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JehovahInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
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The argument long presented was that the inspired writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures made their quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures on the basis of the Septuagint, and that, since this version substituted Kyʹri·os or The·osʹ for the Tetragrammaton, these writers did not use the name Jehovah. As has been shown, this argument is no longer valid. Commenting on the fact that the oldest fragments of the Greek Septuagint do contain the divine name in its Hebrew form, Dr. P. Kahle says: “We now know that the Greek Bible text [the Septuagint] as far as it was written by Jews for Jews did not translate the Divine name by kyrios, but the Tetragrammaton written with Hebrew or Greek letters was retained in such MSS [manuscripts]. It was the Christians who replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios, when the divine name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more.” (The Cairo Geniza, Oxford, 1959, p. 222) When did this change in the Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures take place?
It evidently took place in the centuries following the death of Jesus and his apostles.
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JehovahInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
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Why, then, is the name absent from the extant manuscripts of the Christian Greek Scriptures or so-called New Testament? Evidently because by the time those extant copies were made (from the third century C.E. onward) the original text of the writings of the apostles and disciples had been altered. Thus later copyists undoubtedly replaced the divine name in Tetragrammaton form with Kyʹri·os and The·osʹ. (PICTURE, Vol. 1, p. 324) This is precisely what the facts show was done in later copies of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
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