So, in response to her repeated question, "Have we come to you, and taught you anyting that was not true in the bible?"
I said, "Well, there is that thing claim that Jesus told us to call God 'Jehovah.' I don't agree that it should be added to the New Testament. After Jesus came, HIS name was put above ALL names..."
She then said, "We aren't pronouncing Jesus's name right either, so maybe we should take His name out of the bible! Would that be the answer?"
I said, "No... I am not disagreeing with the use of the name in the OT. I just don't see where Jesus told us to call God by his name. He called him Father."
"He said He came to sanctify God's name. I showed you where He said He had come to make His Father's name known."
"But he didn't tell us how to pronounce it... and there is no record of Jesus ever actually saying the name."
Miss K then opens her grey bible, and starts looking up the reasoning behind adding the divine name to the NT. We start reading it together, and she says, "I have not read this yet, so I don't know what is in here..."
We read the intro and the first 2 bullet points, and she paused. I went back and was reading, and how it stated that there was a discovery of "some very old fragments of the Greek Septuagint that existed in Jesus's day, discovered in the mid-20th century." (some, not how many or any other description here... how do they know they were from Jesus's day? Not specified). "So, in Jesus's day, the scriptures did contain the personal name of God." Then it goes on to say how the name was removed, and the history of the Jews and how Acts 15:14 states that "God had taken a people for his name."
This is where they call upon logic, to reason that James would not make such a statement if no one in the first century knew or used God's personal name.
Logically...
So I asked her, "So are they saying that there was no accurate bible, until the mid-20th century?"
"No. It doesn't say that!"
I asked, "Doesn't God have the power to preserve his word?"
"Jesus said that his word would be corrupted after His death..."
I asked, "So, is the bible true or not?" She said it was.
She then said something about there being a difference between a "version," like the KJV or NIV, and a "translation." She brought out her big blue book, and showed me a flow chart that showed where they got their bible translation from. I asked her who did the translating, and she gave me the JW answer about men "not wanting to be glorified." (or accountable, however you want to look at it...)
Then she asked me who wrote the KJV. I said I didn't know, but that my friend that I mentioned, and her husband have done some extensive research on bible translations. I told her that the KJV was actually the only version of the bible that is not copyrighted. If you want to make copies of the KJV, you can. You can copy as much or as little as you want, and you can even sell it! If you want to make any changes, or print your own bible, you need a copyright. In order to get a copyright on a new bible, you have to change a certain percentage of the text in order to qualify for a copyright.
She admitted she didn't know anything about that. Then she asked me if the KJV was accurate. Why did they take out the name of Jehovah 7000 times?? I explained that I wasn't defending any translation or version of the bible, but pointing out the fact that they needed to make significant changes to their new translation of the NWT, in order to get that copyright. And I added that some of the changes made DID actually change the meanings. They did take out parts, and even added things, like Jehovah's name, for example... where there was no record of it in original manuscripts.
Then she told me how the fact that JW's have been spreading the name of Jehovah, has made the church actually start using his name also. It turns out that the JW's are the ones who have told everyone what God's name is! Hallejuiah! Seeeee!! WE are the truth! blink blink
I pointed out the change that had been made, in removing the brackets in the text. The old NWT had brackets to indicate where the translators had added words. The new version removed those brackets, so the words just look like they were there all along. I pointed out that sometimes those words could change the meaning. Miss W seemed to have heard about this, because she said "but aren't they usually articles, like 'a' and 'the'?" I admitted that I hadn't done a lot of research on specifics, although I had found a few, and it really did have changes made.
I showed her how in the KJV, it has italicized the words that were not in the original manuscripts. When I read it, I can tell what words were added. Miss K asked if that was ok, in my opinion... I said yes, since I could identify what was added. So she asked me if the KJV was completely accurate and true.
I said, "Maybe NONE of it is true! Should we just throw it out the window?" The argument that there was corruption in one version, but corrected by unidentified "scholars" in the 20th century, was supposed to be proof that her bible was more accurate, even though they admitted they had made logical assumptions to make changes (in order to get a new copyright).
She gasped... "We're not saying that!" hahaha (last week, she had told me we could use any version of the bible that we wanted to use...)
