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.

In THE beginning (6)

It has been a few posts since we looked at arche. We are almost ready to posit a functional rule for the New Testament books. For it to function outside of the canon would require more research and some tweaking that I am not sure I have the time to do.

We have now covered all the singular occurrences of arche, noting the most complex Greek case to be the accusative, to which the John 1:1 arche, has no connection. The most important thing to remember is that John, like most of the New Testament authors, **drop** the definite article when referring to THE beginning. What distinguishes John slightly from the others is the sheer extent to which he does this (lots and lots). The usefulness of a rule is directly proportionate to its power to predict. Yet to try and come up with some kind of rule requires also looking briefly at the plural.

Orchai (plural nominative), archais (plural dative) and Archas (plural accusative) occur in total 10 times. We have no occurrences of the plural genitive in the New Testament. In only one of the ten occurrences, is there an implied definite article as we can observe in the singular, and these are nearly all from Pauline epistles and used to imply "principalities" or "rulers", which we have already seen negates the implied definite article even in the singular. A new and somewhat obscure meaning pokes its nose into the discussion thanks to Luke: two of the four occurrences of archais are anarthrous and mean "corners". OK!

So what of the tenth plural that **does** drop the "THE" in Greek, while preserving its articular meaning/emphasis? This is an important point, because it really helps us shed light on the Hebrews writer's methodology. Here is the verse Hebrews 1:10, which is a direct quotation from the LXX, that we reference as Psalm 102:25 (in the Septuagint this is 101:26):

In [the] beginning[s], Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

Unfortunately, neither the NIBC commentary I have been mainly using, written by Donald Hagner, nor any of the online commentaries, make any effort to explain why a plural lurks beneath this "beginning". My brief forays into the word show that the LXX translators had probably understood from a significant number of Hebrew scriptural sayings (and their own usage of Hebrew as bilingual translators), lə·p̄ā·nîm usually refers to "formerly" or even "the former times" (plural, see Ruth 4:7). This may mean that the English translation here is a bit misleading.

But the key point is that while the Hebrews writer has consistently shown that he does not write like John and the others (who do drop the definite article), here is the one time that we have him writing arche simply by quoting the Old Testament in the version he is most familiar with - the Greek (LXX) version. Hebrews is recognised as being probably the most polished Greek in the New Testament. The writer is careful and all of his quotations are precise. So when he copies the sacred Scriptures into his letter, it seems a fair assumption that he submits his own grammatical preference to what he considers supremely authoritative. In Hebrews 1:10, therefore, the Hebrews writer suspends his preference for explicitly writing the definite article in honour of precise LXX quotation.

***

Hurrah, now having analysed all occurrences of arche, we will be ready to state our rule!

In THE beginning (5)

Awww, these arche posts are KILLING my stats. Sorry, I promise to leave it soon, I just don't want to leave it unfinished OK? I think this one and then one more and I should be done :)

We are in a series of posts which explore the way in which the word arche functions in the Bible, in order to show that it is absolutely no accident or surprise that John's prologue commences without the definite article "the", which we are later required to add back in English. All of this prepares the way for what I hope one day will be an exploration into the murky world or the anarthrous (article-free) "theos" in John 1:1c. But if I have learned one lesson from my stats, my blog will  most definitely not be the place to give blow-by-blow accounts for that! The image, by the way, is a pictorial reminder that the meanings of ruler and rule, which are also contained in arche in some contexts, can predictably affect the inclusion of the definite article differently to when arche refers to THE beginning.

So let us continue.

Now we have established the New Testament state of the feminine singular usage of arche, which includes both the nominative and dative Greek cases, let us now shift gear to arches. Arches is still feminine singular, but this time it is in the genitive case, indicating possession, or “of” or deriving from [the beginning]. This is by far the most common construction in the New Testament, which provides us with no less than 27 instances, John in particular loves it (...from [THE] beginning). 23 of these 27 are translated THE beginning even though there is no article. Authors concerned are Matthew (19:4, 19:8, 24:21), Mark (10:6, 13:9), Luke (Luke 1:2, Acts 26:4), John (John 6:64, 8:44, 15:27, 16:4; 1 John 1:1, 2:7, 2:13, 2:14, 2:24a, 2:24b, 3:8, 3:11; 2 John 1:5, 1:6), Pauline (2 Thessalonians 2:13), Petrine (2 Peter 3:4). The exceptions here obey the same idea as before: either meaning “rule” (Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 2:10) or a special case of Hebrews (5:12, 6:1), to which we will return.

There is one more singular case we have not yet tackled, and it's tricky: the accusative, archen. Here we have 9 examples: John 2:11, John 8:25, 1 Corinthians 15:24, Hebrews 2:3, Hebrews 3:14, Hebrews 7:3, Jude 1:6. In these nine examples we see that the accusative singular seems to affect the need for the article, because the noun “beginning” is actually predicating something else, rendering it in several examples “first”. E.g. John 2:11 in the NIV reads: “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs [i.e. the first sign] through which he revealed his glory”. 

This first of the nine instances should however be excluded from the study because of textual disagreement. I initially thought and blogged that it did not have the article. But as I looked at the Greek "apparatus", that is to say the strength of manuscript reliability for this verse, (that I could not easily account for), it hit me: there is a textual argument for the inclusion in John 2:11 of the article, which would maybe make more sense in the context of the accusative case. RP Byzantine Majority Text 2005, Textus Receptus, Greek Orthodox Church 1904 all witness a written definite article. 

Hebrews 2:3 is our first instance of relatively textually undisputed texts of the singular accusative. The Hebrews author, as I keep hinting, is exceptional in the way he articulates ARCHE. Here, however, he omits the article in order to say “first announced” (a few older or literal translations preferring “a commencement” etc. are most clearly off the mark and also constitute a very small minority). Notice how announced is not a noun, unlike the first sign in John 2:11.

Curiously, John 8:25 and Hebrews 3:14 are articular while providing a similar meaning. Why would Hebrews 2:3 differ from 3:14, and John 2:11 from 8:25 if in both cases they are identical words and case and by the same author? Good question, I don't know exactly. But they must not be grouped together in this way. John is thus far extraordinarily consistent in his anarthrous use of arche (nominative and dative) and arches (genitive). John always expresses “the beginning” without the article. So the first question is why would he in 8:25 exceptionally include the article when in the dozens of other occurrences it is always avoided? I am not sure. A truly thorough word study would need to look into that further.

Notwithstanding the final remarks reserved for the author of Hebrews, the final Hebrews occurrence of 7:3 seems to be anarthrous for it does truly (and rarely) refer to an indefinite beginning: Melchizedek had neither “a beginning” nor “an end” (nor “a father nor a mother”).

1 Corinthians does lack the article but is talking about “all rule”, and finally, Jude is anarthrous in a similar way to the John 2 and Hebrews 3 examples (predicate nouns, which appear to defer article usage to the predicated noun).

In summary: If we were working from the accusative alone, we would clearly be unable to make much progress! It does however contribute to the emerging picture on Hebrews and does open the tricky issue of predicate noun behaviour which will concern, one day, any study into John 1:1c.

In THE beginning (4) [updated 11/1/16]

So now we turn away from identical occurrences to the other feminine singular arche constructions (we will not spend any more time on the LXX from now on).

First let us look at the other feminine singular examples that we excluded last time since they lacked the preposition “en”. As we do this, we will discover an additional meaning of the word. For whereas we always translate en arche by “in the beginning” in English, arche (and other cases) can sometimes mean “rule” or even “ruler”. Here then are the other New Testament examples of arche without “en”:

Matthew 24:8 and Mark 13:8 (nominative singular)
GRK: δὲ ταῦτα ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων 
NAS: these things are [the] beginning of birth pangs

Mark 1:1 (nominative singular)
GRK: ΑΡΧΗ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου
NAS: [The] beginning of the gospel of Jesus

EXCEPTION Luke 20:20 (dative singular)
GRK: αὐτὸν τῇ ἀρχῇ καὶ τῇ
NAS: that they [could] deliver Him to the rule and the authority

EXCEPTION? Colossians 1:18 (nominative singular)
GRK: ἐστιν [ἡ] ἀρχή πρωτότοκος ἐκ
NAS: the church; and He is the/[the] beginning, the firstborn

EXCEPTION Revelation 3:14 (nominative singular)
GRK: ἀληθινός ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κτίσεως
NAS: Witness, the Beginning of the creation

EXCEPTION Revelation 21:6 & 22:13 (nominative singular)
GRK:  ἡ ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ…
NAS: the beginning and the end.

My assurances of consistent dropping of the article are looking seriously doubtful on the face evidence of these passages. Of the 8 other feminine singular arche verses, only three seem to maintain the “rule” that the “the” is implied and not written: that’s less than half.

No it’s not. So far we have seen an actual total of 12 feminine singular occurrences: 7 of these imply the article silently. Of these 7, 4 state “en arche”. Still, you might say 7 out of 12 is still not that impressive evidence. Actually, it is meaningless. We have already established that exact matches are 100% consistent. It could well be argued that without the preposition “en”, that the definite article is simply optional. As a Greek writer of antiquity, you could throw it in or leave it out and no-one would mind or notice either way. My case would not be jeopardised.

But, despite that safety net, we can actually connect the articles to a specific function in at least three of the five “exceptions”. Furthermore, as we look at other configurations of arche, we will see that a very strong case will still emerge for anarthrous arche notwithstanding the exempting circumstances we will look at now.

Firstly, Luke 20:20, is consistently translated into English by “rule”, not “beginning”. In a later post we will do a study on the Greek words for “ruler”, whereupon we will see that this meaning is highly obedient to the more common rules: anarthrous = indefinite & articular = definite. So Luke 20:20 is constructed with the article because “the rule” behaves differently to “the beginning”.

Secondly, Colossians 1:18. Unfortunately this verse will not get us very far, as the manuscripts do not agree: some have the definite article, and some don't. Furthermore, the presence or absence is not strongly contended by textual critics who focus their energies elsewhere so it is difficult to say more than the immediate appearance is that both options are viable. For me it is also impossible to decide.

If the article is present, arche might well be functioning qualitatively or again as “the ruler”. See how in Greek it immediately precedes the word for “firstborn”. In English we separate the two with a comma (“…he is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead”), but this qualitative use could allow for the article to be attached to "the firstborn" rather than "the beginning". However, an even more plausible explanation can be found, in my eyes, when we integrate how arche is generally used in in this epistle. Bearing in mind the shrinking numbers of New Testament scholars still attributing the epistle to genuine Pauline authorship, we should not take lightly that ALL the other declinations of arche in Colossians refer to rule, rulers, principalities, and so on. Colossians 1:18 would be the only exception. If this case were to be worked out more fully, then a translation could legitimately go more along the lines of he is the ruler and the firstborn from among the dead. In either case, the inclusion of the article could thus be explained. 

If the article is not present, then Colossians 1:18 would definitely read THE beginning and would be in line with the overall New Testament usage that we are observing.

The final explicable articular arche is Revelation 3:14. This time, a whole swathe of translations also make the connection with the idea of “the ruler” or “the head”: ERV, EXB, ICB, NCV, NIRV, NIV, WEB, YLT. The NIV gives: “the ruler of God’s creation”. Interestingly, The Message has chosen to echo Proverbs 8 language and go with the qualitative “first”, which is probably not quite right.

So in actual fact we are only really left with one phrase from the very end of the last book of the Bible, in Revelation 21:6 and 22:13: “the beginning and the end”, where both "beginning" and "end" are articular. I would not want to presumptuously assume that there is in fact nothing to be said about the articular use here. One possibility that will later emerge when we look at Hebrews is that within the writings of one author, a preferred expression might be adopted for particular purposes. On the assumption that it is at least possible, many would say distinctly possible, that the author of Revelation may not be the same human being as the author of John’s gospel, we might note that there are simply no occurrences of anarthrous arche in any declination, whether meaning beginning or rule/ruler. Another explanation might be an attempt at keeping the powerful statement balanced; could it not have appeared strange to emphasise the article of “the end” while omitting the article of “the beginning”?

To sum up: without the preposition, the singular arche does not follow the implied article rule when used to mean “rule” or qualitatively. Usage in Revelation is too limited to develop but opens the possibility to author preference.

This concludes my discussion on the singular noun construction for nominative and dative cases, but it should just be noted before closing the post that Greek case does not yet appear determinant. Of the anarthrous instances of arche with implied article, we see represented both dative and nominative cases, although nominative presents more articular instances (it is interesting to note that the nominative Mark 1:1, while lacking the “en” is being used to initiate Mark’s account in much the same way as “en arche” in the four New Testament examples and Genesis 1:1 & Jeremiah 26:1 in the LXX). We will continue to track this as we proceed now to the other two Greek cases for this word: genitive (very consistently dropping the article) and accusative (difficult to track).

In THE beginning (3)

So far I have set out my conclusion that the lack of article in John 1:1 before “beginning” is normal despite the fact that we translate it into modern languages with the definite article. It’s time to see what I base that on and how we can deal with the few exceptions.

The first place to start is to ask ourselves: do we see the exact phrase en arche ever separated by the definite article? Here, where it matters most, we have total agreement: no. This expression is simply the way to express “In the beginning” and our three other biblical examples include the author in question, John, as well as both Paul and Luke. These are the New Testament examples (I will briefly cover the LXX afterward), all of which are in the dative case like John 1:

NO ARTICLE John 1:1 N-DFS
GRK: ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗ ἦν ὁ
NAS: In the beginning was the Word,
KJV: In the beginning was the Word,
INT: In [the] beginning was the

NO ARTICLE John 1:2 (dative singular)
GRK: ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν
NAS: He was in [the] beginning with God.

NO ARTICLE Acts 11:15 (dative singular)
GRK: ἡμᾶς ἐν ἀρχῇ 
KJV: …us at [the] beginning.

NO ARTICLE Philippians 4:15 (dative singular)
GRK: ὅτι ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου
KJV: in [the] beginning of the gospel,

This might seem like scant evidence – do not worry! There is much more to come as we widen out to other cases and configurations. But here we have four exact matches (including John 1:1) across three of the most represented New Testament authors, John, Paul and Luke.

What about the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament? Are there any instances of an articular arche in this form, i.e. en + article + arche ? Here we must concede one, and it is obscure. It is in Daniel 9:21, and is not translated as “in the beginning” at all. 

Firstly, I do not have access to textual variations on article inclusion/exclusion for Daniel 9:21 in the LXX. Scribes definitely do play around with articles a little in subsequent centuries so it is a possibility that the articular version we read today was not originally articular.

Secondly, when you look up the Hebrew word used in Daniel here, בַּתְּחִלָּה֙ it is not the same word as used in the Hebrew, original, version of Genesis 1:1 בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית, to which all scholars would agree there is at least some connection for John’s prologue writer. And yes, before you ask, the LXX also does indeed commence Genesis with the anarthrous “En arche” (no article). The Hebrew used for this idea is found in three other locations in the Old Testament, all of them in Jeremiah. However, only one of these, Jeremiah 26:1, is translated in the LXX as “En arche”. The other two Jeremiah references seem to show evidence of serious textual corruptions, I presume, into the Septuagint tradition because the book of Jeremiah seems to differ generally and significantly beyond this point between the Hebrew and its Greek translation. I should look into this more, but it is no longer of relevance to the current investigation.

So far, so good: En arche in Greek = In THE beginning.

But that should not satisfy, as we need to look at arche in its other forms and without the preposition “en”, which could affect how the need for the article applies is in Greek. However, we shall see that there too, a distinctive pattern will still emerge, albeit with a few more explainable exceptions.

In THE beginning (2)

In the previous post I established that the key question in understanding a word is not why, but how or when. I already informed you that I am also particularly interested in the Greek word arché, which has been understood to mean various things from beginning, the beginning, first (adjective function), corner, principality, rule, ruler. That's quite a swathe.

I am particularly curious about this word because of John 1:1 and John 1:2, where it is sometimes argued (and I certainly thought) that we cannot develop sophisticated grammatical ideas on the critical anarthrous (article-free) theos in John 1:1 because Greek articles are basically unpredictable.
In English, if we want to show that a noun is not just any old one of that thing, but it is the thing in view, we must add the article "the". In plural form, that "the" becomes "these" or "those". You know that. In Greek, the word "the" has a gazillion different variants because the Greek language functions with cases. When it is used, the author is being just as specific as we are with our definite articles.

That said, it sometimes is used when we would not, because for us proper nouns, like "Mary" already carry that specific unique sense - unless of course there are two ladies called Mary in view, and one specific Mary needs identification: (pointing to a photo) "This is the Mary you met, she is called Mary Jones; the other Mary is Mary Smith.

New Testament Greek varies here: sometimes "Jesus" has the definite article, which in English is totally superfluous since we do not have two "Jesuses" in view. Another example is God: ho theos, the One True God, whom many Trinitarian scholars will concede is God the Father (there are no tripersonal usages of "theos" or "ho theos" to my knowledge in the New Testament). See John 17:3 for a great example.

And what about the indefinite article? In English, when a noun is indefinite, we simply add "a", "an" or "some", n'est-ce pas? "I picked up a pebble to toss into the sea". Well here in Greek there is a big shift, because they simply add... NOTHING!

So the temptation can be to say, well, because this or that noun has no article, it is therefore indefinite. That is what the Jehovah's Witnesses have basically done, it would seem, with the anarthrous theos in John 1:1. So they say: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a god. And of course the Christian world goes into uproar at this because of the way JWs have "meddled" with the text. (By the way, I am not convinced at all by JW theology, I only care what the Bible - and Biblical authors - taught and thought). Careful Christians, I unashamedly like to consider myself in this group, also note that they did not start their translation of John's prologue with: "Once upon a time", i.e. in a beginning. We say: surely those JWs must have been allowing their theology to bias their exegesis here, because for the first anarthrous noun, which is arché; they add the THE: In THE beginning, while the anarthrous theos connected to the Word, the logos, is "demoted" to "a god". Could you be any more inconsistent?!

This is how the verse looks with its articles:

In [the] beginning was THE word and THE word was with THE God and [the?] God was THE word.

I am now going to steer away from the highly sensitive anarthrous theos question, and focus on this word arché. Could it be that in my own dislike for some of JW theology and bias, that I was clutching at arguments like the anarthrous arché? Yes, that is precisely what happened.

In the next post I will start to show how the omission of the definite article before arché is ABSOLUTELY NORMAL AND CONSISTENT. There is nothing random about it and it is utterly consistent with how this word arché can be seen to function throughout the New Testament, and even in the Septuagint (LXX). What that means is that if we had significant textual variation in the manuscripts between "In the beginning" and "In [the] beginning", i.e. we didn't know what the prologue originally said, then we would very confidently deduce that an early copyist had changed the text he was copying, inadvertently or deliberately, to ADD the definite article, not to delete it.

That was just a hypothetical textual variation by the way! The manuscripts agree: no article.

At some other stage, maybe, I will delve into the anarthrous theos question, but it is a much bigger project. One argument that will be scrapped however is the necessary unpredictability of usage of articles based on the anarthrous arché in the same verse.

In THE beginning: COULD it be true?!

When looking at the New Testament, we get excited when we see a pattern emerging in Greek usage. It may not be a pattern that makes sense, but then we can rest assured that we are talking about a real human language here and not some robotic theoretical communication system for which there is simply no evidence among the languages of man. I am going to discuss the Greek word arché, in the next post or two, but let us first take a moment to see how important it is to understand the irrelevance of the why question. What we want to know is how does word A mean X and therefore what in fact does A mean? Sometimes to achieve this we go a step further with "when": When does word A mean X and when does word A mean Y? Why is not relevant. Why do we have the same word "could" in English for meaning A and for meaning B??

Meaning A: I could purchase the garage if I took out a loan.

Meaning B: I could purchase the garage because I took out a loan.

"Could A" is the conditional of the modal "can", and is not yet settled. I may choose to take out the loan, or I may not choose to do so. It is open.

"Could B" is the past tense of the modal "can", it is utterly settled, unchangeable and in the past. To combine the conditional and past, I am required to go down the wordy route of: I would have been able to purchase the garage if I had taken out a loan.

Imagine a thousand years from now if English were to change dramatically - and it most certainly will - and that this kind of usage had faded out. Researchers in this future age are desperately peering back into our time to try to understand quite how this strange word "COULD" actually worked. In different contexts, it seemed to function very differently. Sometimes it seemed totally settled. Sometimes it seemed very open. Then they might stumble on their "Ah ha!-moment" as the rule - our rule - began to emerge. It would be a much less useful exercise for these researchers to try to figure out quite why "COULD" functioned the way it did, for their primary motivation is to exegete the meaning of the sentences containing the defunct word.