by barbar 6 Replies latest watchtower scandals
The other day I read about a bible commentator who was upset that the WTBTS has mis-quoted him. They had said he felt the NWT was a good translation and he had not. Can't remember where I read it or who he was.
Do you have any recollections of times that they had quoted experts in their field and misled the WT readers by implying that the expert supported the WTBTS when in fact they had not.
At one point as a teen, I was "losing my faith". I thought it would be a good idea to research some more to strengthen my faith. My research made my doubts increase. I recall finding many misquotes, particularly about the creation theories and the quotes about "signs of the times". I wish I could remember specifics, but I don't.
Wouldn't it be great if the guy you were talking about wrote a letter to the editor saying he was misquoted by the WTS?
I think you mean Julius R. Mantey. This website might be interesting.
http://www.forananswer.org/Top_JW/Scholars%20and%20NWT.htm#Mantey
Thanks Blondie, that name rings a bell. That was an interesting website
Mis Quotes? Isn't that qwerty?
Do you have any recollections of times that they had quoted experts in their field and misled the WT readers by implying that the expert supported the WTBTS when in fact they had not.
It's not just so called experts. You should some of the misquoting they've done when referring to their older publications and former WTBTS President's quotes. The words trickery and deceivery are too kind.
xjw_b12 GotRand?
*** Watchtower 1955 October 1 p.603 Part 3: What Do the Scriptures Say About "Survival After Death"? ***
It comes as no surprise that one Johannes Greber, a former Catholic clergyman, has become a spiritualist and has published the book entitled "Communication with the Spirit World, Its laws and Its Purpose." (1932, Macoy Publishing Company, New York) In its Foreword he makes the typical misstatement: "The most significant spiritualistic book is the Bible; for its principal contents hinge upon the messages of the beyond to those existing in the present.[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower 1956 February 15 pp.110-1 Triumphing over Wicked Spirit Forces ***
10 Says Johannes Greber in the introduction of his translation of The New Testament, copyrighted in 1937: "I myself was a Catholic priest, and until I was forty-eight years old had never as much as believed in the possibility of communicating with the world of God's spirits. The day came, however, when I involuntarily took my first step toward such communication, and experienced things that shook me to the depths of my soul. . . . My experiences are related in a book that has appeared in both German and English and bears the title, Communication with the Spirit-World: Its Laws and Its Purpose." (Page 15, ¶ 2, 3) In keeping with his Roman Catholic extraction Greber's translation is bound with a gold-leaf cross on its stiff front cover. In the Foreword of his aforementioned book ex-priest Greber says: "The most significant spiritualistic book is the Bible." Under this impression Greber endeavors to make his New Testament translation read very spiritualistic.11 Spiritualism claims that there are good spirits and bad spirits and that it does not want to have anything to do with the bad spirits but tries to communicate only with the good spirits. At 1 John 4:1-3 the Bible says: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." Greber's translation of these verses reads: "My dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to learn whether they come from God. For many false spirits have emerged from the abyss and gone out into the world, and are speaking through human mediums. This is how you can find out whether a spirit comes from God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ appeared on earth as a man, comes from God. While every spirit who seeks to destroy belief in Jesus as our Lord incarnated does not come from God, but is sent by the adversary of Christ. You have been told that such spirits would come, and they are already appearing in the world." Very plainly the spirits in which ex-priest Greber believes helped him in his translation.
[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower 1961 January 1 p.30 Was There a Resurrection? ***
[Johannes Greber cited for support for Matthew 27:52-53.]Nor is the New World Translation alone in rendering these verses thus. A modern German translation reads quite similarly: "Tombs were laid open, and many bodies of those buried were tossed upright. In this posture they projected from the graves and were seen by many who passed by the place on their way back to the city."-Matt. 27:52, 53.
[Emphasis Added]
*** "The Word" ? Who Is He? According to John (1962) p.5 ***
[This is a summary, not a quote][Johannes Greber cited for support for John 1:1.]
[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower 1962 September 15 p.554 "The Word"-Who Is He? According to John ***
5 But most controversial of all is the following reading of John 1:1, 2: "The Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. This Word was in the beginning with God." This reading is found in The New Testament in An Improved Version, published in London, England, in 1808. Similar is the reading by a former Roman Catholic priest: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. This was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without it nothing created sprang into existence." (John 1:1-3)** [Footnote to page 554]
The New Testament-A New Translation and Explanation Based on the Oldest Manuscripts, by Johannes Greber (a translation from German into English), edition of 1937, the front cover of this bound translation being stamped with a golden cross.
[Emphasis Added]
*** Make Sure of All Things: Hold Fast to What is Fine (1965) page 489 ***
[This is a summary, not a quote][Johannes Greber cited for support.]
[Emphasis Added]
*** Aid to Bible Understanding (1969) p.1134 Memorial Tomb ***
Memorial Tomb
[?]`TOMBS OPENED' AT JESUS' DEATH
The text at Matthew 27:52, 53 concerning the memorial tombs [that] were opened" as the result of an earthquake occurring at the time of Jesus' death has caused considerable discussion, some holding that a resurrection occurred. However, a comparison with the texts concerning the resurrection makes clear that these verses do not describe a resurrection but merely a throwing of bodies out of their tombs, similar to incidents that have taken place in recent times, as in Ecuador in 1949, and again in Bogota, Colombia, in 1962, when two hundred corpses in the cemetery were thrown out of their tombs by a violent earth tremor.?El Tiempo, Bogotá, Colombia, July 31, 1962.
The translation by Johannes Greber (1937) of these verses reads as follows: "Tombs were laid open, and many bodies of those buried were tossed upright. In this posture they projected from the graves and were seen by many who passed by the place on their way back to the city."
[Emphasis Added]
*** Aid to Bible Understanding (1969) pp.1667-1669 Word, The ***
WORD, THE
[?]"THE WORD" AS A TITLE
In the Christian Greek Scriptures "the Word" (Gr., ho Lo'gos) also appears as a title. (John 1:1, 14 ; Rev. 19:13) The apostle John identified the one to whom this title belongs, namely, to Jesus, he being so designated not only during his ministry on earth as a perfect man, but also during his prehuman spirit existence as well as after his exaltation to heaven.
Regarding the Son's prehuman existence, John says "In the beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god." (John 1:1, NW) The Authorized Version and the Douay Version read "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This would make it appear that the Word was identical with Almighty God, while the former reading, in the New World Translation, indicates that the Word is not the God, Almighty God, but is a "mighty one," a god. (Even the judges of ancient Israel, who wielded great power in the nation, were called "gods." [Ps. 82:6 ; John 10:34, 351) Actually, in the Greek text, the definite article ho, "the," appears before the first "God," but there is no article before the second.
Other modern translations aid in getting the proper view. The interlinear word-for-word reading of the Greek translation in the Emphatic Diaglott reads: "In a beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God, and a god was the Word." The accompanying text of the Diaglott uses capital and small capital letters for the God, and initial capital and lowercase letters for the second appearance of "god" in the sentence: "In the Beginning was the LOGOS, and the LOGOS was with GOD, and the LOGOS was God."
These renderings would support the fact that Jesus, being the Son of God and the one used by God in creating all other things (Col. 1:15-20), is indeed a "god," a "mighty one," and has the quality of mightiness, but is not the Almighty God. Other translations reflect this view. The New English Bible (1961) says "And what God was, the Word was." The Greek word translated "Word" is Lo'gos; and so Dr. James Moffatt's New Translation of the Bible (1922) reads: "The Logos was divine." The Complete Bible?An American Translation (Smith-Goodspeed) reads: "The Word was divine." Other readings (by German translators) are: By Boehmer: "It was tightly bound up with God, yes, itself of divine being." By Stage: "The Word was itself of divine being." By Menge: "And God (= of divine being) the Word was." By Pfaefflin: "And was of divine weightiness." And by Thimme: "And God of a sort the Word was." All these renderings highlight the quality of the Word, not his identity with his Father, the Almighty God. Being the Son of God (Jehovah), he would have the divine quality, for divine means `godlike.'-Col. 2:9 ; compare 2 Peter 1:4, where "divine nature" is promised to Christ's joint heirs.
A translation by a former Roman Catholic priest, Johannes Greber (1937 ed.) renders the second appearance of the word "god" in the sentence as "a god." And The Four Gospels?A New Translation, by Professor Charles Cutler Torrey (second ed., 1947), says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was god. When he was in the beginning with God all things were created through him ; without him came no created thing into being." (John 1:1-3) Note that what the Word is said to be is spelled without a capital initial letter, namely, "god."
[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower 1975 October 15 p.640 Questions from Readers ***
Questions from Readers
? Does Matthew 27:52, 53 mean that at the time of Jesus' death some persons in the grave were resurrected? Without wresting the Greek grammar, a translator can render Matthew 27:52, 53 in a way that suggests that a similar exposing of corpses resulted from the earthquake occurring at Jesus' death. Thus the translation by Johannes Greber (1937) renders these verses: "Tombs were laid open, and many bodies of those buried there were tossed upright. In this posture they projected from the graves and were seen by many who passed by the place on their way back to the city."-Compare the New World Translation.[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower 1976 April 15 p.231 Insight on the News ***
Insight on the News
Event Clarifies Bible
? The recent Guatemalan earthquake affected even some of those already dead. "Time" magazine reports that "several mourners who went to bury their dead in family plots found that the coffins of long-dead relatives had been uncovered by the quake." Something similar occurred during an earthquake in the Jerusalem area at Jesus' death. At that time, dead bodies were customarily placed in vaults or chambers cut from Palestine's soft limestone rock, often in hillsides. A report in the Bible, as translated by Johannes Greber, says that when Jesus died, "the earth quaked, and the rocks were shattered. Tombs were laid open, and many bodies of those buried there were tossed upright. In this posture they projected from the graves and were seen by many who passed by the place on their way back to the city." Hence, rather than a resurrection, as some Bible translations imply, there appears to have been merely an exposure of the dead to observers, as in Guatemala.-Matt. 27:51-53.[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower 1983 April 1 p.31 Questions From Readers ***
Questions From Readers
? Why, in recent years, has The Watchtower not made use of the translation by the former Catholic priest, Johannes Greber? This translation was used occasionally in support of renderings of Matthew 27:52, 53 and John 1:1, as given in the New World Translation and other authoritative Bible versions. But as indicated in a foreword to the 1980 edition of The New Testament by Johannes Greber, this translator relied on "God's Spirit World" to clarify for him how he should translate difficult passages. It is stated: "His wife, a medium of God's Spiritworld was often instrumental in conveying the correct answers from God's Messengers to Pastor Greber." The Watchtower has deemed it improper to make use of a translation that has such a close rapport with spiritism. (Deuteronomy 18:10-12) The scholarship that forms the basis for the rendering of the above-cited texts in the New World Translation is sound and for this reason does not depend at all on Greber's translation for authority. Nothing is lost, therefore, by ceasing to use his New Testament.[Emphasis Added]
*** Watchtower Publications Index 1930 - 1985 ***
[Only these two references under the subject GREBER]Greber, Johannes
w83 4/1 31
w62 554[Emphasis Added]
