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Jehovah Witnesses (JW)have a lot to say about using God’s name, which they claim should be spelt Jehovah in their translations of the Bible. This is held up as evidence that they are the true faith and that the Christian church is false. Is this true and is the proper use of His name God gave to us important in our translations of the Bible?

The claim

Jehovah Witnesses’ claim is that because Christian translations of the Bible usually substitute God’s name as LORD using all capitals (some translations use GOD instead) which in their opinion they should not, that this is evidence that the Christian faith is corrupted. And because JWs always use Jehovah directly with no substitution, then that is evidence that they are the true faith. They make this claim because it is the personal name of God (which is true), and because He commanded us to use it (also true) so as a result it is an insult to God to substitute in another name.

The Jewish refusal to speak God’s name

It is a well-established fact that the Jewish faith today considers God’s name of YHWH to be sacred to pronounce. But history also shows that this practice dates back to the 6th century BC after the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile and was common practice by the 3th century BC. By the time of Jesus, it was a well-established practice to not to attempt to speak God’s name and it was considered worthy of death by some Jewish leaders [1].

It isn’t just about God’s name being too sacred to speak but also no one knows the correct pronunciation and to get it wrong was as felt to be worse than not using it at all. With Hebrew having no vowels the early Israelite nation relied on the proper pronunciation being passed down from one generation to another. Unfortunately, during the Babylonian captivity, this chain was broken and the correct pronunciation was lost. What this led to was the habit of using other terms in the place of using God’s name to be on the safe side. Examples are Adonai (Lord), or Ha-Shem (lit. The Name).

It is the use of Adonai, which is Hebrew for the Lord, that led to the use in the Greek translation of the old Testament (known as the Septuagint of LXX for short) to use the Greek equivalent which is the Greek word Kyrios. This is logical because the Greek language has the use of vowels so it would have been impossible to translate God’s name from the Hebrew to incorporate the correct use of vowels, because no one actually knew what they should be and to use the wrong pronunciation was considered blasphemy and worthy of the death sentence.

Now if you spend some time on the JW website (as I have) you will find that they mention that there are two Greek versions of the old Testaments that have used God’s name instead of substituting in Kyrios (Lord) [2]. One is dated from the 1st century BC and the other from between 50 BC to 50 AD.

They get very excited about this and claim it as evidence that at the time of Jesus and the disciples, they would have had access to God’s name and imply they would have used it as a common practice. This obviously a wrong assumption. In these two manuscripts the use of God’s name is actually written in Hebrew (which they acknowledge) and uses the Tetragrammaton of YHWH. They already had this information because they had the Hebrew scriptures to refer to. They still wouldn’t have had the correct pronunciation so would not have been able to use it in speech, only in writing.

It is a fascinating fact that if any of the Greek translations had translated the name into Greek with vowels then we would today know the proper pronunciation of His name – assuming they got it correct that is.

Jewish scholars reject Jehovah as the correct pronunciation of YHWH

The following is taken from the Jewish Virtual Library website. Other sources make the same claim.

Some Christian scholars render the four-letter Name as "Jehovah," but this pronunciation is particularly unlikely. The word "Jehovah" comes from the fact that ancient Jewish texts used to put the vowels of the Name "Adonai" (the usual substitute for YHVH) under the consonants of YHVH to remind people not to pronounce YHVH as written. A sixteenth century German Christian scribe, while transliterating the Bible into Latin for the Pope, wrote the Name out as it appeared in his texts, with the consonants of YHVH and the vowels of Adonai, and came up with the word JeHoVaH, and the name stuck. [3]

Why does the New Testament use Lord

I think it was made very clear above why the Jews stopped speaking God’s name and didn’t attempt to use it in Greek translation; because of the problem with knowing how to pronounce it correctly and their fear that in getting it wrong they would be blaspheming. With this in mind it is obvious that the writers of the New Testament who were writing in the Greek language would not have been able to do anything different than what had become standard practice. With the church experiencing very fast growth into the Greek speaking world, then it would have been very difficult not to use the Greek language to spread the message. Hebrew would have only been of any use to the Jews and then the Tetragrammaton could have been used but no other nation would understand it. If Aramaic was used which was also widely spoken in that region, then any verses taken from the Old Testament would have had to have been translated from the Hebrew and then there would still have been the issue of how to express the Tetragrammaton verbally. Greek would have been the favourite because every time they used Old Testament Scriptures, which was often, then they already had a good translation to call upon.

I find it fascinating that in God’s provision in having the Old Testament translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC which was useful in the spread of the Gospel into the Greek speaking Roman world, that this issue of God’s name had already been settled for them in advance. It is a great shame that the correct pronunciation of God’s name had been forgotten back in the Babylonian exile but God had His reasons why He allowed this. Anyway, it isn’t as important to the church as it was to the Jews and we are as happy to say Yahweh or Jehovah. We are not restricted by religion and superstition. It is ironic that JWs who are very religious are not as fussy about whether they are pronouncing God’s name correctly even though they like to claim it as evidence that they are the truth.

Incidentally, the reason no attempt is made to translate the four Hebrew letters into Greek equivalents is that none of the Greek letters are equivalent. Any attempt would have made the confusion even bigger in the same way we ended up with the English translations using Js where Ys should be used, with Jehovah instead of Yehovah being a classic example.

Conclusion

We see from this discussion that the Witnesses claim that not using God’s personal name is the church committing apostasy is false and really good reasons exist for being the way it is – especially for the New Testament. I say especially for the New Testament because personally speaking I hate the fact that in the Old Testament translation into English don’t use Yahweh (or Jehovah) in most translations. There are some exceptions such as the American Standard Version and a few others but I see any reason why it can’t be standard practice especially when most of the English Bible translations uses the Hebrew manuscripts rather than the Greek.

For the New Testament not using Yahweh when quoting Old Testament passages, I would say that because the Greek version of the Old Testament is used then it should stay with the translation of Lord, because otherwise you are changing the original and I always prefer to stay with the original as far as possible.

One of the things that the JW organisation is ignoring is that Christians are very happy to use God’s name of Yahweh or Jehovah and do often. In fact, they cannot give a reason of how Christians are deliberately committing apostasy by not using God’s name. Normally when someone commits apostasy such as denying the deity of Jesus there are no half measures – it is all or nothing. We don’t deny that God’s name is Yahweh (or some version of YHWH) and through our whole history that has been the case.

I find it interesting that JWs are pedantic about using the name Jehovah but not bothered that in the Hebrew it would be with a letter Y. They are not as fussy about all those times the English Bible gets the spelling of Bible characters wrong. The big example of this is with the name Jesus which is an English translation of a Latin Translation of a Greek translation of the original Hebrew name Yeshua. Personally, I would love to go back to the original names of all Bible characters but I don’t think that will happen.

To finish I would just like to remind my Jehovah Witness friends that Yahweh and Yeshua share the same qualities. Take for example Psalm 23 that tells us that Yahweh is our shepherd while John 10 tells us that Yeshua is our good shepherd – both are the shepherd. Incidentally, how can Yeshua be good when He tells us only God is good?

If you want more examples of shared attributes of the Father and the Son check out this link.

Notes

[1] However, by the time of the Talmud, it was the custom to use substitute Names for God. Some rabbis asserted that a person who pronounces YHVH according to its letters (instead of using a substitute) has no place in the World to Come, and should be put to death.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-name-of-god Last accessed November 2025.

[2] https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1978323#h=1:0-35:0 Last accessed November 2025.

[3] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-name-of-god Last accessed November 2025.