From: Theology’s
Impact on Translation: KJV to NRSV Return to Home
By Roland H. Worth, Jr. © 2013
[Page 9]
Chapter 1:
The Sectarian Fringe
Some Bible
“translations” are so outlandish that they are more likely to provoke a laugh
than a denunciation. In this chapter we
will examine a few of these and phrase into a consideration of other
translations that are far more deserving of consideration in this
context than in the company of serious and responsibly scholarly endeavors.
1. Kabbalistic-Assisted
Translations
Medieval kabbalism
placed a heavy stress on converting the letters of the Old Testament text into
their “numerical equivalents” and reconverting these numbers into new,
previously hidden “insights” and “truths.”
Strange as this approach to spiritual matters is to most of us, it is
far from dead. For example, in the late
1980s it began to enjoy a considerable resurgence in contemporary
The newspaper
writer Calev Ben-David explained to his reading
audience in these words the technique of one such contemporary kabbalist: “[Stan] Tenen does advanced mathematical analysis of the Book of Genesis,
searching for hidden meanings in the patterns of its Hebrew letters. ‘What I’ve found,’ says Tenen, ‘is that these
patterns correspond to the numerical patterns of some of the basic geometrical
forms found in the physical world, for example, the double helix, which is the
form of the DNA molecule.’ ”
(N. 1)
This
“technique” has not only been used to deduce “truths” from the Bible,
but also, it seems, to establish the text itself that is
translated. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, F. W. Grant published his multi-volume Numerical Bible;
Being a Revised Translation of the Holy Scriptures with Expository Notes
Arranged, Divided, and Briefly Characterized According to the Principles of
Their Numerical Structure. (N. 2)
[Page 10] Grant claimed that “the Lord led me
into the discovery of a numerical structure every-where pervading
Scripture” (page 8). He considered this
to be a decisive rebuttal of unbelief:
“It confronts the deniers of the complete inspiration of God’s book, and
much more the rationalist and the infidel, with an argument they can never
meet. It shows the one
mind of the Spirit in all these various writings of so many men of so many
generations” (page 10).
He provides
this concise summary of the “numerical” approach, beginning with a premise most
would more or less agree with and then carrying it where few would ever dream:
The
numerals of Scripture all students of it believe to have (in many cases
at least)
definite meaning,--as, for instance, in the number 7 we have
“completeness.” The view that I am advocating simply applies
this symbolism to
such a
series as we have here and affirms that Genesis, which stands first among
these, has
for its special line of truth that which would be suggested by the
number
one, Exodus, similarly, a line connected with the number two, Leviticus
with
number three, Numbers, with four, Deuteronomy with five.
To
take of these, perhaps the simplest, the number four stands as the
number of
the world, and the symbol for “weakness” (which comes out in
failure),
“trial,” “experience,” and so the book of Numbers will be found to be
characterized
by these thoughts. It is, in fact, the
testing and failure of
the
wilderness—the type of our own pathway of trial in the world, and the
characters
implied in the number are found in it throughout.
Now
this is not only true of the books as a whole. Each one, we find,
when we
come to examine it, readily parting into similar divisions, and these
again into
subdivisions, and so to be divided again and again, and in the case of
each
division, whether smaller or larger, the same rule applies. The number of
each in
its series is an indication of the line of truth contained in the division to
which it
is attached (page 8).
The reader
can quickly grasp why this can be labeled a kabbalistic/mystical
approach to the Scriptures!
Note the
presence of the same technique of prediction utilized by astrology: making the predictive element (stars or
numbers) represent such a broad constellation of ideas that “fulfillment” is
virtually assured to any reasonably creative mind. For example “four” can mean trial or
experience or weakness or the world. That gives one a wide range of ideas that are
readily malleable to product the results that the observer knows “must” be
there.
Another
obvious objection lies in the problem of identifying the boundaries of
the supposed subdivisions of the text:
“We have to discover these divisions in most cases for
ourselves.” Since he has the
prerogative of both determining the supposed numerical meanings of the terms and
the textual boundaries of each unit within which they operate, he claims the
prerogative to “juggle” divisions and meanings to fit his fancy. Naturally, the text “confirms” his
conclusions—he claims the right to do whatever necessary to guarantee
that result.
[Page 11] Perhaps the most obvious giveaway
that he is building his theory on soft and wobbly sand, is Grand’s dividing of
the Pentateuch into five parts. We
divide the Pentateuch into five books; the Jews treated the entire Torah
as one book. Why then wouldn’t
the entire “five” books of Moses have the numerical value of one?
In Ezra and
Nehemiah’s day we read that the divisions into priests and Levites were
described “in the Book of Moses” (Ezra
In contrast
the command not to execute children for the sins of their fathers (or vice
versa) is quoted as coming from “in the Law in the
Book of Moses” (2 Chronicles 25:4; NKJV).
The text quoted in found in Deuteronomy 24:16. In 2 Kings 14:6 the same passage is quoted as
coming from “the Book of the Law of Moses.”
Hence, even
though practicality required five scrolls to contain it all, these passages
give a strong indication that the singular “book” (equaling “one” numerically,
doesn’t it), was the way that the Torah was regarded for centuries after its
composition. If one can not even get the
“numerical value” of the Pentateuch correct, are any conclusions built upon the
theory likely to be sound?
Oddly,
Grant presents the Numerical Bible as essentially a revision of the King
James Version, most of his unique contribution consists of his “numerical”
commentary on the text. He is
conspicuously silent—at least in the introduction to volume one—as to what
impact the theory had on the wording of the translation itself.
Furthermore,
his great stress on the certainty and undeniable validity of numericalism would surely put overwhelming psychological
pressure upon the translator to adjust the translated text as well as the
commentary to bring out “with greater clarity” the “insights” and
“validity” of his approach.
As of
September 2012 all seven volumes are still available in print and electronic
form.
We cite the
Numerical Bible not as a serious translation or commentary but as a
piece of “trivia” to put us on our guard:
because it is presented to the world as the result of much “scholarly”
labor is no guarantee that true insight underlines the translation. Nor are sweeping claims as to a translation
and note’s “absolute” reliability a guarantee that the translator or its
advocates are correct. If claims
were the criterion of acceptance each of us would be preaching from the Numerical
Bible!
2. The Jesus-Translated Bible
In 1861 Leonard Thorn published
his The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ as Revised and Corrected by the Spirits (“published by the [Page
12] proprietors,”
The
introduction “tells it all”—and serves as its best indictment:
INTRODUCTORY
REMARKS AND EXPLANATIONS BY THE SPIRIT OF
JESUS CHRIST
I was born about 1861 years
since in the town of
lived about
34 years in the flesh. I was of the
lineage of David, as the prophets
foretold. My father’s name was Joseph. My mother’s name was Mary. I was
about
thirty years and four months old when I began to preach.
I
preached about three years and a half.
I was crucified by the mistaken
Jews. My body was laid in the sepulchre. My spirit only arose, and on the third
day I was
seen. The watchmen were entranced by a
spirit, and then the spirits
took
my body away.
There
were errors in all of the Books of the New Testament, and those
errors
came from different causes: First, there
were many errors from improper
translations. Second, also from the
variation of the phrases of the times.
Third,
many
errors had found their way into that book by designing men. And from
these and
other causes, many of the sayings, doings and writings of Christ and his
Apostles have been
misunderstood. It therefore made it
important that the book
should be
revised and corrected.
The
question will undoubtedly be asked, “Why did Christ correct the four
Evangelists and
the Revelations, instead of the writers themselves?” Because I,
Jesus, knew how to correct them
better than any other spirits, even the writers of
those
books.
Paul
came personally in the spirit and corrected the Acts of the Apostles,
and all of
the other books in this testament which are also called Paul’s writings.
James,
Peter, John, Jude, all came in the spirit personally, and revised and
corrected
their own books.
We
have long sought for an opportunity to accomplish this work, and now,
through
a superior medium, by the direction of God, the Father, we have
accomplished
the work, and blessed be His holy name that He enabled us to
accomplish
it (page 3).
So Jesus
provided the Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude the real truth so that
through the spirit they could now correct the mistaken record that now
exists. The exclusion of the Synoptic
Gospel authors would seemingly indicate that Jesus personally saw to the
correction of these particular works.
Why would these writers and Jesus,
for that matter, permit these records to circulate in a brazenly incorrect form
for 1700-plus years? If this were really
Jesus, would He have waited so long to correct the allegedly atrocious
situation? Really?
[Page 13] The
claim that “many errors have found their way into [the New Testament] by
designing men” reflects both personal lack of knowledge and reveals how
widespread was that frame of mind in the middle of the Nineteenth Century—at
least among those consumed by an extremely anti-Catholicism or who desperately
needed an excuse to introduce new un- and anti-Biblical doctrines.
It was not something confined to
the fantasies of Mormonism. What the
multitudes of full and partial manuscripts now available conclusively prove is
how hollow this claim of massive intentional corruption really was. Accidental changes even
well intended “corrections” where the actual text didn’t seem to make
sense—yes; massive internal alterations no.
Furthermore,
the Jesus pictured here is certainly not the Jesus of the Scriptures: A resurrection of the “spirit only” flies in
the face of the obvious reading of the gospel texts. Thomas felt the wounds (John
And—shades
of infidelity! We find the body being
stolen. Though here it
is “spirits” who do it, not the disciples or the enemies of the Lord. (Which raises the
perplexing question of how a spirit moves a physical body and what it
plans on doing with it.)
The Jesus
pictured here is a rather ignorant one, one who could not even have been an
intelligent mortal much less deity incarnate. He doesn’t even know the basic facts about
Himself. “I was born about 1861
years since . . . I lived about 34 years . . . I was about thirty
years and four months old when I began to preach.” Surely He could have remembered at least some
of this data! But then He’s pictured in
the New Testament as supernatural and Deity:
Shouldn’t He have accurately remembered all this data? Of such foolishness are “inspired” translations
reduced to!
3. Joseph Smith’s “Inspired” Version
Thorn’s Jesus and apostle
“inspired” New Testament has blissfully sunk into the oblivion that
“miraculous” translations amply deserve.
Alive and with us, however, is Joseph Smith’s “Inspired Version.” (In case the reader should have doubts, the
cover tells us that is what it is.)
Upon
hearing of this, individuals sometimes think we are alluding to one of Smith’s
wider known—and circulated—writings: The
Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Book
of Mormon—if the last be his work at all.
No, this is the Bible as we know it (more or less) and claims to
represent the true and original texts of both testaments, translated under the
guidance of God. The Reorganized Latter
Day Saints recognize it as fully authoritative; the Utah Mormons don’t
reject it but usually have a far more reserved attitude. They aren’t about to repudiate it, but they
don’t push for its widespread adoption either.
Non-Mormons
have generally considered this differing attitude to be a matter of
denominational rivalry or snobbishness:
The Reorganized Mormons had the complete [Page 14] manuscripts in their hands while the
mainstream (
The
mainstream (i.e.,
In the
1970s “
To critics
of their system, it is amusing that they should claim possible inaccurate
printing of the manuscripts as an objection to the reliability and acceptable
of the “translation” when their own Utah denomination of Mormonism has
grievously reworded the original printing of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine
and Covenants in a multitude of ways.
But this well documented fact has given them no pause at all. One suspects it’s a case of “whose ox is
being gored!”
Another
objection concerned whether the translation was “finished” or not. Actually it both was and wasn’t contradictory
as that may sound. As Matthew (N. 4)
observes: “Although the Prophet stated
in a letter of 2 July 1833 that he had that day ‘finished’ the translation of
the Bible, it is evident that he did more to it later and did not consider the
manuscript ready for publication at that time.”
Actually
this begs the point: If truly
inspired, then it would have been fully accurate and ready for publication at
least in those parts that had been already revised. And Matthews indicates that Smith considered
the entire work completed. How then do
we explain the further work? Inspired
translation would not require inspired “correction,” would it?
The next
time you are perturbed at the Jehovah Witness translation of John 1:1, you
might want to remember the even more “creative” rendering by Joseph Smith: “In the beginning was the gospel preached
through the Son. And the gospel was the
word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was
of God.”
It is hard
to take seriously such fantasy. The
Jehovah Witnesses will go round and round in an effort, however futile, to
justify their eccentric rendering of John 1:1, but for the rendering Smith
has made there simply is no Greek text to tamper with! It represents imagination unhindered and
unrestrained by the need for hard, real, genuine manuscript evidence.
Our second
objection is that not only was Smith unconcerned with whatever textual
evidence existed to back his rendering, he also didn’t consider it necessary to
translated from the original Biblical languages. The Mormon scholar Matthews concedes (N.
5): “So far as we have any evidence,
Joseph Smith did not use Biblical languages and manuscripts in the
translation. His learning of Biblical
languages came after his initial translation and may have been
employed by him in making some of the revisions and corrections in the
manuscripts between 1834 and 1844.”
[Page 15] There was a tradition among the
Jews, that the Septuagint was translated by direct Divine guidance into the
Greek, but even they believed it was done by men well versed in the
original language of Hebrew and who worked from actual original language
manuscripts! Smith attempted to bypass
both the necessary scholarship in the original tongues and the use of
original language manuscripts.
In the abstract,
one must admit that God could have inspired a man to accurately render
the Scriptures into his own native tongue though he lacked all knowledge of the
original one and had not a single original language manuscript to work
from. But in such a case it would not be
a matter of true “translating” at all but of penning the received revelation
of the translation. Furthermore, if
God had so blessed Joseph Smith then we would expect his translation to, essentially, match what the best of contemporary scholarship
can produce.
It doesn’t
require a lot of knowledge of comparative Bible translations to recognize that
Smith has presented strange and exotic renderings that even those scholars who
are the most antagonistic to the fully inspiration of the Scriptures have never
dared suggested. The meager defense that
Matthews can come up with is that in “some passages” there are
“similarities” to the readings found in modern translation (N. 6).
Even among the
fanciful apocryphal writings there are only “some” (his expression) that “show
a similarity in content to some of the passages of Joseph Smith’s
translation” (N. 7). After this hemming
and hawing, he finally says it outright:
“In the overwhelming majority of passages there are no
parallels to the work of Joseph Smith in supplying new materials and
information to the Bible” (N. 8).
Inspiration
would guarantee absolute accuracy; it would not result in repeated
renderings so incredibly different from that which contemporary scholars arrive
at. They know the original
languages. They have access to multitudes
of partial and nearly complete manuscripts of the various parts of the Bible in
diverse languages. Uninspired though
they be, they have done the “home work” that requires their efforts to be taken
seriously. Joseph Smith did not.
Our third
objection to the IV is that a truly inspired writer would have no need to revised his inspiration translation yet Matthews informs us
that is just what Smith did: “It has
been noted several times throughout this work that the original manuscripts
give evidence that some passages were revised more than once by the
Prophet Joseph Smith. The effect of a
second or third revision was generally to (1) add information, (2) delete
information, or (3) to give a passage a different emphasis” (N. 9).
Matthews
calls this “the ongoing nature of revelation” (N. 10), but this is not
revelation—not inspiration—as the Bible knows of it. Biblically inspiration is a revelation
of pure, correct, uncorrupted truth (John
Furthermore,
in true revelation and inspiration, God is His own way assured that even
the words utilized were somehow the correct ones (1Corinthians 2:6-13;
especially verses 12-13). God isn’t
very likely to choose the wrong words, is He? Yet if Smith’s IV was inspired, God
made just such blunders--repeatedly!
What we
have here is an incredibly weak doctrine of inspiration, one that the
Scriptures in no way uphold. In
disputation with outsiders, Mormons speak in terms of authoritative, final,
completely reliable revelation whose validity and truth can in no way [Page
16] be doubted. Yet in discussing such matters as this
one—the nature of Smith’s “inspiration”—we find “revelation and
inspiration” to be something far different:
tentative, probing, full of error, and needful of major correction
later.
And if that isn’t enough to
discredit reliance on the IV, think about this for a minute: Smith was murdered before the final revisions
of the IV were completed; he was still working on it at the time of his
death. Hence, the Mormon doctrine of “inspiration”
allows to the very realistic possibility that there remain uncorrected
errors in Smith’s own “Inspired” Version.
Although these observations should
be sufficient to dismiss this pseudo-translation, the reader may still be
intrigued by some of the other peculiar theological and other “twists” that
Smith has introduced.
The account of creation is changed
from a third person (“God did such and such”) to a first person narrative: “I, God. Say;” “I, God, called;” “I, God,
saw;”
The Song of
Solomon is entirely omitted from the IV, Smith considered it “uninspired
Writing” (N. 11). A Victorian-type fear
of its “sensuality” could understandably cause an individual to question that
book’s canonicity. But Smith was at the
opposite extreme—a practicing polygamist, which makes the rejection of
“sensuality” odder still.
In the Inspired
Version’s Genesis 3:1-7 (and there is nothing like this in any one else’s
translation of the text), the eternal existence of Satan is asserted: “That Satan . . . is the same which was from
the beginning” (verse 1). After God
speaks to Moses in the burning bush, the IV would have us believe that Satan
appeared to attempt Moses to worship him.
In the IV
of Genesis 6:67-71, Adam’s baptism is described. Salvation through repentance and baptism was
available beginning in those days (Genesis 5:1-2, 44-45)!
We are even
provided a specific chronological age of accountability: “And I will establish a covenant of
circumcision with thee, and it shall be my covenant between me and thee, in
their generations, that thou mayest know for ever
that children are not accountable before me until they are eight
years old” (Genesis 17:11).
According
to Matthews (N. 12), this particular passage was translated between
In the KJV,
RSV, etc., of Genesis 6:6-7, it is “the Lord” who “repented” of making man; the
parallel account in the IV (Genesis
Whether
mankind’s souls “existed” before the creation of the earth is certainly not
asserted in the Genesis text we are acquainted with. But in the IV (Genesis 2:4-6) the doctrine is
spelled out: “For I, the Lord God,
created all things . . . spiritually before they [Page 17] were naturally upon the face of the
earth. . . . And I, the Lord God, had
created all the children of men, and not yet a man killed the ground, for in
heaven created I them.”
In Matthew
18:10-11 Christ rebukes those who would be unkind to children. In the IV, He adds, “These little ones had no
need of repentance, and I will save them.”
In Matthew
4. The
No discussion of sectarian
translations would be complete without attention being given to the New World
Translation, published by the Jehovah Witnesses. Although Smith’s “Inspired Version” is little
known outside the LDS community, the NWT has been circulated in massive
printings throughout the world.
That there
are scattered renderings here and there that are fine or even exceptionally so,
most writers on the subject will willingly concede. But they are just that—the unusual, the
abnormal. (And occasional flashes of
genuine insight will occur in almost any translation.) Over all, the translation merits little
confidence outside the Jehovah Witness movement itself. A blatant willingness to “slant” and “bend”
the text is repeatedly obvious.
Witnesses
have sometimes attempted to counter this prevailing low opinion through an
appeal to Professor E. C. Colwell’s What Is
the Best New Testament? The
Professor listed 64 texts from the gospel of John and compared various
translations with the Greek original.
The Witnesses claim a perfect score of accuracy when using his list.
Of course,
if one were to choose a different set of comparison texts one might well
produce a different set of “winners” and “losers.” Also note that the comparison was limited to
texts from one gospel account rather than being based upon a wider
selection of passages.
The
doctrinally significant passages would naturally be greatly reduced by reliance
upon one gospel alone—not to mention excluding those in the epistles. And it is among such doctrinal texts that the
NWT receives some of its severest criticism.
In other words, if you don’t consider texts where the special biases of
the Witnesses are involved, one is bound to consider the translation
better than it would otherwise be rated.
Furthermore,
the “best” translation according to Colwell, was Goodspeed’s.
Although this is a well respected translation, it is also a modern
speech translation, in which concerns for strict accuracy are willingly
sacrificed in the interest of (supposed) better communication. When Goodspeed is
judged the best translation, more conservative students of the Bible
will question the criteria being used by the evaluator!
[Page 18] Michael Van Buskirk
adds an additional argument that will be of importance to those who reject
modern “critical” texts: Colwell’s
evaluation is based upon the Greek text of Westcott and Hort;
hence any translation that deviates from that underlying text will automatically
be considered a less accurate translation than one that adheres, for example,
to the Majority Text. Similarly, one
that conforms to the “critical” text will automatically be considered a
more liable version.
It strikes
me that he may go a step too far, however, when he contends, “What received the
perfect score was the Greek text utilized by the New World Translation
Committee, not the English translation they produced” (N. 14).
Buskirk (N. 15) also challenges the JW claim that Colwell’s
book, published in 1952, could be considered an evaluation of the NWT since it
consisted of lectures delivered in 1947, three years prior to the
release of the Witnesses’ translation. Burskirk notes that the preface is dated
Before we
examine some of the notorious distortions of the Witness “translation,”
attention should be drawn to the fact that the identity of the translators was
kept a zealously guarded secret. The probable
identities have been suggested by external critics and by a high level defector
from the group. The latter’s list
included five men, four of whom had no special training in either Hebrew or
Greek and the Hebrew language capacity of the fifth seriously challenged.
The
Witnesses continue to downplay in 2012 the question of who translated the work,
arguing that this reflects their desire to be humble and concentrate attention
on the translation itself. They note the
desire of the New American Standard Bible to not reveal who did their revision
and how the NASB prefatory matter points to the need for attention to be
centered on the translation itself and not on these secondary matters (N. 16). Hence they argue that there is an
inconsistency bordering upon hypocrisy by certain of their critics.
Whether
emphasized by the NASB or not, you can find the list if you wish to. (N. 17). Even if the inconsistency be granted, would
that really justify the practice?
Especially when the translation results are, to put it mildly, quite
controversial?
I attempted to get JWs to grasp this point in the 1970s and 1980s by two
approaches. I tried to use their
admitted secrecy as a teaching tool, to breach their thick shell of
self-confidence and make them think.
“Won’t you concede that the NWT has what, at the least, would be
considered unusual and unexpected translations that you would be hard put to
find anywhere else? (John 1:1, for
example.) When translations are that
different from others, don’t you believe we should be told the credentials of
the translators and their names so we can judge for ourselves whether to take
their translation seriously?” (I even
had one Witness attempt to secure the names for me—unsuccessfully.)
Or another
approach: “Isn’t it odd that the Society
still refuses to reveal the names? I
have here a copy of Joseph Smith’s translation—it even has ‘Inspired Version’
on the cover. Your Society won’t even
reveal who translated the NWT while this one not [Page 19] only tells us who translated it but
even claims what you don’t—outright inspiration. So why should I give credibility to your
translation and throw away this one?”
These
challenges remain just as relevant today as they were back then.
Although
much more could be said about the NWT, we will limit ourselves to an analysis
of one recurring error and the folly found in their rendering of two specific
verses.
A.
The unexpected appearance of “Jehovah” in the New Testament.
“Jehovah”
is one rendering of a Hebrew word.
We would not expect to find it in the translation of the Greek
New Testament. Nor do we find it in any
of the widely circulated translations readily available—except the NWT. Robert H. Countess notes that: “In the body of the NWT, ‘Jehovah’ has been
inserted 237 times, and ‘Jah’—the abbreviated
form—four times” (N. 18).
Countless points out that there is no Greek manuscript of the New
Testament with “Jehovah” in it.
The Witnesses respond that “Lord” was substituted as an act of
deliberate textual corruption. A
“corruption” so pervasive that it has totally swept away all “Jehovah”
manuscripts! By such reasoning we could
argue for the addition of any doctrine or phrase we wished.
One might also wish to consider the
rationale for any suppression by the Roman Catholic Church: What could have possibly offended it? It affected none of their own doctrinal
“peculiarities” or practices. Where was
the reason to act—not here and there but to manage nothing less than a universal
suppression? And if the use of that name
were regarded as somehow heretical—why else repress it?—why aren’t the creeds
and church canons of antiquity full of denunciations of its use? One would, historically speaking, expect
these two phenomena to go hand in hand.
The Witnesses argue that Jesus and
the writers of the New Testament would have used “Jehovah” in their spoken
discourses and, therefore, it would naturally have been included in the written
records of these conversations, our “four gospels.” The normal assertion of scholars (liberal or
conservative) is the exact opposite:
that the tetragrammaton
(i.e., God’s name, “Jehovah”) was considered so holy that it was neither
written nor spoken. To refute this, appeal is made to one manuscript of Deuteronomy—note
carefully the number—in which the Greek translation does have
“Jehovah.” Hardly a sufficient number to
justify the rejection of all the others that lack it!
The famous Bible translator Jerome
is appealed to. Once he wrote, “We find
the four-lettered name of God in certain Greek volumes even to this day
expressed in the ancient letters.” Note
that he does not claim these to be texts of scripture. He uses a very different term, “certain Greek
volumes.” Furthermore he uses the limiting
term “certain Greek volumes,” as if they were few or (very?) limited
in number. Unquestionably
a minority as distinguished from the majority.
And, of course, not the slightest
hint that these manuscripts included any of the New Testament.
Then there is the argument that
since Jesus rejected the unscriptural traditions of the Jewish leadership, He
would have rejected their refusal to use the name of “Jehovah.” But that assumes what needs to be
proved—that it was regarded by Him as an unscriptural tradition.
[Page 20] And, if memory
falters here forgive me please, is there any case in which Jesus
challenged their reliability in preserving the text of Scripture? Is not every case we encounter of Jesus
denouncing unscriptural traditions, cases of where either it contradicted or undermined
what the Scriptural text itself said? Is
that not something dramatically different than changing the text itself?
As to verbal use of “Jehovah,”
where was the abuse in avoiding its use?
It was motivated (so far as we can tell) out of respect and honor. Excessive perhaps, but respect and honor none
the less. How was there anything in the
non-use that would raise the rebuke of Jesus?
Indeed, if its non-use was as
subversive of the Divine will as we are told why are we lacking a specific
rebuke of it? This was a fundamental
of their religious practice that Jesus must have encountered time after time
and day after day. Jesus’ silence seems
inexplicable if the practice were actually sinful.
In defense of rendering “Jehovah”
in the New Testament, appeal is made to Matthew having been written first in
Aramaic and then being translated into Greek.
Even granting the validity of this theory, their assumption would not
necessarily require that “Jehovah” would be used. No early Aramaic Matthew has survived.
Because God’s “name” is so
important it would have had to be included, goes another argument. But that was also true in Old
Testament days as well—and yet the manuscript evidence refutes the
thesis for “Jehovah” is never found in the Greek translation-manuscripts (with
one solitary exception).
On such flimsy “evidence,” the
Witnesses feel free to alter the New Testament text 237 times!
The theological motive to ignore
the evidence is not hard to find: After
all, the group’s name is “Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
The Witnesses have endured
additional rough sailing in recent decades as scholars have vigorously knocked
the air out of their “Jehovah” sails:
Are the vowels that are added to the Hebrew letters, thereby producing our
word “Jehovah,” the correct ones?
A very large body of scholarly
opinion now holds that the proper rendering would be “Yahweh!” Although Witness books conspicuously fail to
stress this, some of them do admit the popularity of the proposed substitute
and even concede that it might be right.
When a group that has made a virtual fetish out of the essentiality of
God’s people being called Jehovah’s Witnesses have to concede that Yahweh’s
Witnesses might well be the correct name, one is forced to smile at their
discomfort!
As for me, I’ll stick with
“Jehovah” most of the time, except in my very scholarly writings and, even there, I’m not above using the older term. It was the one I grew up with and I am quite
comfortable with. It may not be the most
correct rendering, but everyone knows who we are talking about. Not so with the name “Yahweh.”
B. John 1:1.
If one single verse is to be
pointed out as the hub of allegations of doctrinal slanting in the New World
Translation, it would surely be John 1:1:
“In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was a god”—note both the lower case “god” and the addition of “a.” The works already cited by Countess and Buskirk deal in detail with the scholarly arguments pro and
con.
[Page 21] “The Greek”
is always a handy hiding place for special pleading since most don’t know
it—including the vast majority of Witnesses!
Selective citation of “authorities” can be woven together to prove just
about anything one pleases if one’s ethics are sufficiently flexible. The Witnesses have been scalded time and
again over utilizing this type of approach to “vindicate” their substitution of
“a god” for “God” in John 1:1.
But rather than crawl into the
complexities of the Greek, let’s approach it from a standpoint that is both
easily usable and understandable—a line of reasoning that can be used without
any Greek knowledge at all:
“What is there in this verse that a
righteous pagan could not have said about Jesus?” I have asked that question more than once and
have never received much in reply. And
it’s easy to understand why: In a
society where emperors were often deified by the Roman Senate after death
(sometimes, and more controversially, while still alive), pagans would have had
no difficulty in accepting Jesus as “a god.” The problem arose when He was linked in Deityship with the one unique God of Judaism;; this allowed no room for Jesus being mere “a god.”
Furthermore, if John meant “a
god,” as the NWT would have it, then he was writing nothing offensive to
paganism. He was writing nothing that
would have made Christianity a persecuted religion, he
was writing that which would have made Christianity an acceptable Judeo-pagan
cult. Hence unless John was writing a
form of Judaized paganism, he had to mean more
of Jesus than that He was merely “a god.”
For this common sense reason alone,
the NWT rendering has to be wrong.
C. Luke 23:43.
To illustrate how a little
“creativity” can distort the intended meaning of a text, few better examples
can be given than Christ’s promise to the thief on the cross: “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with
Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43, NASB).
Christ is telling the thief: You are not going to cease to exist
though you die a physical death. You are
going to survive that death. You are
going to be with Me this very day in
This passage is clearly an
embarrassment to the Witnesses: To them
once you are dead you are dead all over like Rover. (To swipe the atheist jibe
at believers.) Witnesses believe man is
totally material, nothing of us survives death except the memory
of us in God’s mind.
By producing their own translation
they possessed the means to “solve” the inconvenience of this text. Unlike John 1:1, they don’t mistranslate
it. Oh, nothing so crude or
outlandish! They merely change the
punctuation: “Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in
Note that the comma is moved over
by one little word, thereby altering the entire meaning! Instead of asserting that the thief would be
with the Lord in
For the reason just noted, the
rendering is utterly improbable. Lewis
points out further evidence against it (N. 19):
[Page 22]
Hence
the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ bias clearly comes through. The
antithesis
between the thief’s indefinite, “When you come in your kingdom,” and
Jesus’ “Today you shall be” is
destroyed. Furthermore, the formula
“Truly I say
to you” in
other New Testament settings (Matthew
used that
what follows is always part of the statement and not part of the
formula.
The Witnesses can claim the Curetonian Syriac and the church
father Theophylact
on their
side of the issue, but the whole affair was perhaps best characterized by
Henry Alford as
“something worse than silly.
Notes
N. 1 -- Calev
Ben-David. “Mysticism
for the Masses.”
N. 2 -- Specifically volume 1: The Books of the Law
(Genesis-Deuteronomy). Third Edition.
N. 3 -- Robert J. Matthews. “A Plainer Translation:” Joseph Smith’s Translation of the
Bible—A History and Commentary.
N. 4 -- Ibid., page
xxviii.
N. 5 -- Ibid., page
xxx.
N. 6 -- Ibid., page
xxxii.
N. 7 -- Ibid.
N. 8 -- Ibid.
N. 9 -- Ibid., page
215.
N. 10 -- Ibid.
N. 11 -- Ibid.
N. 12 -- Ibid., page
260.
N. 13 -- Ibid., pages
253-261.
N. 14 -- Michael Van Buskirk. The Scholastic
Dishonesty of the Watchtower.
N. 15 -- Ibid.
N. 16 -- [Anonymous.] “Why Did the Translators of the
N. 17 -- [Anonymous.] “Translators of the New
American Standard Bible.” Part of
the Wholesome Words website. At: http://www.wholesomewords.org/nasbtran.html. [September 2012.]
N. 18 -- Robert H. Countess. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New Testament.
N. 19 -- Jack Lewis. English Bible. Page 231.