I don't think the NWT is terrible at all. very literal, sometimes, too. I still think its better than KJV.
"NWT emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared..." ???
by whereami 51 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Junction-Guy
The NWT shouldnt even be called a version, it is a perversion.
The more I read the NWT, the more I notice the words they have changed, some words are ever so subtle, but can totally change the meaning of the verse.
If I only knew for certain it wouldnt be sacreligious, I would burn one at the next apostafest. You see, they didnt change the whole bible, just enough words and verses to fit their doctrine.
If I were to burn an NWT, I would be burning God's word along with their corruptions, so I cant feel too gungho about defacing the NWT, unless someone here can convince me otherwise. -
AuldSoul
Narkissos mentioned the mistranslation of a very simple Greek word in the NWT. It was not consistently mistranslated, but was frequently mistranslated. The word is en. I believe this is one of the clearest and most theologically abusive instances of their bias in translation.
In the NT they mistranslated the word 95 times.
John 25 Romans 5 1 Corinthians 4 2 Corinthians 3 Galatians 5 Ephesians 13 Philippians 3 Colossians 5 1 Thessalonians 4 2 Thessalonians 2 2 Timothy 2 Philemon 1 1 Peter 2 1 John 20 Revelation 1 Total 95 This mistranslation perverts the good news about the Christ. (Galatians 1:6-9)
Respectfully,
AuldSoul -
Brigid
For anything written in hebrew (Torah/or OT), I'm gonna go with the source, so give me the TANAKH any ole day. For the aramaic/greek NT, I suppose the NWT is my bible of choice. Though I like the King James for the Psalmist's poetry. Yes, along with Bucklands Big Book of Witchcraft, Crowley's Book of Lies, and the Mystical Kaballah, I do read the bible. I have quite the interesting library. It almost rivals Daystar's for diversity and overall weirdness.
You can imagine what dinner conversations are like between us.
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JWdaughter
The Bible can be translated in more than one way and be entirely 'accurate'. All of those accurate enough translations can then be interpreted in MYRIAD ways. To me, all of this means about as much as a person who gets a degree in Shakespeare. They get in groups with other shakeperean scholars and delve into the deeper meaning of what HE was really trying to say. They deny that he ever had coninuity issues or historical accuracy issues. But they are scholars of fiction. So I take it for what it is. If there is a God that takes all this seriously, he made a mess of things. Thats what I think. Sorry, I have nothing more to offer your serious question. I am pretty disillusioned with religion altogether and while I loathe the WT society particularly, I think religion is pretty sucky generally. And the Bible is an interesting collection of cultural history, myths, and morals.
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Death to the Pixies
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
Hi Nark, I thnk you are being uncharitable, read the above closer you will see that he is not saying theology is out of his concern, but is pointing out that at John 8:58 that it is not this amazing super-title at every step necessarily. You might see this point better if you give us your translation of John 14:9. Since the standard translation is ungrammatical (and it is) why let a debate-able theology be the final guide in your translation when it only leads to bad english?
Basically, my question, why is it a dumb point to make in reference to john 8:58, but not John 14:9?
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daystar
You can imagine what dinner conversations are like between us.
LOL!
Daystar: "Each of us sex leaves a larger or smaller footprint sex upon the collective sex influence sex mankind has upon itself... sex... dependant upon how driven, willful, disciplined, sexy, etc. each individual is. You might say we each have a sex sphere of influence to go along sex with our sphere of perception, one directed outward sex, the other, inward."
Brigid: "Yes, sex, I agree. I'll quote <that guy you often quote> sex, who says sex sex sexity sex sex!"
Daystar: "Oh baby... talk dirty to me!"
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Narkissos
Terry,
Thank you.
DttP,
Hi Nark, I thnk you are being uncharitable
Perhaps I should have broken your quotation down in my reply. What I found most irritatingly dumb, from a literary perspective, is the (non-theological) part about word order -- as if the translator's role was to reduce the text to its minimal meaning in the micro-context (I was around even before Abraham) and then put it into the plainest English form of indicative expression, without wondering if it suits the larger context, genre, language level, or style of the source text. Form and meaning are not as easily separable as the functional equivalence positivists of the 60's/70's would have us believe.
Back to theology, I think that it cannot be easily separated from the translation process either. Bible translation is an integral part of the so-called "hermeneutic circle"; interpretation necessarily occurs both upstream and downstream of it.
Side story: the other day my wife (who is a piano teacher) told me about one student who had started working on a new piece. After he played, she remarked he had missed the accidentals. He replied, "I know, I just learn the piece without them and I'll add them later". Which is, of course, musically inept -- the piece "without" the accidental is not the piece and makes no musical "sense". Translating a Bible text without the theology is a similar mistake I think.
What signals a theologically significant use of egô eimi in John is not a single instance but an iterative network: because the phrase is repeated as a leitmotiv, in some micro-contexts unremarkably at first (the idiomatic absolutes of 4:26; 6:20; 8:28; 13: 9:9, and the predicatives in 6:35,41,48,51; 8:12,18; 10:7,9,11,14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1,5), in others very conspicuously (8:24,28,58 -- I do include this one for the tense; 13:19; 18:5ff, cf. v. 6!) a pattern gradually emerges to consciousness; this in turn reflects back (because a Gospel is not a text to be read/heard just once) on even the occurrences which might have been deemed unremarkable at first reading/hearing. This, of course, is only possible in translation if the translator doesn't carelessly (or willfully) break the chain of formal consistency. Which will fatally happen if s/he just translates every micro-context idiomatically in the target language, disregarding (hence destroying) the network effect in the broader context.
In this case it seems to me that BeDuhn candidly, though shortsightedly, defends a translation which is everything but candid. Because imho "good English" was the least of worries of the NW translators when they came to John 8:58 (I'm being uncharitable again ).
I'm not sure why you bring up John 14:9... is it for eimi (not egô eimi), or for "whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (which is hardly a translation problem)?
Assuming that it is the former, I would think that a mere occurrence of eimi (without the egô which is unnecessary, hence emphatic and remarkable, in Greek) doesn't belong to the "network" I tried to describe above; so there is no "chain" broken by using the present perfect. (Btw, we don't have any tense problem here in French, as we use the present in that case: "I have been here for 3 years" = "Je suis ici depuis 3 ans"). Theology aside, the grammatical case is different from 8:58; it would be closer if the latter read "since before Abraham came to be (I have been)".
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Mile 0
I agree with lady lee, and I wish I had the links handy (if they still exist), but on the old H2O site a few years ago there were examples posted where the Society made subtle changes in grammer to fit their doctrine. There are posters here I would imagine that know this stuff already, but if I can find the links I'll post them. Here is a quick example of how a small change can make a huge difference. Can't recall the exact verse etc., but it's when Jesus is hanging just before he dies he says "Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise."
Now I'll place the coma in a different place.
"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
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