"NWT emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared..." ???

by whereami 51 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  TD

  Greetings, DTP

  I was careful to use the term "poor translation" rather than "mistranslation." In my amateur, bourgeois opinion, John 17:3 is a good example of this in the NWT.

  The NWT renders ginwskwsi as the object of a new verb (taking) and the subjunctive is lost entirely. It's true that the present tense may indicate an ongoing action or process, but the translator or translators of this verse in the NWT interpret this as the acquisition of knowledge rather than an ongoing state of knowing. This choice is not consistent with the rest of the verse which asserts that knowing is ( auth de estin ) everlasting life, not that it sets one on the path toward everlasting life or leads to everlasting life.
• 

  moggy lover

  Despite his obvious and weighty scholastic credentials, it ought to be pointed out that Prof Be Duhn is somewhat uncharitable in his assessment of bias on the part of certain, obviously Trinitarian translators. It is his contention, more alleged than proven, that it is because certain translators are Trinitarian that it is this viewpoint that has caused them to translate certain key portions of the NT with a Trinitarian bias. In fact I believe it is the opposite which is true.

  It is because there are clear textual implications for the Trinity, and especially for the Deity of Christ, in the NT that translators in fact became Trinitarian. A non Tinitarian dissenter, like BeDuhn, may feel that no such clear delineation exists, because the teaching of the Trinity is not explicitly taught in the NT, but the fact remains that the testimony to Christ's Deity exists, and must be confronted, as the Early Christians did.

  It is not because translators such as FF Bruce and Prof William Barclay are Trinitarians that they render Jo 1:1 as "The Word was God by nature" but rather, it is because the text itself imposes its authority on the translator by saying "kai Theos ho Logos ain" that forces them to uphold the veracity of Christ's Deity. To invest the word "Theos" with a shade of meaning that belies its very foundation is to invent a post translational argument to suit a preconceived bias.

  The impression that Prof BeDuhn conveys though somewhat obliquely, is that all Trinitarians are somehow fire breathing, Bible bashing intorerant zealots, and although these certainly do exist, they inhabit the Taliban wing of extreme right wing Christianity, and represent virtually none of the translators. Like the two men I mentioned above, most translators are mild mannered men, conveyed by a burden to transmit what they firmly believe to be the word of God to the reading public, to the best of their abilities. And the vast majority of Christians, moderate in spirit and perspective, as is myself, realize that they need to embrace these extremists with the equanamity by which they accept non-Tinitarians.

  However, having said that, the NWT is itself a product of men who were keen to establish ther anti-Trinitarian bias. In my opinion, the NWT is not a manifestation of the sholastic pretensions of the leadership of the WTS, but it is in fact a reflection of their feeble inadequacies, and collective insecurity. Either unwilling, or unable, to argue their more bizarre theological positions on the basis of standard Bible translations, they resort, on the grounds of bias on the part of others, to pushing a version of scripture which happens to be the very epitome of bias.

  There are several non-Trinitarian groups out there, the Christadelphians and the Unitarian-Universalists, among others, who can present substantially intelligent arguments for their viewpoints, without the need to fall back on some idiosyncratic "translation" that represents a cultic opinion.

  Indeed I have read translations that can be considered good, and I have read translations that can only be referred to as bad, but I have never as yet read a "translation" that sinks to such a low depth of ineptitude and theological debauchery as the NWT.

  Cheers
• 

  UnConfused

  Even IF it were - that doesn't make their conclusions, doctrines or practices correct
• 

  Terry

  What now exists as THE bible is the result of many eager hands tidying up texts to conform to this and that over a loooooooong period of time.

  It needs to be pointed out periodically in these discussions that there is no ORIGINAL by which translations are to be measured for accuracy. There is no there there.

  Differences of opinion have existed about almost everything from the beginning. Those differences and their arguments are soaked up into the texts and can be found to thumb a nose and shoot a finger at each other upon careful scrutiny.

  Almost any point of view remains to be found, isolated and drawn into a creed. Look around you. All those churches listed in the yellow pages are doing just that.
• 

  veradico

  It has already been mentioned, and BeDuhn himself states, that a different group of sample texts would generate different results. He claims to have chosen Trinitarian verses because these are often most hotly contested. The NWT does not do very well in the area of gender according to BeDuhn's analysis, and, as mentioned, he devotes an entire appendix to denouncing the insertion of "Jehovah" into the NT. Other individual verses in the NWT are also negatively criticized. At times it is the case that the theological biases of the NWT translators happen to have been more similar to the beliefs of the folks who produced the texts in the NT than those of other Christian sects. The NWT does not try to impose the Trinity on the text of the NT, and it's a historical fact that the Trinity per se was not articulated until after the NT documents were composed. However, most early Christians were far more devoted to Jesus than are most Witnesses. Jesus was worshipped, prayed to, etc. I think that if BeDuhn were more sensitive to the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses he would be more able to see where bias comes into the translation.
• 

  Narkissos

  "On the matter of word order, normal english follows the structure we all learned in elementary school: subject + verb + object or predictae phrase. The order of the Greek in John 8:58 is: predicate phrase + subject + verb. So it is the most basic step of translation to move the predicate phrase "Before Abraham came to be" (prin abraam genesthai) from the beginning of the sentence to the end, after the subject and verb. Just as we do not say "John I am" or "hungry I am" or "first in line i am", so it is not proper English to say "Before Abraham came to be I Am". Yet all of the translations we are comparing, with exception of the LB, offer precisely this sort of mangled word order." (Beduhn p.105)
  
  

  He is equally critical of the NWT here, he argues that "ego eimi" may have theological significance, but at John 8:58 it is really just one of the most basic pron-noun + verb combinations there is, anything else is read into it and is outside the concern of a translator. Not that theology is is outside of concern necessarily, but that here the most straight forward method works fine, so why add to it

  LOL, this is the dumbest thing I have read for some time. Even in the height of the "functional equivalent" fashion 30 years ago, the average translator would have first cared to ask whether this is the "normal" word order in the source language. What BeDuhn calls the "most basic step of translation" (unless he modifies it elsewhere) is the programmed destruction of nuance, style, emphasis, not to mention poetry, and grinding the formal variety of the texts into an undistinct dough of "plain meaning" to be reshaped according to the preset forms of "plain English" (which always results to be much poorer English than what is actually spoken and understood even by the most uneducated categories of speakers).

  In Greek, as in the most common English, the position of the temporal clause is neither fixed nor semantically indifferent. Putting it first emphasises it. Plus, in 8:58 this logically follows the previous question (on "Jesus" having seen Abraham), which makes it very natural, were it not for the verb tense.

  And there comes the only true problem: egô eimi is certainly less awkward than "I am," but it is not the most natural way of saying "I was around" either -- the imperfect would be way more natural. The sentence form visibly departs from "normal expression" under the constraint of a theological intent, i.e. reiterating the Christological egô eimi in a conspicuous (hence not so natural) context.

  I'd hate to read a philosophical treaty translated by someone who thinks that philosophy is "out of his/her concern". True, a translator with strong personal philosophical ideas may (more or less consciously) bend the translation, but the text resists and something will come out from the struggle (this is even true of the NWT). What the translator doesn't grasp or care for, otoh, is often lost for good. BeDuhn here sounds like the apology of the theologically overconcerned by the theologically underconcerned.

  In any case, whether more "formal" or more "functional," translation remains an art of compromise between conflicting necessities.
• 

  Terry

  LOL, this is the dumbest thing I have read for some time. Even in the height of the "functional equivalent" fashion 30 years ago, the average translator would have first cared to ask whether this is the "normal" word order in the source language. What BeDuhn calls the "most basic step of translation" (unless he modifies it elsewhere) is the programmed destruction of nuance, style, emphasis, not to mention poetry, and grinding the formal variety of the texts into an undistinct dough of "plain meaning" to be reshaped according to the preset forms of "plain English" (which always results to be much poorer English than what is actually spoken and understood even by the most uneducated categories of speakers).

  In Greek, as in the most common English, the position of the temporal clause is neither fixed nor semantically indifferent. Putting it first emphasises it. Plus, in 8:58 this logically follows the previous question (on "Jesus" having seen Abraham), which makes it very natural, were it not for the verb tense.

  And there comes the only true problem: egô eimi is certainly less awkward than "I am," but it is not the most natural way of saying "I was around" either -- the imperfect would be way more natural. The sentence form visibly departs from "normal expression" under the constraint ofa theological intent, i.e. reiterating the Christological egô eimi in a conspicuous (hence not so natural) context.

  I'd hate to read a philosophical treaty translated by someone who thinks that philosophy is "out of his/her concern". True, a translator with strong personal philosophical ideas may (more or less consciously) bend the translation, but the text resists and something will come out from the struggle (this is even true of the NWT). What the translator doesn't grasp or care for, otoh, is often lost for good. BeDuhn here sounds like the apology of the theologically overconcerned by the theologically underconcerned.

  In any case, whether more "formal" or more "functional," translation remains an art of compromise between conflicting necessities.

  Narkissos, yours is a musical intelligence that cascades from a scintillating intellect in a melifluous flow of intelligible magic. I'd love to spend hours talking to you in person because you are so lucid and disencumbered by ideology.

  Folks, we are very fortunate to have such a mind in our presence. And I mean that sincerely.
• 

  LanDi

  Jehovahs Witnesses must be dancing in the streets now. I can see it - Jehovah has seen it fit to deliver his servants from criticism and the faithful and discreet slave have been vindicated.

  I am not a biblical scolar, and it is fair, 96 %+ of people using this forum aren't. So it is difficult for us to comment with full conviction ? We know the Jehovahs Witness cult like line (all opposing views are of those misled by Satan - maybe??) But let us ignore the scriptural points that are beyond non biblical scolars like ourselves who cannot have access to the originals and could not translate more than a handful of words.

  I took the NWT and five other bibles, set them all out and compared several scriptures (Not one !) from the Greek Scriptures. What I found was extremely disturbing - to say the message of the NWT is a little different is something of an understatement, important scriptures about being a Christian and serving God, were so poorly rendered in the JW version - they were difficult to understand what they convey.

  So, this man who is commenting on the NWT clearly has a hidden agenda. Jehovahs Witness perhaps ???? Or, has the WTS slipped him a few ???
• 

  Stealth453

  Hahahahahahahahahahaha

  Now that IS funny.
• 

  M.J.

  So, this man who is commenting on the NWT clearly has a hidden agenda. Jehovahs Witness perhaps ???? Or, has the WTS slipped him a few ???

  No, he's not religious. But he admires JWs in general.