The Tetragrammaton Among the Orthodox in Late Antiquity1

chapter 3 The Tetragrammaton among the Orthodox in Late Antiquity1 In this chapter we shall consider first explicit mention of the Tetragrammaton among the Church Fathers. This material was to form the basis of the intellectual heritage on the divine name which they transmitted to the Middle Ages and the early modern period, and it is for ease of later reference that I isolate that material rather artificially here. Thereafter we shall explore more fully their thoughts on the name of God when we consider their interpretations of Exodus 3:14. We have anticipated repeatedly the emergence of a Christian Greek Old Testament—and, indeed, the New—without the Tetragrammaton and with the general substitution of kurios for it. By the end of the 1st century a.d. it would appear this version had been taken up by the Christians and was at the same time being progressively avoided by Jews.2 The substitution of kurios in the Septuagint, and thence of dominus in the Vulgate, effectively removed the name of God from the awareness of those who read or heard read these Scriptures. As we have seen, Exodus 3:14 thereby effectively ceased to be an explanation of the Tetragrammaton, but rather became an independent state- ment of God’s existence. The Tetragrammaton was simply not in their Bibles, nor did its absence draw attention to itself. Explicit Mention of the Tetragrammaton among the Fathers3 Such learned comment as is found among the early Fathers of the Church on the subject of the Tetragrammaton may now receive our attention. It is not 1 “The Orthodox” here usefully designates those whom subsequent centuries would consider (by and large) orthodox. It is not intended as an evaluative term. 2 We have seen that Jews in the Byzantine Empire could continue to avail themselves of the resources of this translation and that Christians generally accepted the account of the origins of the Septuagint presented in the Epistle of Aristeas. An early modern exception is Hody in 1684. Details may be found of him and a few others in Swete, Introduction to the Old Testament (Cambridge, 1902), p. 15. 3 A. Deissmann, “Greek Transcriptions of the Tetragrammaton,” in idem, Bible Studies, trans. A. Grieve (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 321–336, discusses Patristic notices, as does Baudissin, Kurios, vol. 2, pp. 215–225. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004288171_005 124 chapter 3 extensive, and the comments of the great biblical scholars Origen and particularly Jerome, which we have already discussed, constituted the bulk of the legacy of knowledge on the subject bequeathed to later generations. Jerome’s observations were particularly valued because of his distinction as a Hebraist, as a biblical translator, and as unquestionably orthodox. He wrote in Latin and his Prologues appear commonly in Latin Bibles.4 The most explicit of his remarks, de Decem Dei Nominibus, glosses: El, Eloim, Eloe, Sabaoth, Elion, Ieje aser Ieje (treated as a divine name5), Adonai, Ia (dominus), Iao (dominus), and Saddai.6 This was basic text upon the subject for the Middle Ages, though it was often the victim of scribal corruption. The notion of the ten names of God here and also in an anonymous Greek treatise on the subject is first found in Origen’s comments on Psalm 2 (PG XII.1104), where the Tetragrammaton is given as Iaê. Dr De Lange considers it likely to be a Jewish explanation.7 But it was Jerome who put it into Latin. Isidore, we shall see later, knew this text and repeats it, perhaps with some philosophic meditation.8 Jerome wrote his Liber de Nominibus Hebraicis in explicit rivalry with Philo, who wrote on the same subject but also with an acknowledged dependence 4 See Michael Graves, Jerome’s Hebrew Philology: A Study Based on His Commentary on Jeremiah (Leiden, 2007), pp. 1–12, for current work and bibliography. Also James Barr, “St Jerome’s Appreciation of Hebrew,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 49.2 (1967), 281–302. Moritz Rahmer, Die hebräischen Traditionen in Werken des Hieronymus (Breslau, 1861), remains use- ful. The basic modern biography is J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (London, 1975). See now: A. Cain and J. Lössl, eds., Jerome of Stridon, His Life, Writings and Legacy (London, 2009). Sarah Kamin, “The Theological Significance of the Hebraica Veritas in Jerome’s Thought,” in Sha’arei Talmon, eds. M. Fishbane and E. Tov (Winona Lake, 1992), pp. 243–254, suggests more than philology may lie behind Jerome’s championing of the Hebrew against Augustine, and his rejection of the Aristeas myth of the inspired origin of the Septuagint. P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, Wealth, the Fall of Rome and the Making of Christianity in the West (Princeton, 2012), pp. 259–282, on patronage and scholarship, is enlightening. Eugene F. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1985), deals admira- bly with his later reputation. 5 This presumably shows that his Jewish teachers (if such there were), like the translators of the Targum, treated both this and the Tetragrammaton as expressions of the divine name. 6 PL XXIII, p. 1272. Another version slightly complementing this is found in Jean Martianay’s Benedictine edition of St Jerome, Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonesis Presbyteri Operum Tomus V (Paris, 1706), p. 883. 7 De Lange, Origen and the Jews, pp. 180–181. 8 W. Schmidt-Biggeman, Philosophia Perennis: Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought (Dordrecht, 2004), pp. 78–80..

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