The Lords prayer ;Our Father prayer...."Let your name be sanctified " from Jesus.

by smiddy3 35 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  slimboyfat

  Smiddy I think it’s better to have a discussion without using such insulting language: “deliberate ploy”, “confuse”, “disappointed in you”, “old trick”, “you haven’t been honest”, and so on. Cut it out, and make your case without insults. I am so put off by your rhetoric that I am tempted not to respond, but it’s a topic I am very interested in.

  I have argued both that the NT originally used the divine name, and that Jehovah is God in the New Testament and that Jesus is Lord. These two issues are very closely related, as George Howard explained in his seminal article:

  This removal of the Tetragram, in our view, created a confusion in the minds of early Gentile Christians about the relationship between the "Lord God" and the "Lord Christ" which is reflected in the MS tradition of the NT text Itself. http://www.areopage.net/howard.pdf

  David Trobisch and others similarly argue that removal of the divine name from the New Testament resulted in confusion between the identities of Jesus and God. The issues of the divine name in the NT and Christology are inextricably linked. If you don’t appreciate how closely related these issues are then maybe you need to read more on the topic before accusing me.

  Authors such as David Capes, Richard Bauckham and others argue that OT YHWH texts are applied to Jesus and “include Jesus in the divine identity”. (To use Baukham’s particular Christology terminology).

  On the other side are scholars who see a clear distinction between Jehovah God and the Lord Jesus in the NT, such as Howard and Trobisch, on the basis that the original NT made this distinction in terms of use of the divine name.

  Consider this point: if the original NT used kyrios instead of the divine name throughout, then that means that both Jesus and God are described as “Lord” in the NT, and we often need to work out who is meant according to the context. If however the divine name was used in the NT, that means that Jesus is the one who is called “Lord”, and God is rarely, if ever called “Lord” (kyrios) in the NT. In other words, the restoration of the divine name resolves an incredible amount of ambiguity in the NT over which “Lord” is intended. If the original NT consistently used YHWH for God and kyrios of Jesus then it reads better and makes more sense, which is good evidence in itself for the argument that the original NT used the divine name.

  It is disputed among scholars what name Phil 2 refers to, whether it is the divine name or Jesus. In whichever case it shows that God can give his name to another if he chooses, so that person acts on his behalf. James McGrath is excellent on this.

  This is seen most clearly in Phillipians 2:10-11, [kyrios/YHWH used for Jesus] where Paul applies to Jesus language that is applied to God in the Jewish Scriptures. This use of “Lord” as the divine name can be easily misunderstood, however. In at least some streams of thought within the diversity of first century Judaism, it was not felt to be incompatible with monotheism for God’s supreme agent to bear God’s name as part of his enmpowerment to serve in this capacity. A striking example, which provides an instructive parallel to Paul’s own statements, is the case of the Angel Yahoel in Apocalypse of Abraham. James McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context (2009), page 49.

  James McGrath says much more on this topic of the divine name given to Jesus worth reading, I only quote the beginning of his discussion.
• 

  LV101

  SBF - very interesting and appreciate all this info but could you please tell me what MS stands for in "MS tradition" in the first highlighted explanation by George Howard. Sorry - other than the word manuscripts I'm clueless.

  Thanks.

  It has to stand for manuscripts - missed some previous posts where one is referring to old manuscripts.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Yes MS means manuscript and MSS means manuscripts plural.
• 

  Phizzy

  The big problem with "restoring" YHWH to the N.T texts is that those doing the "restoration" are affected by their particular Theology and Christology.

  It is clear that the JW Org is against the concepts contained in the Trinity Doctrine, and so will render verses according to their beliefs, as will people in the pro Trinity camp.

  We are deep in the realm of Eisegesis, not pure Translation. Of course, if one is reading an honest Translation, the reader must use Exegesis, as YHWH will not appear.

  I do feel that the JW org, though restraining themselves somewhat when inserting " Jehovah" into the Text, have in fact been overly enthusiastic to do so in certain places, but again, that is only my opinion based on my understanding of the Text.

  I think that all Scholarly efforts to render in a modern language what the writer intended to say are to be respected,but we have to recognize that the results are only the opinion of the Scholar.

  At the end of it all we must admit two things, 1) the MSS we have are very late, have been redacted and edited and had additions included, therefore we can never know what was originally written and 2) Whether or not YHWH appeared or not, or how often it appeared, really is not very important.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Phizzy I think it depends on the approach taken. The NWT restores the divine name 237 times. If they stuck purely to OT quotations that should have been closer to 110 or so. The extra 120 or so are made up from OT allusions and common OT phrases such as “angel of Jehovah” and so on. If a translator proceeded on the basis of restoring the divine name wherever there was good contextual indications and variant readings to support it, arguably there are more instances where an original use of the divine name makes the best sense. For example Acts 16:7 shows considerable textual variation. The majority of MSS read “spirit of Jesus”, but other early Witnesses say “spirit of the Lord”, “holy spirit”, or simply “spirit”. If the original book of Acts said “spirit of YHWH”, then it is easy to see how the other readings result from the removal of the divine name and later scribes trying to clear up the text in its absence. If the divine name never appeared in the text, then it raises the question why so many variants such as this involving “Lord”, “Jesus”, and “God” occur throughout the NT. Acts 20:28 is another example where an original use of the divine name probably makes better sense and explains the textual variants associated with the verse. In short, there are verses where a good case can be made for the divine name where the NWT has not included it.

  Further in Howard’s article:

  The removal of the Tetragram in the NT of the Gentile church obviously affected the appearance of the NT text and no doubt influenced the theological outlook of second century Gentile Christianity; just how much we may never know. But if we permit our mind's eye to compare the original OT quotations in the NT with the way they appeared after the Tetragram was removed, we can imagine that the theological change was significant. In many passages where the persons of God and Christ were clearly distinguishable, the removal of the Tetragram must have created considerable ambiguity.
• 

  Steel

  The ambiguous use of the term lord actually seems to be from the Old Testament. An angel who appears as god , phrases like the word of the lord appeared and the lord said or the lord appeared by his word. Or the times lord speaks to god ......so on and son on. Man I wish I wasn’t typing on a phone or I could post some links.

  The really interesting part is the textual variations of the 5000 or so known copies of the New Testament where Jesus and lord become interchangable. Some copies say Jesus and some say lord.

  Were they thinking of two different beings ? I don’t believe so.