Jehovah's Witnesses - 04_05 - The NWT and Manuscript Evidence

Doctrine Article - D.0300_04_05

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1. Thank you for your thoughts on whether_the_NWT_is_an_accurate_translation (and for the article from your friend). You may claim that the Divine name has been correctly translated 237 times in the New Testament of the NWT, if you rely on Alexandrian manuscripts and consider them to be the basis for the New Testament; but the evidence indicates that the name has been added 237 times into the New Testament, if you rely on Antiochian manuscripts, as I do.

2. One of the problems with this is that, regardless of how many experts you commission to translate a Japanese automaker's car manual into English you will never end up with a menu for a MacDonald's Restaurant (regardless of the fact that both mention grease as ingredients). The reason you won't end up with a menu is that the content of the textual information being translated from the source is not restaurant menu material.

3. For the same reason, regardless of how many experts you use to translate Alexandrian manuscripts into various English Bible versions you will never end up with God's word. The Alexandrian manuscripts were never God's word in the first place and were not accepted or received as God's word by the early Christians. But that is what you, your friend, and many others have assumed has happened.

4. If you had read the supporting documentation to the article I wrote, "What_About_the_Septuagint?", you would understand one of the major reasons why your friend's article is misguided. Your friend pre-supposes that a pre-Christian Septuagint existed, and further, that the New Testament writers quoted from that Greek Septuagint when referring to Old Testament Hebrew texts. (The fact that the quotes are nearly identical to those in the Septuagint is attributable to the fact that Origen (or perhaps Philo) wrote the Septuagint to appear that way – long after the NT writers had finished their work. This is exactly akin to someone writing a play called "Hamlet", forging a letter that claims it was written before the time of Shakespeare, and then claiming that Shakespeare got his idea – or plagiarized the entire play – from that 'earlier' work.)

5. The Septuagint did not exist at the time of Christ, or at any time before Christ. If that statement was simply my opinion against yours then we wouldn't get very far. And if it was simply the opinion of my experts against the opinions of your experts then we also wouldn't get very far either. But it's not simply opinion. Even some of the most liberal of scholars admit that the letter of Aristeaus is a forgery and is full of historical error and impossibilities. As the primary evidence for the existence of a pre-Christian Septuagint, that alone is sufficient to conclude that a pre-Christian Septuagint probably did not exist. But once further evidence is added to the analysis - including the extent of actual manuscript fragments available and an understanding of the beliefs and practices of the Jewish priests and scribes - it is impossible to reasonably conclude anything other than that a pre-Christian Septuagint did not exist. Someone lied. Who? A person only needs to research who profited from the admitted forgery to determine who it was that lied and/or who it is that unknowingly propagates those lies.

6. Your friend's article refers to some of those people who profited from the forgery. Jerome is undoubtedly the person who wrote the corrupt Catholic version of what was God's word translated into the Old Latin. This corrupt Roman Catholic version was written by Jerome and is known as Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It is assumed to be the original Latin Vulgate (and is often confused with the original Latin Vulgate, the word of God in Latin), but it is actually a corrupted text. Your friend's article also refers to B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, the men responsible for the English Revised Version and for the entire Greek translation underlying it and for most new versions.

7. (Perhaps you didn't receive the email I sent at 3:43 p.m. on 22 December. It contained some of this information about this Septuagint that would have pre-empted that in your friend's article, and it also contains many questions that you have not yet addressed.)

8. Lexicons, dictionaries and concordances are written by men (James Strong, Brown, Driver, Briggs, Robertson, etc). To rely on them as supposed 'proof' for what God supposedly said is short-sighted at least, because it makes that man to be a mediator/interpreter of God's word when God's word itself says that Jesus is our only mediator (I Tim 2:5), and the Holy Ghost is our interpreter/teacher (John 14:26; I John 2:27). That is why we need to know which book is actually the word of God, without someone's opinion to bias our conclusions. You could say that my final authority of God's word – the Authorized Version – is just as much a biased choice as yours – the NWT or other new version – but it isn't. If you ignore what people are saying about these books and just study the books themselves, you will see that they are very different and contradictory (and therefore not both from God) and that they are not equal in accuracy. For example (another issue about which you haven't commented), the NWT has completely blank verses in many places. To start with, look up: Matt 17:21, Matt 18:11, Matt 23:14, Mark 7:16, Mark 9:44, Mark 9:46, Mark 11:26 and Mark 15:28.

9. If the NWT is actually God's word then it would not have verse numbers with completely blank verses in it … anywhere.

10. Westcott and Hort were clearly ungodly men who didn't even believe that the originals were given by inspiration of God. Given that they wrote the Greek text underlying most new versions, it is circular reasoning and meaningless to use their writings as evidence in support of their derivative works (most new versions). The text they used and the text they wrote were not the received texts.

11. Terry, do you really believe that God gave his word by inspiration (II Tim 3:16) and then lost it for over a thousand years (before Tischendorf found it again in a garbage can in a Catholic monastery)? I am referring to the Sinaiticus manuscript, of course – one of the primary manuscripts underlying the new version bibles. It makes no sense that God would be so careless, nor that he would leave his people without his complete word for such a long period of time (or for any period of time for that matter).

12. To what "old manuscripts" does your "footnote" refer in the NWT? Usually it is the Vaticanus or Sinaiticus that is meant by such a footnote, but it is probably the Westcott and Hort Greek text to which it refers; and that is certainly not "old". By the way, the fact that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are older than the received text manuscripts are which underlie the Authorized Version is simply a result of Christians having used the received text manuscripts and worn them out and then replaced them with newer copies. So the fact that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are so old is a result of them not having been used (the Christians recognized them as not being God's word) and so they didn't wear out. Besides this, as I mentioned, the Sinaiticus was found literally in the garbage can of Saint Catherines' Monastery – probably because it had already been edited, altered, changed, and struck over some ten times, in many places. It was an absolute mess. THIS is one of the two "most reliable", "oldest" and "best" manuscripts to which many modern scholars refer in support of their new versions. It is no wonder that there is such confusion, error, omissions and contradictions in the new versions. In fact, between the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus (the two primary manuscripts just mentioned) there are more than 3,000 contradictions in the four gospels alone.

13. Regarding scholarship, I fully agree with you that God often uses simple, humble people. It is the elite that promote scholarship and new versions; and not the elite who promote final authority and the Authorized Version. (In fact, that elitism is inherent within, if not the whole basis for, Textual Criticism). The textual critics leave themselves as the final authority, judging what parts of God's word they choose to accept as God's word and what parts they don't. These are not humble men like those who were inspired to write holy scripture as the Holy Spirit moved them. These are men (including former Presidents of the Watchtower) who admitted under oath in court that they could not recognize and could not translate words in the very languages from which they themselves claimed they had translated the entire NWT. So, this is a matter of honesty (i.e. lack of honesty) on the part of those men in what they claim to have actually done; and is not a matter of whether or not God would have chosen to use them for their humility (even if they were humble; which is highly contestable).

14. You make these unsubstantiated claims (as do others) such as: "Unfortunately no version of the Bible is 100% correct, so we must continue to search for truth." Who told you such a thing? What is "wrong" with the Authorized Version and on what basis do you judge it as being wrong? (i.e. you cannot say that it is wrong simply on the basis that it differs from a particular new version rendering. You need an objective standard to make such a judgment. In contrast, I have shown how the NWT has verses omitted, without referring to any other book as proof - only to the NWT itself. That is an objective judgment.)

15. By making such claims, you are accusing God of having given us less than the complete truth. (That is a dangerous, if not blasphemous accusation; and it makes no sense.) Ps 12:6,7 in the Authorized version claims that God himself would preserve his words forever. How can you dispute that and claim that he hasn't provided you with a perfect copy of his word? How do you know what parts of your bible are perfect and what parts have errors? If yours has errors in it, how do you know if the parts you rely upon in order to live forever in paradise on earth are actually true?

16. You seem to think that God would inspire his word and then lose it for over one thousand years (the portions of your bible that came from the Sinaiticus). Do you also believe that God would use men to write his word who didn't even believe it was inspired in the first place (Westcott, Hort and Origen, among others)? Doesn't it make sense that Satan would produce counterfeits of God's actual word and deceive people with those counterfeits? If so, which books are likely to be the counterfeits, who would decide which are true or not, and how would they know?

17. If you study the origins of the manuscript evidence, you will find that the manuscripts came from one of two sources – those that originated in Alexandria, Egypt, (the house of bondage where God commanded his children not to go - not even to buy a horse) and those that originated in Antioch, Syria (where the disciples were first called Christians – Acts 11:26). The Alexandrian manuscripts underlie all new versions. The Antioch manuscripts, the received texts, underlie the Authorized Version. Study the objective evidence. You could start by finding out what God himself thinks about these places. We have compiled the scripture references to make a study of this very easy, in an article called Antioch_and_Alexandria.

18. You say that, "The word of God is like a collector's car that is preciously kept. The fact that restoration at some time may be required does not take away from its originality or authenticity." But it does take away from God's promise and responsibility to preserve his words forever, himself. "The words of the LORD are pure words: … Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever." Ps 12:6,7

19. By 1929, Judge Rutherford built a mansion (Beth Sarim) that he claimed was for the saints to live in when they were resurrected at the second coming of Jesus (even though Jesus had supposedly returned, or - as witnesses were told later - that "his presence" had already returned … in a sense … in 1914) – an event that he claimed at the time was merely months away. Rutherford himself lived in the mansion until his death and the saints have still not appeared to this day. The mansion has been sold. The history of the Watchtower society is more than full of such fantastic (and erroneous) claims. At what point does a 'Witness' begin to question the veracity of Watchtower leadership that makes such false claims (while simultaneously claiming to be the official mouthpiece of the LORD) and then revises and/or completely re-writes their own history? Are these the types of claims and guidance that one would expect to receive from a perfect, holy and unchanging LORD GOD?

20. I encourage you to prove ALL things; hold fast that which is good (I Thess 5:21)

Mike.