Talk:New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures/Archive 2

message: Again, I apologize for making changes without consultation. I am new to Wiki, and I obviously started off on the wrong foot. Sorry.
However, I made two changes, and I do believe they both ought to be made, so perhaps I can get some discussion on them.
1. The sentence "therefore their claim as to his lack of credentials is questionable in itself" is a purely subjective claim. If we do want to keep it at all, the language should be reworked, IMHO.
2. The second paragraph under Caracteristics, about the divine name, is disorganized, overly wordy, and just plain jumbled.
That paragraph also contains one argument that is utterly irrelevant to the subject: the argument about translisterating Greek names. Replacing kyrios with the divine name is in no way analogous to replacing one transliteration with another; one is a change of meaning, the other is simply a change of spelling. To my knowledge, the publishers of the NWT have never advanced this argument in defense of their rendering, and I don't think it remotely qualifies as representing the best arguments of the pro-NWT side.
I tried very hard to be neutral in my reworking of the paragraph, but I'm not wedded to my draft. If anyone else has a better edit, by all means come forward with it. But I really think that the paragraph needs to be changed.
--Danglick 17:45, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reworking Divine Name Paragraph 

message: Wow this is really getting huge, can we shorten this down a bit? (or a lot!) george 02:44, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you talking about the article or the Talk page? What do you think should be cut? Trimmed? --DannyMuse 07:00, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some issues Involving the New World Translation

message: Reading this article gives the impression that bible scholars are pretty well split on the accuracy of the NWT. 2 are quoting against (Countess, Metzger), and 2 are quoted for (BeDuhn, Kedar). Yet the reality is that the overwhelmingly vast majority of biblical scholars think that the NWT is a horrid mis-translation (William Barclay, Robert Bowman, James L. Boyer, F. F. Bruce, Ernest C. Colwell, Charles L. Feinberg, J. J. Griesbach, Julius Mantey, etc.).
So why is this fact nowhere in the article? Was this article written primarily by JWs? Kevin Rector (talk) 07:13, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
:First let me say I thnk your edits today were quite good.
:Next, every rendering in the NWT is supported in at least one other translation the scholars you mention find acceptable. Therefore presenting the pro and con arguments as they are is honest. As far as how many are listed, JW opposers have been the ones to add this information and they apparently felt these were the best examples. Mantey is quoted as an opposer. that makes three. If you want to change it go ahead, perhaps "Most" scholars instead of "Many"?
:Apparently, the critics who work here, have been unable to make a very good case using real facts. That is what happens in an NPOV format when JW's get to contribute. 
:George 12:14, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: To Read this Article...

message: This is "As of 2004" does anyone with the info want to find out if it's changes "as of 2005"? Kevin Rector (talk) 17:50, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Keep this in mind. Many times a belief may be orthodox, popular, or considered unorthodox or cult by religious groups, but it is not the bible that most use to determine the right and wrong of a teaching, it is personal opinion or what is most accepted by the orthodox. This has been the case through out the bible from Abel to Jesus to Paul.
Thats why Jesus could make the statement at Matthew 7:13-14 “Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it;whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.
What does that have to do with what I asked about the "as of 2004" bit? Kevin Rector (talk) 16:07, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
In 2005, this translation translated to 53 languages. 61.22.157.95 14:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's quite funny, since http://www.jw-media.org/people/statistics.htm states it is published in 52 languages.--Mini 14:53, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The New World Translation in Other Languages

message: The only credible person who came forward as a "translator" of this work has admitted that no one on the committee knew Greek or Hebrew. There are large portions of the Old Testament that are literally word-for-word the ASV 1901 text. This article gives way too much credit to this as an actual Bible translation. It is a paraphrase of the Bible to accommodate the views of a particular sect and is of little-to-no importance to anyone who is not a Jehovah's Witness. It cannot be relied upon for any degree of scholarship or faithfulness to the original text. The article goes out of its way to characterize this as a legitimate translation and give balanced POV, when the reality is that you can only give it as balanced a treatment as you could any other piece of propaganda.
:Franz left the organization and published a book.  In it he claims to reveal the identities of the NWT translators.  If no one on the committee knew Greek or Hebrew they probably would have had a hard time TRANSLATING then aye?  The problem is that the NWT is NOT deliberately misleading in order to affirm Trinitarian a-priori, and for this critics claim, ironically, that it's biased.  If you want propaganda, go pick up ANY mainstream bible and read it's OT.  You'll see they've REMOVED the divine NAME of God, replacing it with the ambiguous TITLE "LORD".  Mainstream bibles remove the names of cities that Jehovah destroyed, replacing their names with the pagan: "Hell" in order to affirm some ludicrous idea that the wicked will be punished their for all eternity (see Ecc. 9:5).  Propaganda indeed.   Duffer 03:31, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this even a translation? 

message: I rewrote this section for accuracy and emphasis of an issue that Jehovah's Witnesses take very seriously.  The previous:
:The Tetragrammaton, the four Hebrew letters representing the divine name and usually transliterated as YHWH or JHVH, appears in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) almost 7,000 times. While many English translations of the Bible replace it with the capitalized word LORD, the New World Translation translates it as Jehovah. Most scholars believe that the ancient Hebrew pronunciation was likely "Yahweh" or "Yahveh", but the original pronunciation is unknown. Jehovah's Witnesses use the pronunciation "Jehovah" because of its familiarity, and point out that other Biblical Hebrew names are also transliterated into anglicized equivalents, e.g. Jeremiah and Isaiah instead of Yirmeyah and Yeshayahu.
:The New World Translation also uses the name "Jehovah" 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures (New Testament), particularly in the case of quotations from or allusions to Old Testament passages containing the Tetragrammaton. While no extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament contain the Tetragrammaton in these passages the publishers of the New World Translation argue that the Tetragrammaton was probably written in the original manuscripts. Their reasoning is based on the only copies of Greek scripture from the first century, namely the Greek language Septuagint (a translation of the original Hebrew bible or Old Testament). These fragments contain the Tetragrammaton, thus pointing out that the name was being used in the Old Testament at the time the New Testament was being written. Since there are no manuscripts of the same age for the New Testament, the translators have relied on the Septuagint version of the Old Testament to support their reasoning. Most biblical scholars consider this to be poor reasoning and mere speculation. Traditional textual criticism would require the use of the existing manuscript evidence to support their claim and such manuscript evidence does not exist.
This is not fully accurate, and in the case of the final paragraph, entirely misleading as there are far more than one reason to introduce the divine name to the New Testament.  On top of this, more recently is has been argued by [Gerard Gertoux] that the actual pronunciation of the name IS knows, and that it is not "Yahweh" or some other two syllable equivelant.  I wrote the following for the main Jehovah's Witness page, but I felt I needed to reproduce it here as well for obvious reasons.
:God's Name in the Old Testament
:The Hebrew divine name of God, the Tetragrammaton ("YHWH"), is found in the Old Testament 6,828 times.  Nearly all orthodox bibles either remove the proper name entirely (replacing it with the ambiguous title: "God" or "LORD" in all capitals), or they render the name (as either "Jehovah" or "Yahweh") only a handful of times. The New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses (NWT) differs significantly here from almost all other bibles.  The NWT consistently renders all 6,828 instances of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton (divine name) as a proper name: "Jehovah."  They chose the transliteration "Jehovah" because: "Jehovah is the best known English pronunciation of the divine name.."  On top of the 6,828 instances of the Tetragrammaton, the NWT translators introduce 145 more instances where they believe the name should be there, but is not technically extant.  They cite the works of C.D. Ginsburg as justification for the additional 145. Such consistent use of the name is done out of what they believe to be a deep respect for the "Author of our salvation."
:God's Name in the New Testament
:They believe that the divine name was removed from New Testament (NT) manuscripts over the first couple of centuries, post Christ, due to Jewish superstition. With this belief in mind, they introduce 237 instances of the divine name into the New Testament despite total lack of extant manuscript evidence. They point to several, though admittedly speculative, reasons for justification:
:*Passages where the apostles directly quote Old Testament Scriptures that contain the divine name.
:*New Testament scriptures that suggest the name would be there if 1st century manuscripts were discovered, most notably Jesus' words as recorded by the apostle John (John 17:6): "I have made your name manifest to the men you gave me out of the world..", and Luke (Acts 2:21): "And everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved." (NWT)
:*Recovered 1st century Septuagints (Hebrew to Greek translations of the Old Testament) that contain the Tetragrammaton. Confirming that the Name was indeed known by Greek speaking Jews of the time.
:*Four instances in the book of Revelations that contain the abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton as the exclamation: "Hallelujah!" (Literally: "Praise Jehovah!") (Revelations 19:1, 3, 4, 6)
:These reasons, among others, culminate into the consistent use of "Jehovah" throughought the Old Testament and New Testament of the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses. On the other side of that coin, 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."
This change is entirely appropriate for this section.  The only thing that I see that could possibly be considered POV is the couple of sentences that occur after: "On the other side of that coin..." though those sentences are balanced by the quote from Dr. BeDuhn that criticises BOTH methods.  This is far more accurate, and far less ambiguous than what was previously up.  I do not see at all why it has been deleted twice now.  Duffer 15:21, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Characteristics of the Translation, God's Name 

message: Hans Grüber.
This scandal was not mentioned. It caused the society a lot of pain and caused a revision I think, If I remember right. Do to the fact he was a catholic preist, and his wife was in to spiritism and helped him in his translating. I think this happened when the book changed from it's green cover to black.--Greyfox 03:27, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you sure? A Yahoo search for that name and "new world translation" turns up nothing. Are you thinking about the spiritistic fruitcake that did his own translation and said that spirits and voices were guiding him in making it, and who the Society has quoted in support of their version of John 1:1?Tommstein 05:32, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  one name missing from article