Volume Jehovahs
Can a mistranslation in the New World Translation prove that the translators knew Hebrew?
The NWT published by Jehovah’s Witnesses mistranslated Leviticus 23:21.
In 1953, The first volume of the NWT of the Hebrew Scriptures was published, which had Leviticus 23:21 read:
“And you must proclaim on this very day Jehovah’s holy convention for yourselves.”
This stood for 26 years, when it was changed to:
“And you must make a proclamation on this very day; there will be a holy convention for yourselves.”
Lev. 23:21 has יהיה (“there will be”) which is remarkably similar to יהוה (“Jehovah”). The translators misread יהיה as יהוה.
The NWT is the only Bible translation to have “Jehovah” in Lev 23:21. This is interesting because of the claim of some JW critics that the NWT wasn’t translated from the Hebrew and Greek, but was just a revision of other English Bibles such as the KJV, ASV, and Rotherham.
Greetings,
Very interesting bit of trivia! The original mistake definitely shows that the translators were either working from or comparing a Hebrew text and not simply “revising” English bibles!
And the revision shows that the later revisers were also checking the Hebrew!
Yours,
BAR-ANERGES
EDIT:
“James” is operating on a faulty presupposition and so his conclusions are false.
He is incorrectly assuming that he knows the translators of the NWT. The fact is that no one knows who the translators were or how many. There are some names which are good guesses for some, but there is no evidence to confirm these assumptions. Nor, can the translators be limited to these guesses.
Those that claim to have identified them have absolutely no evidence for their claims –other than *their* own opinion. So any claim to be able to list the translators is based on an unfounded assumption derived from the testimony of a highly questionable and prejudiced source.
The accuracy of the translation is proven by the facts. Even on this forum this has been proven repeatedly. The fact that critics rarely provide an example of where the NWT is inaccurate demonstrates that they know how weak their criticisms really are. When they offer an example of what they claim is a mistranslation it is immediately proven to be an invalid and illogical complaint.
So they repeatedly have to resort to prejudicial complaints and irrelevant ad hominem attacks regarding the supposed translators.
However, the fact that we do not know the NWT translators has absolutely no bearing on the correctness of the translation. Indeed, the names and credentials of translators behind any Bible translation has never been necessary in determining whether a translation can be trusted.
Scholar Alan S. Duthie says: “If we know who the translators or the publishers of a particular Bible translation are, does it help us to decide whether that translation is good or bad? Not directly. There is no substitute for examining the characteristics of each translation itself.”
Therefore, those who insist that we must know the names and education of translators to determine a translation’s accuracy are mistaken. This argument is actually a logical fallacy (Appeal to Authority).
The fact is that the NWT has been praised by many scholars even when they don’t agree with the Witnesses belief:
The most recent is Jason BeDuhn in his book “Truth in Translation, Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament.” He chose the NWT as most accurate in comparison with several other well-known versions (Jason David BeDuhn, University Press of America).
“The translation is evidently the work of skilled and clever scholars…”– Alexander Thompson, The Differentiator (British religious Journal)
“…the anonymous translators have certainly rendered the best manuscript texts…with scholarly ability and acumen.”– Charles Francis Potter, The Faith Men Live by
“The New Testament translation was made by a committee…that possessed an unusual competence in Greek.”– S. MacLean Gilmore, the Andover Newtion Quarterly, September 1966, Vol. 7, Number 1, pages 25-6.
What I personally found over the years is that in every case where the NWT is criticized by so-called “scholars” it has usually proved to be accurate, and at the very least its rendering is solidly based on the laws of translation such as following the original grammar and word definitions. In almost all cases I found that the NWT was more accurate than the vast majority of other translations. *Most* criticisms brought against it are usually themselves *unwarranted and unfairly biased. *
That is why you mainly hear prejudicial comments, and unsupported accusations against the NWT by regular posters here. They know that when they raise a specific translation difference they will receive a scholarly response proving that the NWT translation is an accurate rendering of the original.
The NWT always proves to be an accurate and faithful translation.
Jehovah’s witnesses(The Seventh Vol entitled: The Finished Mystery speaks out to JW’s of today)
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This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2010 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.