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They Criticized Too Soon!

IN 1950 the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures presented evidence supporting its use of the divine name. Nonetheless, certain religious writers criticized its putting “Jehovah” in the “New Testament.” They thus placed themselves on record as being of a mind different from that of David, who sang: “O magnify Jehovah with me, you people, and let us exalt his name together.”​—Ps. 34:3; compare Psalm 74:10, 18.

A booklet published by the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus charged—

“The early Christians who wrote the New Testament certainly did not use [Jehovah], but rather the word ‘Lord,’ which they also applied to Christ. Here, therefore, we have a pathetic example of pseudoscholarship attempting to defend the indefensible.”

Presbyterian scholar Bruce M. Metzger also claimed it was “indefensible” and added—

“The introduction of the word ‘Jehovah’ into the New Testament text, . . . is a plain piece of special pleading.”

Jack P. Lewis, professor at a Church of Christ college, wrote about the use of “Jehovah”—

“While questionable enough in the Old Testament, it is entirely without justification in the New Testament.”

And Baptist minister Walter R. Martin cast slurs about—

“the shallow scholarship of Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose arrogant pretension that they have a sound basis for restoring the divine name (Jehovah) to the Scriptures, . . . is revealed to be a hollow scholastic fraud.”

How bold, dogmatic and immodest such criticisms were! Yet, as the accompanying articles show, these criticisms were entirely groundless. Even the scholarly community is now admitting that Jesus’ apostles used the divine name, in fact, included it in the “New Testament.”