What the Original Manuscripts Preserved
and What Was Done to Them

The oldest Septuagint manuscripts contain YHWH in Hebrew characters within Greek text. The name was there. Then it was removed. The evidence is not in dispute.

Part 5 of 7

 

What the Septuagint Was

The Septuagint, identified by the Roman numeral LXX, meaning seventy, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures produced beginning in the third century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. The name comes from the tradition that seventy-two Jewish scholars translated the Torah into Greek at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, completing the work in seventy-two days.

Whether the origin story is precise history or pious tradition, the Septuagint itself is historically real and historically significant. It was the first major translation of the Hebrew scriptures into another language. It made the covenant texts accessible to the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora, the millions of Jews living outside the land of Israel who had lost fluency in Hebrew and conducted their daily lives in Greek. By the first century it was the primary scripture of Greek-speaking Jews across the Roman world.

It was also the primary scripture of the early followers of Yeshua. When Paul quoted the Hebrew scriptures in his letters, he was usually quoting the Septuagint. When the gospel writers referenced the prophets, they were drawing on the Septuagint. When the early movement spread into the Gentile world, the Septuagint was the Bible they carried with them. The Septuagint is not a marginal document. It is the textual foundation on which the entire New Testament was built.

This makes what happened to the name YHWH within the Septuagint not a minor textual footnote. It is the first link in a chain of erasure that runs from Alexandria in the third century BCE to every English Bible printed in the twenty-first century AD.

 

What the Oldest Manuscripts Actually Show

Here is what the documentary evidence establishes. It is not speculation. It is archaeology and manuscript scholarship.

The oldest surviving manuscripts of the Septuagint, the ones that predate the Christian era, do not use the Greek word Kyrios in place of YHWH. They preserve the divine name. In some manuscripts it appears in standard Hebrew characters embedded within the Greek text. In others it appears in Paleo-Hebrew characters, the ancient pictographic script, set within the Greek. In others it appears as the Greek transliteration IAO. In every case the oldest pre-Christian manuscripts show that the original Septuagint translators did not replace YHWH with a Greek substitute. They preserved the name.

The manuscripts are not anonymous. They are identified, dated, and held in major collections.

 

Papyrus Fouad 266

Date: 1st century BCE, pre-Christian

A Greek manuscript of Deuteronomy found in Egypt. Contains YHWH written in standard Hebrew characters within the Greek text. The name is present. Not replaced.

4Q120 (4QpapLXXLevb)

Date: 1st century BCE, found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls

A Greek manuscript of Leviticus. Contains the divine name written as IAO, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew. Not Kyrios. Not Lord. A representation of the actual name.

 

Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, Nahal Hever

Date: Late 1st century BCE to early 1st century CE

A Greek translation of the Minor Prophets found in the Judean desert. Contains YHWH written in Paleo-Hebrew characters, the ancient pictographic script, embedded within the Greek text. The most ancient form of the name, preserved within the newest translation.

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3522 and 5101

Date: Early centuries CE

Greek manuscripts containing Paleo-Hebrew YHWH within Greek text. Confirming the practice extended into the early Christian period before the replacement was systematically applied.

The pattern across all of these manuscripts is consistent. Where the Hebrew text had YHWH, the pre-Christian and earliest Septuagint manuscripts preserved some form of the name. Hebrew characters. Paleo-Hebrew characters. Transliteration. The translators knew the name was there and kept it visible.

The oldest Septuagint manuscripts, dated before the Christian era, preserve YHWH in Hebrew characters, Paleo-Hebrew characters, or Greek transliteration within the Greek text. The name was there. The earliest translators kept it. What came later was not translation. It was replacement.

 

What Christian Copyists Did

The later manuscripts tell a different story. The great codices of the fourth century, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, which form the primary textual basis for most modern Old Testament scholarship, consistently use Kyrios in place of YHWH throughout. In nearly every instance where the Hebrew text had the divine name, the fourth century Christian manuscripts have the Greek word for Lord.

The documentary evidence is unambiguous on what happened between the oldest manuscripts and these later ones. Christian copyists replaced YHWH with Kyrios in their copies of the Septuagint. This is not a theory. It is documented. The same passages that appear with YHWH in the pre-Christian manuscripts appear with Kyrios in the Christian-era manuscripts. The substitution is traceable. The hand that made it is identifiable, not a specific individual but a specific community. The early Christian communities copying the Septuagint replaced the name with the title.

The motivation was not malicious in the simple sense. It was theological. The early followers of Yeshua had come to identify him with YHWH, the claim of John 8:58, the application of YHWH texts to Yeshua throughout the New Testament letters, the declaration that the one whose name meant YHWH saves was the arrival of the YHWH who had manifested through the covenant history. And Kyrios, Lord, was the Greek word they used for Yeshua. Using Kyrios for both YHWH and Yeshua in the same text reinforced the identification.

But the theological motivation does not change the textual consequence. The name that the original translators had preserved, in Hebrew characters, in Paleo-Hebrew, in transliteration, was replaced. And once replaced in the manuscripts, it was replaced in every tradition that followed those manuscripts.

 

Jerome and the Final Layering

The fourth century produced one more instrument of the name’s erasure. Jerome, the brilliant, combative, deeply learned scholar commissioned by Pope Damasus I to produce a standard Latin Bible, undertook his translation primarily from the Hebrew text rather than the Septuagint, which he recognized was of uneven quality. His Latin translation, completed around 405 AD and eventually called the Vulgate, became the authoritative Bible of Western Christianity for over a thousand years.

Jerome rendered YHWH as Dominus, the Latin word for Lord, master, owner. The same flattening that Kyrios had performed in Greek, Dominus performed in Latin. But with one additional consequence that the Greek had not fully produced.

Greek has a definite article. The difference between the articulated Kyrios, the Lord, with the article, and the unarticulated Kyrios, Lord, without the article, was a distinction that careful Greek readers could potentially use to differentiate between YHWH and ordinary uses of the word Lord. It was a thin distinction and rarely understood, but it existed in the Greek text.

Latin has no definite article. Dominus is simply Dominus, Lord, in every context, for every usage, with no grammatical mechanism to distinguish the divine name from any other application of the word. Jerome’s Vulgate did not just replace the name. It removed the last available textual signal that a replacement had occurred. The distinction between YHWH and Adonai, which the Greek had at least encoded in the presence or absence of an article, disappeared entirely in Latin. And the Latin tradition shaped Western Christianity for a millennium before any significant vernacular translation appeared.

Jerome’s Latin Vulgate replaced YHWH with Dominus, Lord. Latin has no definite article. The last available textual signal that a replacement had occurred was removed. For over a thousand years Western Christianity read a Bible in which YHWH had been replaced by a word that pointed nowhere and declared nothing about the covenant history, the cross, or the name that was always meant to be spoken to all generations.

 

The Chain

From Alexandria to Every English Bible

The erasure of the name did not happen in one moment. It happened in a chain, each link depending on the one before it, each link adding one more layer of distance between the reader and the name YHWH declared forever.

1. Jewish oral tradition in Alexandria: Adonai spoken instead of YHWH when reading the text aloud, a practice of reverence that became a habit that became a prohibition
 
2. Pre-Christian Septuagint: YHWH preserved in Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew characters within the Greek text, the translators kept the name visible
 
3. Christian copyists, 2nd-4th centuries: YHWH replaced with Kyrios in Christian copies of the Septuagint, the theological motivation of identifying Yeshua with YHWH produced a textual replacement that erased the distinction
 
4. Jerome’s Vulgate, c.405 AD: Kyrios rendered as Dominus, Latin without articles removes the last signal that a replacement has occurred
 
5. Western Christianity, 5th-16th centuries: One billion people read a Bible in which YHWH has become Dominus, the name is gone from the text and from living memory in the Western tradition
 
6. English translations, Tyndale onward: Dominus becomes LORD in all capitals, a typographical convention signaling that the original text had a different word, that almost no reader understands or investigates
 
7. 20 of 27 modern translations: Exodus 3:15, where YHWH declared this is my name forever, rendered as the LORD. The declaration replaced by a title. The name replaced by a category.

 

Each link in the chain was made by people with reasons. The Jewish oral tradition was motivated by reverence. The Christian copyists were motivated by theological identification. Jerome was motivated by clarity and standardization. The English translators were following established convention. No single link was made with the explicit intention of erasing YHWH from the covenant history.

But the cumulative effect of the chain is exactly that. The name declared forever to all generations, written into the text 6,828 times, embedded in the names of the prophets, preserved in the oldest manuscripts of the first Greek translation, is not in any Bible most people have ever read. It has been replaced by a title that could apply to a feudal landlord as easily as to the one who spoke to Moshe from the burning bush and said this is my name forever.

The next document examines what the Gentile world did with this replacement, and why the Gentile tradition was more than willing to receive a title in place of a name. Because the Gentile world had its own reasons for not wanting the name spoken. Reasons that had nothing to do with reverence and everything to do with who the name pointed to.

 

The oldest manuscripts preserved the name. It was in the text. In Hebrew characters. In Paleo-Hebrew. In transliteration. The first translators knew it was there and kept it visible.

 

Later hands removed it. Not in one stroke. In a chain. Each link adding distance. Each link motivated by something that felt reasonable at the time.

 

The name YHWH, this is my name forever, to all generations, is not in any Bible most people have ever held.

 

It was replaced by LORD. A title. A category. A word that points nowhere. Seven letters in capital type standing in for the name that declared everything the covenant was always moving toward.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams