Thanks very much, Ste.S_Walch wrote:Rolf is talking of the Nomina Sacra, which are evident in practically every single Greek mss from the 2nd-9th Centuries CE, mostly for the names/titles Kyrios (Yahweh/Lord), Iesous (Jesus/Joshua), Theos (God), and Christos (Christ/Messiah), although with several more added in.SteveMiller wrote:You mentioned that the earliest NT manuscripts that quote the OT, which are at the end of the 2nd century, used abbreviations for Theos and Kurios in place of YHWH. How many NT manuscripts and verses is this?
The Wikipedia page on the Nomina Sacra is good for an overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sacra
Safe to say, most Greek MS quoting from the Tanakh where YHWH would be in the Hebrew, you will find it as a nomen sacrum.
Romans 10:13 for example, which quotes Joel 2:32, is seen in Papyrus 46 (dated 150-250 CE) as such:
πας γαρ ος εαν επικαλεσηται το ονομα κ̅υ̅ σωθησεται
Hopefully it shows up alright, but you should see the nomen sacrum κ̅υ̅ above, which when written out would be the genitive form κυρίου, translated usually as 'of the Lord', but 'of Yahweh' would work fine as well.
This is very interesting, esp. the wikipedia link, where it says the early manuscripts used a nomen sacrum for the word Spirit, when it referred to the Holy Spirit, and left it alone when it referred t to the human spirit. But the later manuscripts used the nomen sacrum for all occurrences of the word "spirit".
There is debate among Christians as to whether "spirit" in verses such as Gal 5:22 refers to the God-created human spirit, which is a human faculty, or to the Holy Spirit.
Yes. Equivalencing Yahweh with Jesus could not have been done before the resurrection. So it would make sense that Yahweh was replaced the nomen sacrum first in the NT.S_Walch wrote:I would argue however that the use of κύριος for YHWH either predates or at least coincides with the NT era, for the very fact that in Romans 10:13, Paul is using the quote from Joel 2:32 as a reference to Jesus, and not Yahweh (though both not mutually exclusive, IMO, for the NT writers). From them to make this 'conflation' so to speak for κύριος referring to both Yahweh and Jesus, κύριος being used for YHWH either must predate the understanding, or at least coincide with it for them to come to this conclusion.
I thought that the Jews lost interest in the LXX, because the LXX supported Christian claims so well.S_Walch wrote:Notwithstanding, whether it is a Jewish practice that influenced the NT writers, and then subsequently the scribes that copied later LXX manuscripts, is not able to be determined. It might be that all LXX manuscripts after the 2nd Century CE that use the nomina sacra are from the pen of Christian scribes, or from the pen of Jewish ones. Unfortunately the data for what precisely happened between 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE is lost, or yet to be discovered.
Therefore the Jews came up with the Aquila translation around 126 ad.
So the LXX documents after the 2nd century CE should have been copied by Christians.