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God’s Name and Bible TranslatorsThe Watchtower—1988 | August 1
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Regarding Rosin’s first point, archaeological discoveries have proved him wrong. In fact, the translators of the Septuagint did not represent the divine name by the Greek word for “Lord.” Rather, they wrote it out in its original Hebrew characters right in the Greek text, so that copies of the Septuagint translation used by the early Christians contained the divine name.
Interestingly, when the early Christians quoted from the Septuagint it is highly unlikely that they removed the name from the quotation. Thus, original manuscripts of the Christian Greek Scriptures (the “New Testament”) more than likely contained God’s name. Professor George Howard, in an article appearing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978, offered strong arguments for this conclusion. For example, he mentions “a famous rabbinic passage (Talmud Shabbat 13.5)” that “discusses the problem of destroying heretical texts (very probably including books of Jewish-Christians).” What was the problem? “The heretical texts contain the divine name, and their wholesale destruction would include the destruction of the divine name.”
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God’s Name and Bible TranslatorsThe Watchtower—1988 | August 1
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After the first century, “Christian” copyists replaced God’s name with words like “God” and “Lord” in both the Septuagint and the Christian Greek Scriptures.
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