The New World Translation restores the truth

Every translation has verses where scholars disagree, and one disputed verse proves little. A fairer test is to look for a pattern. When the Greek bears on who Jesus is, does a translation follow the same rules it follows everywhere else?

That is the test Christian scholars applied to the King James Version’s 1 John 5:7. The words supported the Trinity, and translators who believed in the Trinity removed them anyway, because the manuscripts did not have them. A translation earns trust by printing what the text says even where its translators would prefer it said something else.

Four places can be checked by the New World Translation’s own wording, or by the Greek it was translated from: the divine name in the Christian Greek Scriptures, John 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, and John 8:58. The translators give a reason in every case. The test is whether they apply that reason the same way when the result would point toward Jesus being God.

The New World Translation prints “Jehovah” over two hundred times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. No surviving Greek manuscript of these books has the divine name at any of those places. The New World Translation’s own appendix on the subject does not claim one does. It gives reasons the translators believe the name was originally there and later replaced by Kyrios, “Lord.” Those reasons are worth reading, but they are an argument about what the text might once have said, not a report of what the manuscripts say.

It matters most where the apostles take a verse about Jehovah and apply it to Jesus. In Romans 10:9, Paul says, in the New World Translation, “if you publicly declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord… you will be saved.” Four verses later he quotes Joel: “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” The New World Translation prints “Jehovah” in verse 13. Paul’s sentence runs straight from one to the other; verse 12, in the same translation, says “there is the same Lord over all.” By changing one “Lord” and not the other, the translation divides what Paul joined.

Compare 1 Peter 3:15, “sanctify the Christ as Lord in your hearts.” Peter is echoing Isaiah 8:13, where the one to be treated as holy is Jehovah. Here the New World Translation keeps “Lord,” because Peter applies the words to Christ. The rule for inserting the name seems to follow the doctrine, not the Greek.

John 1:1 has its own page, John 1:1 says “a god”. The short version: the New World Translation renders theos without the article as “a god” in John 1:1, but as “God” in verses 6, 12, 13, and 18 of the same chapter.

2 Peter is a cleaner test, because it uses the same construction twice in one chapter. In both places, Greek has one article governing two nouns joined by “and,” followed by “Jesus Christ.” The New World Translation renders them differently.

In 2 Peter 1:11 it reads “the everlasting Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” One person, who is both Lord and Savior. In 2 Peter 1:1 it reads “the righteousness of our God and the Savior Jesus Christ.” Two persons. The translation has added “the” before “Savior,” a word with nothing to match it in the Greek, and the added word turns one person into two.

Nothing in the Greek explains this. The only change between the two verses is that in verse 1 the first noun is “God.” If the translation followed its own reading of verse 11, verse 1 would call Jesus “our God and Savior.” Titus 2:13 has the same construction and raises the same question.

In John 8:58, Jesus says, in most translations, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” The New World Translation reads, “Before Abraham came into existence, I have been.” The Greek verb is eimi, present tense, “I am.” The Society’s argument is that a Greek present can describe something that began in the past and continues, which English expresses with “have been.” That is a real feature of Greek, and it is fair to say “I have been” is a possible rendering in some sentences. See John 8:58.

Look at what the rendering covers over. Jesus sets two verbs against each other. Abraham “came into existence,” genesthai, a verb for something that begins. Jesus “is,” eimi. It is the same contrast John drew in his opening lines, where everything “came into existence” but the Word “was.” “I have been” turns that contrast into a statement that Jesus is older than Abraham, which is true but is not all he said.

The crowd’s response shows they heard more than a claim about age. “They picked up stones to throw at him” (8:59). In the law, stoning was the penalty for blasphemy, not for claiming to be old. Translating the tense carefully is fair. Losing the contrast Jesus drew is where the New World Translation goes wrong.

For several years, Watch Tower publications quoted the translation of Johannes Greber, a former Catholic priest, in support of “a god” at John 1:1. In 1983, The Watchtower said his translation should no longer be used, because Greber had said that spirits guided his translating. The Society deserves credit for saying so publicly.

Do not make too much of this. Greber is not the evidence here; the Greek and the New World Translation’s own renderings are. The dates are still instructive. The Watchtower described Greber’s spiritism in 1956, later cited his translation, and stopped using it in 1983. That history does not settle the Greek grammar.

The better way to read any Bible, including this one, is to check disputed verses against the Greek. You do not need to read Greek to do it. Many Witnesses have used The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, which the Society itself published, with the Greek text and a word-for-word English line under it. Open it at 2 Peter 1:1 and 1:11 and compare the two lines for yourself.