In this episode of Hebrew Voices #243 - The Divine Name YHVH in Ancient Greek Manuscripts: Part 1, Nehemia welcomes Dr. Pavlos Vasileiadis (“Dr. Tetragrammaton”) to explore how God’s name appears in ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. Together, they unpack fascinating manuscript evidence and address the controversial question of whether there is any real connection between Jesus and Zeus.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Download Audio

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #243 – The Divine Name YHVH in Ancient Greek Manuscripts: Part 1

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: You’re saying in all the extant Old Greek manuscripts, meaning the Septuagint which predates our Septuagint, as late as the middle of the 1st century CE, the term Kurios is not used. So, in other words, if you look at all the Greek Dead Sea Scrolls, which isn’t that many, all the manuscripts of the Septuagint that predate the middle of the 1st century CE, or AD in Christian terms, you will not find the word Kurios as a rendering of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, that’s what you’re saying.

Pavlos: And if you allow me…

Nehemia: Please. I’m excited. This is amazing stuff!

—

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m really excited today to welcome Dr. Pavlos Vasileiadis. He is known in Greece as Dr. Tetragrammaton. He holds a PhD in biblical literature and religion from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He also has done a post-doctorate at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, which means he actually has, I guess, academic teaching experience. And he has a bunch of other degrees that are almost too long to read everything here; a master’s in theology from that same university, bachelor’s in theology. His master’s, interestingly, is on the Kama Johannaeum, which I may be mispronouncing. It’s that passage in 1 John… help me out here, 5…

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay, maybe we’ll talk about that. I would say that in the 15th and 16th century, it was one of the most controversial passages in the New Testament, so much so that I don’t think any new translations have it, not that I’m aware of, but it’s part of the King James Version. And so, in America, the King James-only people say, “See? They took that out of our Bible.” But it’s a fascinating story. I don’t know that we’ll get to that today, because I, of course, want to talk about… If I’m with Dr. Tetragrammaton, I’ve got to talk about the Tetragrammaton.

Shalom, Pavlos. I should also mention that Pavlos is a research fellow at the Institute for Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research, of which I am the executive director, and we actually co-authored an article together. So, just want to put that out there for people. The article we wrote, and basically, like, you wrote the first half, I wrote the second half, if I remember correctly, is called something like, The Transmission of the Tetragrammaton in… do you remember the name of the title? I don’t even remember. Well, I’m actually looking here on its Wikipedia page, and he tells me it’s pretty… Oh, Transmission of the Tetragrammaton in Judeo-Greek and Christian Sources.

Pavlos: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay, so, Pavlos, I want to start with… So, you did a whole PhD on the Tetragrammaton. Let’s start with; what is the Tetragrammaton? I think my audience knows, but let’s assume some people listening don’t know. What is the Tetragrammaton?

Pavlos: First of all, thank you, dear Nehemia, for your warm invitation and have this discussion. I hope to be enlightening for anyone that will attend this discussion, and I hope to help make clear some points that I have found. And also, I have shared with you during the previous years in my research on the sacred Tetragrammaton.

So, what is the Tetragrammaton? It’s a Greek word from tessera, tetara, tetra, four that is, and grammata from the word grammar, letter, that is a word with four letters. Josephus was the first to use this term for the name of God in the Hebrew language.

Nehemia: Let me stop you for a second. So, for those who haven’t noticed, Pavlos has a certain way of pronunciation. He is a native Greek speaker. So, he was just talking about who I would call Josephus, and he pronounced it the way, I guess a Greek speaker…

Pavlos: Yosefus, in Greek.

Nehemia: Okay, there you go, right. And I’m going to defer to your pronunciation, but I’ll still continue to say Josephus. Which is interesting, because Josephus is the Hebrew name Yosef, and then he adds… why does he add the us ending? I’ve tried to explain this to people for years, but I don’t know that I’m getting it right. You’re the expert in Greek, right? I know where my expertise lie...