Howard and Trobisch mention, among other things, verses that make better sense with the divine name; the use of nomina sacra; and the high number of textual variants involving theos and kyrios.
The New World Translation Dirty Dozen...lurkers will love it!........
by oompa 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Leolaia
donny....Versions may certainly constitute valid textual witnesses, especially if they are early or attest the Vorlage underlying the translation. The LXX is an extremely important witness to the text of the OT; even though it is Greek it is older than the MT by a thousand years and represents an early text tradition cognate to that of the Palestinian and Babylonian traditions. The Old Latin, Syriac, and Coptic are also important early witnesses to the NT text. But if the "J references" are "restorations" as the Society regards them, these would not attest an underlying Vorlage containing the tetragrammaton but represent changes to the text.
There is no external textual evidence for the tetragram, but there is internal textual evidence, such as Howard and Trobisch cite in making their argument for the tetragram in the original NT. You may not find the evidence compelling, but that is to say a different thing.
slimboyfat....The argument has certainly been made but the variation of theos/Khristos/kurios in particular passages imo is not so much evidence of an original presence of YHWH in the text as it is a textual feature that the hypothesis could potentially explain; the evidence only goes as far as allowing certain conjectural emendations to be made (which Howard does rather tentatively). But an emendation is not a textual variant; the variation is at most indirect evidence whose significance depends somewhat on the hypothesis itself.
And indeed the grounds for the emendations are imo not very compelling. Howard proposes emendations at Romans 10:16-17 and 14:10-11 on the basis of the variation mentioned earlier, but there are other internal features in these chapters that weigh strongly in favor of the originality of kurios, e.g. (1) the kurios in the citation of Joel 2:32 LXX in 10:13 is closely tied to the title kurios pantón "Lord of all" (attested elsewhere at Esther 4:17 LXX, Acts 10:36, Justin Martyr, Dialogue 127.2, Acts of Philip 20:11, etc.; compare also Galatians 4:1) in the preceding verse because kurios in both verses is the object of epikaleomai, (2) epikaleomai as the act leading to "salvation" in 10:13 is also connected with the confession of Jesus as kurios in v. 9, and (3) the use of kurios throughout 14:6-11 motivates the verb kuriuó in v. 9 which certainly has kurios as its antecedent. These features imo far outweigh the far slighter grounds for conjectural emendation, which should mainly be used as a last resort when the text is incomprehensible (whereas in these cases kurios makes sense where it stands). My main criticism of the NWT is that it prefers conjecture over the overwhelming testimony of extant MSS and it inserts "Jehovah" into the text on a highly arbitrary basis.
The point of using the J documents is clearly spelled out in the NWT appendix. The argument is made on other grounds that the tetragram stood in the original text. The J documents are referred to because they indicate where other translators have felt it appropriate to use the divine name, they are not cited to imply that they are earlier or superior witnesses, but because they indicate how other translators have dealt with the same problem of where to restore the divine name.
Yes, I understand how they describe the methods, but what I was trying to say was that 1) the "J versions" cannot be cited as textual sources if they wanted to, and 2) the "J versions" are presented in a way that makes them look "as if" they were textual witnesses, even if there were not used utilized that way in preparing the translation. To give an analoguous example, in support of their "a god" rendering of John 1:1 the Society mentioned Johannas Greber's translation and The New Testament, in an Improved Version, upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome's New Translation as two other translations that have dealt with the problem in the same way. But in no sense are these two translations "sources" for the NWT; at least they should not be. Now with respect to the "J versions", we read in Appendix 1D of the NWT that "We have looked for agreement from the Hebrew versions to confirm our rendering" (p. 1565). Fair enough. But then on the same page, they say that the "J versions" are listed as "sources" supporting the renderings. So are they only parallel translations confirming the rendering after the fact, or are these textual sources cited as the support for the renderings? The footnotes make them look misleadingly like the textual sources mentioned alongside them. Some examples from the KIT:
Revelation 18:8: Jehovah, J 7, 8, 13, 14, 16-18 ; the Lord,
Revelation 19:1: To our God, to the Lord our God, Textus Receptus and some cursive MSS; to Jehovah our God, J 7, 8, 13, 14, 16 .Whether or not they were really utilized as sources in the preparation of the translation, the "J versions" are here presented as if they are witnesses comparable to ancient Greek codices and other early versions (the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta); "Jehovah" in the first case and "to Jehovah our God" in the second sure look as if these are presented as textual variants alongside other the variants attested in the MSS.
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Narkissos
Stepping back, I find it interesting that basically the same (imo mis-)appreciation of context and rhetorics can be produced in the construction of a comprehensive scholarly thesis as in the defense of a religious doctrine -- in both cases the approach is transversal to the texts (zooming in on one one passage and then jumping to another) rather than cursory. What seems to make better sense from a synoptic perspective over a patchwork of "samples" may still make the poorest sense in one particular context. Whence the frequent frustration of the translator as he comes back from comprehensive lexical surveys to the texts: it looked compelling but it doesn't work.
There are quite a few passages in the NT where the use of a divine name could make sense (were there any material evidence for it): some OT quotations in Matthew or the infancy stories in Luke 1--2 for instance. In those passages the NWT use of "Jehovah," although textually unwarranted, doesn't alter or obscure the meaning at all. This is definitely not the case in Romans 10 or 14, nor with most Pauline uses of kurios.
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quietlyleaving
here is a nugget for lurkers
http://jehovah.net.au/jehovah.html
When adding the word Jehovah to the New Testament the Watchtower makes an unsubstantiated assumption based on how they wish to interpret doctrine. This is a serious misrepresentation of scripture. Doctrine should be formed by scripture; scripture should not be changed to support doctrine. Inaccurately inserting the word Jehovah into the New Testament changes the meaning of Jesus message to his followers in a number of ways. One important affect is that the Watchtower attempts to use the word Jehovah to prove that only Jehovah's Witnesses will be saved. The book Reasoning from the Scriptures claims use of God's name is one of the 10 things that identify true worshippers. Watchtower publications quote Romans 10:13 to show that use of the word Jehovah is a requirement for salvation. Yet in Romans 10:13 the word used in this passage is not YHWH but Kupiov or Kurios - Lord. Romans 10:9 states "Jesus is Lord (Kurios)" and so it follows that Romans 10:13 refers to Jesus and identifying Jesus is the requirement for salvation. Barnes in his Notes on the New Testament says regarding Romans 10:13, "It is clear, from what follows, that the apostle applies this to Jesus Christ; and this is one of the numerous instances in which the writers of the New Testament apply to him expressions which in the Old Testament are applicable to God" (P.625).
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Morgana
Modern Hebrew Bibles as printed today in Israel - and in this case, I'm talking about Bibles comprising both the OT in the accepted Masoretic Biblical Hebrew (BH) text as well as the NT in (moderately modern) Hebrew - and their liberal readers (orthodox Jews would of course not use such a 'combined' Bible) have no problem with the divine name. I have two different editions, one from 1966 with the Koren Tanakh (i.e., OT) text and the Hebrew NT text as translated by Franz Delitzsch, and the other one (quite beautiful in leather zipper case) from 1991 with the BHS 1977 OT and the UBS (United Bible Society in Israel) NT 1976, revised 1991.
Both NT texts can be considered thoroughly researched translations and are generally accepted as the best possible text version of the NT in Hebrew according to current scholarship. They both use the Tetragrammation (i.e., the letters Yod-He-Waw-He) for the Greek kyrios with only minor variations starting with Mat 1:20 in many places in the NT text where there are either literal quotes from the OT (e.g., Romans 10:13 is Joel 2:32, so there should be no dissens on this one - the name belongs there) or direct allusions, but also e.g. in Romans 14 in a quite "flowing" way going from YHWH to Adonai (Lord) where it feels much more natural in the framework of the Hebrew text than it would in any English translation. (Of course, this use of the name and the "sliding" transition to "Lord" might well imply some sort of identity or "intersection" (in the math sense) between YHWH and the "Adonai" referred to here.)
Also keep in mind that for the Hebrew reader (also the modern one!) the divine name is unpronouncable for a grammatical reason: it is a grammatically non-existent present tense form of the verb "hayah" (inf. lihyot = "to be"). In Ex 3:14,15 when God reveals his name to Moses, he first uses the usual future tense EHYEH (I will be), but then goes over to the (non-existent) present tense form of the same verb, YHWH.
The divine name is a verb, though in a grammatical form that as such does not exist in the Hebrew language except as the divine name.
(Actually, linguistically it is a bit more complicated because Biblical Hebrew (BH) uses tenses in a different way from modern Hebrew - it knows perfect and imperfect forms but no "tenses" per se in our modern sense. But I think you get the idea...)
(Excuse my poor transliteration of Hebrew, but for some reason Hebrew writing seems not to work here on this board.)
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quietlyleaving
Morgana, very interesting, were those hebrew bibles produced by christians or by Jews? And do they have footnotes?
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Narkissos
Morgana
They both use the Tetragrammation (i.e., the letters Yod-He-Waw-He) for the Greek kyrios with only minor variations starting with Mat 1:20 in many places in the NT text where there are either literal quotes from the OT (e.g., Romans 10:13 is Joel 2:32, so there should be no dissens on this one - the name belongs there) or direct allusions, but also e.g. in Romans 14 in a quite "flowing" way going from YHWH to Adonai (Lord) where it feels much more natural in the framework of the Hebrew text than it would in any English translation. (Of course, this use of the name and the "sliding" transition to "Lord" might well imply some sort of identity or "intersection" (in the math sense) between YHWH and the "Adonai" referred to here.)
Since the NT writers did not write in Hebrew and did not quote from a Hebrew text, I can't see any solid reason why their quotations should conform to any extant edition of the Hebrew Bible (OT) in a Hebrew version of their original (Greek) work.
However I'd be curious to see how the Hebrew translators managed in texts like Romans 10 and 14 (if anyone can provide a scan, a link or a transliteration) -- whether the argument is lost (as it is in the NWT) or not...
Btw, it is by no means certain that the root hwh from which yhwh is thought to derive is simply a variant for the classical Hebrew hyh. The theological "explanation" of yhwh in Exodus 3 may rest on a pun rather than a real etymology (as is often the case in Biblical "explanations" of personal names).
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possible-san
I think that I already linked and show.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/173351/1/BTW-Jude-is-the-One-Hit-Wonder-of-the-NWT-BibleWell, that scanned picture (Hebrew New Testament) is usually protected under copyright.
The best choice is that you buy that translation.possible
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Narkissos
The only one I can read so far is http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/nthebrew/romans.pdf which seems to be Delitzsch's.
I transliterate from chapter 10:
v. 9 ki 'im bephikhâ tôdeh shè-yeshua`hu' hâ-'âdôn... tiwâshea`
v. 12... ki 'âdôn 'echad lekullam...
v. 13 ki kol-'asher yiqrâ' be-shem yhwh yimmalet
At the level of writing the verbal link is broken as in the NWT -- it can be restored though if the reader thinks or reads aloud 'adonay in v. 13.
There's no problem in 14:8ff as the Tetragrammaton is not used.
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Narkissos
The other one I can read is a very loose paraphrase (http://www.afii.org/hebtexts/hebrom.pdf), e.g. 10:9 which reads approximately: "For if you make the confession 'with your mouth' to our Lord Jesus, the anointed king... you will be delivered and saved" (!) -- In v. 13 there is neither yhwh nor 'adôn, but h' (probably standing for ha-shem).
In chapter 14, oddly enough, the same h' is used in v. 8 ("to the glory of h'"), while v. 9 uses a long periphrase "that he might have ha-samkhuth (dominion?) over the living and over the dead"...