For the benefit of many of the viewers of JWN who may not be aware of the issues, here are a few of my comments. I'm sure this has been discussed here before, but for a scholar to address the issue in a recent issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review it is time to bring it up again.
The name represented by the tetragrammaton YHWH is, as JWs are fond of pointing out, found in the Old Testament (OT) over 7000 times, and the New World Translation (NWT) places the divine name, spelled 'Jehovah', in each of those 7000+ places. However in the New Testament (NT), the original language Greek contains the divine name ..... how many times? --ZERO-- that's right the name YHWH, Yahweh, Jehovah has NEVER been found in any Greek NT manuscript. Yet you will find the name Jehovah in the NWT Greek Scriptures over 240 times, where the WT translator has taken it upon himself to guess where he could put it. The insertion of 'Jehovah' in the NWT Greek Scriptures is one of the most blatently dishonest things the WT has ever done.
The WT argument has been that Jesus used the divine name in everyday speech. This is their belief, but no reputable scholar has ever supported them in this. The WT had the nerve to quote George Howard of the University of Georgia (now deceased) to support their decision, in the appendix to the study edition of the NWT. Mr Howard later went on camera and lambasted the WT for quoting him out of context. He was pissed.
The point of the original post is that a recent scholar, Mr. Tigay, also does not support the WT view, and although he leaves it open for more discussion, he believes that the divine name was not uttered by first century Jews such as Jesus.
