The Majority text (most dating from around the 9th century) split on this issue with some containing the “me” and others dropping the “me.” But in recent years, scholars have uncovered manuscripts of the Christian Greek Scriptures (New Testament) that date as far back as the second and third centuries. The oldest manuscripts we have available today of this verse in the Gospel of John are Papyrus 66, written in 125 A.D., and Papyrus 75, written sometime between 175-225 A.D. Both of these papyrus fragments contain the “me” in this passage. Not only do the oldest fragments of John that we possess today contain the “me,” but two of the oldest ancient complete copies of the entire Bible in Greek, the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (also called the Wescott and Hort manuscripts) written around the 4th century, both agree with the papyrus’ renderings of “ask me” in John 14:14.
Since Desiderius Erasmus complied and published the Greek text (Textus Receptus) of the King James Bible version in the 1500’s, he did not have access to the older Greek manuscripts that we have today. Thus, the King James Bible version and other Bible versions based upon the Textus Receptus or the Majority text (including the Watchtower Society’s Emphatic Diaglott Greet text published by Benjamin Wilson in 1942), do not contain the “me” in John 14:14. While these Bibles leave out the “me” based upon the text of the Greek manuscripts they follow, this is not the case for the Watchtower Society’s New World Translation. It claims to be based upon the Greek text of the “Wescott and Hort” (the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) ** both of which support the rendering of “me” in “ask me anything.” Therefore, when the translators of the New World Translationchose to omit the “me,” they do so with clear bias against the manuscript support for prayers to Jesus. Indeed, John 14:14 is a strong testimony to Jesus’ approval of the early Christian practice of directing their prayers to Jesus Christ as God.