by pizzahut2023 34 Replies latest watchtower bible
J6 in Matthew 8:25 DOES, however, call "The Lord" in Hebrew "HaAdohn", a title that the Watchtower says corresponds exclusively to Jehovah.
J6 includes Mark 16:9-20, which the Watchtower holds as spurious.
It calls the first "Lord" HaAdohn in heb, "God" is called "Elohim", and the second "Lord" (referring to Jesus) is called "YHWH" in heb.
pizzahut2023 : For example, in J29 (The Original Aramaic New Testament in Plain English (An American Translation of the Aramaic New Testament), by Glenn David Bauscher, Seventh Edition, Australia, 2012)
In Luke 2:11 it says: "For today, the Savior has been born to you, who is THE LORD JEHOVAH the Messiah, in the city of David."
Thanks for all the work you have put into this, pizzahut2023. J29 is without doubt an interesting translation but shows a strong trinitarian bias. In the introduction the translator writes :
Divine Names and titles are generally translated, not transliterated like human names or place names. “Jehovah” is used to translate the Aramaic “MarYah” , which is The Aramaic for The Hebrew -“Yahweh”, and always refers to The Deity. This Name, very interestingly, is applied to Yeshua (Jesus) in the Peshitta New Testament at least 32 times! “MarYah” literally means “LORD JEHOVAH”. It is first applied to the infant Jesus in Luke 2:11. The last reference is in Rev. 22.20.
mryh (maryah) is an Aramaic word meaning 'Lord' and was used in the Syrian royal court long before Christianity. When the New Testament was translated into Syriac, a distinction was made to show whether it referred to human lords or was a euphemism for Jehovah by either spelling it out in full (maryah) or abbreviating it (mary, marah or mar). However, although maryah is used as a euphemism for Jehovah, it is also used to mean 'Lord' in a formal or respectful sense.
When it is used to refer to Jesus (Matthew 22:43,45; Luke 2:11; John 8:11; Acts 2:36,38; 9:10,27; 18:25; Romans 14:9,14; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 11:27,29; 12:3; Ephesians 4:5; Philippians 2:11; James 5:7,8; 1 Peter 2:3; 3:15; Revelation 22:20) it is never used as a name but as a title (Lord).
How do you tell what is meant? Consider the context and whether it is quoting from or alluding to the Old Testament where God's name is used.
Consider, for example, Matthew 22:43-45 :
He said to them, "And how did David by The Spirit call him maryah, for he said: 'maryah said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet'? If therefore David called him maryah, how is he his son?"
Quite clearly, if you repace maryah with "LORD JEHOVAH" in every instance, as is done in this translation, it makes a nonsense of the passage.
shows a strong trinitarian bias
That is exactly my point with this whole thread, not necessarily to prove/disprove the trinity, but to show how the Watchtower used even hundreds (300 J versions in the latest NWT) of different versions, the vast majority of which are more trinitarian than the most trinitarian of "traditional" New Testaments, selected in specific moments, to end up with a translation which has a strong ANTI trinitarian bias...
At the end of the day, it goes to show that anyone with an agenda can create a Bible that suits their ideological bias.
Like Earnest, pizzahut2023, I thank you for the details you are providing. The org leaders could care less about the theology of the sources they cite on the divine name. They do not grasp even the rudiments of biblical scholarship, and they view mostly all printed matter on the Bible as roughly equal: newspaper editor Benjamin Wilson (Emphatic Diaglott) = a Cambridge/Oxford professor.
They pick, like a hen pecks at food on the ground, at whatever morsels they stumble across, and then cite them to an audience already 100% eager to believe whatever they are told. The idea that the historical context of these medieval works they cite would matter is irrelevant.
SBF:
When one appreciates just how thoroughly Trinitarians changed the text of scripture and the early writings of the church to conform to the later Trinity doctrine it’s somewhat a miracle that non-Trinitarian material has survived at all from the early period. For every description of Jesus as the first creation of God in early Christianity that managed to cling on in the manuscript tradition there were probably many other examples that were blotted out.
Yes, it's like those early church onomastica, and the fathers who quote them, that still testify to Iao/Yaho as the living non-magical pronunciation for the Father in Second Temple Period Judaism among the masses. Remarkable that such testimony has survived at all.
J7 is my favorite J version, because it is the one that got me out of the Witnesses.
It was J7 having 1 Thessalonians 4:16 saying the "Jehovah himself will descend from heaven" that struck the first serious doubt I had about the witnesses.
J7 is:
Novum Testamentum Dn̄i: Nr̄i: Iesu Christi, Syriacè, Ebraicè, Græcè, Latinè, Germanicè, Bohemicè, Italicè, Hispanicè, Gallicè, Anglicè, Danicè, Polonicè (New Testament in 12 languages, including Hebrew), by Elias Hutter, Nuremberg, 1599-1600. This edition is often referred to as the Nuremberg Polyglot New Testament. The translation into Hebrew uses יהוה in the main text of various verses.
You can find it here:
https://archive.org/details/hutter-polyglot/1-%20Matthew/mode/2up
(You can see each book individually in that link).
Also known as Hutter's Polyglot, the Watchtower has written an article extolling its virtues:
https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/watchtower-no4-2017-july/elias-hutter-hebrew-bibles/
"How good was Hutter’s Hebrew translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures? Noted 19th-century Hebrew scholar Franz Delitzsch wrote: “His Hebrew translation reveals a grasp of the language rare among Christians and it is still worth consulting, for in instance after instance he has been most fortunate in striking on precisely the right expression.”"
"In translating from the original Greek, Hutter appropriately rendered the titles Kyʹri·os (Lord) and The·osʹ (God) as “Jehovah” (יהוה, JHVH) where the text is a quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures or where he felt it referred to Jehovah."
Note that the Watchtower leaves itself an "out": "where HE felt it referred to Jehovah."
Hutter refers to Jesus as Jehovah many many times in his polyglot!! Guess the Watchtower will say "well, that's just his opinion"!
I will start posting where Hutter goes against the Watchtower.
The Hutter Polyglot is in reality very trinitarian.
Luke 2:11, for example, says that "Jehovah the Christ" was born! What's interesting is that in other languages in general he puts "Lord" (in this case, in Spanish), but in Hebrew, it's the Tetragrammaton.
The Hutter Polyglot also has Aramaic, and in the Aramaic, in Luke 2:11, Hutter is again very trinitarian:
Not only does he put the Tetragrammaton, but he puts MarYah. So Luke 2:11 could read as "Jehovah the Lord Yah the Messiah was born".
John 20:20 in the Hutter Bible is Trinitarian. The Watchtower says that "HaAdon" is exclusively used in the Masoretic text to refer to Jehovah.
Surely Hutter knew this. And yet, he still decided to call Jesus "HaAdon" (The True Lord) in John 20:20.
Pardon my being obviously obtuse, but could someone kindly explain the interest in these MSS ? of what significance are they to our determining what was originally written all those Centuries before these Texts appeared ?
Thank you.
Pardon my being obviously obtuse, but could someone kindly explain the interest in these MSS ? of what significance are they to our determining what was originally written all those Centuries before these Texts appeared ?
no worries!
Firstly, these are not (with maybe only the first one) manuscripts, as they were not handwritten, they're all from 1385 onwards, so there was printing already.
These are Bible versions that various people have made that agree with the Watchtower on one thing: "Jehovah" should be in the New Testament.
That's where the similarity ends. WHERE in the New Testament should "Jehovah" go, that's a whole different story. These 300 versions all have different opinions on where "Jehovah" should go or where it shouldn't, and the vast majority of them are very, very, very trinitarian.
They put "Jehovah" in places where the Watchtower would never ever agree with, because it would make the text extremely trinitarian, like in Luke 2:11. "Jehovah" wasn't born, it was Jesus who was born, but many of these J versions say that "Jehovah" was born.
So the interest of this study is to show the reader how utterly corrupt the New World Translation is, that it neglects 5000 or more New Testament Greek manuscripts and favors Bibles, some even from 2012 (!!!), that agree with what it says instead.
None of the existing 5000 greek manuscripts of the New Testament ever mention "Jehovah". So the evidence points to the autographs, the original NT, not having the tetragrammaton in it. The Watchtower doesn't accept that, and uses these Bibles to justify inserting (they call it "restoring") Jehovah into the New Testament.
