Arian Biased Translations

 

 

 

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Schonfield
Johannes Greber
New World Translation
Moffatt, James
Goodspeed, Edgar
Smith, J. M. Powis
Emphatic Diaglott
Kingdom Interlinear
Lamsa
Cotton Patch
New English Bible
Revised English Bible
New Testament in an Improved Version
Newcome's New Translation

Modernists who deny the virgin birth are quoted by Jehovah's Witnesses because both deny the deity of Christ!

 

Bible Scoffers and Arians make strange bedfellows!

 

 

 

Anti-Trinitarian rebuttal refuted

Below are the Bibles Jehovah's Witnesses will quote to support their false doctrine. They quote them profusely. The fact is that Anti-trinitarians must scrape the bottom by shopping the world and coming up with obscure, corrupt Bibles written by liberal minded Bible haters, with low grade scholarship, no one has ever heard of to prove their point. Often Jehovah's Witnesses will provide a list of up to 50 translations of a single passage that support their view. We have not discussed them because most of them are not Bible translations, but one man's a commentary where in he translates the single Bible verse. These men are usually anti-trinitarians themselves, so the vast majority amount to self-quoting.

Bibles frequently quoted by Jehovah's Witnesses:

  1. Schonfield: is a Greek translation by one individual into English! However, Schonfield, author of "The Passover Plot", makes Jesus into a charlatan, and doesn't even believe in the deity of God the Father! Schonfield, an advocate of the "swoon theory" is quoted by the Muslims in support of their view that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross. Jehovah's Witnesses habitually quote faithless men like this to trash the trinity. ("The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan." (The Paganism in Our Christianity, Arthur Weigall, quoted in "Should you believe in the Trinity, Watchtower Publication)
  2. Johannes Greber: is quoted by the Watchtower, but he is an occult spiritist, who claimed to get his translation through a spirit medium!
  3. New World Translation: Produced by Jehovah's Witnesses for Jehovah's Witnesses. Nothing more than a sectarian paraphrase and not even a translation! The 4 paraphrasers were: Nathan Knorr, Albert Schroeder, George Gangas, Fred Franz. "Fred Franz however, was the only one with sufficient knowledge of the Bible languages to attempt translation of this kind. He had studied Greek for two years in the University of Cincinnati but was only self-taught in Hebrew." ["Crisis of Conscience"; by Raymond Franz; Commentary Press, Atlanta; 1983 edition; footnote 15; page 50]
  4. Moffatt, James: Greek into English but one man translation, whereas all other major translations had between 40-100 different scholars involved in the translation. Regarding James Moffatt, he was a professor at Union Theological Seminary, one of the most radical liberal institutions. His attitude toward miracles and the supernatural is illustrated by the following quotation from his book "Introduction To The Literature Of The New Testament": "A similar consideration bears upon Luke's treatment of the supernatural. On the one hand, the presence of miraculous anecdotes ... is no proof that they are unprimitive. A comparison, e.g., of the historical traditions gathering around figures like St. Patrick or even Thomas a Becket will show that it is the most natural thing in the world for such stories to spring up within a man's lifetime, and the mushroom of legend appeared under certain conditions as rapidly in the East an in the West. This applies in some degree to the miracles in Acts as well as in the gospels." (page 302). Clearly, Moffatt regards the miracles of the Bible, such as Jesus' virgin birth and His raising of the dead, as mere myth or legend. Moffatt claimed that the traditions of national unity and supernatural guidance "are at the heart of the tales and traditions within the first five books of the Bible." He believed portions of the Bible were badly edited and arranged, so he tried to improve on them. He rearranged entire chapters to suit himself.
  5. Goodspeed, Edgar: The Complete Bible, an American Translation, by Edgar Goodspeed and J. M. Powis Smith. Greek into English but a two man translation, whereas all other major translations had between 40-100 different scholars involved in the translation. Goodspeed was a liberal theologian.
  6. Smith, J. M. Powis: The Complete Bible, an American Translation, by Edgar Goodspeed and J. M. Powis Smith. Smith was a professor in a radical liberal institution, the University of Chicago. His attitude toward the virgin birth is evidenced by the way he translated Isaiah 7:14 - "A young woman is with child ..." The Complete Bible renders Matthew 1:23 as "A maiden will become pregnant ..." - again denying the virgin birth. Even if one might debate whether the Hebrew word has to mean virgin, there is no question that the Greek word parthenos in the passage in Matthew means virgin. This is scholarly consensus. His formulation of Matthew 1:23 is unquestionably a mistranslation. Smith regards the miracles of the Bible, such as Jesus' virgin birth, His raising of the dead, and others as mere myth or legend.
  7. Emphatic Diaglott: Produced by a Christadelphian named Benjamin Wilson, with no credentials in Greek. Wilson denied the personal pre-existence of Christ before his birth, the entire incarnation doctrine, being anti-trinitarians himself. It is used widely by Jehovah's Witnesses because of its anti-trinitarian bias.
  8. Kingdom Interlinear: Produced by Jehovah's Witnesses for Jehovah's Witnesses.
  9. Lamsa, George M.: This is a translation made from Greek into Aramaic Hebrew, then translated a second time into English. Lamsa admits he was raised in the Nestorian church. Nestorius, who was condemned by the third Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431, taught that Jesus had two persons in one body, one human and one divine. Lamsa said: "the Eastern Christians believe in one God with three attributes, instead of three persons." (George M. Lamsa, The Short Koran, p15) Lamsa believed God communicated directly with him and that he was God's sole chosen Bible translator. Lamsa said of himself, "The author, through God's grace, is the only one with the knowledge of Aramaic, the Bible customs and idioms, and the knowledge of the English language who has ever translated the Holy Bible from the original Aramaic texts into English and written commentaries on it" (George M. Lamsa, More Light on the Gospel, p151) Lamsa denies the physical bodily resurrection of Christ, the actual second coming, the person of the devil and demons. Lamsa believes parts of the Bible have been lost altered and corrupted, questions the inspiration of the Pauline epistles, believes that certain bible passages were "deliberately forged". (George M. Lamsa, New, xiii-xv. 44 Origin, 97. 45 Ibid., 97-98. 46 Bible, v. 47 Origin, 89)
  10. Cotton Patch: Is a paraphrase by one person not a translation, so is completely unreliable.
  11. New English Bible & Revised English Bible: produced by liberal, modernistically minded theologians whose vital faith is troubling even to Jehovah's Witnesses. The fact that the word "Christian" is found 32 times in these Bibles, when in fact it is only found three times in the Greek is proof enough that it is unreliable as a literal translation. They not only work against the deity of Christ, but the virgin birth. In Luke 1:34 they mistranslate the Greek, "knew no man-virgin" for "I have no husband." They also mistranslate the Greek "first day of the week" for "Saturday night" in Acts 20:7. (Saturday is the 7th day of the week). They use "Friday" in Luke 23:54, with no supporting Greek at all! They use "Sunday" in 1 Cor 16:2, instead of "first day of the week". They also mistranslate the Greek, "Pentecost" for "Whitsuntide" (a religious festival of the church of England). Overall, the translation bears the stamp of modernism. If they can get big simple stuff wrong, we certainly cannot trust them in John 8:58. Jehovah's Witnesses highlight the anti-trinitarian bias and ignore all the rest of the modernism in this translation. Yet the NEB does get some stuff right on as Barclay notes about John 1:1, "But it is here that that NEB [New English Bible] has brilliantly solved the problem with the absolutely correct rendering: "What God was the Word was"" (Barclay, William; Many Witnesses, One Lord, 1973, p23-24.)
  12. New Testament in an Improved Version and Newcome's New Translation : Precedents for translating John 1:1, ... "and the Word was a god", we find the Watchtower quoting on page 5 of "The Word Who is He? According to John". "This reading is also found in the "New Testament in an Improved Version", published in London, England in 1808." We are directed to a footnote which reads, "The title page reads "The New Testament in An Improved Version, upon the basis of Archbishop Newcome's New Translation with a Corrected Text, and Notes Critical and Explanatory. Published by a Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of Virtue, by the Distribution of Books -- Unitarian." Yes, the key word above is "UNITARIAN". This is a cult teaching that Jesus was an extraordinarily good man only, nothing more. Mr. Thomas Belsham after Archbishop Newcome's death, altered Newcome's text! [See page 394, "Manual of Biblical Bibliography".] This altered text dishonoring Archbishop Newcome's careful scholarship also provided a basis for the New World Translation's "...and the Word was a god".(see also the Kingdom Interlinear Translation, page 1160, 1969 ed.) Archbishop Newcome certainly never said, the Word was "a god".
 

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