Vasileiadis not convincing on his "consensus" against Kyrios

[very sorry, I accidentally published a draft version of this post before]

In my last post, we looked at six factors provided by Pavlos Vasileiadis as to why the Hebrew divine Name, possibly pronounced something like “Yahweh” (but we don’t really know!), became unpronounceable in some circles to the point of being a capital offense in the third century AD.

Today I hope we're going to see why it is virtually impossible to justify the idea that it was Christians that came up with the idea of translating the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, into Greek kyrios.

At the point we are up to (p. 58 in the journal), Vasileiadis reconstructs a progression of practice among the desert-based Qumran community, whose writings were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls[1]. These people, our author asserts, went from prohibitions against pronunciation to prohibitions against writing, involving practices of term replacement—first by ‘God’ and ‘Lord’ equivalents and finally by even broader “hedges”, such as “heaven”, “the Holy One,” “the Place,” and “the Name” (the references here are to Stroumsa, A nameless God, 231 and Rösel, “Names of God”, 601, 602), although he will soon point to other possible reconstructions as we shall see. The reader is reminded again that we are not talking about a universal Jewish reticence to pronounce and write Yahweh but rather an apparent majority tendency, since some Jews and non-Jews were still uttering the Name (thus known) as late as into the AD 200s. This brings us to my first point of slight disagreement with Vasileiadis, although it may just be semantics—I’ll have to let you decide.

He states on p. 59, supported by a single quote from 17^th-century theologian Sixtinus Amama, that Christians followed Jews in this reticence to pronounce the Name (in Hebrew). First, that is to my mind too broad an extrapolation from this curiously late source to generalise to the Christian community/communities at large (although I expect Vasileiadis to have other references in mind and I myself can think of one). Second, if the Greek-speaking Christians were in the habit of referring to the kyrios translation option, such as all the New Testament authors manifestly did, then we need to know quite what is meant by this inaudibility Vasileiadis refers to. He is thinking specifically of Hebrew pronunciation, of course. However, is there not an assumption here that all Greek-speaking Jews had a de facto knowledge that kyrios was not the real deal or a full equivalent to it? For Greek-Speaking Christians to not have been using the Hebrew name does *not* necessarily imply that they were relinquishing some right to name their God, even in the most personal sense. This is especially true in light of the careful efforts of the translators or rescensional scribes to preserve the anarthrous character of kyrios in the LXX that I have demonstrated after mapping out all the 6,866 occurrences (at my count) of the LXX Tetragrammaton translations into Greek kyrios (96.5 % of nominative and genitive kyrios translations are anarthrous—Genesis through Malachi)[2].

So, for me, I don’t think this difference in view is pure semantics. Look how Vasileiadis concludes this section: “It became an amassingly settled position that it is impossible for God to have a personal name.” The tension is apparent, however, from his very next sentence: “Nevertheless, one way or another, the proper name of God never ceased from use.” What the paper does not inform us, and perhaps cannot within its scope, is on the capacity of anarthrous kyrios to conceptually carry over both the function and the character of the Tetragrammaton into Greek. That is precisely what anarthrous kyrios seems to have been designed to achieve, both function and character.

Vasileiadis, focussing fundamentally on the Hebrew core, cites an impressive number of sources throughout this fascinating paper, and his rich Appendices bear witness to some extensive levels of textual research and scholarship, a practice he has continued to the present day. So, when he asks, somewhat starkly, if we may “assume that a Hebrew term would have one, and only one, pronunciation spanning across all Palestinian and diasporic Jewish populations throughout this long period?” and “if this were the case for the term in its source language, would there be a basis for the possibility of a unique rendering in the target languages?” he is able to answer in the negative in both instances with some conviction. His evidence of flexibility in pronunciation over time in Hebrew does seem quite credible, especially given the rich variety of attempted Greek transcriptions in particular that he will soon demonstrate[3]. However, it does not factor in a special “slow-down factor” of linguistic evolution that sanctity can clearly exercise on language. This phenomenon is actually demonstrable by Vasileiadis’ own reference to the practice of insertion of paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton into Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible, which some of the authors he will cite agree is actually an archaising tendency[4]. That’s an extraordinary practice right there, but we could also widen out and look at other religious practices for the preservation of holy terminology that are so powerful as to divert translator/scribe reassessment of ongoing suitability. That is precisely my thesis on the maintenance of ‘Lord’ in English Christianity to which I have consecrated a good number of posts and which I am writing up in book form. In short, we could do with some balance between the evolution of sanctified language over and against non-sanctified language over the same time period. Perhaps in light of that research, further informed estimations could be made as to how much the variations in writing truly reflected variations in pronunciation as opposed to simply evolving transcription options.

On the issue of fluctuation and stability, one other thought that occurs to me given what we now know of the slight variation in rates of article inclusion in the LXX preceding kyrios, is that kyrios seems to have been the practice of Jewish scribes/translators over, I would say, at least several generations, such that the archetype of Deuteronomy (virtually no articles, regardless of case), would move to nominative-and-genitive-only for much of the canon, to slightly higher rates of articles in Psalms, Proverbs and a few other books, to zero awareness on the part of the Job translator (kyrios is simply a title). That gives us some stability over time within that particular stream of practice (kyrios translation) and a familiarity among the Greek-speaking Jewish community spanning a good number of years, also clearly signifying existence well prior the advent of Christianity.

With that point in mind, we enter on p. 60 into the section of the paper that is most helpful for my own work on the translation of the Tetragrammaton into Greek (and its implications). Vasileiadis lines up an array of perspectives on when and how the Tetragrammaton was translated, which has really helped me to a) clarify my own view in light of the results of the rates of articles preceding kyrios that I have provided for the whole LXX (Genesis through Malachi) and to b) clearly distinguish that first issue from a secondary issue of nomina sacra development. Before entering into the overview, Vasileiadis’ introductory comment clearly indicates his own scepticism about one significant and ongoing[5] stream of scholarship: that ‘recent discoveries [have] challenged previously long-held assumptions’ (i.e., that kyrios was in the original Greek translation of the Pentateuch). By this, he is referring to an apparently awkward fact for those of us espousing that kyrios is original to the Greek Bible: that there are no pre-Christian manuscripts that use kyrios for the Tetragrammaton[6]. I used to think about that and look at my own data and the NT authors’ clear familiarity with kyrios and rapprochements with the kyrios Jesus (e.g. Romans 10:9–13), and simply say something like ‘we’ve just not been lucky’, ‘look at all the great library burnings that took place in Caeserea and Alexandria in the wake of the fall of the Roman empire’, and ‘look at the sheer scarcity of extant pre-Christian Greek Jewish manuscripts anyway’ (more on this coming in a future post).

Because of the way in which this awkward fact seems to be framed, I thought I was being left to defend the corner that kyrios not only predates the Christian era, but that it has also to be original. But, as we now review the range and progression of views, I now see that affirming that kyrios is pre-Christian does not require me to necessarily affirm that it is original to the first Pentateuch translation of the third century BC. So let’s summarise (and slightly supplement) Vasileiadis’ own summary of the research into this problem as follows (approximately in chronological order and colour-coded to indicate whether kyrios was a) considered original [blue], b) kyrios was considered unoriginal but the question of Christian rendering is left open [purple], or c) kyrios was a later Christian tradition [red]):

W. W. von Baudissin (1929) à kyrios is original to the Greek Bible

W. G. Waddell (1944), published Papyrus Fouad 266 à kyrios was not original, used Hebrew consonants^[7]

P. Kahle (1960) and S. Jellicoe (1968) à kyrios was a Christian innovation (but overreaches by claiming that the manuscript P458 did have the Tetragrammaton written in before it was removed to leave blanks, rather than being initially composed with blanks, which seems to be the majority view).

H. Stegemann (1969/1978) à The Tetragrammaton was originally transcribed/transliterated Ιαω /i.a.o/ —kyrios was therefore not original (similar but not identical to Kahle and Jellicoe).

G. Howard (1977/1992) à *written* kyrios was Christian practice

P.W. Skehan (1980) and M. Hengel (1989) à progression of Ιαω, the Tetragrammaton in square Hebrew characters, the Tetragrammaton in paleo-Hebrew characters and, finally, kyrios. No mention here of Skehan or Hengel fully aligning with the Christian-innovation hypothesis. This is an important contribution since it clearly points out the likelihood that there was [older script later]

A. Pietersma (1984), the same Pietersma who helped me come to resolution on the treatment of adonai translation to kyrios in the LXX about a year ago à kyrios is original.

G.D. Kilpatrick (1985), E. Tov (1998/2004/2008), J. Joosten (2011), and A. Meyer (2014) à Pietersma was mistaken.

J. W. Wevers (2005), a huge name in LXX circles, and M. Rösel (2007) à kyrios is original.

Robert Hanhart (2006) à kyrios is original to the Greek Bible

K. De Troyer (2009) à theos first, kyrios later (not necessarily Christian)

L. Perkins (2008) à kyrios is original (see my Perkins paper review here)

R. Furuli (2011) à kyrios ‘did not replace the tetragrammaton before the Common Era’ (some form of Ιαω)

P. Vasileiadis (2014) à “Truly, the hard evidence available supports this latter thesis”.

But what is “this latter thesis”? In light of such strong disagreement about the progressions chronologically and geographically of the Tetragrammaton, why not accept that there is no “hard” evidence for any particular reconstruction?[8] That would surely not have endangered the overall usefulness of the paper. Or perhaps by “hard”, Vasileiadis is referring to extant manuscripts from the era, in which case he returns us to a place prior to the above discussion, which points out other important variables (like Romans 10). Could “this latter thesis” be that kyrios is not the first offering in the original Greek translation of the Pentateuch as a rendering of Yahweh (that is, a simply negative hypothesis)? Or is it more specifically that a non-translation was used first, followed in a mixed-up fashion by translations, transliterations and “transcription-borrowing”-s? There is certainly no consensus there, as his own research summary points out. More clarity here would have been appreciated, although perhaps we will see maybe a bit more clearly what Vasileiadis means by “this latter thesis” as he begins to illustrate each of the four options faced by Greek scribes and their commissioning religious authorities/communities[9].

But first, I’m going to pitch in! I am lucky to have this extra data to hand of the full anarthrous picture of kyrios in the LXX (seeing the extent of the debate it really is rather startling that no-one else better qualified hasn’t felt the necessity to research this available data as I have done):

J. Bainbridge (2019) à kyrios cannot have been a Christian translation serving the established use we see by the NT authors from the early 50s AD, unless these authors felt authorised for the first time to write that which was previously only spoken anarthrously. This minimum position is well described by various scholars, including G.D. Kilpatrick (1985), already included in the above summary, who stated: “[the Christian tradition] consistently presents us with χυριος. How are we to explain this? Whatever was written in the manuscripts, we may infer that when the text was read aloud in the synagogue or elsewhere χυριος was used.”[10]

But I very strongly doubt that the spoken kyrios by Hellenistic Jews was its only pre-Christian existence. The extraordinarily anarthrous patterns of kyrios in nominative and genitive throughout the Greek Bible (96.5% of these Yahweh translations are anarthrous[11]), and the ways in which the 3.5% of arthrous occurrences are not evenly spread, all point to kyrios either being original (most likely) or as an early written replacement of another proper name, such as Ιαω. But please hear what Rösel and Pietersma are saying to us, because it speaks profoundly to this question: “Pietersma was able to show that the distinctive use and non-use of the article serves to distinguish human kyrioi from the one divine kyrios. His conclusion is that this refined concept cannot be attributed to a mechanically working redaction but to the translators themselves”[12]. I agree, without wanting to stake my life on it. Yes, I do still think the kyrios-is-original contingent are the most convincing, because for a recension to be so wide as to encompass the entire Greek Jewish canon (except Job) requires improbable historical reconstructions. The data is more easily explained by postulating that kyrios is indeed original, thus favouring Pietersma, Wevers, Rösel and Perkins’ additional findings.

To summarise, I think we need to clarify the options for kyrios, and where I stand on each.

1.      Kyrios was written in the original Greek translation of the Pentateuch 3^rd century BC. Likely, but not staking my life on it.

2.      Kyrios came to be written before the advent of Christianity. Extremely likely.

3.      Kyrios was already used at least as a spoken surrogate for the Tetragrammaton by the time Christianity was born: I am certain.

4.      Kyrios was used by the earliest Christians: nearly everyone agrees I think.

It is my position to state in the strongest terms that we have a written Jewish Greek practice of kyrios from which the NT authors carefully avoided straying.

One other point remains, perhaps to be developed in a subsequent post, that nomina sacra is a related but distinct issue. If the well-proportioned gaps (potentially kyrios-sized) found in Papyrus Rylands Greek 458 described by Rösel and dated to the second century BC (making it perhaps the oldest we have) are to allow for either a Hebrew Tetragrammaton or a Greek kyrios — and I agree Meyer’s objections to kyrios will need further investigation — then that is most likely in a non-contracted form: KYRIOS, not KS, thus supporting majority scholarship that nomina sacra were a Christian innovation, even if kyrios was almost certainly not. This distinction is then dismissive of Gertoux’s view that Vasileiadis seems to favour (and showcased on the Wikipedia page Names and titles of God in the New Testament) whereby the two questions are collided. Indeed, Dr. L. Hurtado has expressed to me directly his skepticism of the idea that “YAH” (i.e. Jewish) was a nomen-sacrum preceding the Christian nomina sacra practice (Hurtado’s own view is that Jesus’ Greek name itself was the first to benefit from this practice).

I am not quite sure if Gertoux is the only reason the two issues became entangled for me, but the point is that Jewish Christians could have innovated on nomina sacra, but that does not mean that they had to have been behind the kyrios translation for the Greek Bible’s Tetragrammaton Problem. They most assuredly were not.

Has that summary helped? Hopefully still further clarity will emerge as we look at Vasileiadis’ 4 types of Greek renderings.

APPENDIX: “Arthricity” of Septuagint Yahweh Translations Per Greek Case

As a reference to my research on the LXX rendering of the Tetragrammaton into Greek, I hereby include a slightly snazzier graphical summary:

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[1] Although definitely do check out Norman Golb’s hypothesis (Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, Touchstone, 1996) that the Qumran community could not have produced such a wealth of texts and scribes, thus perhaps more the custodians of the hidden treasures than their producers. He’s not the only one to have since shown some scepticism.

[2] Please see my summarised data in the Appendix below

[3] Even views held by scholars that kyrios is original can accommodate this point on variety. Rösel (2007): “one has to conclude that reading ‘Lord’ was not the only custom employed to avoid the pronunciation of the tetragrammaton in pre-Christian times.

[4] Simply finding paleo-Hebrew at all from these centuries is automatically archaising since paleo Hebrew is from an earlier, pre-exilic time. The authors with whom Vasileiadis is in at least partial agreement will assert an original transliteration into Greek followed by the Tetragrammaton in Paleo Hebrew.

[5] Unfortunately, in Vasileiadis is now mistakenly claiming that there is a “consensus” against any early form of kyrios, sweeping aside the considerable contributions of Pietersma, Perkins, Wevers, Rösel, and (Pietersma has informed me) Robert Hanhart.

[6] That is not to say, however, that there is no evidence. Besides the other problems raised in the present article for the Christian innovation hypothesis, Rösel also notes seemingly unavoidable usage by Aristobulus, citing Exod. 9:3, and the Letter of Aristeas 155 citing Deut. 7:18-19, usage in the Greek scriptures not originating from a Hebrew Vorlage, e.g. Wisdom of Solomon (4:17-18; 9:3) and 2 Maccabees (2:8; 3:33, etc.), and Philo. See Rösel,  M. (2007) The Reading and Translation of the Divine Name in the Masoretic Tradition and in the Greek Septuagint, JSOT, SAGE pp. 424-425

[7] Waddell’s contribution I have found elsewhere as Vasileiadis omits him for some reason.

[8] This was clearly not Vasileiadis’ general momentum of thought, as we can see in his most recent paper on the topic dating to this year, where he states: “the current consensus has shifted towards the view that at least the Pentateuch was not produced under the proscription against rendering the Tetragrammaton in the same way the translators represented the proper names of humans or other divinities.” Vasileiadis, Pavlos D, and Nehemia Gordon. “‘Transmission of the Tetragrammaton in Judeo-Greek and Christian Sources’ («Η Μεταβίβαση Του Τετραγράμματου Στις Ιουδαιο-Ελληνικές Και Χριστιανικές Πηγές»), Accademia: Revue De La Société Marsile Ficin, Vol. 18 (2019). [In Press].” Accademia: Revue De La Société Marsile Ficin, 2019.

[9] Idem: the available evidence for this divine “anonymization” points to a date after the appearance of early Christianity”, p. 3

[10] Kilpatrick, G. D. Novum Testamentum 27, no. 4 (1985): 380-82. doi:10.2307/1560456.

[11] Total count of nominative and genitive kyrios translations is 4,859 of which 4,687 are anarthrous.

[12] Rösel, p. 424, emphasis mine