Uncertainty over God’s Name in Jude 1:9
The Greek of Jude 1:9 has a disagreement between our main Greek sources over whether it says ‘Lord’ or ‘the Lord’, meaning we don’t know if there really was a circumlocution for God’s Name here or not (at least not in Greek).
Our main Greek source, the Codex Sinaiticus, underwent a correction here.
‘…but he-said rebuke you The God‘
However, someone in ancient times later corrected this to:
‘…but he-said rebuke you the Lord‘ (see in interlinear)
If it should say ‘the Lord’, then this is not a circumlocution for God’s Name. However, if the full error was saying ‘The God’ instead of ‘Lord’, then the ancient editor perhaps should have replaced ‘the’ as well.
You see, Tischendorf’s New Testament says:
‘…but said may-rebuke you Lord.’ (see in interlinear)
So other Greek manuscripts indicate that this should be a circumlocution for God’s Name, making us suspect that the correction to the Sinaiticus was incomplete.
Also, the later influential Aramaic translation uses ‘maryah’ here (see in interlinear), indicating that eastern Christians understood it as a circumlocution for God’s Name. That’s meaningful.
So, on balance we’ll take it as a circumlocution. However, to mark that it’s not shown in the Codex Sinaiticus, we have put it in [[double brackets]] to indicate an outside source (and this note).
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