The New World Translation (NWT) is defined by the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent organization (the Watchtower Society) as “a translation of the Holy Scriptures made directly from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into modern-day English by a committee of anointed witnesses of Jehovah.” The NWT is the anonymous work of the “New World Bible Translation Committee.” Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the anonymity is in place so that the credit for the work will go to God. Of course, this has the added benefit of keeping the translators from any accountability for their errors and prevents real scholars from checking their academic credentials.

The New World Translation is unique in one thing – it is the first intentional, systematic effort at producing a complete version of the Bible that is edited and revised for the specific purpose of agreeing with a group’s doctrine.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower Society realized that their beliefs contradicted Scripture. So, rather than conforming their beliefs to Scripture, they altered Scripture to agree with their beliefs. The “New World Bible Translation Committee” went through the Bible and changed any Scripture that did not agree with Jehovah’s Witness theology. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that, as new editions of the New World Translation were published, additional changes were made to the biblical text.

As biblical Christians continued to point out Scriptures that clearly argue for the deity of Christ (for example), the Watchtower Society would publish new editions of the New World Translation with those Scriptures changed. Here are some of the more prominent examples of intentional revisions:

Christ A Created Being 1 : The Word “Other”

In Colossians 1:16, the NWT inserts the word “other” despite its being completely absent from the original Greek text.

It does this to give the view that “all other things” were created by Christ, instead of what the text says, “all things were created by Christ.” This is to go along with their belief that Christ is a created being, which they believe because they deny the Trinity.

Christ A Created Being 2 : “The word was a god”

The most well-known of all the New World Translation perversions is John 1:1. The original Greek text reads, “the Word was God.” The NWT renders it as “the word was a god.”

This is not a matter of correct translation, but of reading one’s preconceived theology into the text, rather than allowing the text to speak for itself.

There is no indefinite article in Greek (in English, “a” or “an”), so any use of an indefinite article in English must be added by the translator. This is grammatically acceptable, so long as it does not change the meaning of the text.

There is a good reason why theos has no definite article in John 1:1 and why the New World Translation rendering is in error. There are three general rules we need to understand to see why :

1. In Greek, word order does not determine word usage like it does in English. In English, a sentence is structured according to word order: Subject – Verb – Object. Thus, “Harry called the dog” is not equivalent to “the dog called Harry.” But in Greek, a word’s function is determined by the case ending found attached to the word’s root. There are two case endings for the root theo: one is -s (theos), the other is -n (theon). The -s ending normally identifies a noun as being the subject of a sentence, while the -n ending normally identifies a noun as the direct object.

2. When a noun functions as a predicate nominative (in English, a noun that follows a being verb such as “is”), its case ending must match the noun’s case that it renames, so that the reader will know which noun it is defining. Therefore, theo 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.

3. 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”).

Inconsistent Translation Techniques :

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 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.

The NWT intentionally changes the rendering of the text to conform to Jehovah’s Witness theology. The New World Translation is a perversion, not a version, of the Bible.

The use of “JEHOVA” for YHWH / LORD ( in KJV English )

The name Jehovah is a translation of the Tetragrammaton (Hebrew: יהוה ), which in english is transliterated as YHWH or ALL CAPS “LORD” in KJV English, though the original pronunciation is unknown. Some pronounce it “Yahwey”, or “Yahuah”, etc. but it’s the same. )

The New World Translation uses the name Jehovah 6,979 times in the Old Testament.

The New World Translation also uses the name Jehovah 237 times in the New Testament where the extant texts use only the Greek words kyrios (Lord) and theos (God).

With modern translations, the use of Jehovah in the New Testament is very rare, but not unique to the New World Translation, but it’s not in the KJV

Walter Martin, an evangelical minister, wrote, “It can be shown from literally thousands of copies of the Greek New Testament that not once does the tetragrammaton appear.”

However, the translators of the New World Translation believed that the name Jehovah was present in the original manuscripts of the New Testament when quoting from the Old Testament, but replaced with the other terms by later copyists.

Based on this reasoning, the translators consider to have “restored the divine name”, though it is not present in any extant manuscripts.

Translation History : NWT First Released in 1950’s & 1961 Greek Scriptures :

The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT) is a translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and distributed by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The New Testament portion was released first, in 1950, as The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, with the complete New World Translation of the Bible released in 1961.

It is not the first Bible to be published by the Watch Tower Society, but it is its first original translation of ancient Biblical Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Old Aramaic biblical texts.

Although commentators have said a scholarly effort went into the translation, critics have described it as “biased”.

JW’s Originally Used The KJV:

Until the release of the New World Translation, Jehovah’s Witnesses in English-speaking countries primarily used the King James Version. According to the publishers, one of the main reasons for producing a new translation was that most Bible versions in common use, including the Authorized Version (King James), employed archaic language.

The stated intention was to produce a fresh translation, free of archaisms. Additionally, over the centuries since the King James Version was produced, more copies of earlier manuscripts of the original texts in the Hebrew and Greek languages have become available.

According to the publishers, better manuscript evidence had made it possible to determine with greater accuracy what the original writers intended, particularly in more obscure passages, allowing linguists to better understand certain aspects of the original languages.

A fresh translation of the New Testament, which Jehovah’s Witnesses usually refer to as the Christian Greek Scriptures, was proposed in October 1946 by the president of the Watch Tower Society, Nathan H. Knorr.

Work began on December 2, 1947, when the “New World Bible Translation Committee” was formed, composed of Jehovah’s Witnesses who professed to be anointed. The Watch Tower Society is said to have “become aware” of the committee’s existence a year later. The committee agreed to turn over its translation to the Society for publication and on September 3, 1949, Knorr convened a joint meeting of the board of directors of both the Watch Tower Society’s New York and Pennsylvania corporations where he again announced to the directors the existence of the committee and that it was now able to print its new modern English translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Several chapters of the translation were read to the directors, who then voted to accept it as a gift. The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was released at a Jehovah’s Witness convention at Yankee Stadium, New York, on August 2, 1950.

The translation of the Old Testament, which Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to as the Hebrew Scriptures, was released in five volumes in 1953, 1955, 1957, 1958, and 1960.

The complete New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was released as a single volume in 1961, and has since undergone various revisions. Cross references which had appeared in the six separate volumes were updated and included in the complete volume in the 1984 revision.