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In this talk, the second of a three part series on ambiguities in words used for God and for his Son, I discuss the words translated in your English Bible as “Lord” or “LORD.”
In the Old Testament “the Lord” or “the LORD” is Yahweh himself, the only God. But in the New Testament, we see a new usage of the Greek word kurios (“Lord” or “lord”), based on the most referred to OT text in the NT. Now, “the Lord” can refer either to the one God, or to his human Son, Jesus – someone other than the one God. And it’s a bit more complicated than than, for “lord” also has less exalted uses.
Along the way I discuss whether the use of “the Lord” for Jesus implies that he is God, I make a radical suggestion to reduce ambiguities in present-day discourse, and I address whether or not we should strive to use ancient Hebrew names for God and for his Son.
I recommend this YouTube version of this talk, featuring my slides.
Or here is the video, produced by Sharon Gill:
Links for this episode:
- podcast 224 – Biblical Words for God and for his Son Part 1 – God and “God” in the Bible
- Ephesians 4:4-6; Galatians 1:3-5; 1 Corinthians 8:6; John 4:11; Matthew 13:27; Luke 1:6; Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:34-39; Mark 12:28-30; Ephesians 1:3-20.
- podcast 16 – How is Jesus “the one Lord”?
- podcast 15 – Are Paul’s “one God” and “one Lord” one and the same?
- podcast 14 – One God, One Lord, Two Interpretations
Hey John – thanks for the comments and corrections. I’m going to follow up on these, and may respond further.
Hi Dale, loved the podcast. What a coincidence, I just published a study on my blog yesterday on ‘The Lordship of Jesus the Messiah.’ In my study I discovered something I had never caught before. There is a difference in the reason why Jesus was addressed as kurios in the gospels, prior to his resurrection, as compared to after his resurrection and in the Acts and epistles. One reason the disciples called him ‘lord’ during his ministry was as a title of respect and honor as a Rabbi/Teacher. Later though, after the resurrection they definitely understood him to be much more than just that. I like your suggestion about using Yahweh for the Father and Lord strictly for Jesus, although I do find kurios used many times in the NT for the Father. Also thanks for the tip on the Jerusalem Bible, I think I’ll check it out.
Thanks Dale for sharing a topic close to my heart and personal research. A couple of comments if I may:
Around 5 minutes: you mention the rather unfortunate tradition to maintain a stripping-away of the Yahweh name in many modern Bibles, although you have a preference for the New Jerusalem Bible for study, which includes Yahweh. A while back, I was interested to see how the most common languages spoken in the world fare on this question and surveyed several translations from each. You can see that here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!Agz-dG3ANZ9UgvtjAlGwhCAkfDFMfA. There appear to be different families of traditions around.
By far the most interesting translation for my purposes was actually the French Darby translation (I got lucky there, being a French speaker myself), whereby not only the French translation of Yahweh is maintained “l’Eternel” in the OT, but there are over a hundred *asterisked* “le Seigneur” (the Lord) in the New, which are making a clear NT reference to an intended divine Name, especially used of course during OT citation by the NT authors.
5:35….”in the Greek translations they wouldn’t see the word Yahweh, they would see “ho kyrios”, the Lord and whenever they quote the OT in the NT they’re quoting one of those ancient translations, and that’s what you see reflected in the NT”. That’s not quite right, and here’s the interesting point about the articles, right? Many Septuagint scholars have noted that there is this “anarthrous rule” around the translation of Yahweh into the Greek word for Lord, which actually removes the “ho” from “ho Kyrios” (although I think this only applies in the genitive and nominative cases for other grammatical reasons). That’s a really interesting point because it:
a) Helps us see a more careful thought process that went into the translation, ie preserving grammatically the fact that we are talking about a name here (statistically, Kyrios in the Pentateuch has as low a proportion as any of the other proper names, like Moses).
b) Helps us disambiguate to some degree some other passages in the NT besides thosed asterisked in the French Darby translation, such as 2 Corinthians 3:16-18, which contains mainly “anarthrous” versions of Kyrios.
6:00 “Adonai – the Lord – I believe is always Yahweh in the Hebrew.” Almost. Genesis 19:2 was clearly understood very early as a plural as is rendered ??????. I also have a doubt over Ezra 10:3, Psalm 110:1 and Isaiah 21:8. That still leaves a lot of Adonais pointing to the same referent as Yahweh though 😉
6:10 “Adoni – that’s always some human ruler of some sort”. Again, almost. This is represented by Strongs H113. Exodus 23:17 and 34:23 both apply H113 to God, as do Isaiah 10:33 and Malachi 3:1.
“6:50 all of this gets translated into kyrios… the multi-tool of God words in the NT.” Actually, since we are aligning NT with LXX Greek here, we should also be aware that sometimes the word theos is simply substituted in, and also another Greek word, despotes.
8:45 “Where does Jesus fit into this”? Sir? Master? Yahweh-Jesus Christ? There are not enough categories here, as you say later in the talk, “a unique sense”. I published my findings on a key saying in Greek, “in the name of the Lord” on the Trinities FB group, and it’s still available at my blog at http://faithandscripture.blogspot.fr/2017/12/is-jesus-other-name-yahweh-for-first.html (this is one of those important posts that I continue to revise from time to time, so the latest should be the best), and the title is Is Jesus’ Other Name “Yahweh” for the first century church? Part 1: The Data (I haven’t written Part 2 yet, but you’re inspiring me…). The findings of this research are that the first-century church does not affirm this and are leaving some grammatical clues as to God-Jesus distinctions, while at the same time extending God’s very own and personal kyrios-ship to his Son via inheritance. At the end of that post there are links to some other relevant posts to this important question you raise.
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