Avoidance in the Second Temple Period

There are clear indications that the divine name was given special treatment beginning in the last centuries bc. This is reflected in the writings of the postexilic period, both biblical and nonbiblical, in which Yahwistic theophoric names became increasingly uncommon (e.g., the list of names in Ezra 2). In postexilic biblical literature, the more generic אֱלֹהִים (elohim, “God”) replaced the Tetragrammaton (compare 2 Sam 6:9, 11; 1 Chr 13:12, 14). When copying biblical texts, scribes began using a special script, palaeo-Hebrew, for writing the divine name (Tov, Scribal Practices, 218–21).

In some manuscripts preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the name is written in palaeo-Hebrew in documents otherwise written using the square Jewish script. Elsewhere, אדוני ('dwny), “Lord,” is substituted for יהוה (yhwh) (e.g., 1QIsaa), or else יהוה (yhwh) is written in red ink; represented by four dots; signified by אל ('l) in palaeo-Hebrew script; or through various other forms (Fitzmyer, Semitic Background, §2, 126–27; Rösel, “Reading and Translation,” 413). “Lord” is frequently used as a title for God in the nonbiblical Dead Sea Scrolls. This reflects the context against which the early Greek translations of the Old Testament were made and lends weight to Pietersma’s observation that it is certain “both adonai and the tetragram were equated with kyrios already in pre-Christian times” (Pietersma, “Kyrios,” 98).

Among Greek translations of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), יהוה (yhwh) was represented in a number of ways. There are some Greek texts that opt for what appears to be a visual parallel by rendering the Hebrew with the Greek ΠΙΠΙ (PIPI) (Fitzmyer, Semitic Background, §2, 122–23). There are also a number of apparent attempts at transliteration into Greek represented by the forms Ιαουε (Iaoue)/Ιαουαι (Iaouai) and Ιαβε (Iabe)/Ιαβαι (Iabai).

There are a small number of Greek manuscripts in which the divine name is written using Hebrew (sometimes palaeo-Hebrew) script. This has prompted some scholars to argue that the substitution of κύριος (kyrios) for יהוה (yhwh) was the result of Christian revisions of the translations and hence κύριος (kyrios) was not original (MacLaurin, “YHWH,” 447). However, these may be revisions to an original Greek translation that consistently used κύριος (kyrios) to render the Hebrew יהוה (yhwh) in an archaizing process. Such a process is also apparent at Qumran (see Pietersma, “Kyrios,” 99; Rösel, “Reading and Translation,” 416–19; Skehan, “Divine Name,” 34–38). Consequently, the substitution of κύριος (kyrios) for יהוה (yhwh) in the Hebrew Scriptures was already well established prior to the writing of the New Testament. This allowed the New Testament writers to use the title κύριος (kyrios) to refer to Jesus in such a way that it also implied identity with יהוה (yhwh). Thus when Matthew 3:3 quotes Isaiah 40:3, Matthew’s use of κύριος (kyrios) can be understood to refer to Jesus, a connection that is not as apparent in some modern English translations that preserve the divine name in the Old Testament (Blomberg, “Matthew,” 13).