Kyrios

The Greek word Kyrios (Κύριος) means "lord, Lord, master". In religious usage, it is sometimes translated as God. It is used in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament.

Kyrios appears about 740 times in the New Testament, usually referring to Jesus. The use of kyrios in the New Testament has been the subject of debate among modern scholars, and three schools of thought exist on that topic. The first is that based on the Septuagint usage, the designation is intended to assign to Jesus the Old Testament attributes of God. The reasoning here being, that at the time the Septuagint was written, when reading out loud, Jews pronounced Adonai, the Hebrew word for "Lord", when they encountered the name of God, "YHWH", which was thus translated into Greek in each instance as kyrios. And the early Christians, the majority of whom were speakers of Greek, would have been deeply familiar with the Septuagint. The second is that as the early Church expanded, Hellenistic influences resulted in the use of the term. The third is that it is a translation of the Aramaic title Mari applied to Jesus.