Series: The Berean Examinations — Study B02 (Study Edition)

"Pray then like this: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.'" — Matthew 6:9

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED...

  • Does God have a personal name — and does it matter?
  • Did the New Testament writers use the divine name?
  • What name did Jesus teach his followers to use in prayer?

A NAME AND A FATHER

1 Picture a great king with a glorious name — a name inscribed on his palace, sung in his anthems, honored through all his realm. Now picture that king adopting children, and telling them: "You may call me Father." Would using "Father" dishonor his name? Or would it be the deepest honor his name could receive — the name's own promises coming true? Hold that picture; it is where this study is heading.

2 Jehovah's Witnesses teach that using God's personal name — rendered "Jehovah" — is a requirement of true worship, and that Christendom has sinned by hiding it behind the title "LORD." The New World Translation therefore prints "Jehovah" thousands of times in the Old Testament — and 237 times in the New. Is this restoration, or something else? Let us be scrupulously fair, because parts of this teaching are right.

1, 2. (a) What does the king illustration ask? (b) What do Witnesses teach about God's name?

WHERE THE WITNESSES ARE RIGHT

3 God does have a personal name. The four Hebrew letters YHWH — likely pronounced "Yahweh" — appear about seven thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures. "This is my name forever" (Exodus 3:15). The widespread practice of replacing it with "LORD" in small capitals is a tradition, not a command of Scripture — and the Witnesses' critique of that tradition is deserved. This series uses the name Yahweh gladly.

4 And the pronunciation "Jehovah"? It is a hybrid form that arose centuries ago — not the original pronunciation — but be fair: we say "Jesus" rather than the original Yeshua, and no one calls that unfaithful. Using a conventional form of a real name is legitimate. So the question is not whether the name is real or precious. The question is narrower: is a particular name-usage a requirement — and did the apostles practice what the doctrine preaches?

3, 4. (a) What is God's name, and what tradition deserves critique? (b) What is the real question of this study?

A TEST THE DOCTRINE CANNOT PASS

5 Here is a difficulty inside the requirement itself. The original pronunciation of YHWH is uncertain — "Jehovah" is acknowledged even in Watchtower publications to be an imprecise form. If salvation-level worship required the correct use of the name, God would have preserved its correct form. A requirement whose exact content cannot be known is not a requirement God issued.

6 But the far greater test is manuscript evidence. The Christian Greek Scriptures — the New Testament — survive in roughly 5,800 Greek manuscripts. Ask your Witness friend, or check for yourself: how many of those manuscripts contain the divine name YHWH in even one verse? The answer is zero. Not one manuscript, not one verse. Where the NWT prints "Jehovah" 237 times, every manuscript on earth reads Kyrios ("Lord") or Theos ("God").

7 What, then, are the "J documents" cited in NWT footnotes? They are Hebrew translations of the Greek New Testament — made in the fourteenth century and later, mostly by or for Jewish readers — that render Kyrios back into the divine name. Translations made over a thousand years after the apostles cannot testify to what the apostles wrote. The honest summary: the Old Testament insertions restore what the manuscripts contain; the New Testament insertions add what no manuscript contains.

5–7. (a) Why is the pronunciation problem serious for a "requirement"? (b) How many Greek manuscripts contain the divine name? (c) What are the "J documents"?

WHAT THE APOSTLES WERE DOING

8 Was the early church, then, hiding the name? No — something far more wonderful was happening. Read Acts 2:21 and 2:36. Peter quotes Joel — "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" — and then concludes: "God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus." The saving name is now administered through the exalted Lord Jesus: "there is salvation in no one else" (Acts 4:12). The apostles were not erasing Yahweh's name; they were announcing where Yahweh had invested his saving authority — in the man he raised and enthroned.

9 And Jesus himself? Read John 17:1, 5, 11, 21, 24–25. In his longest recorded prayer — the very prayer where he says "I have manifested your name" — how does he address God, again and again? "Father." Six times. Not once does the prayer use the Tetragrammaton's pronunciation. Manifesting the name, for Jesus, meant revealing the Person — making the Father known — not teaching phonetics.

10 This is the king-and-children picture of paragraph 1 come true. The name Yahweh carries a promise — "I will be who I will be" — and its deepest fulfillment is adoption: "you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'" (Romans 8:15). When Jesus taught disciples to pray, he gave the address himself: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" (Matthew 6:9). The name is hallowed in the same breath that God is addressed as Father. Both, together — exactly as the Son prayed.

8–10. (a) How did the apostles handle Joel's "name" prophecy? (b) How did Jesus address God in John 17? (c) What prayer address did Jesus give us?

THE PRINCIPLE, APPLIED BOTH WAYS

11 Now the question of fairness that decides everything. The Witnesses' argument against "LORD" in the Old Testament is: tradition must not remove what the manuscripts contain. We agree. But a principle is only as honest as its symmetrical application: can tradition add what the manuscripts do not contain? If removing the name 7,000 times was wrong, inserting it 237 times cannot be right. One standard, both Testaments.

12 And notice what the insertions quietly do to doctrine: in several passages, "Lord" clearly refers to Jesus (compare Romans 10:9 with 10:13), and the insertion of "Jehovah" redirects the reference — translation deciding theology. The safest course is the Berean one: let every text say what the manuscripts say, and honor the name where God actually placed it — thousands of times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and fulfilled in the Son who taught us to say Father.

11, 12. (a) What is the Witnesses' own principle, and what does symmetry require? (b) What do the insertions do in passages like Romans 10:9–13?

📖 KEY SCRIPTURES IN THIS STUDY

Exodus 3:15 · Matthew 6:9 · John 17:1–26 · Acts 2:21, 36; 4:12 · Romans 8:15; 10:9–13

💬 TALKING WITH A WITNESS FRIEND

Affirm first: "I love that you take God's name seriously — I do too. I use Yahweh in everything I publish, and I agree the 'LORD' tradition deserved your critique. We're closer on this than you might expect." Three gentle questions:

  1. "Of the roughly 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts, how many contain the divine name? Could we look into that together?"
  2. "If tradition must not remove what the manuscripts contain, can tradition add what the manuscripts don't?"
  3. "In John 17, where Jesus says he manifested God's name — how does he actually address God, all through the prayer?" Handle with care: Never mock the name "Jehovah" — it is a legitimate conventional form, and mocking it reads as mocking their reverence. The goal is not to take a name from them, but to give them an address: the Father whom the name always promised.

✅ IN REVIEW

  • God's name is real, and the "LORD" tradition deserved critique — the Witnesses are right about that.
  • But zero of ~5,800 Greek NT manuscripts contain the divine name; the 237 insertions add what no manuscript has.
  • The apostles proclaimed the name's saving power as invested in the risen Lord Jesus (Acts 2:21, 36).
  • Jesus manifested the name by revealing the Person — and addressed him, six times in one prayer, as Father.
  • One standard, both Testaments: tradition may neither remove nor add.

Sources for the teachings examined: New World Translation (2013), Appendix A5; Insight on the Scriptures, "Jehovah"; The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever (1984). For the full evidentiary treatment, see the complete Study B02 in this archive.

Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one — and the children of his covenant, taught by his Son, hallow that name with the boldest address ever granted to dust: Our Father.