The last post showed the Hebrew tradition of using alternatives and substitutes instead of using the divine name Yahweh. This noble biblical tradition goes back to the psalms and the books of Chronicles.
The next part of the story brings us to what Jesus did. It is eye-opening.
Jesus and the shema
Here is a good test case for how the shema prayer was used by ordinary Jews. The shema in Deuteronomy goes “Hear O Israel, YHWH our God, YHWH is one.”
And we have texts of the shema from around the turn of the era (BC/AD) containing the divine name YHWH (e.g. the Nash papyrus, and Phylacteries at Qumran). But Philo tells us the name was not normally spoken aloud in that era. It is therefore difficult to see that ordinary Jews were saying YHWH when they said the shema. So, another word was used in Philo’s era (which of course was also Jesus’ era). That word was probably Adonai. That is, it went something like “Hear O Israel, Adonai our God, Adonai is one.”[10]
So what words did Jesus use when he said the shema? Now, Mark 12:29 is a written record, representing what was said aloud by Jesus. And we know that his words elicited approval from the Jewish scribe (Mark 12:32), not scandal. So as the Jews were happy with what words they heard, what did they actually hear? Presumably not the divine name. Did Jesus say Adonai instead? Probably, because no-one took offence at the word he used. In the Greek text of Mark's Gospel, it's not the divine name either: it's represented as Kurios.
Jesus and the Lord’s prayer
Jesus' words are striking in that the word Yahweh is never
quoted as coming from his lips. Whatever we might like to infer about it, it is
never quoted.
Even in the example of all examples, the model prayer which
Jesus taught to his disciples, it addresses God not as Yahweh but as "our
Father" (Matt. 6:9; see also Luke 11:2). It actually says, “Our Father in
heaven, hallowed be your name.” Notably, it doesn’t say “Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name Yahweh.” There is no instruction that disciples should
use the divine name here. It is thus implied that God has a name without actually
pronouncing it. Everyone is happy it seems. Jesus gave us the finest example of
how to address God as "Father," not using the divine name it seems. (Yes, I know that 'name' here also has a wider meaning of God's reputation.)
If Jesus really wanted the full name to be pronounced out loud, this is the
moment of all moments when the name would have to be used – in prayer instruction. It doesn’t
happen. That's right. It doesn't happen.
This I think is the main thing - this was the most famous of all moments when Jesus was being asked specifically how one should pray, and Jesus
directed them to do something precisely other than pronouncing the divine name.
That was the opportunity. Would some prefer to pray “Yahweh in heaven, hallowed
be your name”? If so, they should think on why Jesus commanded them to pray
differently and led by example: "our Father." Not once, even in Jesus' long prayer in John
17, does Jesus use the word Yahweh, but often uses the word "Father"
(John 17:1,11,21,24,25).
Jesus practiced what he preached and prayed to “Abba,
Father”. To speak of God as Father was already accepted in Jewish circles, and
Jesus taught his disciples to pray that way. So Jesus does the best thing in
that community, teaching a way of addressing God - as Father - maybe acknowledging God has a name but not pronouncing it. A matchless model for
ministering in a sensitive situation.
In summary, when Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, he
taught them specifically to address God as "Our Father," and in John
17, Jesus does not appeal to anyone but "Righteous Father" (v 25). In
the New Testament, for practical purposes, Father is the "name" of God
for believers, those who by the Spirit cry out, "Abba, Father!"
(Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6)
Jesus often criticises "traditions of men," and particularly the ones to which he
objected were traditions that were burdens on people (Matt 15:1-6; Mark
7:1-13). He mentioned the ones that bothered him (to do with Korban and
Sabbath). He left off his list of objections the tradition of caution as to the divine name.
This is noteworthy. He didn't list that as a problematic human tradition.
In the turbulent world of first century Jews, the century of
Philo and Josephus, such an act as openly pronouncing the full divine name Yahweh would
hardly go unnoticed. The reaction of the sensitive Jewish community would have
been a story worth recording. The gospels provide places where this would
naturally fit, such as Jesus' objections to traditions. It doesn’t happen anywhere.
Jesus doesn’t criticise anyone’s traditions about the name
and no-one criticises his. Silence is all. The divine name simply doesn’t
appear on his lips or theirs, anywhere in the Christian Greek scriptures.
Jesus and his alternatives
Note also how in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son (Lk.
15:21), Jesus has the son saying, “I have sinned against heaven…” -
using the word “heaven” as an alternative to the divine name.
Note also how Jesus uses “The One” as a substitute in Matthew 23:19.
Note also Jesus’ statement in Matthew 26:64 about the Son of man “sitting at the right hand of Power.” Jesus is clearly using the word “power” as an alternative to the divine name, given that he is taking his words here from Psalm 110:1. So, Jesus used Psalm 110:1, which says: “The utterance of Jehovah to my Lord is: Sit at my right hand”. Jesus used "the Power" as a circumlocution.
Jesus there was on trial for his supposed offences the night before his execution. Consider the
febrile scene. A string of allegations was brought up against Jesus by the Jewish
authorities: such as prophesying against the temple; or claiming to be a king. But
no accusation of misusing the divine name? Interesting. So, uttering the
divine name is one charge they had no cause to bring
against him. They presumably never heard him use it. That is telling.
Jesus wasn’t wrong to use a substitute for the name of God, surely. So there in Matthew 26:64 (cf Mark 14:62), Jesus takes these words and says: “sitting at the right hand of …” So how did Jesus end that phrase?
Following the OT, Jesus could naturally have said “sitting
at the right hand of Jehovah”.
But Jesus used a substitute instead of the
divine name. He used "Power" instead. Sitting at the right have of Power. What Jesus said was “sitting
at the right hand of Power”. Why do you think Jesus used a substitute for the
divine name? Was Jesus wrong to do so?
Jesus commanded us to address God as “Father”, not “Jehovah”
(Matthew 6:9), at the same time explicitly acknowledging the existence of a “name”
that is nowhere pronounced in any of these examples.
Using substitutes and alternatives for the divine name is a scriptural
practice. Yes, even Jesus does it.
We ought to consider whether Jesus said "Adonai," or the Greek "Kurios", for "Lord" instead of the divine name. Not considering this would be unserious.
In the Greek New Testament, you frequently see Jesus saying Kurios in Greek, where he could have said Adonai in Hebrew, or Mārā (מָרָא) in Aramaic (or Kurios in Greek!). These would all be more or less equivalent. You have to consider seriously that this is a fair representation of him. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Jesus said Adonai in Hebrew, or Mārā in Aramaic, or Kurios in Greek, rather than the divine name Yahweh. (Note the absence in the gospels of any raised eyebrows from Jews. He evidently didn't bandy about the word Yahweh outside its prescribed limits.)
Note also Jesus’ occasional grammatical use of the divine
passive. For example, beatitudes such as "blessed are those who
mourn" are in the passive voice. God is not named in it. It doesn't say "Yahweh blesses..." It keeps it the other way round: "Blessed are those..."
Jesus and oaths
In a time of holy substitutions, ordinary Jewish people
taking oaths could be left wondering which substitutes for the divine name to
use (to make their oaths binding). Jesus spoke into that question.
A bit of background: Exodus 20:7 is sometimes cited as
creating an expectation that the divine name would be pronounced when saying
oaths. Then, later, substitutes had been used in oaths instead. It was a
subject of some debate for rabbis.
Coming to Jesus, the obvious place to see an application
would be in Matthew 5:33-37, in Jesus' teaching about oaths. It might be a
place where Jesus could encourage people to say “Yahweh” in oaths, but… not so.
He just wants "yes" and "no" instead.
Here Jesus clamps down on oaths so strongly that he does not
want people to even use substitutes for the divine name precisely because God
is still the referent when substitutes are used. Jesus makes it clear in what
he says in Matthew 23:21-22:
"And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it."
Even here, Jesus doesn't say Yahweh. He says "him who
dwells" and "him who sits"! That's what we call circumlocutions.
To Jesus, there is little difference between using
substitutes and using the divine name itself in oaths because both refer to
their God. That is, Jesus indicates that even if one replaces the word Yahweh
with a term further removed, such as ‘heaven’, it still refers to God as
intended, and God is still invoked. So, the only acceptable approach is to
stick to your "yes" and "no" and leave it that, Jesus says.
By clamping down on usage even of substitutes in
oaths, the risk of misusing either the divine name or its alternatives by oath-breaking is
avoided. And so the warning in Exodus 20:7 is satisfied simply by
that. [14] So
we know which way Jesus is leaning here. For Jesus here, avoiding use of the
name is precisely not misuse of the name. Avoiding use is not misuse here.
Jesus could have used his teaching on oaths to make sure the
divine name is pronounced. He did the opposite in every way.
Jesus and the Isaiah scroll
We come to Luke 4:17-18, where a scroll of Isaiah's words is
handed to Jesus to read:
“So the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed him, and he opened the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor…”
As we know, we can’t automatically assume that this scroll had the divine name written on it. Part one of this series of posts covered that.
Let's assume anyway that the scroll was written in Hebrew, and not in Aramaic or Greek. This scroll may have featured dots, or YHWH, or the Greek abbreviation Iao (Greek ιαω, or ΙΑΩ in capitals), or a blank space where the name would fit, as we have seen.
We don’t know whether or not any particular reader speaking
in Hebrew on that day, holding that particular scroll, would choose to say out
loud Yahweh or Adonai or something else. (Although an educated guess based on all we have learned suggests a substitute would be used.) What we do know is that we have the
story in Greek only, and in this gospel, Jesus uses a substitute here, the
Greek word Kurios. If the gospel author thought Jesus had said
Yahweh, then the gospel author could have represented this in his Greek text
as ιαω. But the author didn't - the gospel author wrote Kurios
(Greek κυριος). Which could imply that the gospel author thought that
Jesus had said Adonai. This would be pretty significant. Here is Jesus
definitely reciting scripture and the gospel definitely portrays him using a
substitute, not saying Yahweh. You see the pattern of substitutes? They are all
over the place when you start noticing them, and Jesus is no different.
But what text of Isaiah was Jesus actually reciting? The
quote from Isaiah, which is in the Greek language in Luke's gospel, generally
reflects the text of the Greek Septuagint, while in part agreeing with the
content of the later Hebrew Masoretic Text against the Septuagint. and in part
differing from both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text. And finally, Jesus
adds a line from Isaiah 58:6 into his quote. We can’t really insist that this
scroll had Yahweh on it, given all that variety. But even if it did, the gospel author
tells the story as if Jesus used a substitute. And that's the only direct
evidence we have to go on in this case.
Name theology
Jesus as
incarnate name
In John’s gospel, Jesus talks about "making the Name known". What did he mean?
Reading coded mentions about “the Name” literally as “the personal name” would be shallow readings. If Jesus meant it that way, it would sound patronising to the disciples. They could have answered him, “Tell us something we don’t know, Jesus. We’re Jews. We all know it.” But "Name" here means so much more than advertising the word. (If you've ever heard Jehovah's Witnesses talk about it, they claim that this passage means that Jesus publicised (especially out loud) the personal name Jehovah. But it would seem odd that Jesus would need to "make known" the Name YHWH to devout Jews in any era. It had always been known.)
Something notable
is going on here, regarding the Name, something closely related to the essential theme of Jesus'
prayer in John 17, right where the Name motif is found. It is a profoundly
Jewish thing. In Jewish writing, “the Name” was like a code-word representing
the divine presence. John writes in chapter 17 that Jesus “manifests the Name,”
tying in with what John wrote in chapter 1:18 – that Jesus reveals God. John’s
use of “the Name” is one of his ways of affirming God’s presence on earth, the
divine Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14). Jesus is the Name made flesh. This is
very Johannine theology. I’m capitalising Name deliberately in this context.
There is Old
Testament background to this.
In Deuteronomy,
“the Name” is present with his people. This Name-presence then gets centralised on Jerusalem
and the Temple.
And Solomon
called the Temple "the house I have built for your Name" (cf. 2
Chronicles 6:34, 38).
Elsewhere on
this theme, we find Isaiah 30:27 “the Name of Yahweh comes from afar… his
breath is like a rushing torrent…”.
It then gets
de-centralised again in Jesus.
In John’s gospel, Jesus identifies himself as the temple in whom is embodied the presence of God. For in the Temple, God’s Name has a home (1 Chronicles 23:26, 2 Chronicles 7:16, John 2:19-21, cf Revelation 21:22). Jesus’ body is the temple in which God has made a home for his Name, a temple which makes the Name manifest, makes the name known, in the person of Jesus. (That the Temple is a place in which God dwells, Jesus makes explicit in Matthew 23:19-21.)
That's all for now on Jesus' use of substitutes for the divine name. In the next post, I’ll say more about what else the New Testament
authors do, how they were really quite innovative, while drawing on the
tradition of substitutes that goes back to Chronicles.
Footnotes
(continued from part one)
[10] Stephen
M. Wylen. The Jews in the Time of Jesus: An Introduction. pg 86.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shema_Yisrael and https://www.scribd.com/document/78096694/Troyer-Names-of-God
[11] The
Sages: The World and Wisdom of the Rabbis on the Talmud. Harvard University
Press; 3rd edition (September 1987), 126-131.
[12] FF
Bruce "Name" in The New International Dictionary of New Testament
Theology.
[13] You
can find this FF Bruce quote at https://www.christian-thinktank.com/trin03ex.html
[14] For
more on this, see an interesting Mennonite article here: http://www.goshen.edu/facultypubs/Oaths.html
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