Should the Name Jehovah Appear in the New Testament? -How Have Translators Handled This Issue?

Is the New World Translation the only Bible that restores God's name when translating the Greek Scriptures? No. Based upon the above evidence, many Bible translators have felt that the divine name should be restored when they translate the New Testament.

For example, many African, American, Asian, and Pacific-island language versions of the New Testament use the divine name liberally.  Some of these translations have appeared recently, such as Rotuman Bible (1999), which uses the name Jihova 51 times in 48 verses of the New Testament, and the Batak-Toba version (1989)  from Indonesia, which uses the name Jahowa 110 times in the New Testament.  The divine name has appeared too, in French, German, and Spanish translations.  For instance, Pablo Besson translated the New Testament into Spanish in the early 20th century.  His translation uses Jehova' at Jude 14, and nearly 100 footnotes suggest the divine name as a likely rendering .  

Below are some examples of English translation that have  used God's name in the New Testament:

* A Literal Translation of the New Testament . . .From the Text of the Vatican Manuscript, by Herman Heinfetter (1 863) 

* The Emphatic Diaglott, by Benjamin Wilson (1864) 

* The Epistles of Paul in Modern English, by George Barker Stevens (1898) 

* St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, by W. G. Rutherford (1900) 

* The Christian Bible-New Testament, by George N. Lefevre (1928)_ 

* The New Testament Letters, by J.W.C.Wand, Bishop of London (1946)

Recently, the 2004 edition of the popular New Living Translation made this comment in its preface under the heading "The Rendering of Divine Names":  "We  have generally rendered the tetragrammaton (YHWH) consistently as 'the Lord,' utilizing a form with small capitals that is common among English translations.  This will distinguish it from the name 'adonal which we render 'Lord.'  Then when commenting on the New Testament, it says:  "The Greek word kurios is consistently translated 'Lord,' except that it is translated 'LORD' wherever the New Testament text explicitly quotes from the Old Testament, and the text there has it in small capitals. ' (Italics ours.) The translators of this Bible therefore acknowledge that the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) should be represented in these New Testament quotes. 

Interestingly, under the heading "Tetragrammaton in the New Testament," The Anchor Bible Dictionary makes this comment:  "There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, Yahweh, appeared in some or all of the O[ld] T[estament] quotations in the N[ew] T[estament] when the NT documents were first penned." And scholar George Howard says:  "Since the Tetragram was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible [the Septuagint] which made up the Scriptures of the early church, it is reasonable to believe the N[ew] T[estament] writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the Biblical text." 

Next time: Should the Name Jehovah Appear in the New Testament? -Two Compelling Reasons

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