Questions and Comments from Readers
22 October 2006 William's
Response to M Otero's email to
William
I notice throughout the ISV you refer to Jesus as Lord...does the
Greek have an indefinite article which distinguishes between Lord and
lord? Please explain.
Response by William:
The short answer to
your question is "No, the Greek language does not have an indefinite
article which distinguishes between 'Lord' and 'lord'." The longer
answer is a bit complex, so please bear with us while we provide a
response to some of the presuppositions that inform your question.
Personal note to Asher:
See, Asher, it's not just your writings that I approach with questions
about presuppositions. I do that to everyone, including to this writer
as well as to my own materials! :-)
The thousands of
Greek manuscripts of the New Testament documents that have survived over
the centuries are composed of upper case letters (called UNCIAL
manuscripts) or lower case letters (called MINUSCULE manuscripts), but
not both. So, strictly speaking, every occurrence of the Greek word
"lord" is going to be spelled "LORD" or "lord", but never "Lord". Also,
strictly speaking, the Greek language employs no indefinite article. It
employs no punctuation of any kind in the manuscripts that have
survived, either, by the way.
In translation,
punctuation, paragraph beginning and endings, and even spacing between
words (!) are provided by the translators. There is an indefinite
pronoun (the Greek word tis), but this is used generally to identify "a
certain man" in the sense of an unspecified but otherwise identified
individual as opposed to the word tis being used as the opposite of the
definite article.
To sum up, the
premise of your question is a bit problematic. It assumes that the Greek
definite article might be used to designate "Lord" and that an
indefinite article would designate "lord".
Perhaps by adding something
to this thread I might be able to clarify what I think you're getting at
by your question. In much of the New Testament (including the Gospel
portions), the Greek term kurios, when referred to Jesus, appears
to be used as a title and term of art that serves in much the same way
that the Hebrew word YHWH was used as the name of God in the Hebrew
Scriptures.
Frankly, it is this tendency for New Testament writers to apply the
titles of "God" and "Lord" to Jesus that creates much of the 26 Reasons
set forth in Asher's amazing book! Modern Jews simply do not believe the
claim!
Meanwhile, back to
the first century...
Observant Jews, as is the case today, would never
pronounce the name of God. And by using the term "never," we mean
never...except for one time in any given year. Chaim Richman of the
Temple Institute in Jerusalem claims that the only time the word YHWH
would be pronounced back then would be by the High Priest on the day of
atonement. At all other times they would use a substitute sound such as
"HaShem" (the Name) or replace the four letters with the sound of the
word adonai, the word for "lord".
In its Tanakh portions (the "Old
Testament"), the ISV spells YHWH as "LORD" and adonai as "lord"
unless the two terms appear together. Adonai YHWH, for example, is
translated in the ISV as "Lord GOD" and YHWH elohim
is translated as "LORD
God".
By the way, the very
early Hebrew text was written without vowels or sentence punctuation of
any kind. In later centuries (for example, the Hebrew language
manuscript of the Tanakh dated 1008 AD called the Leningrad
Codex), the
Hebrew copies were made with vowel and punctuation marks added by a
remarkable group of Jewish scholars called Massoretes. Also, there are
no lower case letters in Hebrew, so the question of "Lord" or "lord"
never arises, anyway. In fact, the same Hebrew word elohim is used for
referring both to the one and only God as well as a pagan god.
Perhaps I should make
one other observation about your question.
Because devout Jews were
reluctant to pronounce the name or title of God in Hebrew, they also had
a tendency to avoid writing the name of God when they rendered it into
other languages. Instead, they would abbreviate the words for God and
Lord by writing only the first and last letters of the word.
For
example, when writing Greek in the New Testament, the Greek word for God
(QEOS) would be written
QS and the Greek word for Lord (KURIOS) would be
written
KS when they were referring to God. As an illustrative example,
here are two images of John 1:1-14 in Papyrus 66, commonly known as the
Bodmer Papyrus, as documented in the
Early Greek Bible Manuscripts Project.
The images below are of a MINUSCULE manuscript in which all letters are
in capital letters. This papyrus has been dated to 200 AD. The first
image was taken at a different time than the second, and has been
slightly color corrected to bring out salient features. The second image
was taken earlier than the first. Note certain characteristics of the
lower right hand corner of the page of the second image, which contains
page fragments missing from the first photograph.
If you can read
Greek, you'll note that the second line of the paragraph below reads
which are the Greek
words KAI QS HN O LOGOS.
They translate as "and the Word was God". Do note, won't you please,
that the word "God" is rendered the same was as devote Jews would have
rendered it預s an abbreviation, and that the abbreviation is signified
by a dark horizontal line written above the letters
QS.
Now later on in this very same papyrus (John 7:33) you can read the
following:
Do note the beginning
of line 4, which reads:
The words read
OUN H
IS in Greek. They translate as "Therefore Jesus..." Note that the
abbreviation for the name Jesus (IS) has a dark line written over the
two letter. That dark line signifies that the word is an abbreviation.
You will observe the very same dark line over the word
QS in John 1:1 on
the first two images from the Bodmer Papyrus above. Lastly, please note
this manuscript copy of John 11:31-38 from the same papyrus:
Note in line 5 that you'll read this phrase:
which
reads LEGOUSA KE EI.
("She said, O Lord, if...") Do note, won't you please, the very same
horizontal bar over the abbreviation
KE,
which is the vocative of address to the word "lord". The abbreviated
word is translated "O Lord".
I've pointed all of
this out to say this: as early as 200 AD, only about 165 years after the
mortal life of Jesus ended, the early church had been using the very
same method of referring to the name of Jesus as their contemporary
Jewish acquaintances did to refer to the words "God" and "Lord".
And
they had been doing it long enough that this 160 year old manuscript
(i.e., 160 years from the date of the death of Jesus) was a copy of an
earlier manuscript.
The Bodmer Papyrus illustrates that early Christians
considered the word Jesus too sacred to write out in full, and adopted
the same method of abbreviating the word "Jesus" as their Jewish
counterparts did the words "God" and "Lord". In sum, many references in
Greek to the word "lord" are synonyms for the word "God" when, in their
immediate context, they are referring to Jesus.
Now as to whether you
believe that the New Testament era Christians were right to refer to
Jesus as the Christ (or Messiah), or whether they were idolaters when
they used for Jesus the same titles of address that the non-Christian
Jews did when talking about the words "God" and "Lord" is the whole
point of the dialogs that Asher and I are having together!
We do hope
you learn from both of us. And be confirmed in your mind as to these
remarkable claims of Jesus.
Regards,
Dr. William P. Welty
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