Some of the disagreement about origins of the divine Name translation laid out

It is important to ground any research in other research - and all this Divine Name stuff I've been doing has been inspired by a number of scholarly perspectives and articles, that have seeped into my own perspective over time. The downside is it's pretty complex at times and does not all agree, but hopefully we can draw out some of the fascination that is there too (not least because it affects how we understand early perspectives of Jesus' conferred lordship among first and second century Christian communities). Of course, I've already mentioned Larry Hurtado as being one of the key figures that alerted me to the question of the anarthrous rule (no article) in the Greek translation of the Divine Name, Yahweh. I've also referenced already the great LXX scholar, Albert Pietersma, whose comments about indifference on the part of the Septuagint translators between Yahweh and Adonai in Psalms have spurred me on recently to document the different ways in which Yahweh and Adonai are translated into Kyrios in Greek (I have just emailed Dr. Pietersma about the evidence I describe in my post from October 2016 "Why This Research Matters" - if I hear back from him, I'll be sure to fill you in).

John Wevers is also a massive name in this field - he's passed away now, but he was able to respond to the question of the decaying consistency of the Kyrios translation in Psalms with respect to the Pentateuch and some of the other historical Hebrew books (which I have yet to get to). See the Hurtado hyperlink above.

Another contributor to my thought process was Larry Perkin's whose paper, which I reviewed and whose third point about the originality of the anarthrous Kyrios solution to the unpronounceable Yahweh problem, registered on my radar as a fundamental question. If we could demonstrate that the anarthrous solution was most stringently applied in the Pentateuch, but still applied in the other books of the Septuagint canon to a lesser degree, then we could unearth some potentially very interesting information about the Tetragrammaton conundrum as it was rolled out over time and maybe even over geographical locations. For Perkins and Martin Rösel, (see “The Reading and Translation of the Divine Name in the Masoretic Tradition and the Greek Pentateuch,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 31 (2007):  411-28), the translators came up with this directly (or Jewish religious authorities overseeing their Egypt-based translation). Emmanuel Tov, Koog Hong and others disagree, citing the lack of Greek Jewish papyri in support of the Kyrios solution. This problem is significant, and the Rosel camp that I think I belong to have yet to provide a satisfying solution to it, but the Pentateuch's perfection on the rule points to a much earlier placement than Tov and others suggest (he points to what has to be an impossible mechanical replacement of "iao", one of the extant early Greek options).

So with those few references in mind, we are ready to have a look at an interesting contribution by Koog Hong in my next post or two, who reasons in terms of Euphemism.

Adonai vs Yahweh - Two Charts for the One Lord

OF COURSE I am playing on words with my title here. Both "Yahweh" and "Adonai" are pointing to the same Israelite God. But how they are used is my subject of interest here. We started that in my previous post, How does the Adonai cookie crumble? It wasn't too hard to put some of my research into a graphical format, something I don't think I ever tried on this blog before, so here goes in the form of two helpful charts!

Comments

• Until we reach the Psalms, the Adonai data is extremely low: only 46 occurrences total, with an average of 2-3 occurrences per book up to that point.
• In terms of concentration, it's a similar story: only 0.01% of Hebrew words before Psalms are the word "Adonai"; that's an average of 1 word in every 10,000.
• Yahweh is going to be an altogether different story: Up to and including 2 Chronicles, Yahweh (a.k.a "the LORD") is mentioned 3,823 times, an average of over 270 occurrences per biblical book. For these first 14 books, that's an extraordinary average of 1 word in every 84 being "Yahweh".
• The smallest gaps in concentrations occur in Ezekiel, Lamentations and Amos, where Yahweh concentrations vary from triple to double the number of Adonai occurrences. After those three, and excluding the very low Lord-reference books like Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Daniel, the gaps widen suddenly and on a great scale.
• Hopefully, these huge differences will help us realise that when examining the usages, the number one thing to bear in mind is sheer scale, which has a bearing on the comparison aspect of my divine Name research (it is only one aspect, fortunately): the data pool for the Pentateuch is even smaller: 18 Adonai-s against 1,838 Yahweh-s.
• That parameter is significant if, like some LXX scholars like Larry Perkins, we accept that the anarthrous rule was devised at the outset when only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible were translated. 18 is also such a small number for such a large volume, that it might be possible to assert that there were no Adonai in the original Hebrew Pentateuch, these few additions. being added as copies and recensions succeeded the decaying originals, or "orthographs".
• The amount of data I will have available to analyse Adonai with regard to the Greek article will be small, and will require further control data. My research into the anarthrous rule on the Yahweh side has already led me to exclude certain Greek cases: vocative, dative and accusative because of either common necessity or non-necessity of Greek articles, even for names. Fortunately, nominative and genitive are among the most important cases and are those affected by the rule, but we can expect the pool to be made smaller still when analysing articles included with Kyrios as a translation for Adonai.
• Further control data could take the form of the most popular human character of the book and a title other than "Lord" used by the book (the most likely being king and god, possibly both if I can get round to it).
• With the appraisal in hand of how a proper name and a regular title are handled by the translator, we can deduce if Adonai was affected by the rule or not. A halfway position could be indicative of recensional activity (i.e. lesser articles than a title would be expected for the book, but still more articles than Yahweh in the nominative and genitive).

NB data slightly updated to integrate "Adoun" (Strongs H113) when used to refer to God, with a total of 4 such occurrences by my count (Ex 23:17, 34:23, Is 10:33 and Mal 3:1). 

Related posts:

Yahweh's STUFF!

Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: Results
Is Jesus' Other Name "Yahweh" for the first-century church? Part 1: The Data
Why This Research Matters
Larry Perkins: paper review

How does the Adonai cookie crumble?

ADONAI SEEMS TO be as well known as a name for God among lay Christian believers as Yahweh. Both are used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to the Israelite deity, and are both typically translated into English by "Lord", although Yahweh often gets a capitalised treatment of course. Previous posts will explain more about this, but readers are probably aware that I am keen to disambiguate where possible and where intended.

I had planned to plunge readers into the fascinating depths of what I am calling "Yahweh's Stuff" (see Saturday's post), but it makes sense first of all to deal with:
- How was Adonai used by the Hebrews, and how was its use different to that of Yahweh?
- How effectively did the early Greek translators from 3rd century B.C.E. onwards deal with any distinctions or similarities they saw?

Let's take the first question first! Adonai was usually by the Hebrews as a familiar alternative but relatively infrequent reference to their god (and lord). The inflected Hebrew with the plural vowels (Adonai rather than Adoni) is a good guess based on tradition that contextual knowledge would have been sufficient for the Israelites or later Jewish communities to sometimes pronounce one and sometimes pronounce the other. Hang on, weren't they some of the earliest monotheists on Earth? Why the likely plural? It is used in order to magnify the greatness of their god. Thus, the singular form is reserved for earthly lords, thus reducing the number of references to God still further.

Yes, referenced under Strongs H136, while Adonai is used quite a bit, it's maybe much less than you might think if you account for the massive reliance on Ezekiel for its modest numbers: approx. 434 occurrences, of which Ezekiel accounts for half (214 occurrences)! Compare that to Elohim's approx. 2600 occurrences and Yahweh's (and Yah's) approximate 6900 occurrences, we're talking a minor player in the Hebrew parlance for their god. As the Greek translators would recognise, it was used as a title and possessively (e.g. "our Lord") in a way that Yahweh never was. The swathes of biblical data on Yahweh that could have suggested otherwise simply don't contradict this idea, thus reinforcing it.

We should also remember that the Hebrew was not written overnight and by a variety of authors with different Hebrew styles and preferences - as the Ezekiel example should make very clear. So while Ezekiel occupies the most extensive usage, we see that quite a few books never even mention Adonai: neither Leviticus nor Ruth nor 1 Samuel nor 1 nor 2 Chronicles nor Esther nor Proverbs nor Ecclesiastes nor Song of Songs nor Joel nor Jonah nor Nahum nor Haggai. Amos is actually the most Adonai-friendly literature, representing an even greater concentration than Ezekiel: 24 occurrences for a total of only 3027 words (1 occurrence every 126 words; Ezekiel is 1 every 140). But even the Hebrew Bible's most Adonai-friendly text, Amos, has a major preference for Yahweh (1 occurrence every 42 words).

The second question was How did the Greek translators deal with the distinctions? Firstly, as I have extensively stated, Adonai and Yahweh were drawn together when the Greek translators used Kyrios to translate both of them. Secondly, only Yahweh had the firm grammatical signature of the anarthrous rule: stripping away the definite article in a way that is fitting for a name more than a title. This is where I feel I have demonstrated contra NETS leading translator, Albert Pietersma, following my two key discoveries of comparing Yahweh and Adonai translations in the Psalms, the very translation for which Pietersma is directly responsible. This rule was made possible because of the pre-existing Hebrew fact that Yahweh could not be owned, like a title (our Yahweh, etc.). The anarthrous rule did not make Yahweh this way - it *preserved* Yahweh this way. 

The final thing this breakdown should prepare us for is that the Greek lexical units - Yahweh's stuff - are almost entirely avoided in the Adonai translation scenarios. Not quite completely, though as I will show.

That seems like quite a lot of information already for today's post (and it took a while to distil too), so I'll save the actual breakdown for a future post. I hope that both may serve as a useful breakdown and reference.

Related posts:

Yahweh's STUFF!

Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: Results
Is Jesus' Other Name "Yahweh" for the first century church? Part 1: The Data
Why This Research Matters

Yahweh's STUFF!

It's been a "wee while" since I posted, but little by little, my private research into the "divine Name" in the Bible has been picking up some momentum. What is this Name? In the Old Testament, the Israelites made sharp distinctions between their god, Yahweh, and the gods of the surrounding nations with whom they were in regular dispute. One of the major distinctions was that Yahweh was not just a god or their god (although he certainly was that), he was a whole level above: god of gods! 


For Yahweh your god is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.                    Deuteronomy 10:17

These Israelites spoke Hebrew, and the name of the Israelite deity, Yahweh, was written and spoken in Hebrew (יְהוָ֣ה).

Like any being, divine or mortal, Yahweh had...stuff! 

What am I talking about? In the Hebrew bible, from a linguistic point of view, Yahweh owns: Yahweh's face, Yahweh's glory, Yahweh's house (or temple), Yahweh's hand, Yahweh's Angel, Yahweh's words, Yahweh's anger, Yahweh's love, his Spirit, and of course, a Name (... and still a lot more besides!) In addition to these "lexical units", there are some other units that I want to track, combining a few common prepositions like from Yahweh. But what am I tracking exactly?

A couple of years ago it came to my attention that something special happened between the Old Testament and New Testament regarding Yahweh's name, about which I hadn't the foggiest before that time. I already knew that the Hebrew bible (a somewhat loose canon) had been translated into Greek. I'm not sure if I realised that the reason behind this translation was that the Israelites had been invaded and deported into surrounding nations, where they progressively adopted the local language as their primary language, thus rendering their sacred scripture pretty incomprehensible to many. One very important such community of diaspora Israelites was located in Alexandria, Egypt. I'm certain I didn't know that initially, the translation was of the first five books only - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. That's still a very big translation project!

I was clueless that this translation bears some interesting hallmarks of theological understanding and religious practice and discourse, sometimes with clear influence of the Alexandrian context. So, for instance, there are Egyptian loan-words (like "reed" and "basket"), understanding of divine beings as angels had developed and was emphasised. By far my best and clearest scholar on influences on this translation (along with the other books comprising the Hebrew Bible translation into Greek), is Jan Joosten, a faculty member of the University of Oxford, who has over 80 peer-reviewed papers available on the academia.org website here, and the best of these on Egyptian influences is this one. Honestly, the guy's a linguistic genius, basically, and super interesting to read! Some of his conclusions may appear strong, however, and should be read from within a linguistic sepcialist's perspective, e.g. "Although the Greek version was derived from a Hebrew source, it is essentially a text distinct from the Hebrew Bible, with its very own historical, cultural and religious context." (The Library of Alexandria: A Cultural Crossroads of the Ancient World)

Anyway, one of the most interesting and conspicuous shifts was the diaspora Jews' super-exaltation of the name of Yahweh itself. From various sources, we learn that this name itself became as sacred as its referent, such that the translation in Leviticus 24:16 from Hebrew to Greek. This underwent the following modifications:

[A]nyone who blasphemes the name of Yahweh is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death.

Septuagint Greek translation:

Whoever names the name of [the] Lord - by death let him be put to death; let the whole congregation of Israel stone him with stones. Whether a guest or a native, when he names the name, let him die.

Let's be honest and clear. The Jews could have transliterated Yahweh into Greek letters to reflect the precious name in the much-needed language of Alexandrian Greek. But the name was soooo precious, God's intervention soooo hoped for, and his potential extended offense and wrath waaaaay to dear a price to pay, that an alternative was sought. Someone came up with a novel idea: what about "Lord" (in Greek, Kyrios)? But, in order to make it clear who we are talking about here, and that this is indeed a name let's delete the article before "Lord", so it reads like a name? Great idea! And so it was implemented with considerable consistency across those initial five books we know today as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).

Consistency was necessary because in the Hebrew Bible, there were nearly 7,000 occurrences of this Name, but the choice is of infinite importance for those interested in Christian theology, since we know that Jesus is understood as Lord too - exalted and enthroned into divine lordship over heaven and Earth. That's my "hook", I think. I already demonstrated via my publication here, however, that current exponents of explicit deity ascription to Jesus by the first century Christian authors via this Septuagint novelty (Lord, minus the article) cannot be used among their arsenal.

My longer-term project is to potentially challenge the assumption by current leading specialists on the Septuagint (such as Albert Pietersma) that Yahweh did not receive a different treatment to another Hebrew word/title (Adonai) translated by the same Greek word Kyrios. It is also more generally to provide as yet unchartered data for the slippage of this special translation deletion of the article preceding "Lord" once we venture beyond the Pentateuch. I have published some examples of this here: Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: Results.

As I have proceeded, it occurred to me that there are certain lexical units that can affect things too. They might well provide a more robust preservation against this slippage in centuries between the two Testaments represented in the Christian Bible (300-0 BCE), and even help us in some of the more ambiguous usages of Kyrios in the New Testament. 

My basic thrust here is this: ambiguity, where not intended, should be avoided. I want to know what folk meant by Lord. I often do not not know what people mean by Lord today, especially in anglosaxon Christian communities, where a centuries-long tradition of accepting the KJV importation of the Septuagint's Lord, has been sustained via capitalisation (LORD).

Another spinoff piece of research is to map out how the divine Name is rendered by the various Bible societies translation teams in languages spoken and written today.

Related posts:

Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: Results
Is Jesus' Other Name "Yahweh" for the first century church? Part 1: The Data
Why This Research Matters