I understand that Jehovah's Witnesses use to use the KJV but now use the NWT?

Question

What was the reason for the change? thanks all

Nandy - I never said they use NKJ

just making a play on letters

Answer 1

Yes, this is absolutely true. Then they decided that they needed their own version in order to fit their theology. In 1946 The Watchtower Society's third president, Nathan H Knorr, proposed a fresh translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (the New Testament). From 1950 till 1960 six 'instalments' were produced. In 1961 a complete, revised edition of the whole Bible, the NWT, was released. Only one of the five men responsible for the translation of the NWT had any adequate schooling or background to function as a critical Bible translator. Yet in a Scottish Court of Sessions trial in November 1954, this man (Frederick W Franz) was unable to translate the Hebrew of Genesis 2:4 when invited to do so by an Attorney (Pursuer's Proof pp7, 102, 103).

Dr J R Mantey (who is quoted on pp1158-9 of the Kingdom Interlinear Translation original edition but not the 1985 reprint) in reference to John 1:1 said, "A shocking mistranslation. Obsolete and incorrect. It is neither scholarly nor reasonable to translate John 1:1 'The Word was a god'." Dr Bruce M Metzger said, "A frightful mistranslation. Erroneous, pernicious, reprehensible. If the Jehovah's Witnesses take this translation seriously, they are polytheists." Dr Samuel J Mikolaski of Zurich, Switzerland said, "This anarthrous construction does not mean what the indefinite article 'a' means in English. It is monstrous to translate the phrase 'the Word was a god'."

In Acts 2:42, 46 and 20:7, 11 the NIV uses the phrase 'breaking of bread' when the early church celebrated the Lord's Supper. But the NWT translates it to read that the church simply shared meals together, which they did on many occasions. The reason that the NWT translates the phrase as sharing meals is to disguise the fact that the early church celebrated the Lord's supper more than once a year, and actually broke and ate the bread in accordance with Jesus' instructions, rather than simply passing it from one to another as do JW's at their yearly Memorial meeting (unless they claim to be one of the anointed - less than 0.5% of JW membership).

There's more, but you get the drift?

Answer 2

The question you SHOULD be asking is why did other translators put "LORD" or "GOD" where the name Jehovah should have been. The NWT was translated from the original languages. From those original languages the letters YHWH or JHVH (in Hebrew) were where the translators put Jehovah. Other translations KNEW "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" should go there, but instead they replaced the word with LORD or GOD in all capital letters. If you read your King James you will see that there are places where the words appear in all capitals and places where they appear in lower case letters. (Lord rather than LORD). In the lower case instances, the actual word "Lord" should appear. but in the others Jehovah or Yahweh should appear. Also there is an explanation in the back of your NWT about when and where we used the name Jehovah. In the Greek texts the NWT uses the name Jehovah in any instance where those originally speaking were quoting from the Hebrew scriptures and the word Jehovah was used in the scripture being quoted from. We feel that Jesus and his apostles most likely did use God's name and it isn't likely that they misquoted the original texts or changed "Jehovah" to "Lord" when they quoted. There have been those through the centuries who have worked to wipe out Jehovah's name from the New Testament and so a lot of the earliest manuscripts of the Greek no longer exist. I think the earliest we have are like from the 2nd or 3rd centurys. By then the effort was already underway by the corrupted church to try and make Jesus himself into God rather than to continue to honor Jehovah's name. So whether those manuscripts were copied faithfully or were already changed is in question.

Answer 3

The NWT was translated by Jehovah's Witnesses for a few reasons.
When the King James version was written, people did not speak, even then, the same way as the bible was written. People spoke, for the majority, as we do today. So, the olde style language was added in. So, you can't help but wonder what innaccuracies were made in the earlier Christian's attempts to make their bible seem olde and officiale.

So, the clever translators got together with the original translations and translated it from the ancient languages into the type of English spoken today. Hence, the birth of the NWT!

Hope that helped ;-)

EDIT: It was also due to Revelation 22:19 which states nothing in the bible should be editted or removed. The original manuscripts have God's name (Yaweh, or Jehovah) all over them. For some reason though, they did not put it into the KJV.

http://www.eliyah.com/yhwhdss.html

Answer 4

Why did the translators of the:

ASB, NIV, NASB, RSV, NRSV, Amplified, NJB, YLT (and the list could go on) feel the need to re- translate the bible into English?

Because as one translator put it. (Benjamin Wilson)

"The KJV has over 20,000 known errors in it."

"It is a notable fact that King James Translation is far from being a faithful reflection of the mind of the Spirit, as contained in the original Greek."

"There are some thousands of words which are either mistranslated, or too obscurely rendered; beside others which are now obsolete."

"It has been highly colored in many places with the party ideas and opinions of those who made it, to be worthy of being placed in it as a genuine record."

----

Dr. Macknight said about the KJV:

"it was made a little too complaisant to the King, in favoring his notions"

"that their translation is partial, speaking the language of, and giving authority to one sect."

Dr. Gell:

"and only adapted to one sect;"

"some of the translators complained that they could not follow their own judgment in the matter, but were restrained by 'reasons of state'."

==============

Jason BeDuhn
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair
Department of Humanities, Arts, and Religion
Northern Arizona University

States that the NWT is different not because of bias, but because it is more accurate.

Jehovah's Witnesses are not the first to re-translate the bible into modern english,

They just did it better.

It turns out that the KJV is actually guilty of the very things the NWT has been accused of.

.

Answer 5

For one thing, I no longer speak in 16th century English. If thee choose to do so, that be thy choice. There are many words that were used back then that have different meaning today. Such as "shambles" Would you buy your meat in a shambles? (1 Corinthians 10:24, 25) Doesn't sound sanitary to me. However, when put into modern English, it means meat market.

How about “addicted"? Doesn't that indicate something negative nowdays? The King James says at 1 Corinthians 16:15, “They have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,” so, is that good? or bad?

There are lots of other little things like that. It makes understand the Bible very difficult.

Answer 6

WE USE THE NEW WORLD TRANSLATION BECAUSE
1) MOST OTHER BIBLES OMIT GOD'S NAME!!! (the TITLE LORD is still in the bible) (GENESIS 15:2 .” 2 At this A´bram said: “Sovereign Lord Jehovah, )
2)THE NWT was translated DIRECTLY from the original languages. THE TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH

METHOD: Since the Bible sets forth the sacred will of the Sovereign Lord of the universe, it would be a great indignity, indeed an affront to his majesty and authority, to omit or hide his unique divine name, which plainly occurs in the Hebrew text nearly 7,000 times as ???? (YHWH). Therefore, the foremost feature of this translation is the restoration of the divine name to its rightful place in the English text. It has been done, using the commonly accepted English form “Jehovah” 6,973 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. For a detailed study of this matter, see App 1A-1D.

Answer 7

Primarily, the use (or disuse) of God's name results in most Jehovah's Witnesses preferring NWT over KJV. Both bibles (and any other of personal preference) continue to be used by Jehovah's Witnesses.

The disappointing convention of the "King James Version" is that "LORD" (in all capitals) replaces nearly every one of the almost SEVEN THOUSAND occurrences of the Divine Name; the name "Jehovah" is only used in KJV a mere four times.

"The Tetragrammaton" is the term used to describe the four Hebrew characters (" הוהי ") of the Divine Name. The four characters are generally transliterated (that is, a Roman character familiar to readers of English is shown for the sound of each Hebrew character) as "YHWH" and pronounced something similar to "Yahweh" or "Yehowah". It is relatively straightforward to guess how the Hebrew pronunciation "Yehowah" became translated into the English pronunciation "Jehovah" more than 400 years ago.

The King James Version uses the name "Jehovah" four times (Exodus 6:3; Psalm 83:18; Isaiah 12:2; 26:4). A few place-names which include "Jehovah" are also left intact (see Genesis 22:14; Exodus 17:15; Judges 6:24).

The shortened form of "Jehovah" is "Jah". KJV uses "Jah" at Psalm 68:4, and within the exclamation "Hallelu-jah" (or "Alleluia"), which literally means "praise Jah" (see Revelation 19:1-6).

Learn more:
http://watchtower.co.uk/e/na/index.htm?article=diagram_04.htm
http://watchtower.co.uk/e/na/index.htm?article=article_05.htm
http://watchtower.co.uk/e/20040122/article_02.htm

Answer 8

The New World translation was built by Franz and group to support the doctrinal material published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

This was the next step in the leadership transition from Russell, then Rutherford, then Knorr/Franz and help seal doctrinal most changes throughout the leadership period of Knorr and Franz.

The New World Translation (NWT) is defined by the Jehovah's Witnesses’ parent organization (The Watchtower Society) as "a translation of the Holy Scriptures made directly from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into modern day English by a committee of anointed witnesses of Jehovah." The NWT is the anonymous work of the “New World Bible Translation Committee.” Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the anonymity is in place so that the credit for the work will go to God. Of course this has the added benefit of keeping the translators from any accountability for their errors, and prevents real scholars from checking their academic credentials.

The New World Translation is unique in one thing – it is the first intentional systematic effort at producing a complete version of the Bible that is edited and revised for the specific purpose of agreeing with a group's doctrine. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower Society realized that their beliefs contradicted Scripture. So, rather than conforming their beliefs to Scripture, they altered Scripture to agree with their beliefs. The “New World Bible Translation Committee” went through the Bible and changed any Scripture that did not agree with Jehovah’s Witness’ theology. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that as new editions to the New World Translation were published, additional changes were made to the Biblical text. As Biblical Christians continued to point out Scriptures that clearly argue for the deity of Christ (for example), the Watchtower Society would publish a new edition of the New World Translation with those Scriptures changed.

Certain translations make void the word of God.

Here are three versions of this key phrase from the Word of the Great Teacher, the Master, the Son of God, the Anointed Messiah - Jesus.

Mark 7:13
thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that."(NAS)

Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.(KJV)

making void the word of God by your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things ye do. (ASV)

Pharisaical garbage put out by that Bethel.

Answer 9

The NWT removes a few verses that are against the Watchtower's prescribed belief, such as the idea that washing yourself in a fountain would heal you of all disease, or that there is a lake of fire and brimstone, where the torment is endless and the fire is never quenched.

Because of these removed verses, the Watchtower Society is not legally allowed to call it a "Bible." This is why the cover says "The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures." Also, the NWT substitutes "Jehovah" for every place where it says "LORD," which was presumably placed in the text by pre-Christian Era copyists who felt it was against the 3rd commandment to write the Divine name.

Answer 10

Grig E put it well. Honestly we still are more than willing to use the KJV however many seem to have trouble understanding the Thous and Thees and etc.