Hey NikL, I don't know about you, but this book is new to me:
New World Translation: A Reliable Bible Version?, Gary F. Zeolla.
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ZELGDQAAQBAJ
Reading through it now.
For those that read the bible, does the true message of scripture still come through in NWT?
by NikL 22 Replies latest jw friends
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TrueNoir
The JW bible is actually missing certain things or uses the wrong translations to get a certain mind set ac crossed that matches the teaching. I would recommend using more then one bible for example I usually use http://biblehub.com/revelation/20-12.htm when I'm trying to get the meaning of something but I would also recommend looking at the greek lexicon for meaning of words too because in greek definitions for things are broken down much more directly then english where we don't had like 20 or 30 different words to mean the same thing.
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David_Jay
I have to agree with scratchme.
The Bible was not assembled to have one particular message to derive from it. It was definitely not assembled to be read apart from the religious groups that wrote them and later officially canonized them.
The selections of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament were made up of texts read during the liturgical year to mark either the festivals of Judaism and later the feasts and solemnities of Christianity. While they do contain religious teaching, neither group wrote or used the Scriptures as a compendium of doctrine.
It was not until long after the Reformation, perhaps even as late as the Second Awakening in America that the invention of seeing the Bible as the main source of divine revelation came to the fore. Ideas like that were squashed by the early Church as such a view of Scripture belonged to the heresy of movements like Marcionism.
So it doesn't matter what translation one uses if you are worried about whether the "true message" can stand out in its reading. If the original composers and religions that assembled the writings didn't intend one and reading them in the original tongues can't change that fact, no translation can provide something that isn't there.
Since the original languages aren't hard to learn (we teach our children ancient Hebrew which is different from modern Hebrew), I don't see why people believe they need to rely on a translation if they are so interested in reading and understanding it. In my community, English-speaking Jews know Biblical Hebrew, some Yiddish, Ladino, and often some Aramaic too. Babes are taught to recite the Shema before they even learn to read English. So there is no reason that interested adults in this day and age of the Internet have to rely on Bible translations.
And if you're going to use a translation, read the ones composed by the greater array of scholars from different backgrounds, like the NRSV or the CEB. These were made by Christians and Jews of various traditions so that no bias would slip in. Why would you trust yourself to anything less than a version that has its renditions validated by multiple disinterested scholars? Even the Catholic NABRE was made by an interdenominational group of translators (and it's their official translation in the USA)! People who read versions made by single denominations are only advertising how closed their minds really are.