But more recent discoveries definitely prove that the Tetragrammaton did appear in the Septuagint in those times. Thus Professor Howard of the University of Georgia states: “We know for a fact that Greek-speaking Jews continued to write [the Tetragrammaton] within their Greek Scriptures. Moreover, it is most unlikely that early conservative Greek-speaking Jewish Christians varied from this practice. . . . It would have been extremely unusual for them to have dismissed the Tetragram from the biblical text itself.” So he concludes: “Since the Tetragram was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible which made up the Scriptures of the early church, it is reasonable to believe that the N[ew] T[estament] writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the biblical text. On the analogy of pre-Christian Jewish practice we can imagine that the NT text incorporated the Tetragram into its OT quotations.” Professor Howard also notes that when the Tetragrammaton was removed from the Septuagint it was also removed from the quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures appearing in the Christian Greek Scriptures. This change evidently took place at the beginning of the second century C.E. There is no question that the name Jehovah does belong in the Christian Greek Scriptures, as we find it in the New World Translation.

[Picture on page 25]

Tetragrammaton in Septuagint fragments from Egypt (Fouad Papyri 266)

These papyri were early publicized by Jehovah’s Witnesses and the appearance here of God’s name gave basis for using “Jehovah” in the New World Translation