by Wonderment 13 Replies latest watchtower bible
Mantey was not the most honest of persons, laying claim to H. E. Dana's work as his own. Mantey's contributions to the revision of Dana's A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament were minor. In his letter complaining that Watchtower misused a quotation from it, he said the paragraph in question was his own work. It was not.
The Watchtower continues to use the quotation, but attributes it to the original edition by H. E. Dana.
On top of all of which, I’ve heard the claim that Mantey was going senile when Ankerberg interviewed him and that’s why some of his comments don’t seem to make much sense.
I was just pleased to track down where the accusation that the NWT was based on Rotherham had come from because I was aware of the claim but couldn’t remember the source. It’s possible others have made similar claims.
Uncle B in Separate Identity vol. 2 wrote:
As clergy outrage intensified after 1895, the Watch Tower parousia doctrine was interminably criticized and often misrepresented. This continued through the 20th Century and into the present century. Consider Walter Martin’s comment:
“Jehovah’s Witnesses claim scholarship for this blanket translation of parousia, yet not one great scholar in the history of Greek exegesis and translation has ever held this view. Since 1871, when “Pastor” Russell produced this concept, it has been denounced by every competent scholar upon examination.
“The reason this Russellite rendering is so dangerous is that it attempts to prove that parousia in regard to Christ’s second advent really means that His return or ‘presence’ was to be invisible, and unknown to all but ‘the faithful.’”
This is a polemicist’s poor research and a misrepresentation. His misstatements vary from minor to significant. The 1871 date is wildly wrong, something he could easily have known when he wrote. Russell did not originate the concept, but as we’ve shown elsewhere, it has a long history. He suggests that no “great” Greek-language scholar ever accepted a uniform translation of παρουσία as presence. One supposes that any scholar that disagreed with Martin would not have been ‘great’ in his eyes, including Joseph Rotherham, who noted in the appendix to his translation: “In this edition the word parousia is uniformly rendered ‘presence’ (‘coming,’ as a representative of this word, being set aside). The original term occurs twenty-four times in the N. T. [He lists all the verses which we omit from this quotation] ... The sense of ‘presence’ is so plainly shewn by the contrast with ‘absence’ (implied in 2 Co. x. 10, and expressed in Ph. ii. 12) that the question naturally arises, – Why not always so render it?”
Martin failed to cite or quote any of the “great” scholars
who rejected Watch Tower exposition of παρουσία. When one only writes polemics,
it is convenient to avoid citing sources. Martin misrepresented Russell and
modern Watchtower belief, claiming that their view is that only “the faithful” would
be aware of it. He puts ‘the faithful’ in quotes, but the phrase is lacking on
the pages he cites as is the belief he attributes to Watch Tower adherents. Russell,
the modern Watchtower, and Bible Student groups all believe that in time Christ’s
presence will become apparent to everyone, at least when Christ executes God’s
judgment. Martin’s real objection was that Russell and modern descendent
religions present an understanding of prophecy different from his own. The same
is true for Russell’s contemporaries who wrote similarly. Many who wrote anti-Russell
tracts simply mentioned the teaching without refuting it, relying on shock value to
accomplish their purpose.
David Sidbury at London Bethel was not telling me the truth when he said it would be too expensive to put the Bible online.
He's the one who collected the many Bibles they had on display in UK.
