Fatscript Podcast Episode 8: Joel

Totally chuffed to co-host today with my brother, Josh! Remember, my book chapter is out! Check it out here.  Did you like the transition music? Check out the whole song here and even download it for free! Thanks for listening!

2 Corinthians 3:16 and Luke 1:16 --> the LORD in the New Testament continued...

I have already mentioned the distinct possibility that the passage written by Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 is distinctly Yahweh-esque (please refer to that post here).

Noting how the context of this explanation of Paul is firmly and immediately rooted in the story of the Israelites and that Kyrios (LORD) lacks the article in 4 out of 5 occurrences, I proposed the following translation:

But whenever anyone turns to LORD, the veil is taken away. 17 Now LORD is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of LORD is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate LORD's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from LORD's Spirit.

I showed through comparison with some other passages that the lack of the article before the first LORD is very suggestive, as we have elsewhere in the undisputed Pauline corpus (e.g. 1 Thes 1:9) the same verb and same suffix with the article for Theos.

This is pretty standard practice for stacks of Old Testament declarations about Israel's God. "Yahweh, the God of Israel". Or "Yahweh, the God of us", and so on.

In Greek, of course, this goes: Kyrios (LORD), the God of Israel".

Today I stumbled over even more evidence in favour of my hypothesis that Kyrios is deliberately anarthrous, and therefore referring back to the God of Israel and not specifically to Jesus.

I tried running this search: πρὸς κύριον (to LORD). In the New Testament, this occurs once. However you will see below the exact hit there are also the indirect hits, for πρὸς τὸν κύριον (to the Lord).

A second piece of evidence in favour of capitalisation of LORD in this passage (or even applying Yahweh), is that a similar Greek word behaves the same way and with the same case (accusative): ἐπὶ κύριον. This also means "to LORD" or, at the very least "to the LORD". The context of the only hit (Luke 1:16) here makes it staggeringly plane that capitalisation would be a clearer rendering if the article is kept (which it isn't in the Greek):

He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.
NIV

In my view, this should probably read at the very least:
He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the LORD their God.

The challenge of course is being consistent in the more ambiguous instances.

Please note that in line with Larry Hurtado, I am not suggesting that there is an ultra-neat match of
ARTICLE + KYRIOS = Lord Jesus
KYRIOS (NO ARTICLE) = Yahweh

However, as Hurtado recognises in God or Jesus? Textual Ambiguity and Textual Variants in Acts of the Apostles, there is correlation ("In the majority of their 70 (or so) uses in Acts, the arthrous-singular forms of κύριος are applied unambiguously to Jesus", p. 2, you can read it for yourself here). This ambiguity he traces in Acts is fascinating and I will at some point review it on this blog when I have finished processing it all.

John's gospel: "the Lord"

A crazy-short post today as I'm mega busy. I did procrastinate just long enough to check all the mentions I could find of the English rendering "the Lord" in John's gospel.

Every single one that was specifically referring to Jesus was arthrous. This means that Kyrios, the Greek translation for our word "Lord", is systematically translated with the definite article in John's gospel when referring to Jesus.

This cursory glance is suggestive of different usages of "Kyrios" in the Bible, where Yahweh is often translated "Kyrios", but without the article.

Since these gospel citations are likely emmanating from a later stage of 1st century understanding, given common dating of John's gospel, it seems that this usage is Jesus' earth-ministry title accorded and remembered by his disciples. The name that he inherited as the Son of God (see Hebrews 1:4) is probably a quite different kettle of fish.

A case for development of my position on earlier-is-better: the Divine Name

Some may have noticed that I have been interested in what is sometimes referred to as "the Divine Name". According to the Bible, God revealed himself to Moses that he could say that I AM sent him (Exodus 3:14). Somehow (certainly similar Hebrew letters) this became something like "Yahweh".

Psalm 83:16 and 18 confirm something quite special and, well, you might say basic, but the Divine name really is confirmed as Yahweh... **IN HEBREW**. So why on Earth do most Bibles not stick with that, a name's a name, right? Well, there is some real textual and Jewish history to get into. One key element is that not all the displaced Jewish communities would later speak Hebrew. Before Christ, several (at least six) Greek translations were undertaken. We have but shreds of textual evidence about these early translations, but one thing is very clear: translation of the Divine name was a most delicate task. Not only that, but the Pentateuch passages pertaining to the non-profaning of God's name (e.g. see Exodus 20:17) were corrupted somehow into Greek - probably out of reverence for the Holy God - so as to no longer read don't profane (or misuse) God's name (otherwise you'll die), but don't even mention it (or you'll die). Various textual solutions were offered (although for oral practice scholars are still left mainly guessing), although none of the scant shreds I mentioned include Kyrios ("LORD", even though one of them has a space that some scholars think could have been exactly filled with the Greek letters).

So how is my viewpoint widening? Well, with regard to New Testament exegesis, I have always felt a strong allegiance to the earliest textual form found. A new earlier manuscript may shed light on an earlier form of the text, and maybe even alter the text. With respect to authorial intention, I have also been consistently against any form of eisegesis whatsoever. Earlier is better.

But the Divine Name case represents an interesting problem for the Protestant biblical student. Is it possible that the earliest form of the text is NOT always the most biblical and preferred rendering?

Compare LXX Psalm 83:16 and 18 to Hebrews 1:4. It is the same word used for "name" in both cases. We should remember that the Hebrews author is consistently quoting and particularly faithful to the LXX text (see my evidence to that effect in examining the ARCHE evidence here). I don't think we have any reason to believe that he even knew Hebrew or Aramaic. So, when he talks about "the name that he inherited", I now believe he might well be referring to Kyrios (anarthrously), because that IS the Divine Name he seems to know. (No-one I know of is arguing that Yahweh got translated to Kyrios because of Jesus!!). Jesus is the Son of God (Hebrews 1:5). Being begotten of your father gives you his name, be that naturally or otherwise, and with the name comes special inheritance of the first born.

If Kyrios has a special role to play in connecting the Old and New Testaments, and exegeting the Old with (and without) the New Testament layering, then it seems more than legitimate to consider the preservation of the later tradition of Kyrios, albeit only anarthrously (I.e. ditching the "the" in "the LORD" in the Old Testament and "the Lord" in the New when demonstrably linked to Yahweh). The fact I still don't budge on the issue of articles does mean that I have a serious translation problem. The article is undeniably helpful to flow in some sentences, like calling on the name of the LORD. But I insist we can no longer do away with Biblical tradition when it purposefully maintains the linguistic properies of a name, even when guised in a title. After some practice in the Psalms, I am already getting used to the anarthrous LORD.

So I prefer calling on LORD's name. See, for example, what Luke does with this translation when he writes Acts 2:21. There is no "the", and there is not even a "[the]".

Of course, and I hope I have fully died to any sense of Greek slobbery, this could just be an untranslatable problem. My preference for awkward English is that it highlights the intended preservation of the name, and who knows, potentially awkward Greek too. It also will help distinguish intended Yahweh references from more day-to-day usages of Lord.

Larry Perkins: paper review

I am currently researching the Divine Name in the Greek Old Testament, very curious to understand how we ended up with "the LORD", and the implications that confusing title and name might have in our theology. Dr. Larry Perkins is a very well-read Christian scholar, President of North-West Baptist Seminary, Canada, and provides a valuable contribution to the debate around the Greek Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament. He specialises in the Old Testament book Exodus, and if you are interested in seeing the original I am responding to in this post, you can consult it for yourself here.

The conclusions to his paper are threefold.

Firstly, he affirms and demonstrates that the very common translation for YHWH is kyrios, without the definite article (absence of "the"), and that this strongly implies a consistent grammatical rendering for a name. Although only looking in detail in Exodus, there are still hundreds of samples to work with, and Perkins shows that of the exceptions to the rule (i.e. those times where Kyrios is articulated), it is well within the norms, at approximately 6%. Other names like "Israel", "Moses" etc have similar percentages of articulated translations in the Greek.

Secondly, it is therefore for Greek reasons, not for Hebrew reasons, that the articulation occurs, implying even more consistent intention - I would say anything from 95% to 100% of Kyrios occurrences with reference to YHWH - that Kyrios is a translation of the divine Name, and not a (or the) divine Title when translating Yahweh (there are a few instances - not many - of Adonai in the Pentateuch, that need separate consideration).

Thirdly, Perkins is confident that the original translator of the LXX applied "Kyrios", anarthrously of course. On this third point, however, there seems to be an underlying assumption in Perkins (and possibly some of the other work done in this area - I need to re-check Martin Rosel's benchmark piece) that overstates the translator/copyist distinction. Like Rosel, he covers some of the complicated historical issues. The most critical of these is a lack of explicit textual support for a pre-Christian rendering of Kyrios in the Old Testament, although various explanations can be provided for this, which I may summarise in another post. My view on this is that without further evidence, we need to adopt a more fait accompli approach to this complex translation process, whereby Kyrios, without the article, emerges as a suitable translation for the divine Name. The meaty question remains: why in English and other modern languages is the carefully preserved name converted back to a title? It's an historical question that will take us back at least to the KJV.

FYI: Perkins includes an interesting footnote on the last page of his paper. It reads: "The reasons why the Greek translators of the Hebrew text chose kyrios as the rendering of the divine name remain somewhat unclear. It is quite possible that the use of this term within Egyptian documents to describe the Pharaoh and divine beings gave its use in the Jewish Alexandrian community for YHWH."

Trinities episode 132:10 Apologists’ Mistakes about the Trinity – Part 2

This week I have responded to Dale Tuggy's podcast regarding apologist's mistakes arguing for the Triune God. It's a good episode and very clearly organised as usual, although I think points 1 and 4 could have possibly been combined.

If you are interested (and to make the most sense of my questions to Dale), please check out the episode here :)

Mistake 5. New fangled slogans and grandiose claims

"Gospel and Trinity inseparable". For small-t trinitarians could this not actually be the case? I think it is my case.

4. Dubious proofs of the Trinity from reason
Fallacy: God is perfectly loving only if God is perfectly loving? Is it not rather the fallacy that "God is perfectly loving only if He can be seen to be perfectly loving, i.e. love has to be worked out? I think it is to assume that he has an opportunity to express that love. Is the fallacy not then that this is to presume that God requires the same opportunities to validate that loving characteristic. I cannot really know if I am loving if I do not see it working in my life because I am developmental. God surely is not developmental, right? Also, a ("previously") timeless God still knew that in time he would fully demonstrate his immeasurable love perfectly. That perfect foreknowledge was with Him, correct?

Honesty on a desert island example. Is he compassionate? He might be. Is **might** be enough? Might he also NOT be? Not being God, how can he (or any secret observer) even know? It is not at all obvious to me that he can be said to *be* honest, except perhaps with respect to self-honesty, or honesty within himself (i.e. between his conscious and unconscious).

I think I am "yes" for the fallacy, and "no" for the desert island. :)

3. Speculation about atonement. Agreed.

2. Confusing Trinity with the deity (or even full deity) of Christ. Logos theories were saying this. Is this not also when Docetism hit, which is often confused with God Almighty coming as visible Spirit but not as flesh?

You say: "Originally the Psalm was addressed to a King". Here you were referring to the Psalm referenced in Hebrews 1:8, Psalm 45. Who would have thought those psalm introductory notes would have had an effect on Christology!? But I think they do. So the question I am wrestling with and I ask you if you have had any insight, is could there be confusion (prior 1st century) regarding the addressee of Psalm 45? In several non-Psalter contexts, the words translated "of David" are "to David". But in quite a few places in the Psalms it does seem correctly rendered "of David". If it is correctly David writing, then how natural was it for Israelite kings to address other humans, even their sons, as their Lords? Are there other possibilities, e.g. re-ordering and compiling the psalter resulting in confused introductory comments? This theory has problems because of how Jesus interpreted it - that David is indeed the speaker, even though he definitely doesn't sound like it to me. I'd be really interested to hear your views on this!

1. Linguistic sophistry, echad and Elohim. I actually think this point is quite similar to 4. Is the Schema not more appropriately understood as "YHWH alone"? Why on Earth would it say "YHWH is One"? There are some very obvious reasons for declaring within the Israelites community that there is no space for more than one god.

Out of respect for the Divine name, YHWH is not transliterated but they just replaced it with The Lord. Hurtado blogged about this, citing especially John William Wevers' research into Kyrios in the LXX: "confirming that YHWH is overwhelmingly rendered by forms of kyrios without the definite article (“anarthrous” forms).  In contrast, forms of the word with the definite article (“articular”) are preferred to translate references to other figures who hold a lordly position in the narratives.  As one example, check out Genesis 39:2-3, where the LXX has κυριος (without article) for YHWH consistently, and articular forms of κυριος to translate references to the human/Egyptian “master” in the narrative." (https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/yhwh-in-the-septuagint/)

So regarding the Rule of thumb (unless NT is quoting the OT, the Lord is referring to the Lord Jesus), I wonder if there might be an extra tweak (or simply confirmation) available there to us through the anarthrous kurios data.

Key notions defined series: 5. God

Having completed my main review of the New Testament (and some Old Testament) texts, cataloguing almost 500 passages, I am "celebrating" that milestone by publishing a part of the paper that helps me in the processing and weighing of these texts, which is currently entitled Chapter 2: Key Notions Defined. It also is an opportunity for me to tidy up these definitions. Here is the next one:

God

“Oh my God, she’s beautiful!” exclaimed the younger sister to her older sister, Millie, cradling the new-born baby in her arms.

“O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame”, writes the Psalmist 3000 years ago, pleading to Israel’s all-powerful, universe-creating, divine council-presiding and nation-founding God, Yahweh, to keep his country and people.

What we mean when we say a word like “g-o-d” can vary a lot (see “Deity”). One of the questions of this paper is do we understand that the “God” of Paul is the same “God” of Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa and the other fourth century religious authorities, and if it is redefined what does that mean for us?

Dr. Carl Mosser also informs us that the word God – θεός or theos, in Greek – might not originate in Greek as a being. In early antiquity it was frequently used in an adjectival sense, i.e. of that divine realm. For Greek-speaking Jews who carried belief in Yahweh, ultimate supreme creator and presiding among the heavenly council (Psalm 82), the fullest sense of theos in the first century was of “that ultimate one, the God of Israel” when prefixed by “ho” (the). However, because theos does not originate in Hebrew, but in Greek, it seems possible that it came to be used increasingly as a noun with the expansion of its empire into Jewish areas. Mosser notes that the earlier more generic sense was not instantly replaced and that in the first century both usages could be happily used alongside, relying on context to communicate the intended meaning. Dr. Winfried Corduan, who makes an interesting case for original monotheism (that monotheistic religions did not “evolve” from a pantheistic root), might take issue with this slow shift in usage from one language into another.

Dr. Paula Fredriksen is also in agreement with Mosser, however, that we need to be careful about the application of words like “deity” and “god” in the early Christian era. In the ancient world, it was a commonly held view, monotheistic cultures included, to see other divine gods as present and active, but that towering above them all was the one True God, the Creator of all things.

The Old and New Testaments, with a possible few exceptions, like Isaiah, seem to accept and presuppose the existence of other gods, and yet Christians are often sheltered from this more ancient form of monotheism. Indeed, Psalm 82 and other Old Testament passages  would suggest a more plural divine picture, but all the same: allegiance and worship were reserved for God Almighty, El Shaddai, as shown in Exodus 6:3 as YHWH.

Some of the most famous words in the Old Testament are the ten commandments given to Moses, and the very first, and possibly most important of these seem to pre-suppose other gods:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God (Exodus 20:3-5).

Another final point we stumble over a few times in the paper is the issue of this definite article preceding “theos”: ho (the). In Greek, you get a strong idea of the subject being a specific being when this definite article is used, i.e. “ho Theos”. First century believers – like Arabic-speaking Christians in North Africa to this day – are quite comfortable about saying “the God” all the time. When it is without the article, well, that is a big debate!

DID GOD DIE

?

Psalm 110 - clear as mud!

Gosh, despite Jesus, 1st century authors, 4th century fathers and most of christianity finding this passage amazing, I am so confused by Psalm 110!

Firstly, we have some copyists to thank from the inter-testamental period for collapsing YHWH into Kyrios, thanks for that, so now we have, in both old and new testaments “The Lord/LORD says to my Lord”.

I am glad to know this is nothing like what the original sounded like, because now it just sounds nuts.
YHWH said to my Lord already gives me something to stand on, but I need it for what is next.
We would love to think that David was seeing some kind of super messiah vision and talking directly to Jesus, right? So what is with verse 5? The Lord (not LORD) is at your right hand. Is the first-person-psalm recounter now talking to someone else? Is he in fact now praying to YHWH? Who is the author to inform YHWH about the Lord (lowercase) crushing kings on the day of his wrath?
It’s been clear to many - to me only as mud!