Hebrew Voices #243 – The Divine Name YHVH in Ancient Greek Manuscripts: Part 1

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Nehemia: You’re saying in all the extant Old Greek manuscripts, meaning the Septuagint which predates our Septuagint, as late as the middle of the 1st century CE, the term Kurios is not used. So, in other words, if you look at all the Greek Dead Sea Scrolls, which isn’t that many, all the manuscripts of the Septuagint that predate the middle of the 1st century CE, or AD in Christian terms, you will not find the word Kurios as a rendering of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, that’s what you’re saying.

Pavlos: And if you allow me…

Nehemia: Please. I’m excited. This is amazing stuff!

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m really excited today to welcome Dr. Pavlos Vasileiadis. He is known in Greece as Dr. Tetragrammaton. He holds a PhD in biblical literature and religion from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He also has done a post-doctorate at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, which means he actually has, I guess, academic teaching experience. And he has a bunch of other degrees that are almost too long to read everything here; a master’s in theology from that same university, bachelor’s in theology. His master’s, interestingly, is on the Kama Johannaeum, which I may be mispronouncing. It’s that passage in 1 John… help me out here, 5…

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay, maybe we’ll talk about that. I would say that in the 15th and 16th century, it was one of the most controversial passages in the New Testament, so much so that I don’t think any new translations have it, not that I’m aware of, but it’s part of the King James Version. And so, in America, the King James-only people say, “See? They took that out of our Bible.” But it’s a fascinating story. I don’t know that we’ll get to that today, because I, of course, want to talk about… If I’m with Dr. Tetragrammaton, I’ve got to talk about the Tetragrammaton.

Shalom, Pavlos. I should also mention that Pavlos is a research fellow at the Institute for Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research, of which I am the executive director, and we actually co-authored an article together. So, just want to put that out there for people. The article we wrote, and basically, like, you wrote the first half, I wrote the second half, if I remember correctly, is called something like, The Transmission of the Tetragrammaton in… do you remember the name of the title? I don’t even remember. Well, I’m actually looking here on its Wikipedia page, and he tells me it’s pretty… Oh, Transmission of the Tetragrammaton in Judeo-Greek and Christian Sources.

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay, so, Pavlos, I want to start with… So, you did a whole PhD on the Tetragrammaton. Let’s start with; what is the Tetragrammaton? I think my audience knows, but let’s assume some people listening don’t know. What is the Tetragrammaton?

Pavlos: First of all, thank you, dear Nehemia, for your warm invitation and have this discussion. I hope to be enlightening for anyone that will attend this discussion, and I hope to help make clear some points that I have found. And also, I have shared with you during the previous years in my research on the sacred Tetragrammaton.

So, what is the Tetragrammaton? It’s a Greek word from tessera, tetara, tetra, four that is, and grammata from the word grammar, letter, that is a word with four letters. Josephus was the first to use this term for the name of God in the Hebrew language.

Nehemia: Let me stop you for a second. So, for those who haven’t noticed, Pavlos has a certain way of pronunciation. He is a native Greek speaker. So, he was just talking about who I would call Josephus, and he pronounced it the way, I guess a Greek speaker…

Pavlos: Yosefus, in Greek.

Nehemia: Okay, there you go, right. And I’m going to defer to your pronunciation, but I’ll still continue to say Josephus. Which is interesting, because Josephus is the Hebrew name Yosef, and then he adds… why does he add the us ending? I’ve tried to explain this to people for years, but I don’t know that I’m getting it right. You’re the expert in Greek, right? I know where my expertise lies, that’s in Hebrew. Why is there an us added to Josephus’s name?

Pavlos: This is a “Grecisized” form.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Pavlos: Normalized in the Greek language, so that not to have a strange end of the word, of the name. So, in Greek, we add a masculine ending like os, is. So, for example, Yeshua became Isus.

Nehemia: So, what is Yeshua, for those who don’t know?

Pavlos: It’s the name of Jesus. In Greek, it’s Isus. It’s normalized with S in the end. Isus.

Nehemia: Okay, so, when you take the name over into another language, I guess they call that phonosemantic strategies, right? In other words, certain languages have certain sound patterns. Like, if you’re speaking Japanese, if I’m not mistaken, every syllable ends with a vowel, and so, you have to… I don’t remember what it is, but the name McDonald’s has some Japanese pronunciation where everything ends with a vowel. Someone in the comments can share that.

So, you’re saying Jesus, or Yeshua, was normalized into Greek as Yesus. So, all right. I didn’t intend to talk about this, but I’ll ask you. So, one of the things I’ve heard from some people, there’s this idea out there that Jesus in English is, is Ye-Zeus. “Oh, hail Zeus.” You’re the Greek expert. Is there any truth in that?

Pavlos: Please repeat what you say…

Nehemia: So, there’s the name of the Greek god Zeus. How do you pronounce that name Zeus in Greek?

Pavlos: Ze-us. Ze-us.

Nehemia: Okay. In Modern Greek, do you say Zevs, or how do you say it?

Pavlos: Yes. Zeus, Zios in the genitive.

Nehemia: Okay. So, in other words… so there’s people who don’t know Greek, I assume, who argue that Ye-sus is “Oh, hail Zeus”. Is there any truth in that as a Greek expert?

Pavlos: Not at all, not at all. These are para-etymological definitions…

Nehemia: What does that mean? I don’t know. Well, I know my audience doesn’t know what it means. Let’s put it that way. What is para-etymological? Explain that. One of my jobs is to pretend I don’t know stuff to explain it to the audience.

Pavlos: That’s good. It’s not genuine etymological definitions found in the dictionary. But from the sound only of a word, they try to have an etymology that resembles with another word. But it’s not real etymology and it has no actual connection with this word. So, in Greek, no, Isus is Iesus as was read in that period, is a form of the Hebrew name in Greek. So, there is Iesua and also the Grecisized form Isus, Iesous.

Nehemia: Oh, do you find the form Yesua in Greek sources?

Pavlos: Yes.

Nehemia: You do?

Pavlos: Especially for Joshua, the son of Nun.

Nehemia: Okay. But he’s also called Yesus, isn’t he? Yehoshua is called Yesus.

Pavlos: The same is the case with Yaakov, for example, Jacob.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: Also called Yaakov-os. And Yosephus really wanted to add these final endings to normalize the folks in Greek of the names.

Nehemia: So, I want to share something which I didn’t plan on sharing, but just before we got on, I wanted to bring the Josephus passage. And I’m a bit lazy, so I went to ChatGPT and I said, “Where does Josephus…” Here, I’m going to share with the audience. And I should mention that Pavlos also has a… am I right? You have a master’s in some technology, in computer science…

Pavlos: Artificial Intelligence, yes.

Nehemia: So, I don’t know if you deal with AI, but maybe you… I don’t know. Maybe you have some comments on this, maybe you don’t. So, here I’m looking. This was his page on Wikipedia, which he says is accurate. Or as of this recording, it’s accurate. They change these things so often, you can’t trust them. But here I asked ChatGPT. I said, “Where does Josephus say the Tetragrammaton was written as four vowels?” He says, “Josephus discusses this only once.” And he brings me the exact Greek words. Can you read these words, Pavlos?

Pavlos: Yes. Grammata tessara funienda.

Nehemia: So, I go and I look for those words, and I can’t find them. So, I look in Accordance, and I say, “Here is what I have in Accordance.” And I’ll let you read that. What does that say?

Pavlos: Ta yera grammata. In the…

Nehemia: Holy word… what is grammata? The word?

Pavlos: Holy letters, in the holy priest’s forehead…

Nehemia: What we call in English the mitre of the high priest, or the tzitz in Hebrew. Okay.

Pavlos: Tauta desti phonienta tessara, these are the four vowels.

Nehemia: So, he lied, ChatGPT! And I said, “Was grammata tessara funienda an AI hallucination?” Short answer: yes! So, AI hallucination is, he makes up a text that doesn’t… and when I first encountered this was so hard for me to believe. He’s bringing it to me in the original Greek; it sounds very authentic. But it doesn’t exist in any text, only in his own imagination.

Pavlos: The letters of the Tetragrammaton, if we try to transcribe in Greek, this was, in the core of the problem of transcribing the name of God from the Hebrew language to the Greek language. The core of the problem is that there is no corresponding letters. So, Josephus says indeed that… and not only Josephus, others as well, that the Hebrew letters, the most corresponding ones are vowels. So, in Hebrew, also, the same letters of the Tetragrammaton were also vowels; matres lectiones.

Nehemia: Okay. I’m going to share my screen here and look in Accordance, because that’s more reliable here than ChatGPT. So, I’ll read it in English, and then I’ll ask you to read it in Greek and then explain what you’re saying. So, it says, “A mitre also of fine linen encompassed his head.” This is the Kohen Gadol, the high priest in the Temple. “Which was tied by a blue ribbon, about which there was another golden crown, in which was engraven the sacred name: it consists of four vowels.” So…

Pavlos: In Greek.

Nehemia: So, can you read that whole sentence in Greek? I think it would be nice to hear it.

Pavlos: Yeah. Tín dé kefalín vyssíni mén éskepen tiára, katéstepto d᾽yakíntho, perí ín chrysoús állos ín stéfanos éktypa féron tá ierá grámmata: tauti d᾽estí foníenta téssara.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm. By the way, here’s an interesting word, chursus, which I know you might pronounce that differently. But in Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew of the word charutz, which is fine gold, and I believe that’s a Greek word that actually comes probably from Hebrew, or…

Pavlos: A very ancient word, torsu. Churusoús is found in Cypriot Greek language, so it’s really…

Nehemia: So, it could be that that was the name in some foreign language, and when they imported that quality of gold, that type of gold, that grade of gold, they called it by the Cypriot name. Right? So, maybe Hebrew got it from the same place as Greek, from the Cypriot. I don’t know.

Pavlos: Yes.

Nehemia: Yeah. Explain here.

Pavlos: So, we have four letters, and the issue is that they’re vowels or consonants. Both letters in Hebrew, and in Greek as well, can be regarded and transcribed in Greek as vowels and also consonants, giving different forms of the name of God.

Nehemia: So, for example, the letter Yud can be yuh, or it can mark the vowel ee or ah or eh.

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: The letter Vav could be oh or oo or vuh, and some people will say, “Well, we don’t need to get into that issue.”

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: And then Hey is like at the end of the word, Torah, marks a vowel. Okay. So, this is really important, because there are some people out there who say that what Josephus is saying is that it was pronounced as four vowels. He says it was engraven with four… so, is it pronounced with four vowels? Of course… I mean, could it be read in Greek? And it’s not a trick question. I don’t know the answer. Could it be read in Greek to mean its pronunciation was with four vowels? Or does it have to mean it was just written with four letters that are equivalent to vowels in Greek?

Pavlos: Yes, it could mean four vowels in Greek. For example, “e-eh-o-a” are four vowels in Greek. E-eh-o-a.

Nehemia: No, in other words, the way Josephus formulates this, tauta de’estí fone’enta téssara; could that mean it was pronounced with four vowels?

Pavlos: Look what’s the problem, Nehemia. If at that time were used letters like He in Greek, or Ramma, these letters at that time, even at the Koine period, were read like… the Ramma was read guh. The Hi letter was read…

Nehemia: Ramma is what we call in English Gamma? Is that…

Pavlos: Yeah, exactly. Ramma in Greek. It softened after the Koine Greek. So, the G became R. The KH became H. More softened forms.

Nehemia: What’s the K? Which letter is that?

Pavlos: The Greek letter, KI. HI.

Nehemia: Oh, HI. Okay. So, how is HI pronounced?

Pavlos: Now it’s pronounced, from Jesus’ time, “h”, not “k”, not K-H, but simply H, let’s say. Or C-H, okay.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: So, at that time, Josephus couldn’t use Greek consonants to make a transcription, as we can do today, that these consonants became more soft. So, today we have Yakhweh, we have Yehovah, and we can write it in Greek. But at that time, it wasn’t possible for the Greek-speaking ones.

Nehemia: So, let me ask if this is what you’re saying. So, we have the Hebrew letter Hey, and there was no consonant equivalent to Hey in the Greek at the time of Josephus.

Pavlos: You could also omit it, as if we use only vowels, e-eh-o-a. We omit, and it’s very close to Yehovah. Yehovah. It’s very close…

Nehemia: And then for the Y sound, you’re saying in Modern Greek you’d use Gamma, because the Gamma is pronounced almost like a guttural Y, and I won’t attempt to do it…

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: …but in the Greek of Josephus’ time that wasn’t the case, so he’s kind of stuck with yota, or Iota.

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: And from that time, we have the transcriptions of today. For example, Isus, Jesus in Greek, starts with an Iota.

Nehemia: Is there anybody who writes it with Gamma today? Or…

Pavlos: No, no. Only if you want to focus or to underline the Hebrew origin of a word.

Nehemia: Ah. So, if you were trying to show how to pronounce it in Hebrew, you would write it with Gamma today…

Pavlos: Yes.

Nehemia: …but historically it’s written with Iota. I see. Okay. So, let’s go back here to this phoneh enta. Could that mean it’s pronounced with four vowels?

Pavlos: It could be.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: I wouldn’t say no.

Nehemia: Although here he’s talking about that it’s engraven on the miter of the high priest.

Pavlos: Look, Josephus makes an approximation. He’s doing his best to describe what’s going on. Okay? It’s not a photo. We know that for sure Josephus, coming from a priestly family, was familiar with pronouncing the name. He himself says that “I know how the name is pronounced, but it’s not allowed to do so.” So, he says that he looks at the mitre of the high priest, the four letters that in Greek, the best transcription would be with vowels. So, he says, “I see four vowels.” For a Greek speaking audience, this was the best way to describe what he was looking at.

Nehemia: I gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. You had a PowerPoint you were going to share, which I’m really excited about. Can we jump into that?

Pavlos: Of course. Would you like to discuss first the papers that I published?

Nehemia: Yes, let’s hear. Tell us about your research.

Pavlos: The first article that I published on the name of God was Aspects of Rendering the Sacred Tetragrammaton in Greek, in Open Theology, a publication, journal, in 2015. It was a big article, more than 30 pages. Many points for someone who wants to dig in the issue of the Tetragrammaton. It’s a very good starting point with many references. One point that I would emphasize is the second one. For various reasons, there is no unique or universally correct rendering of the Hebrew term in Greek. Many ask me, “What is the original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton in Greek?” My answer is: there is no such thing. If you can answer me what is the best rendering for any other Hebrew name in Greek, we will agree on that. But all of the renderings are approximations. We approximate the actual Hebrew form of the name. So, in different periods, we have different forms of the name. Under different mentalities, we come to have different renderings. So, we cannot say that there is one and the best rendering in Greek. Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. So, I’m trying to understand what that means. So, does that mean that at different times, different groups, when they tried to render it in Greek, they essentially, or many of them, maybe, went back to the Hebrew and then attempted independently to render? Is that what you’re saying?

Pavlos: Yes. In history, actually, there hasn’t been any time that there weren’t people that were trying to make a better rendering of the Tetragrammaton. In all centuries, there were many attempts. In this article, in the end, I have hundreds of different renderings during the centuries trying to render better in Greek the name of God.

Nehemia: Yeah, so, this is actually how Pavlos got on my radar. Appendix X kind of blew my mind. Or excuse me, Appendix A, on page 77 of this article, we’ll put a link on Nehemiaswall.com. And I counted something like 33, but it depends how you count them, different forms of the name in Greek. So, if you’re looking at Greek, there’s a lot more, but I think you said…

Pavlos: More than a hundred.

Nehemia: More than one hundred. In Greek. But then if you take them, like, phonetically, then it’s over 30 at least.

Pavlos: Yeah.

Nehemia: In other words, some of them are written different ways in Greek, but if we were writing out phonetically, you’d end up with the same pronunciation. So, here in his article, he has… and can you read these different ones? Like, basically these are all the same pronunciation, according to what you write here.

Pavlos: Yes. I put them together, yes.

Nehemia: Right. So, how do you pronounce these?

Pavlos: Yau.

Nehemia: All of them are Yau?

Pavlos: Yau with different accents. That is Ya-o. Yaa-o. Yaa-o-o.

Nehemia: Oh, different emphases. So, this one is not different from this one, you’re saying. Is that right? Meaning, how would you pronounce this?

Pavlos: Ya-o-o.

Nehemia: Oh, is that two O’s? Meaning, is the O pronounced twice?

Pavlos: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay, so it’s slightly different than Ya-o.

Pavlos: No, actually in the Greek here it’s not different. So, I put them together.

Nehemia: Oh, I see.

Pavlos: But you can find in the right, the sources of…

Nehemia: Right, so, this is in 1767. So, you’re not saying this is how, you know, I don’t know, when Jesus was in the Temple and he heard the high priest on Yom Kippur, you’re not claiming this is what he heard. You’re saying in 1767 this is how Jay Matani wrote it, right?

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: And then here, 4Q Papyrus LXX Leviticus B, which is in the Dead Sea Scrolls, has this form. But I believe there’s no accents there. Am I right? In 4Q Pap Leviticus? I think you have a picture of it even here.

Pavlos: It does not make a difference, the accents, in Greek.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: If you read it, ya-o, it means to heal, in Greek.

Nehemia: Really?

Pavlos: It’s read Ya-O. It’s a name, and it’s read Ya-O.

Nehemia: Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on a second. With the accent on the Alpha or the Omega is to heal?

Pavlos: In Alpha, ya-o.

Nehemia: So, this one means… what does it mean? I heal? Or…

Pavlos: Heal, to heal.

Nehemia: Like heal as in somebody who’s sick?

Pavlos: Yeah, to heal someone who is sick, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, this I did not know. So, what form of the… is this a verb or is this an infinitive verb? What is ya-o?

Pavlos: It’s the verb, yeah, the infinitive form of the verb. Yeah.

Nehemia: So, it’s to heal.

Pavlos: Yeah, exactly.

Nehemia: What? Hold on a second. So, wait; we have “I am Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, your healer”. So, this has to be some sort of a play on words.

Pavlos: This is also found in the sources. Yes, men have discussed that this means to heal.

Nehemia: Have you written about this? You need to write about this.

Pavlos: Of course, of course.

Nehemia: I don’t remember reading that. Okay.

Pavlos: There are many sources on that. And also, that Jesus, as a healer, the Yasus or Yisus in Greek means the healer. But this is also a kind of para-etymology; it’s not actual. It resembles the Greek word, but it’s not actual…

Nehemia: So, biblical name explanations are often what you might call a para-etymology. In other words, when it says that in English we have a figure called Jabez, in Hebrew Ya’avetz, and it says he was born in sorrow, but the word sorrow switches the two letters, right? So, it’s otsev, Ayin-Tzadi-Bet, but then his name is Ayin-Bet-Tzadi. So, it’s not meant to be an etymology in that case. It’s been called MND – Midrashic Name Derivation. That’s what one of the scholars called it, MND. And that’s actually… meaning, within the biblical text itself… meaning, let’s take the text at face value. This woman called her son Ya’abetz because she said that he was born in sorrow, meaning, in pain of childbirth, which is otsev. And we have a lot of names like that, like, you could even say ish and isha is what you would call para-etymology, because actually the root of isha, woman, is Aleph-Nun-Shin; we see that when we look at other Semitic languages.

Pavlos: There are various plays on words that took place, and they…

Nehemia: So, this is interesting. You’re saying in Greek, Yesus means healer. I find it hard to believe that that’s a coincidence. Or, at least, here’s what we could say; in the reception of the name Yesus, were there people who said in Greek that he’s called that because he’s a healer?

Pavlos: In some sources, yes, we have this understanding that he is the healer of Yao. Yeah.

Nehemia: The healer of Yao. So, tell me what that… I don’t understand.

Pavlos: The form Yassun was given in some sources as a synonym for the Greek Iesous; Iesous in Modern Greek or in Koine Greek.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Pavlos: So, Iesous – Iasson. Yasso means I will heal. Yao, to heal. Iasson and iaso, the verb, means I will heal.

Nehemia: That’s the future form, iaso.

Pavlos: Exactly. So, Iasson, the rendering of Jesus in Greek, means healer.

Nehemia: Okay, yeah. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Pavlos: So, some sources give this information as well.

Nehemia: Okay, so, now we’ve got to go to Matthew, I think it’s 1:20… This is way off topic from what I was planning on talking about, but now that you’ve brought this up… So, here we have Matthew 1:21, “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Can you read that in Greek for us?

Pavlos: Téxete de Ión kai kaléseis to ónoma aftoú Iisoún. Aftós garsósei ton laón aftoú apó ton amartión aftón.

Nehemia: So, would an ancient Greek, who, let’s say, didn’t know Hebrew, who’s hearing this, and wouldn’t know… because obviously in Hebrew the connection is Yeshua; yehoshia, he will save. Right? But in ancient Greek, let’s say in Athens, or in Thessaloniki… and by the way, the letter to the Thessalonians, is that your town, where you’re from?

Pavlos: Yes.

Nehemia: Okay. And Jewish sources…

Pavlos: … here at Thessaloniki.

Nehemia: So, for my Jewish listeners, we know that as Salonika, or Saloniki, and in Jewish sources the thessos, or the “th” part is dropped. All right. And that’s where Shabtai Tzvi was active, am I wrong about that? I think it was from Izmir, but Shabtai Tzvi, the false messiah in 1640s, 1650s in Judaism, right? Meaning, he’s the most famous figure in Judaism who is from Saloniki.

Pavlos: And he was pronouncing the divine name according to his letters, to its letters.

Nehemia: Wow.

Pavlos: So, he was cast out of the…

Nehemia: Wait, hold on a second. Shabtai Tzvi in 16-something…

Pavlos: Sixty-six, yeah. He announced himself as a messiah.

Nehemia: What year?

Pavlos: Sixty-six.

Nehemia: Sixteen sixty-six. In Saloniki, in Thessalonica…

Pavlos: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, he was pronouncing the divine name and he was expelled from…

Pavlos: In Smyrna, we have record that he was cast out from the synagogue because he was freely speaking the divine name. Gershom Shalom and other authors write extensively on this.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s for a different subject, a different discussion.

Pavlos: And they found poems of his students that use the name.

Nehemia: Okay, we have to discuss that more at a different time, because I want to get to this. So, if you were a Greek speaker in Saloniki, Thessalonica, and you heard this, like, you’re sitting in the pews and you’re a believer and you heard this, would you connect the name Yesun to Sose? Meaning, you can say it’s a play on…

Pavlos: No.

Nehemia: You wouldn’t. Okay, so, what would you think? I’m missing something here. Is that what you would think?

Pavlos: If you say that Isus with Sose… there’s no actual connection. There are two similar letters, but nothing more than that. There’s no connection. Not with Yao, neither with sose, sozo, sose. “He will save”, means here sose...

Nehemia: And here it’s the future. Down here is… how would you pronounce this word down here?

Pavlos: Sozo, save.

Nehemia: So, that’s, I will save. And then sose…

Pavlos: He will save.

Nehemia: He will save, in the future. Okay. Got it. All right. So, there isn’t a play on words to the Greek ear between Yesus and sose. And so, okay. All right. Fair enough. All right. Let’s go, let’s get back to the Tetragrammaton. All right. This is fascinating stuff.

So, share again, please, your screen and show us some of your other research. This is amazing stuff. Thank you.

Pavlos: So, one point of interest was that in this paper, our friends can search for it and read it in the Academia page. Another point is here, the third one, the term Kurios is not a Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton because it lies outside of the semantic domain of the Hebrew term and is not related to any of its possible etymologies. It is obvious that if Kurios had actually been used in the original Septuagint translation, this was not a welcome translational choice for more than two or three centuries. In all extent, all Greek, that is, original Jewish Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, or Septuagint, that means in the Christian era manuscripts as late as the middle of the 1st century CE, the term Kurios is not used, but rather Hebrew and Greek forms of the Tetragrammaton.

That is also very important to become clear to the minds of the readers, of the audience, that as Emmanuel Tov and other specialists have made clear, against the classic view that the Septuagint, the original Old Greek translation used in the Pentateuch, used the Kurios for rendering the Tetragrammaton. All the hard evidence and the history of the name points to this conclusion that actually a pronounceable form of the name was used, like Yao, as was made in Alexandria, where the Aramean influences were very important.

Nehemia: Aramean… like you mean from Aramaic?

Pavlos: From Aramaic, yeah. Yaho, Yao in Greek, came into the Bible. It’s not a rendering of four Hebrew letters. It’s a rendering, Yao, of three Hebrew letters. That’s common in the Elephantine letters and in the Alexandrian-Egyptian Jewish communities. So, from that time and place in the original Old Greek, the conclusion seems to be that Yao was in the original Pentateuch translation in the Greek.

Nehemia: Let me ask you to back up a little bit. What is the Septuagint? Let’s assume some of the audience doesn’t know.

Pavlos: Yes. Septuagint is the translation that Jewish specialists made from the Hebrew original text of the Pentateuch in the beginning, from Hebrew to Greek. But if we want to be more precise, we say that this is called Old Greek translation. The Septuagint, we keep it in our times now for the handling of this translation in the Christian environment. But in the Jewish environment, the original Jewish setting of the translation, we use the term Old Greek.

Nehemia: So, wait a minute. So, when somebody goes online on Bible Hub and pulls up the LXX, the Septuagint, is that the same Septuagint, I don’t know, word for word, let’s not say letter for letter because it’s not Hebrew, but is it word for word the same Septuagint as was available to Josephus in the 1st century, or Jesus in the 1st century, or Paul?

Pavlos: No, no, no.

Nehemia: It’s not? So, what they had would have been called Old Greek? Or we would call it Old Greek, right, let’s say.

Pavlos: Old Greek, not in the language, but it means that it was the first in Greek translation. Although we know now that there were also some other translations at the time that the so-called Septuagint was made, some also other attempts were made in Greek, and we have testimonies on that. But this corpus is very important, was the Septuagint, what we call the Septuagint. Of course, as Origen… am I saying right the name? Origen?

Nehemia: So, Origen guys, is O-R-I-G-E-N. He’s the name of one of the what’s commonly called the Church Fathers, right? So, it’s not the word origin, isn’t the origin of something, but Origen… it’s very confusing. But the man named Origen, exactly what does Origen say? Yeah, Origen who made the hexapla, is that where we’re going?

Pavlos: Exactly. And he writes in one of his works, “I go to the local churches, to the local congregations of Christians, and when I look at their scriptures, I saw many differences.” And that was the reason that prompted Origen to start comparing the manuscripts, trying to find the best manuscripts of the Septuagint, and make his own corrected version of the Hebrew scriptures in Greek, using Greek translations. And also having in front of him the Hebrew original, let’s say, or copy that he had at his disposal.

Nehemia: So, in other words, when people open up on Bible Hub the Septuagint, today that’s not what was available… or maybe one version of that was available to Origen, but there was a bunch of other versions, and so… So, this is important guys. So, in other words, you say, “Oh, the Septuagint was translated around 250 BC, although that was only…” am I right that that was only the Torah?

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: And then Esther was what, like 150 years later, or something?

Pavlos: Yes.

Nehemia: And so, it was sometime… I would imagine, I don’t know if you agree, that between 250 and 100 BCE is when the Septuagint for the whole Old Testament was created. But we don’t have that. We have copies of copies that have been… undergone changes, and what you’ve written here in your article in 2015 before… this is amazing, guys. This is one of the ways I discovered Pavlos from this. This is really a very important article. You can see actually how many times it’s cited by other scholars, which is many.

You’re saying, in all the extant Old Greek manuscripts, meaning the Septuagint which predates our Septuagint, as late as the middle of the 1st century CE, the term Kurios is not used. So, in other words, if you look at all the Greek Dead Sea Scrolls, which isn’t that many, all the manuscripts of the Septuagint that predate the middle of the 1st century CE, or AD in Christian terms, you will not find the word Kurios as a rendering of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, that’s what you’re saying.

Pavlos: And if you allow me…

Nehemia: Please. I’m excited. This is amazing stuff!

Pavlos: We have a…

Nehemia: What I love about this is, everybody’s got opinions and views and theories, and this is empirical research, right? Meaning, this is what the sources say. You could believe what… Look, I once had a conversation when I was working on my masters, and I was speaking to a guy who had a… I think he was working on his PhD, and I said to him something that like, you would laugh at probably, because you agree like… or his response may be laughed at… I said, “You know, we don’t have the Septuagint from 250 BC, we have something that’s gone through many iterations from around 325 AD,” right? Meaning, we have the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus, and then there’s the… there’s a palimpsest we have also, right?

Pavlos: The same issue is with the New Testament, I would boldly say. Of course…

Nehemia: Wait a minute, hold on, everybody pay attention. What are you going to boldly say about the New Testament?

Pavlos: Let’s make clear that there is no big differences from one manuscript to another. There are minor points. Of course, in the Old Testament, we have some major differences as well in some books…

Nehemia: Like Joshua and Judges are completely different, right.

Pavlos: Exactly. Jeremiah rearranges the material in many different ways. But the message does not change, I wouldn’t say that. But of course, we must make clear, for example, that we do not have copies of the Greek New Testament, for example, from the end of the 1st century or the early 2nd century, or even the whole 2nd century. Before you… what was happening in the Greek New Testament manuscripts before the introduction of the Nomina Sacra, the shortened forms of Kurios and theos in Greek?

Nehemia: So, guys, let me explain this for those who don’t know Greek. So, when they write Lord in Greek, they write Kappa-Sigma. By the way, I was just at the Museum of the Bible, and they have an inscription from the 3rd century in a mosaic in a church at Megiddo. It was actually the prisoners of the Megiddo prison who unearthed it. And there, it’s using these what you call Nomina Sacra, which literally means sacred names, but it’s abbreviations, right? They’re not going to write out Yesus because it’s such a common word. I mean Jesus, they write Iota-Sigma, or maybe it has a different ending, so they write iota… is it Iota-Omega, or maybe… I mean, depending on… it has to do with Greek case endings. We won’t get into that. But they write it as an abbreviation with a line above it. That’s the Nomina Sacra. Okay, so, you’re saying before the Nomina Sacra in the New Testament… I’m now hanging on every word; what was in the New Testament before that? Do we know?

Pavlos: It’s a good question. We can say many things, and I have written… we will see an article on this.

Nehemia: Okay, so, we’ll wait for that. Guys, this is exciting. That’s the part I’m waiting for. All right, so here you’re showing us… So, wait a minute. So, I’m having this conversation in the 90s with, or I guess it might’ve been in… maybe it was the late 90s, and with this much more advanced scholar. And I said, “We don’t have the original Septuagint. We have something that’s gone through many iterations and changed over time.” And he said, “Oh, opinions. People are bringing opinions into this.” And I said, “It’s not an opinion. Show me the manuscripts from 250 BCE. We don’t have those.” And I didn’t know what I know now, that we do have some earlier versions of the Septuagint, what you’re calling the Old Greek, or maybe they’re closer to the Old Greek. I’m not sure how you would describe it.

Pavlos: We have the critical editions. We compare all the different manuscripts. We put from a text critical point of view, the best articles in an order, using different various criteria, to say what is the best reading for each and every verse of the Bible.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: Yeah. So, here we see in the presentation, we see what I was saying before, that these are the oldest available Septuagint, as we commonly say, but I would say Old Greek copies, copies of the Old Greek, and all of them… you can see here in yellow, from the 1st century, yellow color, 1st century BC to 250 to 300 CE, we can see that it’s rendered not with Kyrios or Kurios. I use the Koine Greek pronunciation that is common with the Modern Greek.

Nehemia: No, that’s fine. Guys, he’s pronouncing Greek the way a Greek would, a modern Greek would, but fair enough. In other words, when I learned Greek, we were taught that, you know, “This is how it was pronounced in classical Greek, but not Koine.” Right? So, the Beta was pronounced buh, but you pronounce it vuh, am I right?

Pavlos: So, I’m reading as I have been in the time or almost the time of Jesus.

Nehemia: Okay. All right.

Pavlos: Okay. So, we see here Yao in the oldest available manuscript we have. We see endolon, commands, of Yao, of the God Jehovah, or Yahweh, or whatever you want to have.

Nehemia: But you’re saying Yao is based on the Aramaic Yud-Hey-Hey or Yud-Hey-Vav in the Elephantine Papyri. Guys, I did an episode with Prof. Betzalel Porton of blessed memory; he’s passed away since then. By the way, we were at a conference together in Helsinki, and you said to me, “Nehemia, do you know who that guy is?” “No, who is he?” “He’s Betzalel Porton.” And I’m like, “Okay, we got to go meet him!” Right? The famous scholar who transcribed… who basically made available for the world the transcription and translation of the Elephantine Papyri, which are ancient Aramaic Jewish papyri from Egypt.

Okay, so, Yao is a translation, not of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, you’re saying. Am I right? But it’s of Yud-Hey-Hey or Yud-Hey-Vav, which is an Aramaic rendering of the name.

Pavlos: Because we already have from the 5th century and 4th century BC, we have forms like Yaho, or Yud-Hey-Vav, probably read as Yaho, from the Aramean…

Nehemia: Oh, and the Elephantine papyri are in Aramaic, for those who…

Pavlos: Exactly. And other sources as well, yes.

Nehemia: Okay, all right.

Pavlos: So, it seems that it was under Aramaic influence, this form of the Tetragrammaton. That became Trigrammaton, three letters.

Nehemia: What did you call it, the Tri-grammaton?

Pavlos: Trigrammaton.

Nehemia: Look, and we have a two-letter name in the Masoretic text, which is Yah, as in hallelu-yah, praise Yah, but in Aramaic, and it’s not even that you’re saying… it’s clear in the Elephantine Papyri that there’s a form that’s usually written Yud-Hey-Vav, and then at least once it’s written Yud-Hey-Hey. Meaning, that’s the empirical data, right? Meaning, those are facts. How you interpret those facts, you can say whatever you want, but those are the facts. And this corresponds to the Aramaic, you’re saying. Okay.

Pavlos: So, the other manuscripts that we have from the Septuagint are using, like here, the second one, the Hebrew Tetragrammaton in Square Aramaic script, the Tetragrammaton Otheos.

Nehemia: Wow! And by the way, what we don’t know is how they read that. Maybe they read that Adonai Hotheos. That’s a different question, right? But they decided not to write Kyrios or Kurios, they wrote Yud-Hey-Vav… and this is from Papyrus Fuad 266b, is that right? From around 50 BCE. Okay. Wow! Okay.

Pavlos: Here I say we see a Hebrew term within Greek text. I have described this phenomenon as a choice of freedom.

Nehemia: As a what?

Pavlos: A choice of freedom.

Nehemia: A choice of freedom.

Pavlos: Yes. Why I described it this way? Because if I am reading at home, at my safety of home, such a copy of a biblical text, I would say, “Yao Otheos, Yohwa Otheos.” I could pronounce the name. Because soon after this translation was made in the Old Greek translation, started already from the 3rd century, started and even before that, to hold the sacred name of God as very holy to pronounce it. And the years that came and the centuries that followed, more and more started not to be pronounced in the public.

So, if someone in private wanted to pronounce the name, could do this way. If you were in public or in a synagogue, not to read, because the community there didn’t pronounce the name for reverence or other reasons, you could say Adonai Otheos, or Kyrios Otheos. It was, you saw the signal, ding-ding- ding-ding-ding-ding, Tetragrammaton. And you could transcribe in any way, depending on the environment that you were found at that time. You could use whatever term it was best fitting at that time.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm. I want to do something here, and this is kind of always a bad idea because it’s like, you know, ad hoc. We can edit this out if it doesn’t work out. So, Deuteronomy 25… oh, I don’t know where that is. So, if I looked in… and I’m just going to open up a random page here in Codex Vaticanus, which I have on my computer. So, like I said, this is always a bad idea to just open up something at random, but let’s go ahead and do it. And I want to show people what the Nominous Sacra looks like, because we mentioned… Oh, here we go, here’s one. And I’m going to put you on the spot and try to have you read an unbroken Greek text! At least the part that we’re looking at shouldn’t be that challenging here. This is a, just a random page, page 916 of codex Vaticanus. You can find this on the Vatican’s website. And here we have… so what is this? Here’s a Kappa and a Nu, or K-N, right, in English. Right? And then there’s a line above it. And then here’s Theta and Nu. And again, I’m pronouncing this the way, frankly, an Israeli would pronounce it. What are these? What’s going on here?

Pavlos: Here is Kirion Theon, that is, to the Lord the God, if we…

Nehemia: Okay, so the Nu here is what’s called the date of ending, guys. Is that right? We don’t have to get into what that is. If you want to google Greek case endings, it’s an important topic, but beyond the scope of today. So, in other words, sometimes it ends in a Nu, sometimes it ends in a different letter, but any reader of ancient Greek, or let’s say any Christian for sure who read this would say, “Oh, that’s that Kappa stands for Kurios, and then the Nu ending, and Theos, and the Nu ending.” And they know how to read this, and what you’re showing is that before this convention, they were writing it in Hebrew letters. That’s amazing.

All right, let’s go back to you sharing what you were sharing… and that’s amazing. That’s very cool. And look, you know, guys, what I love about this is, this is empirical data. In other words, if a manuscript shows up from 150 BCE and it has those sorts of abbreviations or it has the full word Kurios, okay, then the data has changed. But the current data that’s available to us is that we don’t have anything predating… and you put there 50 AD or 50 CE that has Kurios in place of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. What is the earliest? Do you know off the top of your head, what the earliest manuscript is that has the Nomina Sacra? Or even Kurios, but not as an abbreviation?

Pavlos: I mentioned…

Nehemia: Oh, I’m jumping ahead, so, let’s wait for that. Okay guys, I’m impatient. But what this shows here… Well, let’s go on. So, you showed Papyrus Fuad 266b, and guys, it says here Ralphs 848. What that was is, there was this scholar named Ralphs who made a critical edition the Old Testament in Greek of Septuagint, and he assigned a number to every manuscript that was available to him. So, this is his Manuscript 848, which is I believe in Egypt to this day. It’s a papyrus. So, it doesn’t come from Israel. It actually comes from Egypt, which is interesting.

Pavlos: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: But the important thing here is that…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Pavlos: …in square Aramaic script, the common script of that time of the Hebrew, when the copies of the Hebrew Bible were made at that time, were made using this script.

Nehemia: By the way, it’s not just Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Am I right? There’s Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey with a dot over it. Can you talk about the dot?

Pavlos: I wouldn’t say… as far as I know the bibliography, no one has, because there are other instances as well that do not have that point.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: Probably it’s a spot…

Nehemia: If I’m not mistaken, there’s a manuscript where there’s only the dot, and the dot might have been assigned for the scribe to fill in the name here.

Pavlos: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s one explanation I read. I don’t know if that applies to this. I don’t remember which one.

Pavlos: Four dots; there are four dots as well.

Nehemia: Right. So, in other words… well, let’s not get into that. Let’s continue. Go on.

Pavlos: … and so on. So, at that time, we are at the 50 BC. The next manuscripts available of the Greek translation of the Hebrew text are using the Tetragrammaton within the Greek text in Paleo-Hebrew. So, there was an attempt after the Maccabees and all their revolution against this Hellenizing tendency, to go back to the original. And the original was the use of the Paleo-Hebrew, especially for what was the most sacred; the names of God, mainly the Tetragrammaton and also the Elohim in some instances.

So, here we see the manuscripts that have approximations or attempts of the Hebrew of that time. That was the way that were read in Paleo-Hebrew, the Tetragrammaton within the Greek text. And this is very important. So, this is a Hebraizing tendency at that time, because the nationality, nationalism, the Hebrew nationalism was in its rise.

Nehemia: And one of the places we see this Paleo-Hebrew is on coins. And it’s very clear that on the Bar Kokhba coins, and the revolt against the Romans in 66 to 73, or 70 really, for the coins, CE, that they put this Paleo-Hebrew on the coins, and that was a way of saying, “Look, this is our ancient Hebrew Jewish identity. On a daily basis, yes, we write in this different script, but we remember this is our original script. And we want to emphasize that as part of our identity and put it on coins.” And you’re putting it in using the name, because it’s the sacred word.

So, it’s interesting, the earliest form, it’s in Greek letters, and then they’re putting… and it’s not, I mean, look, these could have existed side by side, but at least from the evidence we have here, is you have the Greek letters, then they go to the Hebrew Aramaic script, and then to the Paleo-Hebrew script, right? That’s very interesting.

Pavlos: And we are coming, until the 3rd century CE, that all the manuscripts that we have available use the latest, the 3rd century, but surely until the 2nd century plus, they are using only Hebrew terms within the Greek text.

Nehemia: Wait a minute, wait a minute, slow down… until what time are they doing this?

Pavlos: Second plus century. All the available manuscripts.

Nehemia: So, you’re saying in 150 AD or CE…

Pavlos: You can check it in front of you.

Nehemia: So, let’s just like… there’s this very fascinating discussion between… it’s something called Dialogues with Trypho, right? So, it’s Justin Martyr, who is a Christian, and he comes from a pagan background, and he has this encounter. You know, look, he’s writing this, so it could be a fictitious encounter, but he describes an encounter with a Jew named Trypho, which some people say is Rabbi Tarfon. And I love that in the beginning of the book, Trypho says, “I came from the war,” meaning the Bar Kokhba revolt. So, whether it actually happened or not, it’s putting a date roughly 135 AD. Right? You know, and it could be him remembering 10 years later or making up something 10 years, who knows. But, but so, when Trypho opened up the Greek Septuagint, would he have seen Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, or would he have seen Kurios?

Pavlos: Nice question. I would say, another question I would put on the table. If that was the case, and in the 2nd century CE, what was the Greek text that Jesus and his apostles were reading, when they were reading, not the Hebrew text, but Greek texts?

Nehemia: What’s the answer? You tell me.

Pavlos: [Laughter] In front of you is the answer. All the available manuscripts we have from that time, they are using the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.

Nehemia: So, this is what’s so amazing about the research you do. So, guys, you can have any opinion you want, any theory you want, right? And maybe somebody will find, tomorrow, a manuscript in the library on Mt. Athos or someplace like that, and we can date it to 150 BCE, and it’ll have Kurios with a line above it… that could happen. But from what we know today…

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: …the objective empirical information we have today is that Jesus’s scroll in Greek, or… I’m going to say Paul’s scroll, because he came from Tarsus, right? So, when Paul is in the synagogue in Tarsus as a young boy, and he opens up a scroll, and it’s in Greek, of the Old Testament, which was, you know, the only bible when he was a kid. Right? It has something like what we’re seeing here. Either Yao or Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey in Aramaic script or Paleo-Hebrew script. And it’s not like some theory or hypothesis, based on the currently best available evidence today, is what you’re saying.

Pavlos: But look, Nehemia, what’s going on here.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: Look at the final manuscript here.

Nehemia: And this is Papyrus Oxyrhynchus. Can you say something about Oxyrhynchus?

Pavlos: Yes, it’s in Egypt, an area in Egypt. It’s a fish’s name, Oxyrhynchosh.

Nehemia: It’s a name of a fish, you said?

Pavlos: Yes. It’s a name of a fish, Oxyrhynchosh. Sharp nose.

Nehemia: And that’s the name of a town somewhere in ancient Egypt?

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay, alright.

Pavlos: And there, in the middle of the 3rd century to the end of that century, we have a manuscript in Greek of the book of Genesis, of the Septuagint, that has a shortened form using two Yuds here. Yud– Yud. And here, nomen sacrum, Theos, using Theta and Sigma. All of them, if we go up here, we see there is no nomen sacrum. Here say o Theos, no nomen sacrum, Theta, Sigma.

Nehemia: So, the nomen sacrum is the abbreviation with the line above it.

Pavlos: It’s the abbreviated form.

Nehemia: Okay. Alright.

Pavlos: No Theos. But here, you see an abbreviated form in Hebrew.

Nehemia: That’s Paleo-Hebrew, two Yuds, am I right? It’s hard to see.

Pavlos: Paleo-Hebrew, exactly. And here, nomen sacrum, Theos, God.

Nehemia: So, this is like a transition stage, you’re saying.

Pavlos: Exactly. So, this is important. Is the source Christian or Jewish? At that time, the difference between them, they were using the same scriptures. There was no Christian scripture of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scripture. No. They were common scriptures, and they were copying both communities. Jewish communities and Christian communities, they were copying the same manuscripts. Of course, Origen came and said, “I see differences and I will try my best to find the best.” Okay, copies had that problem that they were at the risk of making errors and reproducing errors. Of course. This is natural for that time. There were no Xerox machines.

But we see that there is a transition, as exactly you said for the period, that we know who is the Tetragrammaton, because many say that in the New Testament, from the beginning, we didn’t make clear, there wasn’t made clear, who is the Lord. Is the father meant or the son? It is clear, and many studies, centuries long, but also in this 20th century, many studies have shown, as already I have published, that the authors of the New Testament knew very well the Lord who was actually they were speaking about. There are very few cases that it is not clear if it’s the father or the son. For the great majority of the cases, I would say the 90, 95%, we know exactly that this Lord is the Father.

Nehemia: I think that’s important to explain. So, in Hebrew, you have Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, which is unambiguous, but then you have ambiguous terms. Let’s say we have adon. Adon, which means lord. And I’m not even talking Adonai. Let’s leave that aside for a minute. Adon can refer to Yehovah or can refer to a human. And Yehovah is, I’ll just use that term, is sometimes called Adon. And you’re saying that in the New Testament when it says Kurios, in our current New Testament text, that’s inherently ambiguous. Is that what you’re saying?

Pavlos: If we have, in both cases, Kurios, for the Tetragrammaton and for the adon, that is in general the lord.

Nehemia: Meaning Jesus?

Pavlos: Might mean Jesus, might mean a human master.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: But when we talk about God the Father, it’s clear. And in this place, we…

Nehemia: It’s clear because of the context, or it’s clear because they wrote something in Hebrew, or Yao or something.

Pavlos: Mainly because of the context. Mainly.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: But we have a major testimony that is coming from the old Syriac translations. And this is another part of my research during the previous years…

Nehemia: Oh.

Pavlos: …that comes from the 2nd and 3rd century CE, from the Syriac translations, probably from Greek originals, but they were keeping in the Syriac-speaking communities the ancient traditions. They were new in the Greek text, where, if they have the manuscripts that have in front of them of the New Testament, if there was already Lord there, they knew from the tradition who the Lord was, the father or the son, and…

Nehemia: Is this in the New Testament you’re talking about?

Pavlos: Yes, in the New Testament.

Nehemia: Okay, is this about where it says maria, that that was referring to God the Father?

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: What would they say if they were talking about Jesus, then?

Pavlos: Mar, maran.

Nehemia: Mar.

Pavlos: But maria is an intensive form of mar that is used only for Jehovah, only for God the Father.

Nehemia: Okay.

Pavlos: So, in the old Syriac translations, there’s a distinction. When we read, the Lord said to my lord, it is maria told to maria to maran, to maran, to my lord. So, the difference between the Tetragrammaton and the Lord is kept in the…

Nehemia: Let me, if you want to stop sharing for a second, I want to show the audience what this looks like. In something that’s not controversial, right? Meaning, like, when you get to the New Testament there’s probably some controversial passages. I don’t think there’s anything controversial here. So, here we have Genesis 18:12. And this is, “Sarah laughed inside of her, saying, after I am withered and I will have pleasure and my lord is an old man.” And that’s adoni. And adoni, I’ll have you read this because I’m not going to… in the presence of such a great Greek scholar, I’m not going to read Greek. What does this say?

Pavlos: Ho de kurios mo presbyteros.

Nehemia: All right. So, the kurios, the lord of mine, that’s like the word Presbyterian. Presbyteros is old. And then here we have in the Syriac, mari…

Pavlos: My lord.

Nehemia: My lord. Okay. And nobody thinks this is referring to God. Obviously, it’s her old man, as we would say in English, meaning her husband. And then Genesis…

What’s that? Genesis 18:27 has Adonai. And what is the Greek here for Adonai? Actually, let’s keep the other one so they can see it as well. So, the Greek here for Adonai…

Pavlos: On Kirion.

Nehemia: Right, so in other words the word Kirion… the ending doesn’t matter here. It has to do with the function within the sentence. But the word Kurios or Kyrios is the same whether it’s referring to God or Sarah’s husband. But then in the Syriac, here we have Maria, which as you say is an intensive form which is exclusively referring to, as you would say, God the Father, meaning just God here in the Old Testament context. Right? And you’re saying in the Greek New Testament, Maria only refers to God the Father. Is that the takeaway?

Pavlos: Yes. It comes from the translation of the Hebrew Bible. There is a consistency of the translations in Syriac of the Old Testament and also the New Testament. There is a consistency of using Maria for the Tetragrammaton.

Nehemia: What’s interesting about the… and this is what’s called the Pshita, the Syriac Old Testament; from what I understand, that’s not translated from Greek. And you can see that when there are significant variants between the Hebrew and the Greek, the Syriac tends to be based on the Hebrew. Although, let’s wait till I interview the Syriac expert on that, for maybe more details. So, Maria is a rendering… I like that word you use, rendering. In other words, Maria represents Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey. Okay.

Pavlos: Exactly.

—

Nehemia: Oh! What do you have here? Oh, this is exciting.

Pavlos: Here we have the next step. The Nomina Sacra came to take the hold of the situation because many are saying, “Come on, all the manuscripts we have of the New Testament are using the Nomina Sacra. Why are you talking about the Tetragrammaton in New Testament?” This question is not new. All the centuries were people that were using the Tetragrammaton in their Bibles, especially from the 10th century and on, we have numerous New Testament versions that were using, during the centuries, more and more a form of a word that was differentiating God the Father from Jesus in the New Testament text.

Nehemia: In the New Testament text?

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