God's Holy Name in the Septuagint

Many believe that Jesus and the apostles used the Septuagint when quoting the Old Testament. Based on this assumption, they claim that Jesus and the apostles followed the Septuagint changing God's Holy Name to other words, such as forms of the Greek word often transliterated as KURIOS or KYRIOS (meaning, Lord). This is offered as proof that Jesus and his apostles joined in with the Jews in changing the Holy Name to other words.  Thus, it is further claimed that the original autographs of the New Testament also changed the Holy Name to other words.

We should, however, understand that the Septuagint as we have it today did not exist in the days of Jesus. What is often called the Septuagint is actually what some have called the "Christianized Septuagint". This version of the Septuagint did not exist in the days of Jesus and the apostles, and thus they could not have been quoting from it.

We should also understand that we do not have the original autographs of the New Testament. All we have are later copies that may, or may not, fully be what was originally written. We can only trust, by faith, that God preserved the writings and allowed errors to creep in as He permitted.

We do know that the Christianized Septuagint does have God's Holy Name changed to other words. We do not have a full manuscript of the earlier Jewish Septuagint, but we do have fragments of manuscripts that are thought to be from the earlier Jewish Septuagint. Do these fragments show that they changed God's Holy Name to other words? Actually, no, they do not. In fact, they show that they presented the Holy Name in some Hebrew form.

Papyrus Fouad 266 and the Nahal Hever manuscripts are two examples of ancient fragments that provide evidence of the Holy Name's original existence before the Christianized version was created, evidently in the second century AD. These fragments reveal the Holy Name inscribed in Paleo-Hebrew script (𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄). The conclusion is that the earlier Jewish Septuagint did contain the Holy Name retained in Hebrew form; it did not replace the Holy Name with forms of Kyrios or Theos. Thus, this evidence suggests that if Jesus and the apostles were quoting from the Septuagint of that time, they would not have changed the Holy Name to forms of Kyrios or Theos.

We may add more to this later, God willing.