Its use in place of the divine name. During the second or third century of the Common Era, the scribes substituted the words Kyʹri·os (Lord) and The·osʹ (God) for the divine name, Jehovah, in copies of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Other translations, such as the Latin Vulgate, the Douay Version (based on the Vulgate), and the King James Version, as well as numerous modern translations (NE, AT, RS, NIV, TEV, NAB), followed a similar practice. The divine name was replaced by the terms “God” and “Lord,” generally in all-capital letters in English to indicate the substitution for the Tetragrammaton, or divine name.

In departing from this practice, the translation committee of the American Standard Version of 1901 stated: “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.”​—AS preface, p. iv.

A number of translations since then (An, JB [English and French], NC, BC [both in Spanish], and others) have consistently rendered the Tetragrammaton as “Yahweh” or have used a similar form.

Under the heading JEHOVAH (In the Christian Greek Scriptures), evidence is also presented to show that the divine name, Jehovah, was used in the original writings of the Christian Greek Scriptures, from Matthew to Revelation. On this basis, the New World Translation, used throughout this work, has restored the divine name in its translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, doing so a total of 237 times. Other translations had made similar restorations, particularly when translating the Christian Greek Scriptures into Hebrew.

When discussing “Restoring the Divine Name,” the New World Bible Translation Committee states: “To know where the divine name was replaced by the Greek words Κύριος and Θεός, we have determined where the inspired Christian writers have quoted verses, passages and expressions from the Hebrew Scriptures and then we have referred back to the Hebrew text to ascertain whether the divine name appears there. In this way we determined the identity to give Kyʹri·os and The·osʹ and the personality with which to clothe them.” Explaining further, the Committee said: “To avoid overstepping the bounds of a translator into the field of exegesis, we have been most cautious about rendering the divine name in the Christian Greek Scriptures, always carefully considering the Hebrew Scriptures as a background. We have looked for agreement from the Hebrew versions to confirm our rendering.” Such agreement from Hebrew versions exists in all the 237 places that the New World Bible Translation Committee has rendered the divine name in the body of its translation.​—NW appendix, pp. 1564-1566.

Evidently by early in the Common Era the divine name, YHWH, had come to be regarded by the Jewish rabbis as too sacred to be pronounced. Instead, they substituted ʼAdho·naiʹ (sometimes ʼElo·himʹ) when reading the Scriptures aloud. The Sopherim, or scribes, went even further by replacing the divine name in the written text with ʼAdho·naiʹ 134 times (133 in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia). From about the fifth to the ninth centuries of our Common Era, the Masoretes copied the text with great care. They noted in the Masora (their notes on the text) where the Sopherim had made such changes. Hence, these 134 changes are known. (For a list see NW appendix, p. 1562.) Taking this into account, there remain 306 places where ʼAdho·naiʹ did originally appear in the text.