| abstract
| - Archaeologists have discovered papyrus fragments of works which were later included in the canon of the New Testament dating as far back as the middle of the second century. Despite the fact that there are no autographs surviving until today, it is worth mentioning that of all 5,000 extant New Testament manuscripts none contains any form of the Hebrew יהוה (Tetragrammaton). One of the most ancient fragments, the papyrus codex designated Chester Beatty Papyrus No. 2 P46, is dated about to AD 200 and contains nine of the Apostle Paul's letters. In the Chester Beatty Papyri, we find ΚC and sometimes ΘC with a horizontal bar above them in citations of the Hebrew Bible where the Tetragrammaton occurs in the Hebrew text. These are abbreviations for kyrios (KYPIOC "lord") and theos (ΘEOC "God") normally known as nomina sacra ("sacred names"). Some scholars propose that such space-saving abbreviation was very common throughout costly, ancient manuscripts. Other scholars believe that this practice was based on the Hebrew consonantal writing, especially related to the extreme care for the word יהוה (YHWH). For centuries, scholars rejected the idea of the existence of the Tetragrammaton in the copies of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). During recent decades, though, a number of very ancient manuscripts have been discovered using some form of the Tetragrammaton into the Greek text. As a matter of fact, the oldest extant copies of the Greek Old Testament include the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew or Greek. Similarly, a newer thesis has been proposed that the pious Jewish authors of the New Testament used the revered name YHWH and did not replace it with a surrogate like "Lord". As a result, the Tetragrammaton was present in the New Testament autographs. Later on it was substituted by the nomina sacra. George Howard set forth this hypothesis that YHWH appeared originally in the New Testament and that "the removal of the Tetragrammaton from the New Testament and its replacement with the surrogates kyrios and theos blurred the original distinction between the Lord God and the Lord Christ." The weight of this position led to its inclusion in the article of the Anchor Bible Dictionary, where it is stated: "There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, Yahweh, appeared in some or all of the OT quotations in the NT when the NT documents were first penned." As it is a relatively recent thesis on an ever-changing field of study, it has not yet found wide acceptance, and Howard has qualified it: "My theory about the Tetragrammaton is just that, a theory. Some of my colleagues disagree with me (for example Albert Pietersma). Theories like mine are important to be set forth so that others can investigate their probability and implications. Until they are proven (and mine has not been proven) they should not be used as a surety for belief." Even though Albert Pietersma does not accept Howard's theory, he has stated: "It might possibly still be debated whether perhaps the Palestinian copies with which the NT authors were familiar read some form of the tetragram."
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