Chapter 15: What Kyrios Means to Me

    In the Overview, the reader was told that this book began as a personal study. Explaining more now will help you understand why this book was written and the effect of the study on my life.

God sent two Witnesses
    In 1983, two Witnesses came to our home. They were gracious and articulate gentlemen, well-informed and knowledgeable concerning their beliefs. They favorably represented the Watch Tower Society, and expressed a willingness to maintain contact through study.

    At the time, I had been active in Christian churches for many years. However, I knew little of the Jehovah's Witnesses' doctrine. At first, I was primarily interested in learning about Witnesses. (Of course, as any Witness who has spent time in field service understands, I also wanted to defend my "evangelical Protestant" point of view.)

    In our early discussions, we went through a familiar process of exchanging theological opinions, each of us attempting to persuade the other with our favorite verses. The conversations were enjoyable, but neither they, nor I, were convincing the other.

Two personal decisions
    At this point, I made two decisions which completely altered the way I responded to these two Witnesses as well as the subject itself.

1. First, I decided that I would learn from Witnesses themselves. That meant that I would study from the New World Translation, I would read other Watch Tower publications, I would occasionally attend Kingdom Hall meetings, and, above all, I would not find my answers in books written to criticize the teachings of the Watch Tower Society.
2. Secondly, and most importantly, I decided that I would be open to God and allow him to direct me into truth. That was a frightening—yet liberating—decision. I decided that if, after my study, I discovered that Jesus was who the Watch Tower Organization claimed him to be, then I would acknowledge him as such.*

   (*Footnote: Simply stated, I believed with less certainty then—as I believe now with great assurance after my study of the biblical information associated with the Greek word Kyrios—that Scripture fully identifies Jesus with Jehovah God himself. Witnesses merely believe that Jesus is God's first and highest creation. The contrast is immense when one considers that, in salvation, we have God's righteousness through Jesus. (See Romans 4:24-5:2 and 2 Corinthians 5:20b-21.) The difference is whether, because of Christ's death and resurrection, the one who believes receives merely the righteousness of the highest of God's created beings, or infinitely greater, the full righteousness of Jehovah God himself. In the first instance, that righteousness would cover only the sin of Adam, because Jesus' righteousness would be the righteousness of one who was also created. In the latter, the gift of Jesus' righteousness is the righteousness of "the Lord God Almighty," which assures a secure eternity with him requiring no additional saving work on the believer's part.)

The Tetragrammaton study begins
    Through reading the Watch Tower literature given to me, I realized that the Society's teaching concerning the Tetragrammaton was of paramount importance. I obtained a copy of the Kingdom Interlinear Translation and began an exhaustive study of each occurrence of the word Kyrios (κύριος) in the entire Christian Greek Scriptures. The initial study took almost two years. Much additional study on Tetragrammaton-related material was done after that.

    The initial study from the Kingdom Interlinear Translation was guided by its footnote references which are shown in Appendix A. I then located all the Kyrios (κύριος) verses with the help of J²⁰. (Appendix G shows only the יהוה entries from J²⁰. The actual Kyrios references from J²⁰ are reproduced in Appendix C.) J²⁰ also gave me the information identifying the Hebrew Scripture quotations which used the divine name. Finally, the entire list of Kyrios verses (and the remaining Theos verses included in the 237 Jehovah references) was organized in the form of Appendix B. After the Kyrios study was completed, I examined other areas relating to the Tetragrammaton such as the writings of the patristics (the material in Chapter 10), the George Howard paper (Appendix D), and studies of actual ancient Greek manuscripts themselves (Chapter 8, Appendix E, Appendix F, Appendix H, Appendix I, and others). In addition, a considerable amount of time was spent reading in the area of textual criticism and related subjects dealing with the Greek text and its manuscripts.

    My first area of concentration, however, was the Kyrios study which has been described in Chapters 3 and 4, with the resulting entries reproduced in Appendix B. For almost two years I spent as much as an hour a day, three or four days a week, locating and cross-referencing verses from the Kingdom Interlinear Translation and the New World Translation. Week after week as I located each Kyrios reference, I began to see a pattern develop. This was particularly true in those verses with a cross reference to the Hebrew Scriptures in the column entitled Hebrew Scripture quotation using the divine name or the following column Hebrew Scripture quotation referring to the divine name (Appendix B). A trend was becoming unmistakably clear. The Hebrew Scripture quotation was clearly talking about Jehovah. Yet, when a Christian Greek Scripture writer used the same passage, he often ascribed the verse to Jesus^# using the title Lord.

(^#Footnote: This needs to be carefully stated so that it is not misleading. In the strictest sense, the Greek Scripture writers did not usually quote a Hebrew Scripture passage and insert the name of Jesus. [There are exceptions such as Philippians 2:10-11. However, the Philippians passage does not identify Isaiah as the source of quotation.] What the Greek Scripture writers did do was quote a Hebrew Scripture verse which identified Jehovah. Then they used the Greek word Kyrios [which was clearly a Greek title of Jesus] in place of the divine name. This was done repeatedly with no attempt to clarify whether they were referring to Jehovah or the Lord Jesus. It is this dual meaning introduced by the Greek Scripture writers themselves which led me to realize that they were not concerned with making a distinction of substance between Jehovah and Lord Jesus. This was the subject of Chapter 14.)

    For example, Isaiah 45:22-24 says:

    For I am God, and there is no one else. By my own self I have sworn that to me every knee will bend down, every tongue will swear, saying 'Surely in Jehovah there are full righteousness and strength.'

    But when the Apostle Paul quoted these verses at Romans 14:11 according to the Kingdom Interlinear Translation Greek text, he attributed the quotation to the Lord. The passage appears as follows in the Kingdom Interlinear Translation:

    it has been written for Am living I, is saying Lord (κύριος) that to me will bend every knee, and every tongue will confess to the God.

A memorable conversation
    Throughout the time I was involved in the initial parts of my study, the two Witnesses mentioned earlier graciously maintained contact with me.

    A conversation took place in our living room in which an Overseer said that his faith was not dependent on the presence of the Tetragrammaton in the Christian Greek Scriptures. When I heard his statement, I was aware of the remark's inconsistency. I had already learned enough to know that his statement could not be true. Much of my study since then has been cognizant of the seriousness of his lack of understanding. Whether or not he knew it, his faith was absolutely dependent on this single teaching of the Watch Tower Society.

    Without the Tetragrammaton in the original Greek Scriptures, this Overseer must acknowledge that the one bearing the title Kyrios (κύριος) stands as fully identified with יהוה .

My personal realization
    The pattern was clear. The Hebrew Scripture writers spoke of Jehovah. Yet, when quoting the same passages, the Christian Greek Scripture writers used the Greek word Lord (κύριος). Ultimately, this left me with only one of two possible options.

    The first option would be to recognize that the Greek text of the Kingdom Interlinear Translation was faulty, but that it could be explained by the removal of the Tetragrammaton in the second or third centuries. Though the thought of a faulty Scripture text was troubling, it was a question which could be answered through a careful search for evidence of the Tetragrammaton in the original Greek documents.

    The second option was that, under inspiration of God, the Kyrios (Lord) of the Greek Scriptures was identified with Jehovah of the Hebrew Scriptures by the original Greek Scripture writers themselves.

    I looked at every possibility which would show me that these verses used the Tetragrammaton, but there was none. However, if these verses did not use the Tetragrammaton, then I was left with only one conclusion. The Jesus of the Christian Greek Scriptures is none other than the One identified with יהוה (Jehovah) in human form. Without any fear of blaspheming the name of Jehovah, the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures could say of Jesus as Lord exactly what the Hebrew Scripture writers said of Jehovah. The Apostle John could include Jesus as "God, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8, 4:11, and others).

    Read the rest of this chapter.