Does anyone know which other Bibles translate John 1:1 as "the Word was a god"? besides the NWT...
Just saw with MY OWN eyes the JWs have THEIR OWN Bible!
by FollowedMyHeart 34 Replies latest watchtower bible
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lovelylil
Here is a list of 6 other scriptures changed in the NWT taken from the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry Website or CARM
This is their site; http://carm.org/
Gen. 1:1-2 - "In [the] beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of [the] watery deep; and God's active force was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters," (New World Translation, emphasis added).- The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society denies that the Holy Spirit is alive, the third person of the Trinity. Therefore, they have changed the correct translation of "...the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters," to say "...and God's active force was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters."
Zech. 12:10 - In this verse God is speaking and says, "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son" ( Zech. 12:10, NASB ).
- The Jehovah's Witnesses change the word "me" to "the one" so that it says in their Bible, "...they will look upon the one whom they have pierced..."
Since the Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus is God in flesh, then Zech. 12:10 would present obvious problems--so they changed it. - John 1:1 - They mistranslate the verse as "a god." Again it is because they deny who Jesus is and must change the Bible to make it agree with their theology. The Jehovah's Witness version is this: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god."
- Col. 1:15-17 - The word "other" is inserted 4 times. It is not in the original Greek, nor is it implied. This is a section where Jesus is described as being the creator of all things. Since the Jehovah's Witness organization believes that Jesus is created, they have inserted the word "other" to show that Jesus was before all "other" things, implying that He is created.
- There are two Greek words for "other": heteros, and allos. The first means another of a different kind, and the second means another of the same kind. Neither is used at all in this section of scripture. The Jehovah's Witness have changed the Bible to make it fit their aberrant theology.
- Heb. 1:6 - In this verse they translate the Greek word for worship, proskuneo, as "obeisance." Obeisance is a word that means to honor, show respect, even bow down before someone. Since Jesus, to them, is created, then he cannot be worshiped. They have also done this in other verses concerning Jesus, i.e., Matt. 2:2 , 11 ; 14:33 ; 28:9 .
- Heb. 1:8 - This is a verse where God the Father is calling Jesus God: "But about the Son he says, 'Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.'" Since the Jehovah's Witnesses don't agree with that they have changed the Bible, yet again, to agree with their theology. They have translated the verse as "...God is your throne..." The problem with the Jehovah's Witness translation is that this verse is a quote from Psalm 45:6 which, from the Hebrew, can only be translated as "...Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom." To justify their New Testament translation they actually changed the OT verse to agree with their theology, too!
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lovelylil
I can't seem to remove the numbers in the above text, just ignore it and read the text itself as the numbers 1,2,3, etc. do not line up with the text properly. You get the gist by reading it though. Lilly
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wyorobert
"In this case, the recording and possible carrying out of a foolish vow in no way proves that God caused human sacrifice"
You can't say that God didn't require it. Jephthah had a contract with God, otherwise why would it be mentioned in the Bible?
If God helped him win the war with the Ammonites, he would give the first one out of his house as a burnt offering. That was the deal and if it's in the Bible and you take it literally, then he offered his daughter as a sacrifice, just as it says.
If you go off on a tangent and say that the Bible isn't literal, then you can trump any discussion with that comment.
If the Bible discussed a human sacrifice in the Old Testament, then what I'm curious about is why did the Witnesses and other religions, feel they had the right to change it, or just dismiss it. It seems to me that it is clearly stated and can only be interpreted as a contract with God that was fulfilled.
I'm only commenting because I'm hoping that issue will be addressed. Who has the right to make a change to the Bible, just because the original story doesn't seem logical. Just throw the rest of it away if you do that.
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WontLeave
Christ's identifying himself as the I AM
"I am" is not a title or a name, it's just the way the KJV translated a Greek phrase in one of its many attempts to establish the Trinitarian doctrine of the Church of England. This is why Trinitarians love the KJV; because it was "translated" by rabid Trinitarians. Of all the evidence presented for the Trinity doctrine, this one is far and away the most ridiculous and stupid. Other Trinitarian versions kept this wording as a Trinity "proof text" and followed suit. Many even capitalize it as a proper noun to force the point, even though Greek would require a definite article to translate it that way. Trinitarian doctrine being shoehorned into John 8:58 is a gross violation of the original meaning. The idea that Jesus was trying to identify himself as "the I Am", as if there is such a thing is preposterous and just plain silly. For crying out loud, it's part of a sentence and Trinitarians just pull out half of it as if the other half wasn't even there.
"Before Abraham was born, 'I Am'." - TEV
The TEV form of John 8:58 strays from normal English usage in word order and verbal tense complementarity. That is, it puts the subject after the predicate, which is not the normal word order of English sentences, and it mixes a present tense verb with a past tense verb in a totally ungrammatical construction. Most other versions have the same problem. - Truth in Translation, by Jason Beduhn
I already was before Abraham was born. - WE
I was in existence before Abraham was ever born. - LB
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J. Hofer
"a god" does not deny deity. it's the same as getting into an argument about socrates having been human or a human.
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djeggnog
@jonathan dough:
Whereas the great majority of Bibles interpret John 1:1 as "...the Word was God," the New World Translation claims the "Word was a god," thereby denying the deity of Christ.... Christ's identifying himself as the I AM and deity is changed to "I have been" at John 8:58.
How exactly does rendering John 1:1c ("... the Word was a god") deny Jesus' deity?
@WontLeave:
"I am" is not a title or a name, it's just the way the KJV translated a Greek phrase in one of its many attempts to establish the Trinitarian doctrine of the Church of England. This is why Trinitarians love the KJV; because it was "translated" by rabid Trinitarians. Of all the evidence presented for the Trinity doctrine, this one is far and away the most ridiculous and stupid.... Trinitarian doctrine being shoehorned into John 8:58 is a gross violation of the original meaning. The idea that Jesus was trying to identify himself as "the I Am", as if there is such a thing is preposterous and just plain silly....
The TEV form of John 8:58 strays from normal English usage.... [I]t puts the subject after the predicate, which is not the normal word order of English sentences, and it mixes a present tense verb with a past tense verb in a totally ungrammatical construction.... - Truth in Translation, by Jason [BeDuhn]
Professor Jason D. BeDuhn, a Greek scholar and associate professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University, posted the following regarding @jonathan dough's objection to the NWT's rendering of John 1:1c (slightly edited):
The Greek phrase is "theos en ho logos," which translated word for word is "a god was the word." Greek has only a definite article, like our "the," it does not have an [indefinite] article, like our "a" or "an." If a noun is definite, it has the definite article "ho." If a noun is indefinite, no article is used. In the phrase from John 1:1, "ho logos" is "the word." If it was written simply "logos," without the definite article "ho," we would have to translate it as "a word."
So we are not really "inserting" an indefinite article when we translate Greek nouns without the definite article into English, we are simply obeying rules of English grammar that tell us that we cannot say "Snoopy is dog," but must say "Snoopy is a dog." Now in English we simply say "God"; we do not say "The God." But in Greek, when you mean to refer to the one supreme God, instead of one of the many other beings that were called "gods," you would have to say "The God": "ho theos." Even a monotheistic Christian, who [believes] there is only one God and no others, would be forced to say in Greek "The God," as John and Paul and the other writers of the New Testament normally do. If you leave off the article in a phrase like John 1:1, then you are saying "a god."
(There are some exceptions to this rule: Greek has what are called noun cases, which means the nouns change form depending on how they are used in a sentence. So, if you want to say "of God," which is "theou," you don't need the article. But in the nominative case, which is the one in John 1:1, you have to have the article.) So what does John mean by saying "the word was a god"? He is classifying Jesus in a specific category of beings. There are plants and animals and humans and gods, and so on.
By calling the Word "a god," John wants to tell his readers that the Word (which becomes Jesus when it takes flesh) belongs to the divine class of things. Notice the word order: "a god was the word." We can't say it like this in English, but you can in Greek. The subject can be after the verb and the object before the verb, the opposite of how we do it in English (subject-verb-object). Research has shown that when ancient Greek writers put a object-noun first in a sentence like John 1:1 (a "be"-verb sentence: "x" is "y"), without the definite article, they are telling us that the subject belongs to the class represented by the object-noun: "The car is a Volkswagen."
In English we would accomplish the same thing by using what we call predicate adjectives. "John is a smart person" = "John is smart." So we would tend to say "The word was divine," rather than "The word was a god." That is how I would translate this phrase.
"The word was a god" is more literal, and an improvement over "The word was God," but it raises more problems, since to a modern reader it implies polytheism. No one in John's day would have understood the phrase to mean "The word was God" - the language does not convey that sense, and conceptually it is difficult to grasp such an idea, especially since that author has just said that the word was with God. Someone is not with himself, he is with some other. John clearly differentiates between God from the Word.
As to the point you make regarding the NWT's rendering of John 8:58, I concur, @WontLeave, and so would Dr. BeDuhn as well. At John 8:58, Jesus was merely responding to the question that urged his response regarding his age when compared to Abraham's. (John 8:56) Jesus had just told the Pharisees, "Abraham ... rejoiced greatly in the prospect of seeing my day," for he put faith in God's promise to make Abraham "a great nation ... and all the families of the ground will certainly bless themselves" "by means of your seed." (Genesis 12:2, 3; 22:18) This is what Jesus meant and it is apparent that @jonathan dough doesn't appreciate at all what Jesus was really saying at John 8:58.
@palmtree67:
This is a perfect example of why I love this forum. No JW does this kind of research, because they are not allowed to look at outside sources. Or even THINK for themselves.
I suppose I would have to know what you mean when you used the word "research" in your post. Do you have any clue as to the extent of the "research" that was done by @FollowedMyHeart? It is apparent to me that you didn't take care to read with care what it was @FollowedMyHeart actually wrote, but I have three (3) clues as to the kind of research that was done. First, there was at least a video involved in the "kind of research" that @FollowedMyHeart produced by Non Stamp Collector (NSC):
I watched Non Stamp Collector's Jephthah video and it didn't go according to the story, so I thought.
Second, @FollowedMyHeart tells us how she went on to read the comments about this video:
I checked the comments on the video expecting to see others complain that he had gotten it wrong. What I found was NSC stating that he had done research etc.
Lastly, @FollowedMyHeart tells us what her conclusions were after she had reviewed the rendering of Judges 11:35 and Judges 11:40 in the NWT with four (4) other Bible translations, the NIV, NASB, NLT and NKJB:
In verse 35, ostracizing is added. Ostracizing is something very different from troubling, devastating, or bringing disaster upon! It is obviously added to help change the story.
Which story is then carried out in verse 40 by saying the the young women would go to give commendation to his daughter. She wasn't dead at all! NO HUMAN SACRIFICE HERE!!!! That, however, is VERY different from commemorating or lamenting her, which makes it obvious that the story states that Jephthah did, in fact, offer his daughter as a BURNT OFFERING!
So now I understand that in order to thank Jah of Armies for His help in killing the Ammonites, Jephthah killed and burnt his daughter!
The mention of "a burnt offering" at Judges 11:31 ("the one coming out, who comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Am'mon, must also become Jehovah's, and I must offer that one up as a burnt offering") is clearly just a figure of speech, for we Judges 11:39, 40, says that "And it came to be a regulation in Israel: From year to year the daughters of Israel would go to give commendation to the daughter of Jeph´thah the Gil´e·ad·ite, four days in the year," which means that not only was Jephthah's daughter not offered up as a human sacrifice, "a burnt offering," but that her willingness to accept the vow made by her father to devote herself to Jehovah's service was commemorated "from year to year ... four days in the year," which "regulation" would not have been a "year to year" event had Jephthah's daughter been dead, offered up as a burnt sacrifice! Jehovah didn't permit Abraham to offer up his only-begotten son to prove his faith, and neither would He permit Jephthah to offer up his only-begotten daughter in keeping with what he had vowed to Jehovah. Jehovah is not less than a man that He would be so stupid as to believe that what Jephthah had vowed to Him wasn't just a figure of speech!
The NIV translates the Hebrew word _akar_ at Judges 11:35 as "devastated," while the NLT use "brought disaster," while both the NASB and NKJV decide to use "trouble" here. My question is, do you even know why the word "ostracize," used in the NWT, is more appropriate? One meaning of the word "ostracize" is to shun someone, but another meaning of the word "ostracize" is to "expel from a community or group," "to drive out," "to oust" or "to dismiss," and, in this case, because 'the one coming out of the doors of his house to meet him upon his return from his fighting against the Ammonites' happened to be Jeththah's own daughter, it turned out that she was the one that Jephthah was "ostracizing," the one that it turned out he was ousting, driving out, dismissing from his household in accord with his vow to Jehovah. A similar Hebrew word _garash_ is used by Abraham's wife, Sarah, at Genesis 21:10, when she decided that Hagar's son, Ishmael, who was also Abraham's wife, wasn't going to become an heir with Isaac. (Genesis 21:10)
I'm pretty sure that like most Jehovah's Witnesses, born-ins or not, @FollowedMyHeart didn't do any real research, and that she based her conclusions on her own understanding of the Scriptures (Proverbs 3:5), and on her own understanding of the meaning of the English-language words she read in these five Bible translations, words that she really didn't understand. Most Jehovah's Witnesses, born-ins or not, tend to think of Hagar as being the Egyptian woman that became Sarah's maidservant by whom Abraham's first child, Ishmael, was born.
It comes as a surprise to many Jehovah's Witnesses, born-in or not, to learn that Hagar, although her status had changed so that she became Abraham's secondary wife, remained Sarah's slave girl (Genesis 16:9), because they don't really think of a concubine as being a wife, nor have they, for the 20, 30, 40, 50 years that they have been Jehovah's Witnesses, born-ins or not, done more than half-read the Bible and half-read our publications that point out what Genesis 16:3 clearly states: That Sarah, Abraham's beloved wife, gave Hagar to "her husband as his wife," and that later both she and Ishmael were summarily ostracized, ousted, driven out, dismissed from Abraham's household.
Do some real research into the meaning of the Hebrew words _akar_ used at Judges 11:35 and _garash_ used at Genesis 21:10. Leah's concubine Zilpah to whom sons #7 and #8, Gad and Asher, respectively, were born, and Rachel's concubine Bilhah to whom sons #5 and #6, Dan and Naphtali, respectively, were born, were both, as were Leah and Rachel, also Jacob's wives, all four of them. Otherwise it would have to be said that these four children of Jacob's would instead have been "sons of fornication" and the Jews would have been sons "born of fornication." (Hosea 2:4; John 8:41)
Perhaps I'm only pretending to be providing scholarly information, @FollowedMyHeart. Why not do some real research and prove than I am just making things up here.
I would at least give heed though to @WontLeave's post. If the extent of your knowledge is based upon someone else's research, something you may have read in WTS publications, and a knowledge of the US English lexicon, then your research will be incomplete since all English-language Bible translators have made decisions in their translations as to which English language words they will use to translate the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek text, and research will more than adequately reveal this fact to you.
@djeggnog
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wyorobert
Wow, I can't wait for someone to respond to djeggnog. I don't know where everyone finds the time to read all of these posts in such great detail, but it is fun to be a bystander and watch from time to time.
I enjoyed reading djeggnog's information, but could live without some of the arrogance. You can parse words and phrases until it just gets silly and the arguments never really end. If you become really sure of yourself and draw a different conclusion about the meaning of one or two words, you can become a really rich lawyer or start your own religion.
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djeggnog
@wyorobert:
Wow, I can't wait for someone to respond to djeggnog.
Well, you didn't wait; you responded, and I thought your response to be an honest one.
I don't know where everyone finds the time to read all of these posts in such great detail, but it is fun to be a bystander and watch from time to time.
If you read my posts, @wyorobert, you'll notice that I will have read the entire thread, even if it should take me a couple of days to do so, so that I understand the topic (actually, the gripe) before I post a response to some of those posting to it. When you have time, you should read more of my posts.
I enjoyed reading djeggnog's information, but could live without some of the arrogance.
My response is an educated one; that you read arrogance from it is of concern to me. When anyone speaks from knowledge, is it arrogance on his or her part that they might say things that you never knew or heard, but which you can verify for yourself in order to ensure that what you read is based on accurate knowledge as we might perceive such knowledge to be in 2011 and not obsolete knowledge based on what we believed to be true 20 years ago (like back in 1991).
For example, how many of Jehovah's Witnesses do you think still believe that Jesus gave two keys to the apostle Peter, rather than three keys? Before 1979, Jehovah's Witnesses understood and taught that there were two keys and in the book, Holy Spirit-The Force Behind the Coming New Order, published in 1976, emphasized two keys, but in 1979, some three years later, an adjustment was made in the article "'The Keys of the Kingdom' and the 'Great Crowd'" published in the Watchtower dated October 1, 1979, so that Jehovah's Witnesses then came to realize and began teaching that there were really three keys, which fact was prominently made in the book "United in Worship of the Only True God," published in 1983. But there are many of Jehovah's Witnesses that in 2011 will tell you that there were only two keys, omitting the Samaritans as we formerly did before 1979.
Speaking here of the Samaritan people at that time, I'm going to expand this example by perhaps reminding you that the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus spoke at John 4:6-26 had thought herself to have accurate knowledge of the things that the Jewish nation believed, thinking as she struck up a spiritual discussion about true worship with a Jew that didn't seem to possess the same prejudice against talking to someone of a different race, she not knowing at the time that this Jew was the Christ, that true worship could be measured by where it was one worshipped, in the mountain at Gerizim, the place where the Samaritans worshipped, or in Jerusalem where the Jews worshipped.
Not only did this Samaritan woman strut her limited spiritual knowledge in boasting to Jesus about Mt. Gerizim, which had been viewed by the Samaritan nation as "the holy mountain of God," she went on to boast in the common forefather of both Jews and Samaritans, Jacob, and even asserted that Jesus and the Jewish nation to which he belonged weren't greater than Jacob. Of course, Jesus could have straightaway told the woman that Mt. Gerizim wasn't Mt. Ebal, but he didn't do this, because he realized at once that he was talking to a woman whose knowledge of God was partial, distorted, incomplete, only based on the first five books of the Bible, when God had revealed so much more about Himself since the Torah was written, so what little bit that she knew about true worship in the five books that she knew about would have been unacceptable to God, because the god that his woman worshiped actually did not exist, because there was no such God with just that little information that she knew about God being in evidence.
In the first century AD, the Jews had the Greek Septuagint Bible, which contained not just those five books of Moses, but what we today reckon as 39 books in which God had progressively provided more accurate knowledge about Himself to the Jews than this woman had, which is why Jesus could say to the woman, 'You Samaritans worship what you do not know,' and then in contrast say, 'We Jews worship what we know,' we worship a God that is known to us, the Truth, "because salvation originates with the Jews." Jesus went on to tell the woman tactfully that the hour was coming when it would neither be in this mountain, Mt. Gerizim (which it wasn't at that time!), nor in the temple at Jerusalem (which it was at that time), where the true worshippers of God would worship Him, but that from that the hour had come for all true worshippers of God would worship Him in spirit and truth, for God is looking for suchlike ones to worship Him with spirit and truth.
Today, many Jehovah's Witnesses, even those who were formerly Jehovah's Witnesses, will claim, like this Samaritan woman, that their God is Jehovah. They will claim as did this woman that their God to be the God of the Bible, Jehovah. Ask the Samaritan who she recognized as her God, and she would say, "Jehovah," because this is the God that Moses talked about in the Torah, but anyone having an incomplete knowledge of Jehovah, as had this Samaritan woman and like many Jehovah's Witnesses today with an incomplete knowledge of Jehovah that talk about "two keys" instead of three keys is not a true worshipper of God. Their religion is just like this woman's religion, based on an incomplete knowledge of God, not based on accurate knowledge, so that they, like this Samaritan, are really, in effect, worshipping another god, a god that is totally unknown to them and to the rest of Jehovah's Witnesses whose understanding of the Scriptures has been progressively adjusted from the moment that they became Jehovah's Witnesses until now.
In my telling you this, @wyorobert, do you think this educated response to be the height of arrogance on my part? If this is what you believe, then I have no choice, but to accept this as being your opinion, and you are certainly entitled to hold onto it, but when I spoke in my previous post about the vow that Jephthah made, this vow serves as an example to all Jehovah's Witnesses of a man of faith that took his vow to Jehovah seriously, whereas there are former Jehovah's Witnesses today that made a vow in dedicating themselves to serve God faithfully for the rest of their lives only to have become forgetful as they are no longer doing this, even though Jehovah fully expects them to keep the vow of dedication that they made to Him when they were baptized. I didn't say these things in arrogance, but with the confidence I have as a minister of God.
Jephthah could have reneged on his vow and say that he spoke in haste, for Jephthah had no thought that his daughter, his only one, would be the one coming out of the house after he had returned from his win against the Ammonites, but the victory over the Ammonites in exchange for whoever it was that came out of the house to meet him was the vow that Jephthah had made, and he kept it in contrast with what so many Jehovah's Witnesses, who have left our ranks and not kept their vow of dedication. They should come back to Jehovah, keep their vow, while there is yet time for them to do so.
When I also spoke in my previous post about Greek grammar, all of that was really irrelevant, for if one doesn't respect the parts of the Bible that tell us that we need to take in accurate knowledge of Jehovah, "the only true God," and Jesus, then arguing that John 1:1 may mean that Jesus is God or arguing that John 8:58 may mean that Jesus is the "I AM," serves only as an excuse to not keep one's vow to Jehovah. Even if you should believe that Jesus is God, how can anyone desirous of pleasing God teach others to this effect when Jehovah's Witnesses are commanded to "speak in agreement" (1 Corinthians 1:10)?
All Christians are commanded, regardless of what opinions we might have, to "speak truth ... with his neighbor, because we are members belonging to one another." (Ephesians 4:25) We should not want to 'abuse our authority in the good news' by our not declaring the good news that we learned from the Bible by teaching what things we want to teach without our progressively having received the remaining 27 books of our 66-book Bible canon that comprise the truth about God as to which we ought to be teaching others, because even if what we preach is against our will, there is still a reward laid up for us as long as we obediently do the work and without cost. If we are not teaching accordingly, we are really abusing our authority in the good news because the necessity to share what we have learned with others is laid upon each one of us that hears the good news, and we know so much more today than did Paul back during the first century AD, whose knowledge he admitted was only partial, incomplete, and while our knowledge of God today is not yet complete, we are persuaded that our knowledge of God will become progressively complete "for that which is partial will be done away with" as the end of this system of things draws ever nearer. (1 Corinthians 9:16-18; 13:9, 10)
You can parse words and phrases until it just gets silly and the arguments never really end.
Do you truly believe I posited one or more silly arguments? If so, which argument(s) did you find to be a silly parsing of words and phrases, @wyorobert?
If you become really sure of yourself and draw a different conclusion about the meaning of one or two words, you can become a really rich lawyer or start your own religion.
This is true, but the good news of God isn't about obtaining riches in this world or starting a new religion in competition with this good news of the kingdom, so what really would be the point?
@djeggnog
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wyorobert
In my telling you this, @wyorobert, do you think this educated response to be the height of arrogance on my part? If this is what you believe, then I have no choice, but to accept this as being your opinion, and you are certainly entitled to hold onto it, but when I spoke in my previous post about the vow that Jephthah made, this vow serves as an example to all Jehovah's Witnesses of a man of faith that took his vow to Jehovah seriously, whereas there are former Jehovah's Witnesses today that made a vow in dedicating themselves to serve God faithfully for the rest of their lives only to have become forgetful as they are no longer doing this, even though Jehovah fully expects them to keep the vow of dedication that they made to Him when they were baptized. I didn't say these things in arrogance, but with the confidence I have as a minister of God.
I think it is arrogant to assume you know why I found you to be arrogant, or to assume that I would think it was the height of arrogance. I enjoy your opinions and your passion for the Bible, I have an instant aversion to anyone who sees themselves as better than anyone else. It is no more or less than that. The fact that you assume that I find you arrogant because you percieve yourself to be better educated, pretty much proves my point.