The New World Translation is a Mess

by Amazing 144 Replies latest jw friends

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  Narkissos

  greendawn,

  In Hebrews 11:14 the NWT actually translates patris as "a place of their own" (is it to avoid the "patriotic" overtones of "homeland"?). Semantically this is not that bad.

  Other NWT renderings of patris are "home territory" (Matthew 13:54,57; Mark 6:1,4; Luke 4:23f) and... "homeland"! (John 4:44), lol. Consistency is easier claimed than realised.

  slim,

  Agreed, that's just the point I was trying to make about the difference between Paul's quotations and his free use of his own theological vocabulary (exemplarily 1 Corinthians 8:6, one theos, the Father, one kurios, Jesus). The border is blurred, though, when Paul draws an original Christological elaboration from a quotation (clearly imo in Romans 10:13, arguably in 1 Corinthians 2:16). But he is certainly not consistent to the point of censuring the divine use of kurios in quotations when he has no particular Christological point to make.

  As a side remark, I think Ziesler is uncautious, however, in inferring from the available evidence that all LXX copies except the Christian (even partial) ones had the Tetragrammaton instead of kurios. Philo clearly stands in the way of such an assertion. Pietersma made a good case that kurios is original to the early LXX, and that the Tetragrammaton was introduced in a later and limited revision (even though it happens to be reflected in the oldest extant mss).
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  Handsome Dan

  Old ignorant uneducated men with the power of God in their hands is never a good thing for humanity and never will be.
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  Disillusioned JW

  Amazing, would you consider the following to be a more literal English translation of John 1:1 and better conveying nuances of meaning?

  "In the beginning (origin) was the Word and the Word was with the God (face to face -toward) and the word was god."
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  TD

  Fourteen year old thread. These people don't participate here anymore. Some of them are no longer with us at all

  Narkissos would have been the one to ask if that were not the case though
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  Disillusioned JW

  The New Testament writers in a few verses when quoting the OT where The Name (the name of YHWH/Yahweh in the Hebrew OT, but typically "the LORD" in the Greek manuscripts of the OT) appears were equating Jesus with "the LORD" (Yahweh). See Romans 10:9 -13 in the NWT (1984) and then read the interlinear literal translation of the Greek text in the WT's Kingdom Interlinear. Look at the cross references (in the 1984 NWT) for verse 13 to Joel 2:32 and Zephaniah 3:9. Those OT verses are where The Name YHWH/Yahweh/Jehovah is used in the Hebrew Scriptures ("the LORD" in at least most copies of the Greek translation of those scriptures). Look at Acts 2:21 (NWT 1984) where it says "And everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved." Then look at the Kingdom Interlinear's literal interlinear translation and notice it says "the name of Lord" instead of Jehovah in that verse.

  See also the website of https://www.tetragrammaton.org/ . Its author claims to have attended meetings at a Kingdom Hall of JWs on a weekly basis and that he has never been a JW (and thus never an apostate of the WT/JW religion). He is an evangelical Christian who has carefully examined the J (Jehovah) references in the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures.

  There is evidence that the earliest Christians originally thought of the heavenly Christ as originally an emanation of Yahweh (or as part of Yahweh) and thus they thought he could be called Yahweh and "the LORD" and thus also be worshiped and be considered God and be prayed to (see John 1:1, John 20:28, Acts 7:59,60 [note footnote in 1984 NWT regarding alternate reading for "made appeal" and see the Kingdom Interlinear's literal translation of Acts 7:59, 60]). See Colossians 1:17 in the KIT and note that the Greek text for that verse has no Greek word meaning "other". Note that NWT Bible editions printed from 2006 and later exclude the brackets around the word "other" and thus obscure the fact that the word "other" in the translation of that verse does not complete the sense of that verse, but rather alters its meaning.
  

  See also Hebrews 1:1 - 14 and note that Jesus is being contrasted with the angels and thus being considered as not an angel and thus not the Archangel Michael. Notice that verse 6 (in the 1984 NWT) says "... let all God's angels do obeisance to him." Note that the footnote for that verse in the 1984 NWT Reference Bible says 'Or, "let ... worship." '. Compare the wording of the verse to the 1970 and earlier editions of the NWT; they say in the main text for Hebrews 1:6 the following '... And let all God's angels worship him." ' [See also the ASV and KJV Bibles for that verse.] In contrast the latest revision of the NWT (the 2013 Revision) in Hebrews 1:6 in the footnote for "do obeisance" doesn't give the alternate rendering of "worship .." but says "bow down" instead. [See https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/nwt/books/hebrews/1/#fn161259120 .] Step by step the WT in the translation of their NWT has diminished the significance of sayings in the Bible which ascribe worship to Jesus Christ.
  

  Let me make clear, I don't believe/think that Jesus is the God or a god - I'm now an atheist and a philosophical naturalist - but I now think that parts of Bible do teach that Jesus is God (in some sense - in a much greater sense than the WT interpretation of "and the Word was a god") and that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus as God (in some sense - in a much greater sense than the WT interpretation of "and the Word was a god"). See the book by Earl Doherty called The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus. See also Doherty's website at https://www.jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/index.htm .

  The earliest extant New Testament manuscripts didn't write out the name Jesus but used nomina sacra instead. Regarding nomina sacra see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sacra .