Pietersma and the Tetragrammaton in the Greek LXX.

                 Pietersma and the Tetragrammaton in the Greek LXX.

If we take the situation with Pietersma, he opposes the theory, that, the original LXX contained the Tetragrammaton; this is a familiar one and does not really hold much water, as he is of the opinion, that 8HevXIIgr is not a good example of the LXX, as it, says, Pietersma, that it contains Hebraizing modifications and on this basis, he does not consider 8HevXIIgr a good exemplar, for instance, he argues against the use of the Tetragrammaton in Deut 31:27, because, P.Fouad 266 has the Tetragram and the Greek accusative “ton theon”, which altogether reads in the above “Jehovah God”, whereas, “God”, not “Jehovah God” is to be found in all other LXXs manuscript fragments, but, it is as the bible scholar Mogens Muller pointed out in this regard in his book, “The first bible of the church, a plea for the Septuagint”, because of the knowledge obtained from the Qumran caves over these many years, no Hebrew text recension could lay claim to being the original bible text, now here is the point, that Muller has picked up on, that, Pietersma, either is unaware of or simply ignores and that is, if the original Hebrew text read “Jehovah God” and then, the Tetragram was removed, instead of reading “Jehovah God”, it would read “God” (ton theon) as in all other LXXs with the exception of P. Fouad 266, but, if that was the case, then, the removal of God’s name would surely have left “kurios ton theon” (the Lord God) in the LXX tradition.

Pietersma does however admit, that, 4QLXXLev-b, which uses the Tetragram and which possibly goes back to very early LXX renderings and has the highest credentials are impeccable!

The real truth of the matter, as I see it and that is, those who oppose God's name from being in early copies of the LXX and many opposed any copy of the LXX from ever having the Tetragram in it, that is until Qumran...do so, because, they do not want any to believe, that the NT writers quoted from any LXX that did contain the Divine Name and thus, the original autographs and very early copies of the NT contained the name of God, but, later copies suffered the same fate as the LXX copies.

Question

Even though no extant NT manuscript has the Tetragrammaton in them, is there any external proof that the early Christians (who were Jewish Christians, no Gentile Christians at first) actually had gospels that contained the name of God?

"The Hebrew Tosefta, ( Shabbat 13:5 ), written (circa. 3rd Century C.E.), quoting Rabbi Tarfon or Tarphon, Heb., ( רבי טרפון‎ ), from the Gk., ( Τρύφων ), a Kohen, a member of the third generation of the Mishnah sages, who lived in the period between the destruction of the Second Temple ( 70 C.E. ) and the fall of Bethar ( 135 C.E. ):

SHABBAT 13:5: “...We don't save the [ Gilyohnim ] Gospels or the books of Minim from the fire. They are burnt where they are, together with their tetragrammatons. Rabbi Yose Ha-Gelili says: "During the week one should take the tetragrammatons from them, hide them and burn the rest". Rabbi Tarfon said: 'May I bury my children! If I would have them in my hands, I would burn them with all their tetragrammatons...” - (“Who was a Jew?” By Lawrence. H. Schiffman,

Here we see first hand evidence outside of the bible, that the early Christians were using God's name, so what happened?

Did the early Christians use and pronounce God's name?

In the beginning, there were only Judeo-Christians, that is, Jews who became Christians, these were of Jewish stock and before 70 CE and many could understand and speak Hebrew, whereas, the pagano-Christians, those of pagan origin, who converted to Christianity, mostly after the death of John c. 100 CE, these would in the main, be familiar with Greek, not Hebrew, the Judeo-Christians of course used the LXX and continued to promote it, these, continued, in the Jewish custom to insert the Tetragram into the Greek text, until at least, after the death of the last apostle john c. 100 CE (Col 2:8; 2 Thess 2:6-12; 2 Tim 4:1-5; 1 John 2:18, 19).

As mentioned above in the Shabbat?

BT Shabbat 116a; PT Shabbat XVI, 1, 15c Tosefta Shabbat XIII, 5, sifre Nasso 16, between 90 CE and 130 CE, relates the problem when it came to destroying heretical texts, which contained the Tetragrammaton, the heretics were called "minin" (Judeo-Christians) and were using "golyinim" (gospels) which contained the Tetrarammaton, these Judeo-Christians, were originally called by the Jews the "sect of the Nazarenes" and this is confirmed by what Acts 24:5 has to say, these ones later became known as "the poor ones" or maybe better known as the "Ebionites", after 165 CE.

Most modern translation are based on the Catholic codices in Greek and that after 400 CE for the NT.

The evidence is slowly mounting in favour of the Divine Name being in the NT and early copies!

And don't forget what Pietersma admitted to, that, 4QLXXLev-b, which uses the Tetragram and which possibly goes back to very early LXX renderings and has the highest credentials are impeccable!

All manuscripts, in fragment form or in larger parts and 10 have been discovered so far, do not have either "kurios" or "theos", all have "yhwh"; Jewish copies (not later Gentile Christian copies) up to 150 CE have "yhwh"!

Not a single example from a pre-Christian bible (LXX) where the antecedent "kurios" or "theos" replaces "yhwh"!

Here is an extract from wiki, the reader would benefit from reading the whole, as it gives a balanced view of the history of transmission of the Tetragrammaton!

Septuagint and other Old Greek translations

Tetragrammaton written in paleo-Hebrew script on 8HevXII

The most complete copies of the Septuagint (B, א, A), versions from fourth century onwards consistently use Κύριος ("Lord"),[52] or Θεός("God"),[53][54] where the Hebrew has YHWH, corresponding to substituting Adonai for YHWH in reading the original, but the oldest fragments have the tetragrammaton in Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew characters,[55] with the exception of P. Ryl. 458 (perhaps the oldest extant Septuagint manuscript) where there are blank spaces, leading some scholars such as Colin Henderson Roberts to believe that it contained letters,[56] and 4Q120 that has ΙΑΩ. According to Paul E. Kahle, in P. Ryl. 458 the tetragrammaton must have been written where these breaks or blank spaces appear.[57] Albert Pietersma claims that P. Ryl. 458 is irrelevant in this discussion: Kahle insisted that a lacuna in it is too large for the usual abbreviation κς, which C.H. Roberts suggested was intended for the complete word κύριος, was instead meant for the Hebrew tetragrammaton; Pietersma holds that "the full κύριος would seem to be perfectly acceptable from every perspective".[58]

The oldest known LXX manuscript that has the Hebrew tetragrammaton is of the first century BCE, with the letters written in square script. A slightly later one (between 50 BCE and 50 CE) has the tetragrammon in archaic Paleo-Hebrew letters.[59]

Of the same period as the oldest LXX manuscript with the Hebrew tetragrammaton is the manuscript 4Q120 with the Greek trigrammaton ΙΑΩ. P.W. Skehan and Martin Hengel propose that the Septuagint originally had ΙΑΩ (pronounced Yaho = Aramaic יהו) and that this was altered to Aramaic/Hebrew characters and later to Paleo-Hebrew and finally was replaced by Κύριος.[60][61]

Before the third century CE no Greek LXX manuscript has Κύριος in place of the tetragram or ΙΑΩ. "An original tetragram, either in Semitic guise or in Greek transliteration", "had been maintained as far back as Origen",[58]who wrote that the best copies used the paleo-Hebrew letters, not the square:

"In the more accurate exemplars [of the LXX] the (divine) name is written in Hebrew characters; not, however, in the current script, but in the most ancient.[58]"

Other old fragments cannot be used in this discussion because, in addition to their brevity and fragmentary condition, they include no Hebrew Bible verse containing the Tetragrammaton (i.e. 4Q119, 4Q121, 4Q122, 7Q5). 4Q126, which contains the word κύριος cannot be cited as using it for the tetragrammaton, since its unidentified text is not necessarily biblical.[62] In Septuagint manuscripts dating from about the third century CE onwards (e.g., P.Oxy656, P.Oxy1075 and P.Oxy1166) the Greek word Κύριος (Lord) is used rather frequently to represent the divine name יהוה (YHWH) and can be what was used when reading out representations in non-Greek characters.[63]"

Source: WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton