I just posted this information to a private email list, but I think it will be of interest to people on this board.

The following list of translators of the New World Translation is a compilation from a variety of sources:

Frederick W. Franz: Main translator. Took liberal arts sequence at University of Cincinnati; 21 semester hours of classical Greek, some Latin. Partially completed a two-hour survey course in Biblical Greek in junior year; course titled "The New Testament--A course in grammar and translation." Left in spring of 1914 before completing junior year. Self-taught in Spanish, biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Entered Brooklyn headquarters facility of Watchtower Society in 1920. Probable ghost writer for J. F. Rutherford (2nd president of WTS) from late 1920s through 1942. Vice president of WTS from 1942 to 1977, president from 1977 until death in 1992 at age 99.

Franz writes in his autobiography: "What a blessing it was to study Bible Greek under Professor Arthur Kensella! Under Dr. Joseph Harry, an author of some Greek works, I also studied the classical Greek. I knew that if I wanted to become a Presbyterian clergyman, I had to have a command of Bible Greek. So I furiously applied myself and got passing grades" (The Watchtower, May 1, 1987, p. 24). Franz gives the impression that the bulk of his Greek studies were "Bible Greek" under "Professor Kensella" and that classical Greek was secondary under "Dr. Joseph Harry." The opposite is true. As mentioned above, Franz only took one 2-hour credit class of "Bible Greek" but 21 hours of classical Greek. According to the course catalog of 1911, Arthur Kensella was not a professor of Greek, as Franz wrote, but an "instructor in Greek." Kensella did not have a Ph.D. and he therefore taught entry-level courses.

Nathan H. Knorr: No training in biblical languages. Entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1923; 3rd president of WTS from 1942 to 1977. Died 1977 at age 72.

Milton G. Henschel: No training in biblical languages. Private secretary and traveling companion to N. H. Knorr from late 1940s until early 1970s. 4th president of WTS from 1992 to 2000. Still living, age mid-80s.

Albert D. Schroeder: No training in biblical languages. Took 3 years of mechanical engineering, unspecified language courses in college, dropped out in 1932 and soon entered Brooklyn headquarters. Registrar of "Gilead School" from 1942 to 1959. Still living, age 90.

Karl Klein: No training in biblical languages. Entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1925; member of Writing Dept. since 1950. Died 2001 at age 96.

George D. Gangas: No training in biblical languages. Greek-speaking Turkish national, entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1928 as a Greek translator from English to modern Greek publications. Died 1994 at age 98.

Franz was the only man capable of doing translation work. Gangas was a native Greek speaker, knew little of Koine Greek, and apparently helped out with a variety of non-translation tasks including reviewing the English grammar for continuity of expression. From all information published about him personally, one readily concludes that Knorr was the business administrator for the Translation Committee. Henschel might have been on it to take care of legal/secretarial matters. Schroeder and Klein did the copious footnotes (which included textual sources) and cross references and marginal notes, which in the original six volumes of the NWT were more extensive than in the 1984 edition.

The NWT Committee has always been extremely secretive, and so information about who was on it has only trickled out of the Brooklyn headquarters as various staff members have left and revealed what they knew. Scant information has been published, other information has leaked by word of mouth.

Frederick Franz has been criticized for supposedly not being proficient in Biblical Hebrew. This is patently false, since *someone* had to be competent enough to produce a workable translation, and it certainly was not the other men on the NWT Committee. Franz's nephew, Raymond Franz, who resigned from the Jehovah's Witnesses Governing Body in 1980 and was excommunicated in 1981, listed some of the members of the NWT Committee in his 1983 book "Crisis of Conscience". He has told me and others that he once observed his uncle silently reading an ancient Hebrew manuscript in a museum display case, which the elder Franz is not likely to have done in private unless he was actually able to make sense of it. But because the elder Franz has internally been termed "the oracle of the [JW] organization" and was clearly its "head theologian" from 1942 until his gradual retirement in the 1980s, he certainly inserted his religious biases into his translation work.

Someone on the private list asked some questions and I answered as follows:

"How much paraphrasing did the translator(s) of the NWT intend to employ?"

I'll let the "Introduction" to the 1984 NWT Reference Bible answer (p. 7):

"Paraphrases of the Scriptures are not offered. Rather, an effort has been made to give as literal a translation as possible where the modern-English idiom allows and where a literal rendition does not, by any awkwardness, hide the thought. In that way the desire of those who are scrupulous for getting an almost word-for-word statement of the original is met. It is realized that even such a seemingly insignificant matter as the use or omission of a comma or of a definite or an indefinite article may at times alter the correct sense of the original passage.

Taking liberties with the texts for the mere sake of brevity, and substituting some modern parallel when a literal rendering of the original makes good sense, has been avoided. Uniformity of rendering has been maintained by assigning one meaning to each major word and by holding to that meaning as far as the context permits. At times this has imposed a restriction upon word choice, but it aids in cross-referencing work and in comparing related texts.

Special care was taken in translating Hebrew and Greek verbs in order to capture the simplicity, warmth, character and forcefulness of the original expressions. An effort was made to preserve the flavor of the ancient Hebrew and Greek times, the people's way of thinking, reasoning and talking, their social dealings, etc. This has prevented any indulgence in translating as one may think the original speaker or writer should have said it. So, care has been taken not to modernize the verbal renderings to such an extent as to alter their ancient background beyond recognition. This means the reader will encounter many Hebrew and Greek idioms. In many cases the footnotes show the literalness of certain expressions."

Next question:

"Another realm that must be addressed in evaluating a translators skills or the validity of a translation is understanding the presuppositions of the translators."

You are absolutely correct that "Every translator translates with presuppositions." You may have noted Dr./Mr. Swift’s observation that Franz ‘freely admitted his presuppositions’. These were set by previous Watchtower doctrines, some of which he himself had a hand in formulating. Some of these are clearly enunciated in the introductory material to specific volumes. A solid discussion of these is probably beyond the scope of this forum, but an idea can be readily derived by understanding the very basic doctrines held by the Watchtower Society when the NWT originally was produced, from the late 1940s through the late 1950s. These include the notions that the Bible is absolutely inspired and inerrant, that Christ returned invisibly in 1914 (hence the concern with "parousia"), that a special group of Jehovah's Witness leaders are God's exclusive and collective 'spokesman' to all mankind, that the Bible does not teach the Trinity, and so forth. As "head theologian" and vice-president of the Watchtower Society, Franz was required to ensure that his work was consistent with existing doctrine, just as any group of translators is required by those who commission them to follow the precepts of the group. Deviation from accepted ideas may be grounds for dismissal.

Next comment:

"Knowing his or her name permits a scholar to look at the corpus of the translators writings and discover the translators presupps."

Frederick Franz either wrote or contributed to most of the WTS's large-format bound theological books published from the late 1920s through the early 1970s. He also wrote or contributed to countless articles appearing in "The Watchtower" magazine. Once one becomes acquainted with Franz's distinctive writing style, it is not hard to see which publications he wrote or contributed substantially to. Of course, these are not easy to come by for people outside the Jehovah's Witness organization, and the task of reading them is daunting, so I don't know what to tell you.

AlanF

The NWT translation team was as follows:

Scooby Doo
Homer Simpson
Zebedee
Dougal
Sheep
Mr Spoon

bj:

The observations of various people who worked closely with the translation committee or with documentation produced by it. Some of these folks are not comfortable with making themselves known just yet.

AlanF

Logical

######

You are one Sick Puppy!!!!!!!!!

but i love it - my wife and i are here dying on the floor--

loved it -keep up the good work

dmilr

Homer Simpson just too good

james

In this era of Watchtower, there are probably few Witnesses who would recognize the dry pseudo-dramatic style of the late Fred Franz. Rumour has it that there was also a young man generally not credited who participated.

Abbot and Costello---Hey they knew who was on First.
Moe, Larry and Curly lets not forget Shemp,
and we all know the Marx brothers had something
to do with it, what do you think Harpo was doing
in his spear time he couldn't talk.

It has been intimated to me that there were several persons on the 'translation team' besides Fred Franz. Obviously the other fellows -- Schroeder, Klein, Gangas, etc. -- had nothing to do with translation but served in administrative capacities.

Just as the Writing Committee doesn't do all the writing for the magazines, neither was the Translation Committee for the NWT solely responsible for the translation work.

Re: Who Were the NWT Translators? Jul 20, 2001 7:23:48 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You said:
>Alan F
You list the names of six members of the Bethel family who are rumoured to be the members of the NWT committee. This disagrees with the list of four names stated by Raymond Franz in his COC page 50, 2nd edition, 1992. Whis is the correct list? I put it to you that your sources are unreliable even if they are well meaning, such is merely secondhand opinion or simply rumour.

James Penton in his Apocalypse Delayed could not provide any evidence as to the identity of the committee. This is somewhat surprising as he is a competent historian of JW history, lived in somewhat close geographical proximity to the US and Canadian Bethels and no doubt would have had numerous sources and contacts. Yet he only refers to the list given on p. 50 in COC. How can this be?

Under a previous heading on this board 'Accuracy of Bible Translation', I commented that it is somewhat strange that in the likely event that there was archival material of the NWT committee in Bethel that this was mot referred to by Raymond Franz who one would have thought because of his status would have have access to it.
I queried as to why Franz did not provide any ORAL or WRITTEN material that could be used as evidence in a future public forum. In his COC, he gives an excellent account of oral converations, copies of letters and other confidential memos etc. He has a good memory in that he recalls even converations between his colleagues who were supposed members of the NWT committee.

In your reply to this matter, you stated that it was because of a "fanatical devotion to secrecy" as an explanation. Surely, you must appreciate that organizations of whatever type possess at various levels, a measure of secrecy. Why even many families have their secrets. Apart from this, the organization is bureaucratic. This means there is much attention to records, archives, memos, correspondence etc. In short, one must logically expect that somewhere in Bethel there is documention in some form that does or may establish the identity of the committee. If in fact no such documentaion exists. then one may assume that NWT committee existed or exists outside of Bethel but not independent of it.

In fact, in your earlier post , you refer to such documentation but you provide no details. It is somewhat amazing with the number of people who have left and are no longer associated with the Society why they have not blown the whistle so to speak. Even Franz did not feel unashamed in revealing the contents of private conversations that would have been an embarrassment for such prominent individuals.

My thoughts:
Well, you exposed Alan's usual style of drawing attention to himself by pretending to be an 'insider' and he has fooled a lot of people!

Then you said:
The committe wished that their anonymity be protected even after their death. This means that one of life's greatest secrets will be eternally preseved. This means that for eternity the greatest translation ever devised constitutes a memorial to the Author of the Holy Scriptures, Jehovah God.

My thoughts:
Evidently, you have never read the mountainous evidence of the MISTRANSLATION and pathetic bias of the NWT to it's own theology. In contrast, most Bibles are translated using teams of scholars and specialists who are known for their integrity and honesty.
A scholar who is also a 'trinitarian' is just that because he sees the truth of the trinity in scripture. He is not a biased 'trinitarian' when it comes to literal and contextual translating. Those who have no integrity are soon discredited, guys like Greg Stafford and Ralf Furoli are prime examples. Fred Franz much vaunted 'hebrew' knowledge was much bolstered by already translated english Bibles.
Take a look at similiar available literal translations of the era and see where the NWT is almost the same EXCEPT for the verses that it chooses to mistranslate!
Later,
Rex

I have to say, scholar, you're typically JW in your attempt to discredit by implication. Have you been taking lessons from the Writing Department? Your post contains virtually no information, but a number of dark implications.

The list of four NWT translators given by Raymond Franz is correct as far as it goes, but is obviously incomplete. So what? Do you have information that shows that the list I presented is incorrect? If so, then let's have it. If not, then I don't care about your opinions.

As regards Penton's book, you'll have to ask him. Would you like to? I can put you in touch if you would.

As for your ramblings about why documentation on the NWT translators ought to exist and why Ray Franz didn't have access to it, you'll have to ask the Society. They're the ones who are keeping it locked up. If it were up to me, the entire archives would be open to the world.

You seem to wonder darkly why more people who left Bethel have not come forward to 'blow the whistle, so to speak'. I'm not sure just what you're implying ought to be done, but as I said, several people who had information have certainly published the names of those they knew were on the translation committee. It does not follow that they knew all of the translators. However, my private sources tell me that the list I posted is complete. If you have information that indicates that the list is wrong, or incomplete, then let's hear it. Otherwise, you don't really have much you say besides your dark, baseless implications.

As for your claim that the NWT is the greatest translation ever devised, don't try to insult peoples' intelligence. As I mentioned in that other thread, I think it's great as a literal translation most of the time. But stylistically it's terrible. And of course it contains a number of deliberate misrepresentations that are there to support pre-existing JW doctrine or practice, such as substituting "take in knowledge of" for "come to know" in John 17:3, the mistranslation of "parousia" as "presence", etc. I have to wonder why you failed to comment on those things in that other thread.

AlanF

Opinion:
The NWT actually loses some of its punch where it tries to be overly literal. The old KJV is matchless in the way it conveys its message concisely and poetically. Compare a couple of proverbs:

Prov.26:5
KJV - "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he become wise in his own conceit."

NWT - "Answer someone stupid according to his foolishness, that he may not become someone wise in his own eyes."

Prov.26:16
KJV - "The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason."

NWT - "The lazy one is wiser in his own eyes than seven giving a sensible reply."

The NWT's dryness forfeits some of gist that comes with good rhetoric in the psalms and proverbs, to my thinking. Not that I am a great fan of the Authorized Version, I just like the old English for a few things. On the other hand, the literalness of the NWT is much better for rendering something like "hell".