Jehovas Witness Bible, any exclusive contradictions?

"son of god" seems to refer to angelic beings in hebrew. there is some overlap between the two ideas, though i have never seen a basis for jesus being michael. many christians claim him to be "the angel of the lord," however. (do some consider that character to be michael? nearest i can tell, there is some confusion in the bible between the angel of the lord and the lord himself.)

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actually, there a number of traditional points in christian theology that disappear with simply reading the bible in any language. and there very, very many fundamentalist ideas that are totally demolished by a 3rd grade comprehension of hebrew. to be honest, there is A LOT in the bible that smacks of polytheism, all of which is contradictory to ANY judeochristian faith. the degree of strictness of the monotheism varies from book to book. for instance, in job, god appears to have a council, much like the ugaritic iluhim, the council of the god "il." (the words should sound familiar).the phrase used is ‘ —, beni ha-elohim, sons of the god. "sons of..." is actually a sloppy english translation, the closest literal meaning. really, it encompasses women, and grandchildren, etc, in some usages. "beni yisrael" for instance means all the sons of israel, people from the family of jacob. israelites.it's possible that beni elohim means "from the family of god." as in "other gods." i don't think this is a good reading, but there is definitally an implication of other heavenly powers that do have influence. it's perhaps the most polytheistic part of the bible, other than this part in the septuagint:

quote:

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Deu 32:8-9

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When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance,
when he separated the sons of Adam,
he set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of [god].

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For the LORD'S portion is his people;
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

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the word in brackets was changed between the septuagint and the masoretic to read "israel." which makes little sense, because at this point (when god divided the sons of adam into nations, genesis 11) there were no sons of israel because israel himself had not yet been born.rather, what the text seems to say is that god, the "most high" of all the other gods, watches israel. other gods watch other countries. strange, in an extremely (and violently!) monotheistic book. some have suggested that "the word" comes from a greek translation of on particular aramaic (targum) rendering of the concept of god. in genesis, god first creates by speaking. so the aramaic verb meaning "to speak" was used as a pseudonym for god in some translations.it's possible that john is addressing an aramaic confusion here. "the word" simply means "god" and to john, jesus is god incarnate. this is not quite the same idea as found in the synoptic gospels, where jesus walks around calling himself "son of man" which idiomatically means "lowly mortal" and is a traditional title for a prophet (see all of ezekiel, any time god speaks) but not god and not the son of god. in fact, it means the opposite of "god."yet the synoptic gospels make him a kind of separate divine being. you're right to point out that the jw's translation betrays the point john is trying to make, but this one fewer contradiction, not one more. worship of yahweh and any other entity is polytheism. worship of anything made in the image of god is idolatry. worship of any image of god (including a physical being, a man) is idolatry. worship of anything mortal (capable of being killed, say on a cross) is idolatry.the problem is not whether or not jesus is THE god, or A god, but that he was also a man. jesus is the path to god, but not the focus of worship. really, because of this issue, there is still this polytheism contradiction in standard orthodox christianity. in one text, jesus is the one and only god. in others, he is clearly not. jw's modify john a bit to try to reconcile it with the other texts, standard christianity comes up with the trinity. both hare frought with problems, and neither really fits the text very well. because the contradiction -- the debate -- is in the text. changing the text of the bible is, imho, always a bad thing. i think translations should be as literal as possible, while still balancing the idiomatic intentions of the authors -- but left unmodified for doctrinal reasons. i have yet to find a single translation that does not modify something for dogmatic beliefs. which is why i'm learning hebrew. even the kjv does it, btw. they choose the qere over the kethiv. the equivalent of going with the footnotes of "we think they meant this..." instead what's in the text. i'm confused. i thought that WAS the actual beginning, as the majority of christians understand it.Edited by arachnophilia, : subtitle, typo

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thanks. well, this is not neccessarily true. for instance, there is at least one other important factor that needs to considered -- which generation of a translation is it?in this case, the masoretic ("original") would carry more weight, being in the original language. the vulgate translates the hebrew, and then the english translates the vulgate. so we have a translation of a translation. this invariably would have more errors than a direct translation from hebrew into english.but the septuagint has a little more weight to it, because it is actually much older than the masoretic -- we don't have the hebrew it was translated from. and there are differences between the two. in this case, i feel the age balances the generational differences, placing the two about even. i still prefer the hebrew, though.there are also a number of arguments for modern translations. we have things like the dss now that help greatly, and it's easier to understand modern language. idiomatic vs. literal is another concern. (i find most idiomatic translations distasteful as they often wrongly impose un-hebrew dogmatic concept on the text, but the new jps happens to be outstanding.)long story short, there is no "best" translation. different translations and manuscripts attest to this as history instead of speculation. and the targums, and the dss, and all kinds of weird and wonderful things. interpretation is always subjective, and the BEST translations do not force interpretation, but carefully translate the concepts (without excluding ways in which they can optionally be read) the most accurately across languages. luckily, this isn't as big of a problem as you'd expect -- modern english was highly, highly influenced by the kjv, a literal translation of the hebrew. many of the same vagueries carry over from hebrew into english. think "man" as in "a man" or "mankind." adam in hebrew works exactly the same way.as far as literal translations, i actually happen to like the kjv -- my only gripes are that it takes the marginal notes in the masoretic instead of what was written, and that the language is a little antiquated. for idiomatic, i love the new jps version (ot only, of course). i find it do be the most consistent with the usage of hebrew in the text, and best translates the ideas of the text without deviating too far from the literal. it does not seem to impose particular interpretations, except in a few key instances, and most of the ones it does are generally accurate to the best guesses of scholars.ideally, the best thing to do is take a few hebrew classes. the more you understand about the way the language works, the more contextual information you have about the text and how to read it. and the more the idioms make sense.

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trial?do elaborate.

i am, honestly, a lot more interested in the OT than the NT. i have several bibles on my shelf -- i have a few standard christian ones (kjv devotional, rsv, niv). i have the new jps ot. i have a hebrew/english chumash (torah + haftorot). i have interlineal greek/english nt.i think it's better to have a small library than everything in one basket. more variety is better. i'm still looking for a nice, complete hebrew/english tanakh. hopefully one that includes the apocrypha, but i doubt those evern exist somehow. there's really a lot of texts out there. aside from the apocrypha (the extras in the catholic bible), there are a bunch of pseudepigraphical texts too. and a ton of lost gospels. well, i don't think that neccessarily needs a knowledge of hebrew. but i do find myself often carefully translating quotes here, because of some fundamentalist misinterpration of a vaguery present in english that is not in the hebrew. i constantly find fundamentalists making claims based on concordances -- "this word can mean this, so i'm going to make it mean this here." and it doesn't work like that. cases and grammar and usage matters.the fun point here is that nobody who knows any hebrew at all would ever say "jehovah." they might say "yahueh" but they'd more likely say "adonai" it is as close to polytheism as the bible gets. certainly, the council in job is a direct parallel to the ugaritic council of gods under il, the iluhym. well, yes. starting with abraham, actually. in genesis 11, nations are divided, but god creates a new one for himself out of abraham. there is. beny elohim appear repeatedly in the text as a class of god-like beings (many people read them as angels). they appear in genesis 6, and have sex with the daughters of mankind, creating giants and legendary heroes (think hercules, half god half man). they appear in job, and satan (who is clearly a divine being of some kind) is one of them. in a lot of extra-biblical literature, they are very obvious angelic. i can't actually make a whole lot of sense out of what john says. some say "the word" is refering to god's wisdom. yes, and i never said this was exactly honest. yes, in the text, jesus is very obviously separate from god. to the extent that his dying words are "my god, my god, why have you abandoned me?" if jesus and god are one -- in the very, very literal sense and not the man-wife-one-flesh sense -- how could god abandon him? there, dying on the cross, jesus cannot be god, because god is not mortal.you simply cannot be both god and made in the image of god (man). you are either the original, or the reproduction, a son, and jesus clearly refers to another entity as his father, the original. since i seem mistaken, what is the standard christian reading of "in the beginning?" in the beginning of what?

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fun, i could do more than that. well, a revision of someone else's work. it's always fun when someone produces a translation without source material. find a thread on lds -- they have this issue too, but in spades.

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