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2019, Synthesis
https://doi.org/10.26262/syn.v8i1.7718…
61 pages
1 file
The biblical name of God was used widely among the Israelites since the days of Moses. The Bible record extends this practice back to the days of the patriarchs, even to the early days of humanity. It is a historical fact that the divine name was also known by peoples at lands outside Israel—like in Egypt probably since the late 15th century B.C.E. and the land of Moab since the 9th century B.C.E. It became more widely known among the nations around the Mediterranean Sea during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. During the Second Temple period Greek philosophical trends influenced decisively the Jewish theology. The name of God was gradually attempted to be silenced inside the Judaism and eventually became a verbal taboo. The teachings of Jesus from Nazareth and their diffusion by his followers presupposed a re-interpretation of the OT theology. This effort to describe anew the notion of God was written down in the canonical Christian scriptures. In this article it is attempted to explore the understanding of the notion of God among the Hellenistic Jews and early Christians as shown in the use of the divine names and especially the sacred Tetragrammaton. Five essential questions will be examined in brief: (a) Who is actually the God of the Bible, (b) which is the name of the God of the Bible, (c) when did the name of God cease to be pronounced publicly, (d) whether Jesus and early Christians pronounce the name of God, and (e) where may be found the name of God inside the NT texts. A thrilling story of the use and the pronunciation of the Biblical name of the Supreme Being came to be interwoven with a long series of historical twists and turns.
Why, in the English-speaking world, is nobody is given the name "Jesus" while in Spain and Latin America this theophoric name is quite popular? Any confessional argument is ultimately insufficient and unsatisfying and therefore the quandary remains unsettled. And what of theophoric names in early Christ religion? How did early Christian writers who adopted theophoric names for themselves, or employed them for others, navigate the fine line between misuse and honor, religious qualm and religious tribute? Did they navigate it at all? In his two-volume work, the writer known as Luke calls his Christ-believing addressee "Theophilos"; the real or putative Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, nicknames himself "Theophoros"; the anonymous author of the small tract To Diognetus probably invented the designation to formally address a prospective non-Christian audience. Are such names ("beloved of god"; "sprung from Zeus") merely hackneyed commonplaces? Or do such practices bestow "peer/gentlemanly honor" (Appiah 2010) as a manly quality shared by both sender and recipient? Or, as the meta-theophoric "bearer of God" seems to suggest, are theonyms used to rank positions and claim religious prestige? Focusing on three early Christian texts, the paper will try to work its way through these intriguing questions.
Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, 2019
This study argues that there is a tradition, arising from a ‘Jewish milieu’, based around the exegesis of select biblical passages, indicating that the messiah bears the Divine Name. This tradition appears to predate the Christian movement, and is referenced also in rabbinic literature. In the first section we highlight a tradition regarding the relationship between the Name of God and the messiah, the righteous and Jerusalem, a tradition which is shared by the Talmud and the New Testament book of Revelation. The next section will look at the pre-existence of the messiah’s name, which appears to be known by several groups in the early centuries of the Common Era. The fact that several different groups share this tradition points to the existence of an important idea which may be independent of each of these specific manifestations, whether Enochic, rabbinic or Christian, as this tradition was common across several Jewish sects in Late Antiquity.
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual "Brill" typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.
Journal for The Study of The Old Testament, 2007
The representation of the divine name in the Masoretic tradition and in the early translations of the Septuagint is the subject of ongoing discussion. It can be demonstrated that even the oldest Masoretic vocalization as preserved, among others, in codex L must refer to adonai (the Lord) rather than shema (the Name). By means of exegetical observations in the Greek version of the Torah, it becomes clear that already the translators of the Septuagint have chosen 'Lord' (kyrios) as an appropriate representation of the tetragrammaton; the replacement by the Hebrew tetragrammaton in some Greek manuscripts is not original. Moreover, it becomes clear that the translators of the Septuagint were influenced by theological considerations when choosing an equivalent for the divine name.
The Believer and the Modern Study of the Bible, 2019
Four facets of names of God reveal clear internal development within the classical biblical period: (1) El Shaddai was used in oral speech only until the Exodus from Egypt. In later periods, the name Shaddai existed as an archaic term used, infrequently, by prophets and poets. (2) The expression YHWH Tzva'ot (the Lord of Hosts) originated only in the time of the book of Samuel, and was in use from then until the compostion of the books of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. (3) The first two cases of the theophoric element YHW/YH/YW in personal names occurred just before and during the life of Moses. From that point, it increased gradually in frequency until the period of the late monarchy, by which time it was included in more than half of all personal names. (4) The name indicating lordship, Adonai, was initially a term of supplicatory address and became a name of God in the eighth century BCE.
C. Bonnet et al. (eds.), What’s in a Divine Name? Religious Systems and Human Agency in the Ancient Mediterranean, 2024
One of the major changes with regard to the transition of ancient Israelite religion into Early Judaism is the transformation of Yhwh from being the patron god of Israel, enthroned in Jerusalem, to being a universal (and invisible) deity residing in heaven. The first part of this paper surveys how the study of divine onomastic attrib-utes has been approached by Septuagint scholarship, highlighting how this corpus crucially attests to a reconfiguration of Yhwh’s power and status, but also pointingout some methodological shortcomings which emerged in past research. The second part of the paper seeks to provide a new framework for the study of divine onomastic attributes in the Septuagint. Paying attention to the relationship between divine name and embodiment, it correlates the deterritorialisation process of Yhwh, as attested by the onomastic attributes, with broader issues concerning the conditions, forms and limits of experiencing the divine presence in cultic contexts.
The correct pronunciation of The Creator’s name, how it should be used, when it should be used, and if it should even be used at all have long been the source of discussion, debate and controversy. The gravity and complexity of the matter is not to be taken lightly and cannot be fully addressed in a short treatise. However, this paper highlights some key scriptural points on these issues.
Annales Theologici, 2024
The Jewish traditions about the Word of God play a central role in the development of early Christology. By examining Philo of Alexandria's Logos and the Targumim's Memra, this article aims to illustrate the interplay between continuity and discontinuity of New Testament Divine Christology within its Jewish context. Within a frame of overarching continuity, the Incarnation introduces a genuine novelty, reshaping established notions about the Word. The radical nature of this novelty demands a historical explanation. Further studies could explore the correlation between historical events and the development of these ideas.
When the Tetragrammaton began to be read as Adonai is the subject of signi cant debate. While in the Old Greek may be important evidence for this euphemism, many continue to doubt whether is original to the Old Greek. In this article, the unique value of the double title is established in tracing the euphemism in question, and the replacement of of 2 Samuel with 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.
What, according to the Hebrew Bible, was a god assumed to be? In this article the author looks at data potentially relevant to any attempt at answering this question within a sub-type of אל theophory in the Hebrew Bible. These involve personal names that can be rendered into English as " My god is x " , where x denotes a phenomenon the deity is prima facie wholly identified with. The approach adopted by the study is philosophical in general and descriptively metaphysical in particular. The objective is to provide an experimental clarification of this particular sub-type of proper names in Biblical Hebrew with the aid of technical conceptual distinctions found within mainstream interpretations of Aristotle's theory of predication.
Paradoxes in God's Garden: Jewish Philosophy and the Edenic Narrative, 2024
Name-Theology is a central aspect of Jewish religion throughout its history, from the Biblical text where the Name dwells in the Temple to the Kabbalah's accounts of the Name as the fount of all existence. This article will argue that through the philosophical investigation of this tradition, we can find a new way of thinking the question of God's nature. While the Name YHWH is believed to come from the root HYH, ‘to be,’ this should not indicate a static being of God, outside space and time, unchanging and perfect. Rather the Israelite metaphysics demonstrated in the doctrine of God’s Name is presence-based, relational, yet ultimately transcendent. This different metaphysics requires some unpacking and extrapolation in order to find its implications for theology. I will argue that we find the fluidity and relation-dependent nature of God expressed by the unique nominal-theology of Jewish religion, as expressed in biblical concepts such as the Deuteronomic Name-Temple theology, the Angel of the Lord who bears God's Name, and the revelation of the Tetragrammaton to Moses. Through analysis of these traditions, incorporating the philosophical tools and concepts provided by modern Jewish philosophers such as Husserl, Rosenzweig, and Levinas, we find that Jewish tradition holds God ultimately in-relation to human beings, as suggested by the third person construction of the Name YHWH. While there is still an apparent internal aspect, which we may consider the first-person construction of God's Ehyeh, this is ultimately not to be understood as the static perfection of Greek philosophy, but retained as the dark ground of an unknowable internality; the simple a=a of Rosenzweig's theology. It will become apparent that much of this theological development is contained in nuce in Moses' revelation of Ex.3:14, God naming Himself Ehyeh, which Moses conjugates into YHWH.
In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi
In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes from Joel 2:32 (3:5 in Hebrew) in his treatment of Israel and the gospel. The quotation is the same as that found in Acts 2:21: 'everyone who calls on the 1.The Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD) (Freedman, Herion, Graf et al. 1992) has included the article from Howard (1992c) entitled, 'Tetragrammaton in the New Testament'. This might suggest that Howard's New Testament Tetragrammaton theory has widespread currency among New Testament scholars. There is no such consensus in the New Testament community. Most reviews of Howard's thesis are cursory (e.g. Hurtado 2003:182ff). This provides incentive to evaluate Howard's thesis in detail and within a defined scope (see footnote 4 below). 2.Howard examines the following manuscripts: P. Rylands Gk. 458, P. Fouad Inv. 266, 8ḤevXIIgr, and pap4QLXXLev b. A fuller examination of these manuscripts and the textual traditions that informed the New Testament can be found in Span (2018). 3.Although Jesus is referred to as God in places in the New Testament, it is exceptional usage, and the customary referent of the term God ([ὁ] θεός) is the Father (Harris 1992:42) who is referred to variously in this article: God, God of Israel, Lord God, and YHWH. The Christological significance of the exceptional use of (ὁ) θεός in relation to Jesus Christ is a related issue, but largely outside the scope of this study. The Tetragrammaton has great significance in Judaism and Christianity. Hebraist George Howard has proposed a theory of New Testament documentary origins. On the basis of early Septuagint/Old Greek (LXX/OG) manuscript findings, Howard has suggested that the Tetragrammaton has played a part in the transmission history of the New Testament. The New Testament writers, according to Howard, would have retained the Tetragrammaton in their Old Testament citations. With the success of the Gentile mission, uninformed copyists replaced the Tetragrammaton with the Greek word κύριος [Lord]. The result was that passages that applied only to YHWH were now applied in error to both the Lord God and the Lord Jesus Christ so that the high Christology of the New Testament was, in part, artificially elevated through scribal corruption. A detailed response is in order to evaluate the validity of Howard's thesis. As a test case, the LXX/OG quotation from Joel 2:32 (3:5) in Romans 10:13 is examined to determine the proper referent of the linked word Lord. Contextual and grammatical indicators point to Jesus as the 'Lord' in the passage. Combined with documentary evidence, the Tetragrammaton thesis fails to convince. The final section of research applies the findings to two Divine Name Bibles, and the suitability of the Tetragrammaton in anglicised or Hebrew characters, as a translation option, is evaluated.
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2014
Review. Robert J. Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century. Journal of Jesuit Studies 2 (2015), 723-6.
This work presents that the God of the Old Testament, who enacted great deeds through the people of Israel to bring fame to the name of JHVH, underwent a name transformation in the salvific events of the New Testament. In Old Testament times, JHVH's name was "called" over or associated with the people of God in designated cultural expressions to indicate covenant, manifest possession of, or to reveal the divine nature. Through examination of cultural memories and inner-biblical interpretations, the evidence of both testaments points to the name of JHVH being transformed to the name of Jesus to bring glory to the divine identity in a broader international context. Messiah, through his life, death, and resurrection, bears witness to this proposal as the forthcoming examination of the biblical record of the first-century church will show.
Revue de études juives, 2020
In this article, I propose an overview of the history of the names used for Jesus in Hebrew from the time of the historical Jesus and the early Christian movement to the present. I focus on the role of Jewish and Christian mutual perceptions in shaping both the actual ways in which Jesus was named in Hebrew throughout the ages and the conceptions regarding his different Hebrew names.
Bulletin for Biblical research, 2014
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2011
Due to the antiquity of the Sahidic Coptic version of the New Testament among early versions of the New Testament, it is a significant resource for New Testament textual criticism, reception history, and the history of interpretation. This article explores the ...
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Pavlos D Vasileiadis