Greek Name
Kyrios — Lord
Kyrios
Κύριος
- Meaning
- 'Lord, master, owner' — and, in the Septuagint, the standing substitute for YHWH.
- Occurrences
- ~700 times in the New Testament
- First occurrence
- Matthew 1:20 (NT); Genesis 2:4 (LXX)
- Languages
- Koine Greek
Pronunciation
KOO-ree-os
Origin
Ordinary Greek for a master or owner. Its use for YHWH in the Septuagint made it a divine title, and the imperial cult's use of Kyrios Kaisar made confessing 'Kyrios Iēsous' a politically dangerous statement.
Usage & scribal practice
The mechanism by which Old Testament YHWH texts are applied to Jesus throughout the New Testament — Romans 10:13 quoting Joel 2:32 being the clearest case.
Cross-references
Romans 10:9
'if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord…'
Romans 10:13
'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord' — Joel's YHWH becomes Kyrios.
1 Corinthians 8:6
'one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ' — the Shema restructured.
How translations render it
Theories, myths & conspiracy claims
Each claim is stated as its proponents state it, then assessed against the manuscript and linguistic evidence.
Did the earliest LXX copies use Kyrios or the Hebrew name?
The claim: Some pre-Christian LXX fragments (P. Fouad 266, 8HevXII gr) write YHWH in Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew letters inside the Greek text.
Assessment: Documented and important. It shows the Kyrios substitution in Greek manuscripts may be a later or parallel convention, which is the strongest evidence available for the NWT's insertion argument — though it still does not appear in any New Testament manuscript.