Evidence · Case 12 · Jehovah’s Witnesses
The manuscript record
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Every Greek manuscript, including the earliest papyri, reads kyrios or theos in these places, never the Hebrew divine name. The New World Translation’s own appendix concedes there is no surviving New Testament manuscript support and rests the choice on the assumption that the name was later dropped.
Sources
On the divine-name insertions and the manuscript evidence.
Objections & responses
- The divine name was in the Old Testament thousands of times and Jews later avoided saying it. Isn’t restoring it in the New Testament faithful to what the writers meant?
The name’s presence in the Hebrew Old Testament is not in question. The issue is the New Testament, where the inspired writers, quoting those very verses, chose kyrios, and the manuscripts are unanimous. Restoring a word the authors did not write, on the theory that it was later removed without a trace, is reconstruction, not translation. And it is applied selectively, in ways that keep Lord from landing on Jesus. The faithful path is to translate what the manuscripts say.