how is the Jehovah witness bible not the bible when it is a direct translation?

Question

the only difference is King James ''virson'' replaced the word Jehovah with lord god ,,,and it uses modern english words like 'you'' instead of ''thou art''

as an atheist I do not understand why you would compare it to the book of morman(an entierly different book)and say they made the whole book up and that its a cult(of jesus followers)

intelegent anwsers please

Answer 1

I am a Jehovah's Witness and we will use any Bible translation. The truth is the truth.

We always tell people to put the New World Translation next to the Bible translation they feel comfortable using and compare the two.

They will notice that the New World Translation has just restored God's name back to it's original place in the scriptures.

I did this when I first started studying with Jehovah's Witnesses.

Many Bible scholars that are not Jehovah's Witnesses have said that the best translation available today is the New World Translation.

Answer 2

I believe a translation should be judged upon its own merit, not just because some one well-known funded the project.

Most people who assert that the New World Translation is a bad translation have rarely read it themselves, those who say that our beliefs are 'based' on it are showing their ignorance because most of the basic teachings of JWs were there before the translation was done. The English is clear, even children can understand it.

As you mentioned, 'Jehovah' is replaced where it originally appears in the scrolls. Did you know that it appears 6,922 times? (Ok, that's plus or minus 5, I've gotten a headache after all that counting!!!!) You can imagine the cheek they had to 'delete' the name that appears the most times in the Bible! (Jesus appears 912 times- plus or minus 5)

P.S: You HAVE to give me the 10 points after all that counting!! Oh, I gotta go to bed now..... oooooh.......

Answer 3

The Jehovah Witness bible, the New World Translation, was created and printed by the Watchtower Society to support their non-Christian, cultic beliefs. The Society's beliefs deny the core tenets of Christianity, that is: the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, His death and bodily resurrection, and the existence of hell and everalsting punishment. Despite their own claims, no serious biblical or greek scholar upholds the NWT as anything resembling an accurate translation.

Here's a little info about the NWT:The Watchtower Society first printed a New World Translation of the New Testament in 1950, with a complete bible following in 1961 and revisions in 1970 and 1984, long after Charles Taze Russell. The translation committee consisted of Frederick W Franz, Nathan H. Knorr, George D Gangas, Albert D Schroeder, Milton G Henschel, and Karl Klein. Their qualifications:

Frederick W Franz: liberal arts student at University of Cincinatti, took 21 semester hours of classical Greek, with some Latin. Partially completed a 2 hour course in biblical Greek (not the same as classical), and was self-taught in Spanish, Hebrew, and Aramaic. HOWEVER, in a court of law in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1954, while under oath, he failed a simple translation test of Hebrew from Genesis.

George Gangas: No training in biblical languages, but knew modern Greek.

Milton Henschel: No training in biblical languages.

Nathan Knorr: No training in biblical languages.

Karl Klein: No training in biblical languages.

Albert Schroeder: No training in biblical languages. He majored in mechanical engineering but dropped out after 3 years.

These are the men who performed the "translation" of the NWT. The Jehovah Witnesses' New World Translation IS NOT a reliable bible.

Likewise, the LDS church is also a non-Christian church as they, too, deny the core tenets of biblical Christianity. So both the Jehovah Witnesses and the LDS share a commonality, in that both are non-Christian religions that deny biblical Christianity and pose as Christian denominations.

Answer 4

Where in the world did you get your information???

The Jehovah Witnesses are a false teaching and so is their bible. It teaches that Jesus is a "god" (John 1:1) and that there is no burning Lake of Fire that Satan and His followers WILL go to (Re 20:10)

Their bible is not truth - the NKJV is most likely the best translation of the Hebrew Torah and the Greek NT

God Bless You

Answer 5

The name YHWH (Jehovah) was actually found in the oldest Greek Manuscripts, but they were removed in the later copies and replaced with "Lord" and "God".

Update:

Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate, says in his prologue to the books of Samuel and Kings:
“And we find the name of God, the Tetragrammaton [i.e., יהוה], in certain Greek volumes even to this day expressed in ancient letters.”

Origen
“in the most accurate manuscripts THE NAME occurs in Hebrew characters, yet not in today’s Hebrew [characters], but in the most ancient ones.”

"It was the Christians who replaced the Tetragrammaton by kyrios, when the divine name written in Hebrew letters was not understood any more.”
The Cairo Geniza, Oxford, 1959, p. 222.

--====--
Its obvious that the name was taken out of the [N]ew [T]estament because everytime Jesus or any of his disciples quoted the OT, they always some times came across the divine name.

Update:

Obviously D-Rock is misinformed.

Theres scholars that agree with the rendering, and theres some that don't. Franz wasn't asked to translate a "simple" verse, he was asked to translate English into Hebrew, not Hebrew into English. Also the court never asked him to Read Hebrew, they asked him to speak it. Even though they were not the greatest translators, theres nothing in the Bible that they translated that goes against a Greek code or rule.

The NWT is accurate translation that doesn't mistranslates the Bible to take away from the Bible message, nor does it support the false trinity doctrine.

Answer 6

I was going to answer this question, but D-Rock and JC above gave great, thorough answers.

The only thing I will add is that the KJV isn't THE one and only, be all/end all translation, either. The only way to do an accurate translation of the bible is to be an expert on the languages of the ancient manuscripts - and I'd pretty much guarantee that none of the Watchtower translators were experts or they would have listed themselves that way.

Answer 7

It IS a direct translation; however, it isn't entirely correct that the only difference is that the KJV replaced "Jehovah" with "lord".

That is true in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, Jehovah (YHWH) never appears in any original manuscripts. However, the NWT inserted "Jehovah" in the New Testament over 200 times.

Personally, I like the NWT and have no issue with using Jehovah in the Old Testament, but it's just as wrong to change "lord" to "Jehovah" in the NT as it is to change Jehovah to Lord in the OT.

Edit:

I don't know where JR got his information, but he is apparently confused. There is a THEORY that perhaps YHWH may have originally been in the Greek manuscripts, but there has never been ONE manuscript found that contained it, so it remains merely an unproven theory - it is NOT a fact.

Edited again:

Please note that the quotes from Origen and Jerome are in reference to the OLD testament, not the New Testament. The reference to "Greek" refers to the Greek translation of the Hebrew which the Old Testament was originally written , and NOT to the original Greek of the New Testament.

The fact remains: Not one ancient Greek manuscript of the New Testament that is in existence - or known to exist in the past - contained YHWH or the Greek equivalent. (The book of Revelation does contain YH - in ALL Bibles, including the King James Version.)

Answer 8

You've done some homework...good for you. The Bible has something to say about this.

You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. Deut. 4:2

For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book. Rev. 22:18

There are many other "additions" in the jw bible. Just check out my sources.

The Bible is inspired by God (2 Tim. 3:16-17) and God can't lie. (Titus 1:2) The jw bible is just a counterfeit.

Ever heard of the dead sea scrolls? When translated, they read like our modern Bibles. Any Greek scholar (atheist or not) wouldn't bet his career on the accuracy of the jw bible.

Answer 9

As JC is the man has already stated, the NWT was translated by what are pretty much anonymous people. Robert Bowman Jr. states that "...the JW leaders who produced the NWT were not biblical scholars..."
Concerning the name Jehovah being translated incorrectly in the KJV to Lord, Dr. Bowman adds,"...there is no historical or manuscript evidence for this claim."

Answer 10

It is not a direct translation, because non of the originals are in existence. To get a direct translation you have to translate word for word, from the ORIGINAL manuscripts. So the JW translation is from copies, and yes they were from one ideological thinking. No one can be sure, what the Bible really says, cause none of the originals exist.