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#13 The Facts on Jehovah's Witnesses
Analysis and Critique: Does God Speak
Only Through the Watchtower Society?
Four Tests Examining This Claim
13. What do recognized Greek scholars
believe about the accuracy of the NWT?
Greek scholars, Christian and
non-Christian, universally reject the NWT, calling it biased and
inaccurate.
Until his death, Dr. Julius Mantey was one of the leading
Greek scholars in the world. He was author of the Hellenistic Greek Reader
and coauthor, with H. E. Dana, of A Manual Grammar of the Greek New
Testament. Not only did he reject the NWT, he publicly demanded that
the Society stop misquoting his Grammar to support it (see Appendix below). Of
the NWT translation he wrote:
I have never read any New Testament so badly
translated as The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures.
In fact, it is not their translation at all. Rather, it is a distortion of the
New Testament. The translators used what J. B. Rotherham had translated in 1893,
in modern speech, and changed the readings in scores of passages to state what
Jehovah's Witnesses believed and teach. That is distortion, not
translation.
Dr. Bruce Metzger, professor
of New Testament language and literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and
author of The Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 1968), observes, "The
Jehovah's Witnesses have incorporated in their translation of the New Testament
several quite erroneous renderings of the Greek."
Dr. Robert Countess wrote his dissertation for his Ph.D. in
Greek on the NWT. He concluded that the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation:
. . . has been sharply unsuccessful in keeping
doctrinal considerations from influencing the actual translation . . . It must
be viewed as a radically biased piece of work. At some points it is actually
dishonest. At others it is neither modern nor scholarly. And interwoven
throughout its fabric is inconsistent application of its own principles
enunciated in the Foreword and Appendix.
British scholar H. H. Rowley
asserts, "From beginning to end this volume is a shinning example of how the
Bible should not be translated . . ." He calls it, "an insult to the Word of
God."
The scholarly community has rendered its verdict on the
NWT. The Society cannot blame the verdict on alleged Christian or
"Trinitarian bias," for even non-Christian scholars of New Testament Greek agree
that the NWT is inaccurate. They have arrived at this conclusion by means
of rules of grammar, word meanings, and principles of translation that the
Watchtower Society has blatantly violated.
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Appendix
"I haven't read any translation that is as
diabolical and as damnable as the JW so-called translation . . . They (the
Society) hate Jesus Christ."
Dr. Julius Mantey; "Distortions of the New
Testament" Tape "T-2" available from Witness, Inc., Clayton CA 94517
Letter dated July 11, 1974 (From note 64,
Van Buskirk, pp. 11-12.)
Watchtower Bible & Tract Society
117 Adams St.
Brooklyn, New York 11202
Dear Sirs:
I have a copy of your letter addressed to CARIS in Santa Ana,
California, and I am writing to express my disagreement with statements made in
that letter, as well as in quotations you have made from the Dana-Mantey Greek
Grammar.
(1) Your statement: "their work allows for the rendering
found in the Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures at
John 1:1." There is no statement in our grammar that was ever meant to imply
that "a god" was permissible translation in John 1:1.
A. We had no "rule" to argue in support of the trinity.
B. Neither did we state that we did have such intention. We
were simply delineating the facts inherent in Biblical language.
C. Your quotation from p. 148 (3) was in a paragraph under
the heading: "With the Subject in a Copulative sentence." Two examples
occur there to illustrate that "the article points out the subject in these
examples." But we made no statement in this paragraph about the predicate except
that, "as it stands the other persons of the trinity may be implied in theos."
And isn't that the opposite of what your translation "a god" infers? You quoted
me out of context. On pages 139 and 149 (VI) in our grammar we stated: "without
the article theos signifies divine essence . . . theos en ho logos
emphasizes Christ's participation in the essence of the divine nature." Our
interpretation is in agreement with that in NEB and the TEV: "What God was, the
Word was"; and with that of Barclay: "The nature of the Word was the same as the
nature of God", which you quoted in your letter to CARIS.
(2) Since Colwell's and Harner's articles in JBL [Journal
of Biblical Literature], especially that of Harner, it is neither scholarly
nor reasonable to translate John 1:1 "The Word was a god." Word order has made
obsolete and incorrect such a rendering.
(3) Your quotation of Colwell's rule is inadequate because it
quotes only a part of his findings. You did not quote this strong assertion: "A
predicate nominative which precedes the verb cannot be translated as an
indefinite or a 'qualitative' noun solely because of the absence of the
article."
(4) Prof. Harner, vol. 92:1 (1973) in JBL, has gone
beyond Colwell's research and has discovered that anarthrous predicate nouns
preceding the verb function primarily to express the nature or character of the
subject. He found this true in 53 passages in the Gospel of John and 8 in the
Gospel of Mark. Both scholars wrote that when indefiniteness was intended the
gospel writers regularly placed the predicate noun after the verb, and both
Colwell and Harner have stated that theos in John 1:1 is not indefinite
and should not be translated "a god." Watchtower writers appear to be the only
ones advocating such a translation now. The evidence appears to be 99% against
them.
(5) Your statement in your letter that the sacred text itself
should guide one and "not just someone's rule book." We agree with you. But our
study proves that Jehovah's Witnesses do the opposite of that whenever the
"sacred text" differs with their heretical beliefs. For example the translation
of kolasis as "cutting off" when punishment is the only meaning cited
in the lexicons for it. The mistranslation of ego eimi as "I have been"
in John 8:58. The addition of "for all times" in Hebrews 9:27 when
nothing in the Greek New Testament supports it. The attempt to belittle Christ
by mistranslating arche tes ktiseos "beginning of the creation" when he
is magnified as "the creator of all things" (John 1:2) and as "equal with God"
(Philippians 2:6) before he humbled himself and lived in a human body here on
earth. Your quotation of "The Father is greater than I am" (John 14:28) to prove
that Jesus was not equal to God overlooks the fact stated in Philippians 2:6-8,
when Jesus said that he was still in his voluntary state of humiliation. That
state ended when he ascended to heaven. Why the attempt to deliberately deceive
people by mispunctuation by placing a comma after "today" in Luke 23:43 when in
the Greek, Latin, German and all English translation except yours, even in
the Greek in your KIT, the comma occurs after lego (I say) - "Today
you will be with me in Paradise." Also 2nd Corinthians 5:8, "to be out of the
body and at home with the Lord." These passages teach that the redeemed go
immediately to heaven after death, which does not agree with your teachings that
death ends all life until the resurrection. Cross-reference Psalm 23:6 and
Hebrews 1:10.
The above are only a few examples of Watchtower
mistranslations and perversions of God's Word.
In view of the preceding facts, especially because you have
been quoting me out of context, I herewith request you not to quote the
Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament again, which you have been doing
for 24 years. Also that you not quote it or me in any of your publications from
this time on.
Also that you publicly and immediately apologize in the
Watchtower magazine, since my words had no relevance to the absence of the
article before theos in John 1:1. And please write to CARIS and state
that you misused and misquoted my "rule."
On the page before the Preface in the grammar are
these words: "All rights reserved - no part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher."
If you have such permission, please send me a photocopy of
it.
If you do not heed these requests you will suffer the
consequences.
Regretfully yours,
Julius R. Mantey
John Ankerberg & John Weldon
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