Posts by aqwsed12345

24

Hebrews 1: 8 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

the watchtower translates this verse like this: .

but about the son, he says: “god is your throne forever and ever, and the scepter of your kingdom is the scepter of uprightness.

- hebrews 1: 8 nwt.

aqwsed12345

@slimboyfat

Raymond E. Brown’s well-known caution about Acts 20:28 is not the trump card you think it is, nor does it vindicate the New World Translation’s gloss. It is true that, in the 1965 article “Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?,” Brown devotes a section to “passages where the application of the title ‘God’ to Jesus is dubious,” and that Acts 20:28 appears there. But when one reads the next two pages instead of a single adjective, Brown’s nuance becomes evident. The doubt he registers is not about the text (“church of God” is accepted) but about how the genitive τοῦ ἰδίου should be construed. He lists three possibilities: (i) the traditional possessive, yielding “with his own blood”; (ii) the same construction understood Christologically, i.e. “with God’s own [blood],” presupposing the communicatio idiomatum; (iii) a substantival use, “with the blood of His Own [Son].” Brown goes on to say that the third rendering would “fit Paul’s theology” and that “perhaps” Luke intended it. The term “dubious,” then, reflects Brown’s reluctance to treat any single verse as a conclusive proof-text on its own for the full deity of Christ, not a judgment that the traditional rendering is false. That is why, in the Anchor Bible Epistles of John (1982) he still cites Acts 20:28 among the “small group” of texts in which “theos is or may be applied to Jesus” (§6.1), repeating that “some ambiguity remains.”

Your complaint that I did not quote Brown’s phrase “by no means certain” simply mistakes the point at issue. No responsible theologian claims that Trinitarian doctrine stands or falls with this verse; the question is whether the verse, when its grammar and textual history are weighed, naturally yields a high-Christological reading. Brown’s answer is possibly yes, possibly no; the Greek allows either, and on that ground alone it should not be made the cornerstone of dogma. My summary—that he “never dismisses the text” and that he warns only against isolating it—captures precisely that balance. Nothing he writes lends support to inserting a word (“Son”) for which not a single Greek, Latin, Coptic, or Syriac witness offers evidence.

Your larger insinuation—that any synthesis which reaches a different conclusion must be “AI nonsense hiding the facts”—would be more persuasive if you actually engaged the textual and syntactic data that Brown, Metzger, Harris, Fitzmyer, Dunn, Keener, Schnabel, Witherington, and the editors of NA 28 sift in detail. Those data remain unchanged:

θεοῦ is the earlier and harder reading, supported by the oldest Alexandrian manuscripts and the earliest Coptic versions, whereas κυρίου appears first in the Western text and in the later Byzantine tradition.
τοῦ ἰδίου in the second attributive position naturally qualifies αἵματος (“his own blood”); the few NT instances where ἴδιος functions substantivally stand in the first position.
No extant document supplies υἱοῦ. Its insertion is therefore an interpretive paraphrase motivated by theology, not a rendering of the transmitted text.

Scholars who, like Brown, keep the text but hesitate over its theological force do so because they are exegetical minimalists, not because the grammar obliges them. Exegetical restraint is admirable; it does not license adding words to solve a doctrinal unease. When one resists that temptation and translates exactly what Luke wrote, the result remains: “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.”

24

Hebrews 1: 8 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

the watchtower translates this verse like this: .

but about the son, he says: “god is your throne forever and ever, and the scepter of your kingdom is the scepter of uprightness.

- hebrews 1: 8 nwt.

aqwsed12345

@slimboyfat

Your note accuses me of two specific faults: first, of having denied the existence of textual variation in Acts 20:28 and only later “back-tracking,” and second, of resting a doctrinal case on a passage that even Trinitarian scholars such as Raymond E. Brown regard as insecure. Both charges misrepresent the record and the state of the evidence.

I never asserted that Acts 20:28 is transmitted without variants atall; I said—precisely as the critical apparatuses state—that the only significant variant concerns whether Luke wrote ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ (“church of God”) or ἐκκλησία τοῦ κυρίου (“church of the Lord”), with a secondary expansion “of the Lord and God.” No Greek manuscript, version, or patristic citation inserts υἱοῦ (“Son”) into the phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου. That portion of the verse is textually unanimous, and my point was that the NWT’s “Son” is therefore not a translation of any extant text but an explanatory gloss motivated by theology, not by manuscript evidence. Acknowledging a variant at one point of the sentence and insisting on textual unanimity at another is not “back-tracking”; it is the ordinary practice of textual criticism.

Your second contention—that Raymond Brown thought Acts 20:28 unusable for Christological reflection—rests on a selective reading. In his 1965 article “Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?” Brown cautions that the word θεός is applied to Christ explicitly only in a handful of places and that some of those places are text-critical or semantic cruxes. Acts 20:28, he says, “perhaps” may distinguish between ὁ θεός (the Father) and ὁ ἴδιος (the Son). Brown’s “perhaps” signals uncertainty about which of two high-Christological readings is correct; it does not amount to a judgment that neither is possible. When he revisited the question in the Anchor Bible commentary on the Johannine Epistles (1982) he reiterated that Acts 20:28, depending on the vocalization of τοῦ ἰδίου, can be read as an attribution of redemptive blood either to “God” understood Christologically or to “His own [Son].” Brown never claims that the text cannot sustain a high Christology; he merely cautions that one should not build the entire dogma of Christ’s deity on a single verse. On that point every responsible theologian agrees: the doctrine rests on the cumulative witness of the NT, not on a proof-text. But cumulative arguments presuppose the individual texts retain their force, and Brown never suggests excising Acts 20:28 from that larger pattern.

The scholarly discussion since Brown has only strengthened the case that Luke wrote “church of God.” P75 (third century) is no longer extant at this verse, but the Alexandrian uncials א B C* Ψ 33 81 1739 align with the earliest Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic versions in supporting θεοῦ. “Church of the Lord” is the reading of D (Codex Bezae) and the later Byzantine tradition—precisely the witnesses that habitually replace θεός with κύριος to avoid difficult expressions (e.g., 1 Cor 10:9 and Jude 5). Externally, the weight plainly favours θεοῦ; internally, θεοῦ is the lectio difficilior. That is why every critical edition from Westcott–Hort to NA 28 prints θεοῦ, and why the UBS textual committee, after canvassing exactly the same objections you raise, rated that decision {B}—virtually certain.

Once θεοῦ is accepted, the remaining question is grammatical: does τοῦ ἰδίου qualify αἵματος or does it act as an absolute substantive? When Luke and the rest of the NT writers use ἴδιος in the absolute they place it in the first attributive position (e.g., John 1:11, 13:1; Acts 4:23). Acts 20:28 has it in the second position, the normal slot for an adjective that continues to describe the just-mentioned noun. Exactly the same construction in Hebrews 13:12 (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) is rendered by all translators “with his own blood”; no scholar has proposed supplying “Son” there. Luke is a stylist who likes variety, but he is not idiosyncratic: when he means “his Son” he writes υἱοῦ, when he means “his own” he uses the adjective possessively. The papyrological examples sometimes invoked (Moulton–Milligan s.v. ἴδιος) involve invitations or wills in which ὁ ἴδιος stands in apposition to a preceding explicit name; they are irrelevant to Luke’s syntax here.

Finally, the charge that “no doctrine should be based on it” ignores how the Church has in fact handled the verse. Acts 20:28 was cited unhesitatingly by Ignatius (Eph. 1:1), Tertullian (Adv. Prax. 29), Hippolytus (Noet. 18), Origen (Philoc. 24), and Athanasius (Ep. Serap. 1.14) because they found in it an early and apostolic witness that the One who shed his blood is truly God. That is not a post-Nicene invention; it is second-century exegesis. Nor did the verse stand alone: it had already been written that the rulers “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8) and that God had purchased the church “with his own blood.” The doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, given full dogmatic articulation only at Chalcedon, is implicit in Luke’s diction long before the creeds.

In sum: there is one textual variant, not none; it only concerns θεοῦ/κυρίου, not the blood clause. The manuscript evidence and the principle of lectio difficilior favour θεοῦ. The Greek syntax, by parallel and position, favors the possessive reading “his own blood.” Thus, the traditional translation is not a theological imposition but the most straightforward rendering of the text that Luke left us. To acknowledge that some modern scholars prefer a less demanding paraphrase is fair; to imply that the traditional reading is “complete nonsense” or that conscientious scholarship must treat it as “extremely unlikely” is to misrepresent both the textual evidence and the history of interpretation.

65

Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

here's how this verse should read: .

take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the holy ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of god, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

- kjvhere's how it reads in the nwt: pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of god, which he purchased with the blood of his own son.. here is how it reads in the kjv with the greek keyed to strong's: take heedg4337 thereforeg3767 unto yourselves,g1438 andg2532 to allg3956 theg3588 flock,g4168 overg1722 the whichg3739 theg3588 holyg40 ghostg4151 hath madeg5087 youg5209 overseers,g1985 to feedg4165 theg3588 churchg1577 of god,g2316 whichg3739 he hath purchasedg4046 withg1223 his owng2398 blood.g129 .

aqwsed12345

@peacefulpete

Your message reflects a careful reading of the spectrum of English translations and recognizes both the enduring complexity and the theological stakes of Acts 20:28. However, the claim that “the grammar is somewhat ambiguous” and that “translators have read the phrase through the theological lens they subscribe to” deserves a more nuanced assessment. While it is true that doctrinal commitments have influenced certain translation decisions, the evidence of Greek grammar, manuscript tradition, and early patristic usage collectively favors the traditional rendering, “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood,” as both the most natural and the most contextually responsible reading.

The grammatical ambiguity in Acts 20:28, specifically the phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου, is sometimes overstated. Greek’s use of the second attributive position (genitive article + noun + genitive article + adjective) is unambiguously possessive, yielding “his own blood,” with τοῦ ἰδίου naturally referring back to τοῦ θεοῦ, the immediately preceding genitive. This pattern is regularly observed throughout the New Testament (cf. Hebrews 13:12 διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) and in the papyri, where “his own” modifies the previously stated noun rather than supplying an implicit noun such as “Son.” The much-cited examples of ἴδιος used absolutely (as in John 1:11, 13:1, Acts 4:23, 24:23) always occur in contexts where the referent is both clear and plural (“his own [people]”). Acts 20:28, by contrast, presents a singular noun, and the phrase structure directly attaches “blood” to “God.”

Those who favor reading τοῦ ἰδίου as “his own [Son]” often do so not for grammatical but for doctrinal reasons, as even Max Zerwick and Mary Grosvenor’s Grammatical Analysis concedes (“for doctrinal reasons some would translate of one who was his own” [p. 423]). This is not a neutral observation: the normal force of the Greek is possessive, and deviation from this reading is motivated not by the demands of syntax, but by discomfort with the implication that Paul could write of “God’s own blood.” However, the earliest patristic evidence—including Ignatius of Antioch (Eph. 1.1), Tertullian, and Jerome—shows that second-century and third-century Christians understood the phrase as an affirmation of Christ’s full divinity, in keeping with their confession that the crucified Lord is “God in the flesh.”

The proliferation of modern translations you cite, with their variety of renderings and footnotes, is not evidence of a grammatical ambiguity at the core of the Greek text, but rather of a modern ecumenical caution to avoid theological offense. The majority of critical Greek editions (NA28, UBS5, SBLGNT) and the majority of standard translations (KJV, NASB, ESV, CSB, etc.) still maintain the possessive reading, and where dynamic equivalents (such as “his own Son”) appear, they are universally acknowledged as interpretive glosses. Not a single Greek manuscript supplies υἱοῦ (“Son”); every insertion of “Son” is thus an explanatory paraphrase, not a translation of the text itself.

On the theological dimension, the claim that Acts 20:28 only demonstrates “divine agency” or “Second Power theology” misunderstands both the literary context and the theological currents of early Christianity. The passage, indeed, features the Holy Spirit appointing overseers, but this is precisely because the Spirit is integral to the church’s life—a point entirely consonant with classical Trinitarian doctrine, not a denial of it. The text’s doxological shape, assigning redemptive action and possession to “God” in the context of Christ’s sacrificial death, does not merely posit “multiple powerful figures,” but presupposes the unity of divine action in the economy of salvation, which the doctrine of the Trinity later formalizes.

The so-called “surprise” about the Holy Spirit’s active role in the appointment of overseers is only a problem for rigidly subordinationist frameworks. In fact, Acts and the Pauline epistles consistently attribute the activities of sanctification, guidance, and church governance to the Spirit as fully divine and personal (cf. Acts 5:3–4; 13:2), never as a mere extension of a “second power.” The triadic structure of Acts 20:28 is not an accidental byproduct, but a reflection of the apostolic faith in Father, Son, and Spirit.

In summary, while theological lens can color translation choices, the overwhelming grammatical, textual, and historical evidence supports “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood” as the most accurate and faithful rendering. Early Christians accepted and preached this phrase as a profound statement of the unity of Christ’s divinity and humanity, and the unity of God’s saving act. The “ambiguity” is therefore not a defect of the text, but a revelation of the mystery that Christianity proclaims: that God himself, in the person of his incarnate Son, shed his blood for the church, and that the Spirit’s role in the church is not an outlier, but a confirmation of God’s Trinitarian life.

The variations among English versions and the presence of interpretive footnotes do not undermine this reading, but rather witness to its continued theological potency. The NWT’s paraphrase, and the tendency of some modern versions to render the phrase “his own Son,” reflect not the logic of the Greek but the anxieties of later dogmatic positions—positions that, in their attempt to avoid the text’s force, inadvertently confirm just how high a Christology the passage in fact articulates.

66

Time of the end - a TRINITY puzzler.

by BoogerMan in

(matthew 24:36) “concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the son, but only the father.".

(jesus seems to have forgotten to include the holy spirit not knowing either).

(acts 1:7) "he said to them: “it does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the father has placed in his own jurisdiction.".

aqwsed12345

@MeanMrMustard

In Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism the language of “essence,” “form,” and “soul” can easily appear slippery if the distinct intentions of each term are not kept steadily in view. The essence (quidditas) of a material being answers the question what is it?; it embraces both the specifying form and the individuating matter, because this man and that oak are alike human or arboreal precisely in virtue of the same definable content even while they differ numerically by the diversity of their portions of matter. When one then asks through what intrinsic principle is that essence actuated so as to be alive? the reply, for living beings, is “the soul.” The soul therefore is not the whole essence but the essence’s formal constituent, considered precisely as a source of vital operations. In plants and brute animals, we speak of vegetative or sensitive souls; in man of a rational soul. Hence to say that a human being “possesses a soul” is a convenient shorthand, yet strictly the soul is not an added property that a prior subject could lack or acquire; it is the very formal principle by which the composite is a subject at all. The human individual is a rational animal in virtue of the informing soul.

The rational or intellectual soul is the form of the human body of itself and essentially
[Substantia animae rationalis seu intellectiva sit forma corporis humani per se et essentialiter.]
“... we reprove as erroneous and inimical to the Catholic faith every doctrine or position rashly asserting or turning to doubt that the substance of the rational or intellective soul truly and in itself is not a form of the human body, defining, so that the truth of sincere faith may be known to all, and the approach to all errors may be cut off, lest they steal in upon us, that whoever shall obstinately presume in turn to assert, define, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not the form of the human body in itself and essentially must be regarded as a heretic.” — Council of Vienne (1312)

From this it follows that the intellectual acts which most reveal our specific difference—abstract judgment, universal reasoning, free self-determination—are not caused by brain chemistry in the way an electric spark causes ignition; rather, the rational soul elicits these acts through bodily organs as through instruments proportioned to the task of presenting phantasms and concepts for higher consideration. Remove the body, and the soul’s natural field of operation is truncated (hence the need for resurrection); remove the soul, and no ensemble of electro-chemical events can rise on its own to the level of intentional universality. Consciousness, then, “resides” in the essence only insofar as the form is the seat of all immanent acts; but it is expressed as a psychosomatic event, the whole composite thinking and willing through the mediation of neuro-physiological processes. One need not imagine a spatial location where consciousness sits—any more than the form of triangularity “sits” in the three-sided diagram—but rather a metaphysical root from which the life-activities spring.

When you speak of the formal cause “pushing” a being toward its nature you are touching the Thomistic axiom that operation follows being (operatio sequitur esse). Because the form specifies what-ness, it also specifies the range of characteristic acts; because man is rational, he tends by intrinsic inclination toward intelligible truth and deliberate good. To observe those acts in the concrete is therefore to recognize the presence of a proportionate principle: where there is deliberative choice, there must be an intellectual appetite capable of universal ends; where there is true intellection, there must be an immaterial power elevated above merely sensory images. Thus, we infer the soul, not as a deus ex machina to mask our ignorance, but as the adequate explanatory ground of manifest effects that outstrip the powers of matter as matter.

It is indeed through the phenomena of a being’s operations that we discern its nature—yet the Thomist cautions that these operations are not merely epiphenomenal “expressions” of an occult substrate. They are the actuality of the form in act. Consequently, to diagnose a human essence is to encounter a unified substance whose visible behaviors stand to its invisible principle not as symptoms to a hidden cause, but as the very unfolding of what it is to be human. A crippled will or impaired intellect may hinder that unfolding, but even then, the radical aptitude persists, for the form remains the same: a damaged violin does not cease to be a violin, nor does a comatose man cease to be rational.

In sum, the soul is neither an abstract label nor an ethereal passenger. It is the intrinsic actuality that makes this body a living, thinking someone rather than a cleverly arranged something. Because nothing can put forth what it does not first possess at least virtually, the presence of genuinely rational acts authorizes the inference to a rational form. That inference, though philosophical, has immediate existential resonance, for it grounds both the inviolable dignity of every human life and our ordered openness to the transcendent source of intellect and will.

65

Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

here's how this verse should read: .

take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the holy ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of god, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

- kjvhere's how it reads in the nwt: pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of god, which he purchased with the blood of his own son.. here is how it reads in the kjv with the greek keyed to strong's: take heedg4337 thereforeg3767 unto yourselves,g1438 andg2532 to allg3956 theg3588 flock,g4168 overg1722 the whichg3739 theg3588 holyg40 ghostg4151 hath madeg5087 youg5209 overseers,g1985 to feedg4165 theg3588 churchg1577 of god,g2316 whichg3739 he hath purchasedg4046 withg1223 his owng2398 blood.g129 .

aqwsed12345

@scholar

The phrasing τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου in Acts 20:28 is best rendered “the church of God, which He acquired with His own blood.” A strictly grammatical reading treats τοῦ ἰδίου as an adjectival genitive whose default reference is the possessor already present in the construction—namely τοῦ Θεοῦ. Greek regularly employs ἴδιος in this intensive sense (“one’s very own”) after a noun that already carries a genitive article; the phrase therefore means “the blood that is God’s very own.” The NT itself furnishes exact structural parallels: cf. 2 Peter 2:16 τῇ ἰδίᾳ παρανομίᾳ and Hebrews 9:12 διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος, none of which invite us to supply an unexpressed noun. Where a clarifying noun is required, the writers state it explicitly, as in Romans 8:32 τοῦ ἰδίου Υἱοῦ. Luke, however, omits υἱοῦ here, and the absence is decisive; the author had just written αἵματος, so the most economical—and syntactically expected—way to say “His own Son’s blood” would have been διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ. His failure to do so shows that a supplementary noun was not in his mind.

In English we omit the article before “blood,” not because it is absent in Greek, but because English normally suppresses the article with abstract nouns (“by blood,” “with courage,” “in hope”) and therefore a literal “the blood” would mis-portray the Greek sense. The Greek article here functions to mark the genitive phrase τοῦ αἵματος as a single semantic unit, not to signal contrast or identification; retaining it in English would create a false emphasis. The claim that three genitival articles (“of God,” “of the blood,” “of the own”) make the phrase so ambiguous that “theology alone is decisive” misunderstands Koine usage. Luke writes three genitives because each element belongs in that case for independent syntactic reasons: τοῦ θεοῦ depends on ἐκκλησία; τοῦ αἵματος follows the preposition διά; τοῦ ἰδίου completes an idiomatic possessive construction. Their co-occurrence is accidental, not hermeneutically charged. Greek readers met such strings daily; they did not stop to puzzle over Christological puzzles.

The suggestion that τοῦ ἰδίου is a substantive standing for “His Own (Son)” derives not from linguistic necessity but from theological discomfort with the idea that Paul could speak, even rhetorically, of “God’s blood.” Max Zerwick’s standard reference grammar recognizes this when it observes on the passage that “for doctrinal reasons some would translate ‘of one who was his own’”. In other words, the alternative rendering rests on dogmatic preference, not on grammatical compulsion. Bruce Metzger, while conceding that some readers might recoil from ascribing blood to God, still judged θεοῦ to be “undeniably the more difficult reading”—and therefore on the principles of textual criticism the more likely to be original—precisely because a scribe would more readily substitute κυρίου to avoid what he thought a theological problem than introduce θεοῦ and create it.

Appeal is sometimes made to papyrological instances where ὁ ἴδιος stands substantively as a term of endearment for family members. Those examples, however, are plural and arise in vocative or colloquial settings; they do not replicate Luke’s formal genitival sequence τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου. Nor do the four NT occurrences of absolute ἴδιος (John 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23; 24:23) help your case, because in each of them the context itself supplies a plural referent (“his own [people]”), whereas Acts 20:28 is singular and already has a perfectly serviceable head noun, αἵματος, to which ἴδιου naturally attaches.

Textually, the external evidence for τοῦ Θεοῦ is at least as strong as, and probably stronger than, that for τοῦ Κυρίου. 𝔓74, ‫א, A, B, C*, 33, and the Vulgate stand together for θεοῦ, whereas κυρίου first appears distinctly in D and later Byzantine witnesses. The maxim “the harder reading is to be preferred” applies: θεοῦ would invite alteration on theological grounds; κυρίου would confer theological harmlessness. Internally, Paul’s noun phrase “church of God” is idiomatic for him (1 Cor 1:2; 10:32; 15:9; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:13; 1 Tim 3:5), whereas “church of the Lord” never elsewhere occurs in his letters or anywhere else in the NT. That perceived Pauline usage would have induced a copyist unconsciously to normalise κυρίου, not the reverse.

Because τὴν ἐκκλησίαν … διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου is a single syntactic unit, the logic of the sentence is unforced only when τοῦ ἰδίου refers back to τοῦ Θεοῦ: “God purchased the church with His own blood.” Far from being alien to primitive Christian thought, that wording resonates with the confessional idiom of early writers who spoke of “the blood of God” (Ignatius, Eph. 1.1; Smyrn. 6.1). Their witness shows that believers who read Greek natively could apprehend the paradox without paling at its Christological force: the crucifixion is the act of the incarnate Son, yet because the Son is the definitive self-revelation of the Father, Paul can, in a doxological idiom, predicate the shed blood of God.

Consequently, the attempt to safeguard monotheism by interpolating “Son” into the English text masks the literary artistry of Luke and obscures an early high-Christological confession. Grammar, textual evidence, and the history of interpretation all converge on the traditional rendering, whereas the “Son” of the NWT—and of any version that follows it—rests finally on theological expediency rather than on the data of the Greek text itself.

84

Zechariah 12:10 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

here's a question for those who still support watchtower on this forum.

why did watchtower leave out the word "me" in zech.

zechariah 12:10 reads like this: .

aqwsed12345

It is best to begin where all text–critical discussion must begin: with the surviving Hebrew. Every complete Masoretic witness and every extant Judean-Desert fragment that preserves Zechariah 12:10 gives exactly the same consonantal sequence,

וְהִבִּיטוּ אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָרוּ
“they shall look unto me, ‹’ēt› whom they pierced.”

Nothing in the Hebrew tradition, early or late, replaces אֵלַי (“unto me”) with אֵלָיו/עָלָיו (“unto him”). The so-called waw/yōd interchange raised by Burney is well known; yet all presently collated DSS or medieval manuscripts continue to read the first-person suffix. Even the two medieval codices that register a keri-note of עָלָיו retain אֵלַי in the ketiv; scribes flagged the verse as theologically disquieting; they did not supply a demonstrably ancient alternative reading. Consequently, modern critical editions (BHS, BHQ) reproduce אֵלַי without siglummed variants.

Because the MT yields the striking claim that YHWH himself is “pierced,” most scholars—whether or not they are persuaded by Christian dogma—take the line as a textbook illustration of the lectio difficilior. Scribes amend what shocks them; they do not invent it. That is why the locus classicus in Gesenius–Kautzsch–Cowley is headed, not “probable text,” but “we should probably read,” i.e., an editorial emendation, not a reading with external support. To treat that conjecture as though it were an attested Hebrew variant is to confuse scribal evidence with modern editorial suggestion. Men who translate for the pew cannot legitimately substitute an un-attested conjecture for the universally attested text.

Turning from Hebrew to Greek, the Old Alexandrian translator of the Minor Prophets did transform the clause: “they shall look to me because they have mocked” (ἐπιβλέψονται πρὸς με ἀνθ’ ὧν κατωρχήσαντο). Why? Probably to defuse the anthropopathic shock. In the late second-temple period another cadre of Jewish scholars—the circle today called kaige–Theodotion—produced a counter-revision meant to restore formal fidelity to the Hebrew. Their work is preserved (i) in the Naḥal Ḥever scroll 8ḤevXII gr (late 1st BCE/early 1st CE) and (ii) in the eighth-century Codex L (Rahlfs 309). At Zech 12:10 the kaige text reads, as one would expect, “καὶ ἐπιβλέψονται εἰς ἐμὲ ὃν ἐξεκέντησαν”—a literal rendering of אֵלַי plus a relative pronoun demanded by Greek syntax. This is the Jewish-Greek form which the Fourth Evangelist knew. His citation in John 19:37 is verbally identical except that he replaces ἐπιβλέψονται with the synonymous ὄψονται and, in a typical compression, omits the explicit ἐμὲ. Nothing in that omission effaces the first-person sense, because the reader who knows Zechariah will supply it; indeed Revelation 1:7 makes the identification between the pierced One and the eschatological Lord explicit.

Greg Stafford’s defense of the NWT ignores that textual trail. He insists that because John 19:37 no longer contains ἐμὲ, modern translators are free to remove אֵלַי from the Hebrew and to write “they will look to the one.” That is a non sequitur. John is not translating Hebrew; he is quoting a current Jewish Greek recension whose own fidelity to אֵלַי is beyond dispute. To erase the first person from the Hebrew base text is therefore not to “follow John,” it is to alter the only Hebrew that John and every other ancient witness had in front of them.

Nor does the appeal to other modern versions rescue the move. Most modern English Bibles that read “him/the one” put “me” in the margin and explain in a foot-note that the Hebrew is first person; their editorial committees judged the stylistic roughness intolerable but made no claim of manuscript authority. The NWT alone presents the conjecture as the Hebrew original, without alerting the reader that no Hebrew witness supports it—a procedure the United Bible Societies’ Principles and Procedures for Translation (§1.4) labels “unacceptable.”

Finally, the theological tail is unmistakably wagging the textual dog. A strict Arian Christology cannot permit a verse in which YHWH speaks and yet is the One whom Israel has pierced, for that is precisely the identification John exploits to say that the crucified Jesus shares YHWH’s identity. The NWT therefore suppresses the first-person suffix, harmonizes Zechariah to its own reading of John, and then turns round to claim that John vindicates the alteration. Circularity could scarcely be clearer.

The objection from 1 John 4:12 (“No one has ever seen God”) rests on a category mistake. John’s Gospel does not claim that the crowd saw the divine nature; it claims they pierced the enfleshed Logos, the One in whom “all the fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). Classical Christology calls that the communicatio idiomatum: what is done to the incarnate Son is predicated of the person, and therefore—because the person is divine—of God. That is why John can say in the same breath that “no one has seen God” (1:18) and still insist, quoting Zechariah, that the soldiers looked upon him whom they pierced.

In sum, Stafford’s defense collapses at every textual checkpoint. The Hebrew says “unto me”; the earliest and best Jewish Greek says “unto me”; John writes in conscientious dependence on that Greek; the NWT alone rewrites the Hebrew, unbacked by any manuscript, in order to silence a verse that otherwise discloses what orthodox Christianity has always confessed: the crucified Jesus is none other than Israel’s God in human flesh, the Lord who was pierced and who yet promises, “they shall look upon me.”

24

Hebrews 1: 8 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

the watchtower translates this verse like this: .

but about the son, he says: “god is your throne forever and ever, and the scepter of your kingdom is the scepter of uprightness.

- hebrews 1: 8 nwt.

aqwsed12345

@scholar

The semantic, syntactical, and intertextual profile of Hebrews 1:8–9 cannot sustain the construal advanced by Greg Stafford. The NWT’s rendering “God is your throne for ever and ever” is not merely an admissible minority option; it is virtually foreclosed by the linguistic texture of the Greek citation, by the function of Psalm 44 LXX within the catena of vv. 5–14, by the usage of ὁ θεός elsewhere in Hebrews, and by the epistle’s larger Christological argument. A review of each of these concentric contexts shows that the NWT’s interpretation is driven by dogmatic desiderata rather than by the data of the text.

Hebrews cites Psalm 44(45):7–8 LXX in a sharply demarcated strophic pattern, reproducing the opening clause with the unaltered Greek sequence ὁ θρόνος σου ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος. The construction ὁ θεὸς with the article functioning as a vocative is not an exotic anomaly but a recognized feature of Hellenistic Greek: the nominative with article is regularly used as a formal or elevated vocative, especially in poetic or liturgical diction (cf. Pss LXX 22:2; 99:3; Isa 38:19; Judg 6:17; Rev 4:11). The burden of proof therefore rests with any proposal that re-parses the phrase by making θεός either the grammatical subject or the predicate of a verbless clause. Nothing in the immediate syntax forces such a departure. Indeed, both internal cola of v. 8 are finely balanced as address: first the vocative clause, then the appositional affirmation of the Son’s scepter. Restructuring the first colon into a nominal sentence disrupts that symmetry and leaves the second colon uncoordinated, a stylistic jolt wholly out of character with the author’s studied rhetoric.

Appeal to the following verse (“therefore God, your God, has anointed you”) is likewise misplaced. Vocatives are perfectly at home in speech units that proceed to refer to the addressee’s God (cf. Pss LXX 44:8–8a; 45:16–17; 1 Kgs 8:28–29 LXX). The movement from direct address to third-person reference is a conventional feature of royal and liturgical discourse and cannot be pressed into service as a grammatical determinant. Nor does the typological setting of Psalm 44 undermine the vocative. The psalmist’s poetic idealization of the Davidic monarch does not flatten the semantic range of θεός; rather, it provides the very platform on which the epistle can articulate the exalted sonship of Christ. Hebrews opens by asserting that the Son inherits “the Name which is above the angels” (1:4)—a declaration meaningless unless some element of the divine title attends that inheritance. The vocative “O God” supplies that element and stands in seamless continuity with 1:3, where the Son is the “exact imprint (χαρακτὴρ) of God’s being.”

The pragmatic claim that a nominative reading better suits the epistle’s argument is belied by the shape of the catena in vv. 5–14. Each citation ascribes to the Son prerogatives that exceed angelic standing: eternal begetting (v. 5), worship by the heavenly host (v. 6), eternal kingship (vv. 8–9), cosmic creatorship (vv. 10–12), and enthronement at God’s right hand (v. 13). To recast v. 8 so that it speaks only of a throne that derives from God collapses the escalating progression and, more seriously, severs the deliberate parallelism between vv. 8–9 and vv. 10–12. In both pericopes the author opens with a vocative identifying the Son by a divine title (“O God,” v. 8; “O Lord,” v. 10) and then proceeds to predicate of him either a scepter of uprightness or the founding of the earth. The catena thus pairs the two principal Greek vocatives of Israel’s Scripture—θεέ and κύριε—and coordinates them Christologically. Removing the first term breaks the epistle’s Christological symmetry.

The attempt to buttress the NWT’s rendering by citing Goodspeed, Moffatt, Byington, or the alternative margins of earlier RSV editions mistakes the status of those translations. Each represents an isolated conjectural expedient; none defends the rendering in a sustained philological argument and all have been marginalized in subsequent critical discussion. The decisive judgment is that of the major critical grammars and lexica. Blass-Debrunner-Funk §149(1) lists Hebrews 1:8 as a primary NT example of the article-plus-nominative used vocatively, and LSJ s.v. θεός II.2.a cites the verse without reservation.

Text-critical variation between σου and αὐτοῦ scarcely alters the picture. Even if αὐτοῦ is original, the vocative force of ὁ θεός remains intact. The shift of possessive pronoun can be accounted for by scribal assimilation to the LXX text of Psalm 44:8, where αὐτοῦ stands, or by a scribe’s desire to harmonize the clause with the second-person pronouns that pepper the surrounding verses. In either case the semantic outcome is unaffected: the Son addressed as God has God as his God. In biblical idiom the distinction between God’s intrinsic identity and the Son’s filial relation is not collapsed by the vocative; it is presupposed.

Finally, the assertion that Hebrews can accommodate only a “qualified” or “lesser” sense of θεός with reference to Christ misconstrues the epistle’s ontology. When Hebrews designates the Son the “radiance of the Father’s glory” and the “character of his hypostasis,” it locates him on the creator’s side of the creator-creature divide (1:2–3). That theological placement is ratified in the reception of cultic worship (1:6), an honor rigidly reserved for deity in Second-Temple monotheism, and in the attribution of immutable eternality (1:11–12). No angel, no Davidic king, no merely exalted creature ever receives such predicates. The author’s deployment of Psalm 44 thereby serves not to attenuate but to articulate the Son’s full participation in the divine identity.

The NWT thus achieves its reading only by sidelining the normal idiom of the Greek vocative, fracturing the literary architecture of the catena, ignoring the weight of critical lexicography, and flattening the epistle’s High Christology. Once those methodological missteps are corrected, Hebrews 1:8 emerges as the apostolic affirmation it was always taken to be: a declaration that the enthroned Son is addressed, without reservation or diminution, as “God” forever and ever.

65

Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

here's how this verse should read: .

take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the holy ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of god, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

- kjvhere's how it reads in the nwt: pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of god, which he purchased with the blood of his own son.. here is how it reads in the kjv with the greek keyed to strong's: take heedg4337 thereforeg3767 unto yourselves,g1438 andg2532 to allg3956 theg3588 flock,g4168 overg1722 the whichg3739 theg3588 holyg40 ghostg4151 hath madeg5087 youg5209 overseers,g1985 to feedg4165 theg3588 churchg1577 of god,g2316 whichg3739 he hath purchasedg4046 withg1223 his owng2398 blood.g129 .

aqwsed12345

@scholar

The reasoning advanced by Greg Stafford does not withstand sustained philological or textual scrutiny. His case rests on three mutually independent propositions: first, that κύριος is more likely than θεός to be the original possessive in Acts 20:28; second, that the phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου ought to be construed “through the blood of his Own [Son]”; third, that the whole question is Christologically inert because, even if θεός is read, the verse would not ascribe deity to Christ in any way congenial to classical Trinitarianism. Each step is flawed.

1. External evidence for θεός versus κύριος

Stafford cites Abbot’s nineteenth-century essay and Keener’s survey to suggest an equilibrium between the two readings. In fact, the documentary weight has never been evenly balanced. θεοῦ is supported by the two great fourth-century uncials (א, B), by the earliest continuous-text papyrus of Acts (P⁷⁴), by the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic, by the Vulgate (per sanguinem illius), and by the earliest stratum of patristic citation (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Cyprian). κύριος appears in D and its Latin congeners, in Ψ and the Byzantine tradition, and sporadically among Fathers who often quote from memory. The editors of every major critical text from Tischendorf through NA28 have therefore printed θεοῦ and relegated κυρίου to the apparatus on methodological grounds: it is geographically restricted, and it readily explains itself as an early substitution by scribes uncomfortable with the notion of “God’s blood.” The converse cannot explain the rise of θεοῦ in the Alexandrian stream, whose scribes are otherwise noted for theological restraint.

2. The syntactic force of τοῦ ἰδίου

Stafford leans on Metzger’s caution that τοῦ ἰδίου could be understood substantivally. The caution is linguistically true but contextually irrelevant. In Acts 20:28 the adjective stands after its noun in the second attributive position. That construction in Koine Greek invariably yields a possessive sense (“his own blood”). No demonstrable NT or papyrus example shows a post-posed ἴδιος functioning as an independent noun when it follows—rather than precedes—the noun it qualifies. The papyrological salutations Stafford invokes (e.g., ὁ δεῖνα τῷ ἰδίῳ χαίρειν) occur in the vocative or nominative, not in genitive-attributive sequence. The NT parallels Stafford himself lists (Jn 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23; 24:23) place ἴδιοι in nominative or accusative absolute constructions; they are not syntactically analogous to διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.

If Luke had wished to mean “with the blood of his Own [Son]” he possessed two unambiguous formulas. He could have written διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ, Paul’s wording in Romans 8:32, or he could have shifted ἰδίου forward to the first attributive slot (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος, as in Heb 13:12). He does neither. The NWT’s “Son” is therefore not a “completion of sense” but an interpretive addition unsignalled by the grammar Luke actually used.

3. The conjecture of a lost υἱοῦ

Hort’s suggestion that υἱοῦ was accidentally omitted after ἰδίου remains a permissible conjecture—but it is only that. Conjectural emendation has a place when multiple lines of internal evidence converge against every extant witness, yet here no Greek, versional, or patristic source preserves the longer reading, and the existing text is coherent as it stands. For that reason, the conjecture has been rejected by Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, von Soden, Westcott-Hort’s own margin, Nestle-Aland, UBS, SBLGNT, and the Cambridge Greek Testament.

4. The claim that κύριος would better suit Pauline usage

Paul’s undisputed letters do say “church of God” eight times and never “church of the Lord” in the singular—precisely the opposite of Stafford’s implication. Luke, too, has called the community τοῦ θεοῦ at Acts 20:28 already by v. 32 (“the word of His grace which is able to build you up”). Conversely, κύριος in Luke-Acts most often designates YHWH in Septuagintal citations (Acts 2:20–21, 25, 34; 3:22, 24; 4:26; 7:37, 49), not Jesus. Scribal change from θεός to κύριος therefore matches a well-known tendency: avoid attributing αἷμα to God by substituting the less theologically perplexing κύριος, whose reference could be taken as Christ without jangling sensibilities.

5. The invocation of the Tetragrammaton

Speculating that Luke originally wrote ἐκκλησία Ἰαχωβᾶ and that later hands replaced the name with κύριος or θεός is historically and palaeographically baseless. Not one Greek manuscript of Acts—papyrus, majuscule, or minuscule—shows a Hebrew Tetragrammaton or its paleo-Hebrew form. The Fouad Deuteronomy papyri demonstrate a Jewish practise within the Pentateuch, not a Christian habit in narrative prose. All earliest copies of Luke-Acts, including P⁷⁵ (early third century), write ὁ κύριος or ὁ θεός when citing OT kyrios texts. Luke’s own prologue (Lk 1:6, 9, 15, 16, etc.) embeds κύριος in every YHWH citation, showing that the author is entirely comfortable with the standard Septuagintal surrogate. The hypothesis of a lost Tetragrammaton therefore fails the simplest criterion of textual criticism—post eventum conjecture contrary to universal transmission.

6. Christological implications

Stafford concludes that even θεοῦ does not assist Trinitarian theology because Witnesses “unhesitatingly accept Jesus as theos” in a lesser sense. Yet Acts 20:28 does something no Arian scheme can tolerate: it predicates the concrete, historical shedding of blood to God as agent. Luke has already said that it was Jesus whose blood inaugurates the covenant (Lk 22:20) and whose death guards the flock (Acts 20:19 - 25). If Luke then attributes that same redemptive blood to “God,” the simplest hermeneutical explanation is that Jesus shares the divine identity, precisely the point at issue in later Nicene debate. By contrast, the forced insertion of “Son” into the text serves only to keep the divine title and the human action apart.

7. Conclusion

Every line of evidence converges on the traditional wording and sense: “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” θεοῦ is the lectio difficilior yet the best-attested reading; τοῦ ἰδίου in second-attributive position is possessive, not substantival; conjectural emendation to include υἱοῦ lacks manuscript warrant; and appeal to an original Tetragrammaton is historically implausible. The addition in the NWT is therefore an apologetic gloss, not a translation.

24

Hebrews 1: 8 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

the watchtower translates this verse like this: .

but about the son, he says: “god is your throne forever and ever, and the scepter of your kingdom is the scepter of uprightness.

- hebrews 1: 8 nwt.

aqwsed12345

@scholar

The rendering “God is your throne for ever and ever” is philologically indefensible, conceptually incoherent in its OT source, and incompatible with the author’s Christological strategy in Hebrews. The NWT note presupposes three contentions—that the Greek permits a nominative-subject construal of θεός in Heb 1:8, that Ps 45 (44 LXX) originally applied the line to a merely human king and so cannot be invoked to ascribe genuine deity to the Messiah, and that Heb 1:9 proves the addressee of verse 8 is not God because he himself has “a God.” All three propositions collapse under close textual scrutiny.

The Greek of Ps 44:7 LXX, quoted verbatim in Heb 1:8, is ὁ θρόνος σου ὁ θεὸς εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος. Two syntactic observations are decisive. First, the vocative article-noun sequence ὁ θεός is stereotyped in the Septuagint as an address to God or to the one in whom God is encountered whenever, as here, it is flanked by a possessive pronoun on the one side and a predicative phrase on the other (cf. Ps 63:1; 68:30; 85:2). Where the translators meant “‘God’ is …,” they either introduced an explicit copula (e.g., Ex 22:8 ὁ θεός ἐστιν ὁ κριτής) or placed θεός clause-initial. Neither signal is present in Ps 44:7 or in Heb 1:8. Second, the cola ὁ θρόνος σου … / καὶ ἡ ῥάβδος τῆς βασιλείας σου … are syntactically parallel: the first line names the royal throne, the second its scepter. A nominal clause “God is your throne” would destroy the parallelism and sever the rhetorical nexus between throne and scepter. Consequently, every extant Greek manuscript, Patristic citation, rabbinic paraphrase, and ancient version prior to the twentieth century renders the words as a direct address, “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” The nominative hypothesis arose only when modern critics, unwilling to allow an unqualified attribution of divinity to the messianic king, sought an expedient grammatical loophole. No Greek reader formed by the conventions of Hellenistic diction or by the pragmatic rules of vocative signaling would have heard the phrase as the NWT does.

The explanatory note’s appeal to Heb 1:9 (“therefore God, your God, has anointed you”) misconstrues the logic of the psalmist’s parallelism, which Hebrews reproduces. The psalm’s theological tension—addressing the king as God in verse 7 yet speaking of his God in verse 8—already existed in its canonical form. The tension is not relieved by re-parsing verse 7; it is integral to the poet’s portrayal of a vice-regent who radiates God’s own majesty while remaining personally distinguishable from the God who enthrones and anoints him. Hebrews’ author seizes precisely upon that two-foldness to structure his Christology: the Son is the effulgence of the Father’s glory and the exact imprint of his hypostasis (1:3), yet he receives kingship and priestly anointing from the Father when his incarnate mission is accomplished. Far from undermining a High Christology, verse 9 presupposes it: only because the Son has eternally shared the Father’s divine prerogatives can his exaltation above the angelic liturgy be celebrated as a divine enthronement hymn in which angels themselves offer him proskynesis (1:6).

Nor can one salvage the NWT’s reading by claiming that Ps 45 originally glorified a merely human monarch and therefore cannot bear full theological weight. In its canonical Sitz im Psalter the poem is already hyperbolic: the king is addressed in terms normally reserved for Yahweh (compare 45:6–7 with 93:2 and 102:12 LXX). Second-Temple Jewish interpreters read it eschatologically (e.g., 4QFlor 1.10-13), and Christian writers from Justin Martyr onward treated its diction as deliberately theophanic. Hebrews does the same, embedding the psalm within a catena of Yahwistic texts (Ps 2:7; 97:7; 102:25-27; 110:1) so that each citation intensifies the claim that the Son belongs on the Creator’s side of the ontological divide. If verse 8 meant no more than that the Father supports the Son’s throne, the Son’s equality with Yahweh in the subsequent quotation of Ps 102 would be hermeneutically incoherent.

The proposition that θεός can denote angels or Jewish judges and so may be used of Jesus “in a qualified sense” ignores the decisive lexical contrast: when Scripture metaphorically calls creatures “gods,” it immediately subjects them to judgment or death (Ps 82:6-7), whereas Hebrews ascribes to the Son precisely the prerogatives that in Jewish monotheism marked the one transcendent deity—cosmic creation (1:10), unchangeability (1:12), enthronement above all spiritual powers (1:13), and universal worship (1:6). The note’s suggestion that Jehovah is Jesus’ throne is conceptually opaque: Yahweh is nowhere else said to be someone’s throne, and the metaphor offers no intelligible picture of how deity can function as a chair on which another sits. In the LXX and in the NT a throne is either occupied by Yahweh or by the royal vice-regent whom Yahweh installs; it is never equated with Yahweh himself.

Finally, the rhetorical architecture of Hebrews refutes the claim that the author is “beating about the bush.” The comparison with angels does not trivialize the Son’s identity; it dramatizes the decisive break between creator and creation. Angels, though exalted, are creatures and servants; the Son is the one through whom the ages were made (1:2) and to whom the liturgy of heaven is directed. The argument’s structure is chiastic: it begins with the Son’s divine status (1:2-3), descends to the level of angels only to establish his incomparability, and culminates by sealing that incomparability with a series of Yahwistic oracles in which the Father himself acclaims the Son. No “qualified” sense of θεός can survive that cumulative exegetical movement.

In short, the NWT’s marginal gloss dissolves upon inspection: the Greek idiom demands the vocative; the psalm’s canonical voice is already theocentric and eschatological; Hebrews deploys the citation precisely to affirm, not to attenuate, the Son’s full participation in the divine identity.

65

Acts 20: 28 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

here's how this verse should read: .

take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the holy ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of god, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

- kjvhere's how it reads in the nwt: pay attention to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the holy spirit has appointed you overseers, to shepherd the congregation of god, which he purchased with the blood of his own son.. here is how it reads in the kjv with the greek keyed to strong's: take heedg4337 thereforeg3767 unto yourselves,g1438 andg2532 to allg3956 theg3588 flock,g4168 overg1722 the whichg3739 theg3588 holyg40 ghostg4151 hath madeg5087 youg5209 overseers,g1985 to feedg4165 theg3588 churchg1577 of god,g2316 whichg3739 he hath purchasedg4046 withg1223 his owng2398 blood.g129 .

aqwsed12345

@scholar

The Greek line Luke wrote for Paul’s farewell—διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου—does not license the NWT’s decision to add “Son,” and none of the linguistic or historical considerations adduced in the Study Edition overturn that judgment.

Luke’s wording places the adjective-pronoun τοῦ ἰδίου in the second attributive position after αἵματος. Every secure NT parallel with this syntax is possessive, not substantival. Hebrews 13:12 (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) is identical in form; no commentator has ever felt compelled to gloss “his own [Son]” there, because the collocation self-evidently means “his own blood.” When Luke wishes to supply an implied noun he signals it differently, either by the first attributive position (τὴν ἰδίαν πόλιν, “his own city,” Lk 4:24) or by leaving ἴδιος in the nominative or vocative, as in the examples the Study Edition cites (Jn 1:11; 13:1; Acts 4:23; 24:23). In every one of those occurrences the referent is already explicit in the sentence (“him,” “them,” “Paul and Silas”), so the ellipsis is recoverable. Acts 20:28 lacks such an antecedent; the only syntactically available head noun is αἵματος itself. The papyrological instances invoked (“to-his-own-one greeting”) are epistolary salutations in the vocative; they are not genitive modifiers following a concrete noun and so offer no true parallel.

Because no manuscript, patristic citation, or version inserts υἱοῦ after ἰδίου, the proposed sense “blood of his own Son” depends on a hypothetical haplography—but a universal and undetectable one. Hort himself, whom the Study Edition quotes, conceded that this was purely conjectural; the editors of every critical text from Tischendorf to NA28 have rejected it.

Appeal to “context” likewise fails. The nearest contextual marker is not filial but divine: Luke has just said “the church of God.” Throughout Luke-Acts, when αἷμα is combined with a possessor in the genitive, the possessor is the one whose blood is shed (Luke 22:20; Acts 5:28; 18:6). To shift possession from the expressed subject (“God”) to an unexpressed third party violates Luke’s own narrative habit and introduces a theological scruple alien to his style. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the same Ephesian church within two generations, could exhort them to “be subject to Jesus Christ and to the Father in the blood of God” (Eph 1:1); the phrase was evidently not “misleading” to readers nourished on Acts.

Craig Keener’s remark that “many scholars prefer” an implied Son does not claim majority support; he is summarizing a minority view whose principal exponents (e.g., Harris, Metzger) still acknowledge that the Greek text itself reads τοῦ ἰδίου without υἱοῦ and that the traditional construal remains grammatically easier. Metzger, after rehearsing the same papyrus data, concludes that “the committee found no warrant for adding υἱοῦ to the text.”

In sum, the expression Luke chooses is the same idiom Hebrews uses and the LXX employs (e.g., Isa 63:3) to denote a person’s own blood. The consistent manuscript tradition, the syntax of the clause, the narrative usage of Luke-Acts, and the reception among pre-Nicene writers all converge on the straightforward reading: “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” The “Son” in the NWT is therefore not clarification but theological revision, unsupported by Greek grammar or textual evidence.