Need information on EDUCATIONALbackground of New World Translation commitee

by LexWatson 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  LexWatson

  Can any of you give me information regarding the exact educational background of those members of the
  New World Translation commitee???
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  onacruse

  This might be a start:

  http://www.bible-researcher.com/new-world.html

  Fred Franz was the only one of the bunch that went to University, and didn't complete his studies:

  *** w87 5/1 pp. 22-30 Looking Back Over 93 Years of Living ***

  With my father’s permission, I had left the University of Cincinnati in May 1914, just a couple of weeks before the end of my third term there as a junior classman. I immediately arranged with the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society to become a colporteur, or pioneer, as such a full-time minister is called today. By then I had become actively associated with the Cincinnati Congregation of the International Bible Students.
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  5go

  Here it is right below in the boxes.

  The were for the most part drop outs and had none.
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  darth frosty

  Albert Schroedor went to U.of M I dont know if he graduated I always thought he did.
• 

  VM44

  Did Nathan Knorr have any actual training in Biblical languages?

  Could he answer questions about the meaning of Hebrew words?

  --VM44
• 

  LexWatson

  I still quote all my scriptures using the New World Translation since that is what I studied all my life but now I read every scripture from other translations as well.

  In theory I cannot imagine that anyone with no advanced education in ancient Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew could even begin to "translate" the Bible!!
• 

  Atlantis

  http://www.geocities.com/paulblizard/fred2.html

  From a Christian prospective, Franz’s story is tragic. He was a bright, sincere youth who claimed to have been called to the Christian ministry. Instead he was led astray by Satan. Next to Franz’s senior picture in the 1911 Woodward High School Yearbook, it says:

  “I shall introduce to you a young man who worked hard at his lessons, first, in order to lay a good foundation for the future, and next, for the sake of the effect upon his character. By this means he established more firmly the qualities of efficiency, faithfulness and reliability. He was an active member of both the Dramatic Club and Athletic Association, and in this way mixed freely with other students of the school. In him lies that stuff, ‘American Push,’ which shows his acceptance of responsibility of acme of true success.”

  After graduation from Woodward High in Cincinnati in 1911, he attended the University of Cincinnati. However, he did not graduate, according to testimony he gave under oath during a 1954 court trial.

  I traveled to the University of Cincinati where I obtained a photo-copy Franz’s college transcript. It indicates that while he was an adept young man,Macmillan stretched his credentials in Faith on the March.

  While his transcript shows he was an above-average student, getting a 3.63 grade-point average on a scale of 4.0, he could not have carried away any honors, as Macmillan said, because hedid not graduate. He completed six semesters and earned 84 credit hours. He dropped out in the middle of his junior year, the spring of 1914.

  http://www.geocities.com/paulblizard/transcript1.html http://www.geocities.com/paulblizard/transcript2.html

  When writing his autobiography, Franz probably never imagined that his 1911 transcript would surface. Again, the transcript proved him a liar. First, compare Macmillan’s claims of Franz’s linguistic knowledge with the transcript. Macmillan wrote: “Franz has a fluent knowledge of Portuguese and German and is conversant with French. He is also a scholar of Hebrew and Greek as well as Syriac and Latin.”

  Again, irrefutable evidence is revealed in Franz’s college transcript. Franz’s major language studies were in classical Greek, in which he accumulated 21 semester hours. There was only one course in biblical Greek offered then at the University of Cincinnati.

  According to the 1911 catalog, page 119, the course is titles: “The New Testament – A course in grammar and translation.” Franz took this two-hour course, which is nothing more than a survey of New Testament Greek. The Greek Franz studied has a different grammar system from that of biblical Greek.

  The claims to his being a scholar of “Hebrew, Syriac and Latin” are lies.Hebrew and Syriac werenot offered at the University of Cincinnati. Franz only took 15 hours of Latin, which would hardly qualify anyone as a scholar.

  Second, compare Franz’s own biography with his transcript:

  “What a blessing it was to study Bible Greek under Professor Arthur Kensella! Under Dr. Joseph Harry, an author of some Greek works, I also studied the classical Greek. I knew that if I wanted to become a Presbyterian clergyman, I had to have a command of Bible Greek. So I furiously applied myself and got passing grades” (The Watchtower, May 1, 1987, pg. 24).

  The Franz autobiography gives the impression that the bulk of his Greek studies were “Bible Greek” under “Professor Kensella” and that classical Greek was secondary under “Dr. Joseph Harry.” The opposite is true. Franz only took one, 2-hour credit class of “Bible Greek.” The other 21 hours of Greek were classical.

  Also noteworthy, according to the course catalog of 1911, is that Arthur Kensella was not a professor of Greek, as Franz wrote, but an “instructor in Greek.” Kensella did not have a Ph. D. Therefore, Kensella taught entry-level courses.

  Cheers! Atlantis-
• 

  AlmostAtheist

  A similar discussion from last year, really good stuff: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/118479/1.ashx

  Dave
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  Narkissos

  Very interesting points Atlantis. And thanks Dave (AA) for unearthing the old thread -- I was about to repeat some of my comments there.

  I'd like to add a few remarks:

  The NWT is clearly not a blend-copy of other English translations. Its overall formal consistency implies a working grammatical knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and Greek (which Franz may well have acquired through self-teaching). It shows a comparatively low rate of unintentional mistakes (i.e., most of its questionable renderings are intentional and argued as such in the WT literature). This, as well as its general tendency to overtranslation, strikes me as the work of one (pretty obsessive)mindrather than a full-fledged "committee" of peers. I think that the other members of the NWT Committee have done very little except validating Franz's options when he cared to submit them for approval.
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  onacruse

  I said:

  Fred Franz was the only one of the bunch that went to University,

  darth frosty said:

  Albert Schroedor went to U.of M I dont know if he graduated I always thought he did.

  Thank you for that correction. A. S. is no slouch (in the "intellectual capacity" department)...though I must say that AlanF had a personal discussion or two with him that proved to be, shall we say, somewhat less than fully satisfying.

  Nark:

  Its overall formal consistency implies a working grammatical knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and Greek (which Franz may well have acquired through self-teaching).

  Very true! And, insofar as the "mechanics" of translation are concerned (a matter with which you've had much more experience than I), I submit that anyone with a modicum of linguistic ability, the determination, and access to a handful of lexicons and 'original' Biblical texts, could produce a passable translation of the Bible. If so, then, in that respect, it's not so much a matter of how "smart" one might be (University degrees, formal training, etc.) that matters, but whether the resultant translation meets with general approval (read: meets with orthodoxy).