In the September 15, 1994 issue of Watchtower magazine (the teaching magazine of the Jehovah’s Witness organization) we read:
“Of all international religions which is the only that uses God’s name, Jehovah? Is it not Jehovah’s Witnesses? Do you think God would allow them to bear his name and not also give them his holy spirit?”
The implication is that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only true Christians because they use God’s name. Elsewhere the offical Jehovah’s Witness teaching body has written:
“How important is God’s name? Consider the model prayer that Jesus Christ gave. It begins this way: ‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified.’ (Matthew 6:9) Later, Jesus prayed to God: ‘Father, glorify your name.’ In response, God spoke from heaven, saying: “I both glorified it and will glorify it again.” (John 12:28) Clearly, God’s name is of the utmost importance. Why, then, have some translators left this name out of their translations of the Bible and replaced it with titles?” (What Does the Bible Really Teach?, APPENDIX: The Divine Name—Its Use and Its Meaning)
What they’re referring to is the tendency of most translations, following the tradition of ancient (as well as contemporary) Jews to not want to use the name of God, but to translate any occurrence of God’s name in Scripture as “LORD” or some other identifying word (many contemporary Jews use “Hashem,” or “the Name”). In most Bibles “LORD” in all capitals represents four Hebrew letters– in our alphabet, “YHWH.” This name is usually pronounced Yahweh, and means something like “he causes to be,” emphasizing God’s ultimate creatorship. This name is used throughout the Old Testament, but does not appear in any New Testament manuscripts. Even when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, the word used for YHWH is translated as the Greek “kurios,” meaning “Lord.” This follows the vast majority of Old Testament manuscripts in Greek (called the Septuagint), as well as other Jewish works of the time in Greek.
Jehovah’s Witnesses speculate that the earliest New Testament manuscripts contained the name of God, despite not having any Greek (which is the language the New Testament was written in) manuscripts that contain the name. As a result, their translation, the New World Translation (NWT), uses Jehovah (an anglicized version of YHWH) throughout the Old and New Testaments. Jehovah’s Witnesses, as we saw above, often argue for the importance of using God’s name. One reason for this is that:
“In replacing God’s name with titles, Bible translators make a serious mistake. They make God seem remote and impersonal…” (What Does the Bible Really Teach?, APPENDIX: The Divine Name—Its Use and Its Meaning)
Another reason Jehovah’s Witnesses cite for the importance of using God’s name is that it defines which god you are speaking of. The word “god” can apply to countless ideas of God/gods, so using God’s name helps to delimit which god you mean.
These are actually understandable concerns, and I for one would have no problem with using God’s name to allow for specificity and to encourage familiarity with God. However, there are some major problems with the Jehovah’s Witnesses emphasis on the importance of using God’s name. They are:
1. YHWH is God’s name, not Jehovah. Unlike Jehovah, YHWH has an important meaning in Hebrew, but most Christians don’t know Hebrew, so this significance is lost. This problem is compounded by the lack of consensus on how YHWH should be pronounced, since there are no vowels in ancient Hebrew. Thus, if using God’s name is so important, how come He didn’t make sure we knew how to say it? Furthermore, people use the word “God” often as if it were a personal pronoun. So, does this not fulfill the criteria of encouraging intimacy with God? After all, Jehovah’s Witnesses admit that they don’t really know the true pronunciation, but still think it’s important to use a proper name for God. As a result, wouldn’t any name that is used for God, including “God,” satisfy this concern?
2. The reason God’s name, YHWH, was meaningful to the Hebrew-speaking believer is because in the Semitic culture, your name reflected your character. If you don’t know what someone’s name means, this significance is lost. Even if Jehovah’s Witnesses got God’s name right, this isn’t nearly as important as what the name signifies– God’s character. If they don’t understand who God is, it means absolutely nothing that they use His name.
To elaborate on the second point, Jehovah’s Witnesses sometimes quote John 17:26, where Jesus says, “I have made known to them your name.” They take this passage literally to mean that Jesus made sure that His disciples knew what God’s name was. However, this is not consistent with how Jesus’ followers would have understood His statement. Names represented someone’s character, and this is the consistent thought pattern throughout the Bible.
In Exodus 34:14, we read about “YHWH, whose name is Jealous.” If the Jehovah’s Witness interpretational method is applied consistently, one must conclude that God’s name is actually Jealous, and that this is what we should call Him. Of course, that isn’t the point. His name reflects His character, and He can be called Jealous because He refuses to share worship with any other.
In Genesis 16:13 we read that Hagar, “called the name of YHWH who spoke to her ‘You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees.’” Others throughout the Old Testament are given names to reflect their character or circumstances surrounding their birth (see for example Genesis 17:5; Genesis 17:17, 18:12; Hosea 1:6, etc.). Finally, when Jesus is conceived, we read that an angel tells Joseph, “you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Jesus, of course, is the anglicized version of Yeshua, a Hebrew name which means “YHWH Saves.” Thus, Jesus’ saving work is connected with YHWH’s– that’s the significance of His name.
Furthermore, the New World Translation does not always translates “kurios” (Lord) into “Jehovah” in the New Testament. Specifically, there are some places where a New Testament writer uses an Old Testament passage about YHWH to speak about Jesus, and the NWT uses the word “Lord” instead of “Jehovah” as a means of obscuring what the text is actually trying to say.
For instance, in Hebrews 1:10 in the NWT we read of Jesus, “at the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.” This is a quotation from Psalm 102:25-27. Note that the NWT uses the word Lord instead of Jehovah, since the passage is talking about Jesus. The author of Hebrews is not quoting the Psalm in Hebrew (the word “YHWH” doesn’t appear in this verse in the Hebrew text, though it does appear in the verses preceding it), but the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), which reads, “In the beginning thou, O Lord, didst lay the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands” (Ps 101:25, LXX– note that this Psalm is 101 in the Greek Septuagint but 102 in the Hebrew Masoretic). While the Greek Septuagint doesn’t use the word YHWH, but kurios (Lord), the context of the Psalm is clearly about God, and the NWT puts the passage in quotations, demonstrating that they are aware that is a quotation from the Old Testament. Furthermore, every time “Lord” appears in their translation of Psalm 102, they translate it as Jehovah. Even still, they translate “kurios” into Lord instead of Jehovah in Hebrews 1:10, because they don’t want to acknowledge that the author of Hebrews thought of Jesus as YHWH.
Similarly, Psalm 34:8 in the NWT reads, “Taste and see that Jehovah is good.” However, when Peter quotes this Psalm to refer to Jesus, the NWT translates it as “you have tasted that the Lord is kind,” (1 Peter 2:3) leaving out the name Jehovah. That this is a quotation of Psalm 34 is demonstrated by Peter’s quotation of this Psalm at length one chapter later in 1 Peter 3:10-12.
There are also instances where a New Testament writer alludes to an Old Testament passage about YHWH, applies it to Jesus, but the NWT uses the word Lord instead of Jehovah.
One example is the NWT of Philippians 2:10-11, where Paul says:
“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 Lord to the glory of God the Father.”
This is a reference to Isaiah 45:23, which the NWT translates as, “To me every knee will bend, every tongue will swear loyalty.” This passage is clearly about YHWH, and yet Paul applied it to Jesus. If the NWT translators knew about this, it would only be honest to translate kurios as Jehovah instead of Lord, or at the very least to point to Isaiah 45:23 in their verse references. However, they do not. Interestingly, in their translation of Isaiah 45:23, they do list Romans 14:11 as a reference, wherein Paul says, “For it is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says Jehovah, ‘to me every knee will bend, and every tongue will make open acknowledgment to God’” (NWT). Notice that Paul interjects “says the Lord” into this passage, and the NWT translates it as Jehovah. Yet, when he interjects “Lord” into Philippians 2:11, clearly speaking of Christ, they simply translate it as Lord.
We’ve established that in the Hebrew culture, a name reflects character and is more than an arbitrary identifier. Furthermore, multiple names are used for God throughout the Old Testament (see the above citations of Genesis 16:13 and Exodus 34:14 for just a couple examples). Apart from YHWH, there is another important name for God in the Old Testament that we should discuss: “I AM.”
In Exodus 3:13-14 we read:
“Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you’’” (ESV).
This name is used in other places in the Old Testament. For instance in Isaiah 43:10-11:
“…understand that I am he [in Greek, “ego eimi”– I AM]: before me there was no other God, and after me there shall be none” (Sir Lancelot C.L. Brenton, English Translation of the Greek Septuagint).
It is with these passages in mind that we must turn to John 8:56-59. Jesus says to the crowd:
“‘Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.’ So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple” (ESV).
“I AM” in this passage is the same Greek phrase, “ego eimi,” that God uses of Himself in the Old Testament. Jesus is claiming identity with God, the God who simply is without beginning or end. This is the only reasonable explanation for why the Jews would take up stones to stone him. However, the New World Translation obscures the meaning of the text with its translation:
“Jesus said to them: ‘Most truly I say to you, before Abraham came into existence, I have been’” (John 8:58, NWT).
In conclusion, it is not enough to simply use a proper name for God. One must accurately reflect God’s character and not seek to hide what He reveals about Himself. While there is nothing wrong with calling God Jehovah or Yahweh, what is actually important is knowing Him. Communicating truths about Himself is the reason He uses names in the first place. The Jehovah’s Witness organization seeks to deny central truths about who God is, so their use of a proper noun to refer to Him is of no benefit to them. It is pure superstition to assert otherwise.
