IS THE NEW WORLD TRANSLATION A BETTER BIBLE?
The New World Translation was first published in 1950 by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah's Witnesses). This Bible has now been translated into more than 40 languages. Is this new translation truly a better Bible?
Translation notes: When quoting verses, use the commonly accepted Bible of your language, or the NWT in your language when it is being quoted. The word Jehovah is always written in the same way as it appears in the NWT in your language. In some languages, the Old Testament uses "Lord" without capitalizing all the letters. In other languages, the Old Testament uses a name for God rather than LORD. (For example, French uses Eternel.) If the Bible in your language uses another name for God, use that name only when you are not writing about the NWT. However, always use Jehovah as it is written in the NWT in your language when quoting or referring to the name of God in the NWT.
Not all NWTs in other languages have followed the English NWT in every detail. Always consult the NWT in your language for quotations or explanations mentioned in this booklet to make certain that the same things are true of those verses in your language. (For example, the Russian NWT uses [other] fewer times in Colossians 1 than does the English NWT.)
Do not translate each word as it is written in this book. Translate so that the reader will feel that the book was written in his language.
For more information see www.tetragrammaton.org
The Bible is God's written Word. It is the message God wants men and women to read so that they can know Him. However, the Bible was not written in the language we speak today, so it must be translated before we can read it.
God used approximately 36 men over a period of almost 2,000 years to write the 66 books of the Bible. Yet everything that each man wrote agrees just as if one author had written the whole Bible. In fact, that is what actually happened. The real author of the Bible is God.
The Bible was written in three languages and is divided into two parts. The Old Testament was written first. Almost all of these first 39 books were written in the Hebrew language. (Only eight of a total of 929 chapters were written in Aramaic.) The Old Testament contains some of the earliest written history of our world and it describes the beginning and history of God's special people. It contains poetry and books showing God's people how to live. The Old Testament also tells of the Savior who would come to rescue all humanity from their sin.
The second part of the Bible is about the Savior Jesus and His followers. This second part is called the New Testament. It records how Jesus lived a perfect life and yet was hated because He said He was from God. It recounts how His enemies killed Him, and then how He came back to life three days later to show that He really was God. The New Testament tells how Jesus' followers learned to be obedient to Him and spread the message that Jesus was the Savior of everyone who believes in Him.
The New Testament was written in Greek, and was completed about 40 years after Jesus lived. It was written by men who either knew Jesus personally or were His early followers.
But the Bible is more than just history. The Bible is God's Word for each of us today. It tells us about God. It tells us how Jesus came to save us from our sin. And it tells us how we should live in a way that pleases God. Therefore, we need to be able to read the Bible and understand exactly what God wants us to know. However, because the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, it must be translated into a language we understand before we are able to read it. We must have an accurate translation if we are to learn what God wants us to know.
Translations of the Bible have been made in many languages. In fact, the Bible has been translated into more languages than any other book in the history of the world. As a language changes, new translations must be made. But not all translations have been made simply because the language changed. Regrettably, sometimes translations were made because the translators wanted to publish a Bible that taught their doctrine.
Since the Bible is God's Word, we want the Bible translator to translate the exact thoughts of the Hebrew and Greek languages into the language we speak today. Therefore, the best Bible translations will follow this simple rule:
The best Bible translation will tell us the exact thoughts of the original writers of the Hebrew and Greek portions of the Bible in a way that is easily understood in our own language.
Of course, a Bible translation may be good in one area of translation but faulty in others. The best Bible translation for us today will be the one that most accurately tells us all of the thoughts of the original writers. However, a Bible translation should never be used to make the reader think that God is favoring a particular religious group's doctrine.
Some basic Bible facts
Many copies of each book were made immediately after they were written. Then copies of the copies were made. Yet these were all hand-written documents and each contained some copying mistakes. Do we know today what the original authors wrote? Surprisingly, we do. Many very old copies of the Bible survived in countries with dry climates like Egypt. The oldest known New Testament document is very small, but it was copied less than 60 or 70 years after the Apostle John wrote it. These hand-made copies are called Greek manuscripts. There are a number of ancient New Testament Greek manuscripts that were copied within 150 to 200 years after the original was written. In the last 200 years, over 5,000 copies of ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have been discovered. After careful study of each of these manuscripts, the copying mistakes can be identified. It has been a slow and difficult process, but it has resulted in a reconstruction of the original Greek text of the New Testament that is almost exactly the same as it was written by the original writers.
Translation Note A: Omit the sentence about LORD if your Bible does not use capitalized LORD in the Old Testament.
Translation Note B: Write Jah as found in Revelation 19:1, NWT.
Some examples
Before we go further, we need to look at two examples that show us why the debate regarding the Hebrew name of God in the New Testament is important.
Sometimes, however, the Hebrew name of God is not included in the verse that is quoted from the Old Testament. In Romans 14:11, the Apostle Paul said, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." Paul quoted Isaiah 45:23 which says, "I have sworn by Myself…that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance." The Hebrew name of God is not in the actual Old Testament verse that Paul quoted, though Isaiah said that these were the words of God Himself. So Paul knew that it was God who said, "to Me every knee will bow." That worship belongs only to God. Yet in Romans 14:11, Paul says that it was the Lord speaking. However, the New World Translation says, ""'As I live.' says Jehovah, 'to me every knee will bend down, and every tongue will make open acknowledgment to God.'"" (Notice that the New World Translation uses extra quotation marks to show that God is speaking.) (See Translation Note C.)
Translation Note C: Verify that your (language) NWT uses extra quotation marks. Eliminate the sentence if it does not.
However, the Apostle Paul repeats this quotation in Philippians 2:10-11. He says, "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Paul said that the worship that belonged only to God in the Old Testament was also to be given to Jesus. The translators did not want to use the word Jehovah because this verse referred to Jesus. So the New World Translation says, "So that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend…and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." In the verse in Philippians they omit quotation marks as though it is not a verse from the Old Testament. (In their reference Bible they list Isaiah 45:23 as the source for Romans 14:11, yet there is no reference to Isaiah in Philippians 2:10-11.) They ignore that this worship with "every knee bowing" belongs only to God.
The translators' assumptions
The translators of the New World Translation believe that in the original New Testament Greek manuscripts the Hebrew name of God was written in Hebrew letters. They say that the original authors would have read their Hebrew Bibles that used the Hebrew name of God and would have copied that name in Hebrew as they were writing the Greek New Testament. However, then they must explain why none of the 5,000 ancient Greek manuscripts that exist today contain the Hebrew name of God. They explain this by saying that there was false teaching between 70 and 170 years after Jesus lived. They say that this false teaching opposed the use of God's Hebrew name and caused it to be changed to Lord in all of the existing Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. They say that careless and deceitful scribes changed the Bible. There are two great problems with this explanation.
Hebrew versions
If there are no ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that contain the Hebrew name of God, how did the translators of the New World Translation justify using the name Jehovah in the New Testament? The translators gathered a large number of Hebrew versions that used the Hebrew name of God as their evidence. In most cases, in verses where these Hebrew versions used the Hebrew name of God, the New World Translation used Jehovah.
A Hebrew version is a New Testament translated for Hebrew-speaking Christians. It is not a New Testament originally written in Hebrew. Hebrew versions were translated from the same Greek texts used for all other New Testament translations. None of these Greek texts contain the Hebrew name of God. Hebrew versions cannot give more information about the original Greek manuscripts than the Greek texts from which they were translated. Nor are Hebrew versions ancient texts. The Hebrew versions cited by the translators of the New World Translation were themselves translated between the years 1385 and 1979. Hebrew versions are not ancient manuscripts that came from the time of the first Church. They are certainly not older than the ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.
The translators of the New World Translation used the Hebrew versions as though they separated the identity of Lord and Jehovah. However, that is not true. When one reads certain of these Hebrew versions, it is apparent that the Hebrew translators did just the opposite and used the Hebrew name of God to show that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. For example, seven of these Hebrew versions used the Hebrew name of God in 1 Peter 3:15. Had the New World Translation used Jehovah in this verse it would have read, "But sanctify the Christ as Jehovah in your hearts." In another interesting example from a Hebrew version, when the grammatical rules used by the translators are applied, Acts 26:15 reads, "And Jehovah God said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." These Hebrew versions really show that Jesus is Messiah and fully identified with God rather than showing that Jesus and Jehovah are distinctly different.
There is another question that would need to be answered if the original writers of the New Testament had used the Hebrew name of God. We would need to ask how many times (and in what verses) the Hebrew name of God was used. The translators of the New World Translation say that the Hebrew name of God was used 237 times in the New Testament. But when we read the New World Translation, it is obvious that the selection of these 237 verses has more to do with what the verses were saying than with what was written in ancient manuscripts. The verses that were most frequently changed from Lord to Jehovah were those verses that identify a quality that could only be true of God.
Why do Jehovah's Witnesses want Jehovah in the New Testament?
There is a simple reason why Jehovah's Witnesses want a Bible that uses Jehovah rather than Lord in many New Testament verses. Because they believe that Jesus is merely God's first created son, they do not want their Bible to identify Jesus as being equal to the God of the Old Testament. They want a Bible with a New Testament that makes a distinction between Lord and Jehovah. If the New Testament identifies the One on the throne as the "Lord God Almighty" (Revelation 11:17), this would tell us that the Lord Jesus is "God Almighty." Similarly, the Old Testament often makes statements that can only be said of God. If the New Testament quotes an Old Testament verse that uses the Hebrew name of God but applies it to Jesus as Lord, this would tell us that the New Testament writer was identifying Jesus with the God of the Old Testament. This is what Paul did when he quoted Isaiah 45:23, yet applied it to Jesus. Therefore, Jehovah's Witnesses want to change these verses so that Jesus is not identified with God. They want their Bible to read "Jehovah God Almighty" in Revelation 11:17 and many similar verses. They also do not want to apply an Old Testament quotation that uses the Hebrew name of God to Jesus in the New Testament.
Evaluating the New World Translation
Translation Note D: Check your language NWT for the verses in Colossians 1. The English NWT uses "[other]" with brackets. Some recent NWT translations omit the brackets and say "other." Do not use the brackets if they are not in your NWT. Nor do all NWT language versions use "other" the same number of times.
Translation Note E: Copy the word "obeisance" from your language's NWT. Not all NWT language versions make a distinction between "worship" and "obeisance." If the (language) NWT does not make this distinction, eliminate this paragraph.
The New World Translation has failed the test that says that the best Bible translation will tell us the exact thoughts of the original writers of the Hebrew and Greek portions of the Bible in a way that is easily understood in our own language. The New World Translation does not accurately translate what the New Testament writers said about Jesus.
The Good News
Jesus died for our sins so that we can be completely forgiven. He came back from the dead to give us new life. If you do not know God, Jesus will become your Savior if you believe that His death and resurrection is all that you need to satisfy God. (Read Romans 5:1-21 in your Bible.)
Does it matter who Jesus is? It certainly does. If Jesus is God, then He has the power to give us His perfection and we will someday live with God. Of course, we must learn to be obedient to Him in the lessons He wants to teach us. But we do not need to work to earn Salvation. Salvation is God's free gift to us when we have faith in Jesus' death and resurrection. The Bible says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Because their Bible has been changed, Jehovah's Witnesses do not know that Salvation is God's free gift. Since they do not believe that Jesus can give them His perfection as God, they think that they must do good works in order to earn Salvation. They hope that if they do enough, they will live forever in God's Kingdom.
Yes, it does matter whether Jesus was just a perfect man, or if He is really God. Read your Bible to learn what it says about Jesus and why your Salvation depends only on Him.