by Giuseppe Guarino

The New Testament clearly states that we are witnesses, but, because of someone’s claims, the question still must be asked,

Witnesses of Whom? 

We all know those who proudly proclaim to be “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” But is this what the Bible calls Christians to be?

This brief study draws statistical data from my book “The Name of God,” which provides detailed information for each book of the New Testament. My book is not polemical toward anyone. This article, however, is. Here, I intend to clarify who we Christians are witnesses to, based on the Bible and the numbers found there.

 

Premise

The name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” wasn’t chosen at random. There’s a strategy behind it due to the simple fact that in English-speaking churches, thanks also to the King James Version, the name Jehovah is truly considered the name of God, in the most literal sense the word “name” can have in the English language. To gain traction on an already established fact, this nascent group called itself “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” (They were not originally called Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their founder Charles Taze Russell used the names “Bible Students” and “International Bible Students”).

Are we Christians called to be Jehovah’s Witnesses? If so, where do we find this written in the Bible? Let me know if there’s a passage, because I dare declare there is none.

Instead in Acts we read:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses (it is Jesus speaking!) both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

We Christians are witnesses of Christ.

If we also want to embrace the extreme meaning of the term “name”, we can cite in our favor the book of Acts a few chapters later.

“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The name is Jesus and there is NO OTHER NAME given to us by which we must be saved. If it isn’t clear when put that way, I have no idea how else Scripture could say it.

 

Clarification

I’m not writing to convince any Jehovah’s Witnesses. We should break through their narrow-mindedness that prevents them from reading material that isn’t theirs, their fear of leaving the organization, and their stubbornness and desire, in any case, to prevail in the endless diatribes they enjoy starting. This is almost impossible. I write for my brothers and sisters.

Here I offer some simple facts, straight-forward Bible passages that can be presented to them.

Let me tell you this first. Don’t fall into their question-answer trap. The best way to address their desire for religious contention is to disregard their expectations, present our own personal testimony of salvation through God’s love in Christ. And end the discussion there. Their approach, asking their standard questions, is that of an insurance salesman, not of a proclaimer of the Gospel, as Scripture calls us to be. It’s better to respond to their desire for contention by inviting them to pray together or by speaking of the love of God who saved us in Christ. The Holy Spirit will know how to convict the heart of a sincere religious person, touching them and transforming them into a true disciple of Christ.

 

Numbers in the Bible

The results I obtained in the statistical study of the Bible on the “sacred names” in Scripture were, in my opinion, very significant and represent objective data.

In the Old Testament, God reveals his name to Moses, written for us as a tetragrammaton, four Hebrew letters, the exact reading of which we are uncertain about. Jews read it Adonai , meaning Lord, rather than pronouncing it. (This practice is technically called circumlocution of God’s name.) It is also read Hashem , which, translated from Hebrew, means “the Name.” Considering the “vowels” that the Masoretes—Jewish scholars—added to the Name, which are actually what justify the reading Adonai, we get Yehowah: this is the exact transliteration of the Tetragrammaton in our alphabet, not Jehovah. To be so picky and then give in to a morbid affection for an incorrect transliteration is already such a glaring contradiction that only the figure below can explain how it could go unnoticed.

Let us now look at the statistical data on the occurrence of Yehowah and another significant “name” of God, that is, “God” in the Old Testament.

BOOK or PORTION OF THE SCRIPTURE	Occurrences of the Tetragram	Occurrences of the word “GOD”
Pentateuch	1934	810
Isaiah	500	138
Jeremiah	736	127
Ezekiel	445	253

As we can see, the preponderance of the use of the Name of God over “God” is clear. This is in perfect harmony with the ancient covenant and makes sense because Hebrew is the language of the text and Jews are those with whom the covenant was made by God.

It is logical. Inevitable.

But what happens in the New Testament?

In my book, I conduct statistical research for each book of the New Testament. But the overall result perfectly reflects the internal data for the individual books, so it will suffice here, also for the sake of time, to present the end results.

 

The Name of God in the New Testament

Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament was written in Greek. Although many words are present in the Greek text transliterated from Hebrew (Hosanna, Alleluia, Rabbi, Messiah, etc.), the Name of God is not present in any of the approximately 6,000 manuscripts in the original Greek, the approximately 8,000 of the Latin Vulgate translation, the other versions, all the Church Fathers, the ancient writings of the early centuries, or even in the Apocrypha. Such a decisive verdict certainly doesn’t deter those who want to push forward their preconceived positions, so the official version of Jehovah’s Witnesses claims, with philologically and linguistically unfounded arrogance, to have “restored” the name of God in the New Testament as well.

Let’s pretend they’re right. Let’s pretend the Tetragrammaton actually existed in the original New Testament, as they claim. Because even in this hypothesis, we’re talking about a very relative presence. Indeed, even in this way, the Old Testament trend is completely overturned.

	JEHOVAH	GOD
NEW TESTAMENT	237	1363

God is used about six times more than the “Name” of God. – Please, also bear in mind that of the 237 times the Name Jehovah is introduced by the New World Translation, over 133 are quotations from the Old Testament!

But that’s not all. Let’s look at the use of other sacred “names” and we’ll realize the undeniable Christocentricity of the New Testament.

God	1363
Jesus	1112
Christ	536
Messiah	3
Lord (indiscriminately referring to the Father and the Son)	680
Father	368
Son of God	236
Savior	24

The number of references to Jesus are 1112 + 536 + 3 + 236 + 24 + every time he is called “Lord.”

237 references to Jehovah.

Over 2000 references to Jesus.

The New Testament, the new covenant, bears witness to Christ, to his person and to his work, and not to the name of God revealed at a specific historical moment to the people of Israel and for the covenant that He made with them on that specific occasion (Exodus 3) which is the times of their exodus from the land of Egypt.

 

New Covenant

We Christians are in a new covenant.

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17)

John himself wrote in his epistle.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and handled with our hands, concerning the word of life—for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and testify, and declare to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare also to you, so that you also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1-3). 

Here the apostle specifies what he was an eyewitness to the incarnation of the Christ, and he uses the word Father – and not Jehovah – because in the new covenant, in Christ, God is our Father and this is possible through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ.

The essential point of the apostolic witness is Christ. Peter reiterates this.

“For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when a voice came to him from the Excellent Glory, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (2 Peter 1:16-17).

And Peter too is careful to call God our Father (and not Jehovah, remaining attached to the old covenant), because this is the “name” of God by which we Christians are authorized to call him and define him in every language: he is truly our Father, now that Christ has reconciled us to him – not the law of Moses!

As Paul writes to the Romans:

“For you did not receive the spirit of bondage to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15)

Here the text retains the Aramaic word “Abba,” meaning “Father”—in a sense that evokes intimacy and tenderness—but fails to transmit the Tetragrammaton! And how could the copyists of the New Testament text—all of them, throughout the world, to whatever school of thought they belonged, at different times and in different languages—have managed to so perfectly and definitively erase the Tetragrammaton from all existing manuscript evidence? Such a unanimous conspiracy is impossible if we consider the testimony to the New Testament text to be so ancient, varied, and consistent.

The Tetragrammaton was not preserved in the New Testament simply because we are witnesses of Christ, Christians, and not of Jehovah. I have demonstrated this above.

As Paul said:

“For Jews require a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ” (1 Corinthians 1:22-24)

 

We preach Christ,

the power of God

and the wisdom of God!