Dear Christians, which translation of the bible is correct?

Question

Jehovah's Witness bible:
John 1:1-3
1 In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. 2 This one was in [the] beginning with God. 3 All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.
New King James
John 1:1-3
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

Is the "Word" really God or isn't He? Which bible should I believe?

Answer 1

The New World Translation has an agenda, and that being to justify and legitimize the doctrines created by the Watchtower Tract Society. Their New World Translation cannot give any credance to Jesus or the Holy Spirit being of God (Jehovah) in any way, shape or form.

I have many, many examples. You can double check me on this one very easily. You can use a simple Strong's Concordance to look up the Hebrew.

The New World Translation renders Genesis 1:2 as follows...
"...and God’s active force was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters."

The word "active force" is ruach in the Hebrew. The same word is used in Genesis 41:8 & 38. Here is the New World Translation rendering of these two passages.
"And it developed in the morning that his [Pharaoh's] spirit became agitated."
"Can another man be found like this one [Joseph] in whom the spirit of God is?"

In one scripture, referring to God, it renders ruach as "active force". Yet when we see it elsewhere in the same translation, the meaning changes. Why? Because the "Watchtower Tract Society" has an agenda. All evidence and text relating to the Holy Spirit being attributed to God cannot remain in the text, the text must then be changed. The Bible must change the church, not the church change the Bible! This is a perfect example.

Now, here are the same scriptures in the King James Version...

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
"And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled"
"Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?"

Can you see? The New World Translation changed the meaning of ruach to conform to the Watchtower agenda. This, they arrogantly proclaim as a "very accurate translation" from the Hebrew. Well, you can say whatever you want, but a simple Concordance will prove otherwise.

So your answer is this...
In the beginning was the Word (the Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

Can we be sure that the Word is truly God? Yes. A good example that not even the Jehovah Witnesses that came to my door could not answer was "Who is the First and the Last?" Of course, it is YHWH...

Isa 41:4 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I YHWH, the first, and with the last; I am he.
Isa 48:12 Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.

Who is the First and the Last? It is YHWH and His Redeemer

Isa 44:6 Thus saith the YHWH the King of Israel, and his redeemer the YHWH of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.

Who is the First and the Last? It is YHWH it is Yeshua, the Redeemer, the Almighty.

Re 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Re 1:11 Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last:
Re 1:17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:
Re 2:8 And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;
Re 21:6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
Re 22:13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Answer 2

You can't get an answer about why God doesn't make corrections because you are starting from an incorrect viewpoint. The Lord didn't actually write the Bible - only the ten commandments and a few snippets elsewhere are the actual words of the Almighty, most of the book was written by men. Nobody I know would claim that the Bible is the infallible word of God. There are mysteries in it - things that contradict common sense and experience - but Christians accept the mysteries as being beyond human understanding. We might gain understanding in the afterlife. Another answer says that the Qran "plays down" Jesus Christ as just another prophet. That is not the truth. The Qran is the only "holy text" that explicitly describes Jesus Christ as the Son of God Almighty. It is those who interpret the Qran who try to relegate Christ's importance.

Answer 3

People seem to trust the KJV more because it has been around for so long. But it is precisely because it was translated so long ago that there are a quite a few spurious passages in it.There have been many scrolls and documents uncovered in more recent years that have aided modern translators to come out with word for word translations that are closer to the originals.

I know that many doubt the accuracy of the NWT translation because it differs in translation with the KJV in some places, particularly John 1:1. But it may interest you to know that the NWT is not the only translation by far to render John 1:1 this way. Other translations use "a god" "godlike" "divine one" in place of "God" in that verse.

The only "agenda" of the translators of the NWT was to provide an accurate translation from Hebrew and Greek into English. Could it be possible that the tranlators of the KJV had an agenda to promote belief in a trinity, even if it wasn't scriptural?

And Jehovah's Witnesses are by no means the only ones to trust in the NWT rendering of the original Greek. Take a look at what Jason BeDuhn (not a Witness) said about the New World Translation in his book Truth in Translation:

http://www.tetragrammaton.org/truthintrans.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_BeDuhn



Ticlesh: The translation committee was anonymous so your story must therefore be untrue. And we don't celebrate Easter.

Answer 4

I have made the following points before, but no one has explained the deception of the supporters of the KJV here:
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I have often wondered why proponants of the KJV decry our use of the term "a god" at John 1:1. There are other passages of very similar Greek construction the are consistentently rendered by the KJV translator with the indefinite article, which does not appear in the Greek. (It does not EXIST in the GreeK.)

English word-for-word of John 1:1c = god was the word. KJV renders this, of course, as the Word was God.

Now consider Acts 28:4 of the KJV -- "And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live."

This was speaking of the apostle Paul. Let's focus on the pertinant phrase: "this man is a murderer." In Greek this is "murderer is the man."

This is the same construction and word order as John 1:1, but here KJV adds the "a" and there are many other similar instances where they do the same, but they fail to do so in John 1:1.

Since the reason is obviously NOT grammatical, it has to based solely in a theological trinitarian bias.
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In addition to that, let me say the NEW KJV is worse that the regular KJV. At least the older one left God's personal Name JEHOVAH in 4 places: Exodus 6:3; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4.

The NEW KJV has removed it completely. It was originally there almost 7,000 times.

Answer 5

The "Word" refers to Jesus the Christ.

King James is generally regarded by the academic world to be the least reliable translation. During the time that it was written, they had several writers working on different passages, with very little consistency.

Many seminaries and colleges use the New Revised Standard Version as a good translation.

The key is to use a "translation" and not a "paraphrase".

The ultimate truth is probably found somewhere when you meld all of the available translations together...kind of like all of the various Christian religions...each has an element of the truth.

Answer 6

Notice what is said about our bible:

Some Comments by Greek Scholars on The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures

“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.”—Letter, December 8, 1950, from Edgar J. Goodspeed, translator of the Greek “New Testament” in An American Translation.

“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.”—Hebrew and Greek scholar Alexander Thomson, in The Differentiator, April 1952, pages 52-7.

“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.”—Andover Newton Quarterly, January 1963.

“The New Testament translation was made by a committee whose membership has never been revealed—a committee that possessed an unusual competence in Greek.”—Andover Newton Quarterly, September 1966.

“This is no ordinary interlinear: the integrity of the text is preserved, and the English which appears below it is simply the basic meaning of the Greek word. . . . After examining a copy, I equipped several interested second-year Greek students with it as an auxiliary text. . . . The translation by the anonymous committee is thoroughly up-to-date and consistently accurate. . . . In sum, when a Witness comes to the door, the classicist, Greek student, or Bible student alike would do well to bring him in and place an order.”—From a review of The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, by Thomas N. Winter of the University of Nebraska, appearing in The Classical Journal, April–May 1974.
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in 1973 the New World Translation was rated by a British Bible handbook compiler as one of 14 main English translations of the 20th century.


Up until 1950 the teachings of Jehovah’s witnesses were based mainly upon the King James Version of the Bible, but in the course of years the publications of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in English alone have quoted from more than seventy different Bible translations produced in Christendom. This does not take into account the fact that our literature is published in more than 125 languages and that these foreign languages do not have the English New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. In all parts of the world Jehovah’s witnesses are proving their Bible-based beliefs to the people by the copy of the Bible that the householder may have or that he may recognize as authoritative. So the New World Translation comes along merely as a confirmation of the correctness of the teachings of Jehovah’s witnesses and does not constitute the foundation of their teachings.

Answer 7

If you read other Scriptures you come to understand that Jesus is not God but the first born Son, the first born of all creation, meaning Jesus didn't always exist, that God brought Jesus into existence, Colossians 1:15, Proverbs 8:22-36. All angels are called sons of the true God, Job 1:6, 2:1. Jesus is the first created angelic Son of God, he's known in heaven as Michael the archangel, 1 Thessalonians 4:16.

Answer 8

I use the King James! It hasn't been changed to what man thinks it should be for an "easy read" since translations to English. John 1:1-5

"1.In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2.The same was in the beginning with God.
3.All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
4.In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5.And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

Answer 9

The Word is Jesus. When God the Father spoke in creation, it was the Word that brought everything into being. That Word is Jesus. The breath of God is the Holy Spirit. If you went on to read the rest of the mystery of the incarnation in John's Gospel instead of stopping short, you would find that out.

Answer 10

Several bibles translate John 1:1 in a manner compatible with the phrase "the Word was a god". Frankly, the entire bible teaches that Jesus (the Word) is distinct from and subject to Jehovah the Father.
http://watchtower.org/e/ti/index.htm?article=article_06.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/rq/index.htm?article=article_03.htm

Yet this so-called "question" seems to focus on "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures", which is distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. There are more than 145 million copies of this modern-language bible in print, in dozens of languages.
http://watchtower.org/languages.htm

The entire text of NWT is freely available at the official website of Jehovah's Witnesses, and a personal printed copy can be requested at no charge:
http://watchtower.org/bible/
https://watch002.securesites.net/contact/submit.htm
http://watchtower.org/how_to_contact_us.htm


Jehovah's Witnesses certainly like NWT, but they are happy to use any translation which an interested person may prefer, and in fact Jehovah's Witnesses themselves distribute other translations besides NWT. Jehovah's Witnesses attach no particular infallibility or inspiration to NWT.

Since the same manuscripts used by the NWT translators are still widely available for study, and since there are dozens of alternate translations for comparison, anyone who chooses to use NWT does so informedly.

It seems that the vast majority of the criticism against the New World Translation is actually as a proxy for blind hatred against Jehovah's Witnesses. The hatred must be "blind" since secular experts of biblical Hebrew and Greek have consistently refused to condemn any particular verse or phrase as an unacceptable translation. Instead, it is religionists with preconceived theologies who bigotedly insist upon particular wordings, since these are necessary to prop up the shakey tenets of their false worship.

(2 Timothy 4:3-5) For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories. You, though, keep your senses in all things, suffer evil, do the work of an evangelizer, fully accomplish your ministry.

It seems signficant that the relatively small religion of Jehovah's Witnesses are the ones best known for their worldwide preaching work. Yet Jesus commanded that ALL who would call themselves "Christian" perform this public work:

(Matthew 28:19,20) Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you. And, look! I am with you all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.

Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/pr/index.htm?article=article_04.htm
http://watchtower.org/e/na/
http://watchtower.org/e/20020915/article_01.htm
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20050715/article_02.htm