The New World Translation is a Mess

by Amazing 144 Replies latest jw friends

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  Earnest

  Amazing,

  There is no justification for using the word "Jehovah" in the NT. Watchtower rationale in its foreword is baseless, because the Apostles rarely quoted an OT scritpure verbatum, but rather paraphrased or used partial phrases.

  I respectfully disagree. One of the partial phrases to which you allude is "the Lord's angel" or "the angel of the Lord" which occurs a number of times in the NT (Matthew 1:20, 24; 2:13, 19; 28:2; Luke 1:11; 2:9; Acts 5:19; 8:26; 12:7, 23). Every instance in which this phrase is used in the OT it never once refers to "the Lord" but always to Jehovah so "angel of Jehovah" would have been as much a figure of speech to them as "angel of the Lord" is to those of us brought up on the KJV.

  I do think it would have been better to have had 'Jehovah' as a footnote to those texts where it is used rather than in the main text, but the translators of the NWT have explained their justification for including God's name whether you accept it or not.

  The translators who replaced "YHWH" in the OT with "Lord" followed an old Hebrew practice used while Israel was still God's people, and thus saw it as a legitimate practice.

  The old Hebrew practice to which you refer did not involve changing the text, but of reading aloud 'Lord' or 'God' where the text contained the tetragrammaton. The translators of the English bible changed the text in the same way as the NWT is changed, by substituting one word for another, and if that is acceptable practice in the OT it is a bit hypocritical to condemn it in the NT.

  Earnest
• 

  onacruse

  Another interesting source of information about the NWT's use of "Jehovah" is http://www.tetragrammaton.org/copybooks.htm

  Three books in particular (all non-copyrighted) that I first even heard of from Randy Watters: The Divine Name in the New World Translation, Jehovah in the New Testament, and The New World Translation and Hebrew Versions, all go into mind-boggling detail about this issue. Of course, there is also The Jehovah's Witnesses' New Testament, (Robert H. Countess), which has exhaustive (exhausting?) detail about the same.

  Not all of the opinions offered by these various scholarly works are utterly condemnatory of the NWT in the use of Jehovah, except (and this is a very pertinent exception, and one which imho is definitive) insofar as that there is not one extant Greek text (in whole or in part) of the New Testament that has the Tetra in the text. In that respect, the New World Translation, footnotes and prefatory explanations and appendices notwithstanding, does not faithfully represent a fairly consistent reconstruction of the "original" Greek text of the NT (insofar as the substitution of "Jehovah" is concerned).

  In the cross-cultural languages and customs of the time, it is entirely possible, and perhaps even reasonable, to conjecture that the Apostles meant Jehovah when they wrote Lord, but there is no way that any human can now know that for certain.

  And, with no disrespect to any person intended, I daresay that not one in ten thousand JWs have ever even read all the 'justifications' the WTS has given about this, much less understood them. To the extent that that is true, then the NWT has done a disservice by anticipatory obfuscation. And I say that based on my own decades of obfuscation on this matter.
• 

  Earnest

  NanaR,

  Regarding the use of the name Jehovah in the NWT, the Kingdom Interlinear Translation cites as authority the fact that the Tetragrammaton appears in Hebrew translations of the NT (from a later time period than the existing Greek manuscripts).

  I regret that the translators of the NWT attempt to have it both ways with these references to Hebrew translations of the NT. They show, correctly, that other translators of the NT also use God's name, but in restricting their references to Hebrew translations they imply that more weight should be given to these translations than to others. Of course that is nonsense as there is no more intrinsic value in a Hebrew translation of the Greek than there is in an English one. So I would suggest that the problem is not that they do not always agree with the Hebrew versions where 'Lord' should be replaced with God's name, but that they imply there is special significance in these Hebrew translations doing so.

  onacruse,

  In the cross-cultural languages and customs of the time, it is entirely possible, and perhaps even reasonable, to conjecture that the Apostles meant Jehovah when they wrote Lord, but there is no way that any human can now know that for certain.

  I would even go further and say that in the cross-cultural languages and customs of the time, it is entirely possible, and perhaps even reasonable, to conjecture that the writers of the Gospels wrote Jehovah when that is who they meant, but there is no way that any human can now know that for certain. Nevertheless, my experience is similar to yours that the majority of Bible readers (JW or otherwise) do not bother themselves with the textual support for their Bible, or the difference between translation and substitution.

  Earnest
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  Narkissos

  DttP,

  Sorry for the late reply, I was away.

  an example from Paul show that "kurios" is most obviously a reference to YHWH is 1 Cor. 2:16. To go a step forward, it would be odd for Paul to use "kurios" as a reference to the Father here- when it is usually reserved for Christ. Especially when we consider the text he was probably looking at from the LXX, which the available evidence shows- used a form of the Tetra.

  This implies a number of moot assumptions imo: (1) that Paul had the Hebrew DN Yhwh, as opposed to the standard Greek substitution word kurios, in mind at all; a contemporary Greek-speaking Jewish writer like Philo doesn't refer to the Tetragrammaton per se and treats kurios as THE divine name given to men, for all practical purposes, by a really nameless God (On the Change of Names); (2) that he would draw a clear distinction between kurios as God, or the Father, and kurios as Christ, or the Son; when he refers specifically to the source of Jesus' mission he uses theos, or patèr, not kurios; kurios, otoh, is a conveniently fluid word which allows him to apply broadly "divine" OT mentions to Jesus -- this is obviously the case in Romans 10, and also in 1 Corinthians 2:16: to him the scriptural question "who has known the mind of the Lord" is no longer rhetorical (as in the context of Isaiah), since he answers "we have the mind of Christ" -- that wouldn't be an answer at all were kurios to be understood as exclusive of khristos; (3) that he would have before him a "Greek OT"with the written paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton; this is an easy anachronism from our modern perspective, but "complete Greek Bibles" were very rare back then; Paul like most NT authors quote "scriptures" from (Greek) oral memories or testimonia (lists of "prooftexts" in Greek, whence the apparent disregard for the original context); and, of course, both material evidence (the extant copies of the Pauline epistles) and rhetorical analysis (see # 2) militate against anything but kurios in Paul's firsthand sources.

  I think the same anachronistic imagination (Paul opening his Greek Bible to comment on Exodus in context) strains Trobisch's reasoning on 2 Corinthians 3 -- the Pauline midrash works even better if kurios, with its potential ambiguity, is part of his (mental) prooftext.
• 

  NotaNess

  So I guess what really has happened here, being scripture is all God's given word, God meant to completely confuse us and make it difficult to know really what the writer was relaying, as opposed to just having the words mean exactly how they were written.

  ......Is this my understanding of your "John 1:1's - a God or God", could both be used, but know one knows for sure"?
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  onacruse

  Earnest:

  to conjecture that the writers of the Gospels wrote Jehovah when that is who they meant,

  Point well taken! It would be so much easier to have a definitive conversation about this issue if God had chosen to see to it that, in the preservation of His Word, He had seen to it that at least one or two Greek manuscripts were preserved which showed just this. However, that the best justification for such a "substitution" in the NWT is based on very fragmentary LXX evidence, and a necessary extrapolation therefrom (the 'essence' of the NWT preface), pulls the matter from the hands of translation.

  NotaNess: Welcome to JWD! You picked a heck of a thread to make your first post! LOL

  Is this my understanding of your "John 1:1's - a God or God", could both be used, but know one knows for sure"?

  The determination of "a god" (or approximations thereof), and "God," must be made on exegetical and hermeneutic grounds, not linguistic ones.
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  Death to the Pixies

  Hello Narkissos, I trust you had a good vacation.

  1:) Is there a link in Pauline Lit. in which he speaks of a nameless God like certain other philosophers and apologists? eg. Philo, Justin I guess I am making assumption but I do not believe it to be moot however :>)

  2.) Not to turn this into interpretational quibbles, but I suggest Romans 11:34-36 (All things "ek" from him... cf 1 Cor. 8:6) as evidence that 1 Cor. 2:16 refers to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. (That is if I understand you correctly)

  3.) You may need to flesh this out for my benefit a bit more.

  Regards.
• 

  Narkissos

  Hi DttP

  1:) Is there a link in Pauline Lit. in which he speaks of a nameless God like certain other philosophers and apologists? eg. Philo, Justin I guess I am making assumption but I do not believe it to be moot however :>)

  There doesn't need to be. You seemed to assume that Paul was evidently aware of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton behind the substitution word kurios and would deem it significant; I just pointed out that (counter-intuitively to us maybe) this cannot be taken for grantedin the absence of any clear reference to it, because contemporary Greek-speaking Jewish writers like Philo do refer to kurios, not Yhwh, as the name given to Moses. Iow the burden of proof is yours.

  The mere fact that "scriptural" expressions like "in the name of," "calling on the name of" which originally applied to Yhwh are overwhelmingly applied to Christ (which the NWT only partly obscures) in Pauline literature is telling: there is hardly any room in Paul's teaching for an emphasis on God's nameas distinct from Christ's. The only exceptions I can see are the formal OT quotations in Romans 2:24 and 15:9, where no original Pauline elaboration occurs to put any emphasis on the "divine name".

  2.) Not to turn this into interpretational quibbles, but I suggest Romans 11:34-36 (All things "ek" from him... cf 1 Cor. 8:6) as evidence that 1 Cor. 2:16 refers to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. (That is if I understand you correctly)

  Good point about Romans 11:34-36, but, again, it is a formal OT quotation without any original Pauline elaboration to distinguish kurios from Christ. When Paul does elaborate, as in 1 Corinthians 2:16, it is apparent that he can identify the nous khristos to the nous kuriou -- at least to an extent.

  3.) You may need to flesh this out for my benefit a bit more.

  What I meant is that it is very easy to us who can have full critical editions of the MT and the LXX on our desks to overestimate the information available to NT authors when they "quoted from the OT," and then to overinterpret the apparent variations. I was specifically addressing your remark:

  Especially when we consider the text he was probably looking at from the LXX, which the available evidence shows- used a form of the Tetra.

  The moot assumption here, imo, is that Paul would have a full LXX manuscript of Isaiah before him when he wrote 1 Corinthians -- and one with the (most likely "orthodox" Palestinian-induced) Tetragrammaton recension at that. If he was quoting from (oral) memory or from cheaper Christian Greek testimonia (collections of pet prooftexts) he would hardly "read" anything but kurios.
• 

  greendawn

  Narkissos, the word patris is indeed present only in verse 14 but is indirectly referred to in verses 15 and 16 and the NWT puts the word "place" in brackets because taht's how they they translate patris (just as in verse 14) and that's the point I was trying to make. Patris does not mean "place" in any of these verses whether directly or indirectly referred to but country or homeland eg as Ur (the country of his clan) had been to Abraham before he left, in looking forward to the heavenly patris.
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  slimboyfat

  Narkissos,

  I believe Paul did use "Lord" to refer to YHWH in some instances:

  "The more we examine how the use of 'Lord' developed, the more important it is to understand what such lordship meant, both in relation to the people over whom it was exercised, and in relation to the one Lord, Yahweh. A point that has often mistakenly been made is that, because in the Septuagint kurios was the Greek replacement of the sacred name YHWH which was never spoken, Adhonai being used instead, therefore when early Christians called Jesus kurios, Lord, they were granting him the same status as Yahweh. If pressed, this argument proves too much, suggesting that Jesus was Yahweh, an equation never entertained in the early Church. Moreover, it now seems that kurios replaced YHWH only in Christian copies of the Septuagint, for the few fragments we possess of Jewish copies put YHWH into its rough equivalent in Greek characters and do not use kurios for the purpose. That leaves the question of what a reader in a Greek-speaking synagogue actually said, and he may well have said kurios becuase he would not utter the sacred name, and would need some Greek replacement. Moreover, Paul himself writes kurios in Old Testament quotations while reserving it for Jesus when he is not quoting. Yet to say that he can use the same title for both God and Jesus, without thereby equating the two, is to restate the problem, not solve it." John Ziesler, _Pauline Christianity_ (1990) pp. 36-37.

  Slim