Ok, I was doing some reseach and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I have so far. We know that The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures is very close to the critical works of Westcott and Hort. These men believed that there wasn't a firey hell, that we don't have a soul, Jesus was not God, ect. Now the early manuscripts of the bible that they used for translation didn't all match even in the 4th and 5th century. So these men may have been biased when choosing what to except and what not to expect. Since the late 1800's when there work was finished older manuscripts have been discovered. Does anyone know what contradictions if any exist between these older writings and the works of Westcott and Hort? Considering The New World Translation is 99% the same as their works and Jehovah's witnesses have many of the same beliefs as these men. I believe even small grammar differences in the book of Revelation could change the meanings significantly and I'd like to know what these are if they exsist. Does anyone know anything about this subject?
Question about the New World Translation? Westcott & Hort?
by jakesnake82 3 Replies latest watchtower bible
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BluesBrother
Good question Jake, and I wish I knew the answer....btt
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Deputy Dog
Jake
Maybe these guys can help. Pierpont and Robinson From: http://rpbyztxt.com/
In contrast, Robinson and Pierpont have applied many of the same methods of textual criticism to their task, but without the anti- Byzantine bias. Their method of "reasoned transmissionalism" is based on the wider scope of manuscript transmission throughout history.
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My Struggle
We know that The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures is very close to the critical works of Westcott and Hort.
Very close in what way? They are not very close in the translation of the Greek into English. Many bible translations would come up with a completely different English rendering using the Westcott and Hort Greek. One that is based on the Westcott and Hort Greek is the Scofield Bible. Here is a link to it... http://www.studylight.org/com/srn/view.cgi?book=joh&chapter=001 This does not cover all the scripture just a few...
It would be very advantageous in your search for understanding and truth to see how much the Scofield bible differs from the NWT, even though both based on the same Greek they vary greatly in the English. Many of the NWT key scriptures that support the WTBTS doctrine are not valid even when translating from the Westcott and Hort Greek. There is no support, no matter what Greek is used, for most (and it may be all) the unique translations of the NWT.
These men believed that there wasn't a firey hell, that we don't have a soul, Jesus was not God, ect. Now the early manuscripts of the bible that they used for translation didn't all match even in the 4th and 5th century. So these men may have been biased when choosing what to except and what not to expect.
I think you meant to say "So these men may have been biased when choosing what to accept and what not to accept."
First about thier beliefs. Yes, it is true that they had many beliefs that look similar to those of JW's on the surface. For instance the rejection of the Deity of Christ, which the JW's affirm. Though the reasons for the beliefs are quite different. Westcott and Hort say it is in part because Jesus never directly says he is God (which he never directly said I am "ho theos" or the God. He did apply one of God's names, 'I AM' to himself at John 8:58). They also say it is because the bible never links the 'Word' of John 1:1 with Jesus Christ (which is such an absurd assertion b/c in v. 14 the Word is obviously Christ). On the other hand, the WTBTS claims about Jesus come to the same conclusion using different logic. Unlike Westcott and Hort they say that Jesus is the Word, but WTBTS claims there is a mistranlation of John 1:1 in which the Word should not be translated as being God. Even Westcott and Hort did not make the same claims that the WTBTS does when regarding their Greek translation into English. Now onto the manuscripts (MSS) they used to compile their Greek. They mostly used the Codex Vaticanus and as a supplement the Codex Sinaiticus. At the time these were some of the oldest MSS known, but since that point many older MSS have been found. There is much debate about how accurate the two early MSS are. Here is an fairly good synopsis I found :
Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph)
This codex was produced in the 4 th century. In his book Let's Weigh the Evidence, Barry Burton writes of Codex Sinaiticus:
Quote: "The Sinaiticus is a manuscript that was found in 1844 in a trash pile in St.Catherine's Monastery near Mt. Sinai, by a man named Mr Tischendorf. It contains nearly all of the New Testament plus it adds the 'Shepherd of Hermes' and the 'Epistle of Barnabas' to the New Testament. The Sinaiticus isextremely unreliable, proven by examining the manuscript itself. John Burgon spent years examining every available manuscript of the New Testament. He writes about Sinaiticus... 'On many occasions 10, 20, 30, 40 words are dropped through very carelessness. Letters, words or even whole sentences are frequently written twice over, or begun and immediately cancelled; while that gross blunder, whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same words as the clause preceding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament.
THAT'S NOT ALL!
On nearly every page of the manuscript there are corrections and revisions, done by 10 different people. Some of these corrections were made about the same time that it was copied, but most of them were made in the 6th and 7th century.
… Phillip Mauro, a brilliant lawyer who was admitted to the bar of the US Supreme Court in April 1892, wrote a book called "WhichVersion" in the early 1900s. He writes concerning the Sinaiticus… 'From these facts, therefore, we declare: first that the impurity of the Codex Sinaiticus, in every part of it, was fully recognized by those who were best acquainted with it, and that from the very beginning until the time when it was finally cast aside as worthless for any practical purpose.' " (Ref:C1)In his excellent book An Understandable History Of The Bible, Rev. Samuel Gipp writes of Codex Sinaiticus:
Quote: "One of the MSS is called Sinaiticus and is represented by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph. This MS from all outward appearances looks very beautiful. It is written in book form (codex) on vellum. It contains 147 1/2 leaves. The pages are 15" by 13 1/2" with four columns of 48 lines per page. It contains many spurious books such as the 'Shepherd of Hermes,' the 'Epistle of Barnabas' and even the Didache. The great Greek scholar, Dr Scrivener, points this out in his historic work A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus. He speaks of correctional alterations made to the MS: 'The Codex is covered with such alterations... brought in by at least ten different revisers, some of them systematically spread over every page, others occasional or limited to separated portions of the MS, many of these being contemporaneous with the first writer, but the greater part belonging to the sixth or seventh century.' " (Ref:B5)
Codex Vaticanus (B)
The second major manuscript of the Minority Textis known as Codex Vaticanus, often referred to as 'B'. This codex was also produced in the 4 th century. It was found over a thousand years later in 1481 in the Vatican library in Rome, where it is currently held. It is written on expensive vellum, a fine parchment originally from the skin of calf or antelope. Some authorities claim that it was one of a batch of 50 Bibles ordered from Egypt by the Roman Emperor Constantine; hence its beautiful appearance and the expensive skins which were used for its pages. But alas! this manuscript, like its corrupt Egyptian partner Sinaiticus (Aleph) is also riddled with omissions, insertions and amendments.Of Codex Vaticanus Samuel Gipp writes on page 72:
Quote: "This codex omits many portions of Scripture vital to Christian doctrine. Vaticanus omits Genesis 1.1 through Genesis 46:28; Psalms 106 through 138; Matthew 16:2,3; Romans 16:24; the Pauline Pastoral Epistles; Revelation; and everything in Hebrews after 9:14. It seems suspicious indeed that a MS possessed by the Roman Catholic church omits the portion of the book of Hebrews which exposes the 'mass' as totally useless (Please read Hebrews 10:10-12). The 'mass' in conjunction with the false doctrine of purgatory go hand-in-hand to form a perpetual money making machine for Rome. Without one or the other, the Roman Catholic Church would go broke!
It also omits portions of the Scripture telling of the creation (Genesis), the prophetic details of the crucifixion (Psalm 22), and, of course, the portion which prophesies of the destruction of Babylon (Rome), the great whore of Revelation chapter 17.
Vaticanus , though intact physically, is found to be in poor literary quality. Dr Martin declares, 'B' exhibits numerous places where the scribe has written the same word or phrase twice in succession. Dr J Smythe states, 'From one end to the other, the whole manuscript has been travelled over by the pen of some… scribe of about the tenth century.' If Vaticanus was considered a trustworthy text originally, the mass of corrections and scribal changes obviously render its testimony highly suspicious and questionable."
Rev. Gipp continues on page 73:
Quote: "The corrupt and unreliable nature of these two MSS (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) is best summed up by one who has thoroughly examined them, John W Burgon: 'The impurity of the text exhibited by these codices is not a question of opinion but fact...In the Gospels alone, Codex B(Vatican) leaves out words or whole clauses no less than 1,491 times. It bears traces of careless transcriptions on every page… If we are to be thorough and discriminatory in our evaluation of the true New Testament text, then we must not -- we cannot -- overlook these facts.' How did these MSS come into being? How did it happen that they should be beautiful to the eye, yet within contain such vile and devastating corruption? It seems that these uncial MSS along with the papyrus MSS included in this category all resulted from a revision of the true, or Universal Text. This revision was enacted in Egypt by Egyptian scribes! " (Ref:B6)
Rev. Gipp continues:
Quote: "So we see that once a pure copy of the Universal Text (Textus Receptus) had been carried down into Egypt, it was recopied. During the process of this recopying, it was revised by men who did not revere it as truly the Word of God. This text was examined by the critical eye of Greek philosophy and Egyptian morals. These men saw nothing wrong with putting the Book in subjection to their opinion instead of their opinion being in subjection to the book. This process produced a text which was local to the educational centre of Alexandria, Egypt. This text went no further than southern Italy where the Roman Catholic Church found its unstable character perfect for overthrowing the true Word of God which was being used universally by the true Christians." (Ref:B7) The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible has this to say about CodexVaticanus (B) on page 624 under the article Versions.
Quote: " It should be noted, however, that there is no prominent Biblical MS. in which there occur such gross cases of misspelling, faulty grammar, and omission, as in B." (Ref:H2) Barry Burton comments further:
Quote: "For one thing…Vaticanus and Sinaiticus disagree with each other over 3000 times in the gospels alone…
Facts about the Vaticanus."It was written on fine vellum (tanned animal skins) and remains in excellent condition. It was found in the Vatican Library in 1481 AD. In spite of being in excellent condition, it omits Genesis 1:1-Gen.46:28, Psalm 106-138, Matt.16:2-3, the Pauline pastoral Epistles, Hebrews 9:14-13:25, and all of Revelation. These parts were probably left out on purpose."
"Besides all that - in the gospels alone it leaves out 237 words, 452 clauses and 748 whole sentences, which hundreds of later copies agree together as having the same words in the same places, the same clauses in the same places and the same sentences in the same places... The Vaticanus was available to the translators of the King James Bible, but they did not use it because they knew it is unreliable." (Ref:C2)
Dean Burgon comments on Codices Sinaiticus (Aleph)and Vaticanus.
Quote: "Compromise of any sort between the two conflicting parties, is impossible; for they simply contradict one another. Codd.B and Aleph are either amongst the purist of manuscripts,- or else they are among the very foulest. The Text of Drs.Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared,- or else it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred Autographs,- or furthest from them."… "There is no room for both opinions; and there cannot exist any middle view." (Ref: P3) I know that was lengthy, I apologize, but I believe that it is helpful in understanding your questions. I also don't believe that they picked these MSS because they allowed for any translations that allowed for their doctrine. I believe the only reason they used these MSS is becasue they seemed to be the best MSS at the time.
Since the late 1800's when there work was finished older manuscripts have been discovered. Does anyone know what contradictions if any exist between these older writings and the works of Westcott and Hort? Considering The New World Translation is 99% the same as their works and Jehovah's witnesses have many of the same beliefs as these men. I believe even small grammar differences in the book of Revelation could change the meanings significantly and I'd like to know what these are if they exsist. Does anyone know anything about this subject?
Yes, I believe that the above has adequately shown that even their MSS were flawed and those MSS are no longer used as the base for any bible translation. But as for their compilation into the Westcott and Hort Greek, yes there are even more errors that they made that went beyond what the MSS allowed. None of these changes they made directly supports thier doctrine or the doctrine of the WTBTS. I want you to understand this point: The MSS Westcott and Hort used were flawed and their compilation and translation into Greek was further flawed, STILL using their Greek as a base you would not come up with anything close to the NWT!!! The same doctrines that are affirmed in the majority of Christian faiths such as salvation to all mankind, the heavenly awaiting for the saved, the grace by which we are save, the trinity, souls, paradise as heaven, etc. would be affirmed in the Westcott and Hort Greek. The NWT would have come up with their translation regardless of what base they used for their Greek. They had no base for the unique translations they have made, other than it serves to better fit their doctrine. I hope this has cleared up something for you, thought I really hope that it leads to more questions... which can only be answered by our Father and Savior. Know through this that your Lord is with you always.