Jehovas Witness Bible, any exclusive contradictions?

I will not take time to respond to your Message 12. It all makes sense, but for this topic, an NT included Bible would be needed. I understand enough Latin from my monastery days to check with the Vulgate for major discrepencies, assuming it is a faithful translation of the Hebrew. It is pleasantly? surprising to hear your opinion of the kjv, but it again does not contain all the books of a Catholic Bible.So, back to JW's..... I am not making up what I said about Greek. Their pamphlet says 'most people do not know Biblical Greek, so how can they know what John meant?'. So they go on to cite versions of the Bible which have been interpreted to their liking, all JW based Bibles, of course, and holy cow! You can trace the original usage of the phrase 'the Word was a God' in their Bibles, back to a man named Johannes Greber, who claims to have been in touch with a 'spirit world' and whose wife was a medium to the spirit world! Jehova's Witnesses back in 1956 warned that he was in contact with demons and involved in spiritism, and yet went on to use his Bible! Greber claims to have seen 'correct' interpretations of scripture flash before his eyes in gold letters! How convenient! and how much of an affront to people who apply themselves diigently to a careful translation! (sorry for the exclamations;it is crazy)I am interested btw in the other fundamentalist ideas which you have said which are demolished by an understanding of Hebrew. Here, are you saying that the idea of Trinity disappears, or just the Jehova W. version?Yes, polytheism is restricted in judeochrisian theology. That stems from a comprehensive look at the Bible, and not from a few passages. The ones which you have mentioned, Job and Deu 32 I myself do not see blatantly meaning this; You said Israel had not yet been born, so if you say God 'watches Israel' you mean what was to become Israel? Just curious...but otherwise I would take 'children of god' to mean men, not other gods, unless there is a good reason not to. Are you saying John is talking about God the Father here, and not Jesus? If the 'word' simply means God, then why would John say 'the Word was with God right after? But Jesus is man also; I am not sure what you mean by 'one fewer contradiction' except that you mean the JW's have reconciled the synoptics with John. That may be, but so has the doctrine of the trinity and the incarnation, and in any event, the JW's have only done so by forcing the literal text. I did say, if anything, I would expect fewer contradictions in a bible that has been so re-worked to include their views. There is no polytheism contradiction in standard christianity or the trinity. It may be confusing, but I see no reason why God could not divide Himself a million times and yet remain one God. It is more impossible for me to imagine God becoming lesser or different with successive divisions, or not being God if He sent His spirit into a mortal body.I do not think JW's have conciously tried to reconcile anything; they do not even quote the synoptics in their discussion of Trinity. They are clearly lost in John himself, and not sure how Jesus could be with God, and yet be God. They are trying to reconcile John with John and dumb down what was profound. What is confusing? Sorry if my wording was vague.

You can find a lot about this online. It was a trial in Scotland in 1954 where the Vice-President of the Watchtower Society, Franz, was asked to translate one sentence of Genesis into Hebrew, and refused. He had previously sworn under oath to know Scripture in Greek, Hebrew, and other languages.The wt society refuses to say who was on their translation committee, but none of the leaders of the time knew any biblical languages, and were found to have produced an erroneous and made up Bible.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Could you tell me where in the bible it is said that there is the Trinity? Or is it just something about reading the text in context and comparing stuff to see that there has to be the Trinity for it to make sense?
If it's a dumb question just ignore it. I just haven't read the bible much.

It is not a dumb question; the Trinity is not in the Bible. To a lot of people the Trinity does not make sense, and is even considered an affront to God (take Islam) but yes, I think it is the only way to get all the different texts to make sense. The early christians were confused about some of this stuff, too. They came up with countless ideas which were cast aside as heresy, like the Nestorian Heresy. The heretics did not however stoop to actually changing the Bible that I am aware of. The JW's have.I do not know if you have read the previous posts, but there is some interesting info there.

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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Thanks for all the replies so far, especially thanks to arachnophilia for some more in-depth replies.My JW friend keeps on insisting that their version of the bible is the completely an unedited one. Is this true?
Many already replied saying JW's have edited the bible a lot but I'd like more clear examples of this.I'm very close to start studying the JW's version of the bible seriously, but I wouldn't want to waste my time if there actually are some obvious mistranslations and purposeful editing to suit their views in the bible.

Just like with other denominations, there is not one single JW Bible. There are a number of New Testaments which the Witnesses find acceptable.I would ask you if possible to find the exact version which your friend uses. Then we could research the origins of that particular translation. What I have found so far about the versions I know of, is unbelievable.I am not sure if your intentions are in possibly joining the JW sect. I strongly would advise you against it. I will attempt to explain this if I can.Many translations of the Bible used by Jw's are the offshoots of those by a man named Johannes Greber. In 1923 this former priest was asked to do an exorcism, or a least to study the nature of the spirit that seemed to be possessing a young boy. Greber was not an experienced exorcist, but the normal procedure in determining the presence of a spirit is to ask questions which a man who is acting, or mentally unbalanced, could not answer. If it seems clear that there is a possession of the body, a priest will often ask the spirit to profess Jesus as Lord. In this case, Greber began by asking a very bad question. He said 'I have come to learn the truth'. The spriit/boy replied that 'no one can know the truth any longer because the bible has been mutilated and corrupted'. The spirit would give no evidence of who the culprits were in the mutilation, but long story short, promised to reveal to Greber the 'correct' Bible.Greber after this incident was directly involved with spirits, and wrote books about how to become involved. It is important to note that communication with spirits is everywhere decried by followers of the Bible. However, Johannes Greber wrote little by little a translation of the NT that had been 'revealed' to him by the 'spirits' as the true one that God 'meant to say'.There are later instances of translations where a panel of spiritists put together a Bible. The JW's as I have mentioned refuse to list the names of the men involved in the translating, but were forced to admit they had no credentials other than their high position in the secret spirit world.So again, the 'spirits' told Greber that the Bible we have has been edited beyond recognition. I am sure they do consider their own to be un-edited, because they think it has come straight out of God's mouth complete and unabridged just for them and very recently. What they mean by un-edited, and what the rest of christianity means by it, is very different.Just beware.

It's not that I'm "joining" JW's. It just seems it's the only religion worthwhile of studying about. No real contradictions have arose in this thread yet, and I'm a bit disappointed about that.
I may have to use my time to study if it all actually makes sense.

It all depends if you are studying it out of curiousity, or something more. I can't tell what you mean there. If it is curiousity, fine, but I certainly wouldn't say that it is the only one worthwhile of study. There are other groups that are just as fascinatingly mixed up; try the Swedenborgians, or the Mormons.I think that many of people on here don't have a passion for this topic, but you can find out an awful lot about JW's online yourself, and there is an unbelievable amount of literature out there from non-partisan sources which denounces the soundness of their doctrine, the scholarly absence in their translations, and the practices in general of the members.it is interesting, too; JW's oppose the internet, and all studying of other relgions...and voting!If you have any questions, feel free, just don't get too blind-sighted without comparing what they say.

Sorry, Arach, I was away, came back, and missed this one. It`s quoted by most recovering ex-JW sites but I`ll try to find it for you.Oops, I see Anastasia is covering it well. The whistle on the Greek translation lie was blown by a member of the Governing Body, Ray Franz, a nephew of the Presidente (Crisis of Conscience). JW`s have a reasoning book which tells them how to pull dodgy stunts on potential victims. One trick is to show passages from the KJV to show that their Bible corresponds. They never let on about all the changes and omissions which were covered in a little softcover 'Which Bible'? or something like that, coming to a religious store near you.Edited by Nighttrain, : To correct my goof.

The main thing is that you want to be a part of something real. When I was a part of a church, I wanted to believe that what they taught and did was as accurate and good as possible. Why? Because I wanted to belong. To belong to God along with my friends and brethren.Of course, we Christians are taught what the correct versions of the Bible are as much as any JW. If I were to give you any advice, it would be this:

Don't get hung up on exclusivity. Focus on the friendships that you have and if you find that a group of friends wants to exclude you from other groups with different beliefs, beware.

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I believe that God will reach you where you are at. If you feel led to study with the witnesses, by all means do so.

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Do not be afraid to question anything that you have been taught. You should keep that right no matter what religion you choose.

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You can read all of the arguments from both sides of this issue. I have some friends who are JWs and we do disagree on certain interpretations of the Bible, but I never let the argument separate me from my friends.

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In the past, I used to argue more. I have my beliefs and I have strong reasons for some, and blind faith for others. In the final analysis, however, I ask myself what Jesus would want me to do...my motives and heart for the things I say and do.

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And I can live with that.

Thanks for a good post. This subject is still a lot on my mind today. It's really not that I want to belong to a group and feel safe or such. I just want to know what is the truth. If I knew "the truth" my life would be a lot easier obviously.I just don't want to use hours of study to something that can be falsified to begin with. With my friend of course we never "argue" (start yelling at each other ie.), we talk in a friendly fashion and usually I'm just asking questions about where JW stands for.Also, most of the time we're just playing Mario Party and can't focus on anything serious

First off, my sister is JW, so I’ve looked into all of this quite a bit. I’ve read a lot of JW literature too, as well as many outside, critical sources.There is only one official JW bible currently as far as I know. It’s called “The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures”. (there may be earlier JW ones, more influenced by the Spiritists as Anastasia mentioned, but those aren’t the official bible today). The translation is not bad. From my understanding (not speaking Greek nor Hebrew myself), it’s about as accurate as most current translations except for two things.1. It always translates any name addressing God as “Jehovah”.
2. It blatantly mistranslates John 1 as has been discussed already.Because these don’t really affect contradictions, the JW bible should have all the contradictions, historical inaccuracies, and logical problems of the Protestant Bibles (the JW bibles cut out the books that differ between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles). Of course, one could argue that change #2 up there affects the contradictions around the trinity - OK, well, maybe, but the trinity is a mess of contradictions anyway, so I don’t see a big effect by changing John 1.Neutral mind wrote:

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Could you tell me where in the bible it is said that there is the Trinity? Or is it just something about reading the text in context and comparing stuff to see that there has to be the Trinity for it to make sense?

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Um, no. As others have mentioned, the trinity isn’t mentioned in the Bible. Reading more doesn’t help. 1=3 never makes sense. It has, however, been a historically effective way to tire people out and get them to stop asking those pesky questions. It’s “a divine mystery beyond human comprehension”, just like saying 2=3, or 1=5 or 4=1 . . Anastasia wrote:

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The heretics did not however stoop to actually changing the Bible that I am aware of. The JW's have.

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and Neutralmind wrote:

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I'm very close to start studying the JW's version of the bible seriously, but I wouldn't want to waste my time if there actually are some obvious mistranslations and purposeful editing to suit their views in the bible.

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OK, someone isn’t aware of early Christian/new testament history. The different competing groups of Christians in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries all regularly changed their bibles to fit their theological views. This was done by all of the different kinds of Christianities, at least as far as we have their scriptures to compare. In fact, this was done on an individual level at least as much as on a group level. The Gnostics changed their texts, or wrote new ones, the early Catholics wrote theirs (that’s why there are so many books in our new testament that aren’t by disciples), Marcion outright cut out sections of the Gospel of Luke, and on and on. The easiest way to see this is to simply compare the stories of the same event in the Gospels - Mt and Lk are well known to have had and copied from Mk. However, Mt and Lk often change the story to reflect their own bias. This is also obvious when comparing Jn to the others, since Jn is later and much more Gnostic. This is well known among biblical scholars. If you are interested, there is a book that goes into great detail on dozens of cases where the early church changed the Bible: http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed...Intentional changes are part of the reason why, out of the 5,000 early manuscripts we have of the Bible, no two of them agree word for word (except for the ones that are little fragments). Copying errors are a bigger reason, of course. So if you want a Christianity that hasn't altered it's Bible, you're out of luck no matter where you go.Anastasia wrote:

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I am not sure if your intentions are in possibly joining the JW sect. I strongly would advise you against it.

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I agree with Anastasia - I would advise against it.I constantly see JW’s get attacked by Christians for having altered their Bible, for being a cult, for making up new views about God, for believing fantastic things, for being less involved in society, for believing in superstition, etc. However, all of those charges are true of all Christian groups, not just JWs - especially the early Christians that so many Christians seem to want to emulate. While I don’t see much in JW doctrine that I’d consider correct, I don’t see them as much different from many other Christianities.It is true that the Catholic doctrine has an older, unbroken line from the 4rd century to today. But the JW doctrine is very similar to the Arian doctrine, which is of similar age. It’s true that the JW’s doctrine was mostly extinct for 1500 years, but I’m not sure that that is relevant. It’s also true that bigger churches, like the hundreds of millions of Catholics, have advantages over small ones like the JW’s, who have about 7 million members, but that also has disadvantages. After all, we saw in the recent Catholic sexual abuse scandals that any church (big or small) can harbor and protect predators. The political advantages of a large church are clearly superior to a minority, but I’m hard pressed to think of other reasons to favor a big church over a minority. At least for me, both their doctrines are equally out of touch with the real world.Hey, I know one. The mainstream Christianities at least don’t ban blood transfusions, which the JW’s do, and that can be life-threatening if you need one.Have a fun day, wherever you go.Edited by AdminAsgara, : shortened url to fix page width

Dear Anastasia;First thing, here is a link to the New World Translation on line.
http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/index.htmRead it yourself, check some favorite verses and see how it renders the text. You will find it to be a very clear reading modern English Bible. As for accuracy the New World Translation is a very accurate translation. Here is a link to a site where it is shown, that according to a testing system designed by a well known Bible scholar, the NWT NT translation is one of the best out of the 55 translations considered.
What is the best New Testament? Colwell's Rule of Bible Translation.This next web site shows that the NWT has one of the best OT translations.
Comparing the Sopherim Emendations between the New World Translation and other BiblesThe internet attacks on the NWT is just part of the overall attack on all things Jehovah's Witnesses. If the NWT had been published by some minor publishing house, the attacks on the NWT probably would never have been made, they don't bother to attack the other translations that use very simular renderings in some of the same verses they argue over. The rendering used by the NWT in many of the disputed verses are discussed here at this link with the reasons why the rendering used is closer to the biblical text.
http://jehovah.to/xlation/index.htmlThe NWT has many advantages because of the consistency in the way the translation was done, here is a link that goes into some of them.
Advantages of the New World TranslationPersonally I love the NWT, I find it to be an absolutely wonderful translation. I have used it a lot in scriptural discussions and it really is a great translation for really getting to understand the Word of God.Sincerely Yours; Wm Scott Anderson