“Okay, so we DID cheat,” say the later guardians of the Septuagint. “But you didn’t CATCH us cheating! We managed to slip our fraud into the New Testament before you could catch us. So it’s all good.”
That’s what it boils down to with the Septuagint, the Hebrew-to-Greek translation of the OT that served as the basis for writing the New Testament. There is no question that early Septuagint manuscripts use the divine name. Latter Septuagint manuscripts have removed it. The issue becomes WHAT version did the NT authors use—the before or after? So far, evidence suggests the after, though common sense suggests the before. (See the post: the Divine Name in the New Testament)
Say what you will about the Jews avoiding pronunciation of the Divine Name. They never REMOVED it. It takes a special type of sleaze to do that. But somewhere from early on, people with such qualities removed the Name for Lord (kyios) in the Septuagint, which has enabled a furtherance of the trinity doctrine. Prior to that, it had been either ‘YHWH’ transposed into Greek or the Greek equivalent letters (IAO) employed in that Hebrew-Greek translation.
The only question becomes, not whether there was fraud or not—there clearly was—but did the NT writers catch it? The record of extant NT manuscripts so far suggests they did not. Surely the Word of God will not be transmitted through such devious methods! That’s why translators of the NWT proposed a theory that, just as the Name was quickly defused in the OT, and removed in the Greek Septuagint, the same thing may well have happened with early Christian manuscripts.
Frankly, I suspect the New Testament writers DID search out the uncontaminated Septuagint copies. At least two such manuscripts date from the first century. A change so fundamental as that, removal of the divine name for ‘lord’ must surely have caught someone attention. It would be like attending the Kingdom Hall for years and years, then one day discovering it had been renamed the Empire Hall. Someone would have noticed that.
Almost always, persons who fervently argue the trinity do such from a personal revelation. In my time, it was Billy Graham’s “Come Down and Be Saved!” Conversion was instantaneous, whereas Witnesses are well known to require a long period of Bible study, along with a trial period of the JW way of life, before getting baptized. Trinity people are known to convert instantly. Thereafter, whatever the Word says or does not say regarding Jesus and his Father makes no impression at all upon them. If a point seems to go their way, they’ll take it. If it doesn’t they ignore it. They have acquired their sureness from another source, that of a personal revelation.
Perhaps “sleaze” is too strong a work for removal of the unique divine name, to be replaced with “kyrios.’ Perhaps it is just an extension of the same uber-sensitivity to the name that caused its disappearance. On the other hand, since you’re supposed to be careful in handling the Word, perhaps sleaze is the right term after all. Many acknowledge the confusion presented by the generic “kyrios” in the NT placed where the distinctive name of God in the OT used to be. But trinitarians welcome the “confusion” and pass it off as doings of the holy spirit.
The New World Translation’s move to restore the divine name in the New Testament is unconventional move. No one has said differently, nor have the NWT translators themselves in their appendix (A5). Obviously, I can understand how many people would think only existing NT manuscripts be considered, not shenanigans in the source Septuagint. Maybe the NWT even jumped the gun on this point. But they are honest with regard to their reasons, and the reasons do reflect scholarship. And except for the ferocity of those determined to advance the trinity doctrine, nobody is overly concerned about it. To them, it is just one more variation in the challenge of translation ancient languages related through multiple sources.
Counting revisions, every year or three someone presents a new English translation of the Bible. They all differ. But they all work. Each has its own reason for existence. Each thinks it can better represent the thought expressed in the ancient languages inspired by the Bible’s true author. Each incorporates the latest findings of scholarship. Each is unique—no one would go to all the bother of translating the Bible if it was just to rubber-stamp a prior version.
Bible readers have long accepted some accounts related in scripture as genuine, even though outside of scripture there is no evidence it is so. Then, archeologists come along and discover that evidence. In this case, the “account” is the clear testimony of scripture that Jesus and God are not one and the same. NWT translators think maybe some parallel development will shed more light on “kyrios” vs ‘IAO.’ In the meantime, they run with what they have based on Septuagint versions.
Several foreign-language translations of the Bible—in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese—do contain the divine name in the NT. I’ve never heard anyone make a complaint. If you ask AI about it, making clear you want no reference to Jehovah's Witnesses or the New World Translation, it still comes up with lengthy justifications, albeit minority, for included the Name in their New Testaments. I admit I was surprised at this myself. I thought it was only JWs who have reasoned this way. It’s not. Said AI (Grok):
“Some translators and scholars have argued for continuity in the use of the divine name across both the Old and New Testaments, especially in cases where the New Testament quotes Old Testament passages that originally contained the Tetragrammaton. For example, when New Testament writers cite passages like Isaiah 40:3 (“Prepare the way of the Lord”)—where “Lord” translates יהוה in the Hebrew—some translators believe it is appropriate to render the divine name explicitly as “Jehovah” in the New Testament to reflect the original intent of the quoted text. This approach is often motivated by a desire to preserve the distinctiveness of God’s personal name and to avoid conflating it with generic terms like “Lord” (Kyrios in Greek), which could refer to other figures in different contexts.
“Some translators and scholars have posited that the divine name may have been used in the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, or at least in early oral traditions, but was later replaced with Kyrios (Greek for “Lord”) or Theos (Greek for “God”) in surviving copies. This theory, while speculative, is based on several historical and textual considerations:
“Some translators point to historical evidence suggesting that the divine name was known and revered in early Christian and Jewish communities, even in the Greek-speaking world. For example: - Certain early Christian writings, such as those of the Church Fathers, occasionally reference the divine name or discuss its significance, though they do not provide clear evidence of its use in New Testament texts.
“In certain theological traditions, there is a strong emphasis on the importance of God’s personal name as a means of distinguishing the God of the Bible from other deities or generic concepts of divinity. This theological perspective has influenced some translators to include “Jehovah” in the New Testament, even in the absence of direct textual evidence, as a way of highlighting God’s unique identity.
“In some languages, the transliteration “Jehovah” became a familiar and traditional way to refer to God, especially in Christian contexts. Translators in these languages may have chosen to use “Jehovah” in the New Testament to make the text more accessible and relatable to their audience, even if the original Greek text does not explicitly support it.bFor example, in certain African, Asian, or indigenous language translations, the use of “Jehovah” may have been adopted to distinguish the God of the Bible from local deities or to align with missionary traditions that emphasized the divine name. This practice was often driven by the cultural and linguistic needs of the target audience rather than strict adherence to the Greek text.”
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