Has anyone heard of the gentleman who wrote the above titled book. Among other things, he claims the New World Translation is the most accurate translation available today. The author is Jason David BeDuhn, an associate professor of religious studies. His credentials are sound (among them, an M.T.S. in New Testament and Christian Origins from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in the Comparative Study of Religions--his first book won the "Best First Book" prize from the American Academy of Religion). I had some one send me a link to the book. I find his conclusion hard to believe in lite of the statements of many other scholars.
Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New
by 24k 6 Replies latest watchtower bible
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carla
I have seen some things on this book. I think the statement that he thinks the NWT being most accurate is not quite right. There was some discussion on this on a Christian/JW forum. I can't remember where. ( I don't post there) Could have been part of CARM (?) Also, I think some people said he did not really read the NWT, just a few selected scripts. And there was some reports he is not versed in the ancient languages. Not able to verify any of this myself. Further research is needed. He did say there was some things wrong with the NWT, again, sorry I don't remember exactly what. I felt that if he did not actually read it and there was some question of his scholarship abilities, well... Try searching some of the Christian/JW forums. Let us know what you find out. carla
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Leolaia
I have not read this book and cannot give an opinion on it.
I have seen some criticism noting that BeDuhn is not a Greek scholar or translation specialist and thus his book falls a little outside of his field of expertise. Again, without seeing the book, I can't judge it for myself, but I have seen a post he wrote on the translation of John 1:1 and I have to say that his argument is quite facile....
BTW, unlike Furuli, BeDuhn is clearly not a JW and apparently holds certain views about the Bible that would not be accepted by the Society.
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OHappyDay
BeDuhn's original favorable remarks were about the Kingdom Interlinear Translation, nor the NWT per se, though he has defended the NWT translations of John 1:1 and John 8:58, for example.
The most serious criticism BeDuhn has of the NWT is that, unlike the Interlinear, it uses the name Jehovah in the New Testament when "Jehovah" is not found in the Greek text, but kurios..
That criticism tends to undermine the very raison d'etre of the NWT.
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Leolaia
I see that BeDuhn has authored a JBL article (1999) on 1 Corinthians 11:10, and that is no small feat.
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Narkissos
I haven't read BeDuhn's book (yet) but it sure sounds interesting from the online debate it has raised.
I too think that the flaws of the NWT are often exaggerated. True, there are some major frauds (the insertion of "Jehovah" into the NT being the most massive and blatant one); in many places it is obviously biased to suit the WT doctrine (as Fred Franz himself admitted, according to CoC), and in those instances it is not backed up by any firsthand scholarship; it often falls into the trap of overtranslation, mixing up etymology with semantics on the source end, definitions with translations on the target end; stylistically it is simply awful.
Yet it is generally more consistent than most other translations, and when it diverges from mainstream translations it sometimes happens to reveal a true problem.
In the case of John 1:1, the main difficulty is that our monotheistic (or post-monotheistic) concept of "God" is probably not exactly identical with the Johannine concept of theos. The translator's choice between "God" and "a god" reflects the post-Nicene alternative, either the only God or a creature (if not "a false god") and one might suspect that theos in Johannine thought was a much more fluid notion -- potentially including Jesus and believers for instance (17:11,21-23).
More generally, in many places the translation "God" (capitalised) is problematic, especially when there is a polytheistic background. E.g. Judges 11:24:
Should you not possess what your god Chemosh gives you to possess? And should we not be the ones to possess everything that the LORD our God has conquered for our benefit?
Structurally there is no difference in Hebrew between "your god Chemosh" and "our god Yhwh": this is polytheistic speech. But in the general context of the monotheistic Bible one of the two characters has to be called "God" and the other "a god," and this completely changes the perspective. Think of Ruth 1:16:
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.The capital "G" makes Ruth a convert to monotheism; had it been the other way around (the same phrase said by Naomi to Ruth) the lower case "g" would have made Naomi an apostate from monotheism. In translation we are stuck with an unescapable dilemma which is altogether absent from the text (at least in a micro-context).
No modern translation can escape the fact that "God" has acquired a fixed meaning in the target language, especially when it has been shaped by Christian culture; it is not just an unknown "x". Everytime we write "God" our preconception of "God" rules out access to any different meaning of 'elohim or theos in the texts. And of course no church or Christian fellowship would sponsor a Bible translation which would make the main Bible character appear any different from "God".
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Narkissos
As a few threads have been started from Jason BeDuhn's work, I just e-mailed the links to the author that he might have a look at them and perhaps comment if he so wishes...