Nehemia Gordon and the pronunciation of the tetragrammaton

by gubberningbody 92 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  slimboyfat

  I did not intend to make an argument from authority. It was you who called the references I gave "fringe Biblical scholarship" that you were not interested in reading. Going into details about Howard, Trobisch and Ziesler was meant to be a direct response to that comment. It was not meant as "proof" that the Tetragrammaton was in the NT, just that I think they are scholars worth reading if you are interested in the subject. Most scholars would dispute the claim the NT originally contained the divine name, that is clear. The reason I mentioned Trobisch in the context of discussing the nomina sacra on the other thread is that he makes an interesting case linking the nomina sacra present in extant NT manuscripts with the Tetragrammaton used in the early LXX and argues for the likelihood that the NT also originally contained the Tetragrammaton. The development of his argument takes up about 12 pages of text and 7 pages of endnotes. If I could reproduce it here for everyone to read I would. It is because the argument itself is good that I mention it, not to invoke the name of a scholar for the sake of it. You rarely rely upon secondary sources in making your arguments whereas I rely upon them heavily. I think that is understandable considering you can read biblical languages and I can't. I am not in a position to dispute inferences based on linguistic evidence you draw from texts under discussion. I am in a position to point to scholars who disagree with your position and point out where I feel their reasoning is persuasive. That is what I have attempted to do.

  Although you quote me from the thread I wrote to reniaa, I have demonstrated that I can see both sides of the argument:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/161021/1/Should-the-Name-Jehovah-Appear-in-the-New-Testament-WT-Aug-1st-2008

  I think I showed the Watchtower writer is pretty misleading in how he presents his case. However there are a few things I have changed my mind on since making that post. Having read Tov's response to Pietersma I think the evidence is good that the original LXX used IAW not kyrios. Frank Shaw's dissertation also persuades me that forms of the divine name were in everyday use much longer than is generally believed and that some Jews used the divine name in everyday contexts in the first century. (I am just explaining here what information caused me to change my mind if anyone is interested, not insisting that anyone else must believe any particular thing just because some scholar I name said it!) The biggest problem I still have with the Watchtower's argument is that they try to have it both ways: they claim the NT has been well preserved so we can be confident about the text; yet an element of the text as significant as the divine name is said to have been removed. I am not in the position of having to hold those two contradictory positions. I believe the NT underwent significant revision in its early transmission, including the removal of the divine name and introduction of nomina sacra.

  Ziesler's argument in Romans 10 if I remember it correctly is that the five "fors" link "everyone who calls on the name of Lord will be saved" in verse 13 with "believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead" in verse 9, not "confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord" as most scholars see it. And it makes sense of the passage:

  8But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. 13 For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (English Standard Version)

  Paul says that Christians who confess Jesus is Lord and believe God raised him from the dead will be saved. It is God's demonstration of power in resurrecting Jesus that is the guarantee of salvation. The subsequent clauses beginning with "for" are thus each linked with the action of God in raising Jesus from the dead, so that the Lord who is "Lord of all" that Paul has in mind is God who has the power to resurrect from the dead. Thus Paul also has God in mind when he quotes Joel 2:32: "for everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved". (NWT) When the Tetragrammaton was present in the text the point would have been clear. Since it was removed it is understandable that most readers have taken the "Lord" Christians confess in verse 9 to be the same "Lord" they call upon in verse 13. Yet interestingly Ziesler argues that the distinction between the two Lords is present even without positing an original Tetragrammaton. He argues that readers would have known that the Lord of the OT is a different Lord than Jesus in part because the Tetragrammaton was preserved in the copies of the LXX that they read.
• 

  Spike Tassel
• 

  free2think

  Martin Goodman in his Rome and Jerusalem: the clash of Ancient Civilizations testifies to the ideosyncratic nature of early christian beliefs and also of Jewish beliefs during the period before and after the historical Jesus.

  I think Narkissos is quite right to call those scholars quasi scholars, Slim, they are victims of their own ideology as we are of Jehovahs witnesses. The Jehovahs witness myopic view of the tetragrammaton is closely liked to their strongly monotheistic stance. Martin Goodman says that such singular monotheism only emerged in Jewish thinking with the advent of Islam.

  ql using F2T's computer

  edit: in other words, it seems to me, from what I've understood, that Howard and Trobisch are working backwards instead of letting the texts speak for themselves.

  I don't see anything wrong with your style or method of argumentation. Its your sources that are the problem
• 

  Spike Tassel

  Let God be found true, despite what others (including this Martin Goodman) say. Isaiah 43 was written long before the advent of Islam, LOL
• 

  quietlyleaving

  spike

  Let God be found true, despite what others (including this Martin Goodman) say. Isaiah 43 was written long before the advent of Islam, LOL

  spike please not that I said that Martin Goodman said that Jewish thinking took a strongly monotheistic stance with the advent of Islam. Monotheistic ideas and belief about God were always there in Jewish thinking and has been pointed out, numerous times on JWN, Isaiah 43 has to been seen in the context of a tussle between polytheism and montheism which at the same time testifies to polytheistic thinking among Jews at the time.
• 

  Narkissos

  slimboyfat,

  I have already explained (above and elsewhere) why the (too) general approaches to "Jewish" (Hebrew and Greek) or "Christian" "scriptures" carry very little weight to me, so I don't think it is necessary to go into that again. Suffice to say (or repeat) that what really matters to the meaning and function (hence text) of "OT" quotations by "NT" writers is the particular "scripture" they (and secondarily their original audience) had in mind. And this cannot be assumed to be identical with the "original LXX" (if that means anything at all) anymore than with the "original Hebrew" or any state of the "full" OT texts actually known to (or reconstructed by) us. In fact, what they quoted (often from memory or testimonia, i.e. Christian collections of "prooftexts" isolated from their original OT context) can only be inferred from what they wrote. That is why material (ms) evidence of the NT texts is primordial and should not easily be tampered with on the basis of conjecture from other documents, let alone general theories of "scripture". Then comes the narrative and rhetorical analysis of the (NT) context which makes sense of the quote within the (NT) argument. And only then can it be compared to other documents for further enlightenment, which generally tells us more about the drift of meaning from possible "sources" to the quotation than about the meaning of the quotation itself.

  If I understood your (Ziesler's) take on Romans 10 correctly, I'd say it tends to make Paul's argument subtler, deeper or "better" -- than it actually is. Indeed Paul might have made a better point (from our "logical" perspective) had he shown that through their faith in Jesus the Gentile Christians were actually connected with Jesus' God and Father who is also the God of Abraham (if not of the Law), rather than playing on the verbal (and from a modern perspective, fortuitous) ambiguity of kurios. But Joel 2:32 is a very poor choice of a prooftext to make this point (which he does make elsewhere, not with kurios texts though). From v. 8 (with the quotation of Deuteronomy) onward there is a consistent duality of "mouth" and "heart". On the side of the "mouth" are the confession (homologeô) and calling upon (epikaleô) of Jesus as Lord (kurios) for salvation (sotèria / sôzô); on the side of the "heart" is the faith (pistis) in God (theos) as the source of Jesus' resurrection for justification (dikaiosunè). The entire content of the Joel quote (not just kurios, but epikaleô, onoma and sôzô as well) refers exclusively to the first (more "superficial" in a sense) side of the issue (that of the "mouth"), not the second (that of the "heart"). And that Paul hasn't changed referents in the course of the argument is confirmed in what follows the quotation (v. 14ff): "But how are they to call on (epikaleô)one (who's that?) in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ (most likely an objective genitive for 'the word about Christ')"
  
  One of the major pitfalls in exegesis (especially these days when we have easy access to more information than was available to the writers, even though we still lack some of their background) is that of overinterpretation. It took me years to become sensitive to this very real risk and appreciate better the value of plain (or naïve) cursory reading (a practice sorely missing among JWs and sometimes, at the other end of the spectrum, among some highly theoretical scholars). As a rule of thumb, the more you have to explain to make sense of a text, the more likely you are to miss the point.
• 

  PSacramento

  The issue with Romans 10 is that Paul make sit clear in romans and all his other letters that it is in the name of Christ, through Christ, the God gives us our salvation, the subsititution of "Jehovah" into Romans 10:13 goes against the authors (Paul) stated "Doctrine" and a such breaks the rule of translation and makes the passge mean soemthing other than the author sated.

  Now we can debate it till we are blue in the face, but taken how the Chapter and passage before read and taking Paul's view, the plain translation for Romans 10:13 is what is stated in the majority of Translations and trying to "adapt" that to another POV or doctrine is going beyond what is stated in scripture, you ceratinly CAN do it, but you must ask yourself WHY are you doing that?
• 

  Spike Tassel

  Narkissos (Post 9448) includes this:—

  So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ (most likely an objective genitive for 'the word about Christ')"

  The NWT Reference Bible has Romans 10:17 as follows:— So faith follows the thing heard. In turn the thing heard is through the word about Christ ["Word about Christ," P 46 [aleph] * BCD * Vg; [aleph] c ASy p , "word of God"; J 7,8,10 , "word of Jehovah."

  Perhaps, knowing that Christ is Jehovah's foremost Spokesman, "word of Christ about Jehovah" would even be possible, in my honest opinion.
• 

  Narkissos

  Spike Tassel,

  Good point about the variant reading (and I don't mean the "J" part :)), I should have mentioned it. Does Ziesler choose rhèmatos theou over rhèmatos khristou? In any case the earlier attestation of the latter (P46) does not militate for a late Christologising of the passage...

  It should be made clearer that the difference between "of" and "about" in the translation of variant readings is an interpretive, not textual issue. The genitive case can be understood either way, although "word of God" and "word about Christ" certainly make better sense in a Pauline context. Conflating the variant readings as you suggest ("Jehovah" aside) is not really a textual option either (otoh there is an odd Western variant which leaves rhèma without any complement: "the word," cf. Metzger ad loc.).
• 

  slimboyfat

  Indeed Paul would have used the divine name in the quotation from LXX since it used the divine name in that period, and the first readers of Paul's letter would have seen:

  16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “YHWH, who has believed our report?” 17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

  The second century redactors removed the Tetragrammaton and inserted nomina sacra:

  16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “L-d, who has believed our report?” 17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of G-d.

  The significance of L-d used in quotations from the OT as referring to God in Paul's writings was soon forgotten, and new readers understandably assumed that L-d here referred to Jesus as it does in the vast majority of instances in Paul's letters. That made the reference to the "word of G-d" seem out of place in the argument and copyists solved this problem by replacing G-d with C-t early in the text's transmission.

  16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “L-d, who has believed our report?” 17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of C-t.

  Paul letters have many examples such as this where the removal of the divine name from the OT quotation has caused variants in the surrounding commentary as a result of confusion over whether the quotation was now to be understood in reference to Jesus or to God. Romans 14:11-12 and 1 Cor 2:16 are two such examples where the removal of the divine name from OT quotes has resulted in variants involving divine names in the surrounding text. This is what I am talking about when I say the extant text of the NT provides evidence that the Tetragrammaton was originally used in quotations from the OT. I don't think Trobisch or Howard are guilty of merely formulating, "general theories of "scripture" which extrapolate from the Jewish Hebrew or Greek "corpus" to the NT one(s)"; their conclusion that the divine name stood in the original writings of the NT is also a result of close readings of the texts themselves, their problems and variants. On a more general point I don't think someone who had actually read either Trobisch's book on Paul's letters or the formation of the NT would accuse him ignoring situational aspects, purpose and readership of the texts. Such considerations form the basis of his arguments and he is a very careful scholar in that respect.