WHY I STOPPED APOLOGISING FOR THE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY - PART 5
Back in the eighties, when I was a single man in my early twenties, I decided to set up my own home. Since I was outside the territory of my existing congregation I started associating with a new one. One of the elders in this particular congregation was extremely well-known and regarded by many as a spiritual 'pillar' (Galatians 2:9). Although not brought up as a JW, he had by that time been in 'the Truth' for many years. Before the 'elder arrangement' came into force, he had held the post of 'congregation servant', which effectively put him in charge of the congregation. This man's confidence, ability to organise and persuasive manner helped to secure him not only the admiration of the other congregation members, but various responsibilities and speaking assignments connected with circuit assemblies. Many of the 'brothers' were endeared to him because of his understanding nature and willingness to be 'on call' to the flock. Nevertheless, he also acted in a way that could only be described as a 'spiritual policeman'. I had no doubt that he was sincerely trying to protect the congregation from bad influences, but at times it felt like he was the principle and the 'sheep' were the children at his school. On one occasion I had spoken with a 'sister' about my interest in learning Biblical Hebrew or Greek. Not long afterwards, this elder gave a talk in which he remarked that it really was not necessary for brothers to learn Biblical languages. I wondered what was so bad about getting aquainted with the original languages in which the 'Word of God' was written. Koine GreekEarly on in my online activities, I had made an effort to get to know a few things about New Testament (NT) Greek. The reason for this was that from time to time posters would argue about the meaning of words and phrases found in the NT. I figured that the only way to settle matters for sure, in my own mind, was to get to grips with the underlying language known as Koine (or 'common') Greek - that which was spoken by the people of the time. Like many JWs I had a copy of the society's 'Kingdom Interlinear', which gave the original Greek and a word-for-word translation for all of the NT. I was, though, well aware of the accusations of JW opposers that this publication was flawed. So I decided that the only way to counteract their arguments was to play on their own 'turf'. In order to do this, I invested quite a bit of money in relevant publications produced by non-JWs, such as the fourth revised edition of 'The Greek New Testament' (produced by the United Bible Societies), and used online resources that were obviously provided by members of 'Christendom'. Since there were no places locally for me to learn Koine Greek (KG), I bought some beginners books and started teaching myself.As I was determined to get a good working knowledge of KG in a short time, I made sure that I studied daily. To aid me further I developed a computer program that displayed and formatted a freely-available non-JW interlinear version of the NT. Within six months or so I knew enough about the language and had enough tools (including a hefty large print version of 'The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance Of The Bible') to be confident in making some informed online comments on a few NT verses. It was also useful to have a copy of the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (OT), to compare with OT scriptures quoted in the NT. I found the whole thing fascinating. It was also exciting to be in a position to question how a particular scripture had been rendered into English in various Bibles, including of course the New World Translation (NWT) used by JWs.
During this period of time I also spent a good many hours setting up my own web site. The intention was to provide those with little or no knowledge of the Bible with a series of articles that would act as stepping stones through the scriptures. The result was what could be called a resume of the Bible. I had no intention of 'going ahead of the society', but felt that it could be beneficial to some people who would otherwise not take notice of the Bible from literature that had 'JW' stamped on it. It was while preparing one of these articles that Hebrews 13:17 came to my attention. Since the article was discussing Christlike 'leadership', I wondered how being 'obedient' and 'submissive' fitted in with being led by example.
So, 'tools' at hand, I examined the KG text for that scripture. I looked up the word translated as 'obedient' (KG = 'peith-esthe' - root 'peitho') in my various lexicons and found that it actually meant to be 'persuaded'! Interestingly, in the very next verse (18) where it says 'For we trust we have an honest conscience' (NWT), the word translated as 'trust' (KG = 'peith-ometha' - root 'peitho') is identical to the word rendered 'obedient' in the previous verse, only with a different ending due to KG grammatical rules. I went through the same procedure with the word translated as 'submissive' (KG = 'hupeikete'), and found that it meant to be 'yielding'. Thus, there would be no contradiction with the 'leadership' Jesus spoke of. It was obvious to me that congregation members were being encouraged to put trust in those 'leading' them, 'yielding' through cooperation if they would prefer a different way of doing things. I also found out that the word rendered 'taking the lead' (KG = 'hegoumenois'), meant one who acted as a guide.
So, instead of elders being authoritarian figures who told the sheep what to do, they were to act like guides who knew the terrain well and would not only be able to help point to the right pathways but would also warn of known pitfalls. If people decided not to follow the advice of the guide, he would have no authority over them to force them to take his advice, nor to punish them in some way for disagreeing. It struck me that not just the WTS, but also 'Christendom' in general had purposefully used words in translation that would help maintain authority over the 'sheep'. (To Be Continued...)