Paul, John, Jesus, and YHWH

[liamconnor]

This topic has already been broached, but I think the topic needs better phrasing.

One OP maintains that Jesus was not YHWH. But this phrasing is far too objective, asking whether or not Jesus was ontologically YHWH, and ignores the question of, right or wrong, N.T. authors still thought of him as YHWH.

So, I am not interested in whether Jesus was actually divine, signified by YHWH, Elohim, kurios, theos, zeus or whatever.

I am interested in whether certain authors of the N.T. had qualms with associating Jesus with the O.T. Hebrew term יהוה. In English this term is translated Jehovah, Yahweh, or simply YHWH. In the LXX (Greek) this term is translated Kurios. The N.T. is written in Greek. Kurios appears frequently, not infrequently in reference to Jesus.

Q4D: Do any of the N.T. authors (right or wrong) associate Jesus, via the Greek LXX, with the Hebrew יהוה?


In my estimate, yes. Both John and Paul associate Jesus with the Hebrew יהוה. They both assign Jesus the Greek term Kurios in contexts unambiguously hearkening back to the Hebrew יהוה.

Please note, all arguments phrased "Jesus is not YHWH" are irrelevant to this OP. The only appropriate objection would be "No N.T. author thought Jesus was YHWH".

I fear I will have to bring this up again and again, but fingers crossed.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 19 by Elijah John]

How would one "preach Jehovah (YHWH)"? What would that involve?

So you are looking for verses that say "The name of the True God is Jehovah"? That kind of thing. God is not a trinity? God lives in heaven? what?

By proclaiming* the name of Jehovah. By preaching salvation in the NAME of YHVH.

The only time he comes close is preaching that whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

But just who Paul means by "Lord" is highly disputed. Even the ASV does not suggest he means YHVH. Seems he meant the Lord Christ and not the LORD YHVH.

And remember, Paul also said that if you believe in your heart that God raised him (Christ) from the dead, you will be saved.

Nothing about calling on the name of YHVH for salvation, in that particular passage.

---
(* pronouncing, stessing it's importance etc.)

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 21 by Elijah John]

So you're saying you are expecting the statements along the line "Salvation comes only from Jehovah"? No Jesus necessary?

What if that is not true? Should he lie?

And remember, Paul also said that if you believe in your heart that God raised him (Christ) from the dead, you will be saved.

Okay, what if that is absolutely true, should Paul have lied or refrained from writing?

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 21 by Elijah John]

So you're saying you are expecting the statements along the line "Salvation comes only from Jehovah"? No Jesus necessary?

What if that is not true? Should he lie?

And remember, Paul also said that if you believe in your heart that God raised him (Christ) from the dead, you will be saved.

Okay, what if that is absolutely true, should Paul have lied or refrained from writing?

Not sure where you got that first quote.

If Jesus was absolutely necessary for salvation, how do you explain all the heroes in the OT/Hebrew Bible who walked with YHVH and found His favor?

They saw salvation coming directly from YHVH, not through Jesus or the Messiah.

Unless, of course, you want to engage in revisionism, theological gymnastics and retro-projection, seeing Jesus where he does not reside. (in the OT)

And if you insist on bringing "lying" into the equation, what makes you so sure that it was not Paul himself who was doing the lying?

I prefer to see Paul as sincere but deluded by the vision he had, which caused him to interpret everything through the lens of "Christ", even when those interpretations put him at odds with the truths of the Hebrew Bible.

He even adds conditions to salvation, namely "believing in your heart that God raised him (Christ) from the dead"...something that Jesus himself never taught.

And that was easy for Paul to say, as he allegedly encountered the risen Christ directly.

A bit unfair for him to expect that same faith of those who weren't so fortunate, wouldn't you say?

[Checkpoint]

[Replying to post 23 by Elijah John]

They saw salvation coming directly from YHVH, not through Jesus or the Messiah.

Yes, but you need to factor in these scriptures:

1 Peter 1:

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,
11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit anointing in them was indicating when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Matthew 1:

20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.�

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel�

(which means, God with us).

[JehovahsWitness]

If Jesus was absolutely necessary for salvation, how do you explain all the heroes in the OT/Hebrew Bible who walked with YHVH and found His favor?

An there is the point; there is no point in discussing the content of Paul's writings or suggesting he was not balanced without first establishing Jesus' role in salvation. There is no point in discussing Jesus' role in salvation without first establishing salvation FROM WHAT! What are we being saved from and (more importantly) where can we find accurate answers to these questions?

I prefer to see Paul as sincere but deluded by the vision he had...

Paul died 2000 years ago, for all intents and purposes this is how a summary of how you view much the contents of the Christians bible (Paul wrote 13 of the 27 books in the Christian bible)

There is no point in discussing salvation unless we can look to an accurate source of information on this subject. There is no point in looking for an accurate source of infomation on the subject of salvation if no accurate reliable source of infomation on this subject exists

If the bible is just so many suggestions on this subject, to be picked and rejected at will according to ones personal theology, what would be the point in even beginning such a discussion? (not a rhetorical question). There are theological schools of higher education for churning out people that can endlessly disect the bible without ever building faith in what is says, so if that is not the point, what is? (again these are not rhetorical questions).



JW

[Checkpoint]

[Replying to post 23 by Elijah John]

And that was easy for Paul to say, as he allegedly encountered the risen Christ directly.

That is the voice of doubt and disbelief being expressed.

Paul was no liar, what he said really happened.

If it was false it would have been challenged and exposed. It wasn't.

[onewithhim]

This topic has already been broached, but I think the topic needs better phrasing.

One OP maintains that Jesus was not YHWH. But this phrasing is far too objective, asking whether or not Jesus was ontologically YHWH, and ignores the question of, right or wrong, N.T. authors still thought of him as YHWH.

It's good you brought it up again, because I thought people could see the impossibility of Jesus being YHWH by now. Apparently you are not convinced. Once again---the N.T. authors DID NOT think of Jesus as YHWH. My goodness, we have discussed this exhaustively! There is incontrovertible evidence that scribes in the 3rd century stopped copying God's name (YHWH) and inserted "God" or "Adonai" instead. Paul always differentiated between God (the Father) and Jesus Christ. He did not think that they were the same Person. You can see that by just reading through the salutations that he wrote at the beginning of all of his letters to the congregations.

This question has not been ignored.

[Benoni]

This topic has already been broached, but I think the topic needs better phrasing.

One OP maintains that Jesus was not YHWH. But this phrasing is far too objective, asking whether or not Jesus was ontologically YHWH, and ignores the question of, right or wrong, N.T. authors still thought of him as YHWH.

It's good you brought it up again, because I thought people could see the impossibility of Jesus being YHWH by now. Apparently you are not convinced. Once again---the N.T. authors DID NOT think of Jesus as YHWH. My goodness, we have discussed this exhaustively! There is incontrovertible evidence that scribes in the 3rd century stopped copying God's name (YHWH) and inserted "God" or "Adonai" instead. Paul always differentiated between God (the Father) and Jesus Christ. He did not think that they were the same Person. You can see that by just reading through the salutations that he wrote at the beginning of all of his letters to the congregations.

This question has not been ignored.

Please show me where God is a person? I thought the Bible said he was a spirit?

[onewithhim]

I think John with his prologue and the "I AM statements equates Jesus with YHVH God. Paul, comes close but does not go quite that far. But functionally, Paul has Christ as God, even if he were to insist that only the Father is God. ("I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me", etc, etc.)

But even John is contradictory on the matter, in 17.3 he has Jesus clearly identifying the Father alone as the "only true God".

No, John does not equate Jesus with YHWH God. Never! The so-called "I Am statements" are bogus....not even close to fact!

As I have posted many times before, what Jesus said at John 8:58 in many versions is not a fair or true rendering of that verse.

prin Abraam genesthai ego eimi

What Jesus said here is fine, idiomatic Greek, and can be rendered straightforwardly into English by doing what translators always do with Greek, namely, rearranging the word order into normal English order, and adjust things like verbal tense complementarity into proper English expression. It has to be understood that those steps of translation are necessary because Greek and English do not obey the same rules of grammar. Greek has more flexibility with word order than English does, and it can mix verbal tenses in a way English cannot.

Because Greek idioms are different from English idioms, translators do not translate these expressions word-for word, but rather convey the meaning of the Greek idiom in proper, comprehensible English. That is what translators are supposed to do!

It is ungrammatical English for something referred to with a present "am" to occur earlier in time than something described with a past "came to be." In John 8:58, since Jesus' existence is not completed past action, but on-going, we must use some sort of imperfect verbal form to convey that: "I have been (since) before Abraham came to be." That's as close as we can get to what the Greek says in our own language if we pay attention to ALL parts of the sentence. Both the Living Bible and the New World Translation offer translations that coordinate the two verbs in John 8:58 according to proper English syntax, and that accurately reflect the meaning of the Greek idiom. The other translations do not do this.

Think of this also: Why would translators whose job it is to make a Bible into comprehensible, GOOD QUALITY English, choose an awkward, ungrammatical rendering instead? Why do Bible translations which in thousands of other verses freely change word order relative to the original Greek suddenly find a reason to follow EXACTLY, word-for-word, the Greek, producing an ungrammatical and syntactically strained sentence in this instance? It is THEOLOGICAL BIAS.

In the hands of certain translators, the very reasonable interpretation ("I have been since before Abraham came to be") has somehow grown into a strange, unsubstantiated idea about the words "I am" themselves, independent of the rules of grammar concerning Jesus' speech.

Someone became OBSESSED with the simple words "I am," thinking (unwarranted) that Jesus was quoting from Exodus 3:14.

The majority of translations recognize the idiomatic uses of "I am," and properly integrate the words into the context of the passages where they appear. Yet when it comes to John 8:58, they suddenly forget how to translate!


There is much more to say on this travesty of translation, but I think this suffices to back up the argument that John did not infer that Jesus was God by writing the mess of mangled word order as it appears in many Bible versions. Neither John nor Paul believed that Jesus claimed to be God Almighty.


.

[onewithhim]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

Please note, all arguments phrased "Jesus is not YHWH" are irrelevant to this OP. The only appropriate objection would be "No N.T. author thought Jesus was YHWH".

I fear I will have to bring this up again and again, but fingers crossed.

We cannot be absolutely certain either way, as the Name is deliberately absent from the NT.

We can, however draw conclusions based on what they did write and quote.

Then draw some conclusions CP.

My conclusion is that Paul most certainly identified Jesus with O.T. YHWH passages. I really don't think this is as tentative as you, for Paul quotes YHWH passages and places Jesus in them.

In other words, Paul reads passages of the O.T. in which the term YHWH looms large, whether Greek or Hebrew, and sees Jesus in the term.

No he does not, and you should further explain your reason for thinking so.