[Box/​Pictures on page 26]

This fragment of the Septuagint (right) dated to the first century C.E. and containing Zechariah 8:19-21 and Zec 8:23–9:4 is in Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. It contains God’s name four times, three of which are indicated here. In the Alexandrine Manuscript (left), a copy of the Septuagint made 400 years later, God’s name has been replaced in those same verses by KY and KC, abbreviated forms of the Greek word Kyʹri·os (“Lord”)

In later copies of the Septuagint, God’s name was removed and words like “God” (The·osʹ) and “Lord” (Kyʹri·os) were substituted. We know that this happened because we have early fragments of the Septuagint where God’s name was included and later copies of those same parts of the Septuagint where God’s name has been removed.

Well, some very old fragments of the Septuagint Version that actually existed in Jesus’ day have survived down to our day, and it is noteworthy that the personal name of God appeared in them. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page 512) says: “Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX [Septuagint] translated the tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Heb[rew] characters in the G[ree]k text. This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the O[ld] T[estament] in the first centuries A.D.” Therefore, whether Jesus and his disciples read the Scriptures in Hebrew or Greek, they would come across the divine name.

Thus, Professor George Howard, of the University of Georgia, U.S.A., made this comment: “When the Septuagint which the New Testament church used and quoted contained the Hebrew form of the divine name, the New Testament writers no doubt included the Tetragrammaton in their quotations.” (Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978, page 14) What authority would they have had to do otherwise?

God’s name remained in Greek translations of the “Old Testament” for a while longer. In the first half of the second century C.E., the Jewish proselyte Aquila made a new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and in this he represented God’s name by the Tetragrammaton in ancient Hebrew characters. In the third century, Origen wrote: “And in the most accurate manuscripts THE NAME occurs in Hebrew characters, yet not in today’s Hebrew [characters], but in the most ancient ones.”

Even in the fourth century, Jerome writes in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings: “And we find the name of God, the Tetragrammaton [יהוה], in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters.”