebrew YHWH
* Jehovah's Witnesses, a religion that believes that the Tetragrammaton was written in the original, non-extant, manuscripts of the New Testament
* Koine Greek
* List of Hebrew versions of the New Testament that have the Tetragrammaton
* Names of God in Judaism
* Yaw, an article that discusses some linguistic theories involving YHWH
* Tetragrammaton (YHWH)
==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.
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