Here is what real scholars say about the NWT which is another. FAKE translation peddled by the JW's.
In regards to the JW's poor translation known as the New World Translation (NWT) keep in mind the translation committee for the NWT was made up of individuals unqualified to do translations. Here is the list with their backgrounds included:
Frederick W. Franz: Head of the translation committee and chief "translator." Took liberal arts sequence at University of Cincinnati; 21 semester hours of classical Greek, some Latin. Partially completed a two-hour survey course in Biblical Greek in junior year; course titled "The New Testament--A course in grammar and translation." Left in spring of 1914 before completing junior year. Self-taught in Spanish, biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Entered Brooklyn headquarters facility of Watchtower Society in 1920. Probable ghost writer for J. F. Rutherford (2nd president of WTS) from late 1920s through 1942. Vice president of WTS from 1942 to 1977, president from 1977 until death in 1992 at age 99.
Franz writes in his autobiography: "What a blessing it was to study Bible Greek under Professor Arthur Kensella! Under Dr. Joseph Harry, an author of some Greek works, I also studied the classical Greek. I knew that if I wanted to become a Presbyterian clergyman, I had to have a command of Bible Greek. So I furiously applied myself and got passing grades" (
The Watchtower, May 1, 1987, p. 24). Franz gives the impression that the bulk of his Greek studies were "Bible Greek" under "Professor Kensella" and that classical Greek was secondary under "Dr. Joseph Harry." The opposite is true. As mentioned above, Franz only took one 2-hour credit class of "Bible Greek" but 21 hours of classical Greek. According to the course catalog of 1911, Arthur Kensella was not a professor of Greek, as Franz wrote, but an "instructor in Greek." Kensella did not have a Ph.D. and he therefore taught entry-level courses.
Nathan H. Knorr
No training in biblical languages. Entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1923; 3rd president of WTS from 1942 to 1977. Died 1977 at age 72.
Milton G. Henschel
No training in biblical languages. Private secretary and traveling companion to N. H. Knorr from late 1940s until early 1970s. 4th president of WTS from 1992 to 2000. Died 2003 at age 82.
Albert D. Schroeder
No training in biblical languages. Took 3 years of mechanical engineering, unspecified language courses in college, dropped out in 1932 and soon entered Brooklyn headquarters. Registrar of "GileadSchool" from 1942 to 1959. Died 2006 at age 95.
Karl Klein
No training in biblical languages. Entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1925; member of Writing Dept. since 1950. Died 2001 at age 96.
George D. Gangas
No training in biblical languages. Greek-speaking Turkish national, entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1928 as a Greek translator from English to modern Greek publications. Died 1994 at age 98.
Franz was the only man capable of doing translation work. Gangas was a native Greek speaker, knew little of Koine Greek, and apparently helped out with a variety of non-translation tasks including reviewing the English grammar for continuity of expression. From all information published about him personally, one readily concludes that Knorr was the business administrator for the Translation Committee. Henschel might have been on it to take care of legal/secretarial matters. Schroeder and Klein did the copious footnotes (which included textual sources) and cross references and marginal notes, which in the original six volumes of the NWT were more extensive than in the 1984 edition.
[Source:
Freeminds and various others]
Here is a Letter that Mantey wrote to the WTBS when they deliberately misquoted him trying to support their false translation
July 11, 1974
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 a 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. You quotation from p. 148 (3) was a paragraph under the heading: "With the subject in a Copulative Sentence." Two examples occur here 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 140 (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 TED: "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 you letter to Caris.
(2) Since Colwell's and Harner's article in JBL, 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 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 that 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 time" in Heb. 9:27 when nothing in the Greek New Testament support is. The attempt to belittle Christ by mistranslating arche tes kriseos "beginning of the creation" when he is magnified as the "creator of all things" (John 1:2) and as "equal with God" (Phil. 2:6) before he humbled himself and lived a human body 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 Phil 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 translations except yours, even in the Greek in your KIT, the comma occurs after lego (I say) - "Today you will be with me in Paradise." 2 Cor 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. (Ps. 23:6 and Heb 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 photo-copy of it.
If you do not heed these requests you will suffer the consequences.
Regretfully yours,
Julius R. Mantey
Dr. Martin: I don’t know whether you’re aware of it, but there is not a single Greek scholar in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. I did everything I could to find out the names of the translating committee of the NWT, and the Watchtower wouldn’t tell me a thing. Finally, an ex-JW who knew the committee members personally told me who they were, and the men on that committee could not read New Testament Greek; nor could they read Hebrew; nor did they have any knowledge of systematic theology — except what they had learned from the Watchtower. Only one of them had been to college, and he had dropped out after a year. He briefly studied the biblical languages while there.
Dr. Mantey: He was born in Greece, wasn’t he?
Dr. Martin: Yes, he read modern Greek, and I met him when I visited the Watchtower. I asked him to read
John 1:1 in the Greek and then said, “How would you translate it?” He said: “Well, ‘the word was a god.”’ I said: “What is the subject of the sentence?” He just looked at me. So I repeated. “What is the subject of the sentence?” He didn’t know. This was the only person in the Watchtower to read Greek and he didn’t know the subject of the sentence in
John 1:1. And these were the people who wrote back to you and said their opinion was as good as yours.
Dr. Martin: Often we find JW publications quoting scholars. Do they quote these people in context?
Dr. Mantey: No. They use this device to fool people into thinking that scholars agree with the JWs. Out of all the Greek professors, grammarians, and commentators they have quoted, only one (a Unitarian) agreed that ‘The word was a god.”
Dr. Martin: You have been quoted as saying that the translators of the NWT are “diabolical deceivers.”
Dr. Mantey: Yes. The translation is deceptive, and I believe it’s a terrible thing for a person to be deceived and go into eternity lost, forever lost because somebody deliberately misled him by distorting the Scripture!
Dr. Martin: What would you say to a JW who was looking for the truth?
Dr. Mantey: I would advise him to get a translation other than the NWT, because ninety-nine percent of the scholars of the world who know Greek and who have helped translate the Bible are in disagreement with the JWs. People who are looking for the truth ought to know what the
majority of the scholars really believe. They should not allow themselves to be misled by the JWs and end up in hell.
The Critics Speak Out
What do the critics have to say about the New World Translation Of The Holy Scriptures?
Edmund C. Gruss, Professor of History and Apologetics at Los Angeles Baptist College, offers five main criticisms of the book: 20 a) The use of paraphrasing in contradiction to the stated purpose. b) The unwarranted insertion of words not found in the Greek. Alexander Thomson makes a similar comment in a statement quoted earlier. c) Erroneous rendering of Greek words. d) Deceptive and misleading footnotes and appendix. e) Arbitrary use and misuse of capitals when dealing with the divine name. (For details of criticisms see footnote 20.) Gruss concludes that the New World Translation Of The Christian Greek Scriptures, "although outwardly scholarly, is plainly in many cases, just the opposite. Its purpose is to bring the errors of the Witnesses into the Word of God. This translation carries no authority except to its originators and their faithful followers, and should be rejected as a perversion of the Word of God." 21
Ray C. Stedman (internationally known author, Bible teacher, pastor, evangelist)
"A close examination, which gets beneath the outward veneer of scholarship, reveals a veritable shambles of bigotry, prejudice, and bias which violates every rule of Biblical criticism and every standard of scholarly integrity." 22
Walter Martin and Norman Klann (The late Dr. Martin was a leading Christian apologist, known internationally for his studies of the Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups.)
"Once it is perceived that Jehovah's Witnesses are only interested in what they can make the scriptures say, and not in what the Holy Spirit has already perfectly revealed, then the careful student will reject entirely Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower translation." 23
These authors claim that the New World Translation lacks scholarship, and, in fact, reflects scholastic dishonesty.
Anthony Hoekema:
"Their New World Translation of the Bible is by no means an objective rendering of the sacred text into modern English, but is a biased translation in which many of the peculiar teachings of the Watchtower Society are smuggled into the text of the Bible itself." 24
Dr. Hoekema was Professor of Systematic Theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, U.S.A., and the author of one of the most highly regarded reference works on the Jehovah's Witnesses.
F. F. Bruce: (Dr. Bruce is Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis Emeritus, University of Manchester, England. He is a world renowned Biblical exegete who has issued his own translation of the the New Testament, and a number of scholarly works on New Testament themes. The Jehovah's Witnesses have quoted him as an authority on the New Testament on a number of occasions.)
"Some of its distinctive renderings reflect the Biblical interpretations which we have come to associate with Jehovah's Witnesses....Some of the renderings which are free from a theological tendency strike one as quite good..." 25
Bruce M. Metzger, Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, one of the world's leading authorities on the Greek language, and recognized as such by the Jehovah's Witnesses who quote him on occasion in a favorable way, wrote an article in 1950 pointing out the errors in many Christological passages in the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. 26
H. H. Rowley, an eminent Old Testament scholar from England, wrote regarding the first volume of the New World Translation Of The Hebrew Scriptures. His comments should be compared to those of Dr. Goodspeed quoted earlier:
"The translation is marked by a wooden literalism which will only exasperate any intelligent reader -if such it finds -and instead of showing reverence for the Bible which the trans lators profess, it is an insult to the Word of God.... "...this volume is a shining example of how the Bible should not be translated." 27
The comments quoted above are but a sample of the many that have been written over the years. Many more are available in reference to specific details of the translation, especially the translation "...and the Word was a god." which appears in John 1:1c in the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Space precludes their inclusion in this paper.
http://www.freeminds.org/doctrine/publications/the-new-world-translation-and-its-critics.html
hope this helps !!!
