ClaimThe Bible and the translationverified2010sExplicit statement

The Bible and the translation · Claim record

The New World Translation uses the name Jehovah 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. The figure is the organisation's own, stated in Appendix A5 of the 2013 edition.

Claim ID claim-bible-jehovah-237-ntConcerns 2013Explicit statement

The claim and its evidence

Explicit statement · 2013 Verified

The New World Translation uses the name Jehovah 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. The figure is the organisation's own, stated in Appendix A5 of the 2013 edition. Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 2013

The organisation’s position or later explanation: Appendix A5 gives the organisation's six grounds: that first-century Hebrew Scripture copies contained the Tetragrammaton; that some Septuagint copies did too; that Jesus spoke of his Father's name; that the name survives in “Hallelujah”; that the Tosefta refers to the divine name in Christian writings; and that other translators have restored it.

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Primary JW publication Verified

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, “Appendix A5: The Divine Name in the Christian Greek Scriptures”

2013 · pp.1736-1743 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures does not follow this common practice. It uses the name Jehovah a total of 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. … The New World Bible Translation Committee determined that there is compelling evidence that the Tetragrammaton did appear in the original Greek manuscripts.”

The organisation's own statement of the count and of its reasoning. The six grounds it lists concern the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint, Jesus's references to the Father's name, the word 'Hallelujah', the Tosefta, and the practice of other translators. None of them is a Greek New Testament manuscript.

Provenance and verification note for New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, Appendix A5: The Divine Name in the Christian Greek Scriptures

Confidence note. Appendix opened in full on wol.jw.org on 19 September 2026; page markers 1736 to 1743 read from the page-number spans. The observation that none of the six grounds is a Greek New Testament manuscript is my own reading of the list, which I read in full.

Corroborated by. src-nwtv-nwtsty-c1

Notes. The appendix quotes The Anchor Bible Dictionary ('There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton … appeared in some or all of the O[ld] T[estament] quotations in the N[ew] T[estament] when the NT documents were first penned') and George Howard. I have not opened either.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-nwtv-nwt-a5

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