Posted by Rick [Rick] on March 29, 1999 at 12:00:03 {FMFBt36XycFD.oVV6hUcMWRctB9oBIfGc}:
I read an excellent post on the Greek BBS (which I discovered thanks to a link posted by JaneyJJJ earlier), entitled "Divine name in NT" that vindicates the New World Translation Committee's decision to go with using the Divine Name. (See article.)
The posting article brings out this information; I've posted what I consider the highlights and encourage all to read the entire post article:
1. ``The quote by George Howard (a Baptist scholar) comes from the article "The Tetragram and the New Testament" in the Journal of Biblical
Literature 96 (1977) pgs. 63-83. It is a very well written and
documented article, IMO. If it is not readily available to you let me know. I might be able to send you a copy or e-mail the most pertinent quotes.''
2. ``Professor
Howard's 1995 book "Hebrew Gospel of
Matthew." (I've been told that Dr. Howard does not personally advocate modern translations entering the Divine name in the NT because of the lack of manuscript evidence.''
3. ``At Qumran cave 4, a fragment (1 B.C.) of the Greek translation of Leviticus confirms that the divine name was preserved in the pre-Christian Septuagint. The Tetragrammaton is transliterated with the Greek letters "IAO."''
4. ``Howard says: "Since the Tetragram was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible which made up the Scriptures of the Early church, it is reasonable to believe that the NT writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the biblical text... Somehow around beginning of the second century the use of surrogates must have crowded out the Tetragram in both Testaments... In many passages where the persons of God and Christ were clearly distinguishable, the removal of the Tetragram must have created considerable ambiguity."''
5. ``Says George Howard, "This removal of the Tetragram, in our view, created a confusion in the minds of early Gentile Christians about the relationship between the 'Lord God' and the 'Lord Christ.'"''
This Greek forum doesn't censor anyone, which is why truths such as this have spilled out onto the forum. I recommend that all who want to read or engage in serious discussion go to this forum. You join it similarly to H2O's registration process. The forum is well moderated. The professors running it seem to keep out the anti-Witness propaganda that distracts from discussions. The threads appear purely devoted to understanding the truth in the scriptures conveyed in Greek, even if it leads to dealing with facts such as this.
Note that the discussion forums for Biblical languages are referred to as "mailing lists," even though they are web-based forums with threads similar to H2O's.
Rick