How does the Adonai cookie crumble? (part 2: Hebrew)

I SHEEPISHLY YET confidently admit my results on Adonai have surprised me, humbled me, and caused me to question how to proceed. Readers may remember that I have already shown in 2016 some results on the book of Psalms that were particularly telling: a diminished faithfulness by the Psalms translators to the "anarthrous rule" principle introduced for the initial Torah translation project, but an Adonai rate of articles that far outpaced the Yahweh "arthricity", and even a special case of ἐπὶ τὸν κύριον (Adonai in Psalm 130:6) vs. ἐπὶ κύριον (Yahweh in Ps 4:5, Ps 21:7, Ps 22:8, Ps 31:24, Ps 32:10, Ps 32:11, Ps 37:3, Ps 40:3 and Ps 55:22).

I thus overly quickly drew a sketch in my mind about how:

1. Adonai was distinct from Yahweh, and treated grammatically according to that difference
2. The Greek translation of Yahweh as anarthrous kyrios goes right back to the original Alexandrian translation.

Thus far, I still believe in the second point. But like Hong, we need to be careful in describing how the translation issue is distinct from and connected to the Hebrew written-spoken practice issue. Although you are still going to have to wait until my next post to see why my results are humbling me to reconsider 1, let's scrap my original plan and align it with the reality of the best available critical editions of the texts.

Let's start by simply pasting here a Hebrew lexical entry for Adonai as a more logical starting point and reference (i.e. one that leaves Greek translation to the side for a moment) [source, slightly antiquated: Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon]:

I'm not going to explore here all the ins and outs of Hebrew distinctions between plural of majesty or number etc. hinted at by the lexicon, but I will expand on it as follows and introduce a fun and more memorable term of "combo" (by the way, please take my counts as "approximate" as I haven't been able to double check all the arising data):

• As Koog showed, manuscripts have shown fluidity and even hesitation between Adonai and Yahweh in the Hebrew during retranscription.

• Adonai frequently occurs as a combo with Yahweh. I am particularly interested in tracing the relationship of Adonai to Yahweh, so am focussing on the most common type, Adonai-Yahweh combos. These result in English translation alternatives you may be familiar with, such as "Lord GOD" or "Sovereign LORD" (e.g. Gen 15:2, Ex 23:17, De 3:24, Jos 3:13, Jdg 6:22, 2Sa 7:18, 1Ki 2:26, Neh 10:29, Ps 16:2, Is 1:24, Ezekiel en masse, Amos 1:8, Oba 1:1, Zep 1:7, Zec 9:14). In fact, in the Hebrew occurrences I have examined, 319 out of the 453 occurrences of Adonai referring to God are Adonai-Yahweh combos, of which 215 are in Ezekiel and 21 are in Amos. In other words, if Adonai occurs, there's a 69% chance that it is occurring alongside Yahweh, probably before it. Can you see just how close the relationship is between the two terms? Back to this in the next post though because any further generalisations could be skewed by Ezekiel's "thus-says-the-Lord-GOD" mantra.

• Lord or O Lord in the vocative (e.g. Gen 18:3, Ex 4:10, Nu 14:17, De 3:24, Jos 7:7, Jdg 6:15, 2Sa 7:18, 1Ki 8:53, Neh 1:11, Ps 8:1, Is 6:11, Je 1:6, Lam 3:58, Ez 9:8, Dan 9:4, Amos 7:5), imploring God, is also quite an important usage for Adonai, 76 times. Note that vocative usage is not mutually exclusive to the 319 combos referred to in the previous point, but more frequently occur without Yahweh than with (47 x "O Lord" vs 29 x "O Lord GOD"). It is important to note for the Greek issue in advance, that of the scant representation of the Adon root in the Pentateuch - a mere 19 occurrences - thirteen of the nineteen are in the vocative, of which six are recorded alongside Yahweh. Thus we can speculate: vocative was apparently the initial style of Adonai.

  “The sanctuary, O Lord [Adonai], which Your hands have established."

   Exodus 15:17

• Other normal and independent usage occurs around 88 times. 
• For the Pentateuch, of course, it is very limited, and basically comprises "speaking to Adonai" (e.g. Gen 18:27),  beseeching Adonai, "may Adonai do x" (Ex. 34:9), and in De 10:17 he is the "Adonai of all Adonai". 
• Beyond the Pentateuch, non-combo-dependant Adonai extends to include: 
• some of Adonai's stuff (e.g. "Adonai's covenant", Jos 3:11, 1 Ki 3:15, "Adonai's table", Mal 1:12, etc.)
• Adonai titles, such as "Adonai of the whole Earth" (Jos 3:13); 
• "my Adonai" (Jos 5:14, Ps 35:23, )
• "in the sight of Adonai" (1 Ki 3:10); 
• the main subject of a sentence, i.e. "Adonai does x to y at z" (e.g. "Adonai says/said", e.g. Amos 7:8, "Adonai will give it into the hand of the king", 1 Ki 22:6 or "Adonai is my soul's sustainer, Ps 54:4, see also 2 Ki 7:6, Ps 2:4, Ps 37:13, etc.)
• acting on Adonai, such as "reproaching Adonai" (2 Ki 19:23, Is 37:24), "remembering Adonai" (Neh 4:14) or "fearing Adonai" (Job 28:28). 
• ...

Thanks for reading! Come back soon to see why I was mistaken about Adonai going into the Greek, and why Pietersma seems to have been on the right track after all.

Related posts:

How does the Adonai cookie crumble?

Adonai vs Yahweh - Two Charts for the One Lord

"Euphemism": A Critical Response to Koog Hong

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

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

Kyrios (aka the LORD) in the Psalms: results
Larry Perkins: paper review

"Euphemism": A Critical Response to Koog Hong

WE HAVE VERY quickly looked at some of the different issues around the Tetragrammaton in the Septuagint, with brief reference to John Wevers, Larry Perkins, Albert Pietersma, Martin Rösel, Larry Hurtado and Koog Hong, whose contribution I want to unpack with you now. Before I do that, however, I'm pleased to note that I did receive a response from Dr. Pietersma about my reservations with his conclusions on the Psalms. I will integrate his answer into my next post on "How the Adonai Cookie Crumbles", coming soon.

So Hong's paper, written for the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament in 2013 in 37.4 pp. 473-484 in Yonsei University, South Korea, treats the ineffability of God's name as a problem that found an early solution in the Hebrew Bible itself. Its title is The Euphemism for the Ineffable Name of God and Its Early Evidence in Chronicles and (wonderfully) is available for download via Hong's profile at academia.org here. What he does quite well here is to isolate very similar passages between Kings and Chronicles, and looks at how care over usage of God's Name may have affected its usage over the period of time separating the redaction of the two historical accounts. Here are the two most important statements from his abstract:

...the unique value of the double title אדני יהוה [Adonai Yahweh = "Lord LORD"] is established in tracing the euphemism in question, and the replacement of אדני יהוה of 2 Samuel with יהוה אלהים [Yahweh Elohim = "LORD God"] in Chronicles is presented as early evidence of the euphemism. Thus the reading Adonai for the Tetragrammaton appears to have begun considerably earlier than is commonly thought.

 p. 473

So put in simpler terms, Hong is saying that the Israelites were happy describing their God with a double title of Adonai Yahweh and at a later stage, when integrating the exact same story of David wanting to build God a temple, the double title had to go. What I never come to terms with in this paper is how Hong reconciles his belief that Adonai had become this great euphemism for the Sacredness of Yahweh, when in fact the narrow selection of examples that he points to seems to suggest, on his logic, the opposite direction of thought. 

Here's my difficulty: Later in the paper, Hong lays out all the passages he wants to compare for "the" euphemism, and actually 4 of the 7 comparable passages he examines simply contract the title Adonai-Yahweh into Yahweh. Only on two occasions, in 1 Chronicles 17:16-17, do you get the new appendage of Elohim that he just mentioned in the Abstract, and in the very same verse (1 Chronicles 17:17) you also get a contraction into Elohim. In summary, Hong's language of "the" euphemism implies a single solution to the ineffability and sacredness of the Divine Name while his key passage points to multiple acceptable practices, and they all involve ditching Adonai! If it is Yahweh that you want to exclude, why would the Chronicler ditch Adonai? 

The paper wants to set the context for its discovery of the early euphemism mentioned above in the debate around the Greek translation of kyrios ("LORD") for Yahweh. Kyrios, as you probably know by now if you read this blog, is what we know was used by Greek-speaking Jews (and Christians) very early on for "Yahweh", and like Yahweh, it was treated as a name. It was treated as a proper name in that it rarely held the definite article that we systematically smack on to the front, the LORD. I don't think Hong notes this or its significance to the discussion. What he does do is point to early sensitivities or preferences around God's name being significant enough to affect a diaspora community's history books. 

One question that we should check, given even the diversity of expression in the microcosm of Hong's passage: what is the Chronicler's usage of Adonai generally? Here, the other research we are currently unpacking on this blog is of some help to us. If we refer to Adonai vs Yahweh - Two Charts for the One Lord,  we can see that Hong is correct, the Chronicler "avoids" using Adonai completely, despite its 38,013 Hebrew words. 

That sounds impressive (see Hong's emphasis p. 482, "...[Adonai Yahweh] is never retained in Chronicles", emphasis original), but set in the wider context of the Yahweh and Adonai concentrations of the Hebrew Bible, it's not so impressive and points more generally, in my view, simply to an early limited use of Adonai. Look, Genesis and Exodus use it a tiny handful of times, Leviticus doesn't, Numbers has a single occurrence... none of this evidence is used to point to Adonai as a euphemism, sorry the euphemism for Yahweh. So what about Samuel? Oh dear - only 2 Samuel 7 contains Adonai - in all of its 38,003 words it mentions Adonai in just six verses ! It seems there would have been plenty of other opportunities of story overlap between Samuel and Chronicles to implement this apparent practice, but nope, just here. It seems pretty conspicuous to me and could quite conceivably be the work of a redactional revision of Samuel (Hong simply states his strange assumption, p. 474 "the Chronicler's replacement of Samuel's אדני יהוה with יהוה אלהים is presented as early evidence of the use of Adonai as a surrogate for the Tetragrammaton"). Indeed, redactor revision in the opposite direction would seem to work more in step with the chronology required by both Hong's logic and evidence.

Really interestingly, Hong notes Jewish sources from the first and second century B.C.E. that seem to affirm hesitation and replacement between the two names, Adonai and Yahweh (pp. 474-5), although it seems to be in the direction Yahweh -> Adonai, not Adonai - > Yahweh.

Another great contribution by Hong is the summary of the early textual evidence around the Greek translation of these two terms, that does not point favourably to "Kyrios" being in the original Old Greek Alexandrian translation, although as already stated, that is a point of controversy, and I am myself far from convinced. More importantly, several scholars, including Albert Pietersma, Larry Perkins and Martin Rösel are also on the sceptical side of this fence, despite Hong's remarks about what "specialists now tend to see" (p. 477).

The next contribution made by Hong (and I promise to summarise the contributions and problems at the end), is that we must understand there was a difference between written and spoken practices, namely that because of the spoken practices that may have replaced Yahweh with Adonai, that the double-occurrence in the text created redundancy in the Scripture read (p. 482).

We also learn something about the scriptural purpose of the Hebrew, Yahweh-Elohim, which is rarely to do with invocation (Hong, however, seems incorrect in his emphasis about Adonai-Yahweh as commonly used for invoking God - in Ezekiel, where it is most prominent, Adonai-Yahweh is about communicating God's words: "thus says the Lord GOD"). We can agree that the scribal and spoken practices and distinctions are probably what affected the changes between 2 Sam 7 and 1 Chron 17, even if that may have no bearing at all on the originality of the Greek translation for both words, Kyrios.

Final point of note, which does go in the direction of Hong's chronology, Hong notes that Targum Onkelos and Pseudo-Jonathan, this practice of Adonai -> Yahweh became systematic. Dating of this evidence, however, is late, especially in the case of Pseudo-Jonathan.

Let's summarise, with plenty to say on the positive for Hong's contribution:

• highlights an interesting discrepency between Samuel and Chronicles in Divine Name appellation
• introduces the notion of "euphemism" as a tool to understand the substitution mechanisms in place over the centuries
• usefully surveys the lack of earliest extant textual evidence for the written usage of kyrios
• highlights that there is strong evidence for a distinction between written and spoken practice of the Divine Name, 
• asserts the alleged purpose of Yahweh-Elohim is not usually invocational (I can check this out soon with the tool I am developing), 
• Some strands of Judaism later continued in the Adonai -> Yahweh direction.

Great!

What about the negatives?

• Insufficient connection with the controversy around the originality of the Greek kyrios translation,
• Unclear as to why an Adonai -> Yahweh euphemism would help clear up the issues created around the ineffability of the divine Name of Yahweh
• The narrow evidence provided in Chronicles fails to account for any other ancient practice in the direction Hong assumes and fails to integrate the overall concentration differences in the Hebrew Bible between Adonai and Yahweh, the latter dwarfing the former massively and Adonai being generally so very rare in the earlier compositional periods.

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

Centering Prayer, with Cynthia Bourgeault 2

Bourgeault provides her own helpful summary in her Epilogue (p. 161-167) of this in-depth-yet-practical guide to reawakening our life of prayer and spiritual practice. I'm going to combine a few of her 12 points to summarise still further into just six:

1. Possibly via a "sacred word" in a designated timeframe of perhaps 20 - 30 minutes of centering prayer, this is a model of surrender of oneself via gentle release of all of one's thoughts as they occur. Bourgeault connects this to the famous kenosis (emptying) of Jesus as described by Paul in Philippians 2. Earlier in the book, the author importantly mentions that the release process is very gentle.

2. Establishing some kind of inner "breathing" in this surrender (?) means that "good" and "bad" meditations are done away with. Some will involve more thought-surrender than others. It also involves "releasing the passions and relaxing the will".

3. Over time, the sense of self steadily relocates itself outside the insatiable attention draw of thoughts, a new "magnetic centre" that expands out of meditational times into a more contemplative and larger and deeper self. This doesn't do away with the "egoic" self. Training and moving out of it is all part of the process. This GPS (God Positioning System!) realigns our outer and inner self, the inner being characterised by "your yearning for God and God's yearning for you". Bourgeault connects this new centre with the authentic heart of our person, a deep connection with God's own true heart.

4. This is the goal: to nurture this heart. It differentiates centering prayer from other prayer methodologies which are more focussed on clarity of mind in favour of a singleness of heart.

5. This is not preparation for relationship with God, but relationship with God itself with real psychological outworkings. Divine therapy - centering prayer encourages psychological healing as unconscious emotional baggage is slowly released.

6. The earmarks of this journey are "compassion, humility and a growing equanimity". The whole approach creates enhanced inner harmony. A key word for Bourgeault in this book is "consciousness", and she reminds us of it here: growth toward "unitive" consciousness.

While I hope this super-brief summary might be of help, I highly recommend reading the book cover to cover for yourself. Some of Bourgeault's teaching on Centering Prayer can also be accessed via YouTube (Part 1 here), and she also works with Fr. Richard Rohr.

NB: I have omitted one of Cynthia's own bullets completely. I also failed to fully grasp her description of one of her stages of the meditative process whereby we locate the thought, emotion, passion, tension etc within our bodies in order to prepare for its release. I believe this can only be achieved adequately via experience.