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The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a modern-language translation of the Bible published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. and the International Bible Students Association of Brooklyn, New York (corporations in use by the religious organization commonly known as Jehovah's Witnesses). It was not the first, nor the last translation to be published by them, but it was their very first original translation of the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts.

New World Translation
New World Translation

History

In October 1946, the president of the Watch Tower Society, Nathan H. Knorr, proposed a fresh translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Work got under way on December 2, 1947 when the New World Bible Translation Committee was formed. On September 3, 1949, Knorr convened a joint meeting of the board of directors of both the Watch Tower Society's New York and Pennsylvania corporations to announce that work on a modern-language English translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was completed and had been turned over to the Society for printing. It was assigned to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania for publication, with the request that the names of the translators not be published. Their stated intent was, "to honor Jehovah God, the Divine Author of his inspired Word." This fact is very frequently cited by critics of the translation in order to suggest that its scholarship is of inferior quality, as the identities of the translators and hence their credentials could never be conclusively verified. However, Raymond Franz, a former member of the Society's Governing Body and nephew of Fred Franz, identified the members of the translation committee as being his uncle Fred Franz, Nathan Knorr, Albert Schroeder and George Gangas. None of the latter had ever studied Biblical languages at a college level.

The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (New Testament) was released at a convention of Jehovah's Witnesses at Yankee Stadium, New York, on August 2, 1950, to the 82,075 present. The translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) was gradually released as five volumes in 1953, 1955, 1957, 1958, and 1960. The complete New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released as a single volume in 1961.

The translation does not contain any of the Apocryphal books, as the translators believed that any claim for canonicity on the part of these writings is without solid foundation.

Since the original New World Translation was published in 1950, it has undergone minor revisions on a number of occasions, most recently in 1984. The Watchtower's goal is to make the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures accessible to as many people as possible. To that end, the English translation has served as a basis for translation of the Bible into many other languages (see Other Languages & Characters) and editions which include a pocket-sized edition, a standard edition with cross-references, a reference edition with extensive footnotes and a four-volume large-print edition for the visually impaired. It is also available in Grade Two English Braille, audiocassettes, and CDs (in MP3 format). Portions of the New World Translation are also available in American Sign Language.

Characteristics of the Translation

The New World Translation is intended to be a literal rendering rather than a paraphrase. To a very great extent, one English word has been selected for each Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic word and effort has been made to adhere to this rendering, context allowing. Some maintain that this makes the translation sound wooden, stiff or verbose, whereas others feel that it favors accuracy, facilitates cross-reference work and helps preserve the flavor of the original texts.

Jehovah in the Old Testament

The most common of the many Hebrew proper names of God, the Tetragrammaton ("YHWH"), is found in Masoretic versions of the Old Testament 6,828 times, but not in the older Septuagint. Most English translations of the Old Testament follow the standard convention of rendering the Tetragrammaton as "God" or "LORD" in all capitals. A few versions (such as the King James, Living Bible, or Holman Christian Standard Bible) render the Tetragrammaton as either "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" only a handful of times. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) differs significantly here from most other bibles. Following the example of Young's Literal Translation, Rotherham's Emphasized Bible, the American Standard Version (and later the Catholic Jerusalem Bible), the NWT consistently renders all 6,828 instances of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (divine name) as a proper name: "Jehovah." They chose the translation "Jehovah" because: "Jehovah is the best known English pronunciation of the divine name."

In addition to the 6,828 instances of the Tetragrammaton, the NWT translators introduce 145 more instances where they believe the name should be, but is not. They cite the works of C.D. Ginsburg (1831-1914) as justification for the additional 145 instances. Such consistent use of the name is done out of what they believe to be a deep respect for the "Author of our salvation."

Jehovah in the New Testament

See main article: Jehovah in the New Testament.

Jehovah is an older rendering of the Hebrew word YHWH, which does not appear in any original, Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Moreover the New Testament overwhelmingly quotes the ancient Septuagint version of the Old Testament (Greek), not Medieval Masoretic versions (Hebrew). The Septuagint does not contain forms of the word YHWH and so neither does the New Testament when quoting it.

The New Testament is one of the best attested of all ancient writings with over 5,000 Greek extant manuscripts. Furthermore, discovery of papyrus fragments of the New Testament dating back to the middle of the second century. One of the most ancient fragments, the papyrus codex designated Chester Beatty Papyrus No. 2 is dated prior to 200 AD and contains nine of the apostle Paul's letters. Of all 5,000 extant manuscripts, none contains either the Hebrew (YHWH) or Greek transliterations (Iabe) of the Hebrew.

The New World Bible Translation Committee theorised that the divine name was removed from NT manuscripts over the first century, post Christ, due to superstition. With this theory in mind, they introduce 237 instances of the divine name into the New Testament. In none of these instances does the Watchtower Society's Greek Kingdom Interlinear Translation use the Tetragrammaton. In 223 of the 237 Jehovah references the Greek word Kyrios is used. In 13 other instances the word is Theos, but never the Tetragrammaton. The Committee used several reasons as justification for the inclusion:

  • Passages where the NT writers directly quote Old Testament Scriptures that contain the divine name. However, these passages quote the Septuagint, not to be confused with other Greek versions of the Old Testament that were not used by the early Church.
  • New Testament scriptures that suggest, according to Jehovah's Witness doctrinal beliefs, that the name would be there if 1st century manuscripts were discovered, most notably Jesus' words as recorded by John (John 17:6): "I have made your name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world..." However, this is supposition.
  • Some post-Christian Greek versions of the Old Testament that contain the Tetragrammaton in paleo-Hebraic script within the Greek text. The Name was indeed known by some Greek speaking Jews of the time, albeit not readable to the average Greek reader. If indeed any exist, their lateness does not indicate the form of the originals.
  • Modern Hebrew translations of the New Testament contain the Tetragrammaton in some New Testament passages. The citation of Hebrew translations of the New Testament which use the Tetragrammaton is selective as some of these also use the Tetragrammaton in reference to Christ (as at Hebrews 1:10, 1 Corinthians 12:3 and 1 Peter 2:3.) These texts were written over 1000 years after Jesus' death and no more indicate the state of the original manuscripts than any other modern translation.
  • Four instances in the book of Revelation that contain the abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton as the exclamation: "Hallelujah!" (Literally: "Praise Yah!") (Revelation 19:1, 3, 4, 6). However, "Hallelujah" does not contain the tetragrammaton (YHWH), and although "jah" is a possible derivative, that is not the tetragrammaton either.

These beliefs are the basis to consistently include "Jehovah" throughout the Old Testament and New Testament of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures despite the evidence to the contrary. The Watchtower Society's view is that the perpetuation of Jewish superstition to render the proper name as an ambiguous title culminates into the quasi-consistent use of "God" (or "LORD") throughout the Old and New Testaments of other Bible translations. "Quasi-consistent" in that many of these mainstream translations do render the name, in some form, in a handful of Old Testament passages, thus not entirely consistent in either usage. This is summed up by Dr. BeDuhn (Truth in Translation pg. 170): "Both practices violate accuracy in favor of denominationally preferred expressions for God." However, this begs the question of whether YHWH was in the New Testament in the first place.

Other Characteristics

  • This also uses "presence" as the equivalent of Greek Παρουσία Parousia.
  • It consistently translates into "soul" where the Hebrew word ne'phesh or the Greek word ψυχή psykhē occur.

Other Languages & Characters

The New World Translation has been released in 61 languages and/or characters.

The complete edition of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures is available in: Afrikaans, Arabic, Cebuano, Chinese (standard and simplified characters), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (also Braille), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Iloko, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (also Braille), Sesotho, Shona, Slovakian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tsonga, Tswana, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu.

The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures is available in: Albanian, Bulgarian, Cibemba, Croatian, Efik, Georgian, Igbo, Italian (in Braille), Lingala, Macedonian, Malagasy, Maltese, Romanian, Russian, Sepedi, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin script), Sinhala, Slovenian, Spanish (in Braille), Sranantongo, Turkish, Twi and Ukrainian.

Portions of the New World Translation are available in: American Sign Language

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation

The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures contains three Bible texts. The New testament in the Original Greek, by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, 1881, with a word-for word translation from 1969 underneath, as rendered from the Original Greek Language, by the New World Translation Committee, and English text running alongside it taken from the 1984 revision of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.

References

  1. Jones, R. Grant, Ed. Various Religious Topics, "Occasions where the Septuagint is quoted in the New Testament against the sense of the Hebrew text."
  2. Brenton, Sir Lancelot Charles Lee, Trans. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English, Facs, Hendrickson. (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1851).

External links

Critical

  • Countess, Robert H.: Jehovah's Witnesses' New Testament: A Critical Analysis,
  • David A. Reed Jehovah's Witnesses: Answered Verse by Verse - Note: Author is a former Jehovah's Witness
  • Anthony A. Hoekema The Four Major Cults: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Seventh-Day Adventism (1963, ISBN 0802804454)

Neutral

  • BeDuhn, Jason: Truth in Translation - Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament,

Supportive

  • Stafford, Greg: Jehovah's Witnesses Defended. - Note: Author is one of Jehovah's Witnesses
  • Furuli, Rolf: The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation: With a special look at the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1999. - Note: Author is one of Jehovah's Witnesses
  • Byatt, Anthony and Flemings, Hal (editors): ‘Your Word is Truth’, Essays in Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (1950, 1953), 2004. - Note: The essays' authors, including Rolf Furuli (above), are Jehovah's Witnesses.

Unclassified

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