The addition of "Jehovah" into the New Testament has a manuscript basis just as much as this insertion in Romans 13:1: "in their relative positions". Nothing. Here are some other good examples: https://www.bible.ca/Jw-NWT.htm
As a JW apologist article say: "This is eisegesis, rather than exegesis - reading one's own ideas into the text, instead of letting the Bible speak, allowing it to be precise where it is precise and vague, where it is vague."
But in fact the interest of the WTS decides in the translation, they just attach something from their own skull, which is not found in the text.
I have already argued with quite a few of your comrades along these lines, they presented funnier than funnier conspiracy theories, that the alleged New Testament manuscripts containing Jehovah are "kept in their secret cellars in the Vatican, so that the Truth does not come out" and the like. Of course they can exist, just as UFOs, perpetual motion machines or secret masonic world governments can exist. In principle, at least in the skulls of their inventors. It's just that the characteristic of reality is that it comes to light sooner or later. Woe to the one who is forced to live his life relying on such conspiracy theories, snarling at the facts of experience every day as if they ate his breakfast. I understand that you have good reason to assume this, because they chew on their paranoia like a shipwreck on the sole of a six-times-boiled, three-week-old boot, and draw a significant part of their Antheusian vitality from it.
You call this recent stumbling "evidence?" So what can "probability" mean then? Indeed, I'm more and more rooting for the WTS to prepare that Greek "miracle text", which cannot be based on any manuscript, yet it will be forged in 237 places on the tetragrammaton - if you are is so sure about it. And then you will be able to see for yourself. The existing manuscripts are the only sure basis that entitles you to make any kind of dogmatic statement! You are furiously cutting the rope on which their religious system depends.
Stafford, for instance, wants to justify the insertion of "Jehovah" into the New Testament Watchtower by suggesting that it was probably not the apostles who began to abbreviate holy names, but the generation that followed them, while the apostles followed the practice of the Old Testament copyists who inserted Hebrew into the Greek text. In this demonstration, he relies on the hypothesis of a Hebrew original Matthew derived from Papias and Jerome as a fact. However, research has already refuted this insofar as it has shown that the Matthew we have is not a translation, but was originally written in Greek. The hypothesis of a Hebrew Matthew might have originated from those early Syriac translations which, as later works, corrected the tangled Hebraisms in Matthew. The author is also mistaken in suggesting that Matthew consistently quoted from the Hebrew text, because there are many places where he follows the Septuagint (e.g., 1:23, 3:3, 4:4, or 15:8-9).
Then he argues for the insertion of Jehovah in 1 Cor 2:16 ("For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ"), asserting that there are data for the reading of "Lord" instead of Christ, and in this case the name Jehovah would naturally have stood first. The problem with this argument is that an undeniably later textual tradition attests to the "Lord" standing second (Vaticanus etc.) rather than "Christ" (p46, Alef etc.). The latter are much more numerous, so it is more likely that some copyists standardized the usage, rather than that it was originally there and the copyists replaced it with Christ (fearing the strange coincidence) when the Lord allegedly replaced Jehovah in the first place. Because this coincidence was by no means strange if one bears in mind that the authors often applied to Jesus Old Testament verses that spoke of Yahweh. (Such as Hebrews 1:10.)
Stafford's work doesn't really answer the main question, namely, why doesn't the New World Translation translate verbatim, even though it puffs itself up in the preface with all sorts of self-praise, promising to do just that, and even promises concordance where possible. (Some of its defenders boastfully mention this in relation to the gnosis-epignosis.)
Your translation is not verbatim, but contains a lot of interpretative insertions and changes in wording. Many of these are also significant theologically. Your defensive writings focus all their energy on these, but are unable to remove the main accusation: namely, that your comrades are trying to force their various interpretations into the genre of translation rather than commentary. Such tactics will be taken very strictly by readers of a translation that does not wish to be verbatim but prides itself in the preface. That is, those who look into the matter; those who take the promises of the preface at face value will draw false conclusions from this usage.
Therefore, the NWT preface should not have suggested that they will translate every Greek word with the same English word if possible. It seems that in many places they didn't even strive for this. The New World Translation is a theologically influenced, affected translation, which combines some principles of dynamic equivalence with the method of interpretive insertions built on the principle of "it can also be translated this way, you can't refute it". Neither is characteristic of verbatim translations.
For example, let's look at Romans 4:3. You often seem to take pride in the idea that you have corrected the "error" of "apostate copyists" who allegedly removed the tetragrammaton from the Greek texts. Well, in the Hebrew text, the name Yahweh indeed appears, but Paul does not quote the verse according to this, but according to the Septuagint. This change and reversion now backfires on you strongly, because it turns out that the apostle gave his seal of approval to the translation of the tetragrammaton with the word "God". I assume he did this because he realized that the appearance of the name YHWH in this context, although common in the Hebrew text, is strictly speaking an anachronism (i.e., a mode of expression reflecting the subsequent knowledge and vocabulary of Moses, who wrote down the events), since we know that God had not yet revealed the name YHWH to the patriarchs.
Therefore, Paul's inspired word, following the Septuagint (and sanctifying it even against the Hebrew text at this point), returned to the contextual reading of the verse, taking into account the above statement, while you rip the word out of his mouth and drop the name Jehovah in its place, which is simply an anachronism in the Hebrew text at the said place. Who do you think you are?
Daniel already associates the name of God with the word "heaven" and substitutes it twice. Following this, Matthew says "kingdom of heaven" instead of "kingdom of God". Since the Jews started vocalizing their manuscripts, they have been supplying the tetragrammaton with the vowels of the word "Lord" (Adonai), indicating what should be read there. The Septuagint did not leave it in (in some manuscripts) for it to be pronounced: one camp pronounced it, another did not. But even those who pronounced it could not be sure that they were saying it correctly.
That the apostles, when quoting the Septuagint, did not write Jehovah is clear from the large mass of manuscripts. The p46 (one of the Ryland papyri from around 200 AD; one of the earliest papyri containing longer text) writes Kyrios in Rom 9:29, just like the great codices. ("Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us offspring" etc.) Interestingly, Paul did not want to translate the "sabaoth", which is translated as "hosts", into Greek, from which we can deduce that he had before him or in his memory a Greek Old Testament text in which, out of respect for the name of Yahweh, the tetragrammaton was replaced with Kyrios, but the Sabaoth was just transcribed in Greek letters.
What can be said about such a work but to quote Revelation 22:18? How much can a denomination claim to really respect and stand on the Scriptures if it forces such shameless mistranslations?
