Is the Jehovah Witness Bible authentic or were the books written to suit the beginning of a new group?

Answer 1

One Perspective:

The vast majority of Christians worldwide, of all denominations, the vast majority of bible scholars, theologians, divinity scholars, university and bible college staff and the vast majority of clergy AND laity of all Christian denominations regard the NWT as a very poor and inaccurate translation where they believe major passages confirming, e.g. Trinitarian doctrine among many others, have been deliberately and blatantly mistranslated to give credence to what they see as the skewed beliefs of the Jehovah's Witness organization.

It seems that the only support that the JW movement can amass for their translation is a book written by Jason BeDuhn who has only a basic understanding of New Testament Greek. Neither is he recognized in the scholarly community (Christian or otherwise) as anything resembling event approaching an expert in Biblical Greek, and much less so in Hebrew. In fact, it was written recently, by a respected theologian, regarding the translators of the NWT:

"It has been argued that the NWT translators were insufficiently qualified to translate the Bible, with only Franz [one of the JW translators] having any formal education in Biblical languages. It has also been argued that the size of the translation committee was very small compared to the number of translators involved in producing most other English translations. These criticisms are disputed by Witnesses, who state that the translation should be examined on its own merits, not on the speculated credentials of its translators."

In other words, if you need a heart transplant, go down to Macdonalds and ask some of the lads there to do one for you. I'm sure they'd manage, but I'm also sure that it wouldn't work!

The problem with the JW movement is that their founder, Charles Taize Russell had only a very basic education and had no education in the scriptures whatsoever, nor was he ever called to ministry. Yet this did not prevent him from declaring himself a 'pastor' and a 'Bible scholar' until found out in court where he could not even recite the Greek alphabet. Russell began the Watchtower society by selling thousands of tracts (making a great deal of money) supporting his own skewed version of the Bible. Russell reintroduced an Arian theology - discredited in the early church and declared heretical as those who spoke out against it were either eyewitnesses to events themselves or were disciples of those who actually heard Jesus himself teach, and knew Arianism to be wrong. Yet Russell, not having the grounding in scripture necessary to prevent his error, still pursued this discredited cultist theology.

The New World Translation was commissioned by the Watchtower society to provide an 'accurate' translation. However, to almost all Christians worldwide, they see the NWT as a very poor translation that continues to lead gullible people astray from the true message of God's love for humanity into a cult-like organization that regards scripture as its 'god', and which replaces love and forgiveness with a disregard for the sanctity of life (by refusing blood transfusions even to dying children) and the message of revenge and hatred (through the custom of disfellowhipping).

There are too many incidences of mistranslation within the NWT to go into here, but there are just a few examples that show how even slight changes to words and phases can change the complete meaning of passages and render a whole new erroneous theology based on this translation. For example, The New World Translation renders the Greek term word "staurós" ("cross") as "torture stake" because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that Jesus was crucified on a cross, despite all the historical and archeological evidence, plus the evidence of the Church fathers who can trace their teaching back to the disciples themselves. The New World Translation does not translate the Greek words "sheol," "hades," "gehenna," and "tartarus," as "hell" simply because Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in hell, again, despite Jesus' own teaching on this. The NWT gives the translation "presence" instead of "coming" for the Greek word "parousia" because JW's believe that Christ has already returned in the early 1900's - again, in error, as contemporary Greek documents of that time always translate "parousia" as 'coming'. In Colossians 1:16 the NWT inserts the word "other" into the text on several occasions despite it being completely absent from the original Greek text. this may be a small change but it renders the passages with a totally different slant. It does this to give the view that "all other things" were created by Christ, instead of what the text actually says in the original Greek, "all things were created by Christ." This is to go along with their erroneous belief that Christ is a created being, which they believe because they deny the Trinity.

However, the most well known of all the New World Translation perversions is John 1. The original Greek text reads, "the Word was God." The NWT renders it has "the word was a god." This is not a matter of correct translation, but of reading one's preconceived theology into the text, rather than allowing the text to speak for itself. There is no indefinite article in Greek (ie, the English - "a" or "an"), so any use of an indefinite article in the English translation must be added in by the translator. This is grammatically acceptable in English, so long as it does not change the meaning of the text. But here it does. More than that, JWs will not state categorically what they mean by 'a god' simply because their own theology on the matter is very confused simply because they cannot square the divinity of Christ with the skewed and warped translation of the NWT. There are many, many other examples where passages are rewritten in the NWT or words added or removed with the express intent of being able then to use 'scripture' to back up the JW Arian theology. JWs have to accept what is taught them by the elders of the movement on pain of disfellowshipping, and this independent theological thought is banned. This is a great shame as if JWs were allowed by the movement to study scripture in its original form would then realize just how erroneous and skewed the NWT actually is.

Thus most Christians believe that the JW movement introduced the New World Translation of the Bible, not to help discern scripture and its true meaning, as do most modern translations, but to subtly (and not so subtly!) change scripture so that it now backed up their own Arian theology, and, as such, they see it as a travesty of what scripture, in its original Hebrew or Greek, was intended to convey.

A Different Perspective:

Jehovah's Witnesses have produced a translation not a rewriting or "reworking" of the biblical text. It is a semi-literal translation based primarily on Westcott and Hort and Nestle's Greek texts and not a paraphrase bible.

While the NWT does break with tradition in its rendition of certain verses (something that has proved controversial) it has not done so by compromising contextual honesty. As for how "authentic" it is, reference to scholarly reviews (see below) of the New World Translation can give an insight on its value and place as a respectable translation.

Jason BeDuhn, an associate professor of religious studies, Northern Arizona University, stated in 2004 in Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament:

"..the general public and many Bible scholars assume that the differences in the New World Translation (NW) are due to religious bias on the part of its translators. However, he states: "Most of the differences are due to the greater accuracy of the NW as a literal, conservative translation." While BeDuhn disagrees with certain renderings of the New World Translation, he says that it emerges as "the most accurate of the translations compared," calling it a "remarkably good" translation.

New World Translation has been found to be "one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available" and is "the most accurate of the [8 major] translations compared." (BeDuhn, Truth in Translation).

Andover Newton Quarterly of January 1963 said: "The translation of the New Testament is evidence of the presence in the movement of scholars qualified to deal intelligently with the many problems of Biblical translation."

As Theologian C. Houtman explains regarding the unorthodoxy of the New World Translation: "Various traditional translations of important terms from the original text have been discarded, apparently in order to arrive at the best possible understanding."

Regarding the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, Edgar J. Goodspeed, translator of the Greek New Testament in An American Translation, wrote in a letter dated December 8, 1950: "I am interested in the mission work of your people, and its world wide scope, and much pleased with the free, frank and vigorous translation. It exhibits a vast array of sound serious learning, as I can testify."

Professor Benjamin Kedar, a Hebrew scholar in Israel, said in 1989:

In my linguistic research in connection with the Hebrew Bible and translations, I often refer to the English edition of what is known as the New World Translation. In so doing, I find my feeling repeatedly confirmed that this work reflects an honest endeavor to achieve an understanding of the text that is as accurate as possible.

Hebrew and Greek scholar Alexander Thomson wrote:

The translation is evidently the work of skilled and clever scholars, who have sought to bring out as much of the true sense of the Greek text as the English language is capable of expressing.-The Differentiator, April 1952, pages 52-7.

I have never discovered in the 'New World Translation' [of the Hebrew Scriptures] any biased intent to read something into the text that it does not contain

Another Perspective:

I think that if you got a copy of the New World Translation, the King James Version, the Apocryphal Bible and the New Revised Edition, that there are few of us who could see the theological differences - assuming there's even any - in a blind "taste test" so to speak.

Let me give it away - in all the various "versions" and "translations" of the Bible by Christian faiths, they all say God created the Heavens and Earth, Adam and Eve sinned thereby sentencing us all to death, Jesus Christ the Son of God came down and sacrificed himself that any who believe upon him might live.

And they all have Samson, David and Goliath, and Moses in them. Which is about now the extent of what 99% of Christians care about, and now 100% of what they need for salvation!

Truth is, the various translations are pretty near identical, and the difference only concerns those who forget that all Jesus ever said was "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself". Some of you are saying "Amen!" to that.

All these Bibles are fine. If you find one that says, "Hate Jesus", come correct me.

And how about the most obviously overlooked thing? Charles Taze Russell died long before the New World Translation took place. He could not have had any plans for fooling people. And he knew everyone could read, and obviously expected his ideas to be upheld by the Bibles of his time - and apparently, to tens of thousands of people, they were!

Where then the need for a deliberately faked book, when the King James Bible was doing great for them?