Why is there an insertion of the name "JEHOVAH" 237 times in the New Testament....?

Question

....of the Watchtower bible(New World Translation) ?

It does not appear in the Greek manuscripts?

Answer 1

Jehovah's Witnesses believe the premise of this question to be false, since the original Greek manuscripts of the Christian Greek Scriptures (the so-called "New Testament") have never been found. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus, the apostles, and the other Christian bible writers must have used the divine name in their speech and in their writings.

(John 17:26) [Jesus said] I have made your name known to them and will make it known, in order that the love with which you loved me may be in them

(Matthew 6:8,9) God your Father knows what things you are needing before ever you ask him. 9 “You must pray, then, this way: “‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified.


Think about it: Jesus and his apostles must have been extraordinarily familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures (the "Old Testament"), and the evidence is that they frequently quoted from these writings. The Hebrew Scriptures use the divine name SEVEN THOUSAND TIMES; would Jesus and his apostles have skipped over "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" when it appeared in the text they were quoting?

Perhaps the most revealing passage is to note the way that Luke 4:18,19 quotes from Isaiah 61:1,2. Scholars universally concede that the passage in Isaiah uses the divine Name and even repeats that Name; Jesus and his audience all understood Hebrew and the scroll was almost certainly in Hebrew (although that is immaterial). Clearly, when Jesus actually read the Isaiah passage he would hardly have replaced his Father's personal name with a generic term (such as the corrupters of Luke's Gospel have done).

(Luke 4:16-21) [Jesus] entered into the synagogue, and he stood up to read. 17 So the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed him, and he opened the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 “Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor, he sent me forth to preach a release to the captives and a recovery of sight to the blind, to send the crushed ones away with a release, 19 to preach Jehovah’s acceptable year.” 20 With that he rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were intently fixed upon him. 21 Then he started to say to them: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.”

(Isaiah 61:1,2) The spirit of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah is upon me, for the reason that Jehovah has anointed me to tell good news to the meek ones. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to those taken captive and the wide opening of the eyes even to the prisoners; 2 to proclaim the year of goodwill on the part of Jehovah


As in Luke chapter 4, the New World Translation is quite careful to ONLY render the divine name when a verse or phrase in the Christian Greek (NT) Scriptures seems to quote or refer to a Hebrew (OT) Scripture with the divine Name. That is why the OT has almost 7000 occurences of "Jehovah" while the NT has less than 300.

Essentially, the New World Bible Translation Committee believed that it is preferable to err (if that is what they did) on the side of magnifying the divine name, rather than share in perpetuating a superstition that hides it.

The name "Jehovah" is an English translation of the Hebrew name pronounced as or similar to "Yahweh" or "Yehowah"; the exact original pronunciation is unknown. The four Hebrew characters corresponding to the letters "YHWH" are well-recognized as the biblical personal name of Almighty God, and are universally designated as "the Tetragrammaton" or "the Tetragram".

For centuries, most Jews have superstitiously refrained from pronouncing aloud any form of the divine Name. They base that superstition on the third of the Ten Commandments given to Moses:
(Exodus 20:7) You must not take up the name of Jehovah your God in a worthless way
http://watchtower.org/e/bible/ex/chapter_020.htm?bk=Ex;chp=20;vs=7;citation#bk7

Over the centuries, that Jewish superstition has expanded to also forbid writing or engraving any form of "YHWH", even when simply copying from one of the nearly 7000 occurences in the Hebrew Scriptures. In recent centuries, some superstitious Jews have even forbade unabbreviated EUPHEMISMS for "YHWH"; capitalized terms such as "Tetragrammaton" and (amazingly) even "the Name" are forbidden by such superstitions, and they even insist that "God" must be written as "G~d".

Naturally, the religious and superstitious practices of a person are between him and his Creator. However, in recent decades these superstitious Jews have worked to impose their superstitious sensibilities beyond their religious communities, and onto the entire populace. Thus, although "YHWH' is unanimously recognized as the personal name of God, few today use any form of it in their writings and conversation.

Interestingly, Christendom has largely joined with superstitious Jews in suppressing the use of "Yahweh" and "Jehovah". However, it seems that Christendom's anti-YHWH bias largely devolves from their hatred of Jehovah's Witnesses, the religion almost single-handedly responsible for the growing public recognition that the Almighty God of Judaism and Christianity actually does have a personal name.

It seems that too many are more interested in coddling superstition than in allowing intellectual honesty and respect for the Almighty.

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/na/
http://watchtower.org/e/20040122/

Answer 2

You are here: Cults >> Learn More about Jehovah Witnesses! >> New World Translation
What is the New World Translation?

The New World Translation of the Bible was completed in 1961 by the Watchtower Tract and Bible Society. The Watchtower Tract and Bible Society is also known as the Jehovah's Witnesses. The New World Translation is not a true translation of the Bible. Rather, it is an intentional editing of the Bible in order to promote the beliefs of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The New World Translation is identical to other Bible translations in many places. The differences arise when something was stated in the Bible with which the Jehovah's Witnesses disagree. Whatever verses and passages in the Bible that did not agree with the teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses were edited or removed.

The New World Translation is the ultimate example of a religious group altering the Bible in order to promote a particular sect. Here are some examples:

John 1:1 (NKJV), "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1 (NWT), "In (the) beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god." This change was made because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus is God. Rather, Jehovah's witnesses believe Jesus is a created being, the highest of the angels.

Hebrews 1:8 (NIV), "But about the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever…" Hebrews 1:8 (NWT), "God is your throne forever…" Again, a clear reference to Jesus as God is twisted.

Genesis 1:2 (KJV), "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Genesis 1:2 (NWT), "Now the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of [the] watery deep; and God's active force was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters."

The Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a person or is God, rather they believe Him to be a figure of God's power.

The New World Translation is not a translation of the Bible. It is an intentional perversion of the Bible in order to promote the false doctrines of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The names of the "translators" of the New World Translation have been for the most part kept secret. It has been revealed that those responsible for the New World Translation had no knowledge of Hebrew and Greek and no experience in the field of Bible translation. The New World Translation is nothing but the attempt of the Jehovah's Witnesses to make the Bible agree with their false doctrines.

Learn More about Jehovah Witnesses! by clicking on the Answers button @ http://web.express56.com/~bromar/

Answer 3

The New World Translation was the center of a scholarly work titled "How Not to Translate the Bible" for a reason. The translators did not speak Hebrew or Greek, they simply used Hebrew and Greek dictionaries. They base the "Jehovah" (which is an English corruption of "Yahweh", by the way) on some obscure manuscript where someone claims the New Testament originally had the word in it. Such New Testament texts have never been found.

Answer 4

It has been an established fact among all scholars of the Bible that the word LORD in all caps is where God's name was removed and replaced to prevent God's name from being defamed should the scroll be dropped on the ground. The question on this issue has always been where Jehovah is the proper way to pronounce it, because the ancient Jews didn't use vowels, but than the same can be said for Jesus.

As for NWT, there are many Bibles, from before it, that use much the same language, and there have been Bible scholars, unpaid for by the JW like those for other Bibles, who agree with many, if not most of its wording. You will notice how many times people say it has been re-edited since it was released, but consider the stupidity of that statement, needing to re-distribute a new version to several millions of people every time there is a change.

As for revision, the King James or Authorized Version was revised five times over a 150 year period, to keep it current with the beliefs of the Church of England. That can be found at any acceptable web encyclopedia.

You may or may not like the NWT, but consider this, those who use other Bibles don't even follow them. They distort even what the KJV Bible says about such things as the nativity. They downplay the importance of scriptures they think as not being important. These include the so called wise men being led by a star to Christ, when they actually went to King Herod who wanted to kill the Christ child, plus they didn't arrive until Christ was a child in a house, not a babe in a manger. If you are going to claim to follow the KJV, at least do so as a while and not just the parts you like.

Also, consider how those who follow it act as Christians. Regardless of what you may think, JWs live their lives more Christlike than any other.

Answer 5

No, it does not appear in the Greek manuscripts.

The JW's on this forum often praise themselves for being "lovers of truth" and humbly admitting their mistakes, yet I haven't seen one of them admit that it's wrong to translate "kyrios" (lord) and "theos" (god) as "Jehovah". They KNOW it's wrong, but they pridefully refuse to admit the error.

Tee M, for example, resorts to the argument that we don't have the originals. Is he suggesting that we should simply disregard anything we don't like...why only in these 237 instances? Why not disregard ALL the scriptures...none of them are original.

As far as LORD in all capital letters in the New Testament, the only instance that I know of is in Acts 2:34. The word in ALL the original Greek manuscripts in Acts 2:34 is kyrios (lord), not YHWH. . It is capitalized to distinguish it as meaning the Lord God Jehovah as opposed to the Lord Jesus Christ (kyrios translated into "lord", small letters.) Like it or not, the word kyrios was used in reference to Jehovah in Acts 2:34 and has historically been translated into English as LORD in all caps....it has nothing to do with other translators duplicating the NWT. In the Old Testament, LORD appears in English where YHWH appeared in Hebrew. That is not true in the NT which was written in a different language, in a different time period, under different circumstances. In this case, LORD appears only once, and "kyrios" appears in the original language.

The Talmud offers no proof that the Divine Name appeared in the New Testament; the Scriptures it refers to are most likely the Old Testament, especially since the Talmud is a Jewish writing.

In an attempt to PROVE that the Divine Name was used in the New Testament as originally written, notice that we go from "This suggests a POSSIBILITY" into the realm of "the facts PROVE" and "we can be sure". The facts do NOT prove that the Divine Name was used. It is merely a possibility that exists.

Professor George Howard himself calls this possibility a "theory". The Watchtower, however, disagrees with Professor Howard and says "we do not consider this view a "theory"; rather a presentation of the facts of history". (Appendix to NWT Reference Bible, page 1564).

There is no mystery why the Divine Name wasn't used in the NT. The custom had arisen among the Jews NOT to use it in everyday speech and the Christians followed that custom, probably because the very first Christians were Jews and heavily influenced by the Jewish customs.

Interestingly, the Watchtower has this to say about theories and facts:

July 22, 1987 Awake, pages 10 & 13 - When a fact is not a fact


“A fact is something that exists beyond question. It is an actuality, an obejctive reality. It is established by solid evidence.

A theory is something unproved but at times assumed true for the sake of argument. It has yet to be proved as factual. Nonetheless, sometimes something is declared to be a fact that is only a theory. "

“myths become beliefs through adulterated repetition without proper documentation."

If and when an ancient NT manuscript is found that contains the Tetragrammaton or the Greek equivalent of YHWH, THEN this theory would be much more likely. In fact, it would probably be accepted as fact by the religious community in general.. But as it stands now,- without a single manuscript to support this theory - it is nothing more than speculation and conjecture, especially in view of the fact that we already have a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why the name doesn't appear in the NT.

Is this 'theory' justification for altering the Scriptures? If you're really a 'lover of truth', you know the answer.

Answer 6

the object could desire to even have mentioned that maximum English Bibles ***get rid of*** God's call and replace it with "Lord" or "LORD" interior the previous testomony almost seven thousand (7,000) situations. They cry approximately "237" situations yet say no longer something with regard to the 7,000 situations that maximum English Bibles exchange the be conscious "Jehovah" (or "Yahweh") to Lord. Why the double common? the respond on your question is, No. The NWT does not exchange "Lord" to "Jehovah" whilst the textual content is obviously and unambiguously bearing on the Lord Jesus Christ. yet many verses interior the recent testomony refer back to the previous, the place interior the unique writings, God's call is got here upon. So, why do no longer different English Bibles placed God's call in those verses, whilst such verses needless to say quote from the Hebrew Scriptures? that's properly time-honored that the classic Greek Septuagint version easily altered God's call interior the Hebrew Scriptures to study "Lord," and this custom maintains in present day Bible translations. What could desire to be extra troubling is that adult adult males have the audacity to get rid of God's very own call from His very own e book. it relatively is the authentic deception.

Answer 7

"LORD" in all capital letters, is a mistranslation of the name of God. In Hebrew it is Yahweh, in English it is Jehovah.

Now then, with this information, My NKJV has "LORD" in the NT. so if Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong, why did these translators recognize the need to duplicate the NWT?

I also found a reference that shows the Talmud, states that the Gospels included the divine name.

Since the oldest NT manuscript we have are not the originals, the evidence points to the originals having Jehovah's name in the text.

Answer 8

The translators did it to prove a point and they also did it in an inconsistent fashion. There are at least 3 places where the Greek word was not replaced with YHWH because it would make the passage say "Jesus is Jehovah".

Answer 9

Here's an excerpt from one of our articles


There are thousands of copies of the Christian Greek Scriptures in existence today, but most of them were made during or after the fourth century of our Common Era. This suggests a possibility: Did something happen to the text of the Christian Greek Scriptures before the fourth century that resulted in the omission of God’s name? The facts prove that something did.

The Name Was There

We can be sure that the apostle Matthew included God’s name in his Gospel. Why? Because he wrote it originally in Hebrew. In the fourth century, Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate, reported: “Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language . . . Who translated it after that in Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Moreover, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea.”
Since Matthew wrote in Hebrew, it is inconceivable that he did not use God’s name, especially when quoting from parts of the “Old Testament” that contained the name. However, other writers of the second part of the Bible wrote for a worldwide audience in the international language of that time, Greek. Hence, they did not quote from the original Hebrew writings but from the Septuagint Greek version. And even Matthew’s Gospel was eventually translated into Greek. Would God’s name have appeared in these Greek writings?
Well, some very old fragments of the Septuagint Version that actually existed in Jesus’ day have survived down to our day, and it is noteworthy that the personal name of God appeared in them. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page 512) says: “Recent textual discoveries cast doubt on the idea that the compilers of the LXX [Septuagint] translated the tetragrammaton YHWH by kyrios. The oldest LXX MSS (fragments) now available to us have the tetragrammaton written in Heb[rew] characters in the G[ree]k text. This custom was retained by later Jewish translators of the O[ld] T[estament] in the first centuries A.D.” Therefore, whether Jesus and his disciples read the Scriptures in Hebrew or Greek, they would come across the divine name.
Thus, Professor George Howard, of the University of Georgia, U.S.A., made this comment: “When the Septuagint which the New Testament church used and quoted contained the Hebrew form of the divine name, the New Testament writers no doubt included the Tetragrammaton in their quotations.” (Biblical Archaeology Review, March 1978, page 14) What authority would they have had to do otherwise?
God’s name remained in Greek translations of the “Old Testament” for a while longer. In the first half of the second century C.E., the Jewish proselyte Aquila made a new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and in this he represented God’s name by the Tetragrammaton in ancient Hebrew characters. In the third century, Origen wrote: “And in the most accurate manuscripts THE NAME occurs in Hebrew characters, yet not in today’s Hebrew [characters], but in the most ancient ones.”
Even in the fourth century, Jerome writes in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings: “And we find the name of God, the Tetragrammaton [יהוה], in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters.”


In later copies of the Septuagint, God’s name was removed and words like “God” (The•os´) and “Lord” (Ky´ri•os) were substituted. We know that this happened because we have early fragments of the Septuagint where God’s name was included and later copies of those same parts of the Septuagint where God’s name has been removed.

Would a translator have any right to restore the name, in view of the fact that existing manuscripts do not have it? Yes, he would have that right. Most Greek lexicons recognize that often the word “Lord” in the Bible refers to Jehovah. For example, in its section under the Greek word Ky´ri•os (“Lord”), Robinson’s A Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament (printed in 1859) says that it means “God as the Supreme Lord and sovereign of the universe, usually in Sept[uagint] for Heb[rew] יהוה Jehovah.” Hence, in places where the Christian Greek Scripture writers quote the earlier Hebrew Scriptures, the translator has the right to render the word Ky´ri•os as “Jehovah” wherever the divine name appeared in the Hebrew original

Answer 10

Because the New World Translation is not so much a translation as a commentary. There is presupposition and an agenda behind it which seeks to promote certain unscriptural beliefs.