In the New Testament is the tetragrammaton ever used? Does Jesus use it? What is the Greek version of the tetragrammaton?
The New Testament was written entirely in Greek and does not use the tetragrammaton, at all. In the NT, the word for “god” is the Greek word theos ([symbol]qeos[/symbol]) and its declensions. The Christian authors of the new Testament never found a need to use a name for God, so they simply used the word for God. To the extent that any of the NT authors were Jewish, they probably held to the Jewish proscription against waving the name about too freely and to the extent that they (and their audiences) were primarily Greek, they would have had no experience of the Jewish tradtions regarding the tetragrammaton.
There is an interesting possibility, (employed by Mel Gibson in his Passion of the Christ), regarding the trial of Jesus. It has been noted that the claims of the Gospels that Jesus was accused of blasphemy seem odd, since nothing he says during the trials would meet the definition of blasphemy under Jewish law of the first century. In the movie, however, when Jesus is asked whether he is the Son of God, he responds in Hebrew, not Latin or Aramaic, saying “I am.” The tetragrammaton is an archaic version of the verb “to be,” so in the movie version Jesus is using God’s name to identify himself.
However, the Greek gospels portray the entire episode in Greek with no Hebrew interpolations.
Thanks. Do you know you know how the tetragrammaton is translated in the Septuagint? Is the same word used for Elohim and YHWH?
Re the “I AM” passages, I’m reporting something here from memory of information learned years back, and with no cite to support it. (Anyone having one supporting or refuting this is urged to post it.)
As I understand it, however, the “long form” of “I am” in Greek was “ego eimi” – and it was used in much the same situations as a native Spanish speaker would use “yo soy” or “yo estoy.” The “short form” was the verb alone, IIRC (paralleling “soy” or “estoy” without the “yo”). However, it was the custom among most Greek-speaking Jews, at least those somewhat observant, to avoid using the :long form" out of respect for the Divine Name which it would translate. However, John represents Jesus as intentionally and consistently using “ego eimi” in his pronouncements: “I am the bread of life”/“I am the true vine”/“I am the good shepherd” – and most importantly in the argument about Abraham’s children, where Jesus puts paid to the pretensions of some Jews by saying, “Before Abrham was, I AM.”
I do not have a copy of the Septuagint in Greek, but a couple of on-line re-creations of it that I have found simply render the tetragrammaton as theos in the first chapter of Genesis and then simply translates the passage in Exodus 3:14 (where God uses the tetragrammaton to identify Himself to Moses) as “I am” (in Greek, of course). So it appears that the tradition of not transliterating it out of Hebrew predates the New Testament by at least a couple of centuries.
ETA: in Ex 3:14, the Septuagint uses the ego eimi construction.
I don’t. Paging Diogenes. (Isn’t there a Greek Orthodox Doper around who might also have the answer?)
This one I can half-answer. Elohim is translated theos, “God”. The usual substitution for YHWH, “Adonai,” meaning “Lord,” is rendered “Kyrie.” Whether that’s the case on those occasions when YHWH is specified “straight” like when God answer’s Moses’ question “Whom shall I say sent me?”, I don’t know.
The Tetragrammaton is rendered in different ways in different LXX manuscripts. Some of the earliest manuscripts preserve the Hebrew YHWH intact. Some manuscripts use the Greek letters corresponding to PIPI (pi iota pi iota), which is not a transliteration but which was apparently used because those letters visually resembled the Hebrew letters. Some manuscripts leave a blank space where the name would go and others use the word Kurios (“Lord”).
IIRC, the earliest manuscripts use the Hebrew letters or a blank space while the more Greek adaptations came later.
Poly is correct that Ego eimi is a literal (if mildly redundant) Greek translation of “I am,” but that’s more of an NT thing than an LXX thing.
I know, That’s kind of a strange exception. I guess it was intended to better convey the actual meaning of the name (to Greek readers), rather than to just repeat the Hebrew letters or the odd PIPI construction.