George Howard (1977) The Tetragram and the New Testament Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 96, no. 1: pp. 63-83
http://www.areopage.net/howard.pdf
Howard provides good commentary on the early use of nomina sacra
(the only other mention of 'George Howard in relation to the nomina sacra so far on this forum was by Peter Kirby viewtopic.php?p=32062#p32062)
George Howard's 'The Tetragram and the New Testament,' 1977
Re: George Howard's 'The Tetragram and the New Testament,' 1977
B. Christian Usage: When we come to Christian copies of the LXX, we are immediately struck by the absence of the Tetragram and its almost universal replacement by Κύριος. This means that sometime between the beginning of the Christian movement and the earliest extant copies of the Christian LXX a change had taken place. Just when the change occurred is impossible to date with absoluteness. But by the time we reach the Christian codices of the LXX, the Tetragram is not to be found. Instead, the words Κύριος, and occasionally θεός, stand for the divine name and are abbreviated as ͞Κς and ͞θς. In addition to these words there are a number of other nomina sacra (as they are called) in abbreviated form. 61
In all probability the Tetragram in the Christian LXX began to be surrogated with the contracted words ͞Κ͞ς and ͞θς at least by the beginning of the second century [and] these same abbreviated words appear also in the earliest copies of the NT [so] are important for understanding the use of God's name in the New Testament.
61 There are a few LXX fragments which date between the pre-Christian copies of the LXX already mentioned and at least the great majority of the LXX codices of the church. We note here two which may be either Jewish or Christian in origin:
- P. Oxy. 656, an early third-century fragment covering portions of Genesis 14-27. It is characterized by a lack of the usual abbreviations for θεός and Κύριος. At least twice where the Tetragram appears in the MT it reads θεός (Gen 15:6, line 11; Gen 24:40, line 155). Once where the MT has the Tetragram it leaves a blank space which was later filled in by a second hand with Κύριος (Gen 15:8, line 17). Twice the divine name is lacking at the end of a line (and thus possibly omitted by the first scribe). In each instance Κύριος has been added by a second hand (Gen 24:31, line 122; Gen 24:42, line 166). Once the divine name is omitted completely (Gen 14:22, line 5).
. - P. Oxy. 1007, a late third-century fragment covering parts of Genesis 2-3. θεός is contracted in the usual way, ͞θς. The most interesting aspect of the papyrus is that twice the Tetragram is written in the contracted form of a double Yodh written as a Z with a horizontal stroke through the middle: ZZ (Gen 2:8, line 4 and Gen 2:18, line 14).
In 1907 Ludwig Traube suggested that the abbreviated nomina sacra were of Jewish origin, having developed within the circle of Hellenistic Judaism. According to him the Tetragram was first translated θεός; following the Hebrew custom of no vowels it appeared as ͞θς. This soon was followed by the alternate surrogate Κύριος written IK. These abbreviations gave rise to the view that the important thing was to write sacred words with the first and last letters. The result was a series of abbreviated forms for other words such as πνεύμα, πατήρ, ούρανός, Δανείδ, ’Ισραήλ and ’Ιερονσαλήμ. Traube argued that the method of contraction had nothing to do with saving space and had no connection with cursive abbreviations found in documentary papyri.
In 1959 A. H. R. E. Paap took up the issue again using the immense amount of new material, especially papyrological, which had come to light since Traube.64 He concluded, against Traube, that the system of contracting the nomina sacra was of 'Jewish Christian origin', emanating from Alexandria somewhere around + A.D. 100. These 'Jewish Christians', who held the Greek Bible to be as sacred as the Hebrew, considered θεός to have the same value as the Tetragram, which they knew always received special treatment in reading and sometimes in writing. Thus they first employed the principle of consonantal writing for θεός resulting in ͞θς. As Christianity spread, this principle was forgotten and was replaced with the notion that the writing of the first and last letters of a word carried with it a sacred meaning. This led to the abbreviation of other sacred words. A stroke above the abbreviation was used to attract the reader's attention and to avoid confusion in continuous script. Paap suggested that θεός was soon followed by Κύριος, ’Ιησοΰς and Χριστός. These words formed the first group of nomina sacra but were shortly followed by the others.
In our judgment Paap's evidence, which he carefully documents, is basically sound. But the evidence does not point unambiguously to a Jewish Christian origin for the abbreviated forms of the nomina sacra in the LXX ...
... We know for a fact that Greek-speaking Jews continued to write יהוה within their Greek Scriptures ... when it was removed from the Greek OT, it was also removed from the quotations of the OT in the NT. Thus somewhere around the beginning of the second century the use of [abbreviated] surrogates must have crowded out the Tetragram in both Testaments ...
The removal of the Tetragram in the NT of the Gentile church obviously affected the appearance of the NT text and no doubt influenced the theological outlook of second century Gentile Christianity.
Howard goes on to talk about ambiguity and confusion created by remove of the Tetragram but it's as if not more likely the changes were deliberate