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Response
The New World Translation (NWT) is described by the parent organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses (the Watchtower Society) as “a translation of the Holy Scriptures directly from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into modern-day English by a committee of anointed witnesses of Jehovah.” The NWT is the collective effort of the “New World Bible Translation Committee.” Jehovah’s Witnesses state that the decision for anonymity is to credit the work to God. This also serves to shield the translators from accountability for any errors and prevents genuine scholars from verifying their academic qualifications.
The New World Translation stands out for one reason – it is the initial deliberate, organized attempt to create a comprehensive Bible version that is edited and revised to align with a group’s doctrine. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower Society recognized discrepancies between their beliefs and Scripture. Instead of adjusting their beliefs to match Scripture, they modified Scripture to fit their beliefs. The “New World Bible Translation Committee” meticulously reviewed the Bible and altered any Scripture that did not harmonize with Jehovah’s Witness theology. This is evident from the fact that with each new edition of the New World Translation, further modifications were made to the biblical text. As biblical Christians continued to highlight Scriptures supporting the deity of Christ (for instance), the Watchtower Society released updated editions of the New World Translation with those Scriptures altered. Here are some notable instances of deliberate revisions:
The New World Translation translates the Greek term staurós (“cross”) as “torture stake” because Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the belief that Jesus was crucified on a cross. The New World Translation does not provide translations for the words sheol, hades, gehenna, and t
Some refer to Tartarus as “hell” because Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in hell. The New World Translation provides the translation “presence” instead of “coming” for the Greek word parousia because Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Christ has already returned in the early 1900s. In Colossians 1:16, the New World Translation inserts the word “other” despite its absence from the original Greek text. It does this to convey the idea that “all other things” were created by Christ, instead of the original text stating, “all things were created by Christ.” This aligns with their belief that Christ is a created being, a belief stemming from their denial of the Trinity.
One of the most well-known alterations in the New World Translation is found in John 1:1. The original Greek text reads, “the Word was God.” The New World Translation renders it as “the word was a god.” This is not a matter of accurate translation, but of imposing one’s preconceived theology onto the text, rather than letting the text speak for itself. Greek does not have an indefinite article (like “a” or “an” in English), so any use of an indefinite article in English must be added by the translator. This is linguistically acceptable as long as it does not alter the meaning of the text.
There is a valid reason why theos lacks a definite article in John 1:1 and why the New World Translation’s interpretation is incorrect. To understand why, we need to grasp three fundamental rules:
1. In Greek, word order does not dictate word usage as it does in English. In English, sentence structure follows word order: Subject – Verb – Object. Therefore, “Harry called the dog” is not the same as “the dog called Harry.” In Greek, a word’s role is determined by the case ending attached to the word’s root. The root theo has two case endings: -s (theos) identifies a noun as the subject, while -n (theon) identifies a noun as the direct object.
2. When a noun serves as a predicate nominative (in Eng
When a predicate nominative (a noun that follows a being verb such as “is”) is used, its case ending must match the noun’s case that it renames, so that the reader will know which noun it is defining. Therefore, “theos” must take the -s ending because it is renaming “logos.” Therefore, John 1:1 transliterates to “kai theos en ho logos.” Is “theos” the subject, or is “logos”? Both have the -s ending. The answer is found in the next rule.
In cases where two nouns appear, and both take the same case ending, the author will often add the definite article to the word that is the subject in order to avoid confusion. John put the definite article on “logos” (“the Word”) instead of on “theos.” So, “logos” is the subject, and “theos” is the predicate nominative. In English, this results in John 1:1 being read as “and the Word was God” (instead of “and God was the word”).
The most revealing evidence of the Watchtower’s bias is their inconsistent translation technique. Throughout the Gospel of John, the Greek word “theon” occurs without a definite article. The New World Translation renders none of these as “a god.” Even more inconsistent, in John 1:18, the NWT translates the same term as both “God” and “god” in the very same sentence.
The Watchtower, therefore, has no hard textual grounds for their translation—only their own theological bias. While New World Translation defenders might succeed in showing that John 1:1 can be translated as they have done, they cannot show that it is the proper translation. Nor can they explain the fact that the NWT does not translate the same Greek phrases elsewhere in the Gospel of John the same way. It is only the pre-conceived heretical rejection of the deity of Christ that forces the Watchtower Society to inconsistently translate the Greek text, thus allowing their error to gain some semblance of legitimacy in the minds of those ignorant of the facts.
It is only the Watchtower’s pre-conceived heretical beliefs that are behind the dishonest and inconsistent translation that is the New World Translation.
The New World Translation is certainly not a legitimate rendition of God’s Word. There are slight variations among the primary English translations of the Bible. No English translation is flawless. Nevertheless, whereas other Bible translators may make minor errors in translating the Hebrew and Greek text into English, the NWT deliberately alters the translation to align with Jehovah’s Witness theology. The New World Translation is a distortion, not a version, of the Bible.
