Yes, hash-Shem was in the Old Testament

Vox Popoli has been laundering a load of disinformatsiya lately, so tonight this blog will address some of that. For now: The YHWH word did not appear in any Old Testament text until the Masoretic Text of 1000AD!. Quite a take.

This take is false.

It should have been debunked in 2005 when R.H. at "remnantradio" posted it. I suppose we must do that here - so, Vridar: Before “Biblical Israel” there was Yahweh. (Godfrey posted that all of two days ago.) Before AD 1000 we could look to "Jehovah" in Saint Jerome's text, hardly a name mah boi would make up for himself; that doesn't really dispute R.H.'s point but it does show that the MT is no product of AD 1000. For the Tetragrammaton being treated as a nomen sacrum: that pesher on Habbakuk 1-2 called "1QpHab" used the Canaani "palaeoHebrew" script for the Name in the main text, with circumlocutions in the tafsîr.

At least 1QpHab was published in AD 1951; R.H. is aware of such Dead Sea scrolls. R.H. is further aware that the northwestern Semitic kingdoms in the times of Judah and Israel were rife with theophoronyms, like "Hazael" among the Canaanites and Aramaeans. Israel had names ending -yw where Judah, speaking almost the same language, had -yhw. This is, like, Biblical Archaeology 101 so it's good that R.H. knows it. R.H. also knows that the Jews' sacralisation of the name came later.

R.H.'s rambling shouty 2005 mess implies - I cannot say "argues" - that the Septuagint came first and that the M.T. (and S.T.!) were translations therefrom. I don't know that even such Gmirkinites as at Vridar claim that. To that point: early Greek manuscripts of the Prophets and Job bear the Four Letters, in Canaani.

As for Christ - that our Lord avoided some Helleno-Aramaic vocalisation of "YHWH" puts him alongside that commentator upon Habbakuk. The Gospels had Jesus say "kyrie" which just translates adon[ai]. Jesus (or, if you're Godfrey or Carrier, Jesu's inventor) assuredly had the Bible in Hebrew and in its (Aramaic) targums. That Jesus used "Father" also is notable; but not unknown to Jewish prophets such as Jeremiah, Malachi, and trito-Isaiah.

It is difficult to tease out what R.H. was arguing, or if he even holds any of those positions today. Overall I catch the scent of an essay which was much more sure of itself back when it was, er, wrong; and later, as facts trickled in, it got revised... and revised again. R.H. could either admit he was on the wrong trail and delete the thing, or he could puke what he had onto remnantradio's badly-formatted website with le IT JUST IS, OKAY wojack-face.

American Christians, amirite. Sigh.