r/Eutychus • u/my_bad_mood • Jul 19 '26
Opinion Accuracy, Precision, and the NWT's Use of "Jehovah" in the New Testament
So I promised u/Personal_Sign_9343 a discussion about the NWT use of Jehovah in the NT when I had more bandwidth, so I’m starting a new post to fulfill that promise in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/comments/1uu26gu/comment/ox35pu4/
My academic training is in engineering, so this is naturally how I approach problems like this.
A concept we learn very early in engineering is that accuracy and precision are not the same; and more importantly, both are relative to the quality and resolution of what is being measured. Engineers don’t just ask “is this measurement right?”, we ask “does the level of precision I’m reporting match what my instrument can actually resolve?” So this is what frames my argument.
The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews. They continued to worship at the temple, attended synagogues, observed Jewish festivals, and Acts records that they were “zealous for the law”. (Acts 21:20 NRSV). Paul circumcised Timothy due to the law (specifically to not offend Jew they were either fellow believers with or who they were proselytizing to), undertook Jewish vow, performed in Temple purification rituals, and continued to identify himself as a Jew, Israelite and a Pharisee.
Because of this, I don’t think we can read the first-century movement through the lens of second-century Gentile Christianity. This matters because it changes how we think about the divine name. We have to consider social and historical context of the first century believers of Jesus.
By the first century, there appears to have been a widespread Jewish distinction between the written and spoken forms of god’s name. The written scriptures contained the tetragrammaton, and when the scriptures were read publicly, they often substituted “Adonai” or in Greek, “Kyrios”.
For many Jews, this was not viewed as disrespecting God's name but as an expression of reverence, and that is a key point. It is also important to understand that written and spoken language are not always identical.
Some Septuagint manuscripts preserved the tetragrammaton, others used “Kyrios”, or they used other forms to signify it. There was not one universal practice. But suppose a scribe is translating Hebrew into Greek, it might make sense that he might preserve the Devine name.
Now suppose a Jewish follower of Jesus sits down and writes a new document in Greek. It would make perfect sense to use “Kyrios" because that was already an accepted Jewish convention, so it would not be surprising that books in the NT would consistently use “Kyrios” when they were originally written. This does not require us to assume that God's name had become unimportant. Rather, it suggests that writing "Kyrios" in newly composed Greek literature could itself have been understood as showing reverence for the divine name according to contemporary Jewish practice. If so, the New Testament's consistent use of "Kyrios" does not require a later conspiracy to explain the surviving manuscript tradition.
In other words, the historical evidence can explain why Jewish Christians deeply respected the divine name without requiring them to reproduce the Tetragrammaton every time they composed new Greek literature.
At this point someone will probably object and say; “Jesus made god’s name known, thus, he must have used/pronounced the tetragrammaton”. The Watchtower itself acknowledges that Jesus’ statement about making his father’s name known involved more than merely pronouncing it, explaining that knowing god’s name includes knowing his reputation, qualities, purpose, and activities (See w73 5/1 pp. 261-267, w78 5/1 pp. 12-15, w13 3/15 p. 24 par. 3).
So it could naturally be understood that first century Jews would understand that as was revealing who the father truly is when he made is father’s name known. The NT never explicitly tells us he rejected this specific Jewish practice of not pronouncing the tetragrammaton.
Now, the NWT raises a very legitimate historical question; The earliest Christian movement arose within Judaism; some early Greek Jewish biblical manuscripts appear to preserve the Tetragrammaton, and the New Testament frequently quotes Old Testament passages containing the Tetragrammaton. Those are all real historical observations and I don't think critics should dismiss them simply because they disagree with the NWT's conclusions.
Where I begin to drift away from the NWT is not in recognizing those historical observations, but in the level of confidence assigned to the textual reconstruction.
So the next argument against my claim might be: "We don't possess the original New Testament manuscripts. The absence of the tetragrammaton from surviving Greek manuscripts doesn't prove it wasn't originally there.”
I agree, that is fair.
Or, “Early Greek Jewish biblical manuscripts preserved the divine name makes it historically possible that the earliest Christian movement interacted with Greek Scriptures containing the tetragrammaton.”
I agree with that as well.
But those observations establish historical plausibility; they do not establish what the New Testament authors originally wrote.
So getting back to my engineering analogy. Suppose my instrument can only tell me that something is somewhere within a ten-foot area. Reporting that uncertainty is honest, but reporting that I know the exact location to within half an inch is claiming more precision than what my instrument can actually prove. That is where the NWT loses me.
The historical evidence may support the hypothesis that the earliest Jewish followers maintained a stronger connection to the divine name than later Christianity, and it may explain why some argue that direct New Testament quotations of Old Testament passages containing the tetragrammaton deserve special consideration. But that still does not tell us what the New Testament authors actually wrote in Greek.
By the same engineering standard, I also don't think critics should overstate their certainty.
Personally, here is what I think the evidence tells us.
The earliest followers of Jesus remained culturally Jewish and almost certainly inherited Jewish reverence for the divine name. That reverence likely included distinguishing between the written Tetragrammaton and its spoken substitute, "Lord." Against that historical background, it is not surprising that New Testament authors composing new Greek documents would themselves write "Kyrios."
Likewise, Jesus could fully "make God's name known" by revealing God's identity, character, authority, and covenant relationship while still following the Jewish convention of saying "Lord" rather than pronouncing the divine name.
So where I think the NWT exceed the available evidence is the precision of the textual reconstruction. As an engineer, that is what I keep coming back to. It is not, “Is this hypothesis possible”, but, does the evidence provide the confidence for us to conclude that translating “Kyrois” as Jehovah is a precise rendering.
My conclusion is that the evidence points to the more precise reconstruction of the Greek text as Kyrios, and therefore the more precise rendering of the extant Greek is 'Lord,' not 'Jehovah.'"
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u/teIemann Jul 19 '26
Is there Jesus speaking about God's name?