Should We Call God Yahweh Instead of LORD?
We need to use both Yahweh and Lord to understand the New Testament
If God revealed his name as "I AM" or in its noun form, Yahweh, then it does feel strange that we translate this name by LORD (a title). Rather than his name, we give him a title (LORD, Adonai, or Kurios).
That said, the New Testament authors cite the passages in which Yahweh is mentioned and use the word Kurios/Lord to refer to Jesus. Jesus regularly takes the title Lord, as in the Lord Jesus. In many cases, the apostles apply the texts that speak about the LORD God (Yahweh Elohim) and apply it to the Lord Jesus.
That's not quite precise.
When Paul thinks about the Persons of God, he particularly says that Jesus is the Lord (Yahweh) and the Father is God (Elohim). This can be seen in 1 Corinthians 8:4–6 where Paul parses out the double name of God in Deuteronomy 6:4 (the Shema) and then says that Father and Son are included in that same definition of God.
But the Persons are seen by the two names Yahweh (Son) and Elohim (Father). Together, the one God is Yahweh Elohim or Son Father.
When Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Yahweh Our Elohim, Yahweh is one”,[1] the ancient Greek translators rendered the phrase “κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν κύριος εἷς ἐστιν” (The LORD our God, the LORD is one). In 1 Corinthians 4–6, Paul boldly calls κύριος (LORD) Christ and θεὸς (God) the Father, indicating that both are included in the definition of the one God of Israel, Yahweh Elohim, the LORD God:
’there is no God (θεὸς) but one (εἷς)’ … there is one God, the Father (εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατὴρ), from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ (εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς), through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
And here we have it. The one Lord and God, the one Son and Father, created the cosmos, distinguished by an order indicated in the prepositions “from” and “through.” Yet both are one. Both are the Creator. Both are Father and Son, Elohim and Yahweh, God and Lord—the One Lord our God, the Lord who is One.
So while I am technically okay with using the word Yahweh instead of LORD, we should not simply use Yahweh and not LORD, or else we will miss the inner logic of the apostolic proclamation as found in the New Testament.
[1] יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד
I was just talking to a friend about this. I really like how reading Yahweh makes God feel more personal when reading OT passages, even though my brain knows to what LORD means. Yet at the same time by not seeing LORD some of the nuance of the NT writers is lost when the term Lord is applied to Christ.
Thanks, this is helpful! :)
Also, I saw this post from the biblical (OT) scholar, Iain Duguid (professor at Westminster Theological Seminary and translator/consultant for the HCSB/CSB), over at Puritan Board. In context, Duguid was talking about the LSB translation of the Bible. I thought it was insightful as well:
Let me start, as I always do, by reminding us that translation is really hard. You can't write extensive notes to defend your decisions, as you would in a commentary, half of your footnotes will be deleted and there's always a chance that an English style editor will change what you wrote. You are also often hemmed in by the unwise decisions of a general editor somewhere along the way, often someone who has no personal experience of the translation process. I also haven't used the LSB extensively, so bear that in mind in reading my evaluation.
Having said that, I think some of their most trumpeted distinctions are fundamentally wrong-headed. Take the use of Yahweh throughout for the divine name. I get the attractiveness of that, and in some contexts it really pops as a translation. Think "I am Yahweh" or "Yahweh said to my lord" (Ps 110:1). In other places, however, it messes with people's favorite translations, for example: "Yahweh is my shepherd". That's why the HCSB went with Yahweh in some places and "the LORD" elsewhere - but that leaves you with some really strange alternations between the two, which is why the CSB ditched Yahweh completely. More importantly, it drives a wedge between the testaments, since the NT quotation of an OT passage often doesn't match. Even more importantly, the average reader won't now see that the NT is calling Jesus the same title as the OT calls Yahweh, "the Lord". If it is good enough for Jesus to use kurios when translating Yahweh, I can't think why "the LORD" isn't good enough for us.
The same problem exists for the much-trumpeted doulos = slave in all contexts translation. There are some places where doulos certainly ought to be translated slave. But there are plenty of other places where "servant" is a more apt rendition into English of the person's role. The result is a flattening of the Biblical text that results in a loss of nuance. It also - once again - threatens to put a rift between the OT and the NT; for example, according to this understanding Zech 3:8 ought to speak of "my slave, the Branch" (since LXX has doulos); fortunately, the translation goes for a more sensible (and traditional) "my servant, the Branch"). Very few words in one language always translate into a single word in another language: that's just not how languages work; so for example, ruach should be rendered breath, Spirit and wind, sometimes all within a short space (e.g. Ezek. 37:1-14). That's why nobody (except perhaps Youngs literal translation, which completely misrepresents the meaning of Ezekiel 37 because of its overly literal translation) adopts a consistently literal translation policy. Everyone (including the LSB) uses a more dynamic translation sometimes.
Finally, I don't think any one institution has the resources to do a great translation. For the CSB oversight committee, we have translators from a wide variety of backgrounds, who each brought their own expertise (including a full time in house editor to check consistency between parallel passages across the board). It still sometimes felt like an overwhelming project.
https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/legacy-standard-bible-a-year-after-translation.110222/#post-1326641