New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

New World Translation

The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a modern-language translation of the Bible published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. and the International Bible Students Association of Brooklyn, New York (corporations in use by the religious organization commonly known as Jehovah's Witnesses). It was not the first, nor the last translation to be published by them, but it was their very first original translation of the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts.

History

In October 1946 the president of the Watch Tower Society, Nathan H. Knorr, proposed a fresh translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Work got under way on December 2, 1947 when the New World Bible Translation Committee was formed. On September 3, 1949, Knorr convened a joint meeting of the board of directors of both the Watch Tower Society's New York and Pennsylvania corporations to announce that the work on a modern-language English translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was completed and had been turned over to the Society for printing. It was assigned to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania for publication, with the request that the names of the translators not be published. Their stated intent was, "to honor Jehovah God, the Divine Author of his inspired Word." This fact is very frequently cited by critics of the translation in order to suggest that its scholarship is of inferior quality, as the identities of the translators and hence their credentials could never be conclusively verified. However, Raymond Franz, a former member of the Society's Governing Body and nephew of Fred Franz, identified the members of the translation committee as being his uncle, Fred Franz, Nathan Knorr, Albert Schroeder and George Gangas. [see Franz, Raymond. (2004) Crisis of Conscience (4th ed.), pg. 56. Atlanta: Commentary Press ISBN 0-914675-23-0.] None of the latter had ever studied Bible languages at college level.

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, to 82,075 present, fresh from the presses in Brooklyn, New York. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) originally appeared in five volumes in 1953, 1955, 1957, 1958, and 1960, a single edition being produced in 1963.

The translation does not contain any of the Apocryphal books, as the translators believe that any claim for canonicity on the part of these writings is without any solid foundation.

Since the original New World Translation was published in 1950, it has undergone minor revisions on a number of occasions, most recently in 1984. The Watchtower's alleged goal is to make the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures accessible to as many people as possible. To that end, the English translation has served as a basis for translations of the NWT into several other languages and editions, including a pocket-sized edition, a standard edition with cross-references, a reference edition with footnotes, a four-volume large-print edition for the visually impaired. It is also available in Grade Two English Braille, audiocassettes, and CDs (in MP3 format).

Why a New Translation Was Commissioned

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. In the literature they have produced, Jehovah's Witnesses have quoted liberally from the King James Version and many other editions of the Bible over the years. Here follow some reasons given for the publishing of a new 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 stated 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 Hebrew Scriptures as found in New World Translation is based on Codex Leningradensis B 19A as found in Rudolf Kittel's Biblia Hebraica [7th, 8th, and 9th ed.] and the Greek Text is based on Westcott and Hort's The New Testament in the Original Greek. Also considered were texts by Bover, Merk, and Nestle. Newer editions make use of newer texts, for example Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, or BHS, by Kittell, Kahle, Alt and Eissfeldt, from 1967/1977, for the part of the Hebrew Scriptures, and Novum Testamentum Graece, by Aland, Black, and Metzger etc. from 1983, as well as newer lexicons and dictionaries, such as Zorell's Lexicon Hebraicum Veteris Testamenti from 1984 and Würtwein's Der Text des Alten Testaments from 1988.) Additionally, certain aspects of the original Hebrew and Greek languages are perhaps better understood by linguists today than they were previously.

Critics of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the New World Translation argue that the new translation was commissioned not so much to bring the language up to modern use but to remove the strongest evidence of the deity of Jesus Christ from the Christian Scriptures. For this and many other reasons they contend that it was designed specifically to support Jehovah's Witnesses' theology and doctrine.

Characteristics of the 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, and where such would not conflict with their beliefs ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]). 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.

God's Name in the Old Testament

The Hebrew divine name of God, the Tetragrammaton ("YHWH"), is found in the Old Testament 6,828 times. Most English translations of the Old Testament follow the standard convention of rendering the Tetragrammaton as "God" or "LORD" in all capitals. A few versions (such as the King James, Living Bible, or Holman Christian Standard Bible) render the Tetragrammaton as either "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" only a handful of times. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) differs significantly here from most other bibles. Following the example of Young's Literal Translation, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, the American Standard Version (and later the Catholic Jerusalem Bible), the NWT consistently renders all 6,828 instances of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (divine name) as a proper name: "Jehovah." They chose the translation "Jehovah" because: "Jehovah is the best known English pronunciation of the divine name.." In addition to the 6,828 instances of the Tetragrammaton, the NWT translators introduce 145 more instances where they believe the name should be there, but is not extant. They cite the works of C.D. Ginsburg (1831-1914) as justification for the additional 145. Such consistent use of the name is done out of what they believe to be a deep respect for the "Author of our salvation."

God's Name in the New Testament

The text of the New Testament is one of the most firmly established of all ancient documents, a fact which Jehovah's Witnesses acknowledge in their defense of a "correctly transmitted text". Of the approximately five thousand discovered ancient New Testament (NT) manuscripts none contain the Tetragrammaton. Despite these texts, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the Tetragrammaton was removed from the original documents.

The New World Bible Translation Committee theorised that the divine name was removed from NT manuscripts over the first century, post Christ, due to superstition. With this theory in mind, they introduce 237 instances of the divine name into the New Testament. In none of these instances does the Watchtower Society's Greek Kingdom Interlinear Translation use the Tetragrammaton. In 223 of the 237 Jehovah references the Greek word Kyrios is used. In 13 other instances the word is Theos, but never the Tetragrammaton. The Committee used several reasons as justification for the inclusion:

Passages where the NT writers directly quote Old Testament Scriptures that contain the divine name.
New Testament scriptures that suggest, according to Jehovah's Witness doctrinal beliefs, that the name would be there if 1st century manuscripts were discovered, most notably Jesus' words as recorded by John (John 17:6): "I have made your name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world..." (in spite of the symbolical meaning which the context ascribes to a "name" which is given to the Son, v. 11f), and Paul (Romans 10:13, NWT): "Everyone who calls on the name of [Jehovah] will be saved" (The Greek text substitutes kyrios, "Lord," when quoting from Joel 2:32 which uses "Jehovah." Romans 10:9ff)
Some post-Christian Septuagint fragments (Hebrew to Greek translations) of the Old Testament that contain the Tetragrammaton in paleo-hebraic script within the Greek text. This confirms that the Name was indeed known by some Greek speaking Jews of the time, albeit not readable to the average Greek reader. The majority of Septuagint [LXX] texts did not have the Tetragrammaton.
Modern Hebrew translations of the New Testament contain the Tetragrammaton in some New Testament passages. The citation of Hebrew translations of the New Testament which use the Tetragrammaton is selective as some of these also use the Tetragrammaton in reference to Christ (as at Hebrews 1:10, 1 Corinthians 12:3 and 1 Peter 2:3.) These texts were written over 1000 years after Jesus death.
Four instances in the book of Revelation that contain the abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton as the exclamation: "Hallelujah!" (Literally: "Praise Yhwh!") (Revelation 19:1, 3, 4, 6)

These theories are the basis to consistently include "Jehovah" throughout the Old Testament and New Testament of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures despite all evidence to the contrary. The Watchtower Society's view is that the perpetuation of Jewish superstition to render the proper name as an ambiguous title culminates into the quasi-consistent use of "God" (or "LORD") throughout the Old and New Testaments of other Bible translations. "Quasi-consistent" in that many of these mainstream translations do render the name, in some form, in a handful of Old Testament passages, thus not entirely consistent in either usage. This is summed up by Dr. BeDuhn (Truth in Translation pg. 170): "Both practices violate accuracy in favor of denominationally preferred expressions for God."

Rendering of σταυρός (staurós)

In the NWT, the Greek word "staurós" is rendered "torture stake," which is rendered "cross" in most other translations. Jehovah's Witnesses maintain that "staurós" has the same basic meaning, of a single piece of timber or pole, as it did in other ancient Greek texts such as the writings of Homer and other classics and that there is nothing in the New Testament itself that says that two pieces of wood were used to crucify Jesus Christ. The Anchor Bible Dictionary says about crucifixion: "The act of nailing or binding a living victim or sometimes a dead person to a cross or stake(stauros or skolops) or a tree(xylon)...Under the Roman Empire, crucifixion normally included a flogging beforehand. At times the cross was only one vertical stake. Frequently, however, there was a cross-piece attached..."- Volume 1, pp.1207, 1208. The NWT shows that only "one vertical stake" was used in Jesus' case.

Comments by such scholars as W. E. Vine in his Expository Dictionary support this as does others such as A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament, p819. E.W.Bullinger which states:

"Used here [cross] for the stauros on which Jesus was crucified. Both words [stauros, xylon]disagree with the modern idea of a cross, with which we have become familiarized by pictures. The stauros was simply an upright pale or stake to which the Romans nailed those who were thus said to be crucified. Stauroo [the verb], merely to drive stakes. It never means two pieces of wood joining each other at any angle. Even the Latin word crux means a mere stake."

Other Characteristics

This translation uses "sheol", "hades", "gehenna","tartarus" where other translations often use "hell".

This also uses "presence" as the equivalent of Greek Parousia.

It consistently translates into "soul" where the Hebrew word ne'phesh and the Greek word psy･khe' occurs.

The New World Translation in Other Languages

The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures has been released in 53 different languages around the globe. Of those, 33 are complete editions: Afrikaans, Arabic language, Cebuano, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Iloko, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Sesotho, Slovakian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tsonga, Tswana, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu.

The Christian Greek Scriptures of the Holy Scriptures is available in 20 languages: Albanian, Bemba, Cibemba, Croatian, Efik, Georgian, Igbo, Lingala, Maltese, Macedonian, Malagasy, Romanian, Russian, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin script), Shona, Sinhalese, Slovene, Turkish, Twi and Ukrainian.

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures contains three Bible texts. The New testament in the Original Greek, by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, 1881, with a word-for word translation from 1969 underneath, as rendered from the Original Greek Language, by the New World Translation Committee, and English text running alongside it taken from the 1984 revision of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.

External links

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures - online edition available from "Jehovah's Witnesses: Watchtower Society Official Web Site"
Comparisons of verses in many English translations
Article critical of the New World Translation
Article critical of the Kingdom Interlinear Translation
The NWT Defended Online
The leading Tetragrammaton(Divine Name) New Testament Web Site