This is a very interesting discussion...thanks for everyones effort.
How does one refute the official WT explanation as listed below??
The Pope
*** it-2 9-10 Jehovah ***
Why is the divine name in its full form not in any available ancient manuscript of the Christian Greek Scriptures?
The argument long presented was that the inspired writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures made their quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures on the basis of the Septuagint, and that, since this version substituted Ky'ri·os or The·os' for the Tetragrammaton, these writers did not use the name Jehovah. As has been shown, this argument is no longer valid. Commenting on the fact that the oldest fragments of the Greek Septuagint do contain the divine name in its Hebrew form, Dr. P. Kahle says: “We now know that the Greek Bible text [the Septuagint] as far as it was written by Jews for Jews did not translate the Divine name by kyrios, but the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters was retained in such MSS [manuscripts]. It was the Christians who replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios, when the divine name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more.” (The Cairo Geniza, Oxford, 1959, p. 222) When did this change in the Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures take place?
It evidently took place in the centuries following the death of Jesus and his apostles. In Aquila’s Greek version, dating from the second century C.E., the Tetragrammaton still appeared in Hebrew characters. Around 245 C.E., the noted scholar Origen produced his Hexapla, a six-column reproduction of the inspired Hebrew Scriptures: (1) in their original Hebrew and Aramaic, accompanied by (2) a transliteration into Greek, and by the Greek versions of (3) Aquila, (4) Symmachus, (5) the Septuagint, and (6) Theodotion. On the evidence of the fragmentary copies now known, Professor W. G. Waddell says: “In Origen’s Hexapla . . . the Greek versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and LXX [Septuagint] all represented JHWH by ; in the second column of the Hexapla the Tetragrammaton was written in Hebrew characters.” (The Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford, Vol. XLV, 1944, pp. 158, 159) Others believe the original text of Origen’s Hexapla used Hebrew characters for the Tetragrammaton in all its columns. Origen himself stated that “in the most accurate manuscripts THE NAME occurs in Hebrew characters, yet not in today’s Hebrew [characters], but in the most ancient ones.”
As late as the fourth century C.E., Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate, says in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings: “And we find the name of God, the Tetragrammaton [i.e., ], in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters.” In a letter written at Rome, 384 C.E., Jerome states: “The ninth [name of God] is the Tetragrammaton, which they considered [a·nek·pho'ne·ton], that is, unspeakable, and it is written with these letters, Iod, He, Vau, He. Certain ignorant ones, because of the similarity of the characters, when they would find it in Greek books, were accustomed to read [Greek letters corresponding to the Roman letters PIPI].”—Papyrus Grecs Bibliques, by F. Dunand, Cairo, 1966, p. 47, ftn. 4.
The so-called Christians, then, who “replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios” in the Septuagint copies, were not the early disciples of Jesus. They were persons of later centuries, when the foretold apostasy was well developed and had corrupted the purity of Christian teachings.—2Th 2:3; 1Ti
