As far as I was concerned, JWs didn’t have true bible studies. What they HAVE with potential recruits are really ‘literature’ studies.
That's a great way to put it. And it's been like that since the beginning. Russell claimed that true understanding could only come by reading his Studies in the Scriptures books; that if you regularly read them, you wouldn't need to read the Bible at all. And if you didn't read SitS regularly, reading the Bible wasn't going to do you any good.
His ego was almost as big as Lloyd Evans's.