The story of God's name pt. 1 - From Yahweh to Kyrios
The story of God's name pt. 1 - From Yahweh to Kyrios
Did you know that God has a personal name, and it appears three times more frequently in the Bible than Hebrew or Greek words for “Lord”? God revealed himself in the Bible as Yahweh.
Now, if you did not know about God’s name, it is not your fault. Western translations have translated His name as “Lord” for centuries.
This newsletter follows the “story” of God’s personal name, from its revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures to its translation in Greek as Kyrios, which means “Lord.”
God’s Personal Name
In the beginning, the One in charge of everything, the Lord of all, revealed himself to the nation of Israel as Yahweh יַהוֶה, which is connected to the Hebrew word that means “he is” (Exodus 4). Yahweh is God’s “personal name” (Payne 1999). It appears in key passages of the Bible where the identity of the Supreme God as Yahweh is important, such as the following scenarios:
- In the first exchange between Moses, Aaron, and Pharoah: “Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.“ ‘ 2 But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is Yahweh, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know Yahweh, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.‘ 3 Then they said, ‘The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to Yahweh our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.‘ “ (Exodus 5:1-3, modified ESV)
- David’s words to Goliath: “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied” (1 Samuel 17:45, modified ESV).
- After Elijah defeats the 450 prophets of Baal: “And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God’” (1 Kings 18:39, modified ESV).
- And over 5,200 other times.
As the creator and sovereign of the universe, Yahweh was also frequently called Adonai (אָדוֹן), which means “lord” (i.e., a general title for a master or ruler). God is called Adonai in the Bible around 400 times, which is only 1/13th as frequently as he is called Yahweh. Sometime between the book of Malachi and the birth of Jesus, Jewish people stopped pronouncing the name Yahweh and would say “Adonai” in its place (Payne 1999). Thus, the term “Lord” became a very common way to refer to Israel’s God.
How Yahweh was Translated into Greek
After Alexander the Great conquered land from Greece to India, Greek became the default trade language of the Mediterranean. Many Jewish people began to speak Greek—and some only spoke Greek. Their inability to understand the Hebrew Scriptures prompted the Jewish community to create the first translations of the Scriptures: the early texts of the Septuagint.
How did the translators of the Septuagint translate Yahweh into Greek?
At first, they did not translate it. Instead, they retained its original written form as much as possible but (as far as we know) people still said the equivalent of “lord” for both.
According to Brown and Samuel (2003, 2-3), around 200 BCE the first people translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek used the paleo-Hebrew form of Yahweh, 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄. Other translators shortly thereafter used the neo-Hebrew script יַהוֶה (what we find in Hebrew Bibles today) or Greek letters that looked similar to the Hebrew ones, ΠΙΠΙ.
After Christ’s advent, Christian scribes always translated both Yahweh and Adonai with the Greek term Kyrios ‘Lord’ (Brown and Samuel 2003, 3). This final translation strategy, Yahweh –> Kyrios, is what we see employed in all translations of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Greek New Testament.
So, was the distinction between God's personal name and title lost in the Septuagint? No! A title like “lord” in Greek would usually be expected to receive the Greek equivalent of “the” before it: “the Lord.” However, recent scholarship shows that four out of five times the translators rendered Yahweh as “Kyrios” without an article (Bainbridge 2020, 339), giving it the sense of a name. The force of this translation strategy can better be felt with some examples in English:
- Exodus 5:1-2—Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’ ” 2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”
- 1 Samuel 17:45—“You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied”
- 1 King 18:39—And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “Lord, he is God; Lord, he is God”
- Joel 2:32—“in that day, whoever calls on the name of Lord will be saved…”
- Isaiah 61:1— “The Spirit of Lord God is upon me, because Lord has anointed me…”
- Isaiah 61:8—“Because I, Lord, love righteousness and hate robbery and wrong…”
Those who listened to the Greek Scriptures would have heard “Lord” used like a name over 4,000 times (Bainbridge 2020).
What a creative translation strategy!
They managed to make their translation acceptable to their audience and faithful to the nature of the text—they made Kyrios feel somewhat like a name where YHWH appeared in the Hebrew text and made it understandable to anyone who knew Greek.
In the next newsletter I will discuss how, by the time of the New Testament, the term Kyrios became an even more semantically rich term.
TL;DR
- God has a personal name, Yahweh, which appears over 5,200 times in the Bible. This appears 13x more frequently than one of his titles, the Hebrew term for “lord” (Adonai).
- The name “Yahweh” often appears in passages in which the point is who the Supreme God is.
- Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures either used the written form of the Hebrew term Yahweh or translated it with the Greek term for “lord,” Kyrios.
- Those translations that used Kyrios made a distinction between when the term Kyrios was translating the Hebrew term for lord, Adonai, vs. God’s name, Yahweh. They omitted the article when they translated Yahweh, which made Kyrios function like a name in those instances.
- In the next newsletter I will discuss how Kyrios is used in the Greek New Testament.
Challenge for You
- Every time you see LORD (in small caps) in the Old Testament, translate it to “Yahweh.” See how that changes the meaning of the passage.
- Think this newsletter was interesting? Share it with someone who might like it! It represents dozens of manhours of work.
References
- Bainbridge, John T. 2020. “Translating Κύριος after 600 Years of ‘the Lord’s’ Faithful Service.” The Bible Translator 71 (3): 331–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/2051677020965686.
- Brown, Richard, and Christopher J Samuel. 2003. “The Meanings of Κυριος in the New Testament.”
- Payne, J. Barton. 1999. “484 הָוָה.” In Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, edited by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke. Chicago: Moody Press.
- The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016.