Considering your comment about the NWT, it is actually the best version out there, and Professor Jason BeDuhn said as much in his excellent, non-theologically bent, book Truth in Translation. (He says that the New American Bible is the next best.) I have compared many versions, and I can see that the NWT is spot on. It includes "YHWH" (Jehovah) in every place it appears in the original Hebrew text and renders all the hot-spots of argument according to rules of grammar and context.Pytine wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:06 am I'm currently learning Koine Greek. At this point I can't determine if the NWT version of John 1:1 is reasonable. The Greek grammar here is a lot more nuanced than you would think. It works differently than in English, so there is no simple comparison. Miles already gave a good response to the verse in Genesis.
It is indeed not the most blatant insertion of pre conceived doctrine into the Bible I have ever seen. All major Bible translations are made by both linguists and theologians. English Bibles are not just straightforward translations (if such a thing would exist), they always have a theological layer on top of the translation. There can be a denominational layer, but there is always a general Christian layer. Since JW's are non-trinitarien, their theological layer differs significantly from that of other Bible versions, which makes it more visible. I wouldn't recommend the NWT, I think there are better translations. My preferred translation is the NRSVue, which is the Bible most scholars recommend. While it does have a theological layer, this layer is significantly thinner than with other versions.
Here are some examples of more blatant insertions of preconceived doctrine into the Bible:
Isaiah 7:14
After the resurrection, the virgin birth is probably the biggest miracle associated with Jesus. In Matthew 1:23, we find a citation of Isaiah 7:14 supporting this doctrine. However, the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 doesn't talk about a virgin birth at all. This is not at all controversial among Hebrew scholars. However, when the RSV corrected this verse in 1952, it caused a lot of controversy. One pastor even burned an RSV Bible in public out of protest.
It is rather ironic that it was already known in the second century that the Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14 doesn't match with its use in the gospel of Matthew. In Dialogue with Trypho chapter 71, Justin Martyr accuses the Jews of removing parts of their own scriptures because it would point to Jesus. In Against Heresies, book 3, chapter 21, Irenaeus makes the same point. They both see that the Hebrew differs from the Septuagint, but they use this to argue for the superiority of the Septuagint. Irenaeus even said that "the Scriptures had been interpreted by the inspiration of God".
Psalm 22:16
Another famous citation found in the New Testament is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is a reference to Psalm 22:1. Later on in this Psalm, you get another famous passage, "they pierced my hands and my feet". In this video (6 min), Dan McClellan explains why this translation is completely inaccurate. Around 2:30 the part about this verse starts, but the rest of the video is worth watching too.
Job 1:6
In Job 1:6, as well as many other verses in the book of Job, most English translations use the word Satan. The words they translate as 'Satan' are 'ha satan'. These words mean 'the accuser', or 'the adversary'. Just like English, personal names can't be preceded by a definite article in Hebrew. You can't speak about 'the Jesus', 'the Paul', 'the Peter', or anything like that. Thus, most translations have decided to remove the definite article, leave the Hebrew word untranslated, and capitalize the word. This results in a completely inaccurate translation. The reason for this is that in the New Testament, this accuser has developed into the character of the devil or Satan. These translators impose New Testament theology on Old Testament text in order to harmonize them.
It's interesting that people find fault with JWs, thinking that we have "our own Bible," structured as to our whim, but we didn't need another Bible to show our understanding of Scripture. We used the KJV and the American Standard Bible for almost a hundred years before the NWT was made available. We can show the truth in any version. The NWT is just a refreshing translation that irons out all the confusing parts of the text of especially the New Testament. The Emphatic Diaglott by Benjamin Wilson is one of the versions that honor the translation of John 1:1 with "a god," if you look carefully at the Interlinear structure. There are several other Bibles that do that also.
