Jehovah's Witnesses: Can you explain why the NWT version of these verses is so different from the KJV and NIV?

Question

Matthew: 17:21, 18:11, 23:14

Mark: 7:16, 9:44-46, 11:26, 15:28

Luke: 17:36, 23:17

John: 5,4

This is an honest question, serious answers only please.

Answer 1

EDIT: An awesome quote from one of the sites :

Look at the "fruits" they have produced. Some of these new translations are not only watered down, but their serious outright omissions can have very lasting consequences to many souls.

Between 1700 and 1900, The greatest missionary work in church history occurred relying on the Authorized King James version. This alone tells us that the KJV (1611) is the true Word of God because of "the fruits" it produced. On the other hand, look at the fruits these new so-called "dynamic equivalent" versions of the Bible have produced (abortionists, rampant homosexuality, and legislators and judges who back those things - Columbine?).

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Good question!

More words of God simply vanished...


NWT uses the Wescott Hort and the KJV uses the Textus Receptus.

What is the Wescott Hort??

n 1851, Hort and Westcott started the Ghost Society which over the years included some of the most noted intellectuals in England including future Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.4Balfour was at the center of an elite group which had inherited great political power, wealth and social position. 5 They were leaders in the occult revival of the 19th century and founders of the New Age Movement with Luciferian Helen Blatavsky.6

Hort and Westcott were committed Communists.7 They hated America and democracy. 8 There was a close tie between their occult group and Marxism in England.9 And under the leadership of the powerful Arthur Balfour they began working on what has become the one world religion and the New World Order.10

A key strategy in bringing about this one world religion involved replacing the King James Version which was standard in their day with a revised text where words were added and removed and meanings changed.11 Hort and Westcott’s New Age Versions have virtually replaced the King James version today.
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This is from http://www.av1611.org/voice2.html
A peculiar phenomenon kept surfacing during my research into the life of these 'scribes'. God apparently 'cut off' their power to speak.

Regression: A third symptom which accompanies spirit possession in the bible is the inability to speak. It is called a 'dumb spirit' in Mark 9:17, 25 and Matthew 9:32,33, 12:22, 15:30,31. Those verses disclose the corresponding "frog" in the throat (Revelation 16:13) that accompanies unclean spirits of this kind.

[H]e was casting out a devil and it was dumb. . .when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake. . . Luke 11:14

The Living Bible: Taylor

The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things. Psalms 12:3

The popular press has made note of author, Kenneth Taylor's, loss of ability to talk. Time magazine, July 1972, states:

Mysteriously half way through the paraphrase Taylor lost his voice and still speaks in a hoarse whisper. A psychiatrist who examined him suggested that the voice failure was Taylor's psychological self-punishment for tampering with what he believed to be the Word of God.

New American Standard Version

Let the lying lips be put to silence. Psalm 31:18

Also silenced was Philip Schaff, collaborator on the New Greek Committee and director of the American Standard Version, which formed the foundation of the New American Standard and The Living Bible. Paralleling Taylor's pathology, Schaff's son finds the same "frog" in Philip Schaff's throat. Even as early as 1854, the warning was given, "his voice so affected that he could not speak in public so as to be heard." Finally by 1892. . .

the power of articulated speech gone.
(David S. Schaff, The Life of Phillip Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner's Son's, 1897), pp.171, 446)

A friend corresponds to Schaff, "It is with great sorrow that I have learned of the affliction which has befallen you." This malady followed his activity with Westcott and Hort on the RV committee and his American Standard Version. Still in 1893 his pathoses "deprived him of the power of speech." (Ibid., p.492)

'New' Greek Text: Tregelles

Schaff himself writes of S.P. Tregelles, author of a 'New' Greek Text which preceded and strongly influenced the Westcott and Hort revision. Of Tregelles Schaff writes, he was "scarcely able to speak audibly." (Ibid., p.246)

Westcott and Hort Greek Text:

(RV, NRSV, NIV, NASB, CEV, New Century Version, Good News for Modern Man, Jehovah Witness bible, The Book, The Everyday Bible, All Catholic bibles et al.)

Westcott's biographer cites that in 1858 "he was quite inaudible" (Life of Westcott, Vol. I, p. 198) and by 1870 "His voice reached few and was understood by still fewer." (Ibid., p.272)

The New Testament in Modern English: J.B. Phillips

[T]he froward tongue shall be cut off. Proverbs 10:31

J.B. Phillips tells in his own autobiography, "I was still doing a fair measure of speaking in schools and churches until the late summer of 1961. And then quite suddenly my speaking, writing and communication powers stopped. I was not in panic but I was certainly alarmed, and when a few weeks rest brought no improvement I cancelled all speaking engagements for the rest of the year (age 55)." The Price of Success, the title of his autobiography, is apropos. (J.B Phillips, The Price of Success (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), see pp. 163-196)

The speechless sphinx syndrome can even happen to a believer, as is did to Zacharias, because ". . . thou believest not my words" (Luke 1:20).

To TeeM keep googling... and make sure you are not spelling it wrong.

Answer 2

Many Greek scholars and Bible translators acknowledge that John 1:1 highlights, not the identity, but a quality of “the Word.” Says Bible translator William Barclay. Scholar Jason David BeDuhn adds: “In John 1:1, the Word is not the one-and-only God, but is a god, or divine being.” Or to put it in the words of Joseph Henry Thayer, a scholar who worked on the American Standard Version: “The Logos [or, Word] was divine, not the divine Being himself.” When Jesus is referred to as a god, It's a little "g". When Jehovah is referred to as God, it's a big "G".

Answer 3

INTRODUCTION
GREEK NEW TESTAMENT
Westcott-Hort text from 1881, combined with the NA26/27 variants

Prepared and edited by
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.

Released as FREEWARE by the Editor
20 March 1995

It is significant to note that the 1881 Westcott-Hort edition of the Greek New Testament actually reflects the closest approach to a "pure Alexandrian" text edition that has ever been created. . . . Westcott and Hort, who relied primarily on the joint testimony of Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph) and Codex Vaticanus (B) in contradistinction to the assimilation of readings from manuscripts of other texttypes which is consistently practiced according to the eclectic principles espoused by the framers of the modern critical editions. . . . the supposed contents of such verses are not found in the Alexandrian texttype, early papyri, or in other manuscripts

Maurice A. Robinson

Professor of NT and Greek

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

"According, from the point of view of grammar alone,[theos en ho logos]could be rendered "the Word was a god." This leads me to affirm that one may not infer(as is often done)from [Colwell's]rule 2b[in Colwell, JBL, 1933, Vol.53, pp.17-21]that anarthrous predicte nouns which precede the verb are usually definite. Indeed, such nouns will usually be qualitative in emphasis." by Murray J.Harris

Walter Martin wrote:

"Colwell's rule clearly states that a definite predicate nominative never takes the article when it precedes the verb as in John 1:1."-Kingdom of the Cults, 1975, p75.

Walter Martin's statement is a complete distortion of Colwell!

So, definitness is not proven by this rule, it is assumed. However, the converse of Colwell's rule(2b)should not be assumed, as has been. The converse would not be that because a predicate noun precedes a copulative verb it cannot be indefinite.Those who wrote such strong language as cited above often used Colwell here as if it says that an anarthrous predicate nominate which precedes the verb could not be indefinite. This, the rule, did not say, nor may this be inferred from the rule. Harris has also said, "An anarthrous noun in the subject or predicate...may be either indefinite or definite, but the presumption ought to be that it is either (1)indefinite..., until it has been shown to be definite from the context...,(2)qualitative, whatever be it's state of definiteness."- "The Definite Article in the Greek New Testament." Appendix I, p.302 of "Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus," Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992.

According to Colwell the noun is indinite until proven other wise.

The Word was with God, shows the context that the Word cannot be God at the same time.

NAB footnote: 'God (2) is a quality and not an identification'

"Stafford is quite right in saying that Colwell's rule is invalid. It simply does not withstand scrutiny, and has been abandoned by those who know their Greek. Harner's study correctly established what the Greeks are up to in constructions like that of John 1:1, namely,that they have a qualitative sense. Harner has trouble spelling out exactly how this should be conveyed in an English translation of John 1:1, perhaps because of his own religous commitments."

by Jason BeDuhn


edit
Anna, I did a search on Wescott & Hoyt, and come up with some interesting sites, that disprove some of your 'quotes'

Please verify your sources prior to posting.

Answer 4

Those verses, found in some translations, are not in the oldest available Bible manuscripts. Comparison with other modern translations, such as The New English Bible and the Catholic Jerusalem Bible, shows that other translators have also recognized that the verses in question do not belong in the bible. In some instances, they have taken from another of the Bible and added to the to the text being copied by a scribe.

You may be interested in a book called "Truth in Translation" by Jason David BeDuhn. He reviews nine different English Translations of the New Testament.

Answer 5

The Truth of God's Word is found in the entirety of the Bible, not limited to only a few verses. Understanding is had through examining verses in context, based on four principles: literal (understanding Scripture in its literal, normal, and natural sense), historical (interpreting a passage in its historical context to gain a proper contextual understanding of the original intent), grammatical (understanding the basic grammatical structure of the texts in its original language), and synthesis (comparing Scripture with Scripture to discover its full meaning as the Bible does not contradict itself).

The NWT is a version of the Bible used by the Jehovah's Witnesses. It contains a number of translational errors and inconsistencies, resulting in the differing interprations. Most famously, the NWT incorrect rendering of John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was A God." The NWT adds "A" in front of the word "God" (theos), which does not appear in any of the original Greek texts. In fact, according to Greek scholar Dr. E. C. Colwell, the word "theos" NEVER takes an article when it precedes the verb, as in the case of John 1:1.

There are far too many translational inconsistencies and errors in the NWT to go into here. I suggest you take a look at the links below if you are interested in learning more. But, not a single reputable biblical or greek scholar upholds the NWT. The NWT did not exist until after the founding of the Society. It is neither the clearest and certainly not the most accurate translation. The discrepencies are there to support overall Witness theology, which denies the core Christian tenets: the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, His death and bodily resurrection, and the existence of hell and everalsting punishment.

Answer 6

The NWT does not allow Forgery verses to be inserted like the KJV.

That is, Verses that are not in the original manuscripts and much older then the writer who wrote the books.

Answer 7

Each of these verse do not appear in some of the more ancient texts; the NWT does include in the footnotes of our Large Print reference Bible; they are included in the main text of my pocket Bible.

Answer 8

An honest answer may not come from the JW's. The difference has to do with the content of these passages and them saying things that the Watchtower disagrees with.