[B-Greek] QEOS and KURIOS : enough already?

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Fri Sep 19 17:07:19 EDT 2003


Sorry to have missed the present discussion till now, due to my 
absence. Whether I can claim to be saying anything new on the matter 
I'll leave to you to decide. I did some years ago write an article on 
the topic ("Kyrios or Tetragram: A New Quest for the Original 
Septuagint" De Septuaginta: Studies in Honour of John William Wevers on 
his sixty-fifth birthday [ed. A. Pietersma and C. Cox; Mississauga, 
1984]  pp. 85-101. (Unfortunately I have no electronic copy of the 
article. ) The line of argument I adopted there (and still epouse 
today) is that it is first and foremost the INTERNAL evidence of the 
text, whether NT or LXX, that must tell us what it read in its original 
form. That is to say, if the writers of the NT wrote the tetragram 
instead of kurios one should be able to point to some linguistic 
information in the NT that gives evidence to that effect. In other 
words, one needs segments of text that can be explained BETTER on the 
tetragram hypothesis than they can be on the kurios hypothesis. I 
stress "better" to indicate where the burden of proof lies. Since all 
known mss read kurios the burden of proof would seem crystal clear. I 
know of no such segments of text in the NT but will readily admit to 
non-expertise in the NT.
The same is true for the LXX (here limited to the Pentateuch): it is 
the text itself that must tell us what it originally read. Yet here I 
note in the present discussion an alarming leap from what seems to me 
such an obvious dictum. Thus Professor Furuli confidently declares in a 
note of Sept 13: "There is no evidence that LXX translators substituted 
YHWH with KURIOS, as Youtie suggests."  Whence this confidence? "In all 
fragments of the LXX (or LXX-like texts) from the 2nd and first 
centuries and from the 1st century C.E. we find either YHWH in 
Paleo-Hebrew or square Hebrew, or as the Greek phonetic transcription 
IAW." Several observations are immediately in order:
1. In fact there is no II BCE evidence for or against either a form of 
the tetragram or kurios, since no instance is extant in Ra 957 (P. 
Rylands 458).
2. Similarly, Ra 942 (P. Fouad 266), dated to I BCE has not preserved 
any instance of either some representation of the tetragram or kurios.
3. Likewise Ra 847 (P. Fouad 266), dated to I CE, has not preserved any 
instance of either.
4. The same can be said a several Qumran fragments: Ra 805 
(pap7QLXXExod)(I BCE), Ra 803 (4QLXXNum) (I BCE), Ra 801 (4LXXLev-a) (I 
BCE), Ra 819 (4QLXXDeut) (I BCE?).
Thus to state that ALL evidence from II BCE to I CE attests to some 
representation of the tetragram is patently incorrect and hugely 
exaggerated. In fact, of the eight pentateuchal fragments from II BCE 
to I CE  that can readily be enumerated, only two can be cited in 
support of some form of the tetragram: Ra 802 (pap4QLXXLev-b) (I BCE) 
and Ra 848 (P. Fouad 266) (I BCE). That is not to say, of course,  that 
all eight could not have had some form of the tetragram but simply that 
the vast majority have nothing to say on the issue under discussion. 
Thus they should not be implicitly cited in support of either.
But let us take a further step on the question of attestation for the 
tetragram, and consider the three witnesses Furuli cites in support of 
his argument for the originality of the tetragram in the Septuagint:
1. Ra 802 (pap4QLXXLev-b) a Septuagintal witness which attest to a 
variety of  seemingly Hebraizing corrections. As Furuli notes, it has 
the tetragram in Greek transcription IAW.
2. Ra 848 (P. Fouad 266), a Septuagintal witness to which the tetragram 
was secondarily added in Hebrew square script. As Koenen notes, the 
tetragram was added in a space left by the main scribe, large enough 
for kurios. The same phenomenon of leaving a space for later infill has 
been noted, for example, in 11QPs-a
3. 8HevXIIgr, a non-Septuagintal witness of I BCE-I CE which has the 
tetragram in palaeo-hebrew. I call this ms "non-Septuagintal" since by 
universal scholarly consensus it is a recensional text which has 
heavily and systematically revised the Old Greek (LXX) text of the 
Twelve Minor Prophets towards the Hebrew. Thus to rely on this text to 
give us orginal Septuagint reading  in any way shape or form would seem 
rather ill advised.

Since this note is already  longer than is desirable let me just make 
three concluding points:
a) Even if all three mss were bona fide exemplars of the LXX, we cannot 
overlook the fact that the three witnesses speak with three distinct 
voices. To count the three as one is misconstruing the evidence.
b) Were one disposed to hold that the original LXX had the tetragram 
rather than kurios, one would then have to decide which of the three 
forms should be counted as original and how the subsequent variety of 
representations can be accounted for.
c) That not only the palaeo-hebrew script in general and the 
preoccupation with and interest in the divine name in particular were 
topical in the late period is obvious from Qumran. Thus there is no 
difficulty in explaining a similar interest evidenced in Greek 
manuscripts.

The long and short of the tetragram-kurios issue is, it seems to me,  
that it can only be resolved from within the LXX text itself. I began 
that process in my article cited above. More evidence can be readily be 
added. There is plenty of internal LXX evidence that speaks against 
Furuli's thesis. And if it is highly questionable for the LXX it is 
even more questionable for the NT.
Al


  On Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 06:31 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> It seems to me that everything really relevant to the questions raised 
> has
> been stated and that this has been done altogether without the 
> unpleasant
> sectarian wrangling that has characterized some previous discussions 
> of the
> same issue. Could we please call a halt to this now, unless someone 
> really
> has something NEW to say about the matter?
> -- 
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Co-Chair, B-Greek List
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>
>
—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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