Vasileiadis: Aspects of rendering the sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek - a response

In my previous post, I began a short series on Pavlos Vasileiadis' 2014 paper, Aspects of Rendering the Sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek, which had me searching straight away to find the oldest record of the sacred name in Hebrew. We found this in the form of an Israelite amulet dating back to pre-exilic times, known as the silver scroll and written in a script that was significantly different to the Hebrew characters we are more familiar with today. The important point of that introduction was to note that there was initially no problem, no prohibition, no taboo about using the name of Yahweh. Further into the paper (p. 57 of the journal), Vasileiadis correctly refers to evidence arising from other neighbouring, rival nations who also referred to Israel's god. I checked this, and he's quite right - the earliest is astonishingly early and clearly points to a YHWH from an Egyptian hieroglyph, 14th century. You also have the Ugaritic texts that refer to him, albeit as one of 70 sons of Athirat (Asherah) and El. Finally, we have the Mesha Stele stone set up around 840-890 BC. Again, this name/Name was clearly not a taboo.

This was set to change, but why and how broadly?

Vasileiadis consistently points to a variety of practices and debate around what the variety implies. However, he commences with a somewhat bewildering list of factors that he enumerates as contributing to the subsequent non-pronunciation:

- Greek philosophy ('God has no name')

- Hellenization (leading to simple negligence?)

- Syncretism and gnosticism (perhaps implying a special 'secrecy' about the Name?)

- Entrenchment of *use* of Tetragrammaton by exclusivists?

- Paganisation and hypostatisation?

- Moral degradation.

Two of these are quite clear: Vasileiadis' first factor cites an impressive list of sources of possible Greek philosophical influence on the post-exilic growing reticence against pronouncing the name. However, he does not develop the relationship between Greek philosophers and Judaism, but does lift from Marmostein the Greek sources: "Aristotle, Seneca, Maxim of Tyre, Celsus, and Hermes Trismegistus". That said, I have been consistently enough exposed to evidence showing the joining of these two worlds (e.g. the style of the book of Hebrews, some of the theological tendences of the LXX, the NT strong preference for the LXX translation) to listen attentatively to this possibility.

The last factor of moral degradation is probably the most famous of the characteristics of the exiled people and frequently features in preaches from the pulpit. The story classically goes: the Jews so desperately wanted restoration and a wonderful anointed King to rule with them over the surrounding peoples that they were engrossed in a sort of superstitious belief that - since God is not in any way limited in power - he must still be very displeased with them. Any appeasement had to come via super-sanctified living, even exceeding that which was previously required, thus creating a "hedge" around those requirements. And *that's* where the non-pronunciation of the name comes in. Whereas before, you had to be super-careful as to when and how you said it, now it is simply easier to have the hedge around the Name and avoid saying it if at all possible.

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So those two factors make sense.

However, how negligence, Gnosticism, exclusivistic mindsets and hypostatisation fit into that picture is not completely clear and it is, in my view, a little unfortunate that Vasileiadis hasn't elaborated.

One final point of clarity: this tendency (in its variety of forms) reached a climax by 3rd century AD when Name-pronunciation became a capital offence.

Back tomorrow for more!