True, the most complete manuscript copies of the Septuagint now known do consistently follow the practice of substituting the Greek words Kyʹri·os (Lord) or ho The·osʹ (God) for the name Jehovah (Yahweh). But these major manuscripts date back only as far as the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. Recently, however, much older copies, though in fragmentary form, have been discovered that prove that the earliest copies of the Septuagint did contain the divine name.

For example, there is the fragment of a papyrus roll, listed as Inventory Number 266 of the Fouad Papyri. It contains the second half of the book of Deuteronomy, and in it the Tetragrammaton is regularly presented, written in Hebrew characters. This papyrus is dated by scholars as of the second or first century B.C.E., four or five centuries earlier than the Septuagint manuscripts mentioned previously that do not contain the divine name.

Commenting on another ancient papyrus find, Dr. Paul E. Kahle says: “The papyrus containing fragments of Leviticus ii-v is written in a hand closely akin to that of Papyrus Fouad 266, characterized as already mentioned by the fact that the name of God is rendered by the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew square letters (יהוה) not by κύριος [Kyʹri·os] as later in Christian MSS of the Bible.”​—The Cairo Geniza, 1959 ed., pp. 222, 224.

If using the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in later copies, the reader, of course, found the Tetragrammaton completely replaced by the Greek titles Kyʹri·os and ho The·osʹ.