This is the title of an article from the August 1st issue of the Watchtower (public edition).
It can be downloaded from http://www.jw.org/index.xjp?option=QrYQZRQVNZNT but is not yet available in print.
The absence of the divine name in NT manuscripts is vaguely described so as not to confuse the average JW reader. The opening paragraph even gives the uninformed reader the impression that some of those nasty non-JW translators deliberately chose to omit the divine name.
Bible scholars acknowledge that God's personal name appears in the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures. However, many feel that it did not appear in the original Greek manuscripts of the so-called New Testament. What happens then if a writer of the New Testament quotes passages from the Old Testament in which the Tetragrammaton appears? In these instances they use the word Lord rather than God's personal name. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures doesn't follow that common practice. It uses the name Jehovah 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures or New Testament.
But even Rolf Furuli admits in his book Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation (ElihuBooks, 1999: 152) that the situation isn't as simple as the WT wants its readers to believe :
Countess has a much stronger case .... in his criticism of the 237 occurences of "Jehovah" in the NT text of NWT, because no Greek NT manuscript has a single occurence of a complete form of the divine name YHWH. Therefore, the legitimate place of the divine name in the NT certainly can be questioned.
No single occurence? This means the remaining manuscripts must have been corrupted, an argument very similar to the one used by Islamic apologists and atheists/agnostics in their rejecting the accuracy of the NT.
The manuscripts of the NT that we possess today are not the originals. The original manuscripts written by John, Matthew, Paul and others were well-used and no doubt they quickly wore out. Hence, copies were made and when they wore out, further copies were made. Of the thousands of copies of the NT in existence today most were made almost two centuries after the originals were penned. It appears by that time those copying the manuscripts, either replaced the Tetragrammaton with kurios, the Greek word for Lord or copied from manuscripts where this had been done. Knowing this, a translator must determine whether there is reasonable evidence that the TG did in fact appear in the original Greek manuscripts. Is there such proof?
Or, as Furuli put it (pg. 155)
At the outset, therefore, we cannot exclude the possibility suggested by the NWT that, as regards the divine name, the text has been changed. Footnote: Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox corruption of scripture; The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford, University Press, 1993) has amply demonstrated how words in different NT manuscripts from the second century onward were corrupted because of doctrinal views.
How then can we still believe Paul's well-known words in 2 Timothy 3:16,17 if God wasn't able to prevent his sacred word from getting changed with regards to such an important issue, namely his own name? Can we still embrace a "sola scriptura" theology if such huge corruptions as recorded by Bart Ehrman in his numerous publications are acknowledged?
To conclude this post, some of the "proofs" provided by the article to support the appearance of Jehovah in the NWT:
-When Jesus quoted the OT or read from it, he used the divine name (Tetragrammaton in the Septuagint)
-The etymology of Jesus' name (Jehovah is salvation)
-The divine name appears in its abbreviated form in the Greek Scriptures (Rev 19)
-Early Jewish writings indicate that early Christians used the divine name in their writings.
-Other modern translations do the same as the NWT.
Any input more than welcome.