New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (New Testament) was released at a convention of Jehovah's Witnesses in Yankee Stadium, New York, on August 2, 1950. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) originally appeared in five volumes between 1953 and 1960, a single edition being produced in 1963. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has never disclosed the names of the translators, who requested to remain anonymous, even after their death, a fact often pointed to by detractors of the Witnesses and this translation.
However, former members of the Jehovah's Witnesses organization have claimed the members of the committee are Nathan H. Knorr (President of the society), Frederick W. Franz (Vice-President), George D. Cangas, and Albert D. Schroeder. According to Raymond V. Franz, the "principal translator of the Society's New World Translation" was Frederick W. Franz. (ISBN 0914675230) According to M. James Penton, "to all intents and purposes the New World Translation is the work of one man, Frederick Franz." (ISBN 0802079733) It must be noted that these claims come from people who are highly critical of the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, their views reflecting such a standpoint. Frederick Franz afterwards became the president of the Witnesses organization from 1977 to 1992, and was responsible for the revisions to the NWT which appeared after its initial publication.
From the publication of the first issue of The Watchtower magazine in 1879, until the release of the NWT in 1950, Jehovah's Witnesses in English-speaking countries generally used the King James Version or the American Standard Version. Watch Tower literature has quoted liberally from the King James Version and many other editions of the Bible over the years. The Watch Tower Society advanced the following reasons for commissioning the original English-language New World Translation.
Firstly, when the new translation was commissioned in the mid-20th century, the majority of Bible versions in common use employed archaic language. The English language has undergone significant changes since 1611, when the Authorised (King James) Version was first published and many words in the KJV are no longer in common use today, or are used in a sense different from that in which the translators intended them. The intention was to produce a fresh translation, free of archaisms.
Over the centuries since the King James version was produced, more copies of earlier manuscripts of the original texts in the Hebrew and Greek languages have become available. Better manuscript evidence has made it possible to determine with greater accuracy what the original writers intended, particularly in more obscure passages. (The New World Translation is based on the Westcott and Hort Greek text and the Biblia Hebraica text of Rudolf Kittel.) Additionally, certain aspects of the original Hebrew and Greek languages are perhaps better understood by linguists today than they were previously. More controversially, Jehovah's Witnesses felt that doctrinal misunderstandings and preconceived ideas of previous translators of the Bible had affected their work, a charge which, conversely, critics apply to the New World Translation.
The New World Translation is intended to be a literal rendering rather than a paraphrase. To a very great extent, one English word has been selected for each Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic word and effort has been made to adhere to this rendering, context allowing. Some maintain that this makes the translation sound wooden, stiff or verbose, whereas others feel that it favors accuracy, facilitates cross-reference work and helps preserve the flavor of the original texts.
Unlike many other versions, the translation uses the name Jehovah throughout the Old Testament portion, as well as in 237 places in the New Testament, particularly in the case of quotations from or allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures passages where the name is found. The use of the name Jehovah in the New Testament translation, although not unprecedented, is contested by many. This is because the Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters reprsenting the Divine Name and usually transliterated as YHWH or JHVH and the basis the name “Jehovah”, is found several thousand times in the original manuscripts that make up the 39 books of the Old Testament, written largely in Hebrew, but nowhere in the New Testament, written in Greek. Defenders of the translation justify this readily by noting that modern translations of the Bible often substitute the better-known Hebrew names for the lesser-known (to English-speakers) Greek forms of those names, such as "Isaiah" rather than the Greek "Esaias", "Jeremiah" for "Jeremias", etc., in the New Testament rather than the former, more confusing practice (followed in the KJV) of merely transliterating the Greek names, and that therefore the use of “Jehovah” in the New Testament is just the logical extension of this. Detractors dispute this, and also note that the pronunciation “Jehovah” was likely never the one used by the ancient Hebrews for the Divine Name, which many scholars feel was more likely to have been "Yahweh" or "Yahveh". Jehovah's Witnesses maintain that if the change from using the spelling “Jehovah” were changed to “Yahweh” on the grounds that this would more closely adhere to the believed ancient Hebrew pronunciation that then a consistent approach to the translation fo the Biblical text would produce Yirmeyah´ for Jeremiah, Isaiah would then become Yesha`ya´hu, and even Jesus would be Yehohshu´a` (from ancient Hebrew) or Iesous´ (from Greek). In any event, the term in English “Jehovah” traditionally identifies the true God in some earlier English translations, and the correct ancient Hebrew pronunciation can only be guessed at today since long before the time of the New Testament the Hebrews had ceased to pronounce the Name aloud, having come to regard it as so sacred as to be ineffable and substituting "the Lord" instead, as most major English translations do (spelling it with all small caps as LORD, in order to differentiate the term from the Hebrew term which already translates as "Lord").
Since the original New World Translation was published in 1950, it has undergone minor revisions on a number of occasions, most recently in 1984, and been retranslated into many other languages. Currently the New Testament is available in 45 languages, the Old Testament in 28. A stated long-term goal of the Witnesses organization is to have the whole Bible translated into every major language of the world, on the basis on the English edition of the New World Translation.
The translation has been produced in a number of editions, including a pocket-sized edition, a standard edition with cross-references, a reference edition with footnotes and appendix material, a four-volume large-print edition for the visually impaired. It is also available in Grade Two English Braille, and on audiocassettes and CDs (in MP3 format). The complete text of the English New World Translation may be viewed on the Watchtower website (see link below).
The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures presents the Greek text of the New Testament, edited by Westcott and Hort, with a word-for-word translation underneath, and the text of the New World Translation in a separate column for comparison. It was first published in 1969.
Although the translation is aimed chiefly at the Jehovah's Witness community, millions of persons of a variety of religious backgrounds have acquired and read it. Over the last fifty years, approximately 122,000,000 copies have been printed, making it one of the most widely-circulated English language translations in history. (For comparison, Jehovah's Witnesses and associates number around 16,000,000 worldwide.)
Many Bible critics charge that the New World Translation is a rewriting of the Bible to conform to Jehovah's Witnesses' doctrines, as it does not support some of the key traditions characteristic of mainstream Christianity, such as belief in eternal hellfire, and the Trinity doctrine. Scholar Robert M. McCoy noted, "In not a few instances the New World Translation contains passages which must be considered as `theological translations.' This fact is particularly evident in those passages which express or imply the deity of Jesus Christ." (Andover Newton Quarterly, January, 1963).
Some issues involving the New World Translation
John 1:1. "The Word was a god".
This rendering is at odds with the King James Version, the New International Version, the Revised Standard Version and many others, which all translate the phrase theos en ho logos as "The Word was God." Some translations which essentially agree with the New World Translation are Moffat's ("The Logos was divine"), Goodspeed's An American Translation ("The Word was divine") and Schonfield's Authentic New Testament ("The word was divine.") In the past, critics of the New World Translation argued vocally in favour of the rendering "The Word was God," invoking Colwell's rule, which states that definite predicate nouns take the article when they follow the verb but not when they precede it. Although some continue to advance this argument, many now recognize that Colwell's rule merely allows anarthrous nouns before the verb to be definite, but does not require that they be. Furthermore, a number of NT verses appear to violate Colwell's rule and many now accept the view first advanced by Philip Harner that anarthrous predicate nouns before the verb are qualitative, and thus may be rendered "divine," "deity," or "Deity". Thus the controversy appears to be shifting from one of translation ("God" vs "a god") to one of interpretation (What exactly does 'divine' or 'deity' imply?)
John 8:58 "Before Abraham came into existence, I have been." Many other translations have the phrase "Before Abraham was, I am," some even capitalizing the final phrase ("I Am" or "I AM"). McCoy states that, "on grammatical grounds alone, the rendering [of the New World Translation]cannot be justified..." However the translators of the NASB give credit to this rendering, showing it as an acceptable alternative by placing it in the footnotes in the 1960 and 1973 editions. Goodspeed's An American Translation has "I existed before Abraham was born!" and a similar thought is conveyed by Kenneth Taylor's Living Bible.
The disputed Greek phrase is ego eimi, which usually means "I am". Critics hold that the New World Translation is attempting to conceal an allusion to Exodus 3:14, where, according to the King James Version, God calls himself "I AM". The publishers of the New World Translation understand the phrase to be referring to an action beginning in the past and continuing into the present, requiring the use of the English perfect tense ("I have been"). They point out that virtually all versions, including the King James Version, use the perfect tense in rendering the Greek phrase ego eimi at John 14:9, and that in any case, Exodus 3:14 in the Greek Septuagint version does not use the expression.
Titus 2:13 "glorious manifestation of the great God and of the Savior of us, Christ Jesus". Many other translations have "of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." J. B. Philips' translation reads "of the great God and of Christ Jesus, our Saviour"; the New American Bible reads "of the great God and of our Savior Christ Jesus". Those in favour of a trinitarian rendering refer to Sharp's rule, which states that "when the copulative KAI connects two nouns of the same case, if the article HO or any of its cases precedes the first of the said nouns of participles, and is not repeated before the second noun of participle, the latter always relates to the same person that is expressed or described by the first noun or participle; i.e., it denotes a further description of the first-named person.'" Witness sources point to apparent exceptions to Sharp's Rule (notably Matthew 21:12)and to statements by other grammarians that the repetition of the article is not necessary in the koine (common) Greek of the New Testament.
Colossians 1:16, 17. "By means of him all [other] things were created". This rendering has attracted controversy because it is said to imply that Jesus himself was a created being. Critics accuse the New World Translation of 'adding words'. Defenders of the rendering express the view that the word 'other' is implicit in the original, since the Greek word pas frequently does mean 'all other', with many versions translating it that way, for instance, at Luke 13:2.
Other reviewers have expressed appreciation for the translation. Dr Jason BeDuhn, Associate Professor and chair, Department of Humanities, Arts, and Religion, Northern Arizona University commented: "[The] 'New World Translation' is a high quality, literal translation that avoids traditional glosses in its faithfulness to the Greek. It is, in many ways, superior to the most successful translations in use today." BeDuhn has written a book entitled Truth in Translation - Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, examining controversial passages such as those mentioned above and comparing the renderings of nine different translations including the New World Translation. Some detractors have claimed that Dr BeDuhn is not recognized in the scholarly community as an expert in Biblical Greek.
Benjamin Kedar, Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Advanced
Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, stated: "This kind of work reflects an honest endeavor to achieve an understanding of the text that is as accurate as possible. Giving evidence of a broad command of the original language, it renders the original words into a second language understandably without deviating unnecessarily from the specific structure of the Hebrew....Every statement of language allows for a certain latitude in interpreting or translating. So the linguistic solution in any given case may be open to debate. But I have never discovered in the New World Translation any biased intent to read something into the text that it does not contain." Others have claimed that Professor Kedar is not a recognized scholar in Biblical Languages, and that most of NWT's purported deviations are in letters written in Greek, not Hebrew. However, many detractors of the translation have attempted to get professor Kedar to retract his statements or condemn the translation altogether. Therefore their claim as to his lack of credentials is questionable in itself.
Some instances where the New World Translation departs significantly from the majority of other Bible translations are discussed in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures - With References. Other defences of specific verses have been published in The Watchtower magazine.
In 1998, Rolf Furuli, one of Jehovah's Witnesses and a lecturer in Semitic Languages at the University of Oslo, published 'The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation: With a special look at the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses', in which he defends the literalness of the NWT. [1]
A number of Jehovah's Witnesses have entered into online debates or published web sites in defence of the 'New World Translation'. One such site is Jehovah's Witnesses United [1].
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