The four Abariy (Hebrew) letters of the Set-Apart (divine) Name, YAHUAH, do not appear in any surviving Yuuniy (Greek) manuscript of the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament). The Yuuniy (Greek) text uses kyrios (Lord) and theos (God) instead. The one place where part of the Name is plainly preserved is the word “AHLALUYAHUAH (Hallelujah)” in Hazun (Revelation) 19, which contains the form. Beyond that, the question becomes one of history, translation and conviction. This article sets out what is established, what is debated, and how we at Promote The Truth read the evidence.
TL;DR
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No extant Yuuniy (Greek) Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) manuscript contains the Name in Abariy (Hebrew) letters. Yuuniy (Greek) texts use kyrios and theos where the Ta’anak (Old Testament) uses the Name.
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The syllable appears in AHLALUYAHUAH (Hallelujah), “Praise YAHUAH,” four times in Hazun (Revelation) 19:1-6.
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Scholars agree the shift from the Name to kyrios happened in the Yuuniy (Greek) tradition. They disagree about when, and about whether the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) authors wrote the Name themselves.
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The Yuuniy (Greek) of the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) is a witness to a Abariy (Hebrew) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) world, so Abariy (Hebrew) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) manuscript sources matter for how the Name is rendered in English.
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We restore YAHUAH in the Truth Scriptures where the Name stands behind the text, and we explain the evidence so you can test it yourself.
Table of Contents
What the Yuuniy (Greek) manuscripts actually contain
Start with the plain fact, because every honest discussion begins there. The Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) was transmitted in Yuuniy (Greek), and the surviving Yuuniy (Greek) copies do not write the Abariy (Hebrew) Name. Even many skeptical Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) scholars states that the Name is not found in the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament), since it is a Abariy (Hebrew) word and the text is in Yuuniy (Greek). Many later discussion notes the same contrast: the Ta’anak (Old Testament) offers a variety of Personal Names, while the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) uses essentially two terms.
That does not end the conversation. It starts it. If the Name is absent from the manuscripts we have, three questions follow:
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Was it ever there, in the first copies?
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If it was removed, who removed it, and why?
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If it was never written in Yuuniy (Greek), what did the authors and their readers understand when they wrote or read “Lord”?
Serious researchers answer these differently. We think you are best served by seeing all three answers laid out.
The one place the Name survives: Hazun (Revelation) 19
The clearest trace of the Name in the Yuuniy (Greek) text is the word allēlouia, the Yuuniy (Greek) spelling of Abariy (Hebrew) AHLALUYAHUAH (Hallelujah), “Praise YAHUAH.” It occurs four times, all in Hazun (Revelation) 19:1-6. A discussion on a Scriptural (biblical) forum points out that this is the only Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) text where the abbreviated form appears, embedded in the Yuuniy (Greek) word, outside of names that contain a form of the Name.
The point is modest but real. The crowd in heaven in Hazun (Revelation) 19 is not told to Praise “the Lord” in a generic sense. They cry out in Abariy (Hebrew) speech carried into Yuuniy (Greek) letters: Praise YAHUAH. The Name sits at the center of the Bariyt Hadash’s (New Testament’s) final vision of worship.
It also matters that this is a transliteration. The Yuuniy (Greek) writer did not translate the Name. He carried the Abariy (Hebrew) sound across. That is one reason we ask a simple question about the rest of the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament): if the Set-Apart (sacred) Name could be carried into Yuuniy (Greek) here, what does its absence elsewhere tell us?
Names that carry the Name
You do not need Hazun (Revelation) 19 to find the Set-Apart (divine) Name in the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament). It is woven into personal names. Many Abariy (Hebrew) names contain a form of the Name as a prefix or suffix, and these pass into Yuuniy (Greek) text in transliterated form. Our own study of this topic, Yahuah in the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament), walks through manuscript evidence and the Set-Apart Name. If you want to see how the Name appears in names across Scripture, our article of examples of Set-Spart (divine) Name occurrences gives a working list.
The Name of the Mashiyha (Messiah) is the most important case. We explain our reasoning on the Abariy (Hebrew) form and the Name inside it in Jesus vs. Yishua (Yeshua). In short, the Savior’s Abariy (Hebrew) Name speaks of salvation that belongs to YAHUAH, which is why the question of the Name and the question of the Mashiyha (Messiah) are never far apart.
Why kyrios stands where the Name should be
When the conventional Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) quotes the Ta’anak (Old Testament), it quotes it overwhelmingly in Yuuniy (Greek), and the Yuuniy (Greek) Ta’anak (Old Testament) commonly renders the Name as kyrios. This is the heart of what scholars call the kyrios problem. The kyrios problem has the Set-Apart (divine) Name YAHUAH at its epicenter, because if kyrios is an equivalent of the Name, and the title is also applied to Yahusha (Jesus), the consequences for theology are large.
There are broadly three explanations for how the Name disappeared from the Yuuniy (Greek) text:
| Explanation | What it proposes | Strength | Open question |
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| Reverent substitution from the start | Traditional some Jewish readers avoided speaking the Name, and Yuuniy (Greek) translators and Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) authors followed the same practice | Fits widely known Jewish reverence for the Name | Does not by itself explain why some Yuuniy (Greek) scrolls kept Abariy (Hebrew) letters |
| Later scribal removal | The authors wrote the Name or its equivalent, and later copyists replaced it with kyrios | Explains why the Name could be restored in translation | No surviving Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) manuscript shows it |
| Theological design | Authors deliberately used kyrios for both the Father and Savior. | Matches the Bariyt Hadash’s (New Testament’s) pattern of use | Does not settle what the first readers saw on the page |
A paper on the reading of the Set-Apart (divine) Name in the Masoretic and Greek Pentateuch tradition is summarized by researchers as showing that early Greek translators were influenced by Jewish reverence for the Name. On this view the move to kyrios is a deliberate choice rather than a careless mistake.
What the early Yuuniy (Greek) and Aramiy (Syriac) evidence adds
The picture before the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) era is not a simple one. Researchers have drawn attention to forms of the Name in early Yuuniy (Greek) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) settings. One study of the evidence asks whether the memorial Name was in use among early community. IAO is a Yuuniy (Greek) rendering of the Name, and it shows that Yuuniy (Greek) speakers did have ways to write it.
The Aramiy (Syriac) tradition is a further window. Some papers discusses the Aramiyt (Aramaic)-language expressions itself as equivalents. Aramiyt (Aramaic) is the daily language of the world the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) describes, which is why we give weight to Abariy (Hebrew) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) manuscript witnesses alongside the Yuuniy (Greek).
We want to be careful. These studies show that the Name was known and written in several forms in the ancient world. They do not produce a first-century Yuuniy (Greek) Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) scroll with the Name in it. We say that openly, because a case built on overstated claims would not deserve your trust.
“Lord, Lord” and the way Yahusha (Jesus) is named
Scholars also look at the phrasing of the Bashurah (Gospels). The doubled address “Lord, Lord” in Matatiyahu (Matthew) 7:21-22 and Luqah (Luke) 6:46 is read by some as an echo of the Abariy (Hebrew) phrase “Adaniy (Adonai) YAHUAH.” A study on kyrios in the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) notes that the Yuuniy (Greek) word carries amazing theological weight and refers to Yahusha (Jesus) and the Father, so the same title ties together.
That is a real strength of the kyrios reading. It explains why the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) can say so much about the Mashiyha’s (Messiah’s) authority without printing four Abariy (Hebrew) letters. What it cannot do alone is tell you what the Name was, how it sounded, or whether you should use it. For that you must go back to the Abariy (Hebrew) text, where the Name stands thousands of times. Our overview, 6,000 times LORD marks YAHUAH, explains how the capitalized LORD in English Bibles points to the Name, and why that convention hides it from most readers.
What Yahusha (Jesus) said about the Name
Readers often ask: did Yahusha (Jesus) use the Set-Apart (divine) Name? The Bashurah (Gospels) record him speaking of the Father’s Name directly. In the prayer He taught, He asks that the Father’s Name be treated as Set-Apart, and in Yahuhanan (John) 17 He says He made the Father’s Name known to his disciples. Whatever one concludes about the written form, the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) treats the Name as something to be known, honored and carried to others, not as an empty label.
He spoke Aramiyt (Aramaic) and read Abariy (Hebrew) Scripture. When he read from Yisha’aiyahu (Isaiah) in the Qahal (synagogue), the scroll in front of him was in Abariy (Hebrew). To hear him as his first listeners did, we have to think in the languages they used. That is the reason we publish a translation that begins from Abariy (Hebrew) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) sources, rather than reading the Name through Yuuniy (Greek) alone.
How to test the evidence yourself
You do not have to accept our conclusions or anyone else’s. A practical way to study:
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List the quotations. Take a Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) passage that quotes the Ta’anak (Old Testament) and find the original verse. Note whether the Abariy (Hebrew) has the Name.
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Read the Yuuniy (Greek) and note kyrios. Mark where the Yuuniy (Greek) uses kyrios for the Father, and where it points to the Mashiyha (Messiah).
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Check the transliterated names. Find names that contain a form of the Name and compare how Abariy (Hebrew), Yuuniy (Greek) and English render them.
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Read Hazun (Revelation) 19 in Yuuniy (Greek). Look at allēlouia and notice the Abariy (Hebrew) behind it.
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Compare with manuscripts of the Abariy Scriptures (Hebrew Bible). Our article on over 2,100 mentions of YAHUAH in the Dead Sea Scrolls shows how the Name was preserved in ancient scrolls.
If you study with the help of a free tool, our Truth Scriptures Names and Places download gives you the names as we render them, so you can compare form by form.
Our perspective
We and many others believe the Name was never meant to be hidden. The Scriptures say the Name is to be known across the nations, and the Abariy (Hebrew) text records it thousands of times. The Yuuniy (Greek) Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) we have today was shaped in a world that had already moved toward reverent substitution, and the manuscripts show the outcome of that history, not the beginning of it.
We hold three convictions, and we hold them with humility.
First, the evidence does not allow us to claim that a Yuuniy (Greek) Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) manuscript contains the Name in Abariy (Hebrew) letters. We will not say so, because it is not true, and a reader who learns that later would be right to doubt everything else we say.
Second, the Name is not absent from the Bariyt Hadash’s (New Testament’s) world. It lives in YAHUAH in Hazun (Revelation) 19, in the names of the people in its pages, in the Abariy (Hebrew) Scriptures quoted on nearly every page, and in the Aramiyt (Aramaic) speech of its first hearers. Our article, YAHUAH wasn’t erased, takes up this question directly.
Third, a translation has to decide what to do where the Name stands behind a quotation. We have chosen to restore YAHUAH in the Truth Scriptures where the underlying Abariy (Hebrew) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) sources support it. We explain that decision, and we do not ask you to take it on trust. Our study on name theology in Scripture sets out the Shamut (Exodus) 3 foundation, and our piece on how the Tetragrammaton’s pronunciation is debated is honest about where scholars disagree. If you are weighing the pronunciation, read the manuscript evidence for YAHUAH alongside the alternatives.
Our prayer is simple: that you would read, compare and know the Name for yourself.
— Maria
Where to go next with the Truth Scriptures
If you want to read the Scriptures with the Name restored, the Truth Scriptures translation presents the Ta’anak (Old Testament) and the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament), translated from ancient Abariy (Hebrew) and Aramiyt (Aramaic) manuscript sources. If you prefer to study on a screen, the Truth Scriptures Digital Collection is available too.
For guided study, our virtual retreats are offered at 197 GBP one-off each, and you can find the details on the Virtual Retreat page. If you would rather start with video, our Scripture study series is the place to begin.
FAQ
Does the Set-Apart (divine) Name appear in the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament)?
Not in Abariy (Hebrew) letters in any surviving Yuuniy (Greek) manuscript. The Yuuniy (Greek) text uses kyrios and theos where the Ta’anak (Old Testament) has the Name. The form YAHUAH does appear within allēlouia in Hazun (Revelation) 19:1-6, four times.
Did Yahusha (Jesus) use the Set-Apart (divine) Name?
The Bashurah (Gospels) do not record the Name written out in all case. They do record Yahusha (Jesus) speaking of the Father’s Name, asking that it be treated as Set-Apart and saying he made it known to his disciples. He spoke Aramiyt (Aramaic) and read Abariy (Hebrew) Scripture, so what he said aloud is not preserved in the Yuuniy (Greek) letters we have.
Why does traditional English New Testament say “Lord” and not YAHUAH?
Most English Bibles follow the Yuuniy (Greek), which uses kyrios. Scholars describe this as part of a long tradition of reverence in which the Name was replaced by a title when read or translated. Our article on LORD in all caps shows how the Ta’anak’s (Old Testament’s) capitalized LORD marks the place of the Name.
Is there a Abariy (Hebrew) word for Set-Apart, and what is the Set-Apart (divine) Name in the Scriptures (Bible)?
The Personal Name of the Creator in the Abariy (Hebrew) Scriptures is the four-letter YAHUAH. It is related to the Abariy (Hebrew) verb of being, and the pronunciation is specific. We read it as YAHUAH, and we lay out the manuscript reasoning in our pronunciation study so that you can weigh it for yourself.
Sources
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Does the New Testament use the divine name “Yahweh”? (Biblical Hermeneutics Stack Exchange)
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The New Testament kyrios problem and how the Old Testament speeches can help solve it (SciELO)
Recommended
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YAHUAH in the Bariyt Hadash (New Testament): Manuscript Evidence and the Set-Apart (Divine) Name
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6,800 Mentions: The Manuscript Case for the Set-Apart (Sacred) Name Movement
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Bariyt Hadash (New Testament) Textual Variants: What Headline Counts Leave Out
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Jesus vs. Yishua (Yeshua): What Do the Original Manuscripts Reveal?