Names and titles of God in the New Testament

In contrast to the variety of absolute or personal names of God in the Old Testament, the New Testament uses only two, according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia.

With regard to the original documents that were later included, with or without modification,^[1] in the New Testament, George Howard put forward in 1977 a hypothesis, not widely accepted, that their Greek-speaking authors may have used some form of the Tetragrammaton (יהוה) in their quotations from the Old Testament but that in all copies of their works this was soon replaced by the existing two names.^{[2][verification needed]}

Names[]

In contrast to the variety of absolute or personal names of God in the Old Testament, the New Testament uses only two, according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia.^[3][4] Of the two, Θεὀς ("God") is the more common, appearing in the text over a thousand times. In its true sense it expresses essential Deity, but by accommodation it is also used of heathen gods.^[4] The other is Κύριος ("Lord"), which appears almost 600 times. In quotations from the Old Testament, it represents both יהוה (Yahweh) and אדני (Adonai), the latter name having been used in Jewish worship to replace the former, the speaking of which was avoided even in the solemn reading of sacred texts.^[4] No transcription of either of the Hebrew names יהוה and אדני appears in the existing text of the New Testament.

God[]

According to Walter A. Elwell and Robert W. Yarbrough, the term θεος (God) is used 1317 times.^[5] N. T. Wright differentiates between 'God' and 'god' when it refers to the deity or essentially a common noun.^[6] Murray J. Harris wrote that in NA²⁶ (USB³) θεος appears 1,315 times.^[7] The Bible Translator reads that "when referring to the one supreme God... it frequently is preceded, but need not be, by the definite article" (Ho theos).^[8]

Lord[]

The word κύριος appears 717 times in the text of New Testament, and Darrell L. Bock says it is used in three different ways:

First, it reflects the secular usages as the "lord" or "owner" of a vineyard (Matt. 21:40, Mark 12:9, Luke 20:13), master or slaves, or a political leader (Acts 25:26). Second, it certainly used of God. This usage is seen particularly in the numerous NT quotations from the OT where kyrios stands for Yahweh (e.g., Rom 4:8, Ps 32:2; Rom. 9:28-29, Isa. 10:22-23; Rom. 10:16, Isa. 53:1). Third, it is used of Jesus as kyrios (Matt. 10:24-25; John 13:16; 15:20; Rom 14:4; Eph. 6:5, 9; Col. 3:22: 4:1).^[9]

Angel of the Lord[]

The Greek phrase ἄγγελος Κυρίου (aggelos kuriou – "angel of the Lord") is found in Matthew 1:20, 1:24, 2:13, 2:19, 28:2; Luke 1:11, 2:9; John 5:4; Acts 5:19, 8:26, 12:7, and 12:23. English translations render the phrase either as "an angel of the Lord" or as "the angel of the Lord".^[10] The mentions in Acts 12:11 and Revelation 22:6 of "his angel" (the Lord's angel) can also be understood as referring either to the angel of the Lord or an angel of the Lord.

Descriptive titles[]

Robert Kysar reports that God is referred to as Father 64 times in the first three Gospels and 120 times in the fourth Gospel.^[11] Outside of the Gospels he is called the Father of mercies (2 Corinthians 1:3), the Father of glory (Ephesians 1:17), the Father of mercies (the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9), the Father of lights (James 1:17), and he is referred by the Aramaic word Abba in Romans 8:15.

Other titles under which God is referred to include the Almighty (Revelation 1:18), the Most High (Acts 7:48), the Creator (Romans 1:20; 2 Peter 1:4), the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3).^[4]

Extant New Testament manuscripts[]

No extant manuscript of the New Testament, not even a mere fragment, contains the Tetragrammaton in any form.^[2] In their citations of Old Testament verses, they always have κς or θς where the Hebrew text has YHWH.^[2]

There is a gap between the original writing down (the autograph) of each of the various documents that were later incorporated into the New Testament and even the oldest surviving manuscript copies of the New Testament form of any such document.^{[12][13][14][15]} Philip Wesley Comfort says: "The time gap between the autograph and the extant copies is quite close − no more than one hundred years for most of the books of the New Testament. Thus we are in a good position to recover most of the original wording of the Greek New Testament.".^[16] Scholars assume the general reliability of the texts of ancient authors attested by extremely few manuscripts written perhaps a thouosand years after their death: the New Testament is much better attested both in quantity and in antiquity of manuscripts.^[17][18][19] On the other hand, Helmut Koester says that the discovered papyri tell us nothing of the history of a text in the 100 to 150 years between when the original autograph was written and when its New Testament form was canonized. In line with the common view, Koester places canonization of the New Testament at the end of the second century.^[20] David Trobisch proposes a shorter interval, saying that a specific collection of Christian writings closely approximating the modern New Testament canon was edited and published before 180, probably by Polycarp (69–155).^[21][22]

Trobisch agrees with Howard that the autographs may have had some form of the tetragram,^[23] but holds that the edited texts in what we know as the New Testament are not the same as those autographs.^[24] The New Testament, he says, is an anthology with "editorial elements that serve to combine individual writings into a larger literary unit and are not original components of the collected traditional material". These editorial elements "can be identified by their late date, their unifying function, and the fact that they reflect a consistent editorial design; they "usually do not originate with the authors of the works published in an anthology"; instead, "responsibility for the final redaction rests with the editors and publisher". Trobisch states that "the New Testament contains both textual and non-textual elements of a final redaction", and in his book describes "some of the more obvious of these elements".^[25]

Howard remarks that the oldest known New Testament fragments contain no verse quoting an Old Testament verse that has the Tetragrammaton.^[26][2] These fragments are: ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$⁵², ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$⁹⁰, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$⁹⁸ and ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$^{104[27][28][29][30][31]}). Fragments that do contain quotations of Old Testament verses containing the tetragrammaton are at earliest from 175 CE^[32] onward (${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$⁴⁶, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$⁶⁶, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$⁷⁵).^{[33][34][35][36][37]}

Jacobus H. Petzer, citing Harry Y. Gamble, K. Junack and Barbara Aland in support, distinguishes between "the original text" of the New Testament and "the autographs" of the documents it incorporated.^[14] There is a gap of about a century (more in the case of the letters of Paul the Apostle, less in the case of elements such as the Gospel of John) between the composition of the actual autograph documents, the original incorporation of a version of them into the New Testament, and the production of the extant New Testament manuscripts in which, according to the Howard hypothesis, the Tetragrammaton might once have been written, before being eliminated without trace from all existing manuscripts.

Howard points to some twenty single-letter variations in the Greek New Testament manuscripts between κς and θς, among the hundreds of other appearances of these two nomina sacra.^[38] In response to a correspondent who said that Howard "cited the large number of variants involving theos and kurios as evidence for the originality of the divine name in the New Testament itself", Larry Hurtado replied: "Well, maybe so. But his theory doesn't take adequate account of all the data, including the data that 'kyrios' was used as a/the vocal substitute for YHWH among Greek-speaking Jews. There's no indication that the Hebrew YHWH ever appeared in any NT text."^[26] He also noted the choice by the author of the Acts of the Apostles to use Θεός rather than Κύριος when reporting speeches to and by the Jews.^[26] Nearly half of the variants in question are from the Acts of the Apostles.

Variance between κς and θς
NT verse	κς	θς
Acts 8:24	א, A, B	D
Acts 8:25	א, B, C, D	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$74, A
Acts 10:33	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$45, א, A, B, C	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$74, D
Acts 12:24	B	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$74, א, A, D
Acts 13:44	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$74, א, A, B	B, C
Acts 14:48	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$45, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$74, א, A, C	B, D
Acts 16:15	א, A, B	D
Acts 16:32	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$45, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$74, אc (corrector), A, C	א, B
1 Corinthians 7:17	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$46, א, A, B, C	TR
1 Corinthians 10:9	א, B, C, 33	A, 81
2 Corinthians 8:21	א, B	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$46
Colossians 3:13	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$46, A, B, D	א
Colossians 3:16	א	A, C
Colossians 3:22	א, A, B, C, D	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$46, אc, Dc (corrector)
Thessalonians 1:8	אc, B	א
Thessalonians 2:13	א, A, B	D
2 Peter 3:12	C	א, A, B
Jude 5	א	Cc
Jude 9	A, B	א
Revelation 18:8	אc, C	A

Even according to Howard himself, the supposed presence of the Tetragrammaton that he envisages within the New Testament lasted very briefly: he speaks of it as "crowded out" already "somewhere around the beginning of the second century".^[39][40]

R. F. Shedinger considered it "at least possible" that Howard's theory may find support in the regular use in the Diatessaron (which, according to Ulrich B. Schmid "antedates virtually all the MSS of NT")^[41] of "God" in place of "Lord" in the New Testament and the Peshitto Old Testament, but he stressed that "Howard's thesis is rather speculative and the textual evidence he cites from the New Testament in support of it is far from overwhelming."^[42]

In studies conducted among existing variants in New Testament copies, the vast majority of scholars agree that the New Testament has remained fairly stable with only many minor variants (Daniel B. Wallace,^[43] Michael J. Kruger, Craig A. Evans, Edward D Andrews,^[15] Kurt Aland,^[44] Barbara Aland, F. F. Bruce,^[45] Fenton Hort, Brooke Foss Westcott, Frederic G. Kenyon,^[46] Jack Finegan,^[47] Archibald Thomas Robertson). Some critics, such as Kurt Aland, deny that there is any basis whatever for conjectural emendation of the manuscript evidence.^[12] Bart D. Ehrman, Helmut Koester, David C. Parker believe that it is not possible to establish the original text with absolute certainty, but do not posit a systematic revision as in the Howard hypothesis.^[48][49][50]

The oldest extant Greek New Testament manuscript fragments.[51]
Date	Quantity	Manuscripts
Second century	4	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$52, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$90, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$98, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$104
Second/third-centuries	3	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$67, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$103, Uncial 0189
175—225	4	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$32, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$46, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$64+${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$67, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$66
Third century	40	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$1, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$4, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$5, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$9, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$12, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$15, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$20, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$22, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$23, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$27, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$28, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$29, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$30, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$39, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$40, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$45, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$47, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$48, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$49, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$53, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$65, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$69, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$70, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$75, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$80, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$87, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$91, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$95, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$101, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$106, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$107, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$108, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$109, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$111, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$113, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$114, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$118, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$119, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$121, 0220
Third/fourth centuries	16	${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$7, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$13, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$16, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$18, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$37, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$38, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$72, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$78, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$92, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$100, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$102, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$115, ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}$125, 0162, 0171, 0312

Nomina sacra in the New Testament[]

Nomina sacra (ΙΥ for Ίησοῦ, Jesus, and ΘΥ for Θεοῦ, God) in John 1:35–37 in the 4th-century Codex Vaticanus

Nomina sacra, representations of religiously important words in a way that sets them off from the rest of the text, are a characteristic of manuscripts of the New Testament. "There are good reasons to think that these abbreviations were not concerned with saving space but functioned as a textual way to show Christian reverence and devotion to Christ alongside of God".^[52]

Philip Wesley Comfort places in the first century the origin of five nomina sacra: those indicating "Lord", "Jesus', "Christ", "God" and "Spirit", and considers ΚΣ (Κύριος) to have been the earliest.^[53] Tomas Bokedal also assigns to the first century the origin of the same nomina sacra, omitting only πνεῦμα.^[54] Michael J. Kruger says that, for the nomina sacra convention to be so widespread as is shown in manuscripts of the early second century, its origin must be placed earlier.^[55]

George Howard supposes that κς (κύριος) and θς (θεός) were the initial nomina sacra and were created by (non-Jewish Christian scribes who in copying the Septuagint text "found no traditional reasons to preserve the tetragrammaton" (which in his hypothesis they found in the Septuagint text) and who perhaps looked on the contracted forms κς and θς as "analogous to the vowelless Hebrew Divine Name".

Larry Hurtado rejects this view, preferring that of Colin Roberts, according to whom the initial nomen sacrum was that representing the name Ἰησοῦς (Jesus).^[56] Hurtado's view is shared by Tomas Bokedal, who holds that the first nomen sacrum was that of Ἰησοῦς (initially in the suspended form ιη), soon followed by that of Χριστός and then by Κύριος and Θεός.^[57] Since all Hebrew words are written without vowels, the vowelless character of the tetragrammaton cannot have inspired, Hurtado says, the creation of the nomina sacra, which moreover, as in the case of κύριος, also omit consonants.^[56]

George Howard considered that the change to the nomina sacra κς and θς instead of YHWH in Christian copies of the Septuagint took place "at least by the beginning of the second century": it began "towards the end of the first century", and "somewhere around the beginning of the second century [...] must have crowded out the Tetragram in both Testaments".^[39] Already by the late second century nomina sacra were used not only in New Testament manuscripts but also in inscriptions in Lycaonia (modern central Turkey).^[58] David Trobisch proposes that the replacement of YHWH to nomina sacra was a conscious editorial decision at the time of compiling both New and Old Testaments, in the second century.^[59][60]

While Howard supposed that the New Testament writers took their Old Testament quotations directly from Septuagint manuscripts (which he also supposed contained the Tetragrammaton), Philip Wesley Comfort believes they took them from Testimonia (excerpts from the Old Testament that Christians compiled as proof texts for their claims). He recognizes that the earliest extant evidence of the use of nomina sacra is found in second-century manuscripts of the Septuagint rather than of such Testimonia or of the New Testament, and comments: "Regardless of whether the nomina sacra were invented in the testimonia stage or in early Christian Greek Old Testament manuscripts (i.e., first century), the significance is that they may have existed in written form before the Gospels and Epistles were written. As such, some of the New Testament writers themselves could have adopted these forms when they wrote their books. The presence of the nomina sacra in all the earliest Christian manuscripts dating from the early second century necessitates that it was a widespread practice established much earlier. If we place the origin of that practice to the autographs and/or early publications of the New Testament writings, it explains the universal proliferation thereafter." He pictures the nomina sacra entering Christian copies of the Septuagint in the same way as in Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 656 the original scribe left gaps for someone capable of writing Hebrew or Palaeo-Hebrew to fill in with the Tetragrammaton, but that were in fact filled with the word κύριος.^[61]