Why do Jehovah's Witnesses change the word God and Lord God and Lord to Jehovah wherever they see the three?

Question

Why do Jehovah's Witnesses have such a hard time with the writings of John, 1 John, and Revelation? ISN'T IT OBVIOUS THAT CHRIST IS THE LIVING GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT? WHO DO THESE PEOPLE THINK MOSES, ABRAM, ABRAHAM WERE LOOKING AT FACE TO FACE? WHY DO JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES THINK CHRIST WAS THE ANGEL IN REVELATION? WHY DO THEY IGNORE THE ANGEL WHO COMMANDED THEM NOT TO WORSHIP ANGELS?

Answer 1

Jehovah's Witnesses do not do as this questioner suggests. They do distribute a bible translation which restores the Divine Name about 200 times in the so-called "New Testament", but according to very strict rules. Does some version of "Jehovah" belong is the Christian Scriptures?

At Revelation 19:1-6, nearly every edition of the so-called "New Testament" includes "Jah", the shortened form of the Divine Name "Jehovah". Some bibles refuse to translate these expressions correctly as "Praise Jah", leaving the untranslated "Hallelu-jah" or "Hallelujah" without its obvious connection to "Jah Jehovah".

(Isaiah 12:2) Jah Jehovah is my strength and my might

(Isaiah 26:4) Trust in Jehovah, you people, for all times, for in Jah Jehovah is the Rock of times indefinite.


Like the prophets Isaiah and Moses (e.g. Ps 83:18), 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. Sadly, the original Greek manuscripts of the Christian Greek Scriptures (the so-called "New Testament") have never been found.

(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 occurrences of "Jehovah" while the NT has less than 300.

An additional example is the way the Apostle Paul at Romans 10:13 quotes Joel 2:32.

(Romans 10:13) For “everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved"

(Joel 2:32) And it must occur that everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will get away safe (see also Zeph 3:9)


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 occurrences 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/index.htm?article=article_06.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/20040122/

Answer 2

It's amazing how much misinformation people try to put out about Jehovah's Witnesses, instead of just honestly answering questions.

Bias is not truth. It is simply bias.

Jehovah's Witnesses have not changed anything in the Bible. They have translated the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into modern English, just as many other translators have done. However, when the NWT translators saw God's Name in the text they did not hide it with the titles Lord or God. They translated it into the time-honored English form Jehovah.

Neither Raymundus Martini nor any other man "created" God's Name. It is a name that He gave to Himself. The English form of that name, "Jehovah", has followed the natural development of the English language. It is no more a "made up" name than John or Jesus is. It is the English form of a Hebrew name, a practice which is acceptable in all translations from one language to another.

No, it is not obvious that Christ is the Living God of the Old Testament, and he never said that he was. He said "I am God's Son." Christ never said "I am God." If it were true, he would have said so, but he didn't.

We don't worship any angel. We worship only Jehovah, through the Lord Jesus Christ, which is exactly what the Bible says we should do.

Nor do we forego "theological training" out of any desire to be ignorant. We have ministry schools in all of our Kingdom Halls, with a fine course of Bible education. There were "theological" schools of the scribes and Pharisees in the days of Jesus and his apostles, but Jesus and his apostles took their training from God's Word. We do likewise.

Answer 3

Read Psalm 110:1 in your KJV, NIV, NASB, ESV and any number of other bible versions that do not use the name Jehovah in this verse. Ask yourself why the first LORD is in all caps and the second not. Some editions of the KJV include an explanation of this in the foreword. I have 2 copies of the KJV. One explains it and the other doesn't., so I don't know if your copy will. It is easy enough to find one with the foreword included though.
This person identified as "Lord" (only capital L) was applied to Jesus Christ.at Matthew 22:43, Mark 12:36, and Acts 2:33-34. Who is LORD? The foreword in your KJV explains why the translators of the KJV opted to change the original text.
The translators of the NWT did not do this.

Answer 4

The reason is that the Society, although they desire to show the world that they are a Christian organization, they are in fact not. The Witnesses deny the very core tenets of historical Christian faith: the Trinity, Christ's deity, His crucifixion and bodily resurrection, his Atonement for our sins, and the literal existence of hell and eternal, everlasting punishment. Part of their methodology involves term-switching and scriptural distortions.

Why do Jehovah's Witnesses use Jehovah throughout the New Testament? They claim that they have restored the true name of God to where it belongs. There are a few problems with this. First, they derive the name "Jehovah" from the Hebrew consonants 'YHWH'. YHWH is the divine name, the tetragrammaton. "All students of Hebrew know that any vowel can be inserted between the consonants...so that theoretically, the divine name could be any combination between JoHeVah, to JiHiVih, without doing any violence to the grammar of the language" (Martin, 95). Secondly, the Society bases its authority to do so on a papyrus roll of the LXX , which contained part of the book of Deuteronomy and does have the tetragrammaton throughout. However, in the thousands of copies of the Greek New Testament that exist, the tetragrammaton is not found ONCE, instead using the Greek "kyrios" and "theos". Further, the Watchtower uses a number of "sources" as evidence for restoring the tetragrammaton, but every one of these New Testament sources is a translation from the Greek back into Hebrew and date from AD 1385 or later. (Martin) None are from the much, much earlier manuscripts available. The why? To continue support for their denial of Christ, because if Christ is divine and coequal and coeternal with God the Father, then the entirety of Witness theology dissolves.

At every opportunity, the Society will attempt to persuade and convince that Christ was not divine, which is in direct opposition to God's Word as revealed to us through the Scriptures.
Isaiah 7:14 "Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel." (The name Immanuel means God, or Jehovah, with us). Since there is no other God than Jehovah, thus Jesus Christ and Jehovah God are of the same Substance in power and eternity and thus equal. (Martin, 107).
Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Moving to the New Testament:
John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This verse is pretty clear, but the NWT (the New World Translation) instead translates the verse "...and the Word was A God." But there is a problem with that translation. From Martin's book, p108 "The subject of the sentence is "Word" (Logos), the verb was. There can be no direct object following "was" since according to grammatical usage intransitive verbs take no objects but instead predicate nominatives, which refer back to the subject -- in this case, "Word" (Logos). In fact, the late New Testament Greek scholar Dr. E. C. Colwell formulated a rule that clearly states that a definitive predicate nominative (in this case, "theos" (God)) never takes an article when it precedes the verb (was) as we find in John 1:1. It is therefore easy to see that no article is needed for "theos" (God) and to translate it "a god" is both incorrect grammar and poor Greek, since theos is the predicate nominative of "was" in the third sentence-clause of the verse and must refer back to the subject, "Word" (Logos). Christ, if He is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), can be no one else except God unless the Greek text and consequently God's Word be denied." Furthermore, even the Society is inconsistent with their own translations of theos and its forms. Instead, the article is added when it would suit the purposes of the Society in their denial of Christ.
John 10:30: Jesus states "I and my Father are one."

I have only given a few passages from Scripture. There are many, many, more that reveal that Christ was and is God. What is sad about the Jehovah's Witnesses is that they are all being led astray and further from God's Truth and the hope of salvation that Christ gives us by his sacrifice for us on the cross. I admire their desire to go out and evangelize, but the message that they bring is not Truth and life, but deception and death. What saddens me is that more and more people become persuaded by the lies perpetrated by the Society. We who have been born again of the Spirit and given new life in Christ must be the salt and light of the earth. We must stand in defense of the faith, to seek and save those who are lost, and to bring hope and encouragement in the sacrificial atonement of Christ's death and resurrection.

Answer 5

Why do many Bible translations not use the personal name of God or use it only a few times?

The preface of the Revised Standard Version explains: “For two reasons the Committee has returned to the more familiar usage of the King James Version: (1) the word ‘Jehovah’ does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew; and (2) the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom he had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.” (Thus their own view of what is appropriate has been relied on as the basis for removing from the Holy Bible the personal name of its Divine Author, whose name appears in the original Hebrew more often than any other name or any title. They admittedly follow the example of the adherents of Judaism, of whom Jesus said: “You have made the word of God invalid because of your tradition.”—Matt. 15:6.)

Translators who have felt obligated to include the personal name of God at least once or perhaps a few times in the main text, though not doing so every time it appears in Hebrew, have evidently followed the example of William Tyndale, who included the divine name in his translation of the Pentateuch published in 1530, thus breaking with the practice of leaving the name out altogether.

Answer 6

There is a difference between changing and restoring.

No, it is not obvious that Jesus is Jehovah. The Bible indicates that they are separate individuals.

And we do not ignore the command to worship only God. Jesus is the Son of God, the King of God's Kingdom, and Michael the archangel. We do not worship him. We worship only Jehovah. Worshiping anyone or anything else, including the worship of a trinity, is idolatry.

Answer 7

First, they put back what was taken out.

Second, Jesus was created so he could not be the same as his father in the old testament. (Col 1:15)

Third, The bible gives Jesus the title of Chef Messenger to his father.

Gal 4:14 - but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

1Th 4:16 - because the Lord himself, in a shout, in the voice of a chief-messenger,

1Th 4:16 - For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel,

Forth, JWs will not worship Jesus. They pray through him to his father as instructed by Jesus himself.

Jesus says in the model prayer to pray to the father, not to him:

Mat 6:9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Answer 8

We don't replace Jehovah in the bible. It was there to start with. Jehovah is God's name. And we do have God andLord written in the bible also. Just not as much.

Answer 9

Firstly because they put back the original word where it was. In the manuscripts Jehovah, or better YHWH was there, but because of supertitions, it was removed in modern translations. If you go see older English translations like the geneva Bible, Jehovah is there.
And for your whys, what do you care? You don't believe what they believe? so bloody what?

Answer 10

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2006/11/robertson_says.html