Larry W. Hurtado (Emeritus Professor of New
Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of
Edinburgh, Scotland) had this to say on the subject:
YHWH in the Septuagint
August 22, 2014
Further to my earlier postings and the (many!) comments elicited, especially those about the use of “kyrios” in the LXX, I point readers to an excellent essay by John Wevers:
John William Wevers, “The Rendering of the Tetragram in the Psalter and Pentateuch: A Comparative Study,” in The Old Greek Psalter: Studies in Honour of Albert Pietersma, ed. Robert J. V. Hiebert, Claude E. Cox and Peter J. Gentry (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 21-35.
First, he registers agreement with Albert Pietersma’s argument that
the use of the Hebrew YHWH in some Old Greek manuscripts (as well as
other devices, e.g., ΙΑΩ, ΠΙΠΙ), represents “a revision” that took place
within the textual transmission of the Greek of the Hebrew scriptures.
Then Wevers gives details of the use of “kyrios” as equivalents of YHWH and other terms in the LXX.
His particular focus is on the Psalter, but he prefaces that analysis
with a helpfully detailed survey of data from the Pentateuch (book by
book), confirming that YHWH is overwhelmingly rendered by forms of kyrios
without the definite article (“anarthrous” forms). In contrast, forms
of the word with the definite article (“articular”) are preferred to
translate references to other figures who hold a lordly position in the
narratives. As one example, check out Genesis 39:2-3, where the LXX has
κυριος (without article) for YHWH consistently, and articular forms of
κυριος to translate references to the human/Egyptian “master” in the
narrative. The few exceptions, where an articular form of kyrios
refers to God are translations of prepositional phrases and/or a very
few cases where the Greek syntax requires a definite article
(“post-positive” uses of the Greek δε, for Greek “techies”).
And remember that we’re talking about hundreds of instances on which to build the observation that the “anarthrous” forms of kyrios are preferred in the Pentateuch. This pattern suggests that in these texts kyrios is being treated as if it is a name, not the common noun for “Sir/Lord/Master”.
In the final part of his essay, Wevers also makes brief notice of the
pattern of usage in the “former prophets” (called “historical books”
often by Christians), and it’s the same clear overwhelming dominance of
the anarthrous kyrios as substitute for YHWH.
But the main/middle part of the essay is given to the translation
practice in the Psalter, and here the pattern differs somewhat. Wevers
observes that it is “clear that the translator of the Psalter has not
followed the strict pattern established by the translators of the
Pentateuch. To be sure, Κυριος does continue to represent the proper
noun, ‘YHWH’, and it remains unarticulated in the majority of cases, but
this is not a hard and fast rule” (p. 33). And Wevers judges that in a
number of instances the translator may be rendering the “qere” (the Hebrew oral substitute for YHWH that had become popular by the time of the translator, “adonay“), which the translator regularly renders with articular forms of kyrios.
As one example of the Psalter data, consider LXX Psalm 134 (Heb 135). The Hebrew “halelu yah”
is rendered Αλληλουια (“hallelujah”), but cf. the translation of the
same expression in v. 3, αινειτε τον κυριον (the articular form). It
appears, however, that the translator didn’t take the “yah” to
be the same thing as YHWH fully spelled out (as also the case in v. 4).
For in the psalm otherwise, he tends to use anarthrous forms of kyrios to render YHWH (5 times in vv. 1-5). In vv. 19-21, however, the articular (accusative) forms of kyrios render
Hebrew phrases with the particle signalling an accusative phrase, the
Hebrew accusative phrasing here influencing the translator’s decisions
(a translation-choice that we can observe in other Psalms too).
This clear dominance of the anarthrous kyrios as Greek
equivalent of YHWH, a dominance exhibited already in the Pentateuch
(which were the earliest Hebrew scriptures translated), suggests
strongly that it had become a widely-used oral substitute for YHWH among
Greek-speaking Jews. I.e., the anarthrous kyrios served as virtually a proper name for God, a reverential substitute for YHWH.
