On December 6, 2017, the Leningrad Regional Court will hear the Witnesses’ appeal of a lower court ruling to ban the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures in the Russian language.

In August 2017, the Vyborg City Court accepted the prosecutor’s argument that the New World Translation is not a Bible because it renders God’s personal name, represented by the Tetragrammaton, as “Jehovah.” This argument allows the prosecutor to circumvent the Law on Counteracting Extremist Activity, which forbids declaring sacred texts to be extremist.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, publishers of the New World Translation in Russian, strongly object to the decision of the Vyborg City Court declaring this Bible an “extremist” publication. The New World Translation has been published in whole or in part in 161 languages and is well respected, accurate, and easy to read. Over 200 million copies have been distributed.