" Take the issue of the translation of the Hebrew word qana in Prov 8.22. You have asserted that this word does not mean “created” in this verse. What is your basis for this claim? You have offered none."
Truly, I have. Check this out:
The gentile Christians of the first centuries did not know Hebrew, so they used the LXX translation, which renders the correspondent Hebrew word here qānānî (קנני) as ἔκτισε (“created”). This was an accidental mistranslation by the pre-Christian Jewish translators, as the true meaning of the Hebrew word here is not "created", and this was already recognized by the ancient Jewish translators (Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus), and in their version render by ἐκτήσατο (“possessed”). Jerome, whoe has learned Hebrew from the Jews recognised this (the full Hexapla was available for him), so he also rendered it in the Vulgate as possedit (possessed). So it wasn't the Trinitarian Christians who recognised this mistranslation, but the Jews.
The testimony of Philo, Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus and Jerome is clear on this issue. And you links also say that this is not the primary meaing of the verb qanah. The fact that some translations still rendered it with "created" is irrelevant, since a translation is just a translation. You cannot suppress this with fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam, since there is no such things as official, of inspred translation. If wisdom had to be created (was “produced”), are we to conclude that God had no wisdom until a certain time when He created it? It is obvious that God wouldn’t be God if there was a time when He was without wisdom. If God is eternal, then surely His attribute of divine wisdom
is eternal. There could never have been a time when God was without wisdom. So
“possessed” is a more accurate translation than“produced”, or „created.”
You should compare how is the verb 'qanah' translated in the Book of Proverbs 1:5, 4:5, 4:7, 15:32, 16:16, 18:15, 19:8.
When the Hebrew Bible wanted to emphasize creation, it always used the verb 'bara': Genesis 1:1, 1:21, 1:27, 2:3-4, 5:1-2, 6:7; Exodus 34:10; Deuteronomy 4:32; Psalm 51:10, 89:12, 89:47, 102:18, 104:30, 148:5; Isaiah 4:5, 40:26, 40:28, 41:20, 42:5, 43:1, 43:7, 43:15, 45:7-8, 45:12, 45:18, 48:7 , 54:16, 57:19, 65:17-18.
This misinterpretation ignores the middle of the sentence which states that Wisdom existed from everlasting (olam), that is, eternity. Christ (if indeed Wisdom) is eternal, from the beginning, of eternity, before God’s work, not as the first product of God’s works, just as Paul says at Col 1:17: “He is before all things.” He was not created but rather “set up” or “poured out” (Hebrew Nacak) as one pours out an existing libation, or casts existing metal or anoints an existing king (Strong and Vine’s, 188).
- “The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. From everlasting [owlam] I was established, From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.”
- “…Even from everlasting [owlam] to everlasting, Thou art God.” (Pslm 90:2)
Anyway, the Greek-speaking ancient Christians also didn't have problem with it, since ἔκτισε of the LXX still not the same as ποιηθέντα, which was the term condemned by the Nicene Creed. Pope Dionysius explained that ἔκτισε has many shades and meanings in the Greek language, does not mean what Arianism asserts. Secondly, the Wisdom of Proverb 8:22 is not the Logos himself, it does not identify and equate with the Logos per se, but a literary form allegory applied, attributed to the Logos according to the rules of typology, and not to identify (equate) the two, so this could not be used to support a doctrine anyway. Interestingly, the Jehovah’s Witness leaders themselves have admitted that the original Hebrew is in the feminine gender. In their book entitled God’s Eternal Purpose Now Triumphing for Man’s Good, page 28 we read,
“Our thinking here reminds us of what is said in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs, where divine wisdom is depicted as a person who talks about himself. Of course in the original Hebrew text of Proverbs, the word wisdom is in the feminine and speaks of itself as a female person. Divine wisdom does not have any separate existence apart from God. Wisdom always existed in Him, and so was not created. For this reason it is interesting to hear how wisdom speaks of herself as a feminine person.”
So there, without any real explanation of why they did so, they have admitted that they have changed that portion of Scripture from feminine to neuter in the NWT without any satisfactory reason for doing so. It should be mentioned that Hebrew has only masculine and feminine genders. So feminine nouns would, at times, be given neuter pronouns by the translators. However, Proverbs 7:4–5 indicates clearly that the writer of Proverbs intended Wisdom to be presented as a woman. So the Wisdom of Proverbs 8 is nothing more than the poetically personified, gradual realization and manifestation of eternally existing, divine, uncreated wisdom in the created world, starting from the embryonic state of chaos up to the crown of the completed world, the son of man.
https://www.forananswer.org/Top_JW/Bowman_Prov8.htm