John 17:26
John 17:2626And I have made Your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love You have for Me may be in them, and I in them.”
This verse is one of the Watchtower's go-to proof-texts for the claim that Jesus made known and used the divine name "Jehovah" during his earthly ministry. JW publications cite it to support the broader project of restoring "Jehovah" to the New Testament text, arguing that if Jesus made the name known, the apostolic Greek text must have contained it — and apostate scribes must later have removed it. The verse becomes a load-bearing piece of the case for the 237 NWT insertions of "Jehovah" in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
Notice carefully what the verse actually says: "I have made your name known to them." It does not say "I have used the Tetragrammaton." Making God's name known is a Hebrew idiom for revealing God's character and identity — making him known as he is. Jesus did this supremely by being the Father's exact representation (). The verse establishes that Jesus made the Father known; it does not establish that he wrote YHWH into a Greek manuscript. And the manuscript record speaks for itself: of more than 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts, not one contains the Tetragrammaton. George Howard, the only scholar the Watchtower consistently cites in support of the NT Tetragrammaton hypothesis, repudiated the Watchtower's use of his work in 1997.
The NWT renders "your name" in the verse text exactly as the Greek requires, without inserting "Jehovah." But Watchtower commentary surrounding the verse insists that "the name" Jesus made known was specifically "Jehovah" — turning a verse about revealing the Father's character into a verse about restoring the Tetragrammaton to the New Testament. The verse itself does not carry that load; the surrounding study notes do.