Comparatively
flavored
like
sawdust
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
by Quendi 66 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Bungi Bill
Further to the scholastic achievements of F.W. Franz, his two years of studies in the Greek language were spent almost entirely studying Modern Greek, not Koine Greek.
As to his proficiency with the Hebrew language, he left himself wide open to suspicion during the Walsh trial of 1954, in Scotland.
- For sure, he only said "he wouldn't - not couldn't" translate a bible verse into Hebrew / he was asked to translate English into Hebrew, not vice versa / the trial was about JWs being a religion, not about bible translations / the Crown Solicitor was just trying to be a bully / etc. etc. etc.
- However, the best that can be said from that incident is this; if Fred Franz was indeed capable of translating that English sentence into Hebrew, then he surely could have handled the matter much better than he did. (Incidentally, the claim that it is harder to translate English in to another language than the other way is a hollow one from my experience - during all the years that I used the Tok Pisin language of Papua New Guinea during my everyday work, I never found it harder to translate English into Tok Pisin than the other way around).
Scholars of the Biblical Languages have mainly given the New World Translation a bad review. The only scholar that I know who had favorable things to say about it was Alexander Thompson - at the time Advisor to The Queen on Biblical Languages. (All of us used to carry with us a photocopy of his testimonial of the NWT - to wave in the faces of anybody who questioned its accuracy!)
Bill.
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Terry
The renderers, whomever they might be, had a certain style in how they worked. They evidently thought that it would be better to use several words and syllables when one would do the job. This makes the reading unwieldy at times. Grace=1 syllable. Undeserved kindness=5 syllables.
In fact, if you say the greek word kharis just the right way you are actually saying the word grace. So, would it kill them to actually say GRACE??
Like the greek word kaos. We get the word gas from it. Say kaos and you can hear gas.
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myelaine
the people who "translated" the NWT also wanted to copyright it...in order to copyright something you have to make it original...
Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.
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JeffT
No ancient manuscript of the New Testament contains the name Jehovah. When deciding to put it where they thought it belonged, the NWT translators claim to have been guided by its use in a number of translations of the Greek text into Hebrew. Had they followed that rule
1 Corinthians 12:3
Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “JesusisLord,” except by the Holy Spirit.would, in the NWT read "no one can say that Jesus is Jehovah except by the Holy Spirit."
I think that says all we need to know about the determination to keep it free from denominational thought.
In addition, they claim that God saw to it that the Bible came to us virtually free of errors. If that is true, why could He not keep scribes from omitting His own name?
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TTWSYF
I agree with Mad S. I see the NWT as a version. It is not a translation as words, phrases, and ideas are added to change the meaning to something other than the writers meant to convey. I'm not talking about small changes either, but the complete changing of words to fit into the teaching of the WTS.
It is promoted as the most accurate translation ever produced, but the fact that no one else uses it [particularly in the scholastic field] proves that it is a very poor translation. Heck, just reading it is painful to me when side by side with a comprehensive translation.
There is no scholar who endorses the NWT as a complete and accurate work. You will hear people say that there are some parts which were translated well.......Make you wonder, which parts? Which were accurate and which were not. Checking with the KIT shows many examples of poor translationship. [if translationship is even a word]
These 3 examples [not to be confused with the Trinity] are all of the same incident during the last supper.
Matthew 26;26, Mark 14;22, and Luke 22;19 all speak of Jesus words 'This is my body' [or the Greek literal is 'This is the body of me']. In these three verses the NWT has changed the translation to read 'This means my body'
Sure, that looks subtle, but there is no question that such a practice is and example of twisting scripture.
respectfully,
dc
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EntirelyPossible
I like the New World Translation. I think its restoration of the Divine Name to the text (even in the New Testament) is a great strength, and its contemporary language is refreshing.
There is zero evidence that, in the NT, that YHWH or any variant of it was used. In that portion, "restoring" it is adding something that was never there. If you think making shit up and outright lies are refreshing, that version is for you.
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oompa
entirelypossible andj jefft are dead on....wt smashes other bibles that have changed or added text to make it say what they wanted...these are called spurious verses. rev 22:17,18 i believe makes clear you can not add nor subtract a single word of that scroll...the name jehovah appears 12 times in the bood of rev...but that is ok because appendix 1:d says we have restored the name when the greek is quoting a scripture from the hebrew (old testament) scriptures....but that is not true in a single case of the name jehovah in the uber important book of rev.....just check the cross references to the old testament...WT REMOVED the words kyrios and theos (lord and god)....and replaced them with YHWH (actually jehovah in english)...without ANY textual, historical, or biblical support....they are very deceiptful about having done this and do NOT like to be questioned about it!!!
also just look for quotation marks around the verses anywhere the name jehovah appears in their Greek scriptures (new testament)...there are dozens of places they have "restored" the name where there are no quotes from the hebrew scriptures using Jehovah....and even if there was, a translator still does not have the right to CHANGE a word in Greek to make it be what they want it to be just because they want it to say what they want...so there is no way the NAME has actually been "restored"
i know how to build a house...i know how to restore a house...you can not restore a house that has not been built................oompa
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TD
Bill,
Further to the scholastic achievements of F.W. Franz, his two years of studies in the Greek language were spent almost entirely studying Modern Greek, not Koine Greek.
Let's be fair..... It was Classical (Attic) Greek that Franz studied. Not Modern Greek. And he completed 21 semester hours. There are definitely some grammatical differences between Attic of the Golden Age and the common, marketplace (Koine) Greek of a few centuries later, but anyone who can read and understand the classics does not have a huge problem with the Bible. Both Attic and Koine are pretty much taught side by side anymore.
I'm also not sure what everyone means by "Version" as opposed to "Translation" It's certainly true that the NWT is a "Version" in some non-English languages inasmuch as it was pretty much translated directly from the English NWT into the target language. But that's not true of the English NWT itself.
Morever, I'm not sure it's realized how bad of a contradiction this creates with legitmate criticisms of the NWT. If it has in fact been cobbled together entirely from the lexical works of non-JW scholars and not actually translated from the critical texts at all, then claims of "mistranslation" evaporate into thin air. It's only by showing that a rendering you may have a problem with in the NWT does not have any support at all from Greek scholars that the charge of "Mistranslation" can be made. In other words, since mistranslation is by nature a failed or falsified attempt at translation, you have to at least have the latter before you can have the former.
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Bungi Bill
TD,
Acknowledged, FW Franz did study Classical Greek (I got my wucking fords muddled before - my apologies for that!).
The Koine (or Biblical) Greek language was a lingua franca:
- developed by Alexander the Great's forces for use in firstly, the other Greek territories that his father (Philip of Macedonia) and he conquered.
- then, later, used as the Common Language in all parts of the Persian Empire that his combined Greco/Macedonian armies conquered.
Most of its words came from the Attic dialect, but it also contained words from the other major Greek dialects - such as Dorian, Aeolian and Ionian. In this way, it is like certain modern languages, such as:
(1) Urdu - the national language of Pakistan. 80% of its words are from the Arabic language, the rest from Persian, Hindi, and Turkish. But it is well and truly a language in its own right.
2) Tok Pisin - the national language of Papua New Guinea. 85% of its words are from English, the rest from various other PNG languages, Portuguese, Fijian, and Indonesian. (But - many of the English words are changed in meaning, its gramatical structure is totally Melanesian, and anybody thinking that if they speak English, they will automatically speak correct Tok Pisin is very wrong!)
3) Bahasa Indonesian - the national language of Indonesia. A lingua franca developed from all the many regional languages of Indonesia.
Likewise, Koine Greek does contain differences in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation from Attic.
Furthermore, Koine Greek itself evolved over the 600 years of the Hellenistic period. By the time the New Testament was written, this language had already been in use for over 300 years - something like the time difference between the Archaic English of Shakespeare's time and modern English. During that time, its already existing differences from Attic would have been accentuated.
Also, 21 semester hours of learning hardly rates a person as a "scholar". It must be remembered, too, that Frederick Franz never graduated - he dropped out of college quite early in the piece. (When I first began a "bible study" with the Witnesses, I was assured that FW Franz was "the foremost scholar of Greek and Hebrew in the world." For a long time, I actually believed that!)
When translating something with such far-reaching consequences as the Bible, is a brief education in a related language sufficient to inspire confidence? Can you trust a translator who has only a "close enough" level of education? I think not!
Bill.