Why not just let the Greek text stand as it is? What's wrong with that?
Simply put, it is not accurate in reference to God's name, Jehovah. During the time of Jesus, there was a superstition that was developing among the Jews in using the divine name of Jehovah, to even pronounce it, for Josephus, when recounting God's revelation to Moses at the burning bush, said: "Then God revealed to him His name, which ere then had not come to man's ears, and of which I am forbidden to speak."(
Jewish Antiquities, II, 276 [xii, 4]) However, the number of time that God's name of Jehovah is found in the Hebrew Scriptures (commonly called the Old Testament), of 6, 973 times points clearly that God wanted his name used freely.
In connection with the annual Day of Atonement, Danby's translation of the Mishnah (Jewish oral law) states at
Sotah 7:6: "In the Temple they pronounced the Name as it was written, but in the provinces by a substituted word."
Sanhedrin 7:5 says that a blasphemer was not guilty ' unless he pronounced the Name '. For what its worth, these traditional views may reveal a superstitious tendency to avoid using the divine name sometime before Jerusalem's destruction in 70 C.E. and primarily by the priests, and that only in the provinces.
Thus, the time did come when in reading the Hebrew Scriptures in the original language, the Jewish reader substituted either
’Adho·nai´ (Sovereign Lord) or
’Elo·him´ (God) rather than pronounce the divine name represented by the Tetragrammaton. This superstition was then passed on to later Greek manuscript writers, who supplanted Jehovah with either "Lord" (Greek
kyrios) or "God" (Greek
theos), such as in the Greek
Septuagint in the centuries after the death of the apostles.
Concerning the practice of a Jewish superstition being the "benchmark" to follow by Bible translators, the translation committee of the
American Standard Version stated in its preface: "The American Revisers, after a careful consideration, were brought to the unanimous conviction that a Jewish superstition, which regarded the Divine Name as too sacred to be uttered, ought no longer to dominate in the English or any other version of the Old Testament, as it fortunately does not in the numerous versions made by modern missionaries. . . . This personal name [Jehovah], with its wealth of sacred associations, is now restored to the place in the sacred text to which it has an unquestionable claim.”
In the Christian Greek Scriptures (commonly called the New Testament), the Bible writers often quoted or alluded to the Hebrew Scriptures hundreds of times. In the Christian Greek Scriptures, the
New World Translation presents as direct quotations 320 passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. According to a listing published by Westcott and Hort, the combined total of quotations and references is some 890. (
The New Testament in the Original Greek, Graz, 1974, Vol. I, pp. 581-595)
Hence, God's name of Jehovah was in many quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures and should rightly be in the Christian Greek Scriptures, as for example at Matthew 4:4, 7 and 10, but later Greek manuscripts supplanted the word "God" (
theos).
In the book of Colossians, the name Jehovah is found there 6 times in the
New World Translation. The
Divine Name King James Bible recognizes the right of Jehovah being at Colossians 3:13. In the other places, at Colossians 1:10, 3:16, 22-24, the evidence for Jehovah is found in early Hebrew translations of Colossians, such as in the
(1) Christian Greek Scriptures in 12 languages, including Hebrew by Elias Hutter, Nurembeg, 1599,
(2) Christian Greek Scriptures, Hebrew, by William Robertson, London, 1661
(3) Christian Greek Scriptures, Hebrew, by Isaac Salkinson and C. D. Ginsburg, London
(4) Christian Greek Scriptures, Hebrew, by Franz Delitzsch, 1981
(5) Christian Greek Scriptures, Hebrew, by A. McCaul, M. S. Alexander, J. C. Reichardt and S. Hoga, London, 1838. This is but some of the references that give weight for the name Jehovah to be in the book of Colossians, as well as context.
