Who Removed God’s Name from the Bible?
In 1984, the Watchtower Society published a booklet entitled, The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever. On Page 25, it says that, “....the apostate Christian church managed to remove [God’s name] completely from Greek language manuscripts of both parts of the Bible...”. If that statement by the Watchtower is true, it would mean that these apostate Christians did an incredible thing. Since the original Greek manuscripts were copied over and over again, thousands of times by different scribes and then sent to other cities, churches and regions, these scheming men must have traveled to and searched through every building and house in the known world, successfully seizing every single copy of the Greek manuscripts. Since the Watchtower admits on page 23, that, “...no ancient Greek manuscript that we possess today of the books from Matthew to Revelation contains God’s name in full”, this would mean that not only were these devious Christians able to locate every existing manuscript, but they also were able to delete God’s proper name entirely from all of them and replace it with an erroneous name. If we give mere men credit for accomplishing such a feat, we have to ask ourselves, since they successfully removed God’s name from the Bible, what else did they remove? Once we begin to doubt the preservation and accuracy of the bible, we may as well begin to distrust the whole thing. How can we trust any part of the bible if we give a group of corrupt men the power to change God’s Word at all?
Secondly, did not Jehovah have the power to protect His own Word throughout
the ages? How could Jehovah have protected the Jewish Hebrew Scriptures for
thousands of years through wars, violence, destruction and enemy captivity,
but He was unable to protect the Greek Scriptures for even a few hundred
years after their writings? Does this sound reasonable? To suggest that
Jehovah was powerless, or uncaring, about the preservation of His Word is a
direct violation of His integrity and nature.
The New World
Translation Restores God’s Name
The New World Translation (NWT) boasts that it has restored God’s name to the New Testament 237 times. On page 26 of the Divine Name booklet, it justifies this by saying, “Hence, in places where the Christian Greek Scripture writers quote the earlier Hebrew Scriptures, the translator has the right to render the word Kyrios as “Jehovah” wherever the divine name appeared in the Hebrew original”. So the Watchtower says it has the authority to replace the name Lord with Jehovah if the passage is a quote from the Old Testament. It’s interesting that out of the 237 times that the NWT inserts Jehovah into the New Testament, only about 50 of these cases are quotes from the Old Testament. So, that leaves 187 unsubstantiated cases where the New World Translation Committee has inserted the name Jehovah. For instance, in Acts chapter 8:22-26, the New World Translation inserts the name Jehovah 4 times. None of these verses are quotes from the Old Testament.
We have to ask, is the NWT consistently following its own rule by inserting
the name Jehovah in the New Testament whenever there is a quote from the Old
Testament? Let’s look at Philippians 2:10-11. Since this is a direct quote
from Isaiah 45:23, according to the Watchtower’s rule it should read, “so
that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend of those in heaven and
those on earth and those under the ground, and every tongue should openly
acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Jehovah to the glory of God the Father”.
Also, Hebrews 1:10-12 is a quote from Psalm 102:25-27. Using the same rule,
the text should address Jesus in this way: “You at the beginning, Jehovah,
laid the foundations of the earth itself, and the heavens are the works of
your hands”. So we see that the NWT is unwarranted and inconsistent in its
use of the name Jehovah in the New Testament.
What Does Jesus Teach
Furthermore, if Christians are required to call God Jehovah, why didn’t
Jesus teach His disciples this? After all, when Jesus’ disciples came to Him
and asked Him to teach them how to pray, Jesus said to pray like this, “Our
Father who art in heaven...”. Don’t you think that if it was necessary to
call God by the name Jehovah, this would have been the perfect time for
Jesus to teach them this? And why didn’t Jesus ever, while praying, address
His Father as Jehovah? Well, some may answer that Jesus had a close, special
relationship with the Father. I agree. However, that privilege is not just
for Jesus alone. All those who have accepted God’s gift of eternal life
through the shed blood of His Son now has the right, according to Romans
8:15, to call God Abba, Father! If you came to God through an organization,
God is not your Father. However, if you come to Him through His Son, Jesus
Christ, the bible says in Galatians 4 that you are no longer a slave, but a
son. And you too can cry out Abba, Father!
Much of this
information was taken from an article at