In contrast to the variety of absolute or personal names of God in the Old Testament, the New Testament uses only two, according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia. From the 20th century onwards, a number of scholars find various evidence for the name [YHWH or related form] in the New Testament.

With regard to the original documents that were later included, with or without modification,See, for example, Second Epistle to the Corinthians. in the New Testament, George Howard put forward in 1977 a hypothesis, not widely accepted, that their Greek-speaking authors may have used some form of the Tetragrammaton (יהוה) in their quotations from the Old Testament but that in all copies of their works this was soon replaced by the existing two names.

Names

In contrast to the variety of absolute or personal names of God in the Old Testament, several the title words are used the New Testament. Of the two common ones, Θεὀς ("God") is the more common, appearing in the text over a thousand times. In its true sense it expresses essential Deity, but by accommodation it is also used of heathen gods. The other is Κύριος ("Lord"), which appears almost 600 times. In quotations from the Old Testament, it represents both יהוה (Yahweh) and אדני (Adonai), the latter name having been used in Jewish worship to replace the former, the speaking of which was avoided even in the solemn reading of sacred texts. No transcription of either of the Hebrew names יהוה and אדני appears in the existing text of the New Testament; with only one exception, the ISR Scriptures 2009 version which uses the Hebrew text of the Tetragrammaton.

God According to Walter A. Elwell and Robert W. Yarbrough, the term θεος (God) is used 1317 times. N. T. Wright differentiates between 'God' and 'god' when it refers to the deity or essentially a common noun. Murray J. Harris wrote that in NA26 (USB3) θεος appears 1,315 times. The Bible Translator reads that "when referring to the one supreme God... it frequently is preceded, but need not be, by the definite article" (Ho theos).

Lord

The word κύριος appears 717 times in the text of New Testament, and Darrell L. Bock says it is used in three different ways:

Angel of the Lord The Greek phrase ἄγγελος Κυρίου (aggelos kuriou – "angel of the Lord") is found in , , , , ; , ; ; , , , and . English translations render the phrase either as "an angel of the Lord" or as "the angel of the Lord".For instance, The mentions in and of "his angel" (the Lord's angel) can also be understood as referring either to the angel of the Lord or an angel of the Lord.

Descriptive titles

Robert Kysar reports that God is referred to as Father 64 times in the first three Gospels and 120 times in the fourth Gospel. Outside of the Gospels he is called the Father of mercies (2 Corinthians 1:3), the Father of glory (Ephesians 1:17), the Father of mercies (the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9)), the Father of lights (James 1:17), and he is referred by the Aramaic word Abba in Romans 8:15.

Other titles under which God is referred to include the Almighty (Revelation 1:18), the Most High (Acts 7:48), the Creator (Romans 1:20; 2 Peter 1:4), and the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3).

Extant New Testament manuscripts

No extant manuscript of the New Testament contains the Tetragrammaton in any form. In their citations of Old Testament verses, they always have or , where the Hebrew text has YHWH.

There is a gap between the original writing (the autograph) of each of the various documents that were later incorporated into the New Testament and even the oldest surviving manuscript copies of the New Testament form of any such document. Philip Wesley Comfort says: "The time gap between the autograph and the extant copies is quite close − no more than one hundred years for most of the books of the New Testament. Thus we are in a good position to recover most of the original wording of the Greek New Testament.". Scholars assume the general reliability of the texts of ancient authors attested by extremely few manuscripts written perhaps a thousand years after their death: the New Testament is much better attested both in quantity and in antiquity of manuscripts. On the other hand, Helmut Koester says that the discovered papyri tell us nothing of the history of a text in the 100 to 150 years between when the original autograph was written and when its New Testament form was canonized. In line with the common view, Koester places canonization of the New Testament at the end of the second century. David Trobisch proposes a shorter interval, saying that a specific collection of Christian writings closely approximating the modern New Testament canon was edited and published before 180, probably by Polycarp (69–155).David Trobisch, "The New Testament in the Light of Book Publishing in Antiquity" in John S. Klppenborg and Judith H. Newman (editors), Editing the Bible: Assessing the Task Past and Present (Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), pp. 160−170

Trobisch agrees with Howard that the autographs may have had some form of the tetragram, but holds that the edited texts in what we know as the New Testament are not the same as those autographs. The New Testament, he says, is an anthology with "editorial elements that serve to combine individual writings into a larger literary unit and are not original components of the collected traditional material". These editorial elements "can be identified by their late date, their unifying function, and the fact that they reflect a consistent editorial design; they "usually do not originate with the authors of the works published in an anthology"; instead, "responsibility for the final redaction rests with the editors and publisher". Trobisch states that "the New Testament contains both textual and non-textual elements of a final redaction", and in his book describes "some of the more obvious of these elements".

Howard remarks that the oldest known New Testament fragments contain no verse quoting an Old Testament verse that has the Tetragrammaton. These fragments are: 𝔓52, 𝔓90, 𝔓98 and 𝔓104. Fragments that do contain quotations of Old Testament verses containing the tetragrammaton are at earliest from 175 CEGriffin, Bruce W. (1996), "The Paleographical Dating of P-46" onward (𝔓46, 𝔓66, 𝔓75).

Jacobus H. Petzer, citing Harry Y. Gamble, K. Junack and Barbara Aland in support, distinguishes between "the original text" of the New Testament and "the autographs" of the documents it incorporated. There is a gap of about a century (more in the case of the letters of Paul the Apostle, less in the case of elements such as the Gospel of John) between the composition of the actual autograph documents, the original incorporation of a version of them into the New Testament, and the production of the extant New Testament manuscripts in which, according to the Howard hypothesis, the Tetragrammaton might once have been written, before being eliminated without trace from all existing manuscripts.

Howard points to some twenty single-letter variations in the Greek New Testament manuscripts between and , among the hundreds of other appearances of these two nomina sacra. In response to a correspondent who said that Howard "cited the large number of variants involving theos and kurios as evidence for the originality of the divine name in the New Testament itself", Larry Hurtado replied: "Well, maybe so. But his theory doesn't take adequate account of all the data, including the data that 'kyrios' was used as a/the vocal substitute for YHWH among Greek-speaking Jews. There's no indication that the Hebrew YHWH ever appeared in any NT text." He also noted the choice by the author of the Acts of the Apostles to use Θεός rather than Κύριος when reporting speeches to and by the Jews.

Variance between some versesNT verse (Lord) (God) (Christ) (Jesus)OmitActs 8:22 Greek mss. Vg, SypActs 8:24א, A, B D, Vg, SyActs 8:25א, B, C, D𝔓74, A, SyActs 10:33𝔓45, א, A, B, C𝔓74, D, SyActs 12:24B𝔓74, א, A, D, SyActs 13:44𝔓74, א, A, BB, C, SyActs 14:48𝔓45, 𝔓74, א, A, CB, DActs 15:35 Greek mss.SypActs 15:36Greek mss.SypActs 15:40Greek mss.Vgc, Vgs, SypActs 16:15א, A, B, Greek mss.DActs 16:32𝔓45, 𝔓74, אc (corrector), A, Cא, BActs 19:20Greek mss.Vg, SypRomans 4:8א, A, B𝔓46Romans 10:17אc, A, Db, c, K, P, Ψ, min versions, Fathers𝔓46, א, B, C, D*, min version, FathersG, Itf,g, FathersRomans 11:2א, A, B𝔓46Romans 11:3א, A, B𝔓46Romans 11:8𝔓46, A, C, D, F, G: ο θς; א: ο ο θςRomans 11:34א, A, B𝔓46Romans 14:4𝔓46, א, A, B, C, Greek mss.D, Vg, SyhRomans 14:10א*, A, B, C*, D, G, min versions, Fathersאc, C2, P, ΨRomans 15:11א2א*, A, B1 Corinthians 2:16B, D*, G, itrell1 Corinthians 7:17𝔓46, א, A, B, C, Greek mss.Syh, TR1 Corinthians 10:9א, B, C, P, 33, min versions, FathersA, 81, Euthalius𝔓46, D, G, K, Ψ, min versions, Fathers19852 Corinthians 8:21 א, B𝔓46, Vg, SypEphesians 5:17א, D, Greek mss.A, Vgc, SypColossians 1:10א, A, B, Greek mss.VgColossians 3:13𝔓46, A, B, DאColossians 3:16אA, CColossians 3:22א, A, B, C, D, Greek mss.𝔓46, אc, Dc (corrector)Thessalonians 1:8אc, B, Greek mss.אThessalonians 2:13א, A, B, Greek mss.D, VgJames 1:12C, Greek mss.It, Vg, SypJames 3:9א, A, B, C, Greek mss.Vgc, Syh1 Peter 1:25א, A, B, GreekSyp1 Peter 3:15K, L, P, min Fathers𝔓72, א, A, B, C, Ψ, min versions, Clementde Promissionibus2 Peter 3:12Cא, A, BJude 5א, C, K, Ψ, min Syrh, FathersCc, 2492, versions, Lucifer𝔓72A, B, min versions, FathersJude 9A, BאRevelation 18:8אc, CA

According to Howard, the presence of the Tetragrammaton that he envisages within the New Testament lasted very briefly: he speaks of it as "crowded out" already "somewhere around the beginning of the second century".

R. F. Shedinger considered it "at least possible" that Howard's theory may find support in the regular use in the Diatessaron (which, according to Ulrich B. Schmid "antedates virtually all the MSS of NT") of "God" in place of "Lord" in the New Testament and the Peshitto Old Testament, but he stressed that "Howard's thesis is rather speculative and the textual evidence he cites from the New Testament in support of it is far from overwhelming."

In studies conducted among existing variants in New Testament copies, the vast majority of scholars agree that the New Testament has remained fairly stable with only many minor variants (Daniel B. Wallace, Michael J. Kruger, Craig A. Evans, Edward D. Andrews, Kurt Aland,Kurt Aland (1986). Das Neue Testament-zuverlässig überliefert (The New Testament-Reliably Transmitted). Stuttgart, Germany. pp. 27, 28. Barbara Aland, F. F. Bruce, Fenton Hort, Brooke Foss Westcott, Frederic G. Kenyon, Jack Finegan, Archibald Thomas Robertson). Some critics, such as Kurt Aland, deny that there is any basis whatever for conjectural emendation of the manuscript evidence. Bart D. Ehrman, Helmut Koester, David C. Parker believe that it is not possible to establish the original text with absolute certainty, but do not posit a systematic revision as in the Howard hypothesis.Jeffery T. Riddle, Review of Wegner's book.

The oldest extant Greek New Testament manuscript fragments.DateQuantityManuscriptsSecond century4𝔓52, 𝔓90, 𝔓98, 𝔓104Second/third-centuries3𝔓67, 𝔓103, Uncial 0189175—2254𝔓32, 𝔓46, 𝔓64+𝔓67, 𝔓66Third century40𝔓1, 𝔓4, 𝔓5, 𝔓9, 𝔓12, 𝔓15, 𝔓20, 𝔓22, 𝔓23, 𝔓27, 𝔓28, 𝔓29, 𝔓30, 𝔓39, 𝔓40, 𝔓45, 𝔓47, 𝔓48, 𝔓49, 𝔓53, 𝔓65, 𝔓69, 𝔓70, 𝔓75, 𝔓80, 𝔓87, 𝔓91, 𝔓95, 𝔓101, 𝔓106, 𝔓107, 𝔓108, 𝔓109, 𝔓111, 𝔓113, 𝔓114, 𝔓118, 𝔓119, 𝔓121, 0220Third/fourth centuries16𝔓7, 𝔓13, 𝔓16, 𝔓18, 𝔓37, 𝔓38, 𝔓72, 𝔓78, 𝔓92, 𝔓100, 𝔓102, 𝔓115, 𝔓125, 0162, 0171, 0312

Nomina sacra in the New Testament

Nomina sacra, representations of religiously important words in a way that sets them off from the rest of the text, are a characteristic of manuscripts of the New Testament. "There are good reasons to think that these abbreviations were not concerned with saving space but functioned as a textual way to show Christian reverence and devotion to Christ alongside of God".