Then my brothers may have shown you these....
Apparently the earliest Greek manuscripts do contain the Hebrew tetragrammaton in the Greek text.
A5 The Divine Name in the Christian Greek Scriptures — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
No man was ever given permission to remove the divine name from God's own book. And when the NT writers quoted the OT scriptures and God's name was there in the original text, then we restored it back where it clearly belonged.
"Jehovah" is a translation of the tetragrammaton and we prefer this to the transliteration "Yahweh" because a translation retains the meaning of the name, whereas a transliteration merely tries to mimic the sound of it.
In Exodus 3:13-15 Jehovah clearly stated that his name was to be retained for all generations to come....forever.
In the Jewish Tanach the tetragrammaton appears in the written Hebrew but not in the English translation, so its easy to see where the divine name was used in the original Hebrew. That is why we are confident that it is used appropriately in our NWT.
Have you looked up these....probably if you've had in depth discussions.
A1 Principles of Bible Translation — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
Loyally Upholding God’s Inspired Word — Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY
In my own very careful research, I have found the opposite to be true.
When one considers that errors crept into the Christian faith in the early centuries, then in those cases where there appears to be discrepancy, I found that the NWT actually corrected a long standing translation error. Don't forget that those who translated the Bible in the modern era, were all trinitarians, so the bias was already in place IMO.
You are training our up and coming ministers eh?
Its people such as yourself that help us confirm our convictions by giving us grounds for deeper research. I personally love research and the internet has facilitated this in recent years like at no other time. Information is available at the click of a button...but then God said through his prophet Daniel that "the time of the end" would see much knowledge released and understanding given by God's spirit. (Daniel 12:4; 9-10)
That is so good to hear.
There is no reason to lose respect just because you disagree.
Its an emotive topic though so I understand that for many, there is a lot riding on them being right.
In my studies, I see the errors with Christendom were introduced way before the last days began.....so to me JW's clarified the whole Bible and gave me reasons for everything. They identified the errors that had crept in centuries ago but which were held dear by so many that they could not let them go.
My former church taught me nothing about God's Kingdom or the reason for Christ's sacrifice.....and they never answered my questions in any satisfying way. I thank them for teaching me the truth. I have been an avid Bible student for 46 years now and have never regretted my decision to leave what I see as a corrupted form of Christianity splintered into literally thousands of factions, when Christ taught us only one truth.(1 Corinthians 1:10) How will Jesus judge all those disunited Christians? (Matthew 7:21-23)
I wish you well and thank you for being a good sounding board.