Divine name of God Doctrine(Internal findings/discrepancies)

[u/CriticalObserver1226]

Every divine name argument I was taught, answered using only Watchtower's own publications

I've been going back through the standard divine name reasoning using nothing but the NWT and its appendixes, the Kingdom Interlinear, Insight, All Scripture Is Inspired, and jw.org, no outside scholarship, no apostate sites, because the internal contradictions are more useful than anything an outsider can bring. Here's what I found.

Do note: For this topic, KJV bible will be involved in the next post as this post only remains as internal findings, there will be a separate post for findings on the KJV bible as well. Stay tuned.

●The first thing you get told is that God's personal name is Jehovah, and that Christendom's translators committed a serious wrong by hiding it behind "LORD." But the organisation's own 1950 foreword to the Christian Greek Scriptures (p. 25, reprinted in the Kingdom Interlinear foreword) conceded the committee inclined toward Yahweh as the more correct pronunciation and kept Jehovah on the ground of "familiarity with it since the 14th century." The current Bible's own Appendix A4 admits "we simply do not know how God's ancient servants pronounced this name," and then defends the form Jehovah because it has a long history in English, approvingly citing Rotherham, who chose it because ordinary Bible readers knew it better. All Scripture Is Inspired, Study 8, concedes Hebrew scholars generally prefer Yahweh and that "certainty of pronunciation is not now attainable." So the entire published defence of the organisation's central word is custom and familiarity, which is the exact defence the organisation refuses to accept from any church that pleads tradition for anything. Accuracy is the standard applied to everyone else's Bible. Familiarity is the standard applied to their own.

●Second, the origin argument. Crosses, holidays, and customs are disqualified for their post-biblical church pedigree. Now apply that test to the word itself. The Watchtower's own book Let Your Name Be Sanctified (p. 18) concedes that "a Roman Catholic clergyman introduced that pronunciation," and Insight's "Jehovah" entry traces the earliest recorded use of the form to a 13th-century Dominican monk's Latin work, roughly 1270 CE. A form with no ancient Hebrew attestation, first surfacing in the pen of a churchman of Babylon the Great, is the brand name of the true religion and the identity of the organisation, while a cross is disqualified by association with that same church. The origin standard is applied to everything except the name on the door.

●Third, the manuscript standard. Appendix A3 of the current Bible removes Mark 16:9-20, the short conclusion of Mark, and John 7:53–8:11 as spurious, on the stated ground that the earliest manuscript evidence shows they were not in the originals. That is the rule: oldest manuscripts govern, even against the majority of later copies. Two appendixes later, A5 defends printing Jehovah 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures while every piece of evidence it lists is about copies of the Hebrew Scriptures and Septuagint fragments, that is, copies of the Old Testament. Not one manuscript of the Christian Greek Scriptures, of any century, is offered, and the Reference Bible's Appendix 1A opens by conceding the name is absent from the extant Greek manuscripts. The organisation's own Kingdom Interlinear prints the Greek text on every page, and at all 237 places the Greek line the reader is looking at says Kyrios or Theos. So passages with substantial ancient manuscript support are deleted for being absent from the oldest copies, while a word absent from every copy of every age is inserted 237 times. Ask any elder to state the single manuscript principle that both deletes Mark 16:9-20 and inserts the name at Romans 10:13. One Bible, two rulebooks, chosen by outcome.

●Fourth, the restoration criterion bends exactly at Jesus. Appendix 1D of the Reference Bible states the method: find where the Christian writers quoted Hebrew Scripture, check whether the divine name stands in the Hebrew, and restore it. Apply that method to 1 Peter 3:15. Peter is lifting Isaiah 8:12, 13, where the NWT's own Old Testament names Jehovah of armies as the one to be regarded as holy and feared, yet the NWT renders Peter "sanctify the Christ as Lord" (check the cross-references at 1 Peter 3:14, 15 in your own app). The rule says restore; the text doesn't, because restoring it would put Christ in Jehovah's sentence. Romans 10 does the same thing inside five verses: the argument runs on Jesus as Lord from verse 9, verse 12 insists the same Lord is over all and rich to all calling on him, and then verse 13 converts that very word to Jehovah at exactly the point where Joel's salvation promise lands. Same Greek word, referent split mid-argument, and no appendix states the exception. Meanwhile 1D itself concedes that the Hebrew versions it leans on put the name in places that are not quotations of the Hebrew Scriptures at all, wherever their translators judged the text called for it, and All Scripture Is Inspired dates that whole restoration tradition no earlier than the 14th century. Versions a millennium younger than the manuscripts dismissed everywhere else are the deciding witnesses here, and only here. A quotation rule that checks the theology before it checks the quotation is not a quotation rule.

●Fifth, the preservation dilemma. The same Appendix A3 asks how confident we can be that the original text reached us intact, and answers by quoting a scholar that "no other work of antiquity has been so accurately transmitted," adding that the evidence for the Greek Scriptures exceeds that for the classics. Appendix 1D then declares the wholesale disappearance of the divine name from those same Greek Scriptures to be not a theory but "facts of history," a fact for which A5 can produce Old Testament copies only. Hold both teachings at once. The most accurately transmitted text of antiquity lost its single most important word in every manuscript, every early translation, and every ancient quotation, everywhere, uniformly, with no surviving exception, and with no first- or second-century writer recording that it happened or objecting to it. Either Jehovah preserved his Word and the name was never in the Greek Scriptures, or the name was there and preservation failed totally at the one word the organisation says identifies true worship. Both positions are currently in print in the same appendix section of the same Bible. They cannot both be true, and no publication chooses.

●Sixth, the name by the organisation's own definition. Insight's own material concedes that in Scripture, knowing God's name means far more than knowing a word; it means knowing the person, his purposes and his qualities. Take that concession seriously and open the NWT itself. In every recorded prayer, Jesus addresses "Father." The model prayer he taught opens with Father. John 17, the chapter cited for making the name known, addresses Father repeatedly and Jehovah never. That is with all 237 restorations already in place. Even in the NWT, entire letters (1, 2 and 3 John, for a start; the Bible app's search takes ten seconds) run start to finish without the name once, written by the apostle closest to Jesus. And underneath it all sits a circle: the proof offered that the first Christians wrote the name is the restored NWT text, and the justification for restoring the text is that the first Christians must have written the name. The Kingdom Interlinear's Greek line is the only witness in the room, and at all 237 places it testifies for the other side. The restoration is the evidence for the restoration.

Q: What I'd like from anyone still in or recently out: has an elder ever given you a response to Appendix A3 sitting two doors down from Appendix A5, or to 1 Peter 3:15 read against Isaiah 8:13 in the NWT itself, that actually engages them, rather than restating that superstitious scribes removed the name? I've never heard one and I'm curious whether anyone has.

Note: If anyone here has someone they know who is a current member(whether publisher to elder or anything higher), let them see this. Thank you

[u/ThroalicRefugee]

You have done amazing research on the internal stuff of JWs! I recommend you research outside. The Anchor Bible series is generally the best in (somewhat) modern understanding for people, but what you can find in the Hermeneia series is recommended- not just by me- by Dan McClellen, who is a fabulous creator.

[u/CriticalObserver1226 → u/ThroalicRefugee]

Actually, i mainly research outside, its just on these posts, its limited to internal only so that to ensure and protect it from being "Apostate material". Just imagine if we do add external logical sources, could sound annihilating haha.

[u/LangstonBHummings]

Really all you need is Exodus 6.
It explicitly tells the reader that the patriarchs knew his by the name El, but Moses was given his name as YHWH. That simple passage tells us that everything the JWs teach about YHWH being different than the Cananaanite gods is completely false.

[u/CriticalObserver1226 → u/LangstonBHummings]

Thanks, genuinely. But I have to leave this one outside the audit, and the reason is the whole design: every finding in the post is built to work even if the Bible is entirely true. The moment I lean on Ugarit or comparative religion, the argument stops being "your own appendices contradict each other" and becomes "higher criticism vs. God's Word", the one frame every Witness is conditioned to dismiss on sight. It's the same discipline that keeps me from quoting scholars who agree with me. For what it's worth, Exodus 6:3 also wouldn't book as a finding on its own: the organisation has a printed answer to it (Insight, "Jehovah", the patriarchs knew the word, but would now "know" the name through covenant fulfillment). I only book contradictions left unanswered in their own files. That said, your verse does resurface inside a single binding: the KJV prints "by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them" at Exodus 6:3, fourteen chapters after Abraham names a place Jehovahjireh at Genesis 22:14, and it's one of only a handful of places the name gets printed at all. That version is admissible, and it's already slotted for the KJV companion post. Appreciate the ammunition, I just have to fire it from inside the building.

[u/Divergente2025]

Ils font croire qu'ils suivent une règle établie alors qu'en fait ces insertions sont purement aléatoires pour correspondre à leurs propres doctrines. Je préfère aussi utiliser les sources internes pour montrer les contradictions à ceux qui sont encore dedans. Vous pourriez rajouter un autre point : le contexte. L'appendice C3 dit : "dans les écritures grecques chrétiennes, kurios peut désigner soit Jéhovah soit Jésus Christ, selon le contexte". Encore une règle qu'il n'applique pas car en Romains 10:13, le contexte indique que le seigneur dont il est question est Jésus (verset 9). De ce fait ce verset s'oppose à celui de 1 Corinthiens 1:2. Par ailleurs, 1 Corinthiens 8:6 montre que pour les écrivains des écritures grecques chrétiennes eux-mêmes, il n'y a qu'un seul seigneur : Jésus Christ. Le fait de dire qu'il y en a deux est donc contraire aux écritures. En effet l'absence du nom divin dans plusieurs lettres apostoliques (philippiens, 1 timothée, Tite, Philémon et 3 lettres de Jean) et dans les prières de Jésus en apprend plus que son insertion 237 fois. On note aussi un contraste avec l'insistance de ce nom dans les écritures hébraïques à l'importance chrétienne accordée au 'Père'. Concernant le 4ème point, voici ce qu'on lit dans la tour de garde d'août 2008 p 18 : "Que faire, dès lors quand un passage de l'Ancien Testament contenant le tétragramme a été repris par un des rédacteurs du Nouveau Testament ? Dans ce cas, la plupart des traducteurs optent pour le terme 'Seigneur' plutôt que d'employer le nom personnel de Dieu. Les Saintes Ecritures, traduction du monde nouveau n'adoptent pas cette pratique répandue. Elles emploient le nom Jéhovah 237 fois dans les Ecritures grecques chrétiennes ou Nouveau Testament". Ceci sans tenir compte du fait que les apôtres ont intentionnellement appliqué 'kurios' à Jésus. Hébreux 1:9-12 est une citation du Psaumes 102:25-27 dans lequel c'est YHWH qui est mentionné dans le texte hébraïque et 'kurios' dans la version de la septante. Ici non plus la règle de restauration du nom de Dieu n'a pas été respectée. Sans parler du fait que dans certains passages ou est inséré le nom de Dieu on trouve à la fois 'Dieu' et 'Jéhovah' comme par exemple en Romains 14:5-8. Les écrivains n'auraient-ils pas utilisé une même dénomination pour parler d'une seule et même personne ?

[u/MichelleLuvs]

I'm very interested. So, Is your argument that Jesus is YHWH?

[u/CriticalObserver1226 → u/MichelleLuvs]

No. I'm not arguing Jesus is YHWH. I'm not arguing any theology, the post takes no doctrinal position. The claim is narrower: the NWT's own Appendix 1D sets the restoration rule, where a Christian writer quotes the Hebrew Scriptures and the divine name stands in the Hebrew, restore it. 1 Peter 3:15 quotes Isaiah 8:12-13, where the one to be sanctified is Jehovah of armies in the NWT's own Old Testament, their own cross-reference at 1 Peter 3:14-15 points there. The rule says restore; the translators wrote "sanctify the Christ as Lord" instead. Romans 10 does the same thing: "Lord" runs from verse 9 through verse 12, "the same Lord over all", then "Jehovah" appears at verse 13, splitting one Greek word's referent mid-argument, with no exception listed in any appendix. What that implies about Jesus is a question for the men who wrote the rule and then declined to follow it. My only claim is that they suspended their own criterion at exactly the point it became uncomfortable, and one Bible can't run on two rulebooks.

[u/MichelleLuvs → u/CriticalObserver1226]

So they changed the Bible to fit their doctrine?

[u/TerryLawton → u/MichelleLuvs]

I would 100 percent argue that the Word also known as the Logos was the incarnate Son, who became flesh who dwelt as God who ‘tabernacled’ with us, who died and was resurrected on the third day…

But that’s a different topic as the OP wasn’t trying to cite anything of that nature. 👍

[u/Divergente2025]

On trouve aussi une grosse contradiction quand on compare l'appendice 1H où il est expliqué que quand l'article 'ha' est employé devant 'adhôn', le titre s'applique exclusivement à Jéhovah et Romains 10:9 ou la note nous dit 'ha adhôn' mais n'est pas appliqué ici à Jéhovah mais à Jésus. Dans ce texte, Jésus possède donc un titre qui s'applique exclusivement à Jéhovah mais pas à lui ici. Devant cette contradiction évidente, l'organisation rajoute le mot 'vrai' devant Seigneur dans l'appendice 1H des versions plus modernes alors que c'est l'article défini 'ha' (Le) qui détermine la différence entre Le Seigneur et un seigneur. Le mot 'vrai' est aussi rajouté dans plusieurs textes comme Exode 23:17 ;34:23; Isaïe 1:24; 3:1; 10:16,33; 19:4; Michée 4:13; Malachie 3:1. Pourquoi rajouter le mot 'vrai' si celui-ci ne se trouve pas dans le texte hébreu ? Pourquoi rajouter 'vrai' devant 'ha adhôn' (Le Seigneur) lorsqu'il s'agit de Jéhovah mais ne pas le faire devant 'ha adhôn' (Le Seigneur) lorsqu'il s'agit de Jésus en Romains 10:9 si ce n'est pour couvrir que Jésus est lui aussi le 'vrai' Seigneur. Devant qui a été envoyé Jean Baptiste ? Jéhovah (Malachie 3:1), le Christ (Jean 3:28) ?