How Accurate is the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures?

As a weighty and solemn occupation, the scribal profession enjoyed a privileged status that dates back to the days of Moses. Scribal schools in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan and other early Bible lands taught the discipline of faithful text translation and replication. Scribes adhered to a code of ethics, which called for the use of colophons appended to the main text. These colophons contained the scribe's name, the date, the source of the original from which the tablet was copied, the number of lines, and so forth.

Details such as these indicate that ancient copyists were deeply concerned about accuracy. Present-day scholars find only minimal changes in texts copied again and again for a millennium or more. A tribute to the work of these ancient copyists and translators.

In this modern century, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, as used by Jehovah's Witnesses since the early 60s as a complete volume of both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures, has at times been charged with falsification. Why is this? Can this translation be considered an accurate reproduction of original manuscripts? Did modern-day translators follow the principles and constraints of their early counterparts? What of claims that certain texts have been altered solely to meet the doctrinal beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses?

Prior to the release of the New World Translation (NWT), Jehovah's Witnesses generally used the King James Version or the American Standard Version of the Bible. Early literature produced by the Witnesses quotes these versions and uses them for source documentation. Because of the fact these versions employed the use of the English language in its antiquated form, a need arose to have a modern translation that updated such dated vernacular.

Additionally, there was a desire to restore the name of God, as translated to Jehovah, to the appropriate places where earlier transcripts had input the term LORD, in capital lettering.

Early Jewish scholars, notably the Sopherim and later the Masoretes, proved to be meticulous custodians of the Hebrew text. However, an unscriptural orthodox superstition developed whereby the use of God's divine name became sacrilegious; in other words, too sacred to even utter or write. The original Hebrew Tetragrammaton of YHWH, read in the traditional right to left style, was thus phased out. In later years, this trend continued. A very influential and widely used version proved to be the Latin Vulgate, a translation of the Bible by the scholar Jerome into everyday Latin. Jerome rendered the Tetragrammaton by substituting Dominus, "LORD."

Some scholars question the translation of the vowel-less YHWH into "Jehovah." Indeed, it is evident that the precise, original pronunciation of God's name is no longer known.

Frankly, nor is it important. Should the fact that we cannot know with full certainty the way it was originally pronounced cause us to abandon the use of God's name? If the exact pronunciation were critical to our worship, would not have God made sure that it was preserved for us to hear and use? Rather than becoming mired in semantic renderings, the important thing is to use God's name according to its conventional pronunciation in our own language. The NWT has done this.

Consider, it was not merely by chance that Jesus taught his followers to put God's name first in their prayers. (John 6:9) That name was clearly of crucial importance to him, since he mentioned it repeatedly in his very own prayers. On one occasion when he was praying publicly to God, Jesus was heard to say, "Father, glorify your name!" And God himself answered, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." (John 12:28, the Jerusalem Bible.) This is one of the three recorded times that God himself spoke directly from the heavens to the earth. Clearly, an important issue.

God created in us a desire to identify people and things by means of names. It was Adam's first job really, to name all the creatures God had created. What parent would leave their child nameless? Thus angels, people, animals, as well as stars and other inanimate things, all have names. Would it be consistent for the Creator of all these things to leave himself nameless? Of course not. The Psalmist expressed, "Let all flesh bless God's holy name to time indefinite, even forever." (Psalm 145:21)

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Volume 2, page 649) says, "One of the most fundamental and essential features of the biblical revelation is the fact that God is NOT without a name: he has a personal name, by which he can, and is to be, invoked." The NWT is not the only translation that retains God's name in whole or in part. Jehovah, or a version of the Tetragrammaton, can be found in the King James Version, the Catholic Jerusalem Bible of 1966, and others.

What of the popular claim that the founders of the NWT were unqualified in their endeavors?

In October of 1946, then President of the Watch Tower Society, Jehovah's Witnesses' publishing company and legal entity, Nathan Knorr, formed a committee for the review and adaptation of older, dated versions of the Bible into a fresh translation. Work focused on the Greek scriptures initially, with the Hebrew Scriptures being modernized starting about seven years later. It is notable that although outside sources have attempted to name the actual translators, the members of the committee, outside of Knorr, have never been officially identified by the Watch Tower Society. Any attempt to authoritatively name these men, and then unfittingly judge their qualifications, is tenuous at best.

Critics may cite this desire for anonymity as proof that the translators were hesitant to reveal themselves and their lack of credentials. Consider however, that many modern translations of the Bible also have anonymous translation teams. The Bible was authored by God; no person should put their name to it and egocentrically draw attention to themselves.

The Watch Tower Society issued a statement supporting this. The December 15^th, 1974 Watchtower, page 768 said that "the particulars of their university or other educational training are not the important thing."

The New World Translation, now published in 74 languages, complete with footnotes, cross-references, an index, and appendices, has been printed close to 160 million times. The body of work, and its continual usage and the onsetting demand for reproduction, speaks for itself. Favorable academic reviews from Bible scholars are abundant, and for every criticism of the NWT, one can find a first-rate review.

But there still are questions regarding the actual conversion of the ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into modern English. Is it true that scripture has been twisted and manipulated to meet the doctrinal theology of Jehovah's Witnesses? Hardly.

The NWT was produced with much care and attention to detail, and what may appear contradictory is truly a sincere effort to represent carefully the nuances of the original languages as they are linguistically understood today. Moreover, the bible-based truths of the Witnesses of Jehovah are traced to studies of the scriptures done decades and centuries before any attempt to modernize the Bible. To say the opposite holds true can be likened to an argument that says that because the U.S. Constitution was written over 200 years ago, the freedoms it guarantees no longer apply today.

But, in the interest of clarification, consider some of the more popular texts that critics of the NWT have attempted to debunk:

The NWT translates the words "stau-ros" or "xy-lon" as "upright pole, stake, or post" rather than "cross." Long before the Christian era, crosses were used by the ancient Babylonians as symbols in their worship of the fertility god Tammuz. This is a historical fact; one needs only to do the research to verify this. The use of the cross spread into Egypt, India, Syria and China. Then, centuries later, the Israelites adulterated their worship of God with acts of veneration to false gods, using this symbol.

The book "The Non-Christian Cross", by J. D. Parsons (who is not a Jehovah's Witness), explains, "There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross."

The etymology of these words denote, not a two-beamed cross, but an ordinary piece of upright timber or tree. It was not until about 300 years after Jesus' death that some professed Christians promoted the idea that Jesus was put to death on a two-beamed cross. It is noteworthy that ancient drawings depicting Roman executions feature a single wooden pole or tree, and Roman historians are well documented in their support that the Roman custom was to hang a convicted criminal from an upright stake. As you can see, the NWT holds true.

Another misunderstood text is John Chapter 1, verse 1, notorious for its controversy. The NWT in part reads, "The Word was a god." In many translations this expression simply reads, "The Word was God" and is used to support the Trinity doctrine. Not surprisingly, Trinitarians dislike the rendering in the NWT.

But John 1:1 was not falsified in order to prove that Jesus is not Almighty God. Jehovah's Witnesses, among many others, had challenged the capitalizing of "god" long before the appearance of the NWT, which endeavors accurately to render the original language. Five German Bible translators likewise use the term "a god" in that verse. At least 13 others have used expressions such as "of divine kind" or "godlike kind."

I invite you to do the research for yourself. These renderings agree with other parts of the Bible to show that, yes, Jesus in heaven is a god in the sense of being divine. But Jehovah and Jesus are NOT the same being, and scriptures such as those found at John 14:28; and 20:17, among many, many others, support this truth.

What of the seeming convolutedness in terms like "sheol", "hades", "gehenna", and "tartarus" as they relate to the concept of Hell? Is this a NWT origination only?

The King James Version of 1611 always uses the word "hell" to translate the three distinct Greek words, Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus. Modern translations often differentiate between these words, but not as consistently as the NWT.

Hades, transliterated from the Greek, literally means "the unseen place." Peter's use of it, as noted at Acts 2:27, shows that it is equivalent to the Hebrew word Sheol (the common grave of humankind), whereas Gehenna, descriptive of the ever-burning trash dump in the Valley of Hinnom to the southwest of ancient Jerusalem, denotes everlasting destruction. Tartarus occurs but once, at 2 Peter 2:4, and applies only to the fallen angelic spirits. A simple and unbiased study of these word origins show they have different meanings, and while other versions of the Bible like to lump them all together to support the fact that our loving God Jehovah casts people into an infernal, tortuous dungeon, the NWT rightly emancipates individuals from this gross doctrinal untruth.

Because the NWT departs from the traditional rendering of many verses and stresses the use of God's name, Jehovah, it has been deemed unconventional or inaccurate. The fact is, the NWT was produced with much guardianship of the original languages and allocation to detail. Jehovah's Witnesses invite any true student of the Bible, not just a doubting skeptic who seeks only to bring genuine teachings into disrepute, to discover this certainty for themselves.