Why is one conjectural emendation of the NWT constantly criticized on Y!A R&S . . .?

Question

Why is the conjectural emendation of putting "Jehovah" in the New Testament made by the New World Translation translators constantly criticized on Y!A R&S, yet I've never heard mention of the ubiquitous conjectural emendations of the New Jerusalem Bible and the older Jerusalem Bible, both of which are liberally quoted from by Protestants and Catholics alike?

I was just glancing through the New Jerusalem Bible and was amazed by the many conjectural emendations which lack any direct evidence. Sometimes they reorder verses, sometimes they even reorder whole chapters. In scholarly works a few decades old, the JB is quoted often, as much as the RSV was. Today, the NJB is quoted as often as the NIV and NASB.

Here is Gleason Archer commenting on the JB:
"In its twentieth-century garb does the Jerusalem Bible offer to the public a reliable rendering of the original Hebrew Scriptures as they have been transmitted to the church? Unfortunately no. To an even greater extent than was true in the RSV there has been careless, inconsistent, capricious handling of the text of the original. Instead of confining themselves to an accurate rendering of the received text of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible, as amended on the basis of the ancient versions under careful controls of scientific textual criticism, the translators have allowed subjective considerations to have free rein. The interpreter’s conception of what the ancient author ought to have said permits him to substitute entirely different Hebrew words for those of the Masoretic Text, even where such a change finds no support whatever in either the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Targums, the Syriac Peshitto, the Old Latin, or the Vulgate. Such inventions of the translator are usually footnoted as “correction,” but quite often they are not." -- Gleason Archer, "The Old Testament of The Jerusalem Bible." Westminster Theological Journal 33 (May 1971), pp. 191-94.

However, the NJB and JB are generally respected translations despite the conjectural emendations, but the NWT is continually scorned for one conjectural emendation.

Answer 1

I don't know about your critics; and I don't criticize.



But, maybe, much of the conjectural emendation of the JB/NJB could be found in the Hebrew scriptures only where the Tetragrammaton are plenty in number; however, in the case of the NWT, there might rarely be -- or maybe nil -- Tegragrammaton found in the Greek Scriptures, even in direct quotations from the Old Testament.



Besides, critics are critics; they are talking their unsolicited opinion from their own point of view. Just like the emendation of the NWT, its translators did it from their own religious perspective -- that is, from what they believe to be true. Or, at least, from what they seemed to be correct.



I think, the best holding ground of a translation is how it recreates today the same impact that it did to its first-hand readers. If you think that the NWT did the same, then whatever critics might say isn't a big deal.

Answer 2

Conjectural Emendation

Answer 3

This is a little off the subject, but it does support what you are talking about.



I had a workmate that was from Sri Lanka, and she was Methodist. She spoke English quite well and we had several discussions at work on our breaks about the Bible.



I was invited to her house and used this time to discuss more of what the Bible teaches. I of course had brought an English King James Bible, assuming that this is what she used.



She however, used a Tamil translation. So of course I felt a good starting point of a discussion of God's name was Psalm 83:18.



I asked her to read the last verse in the 83rd Psalm. And when she did, it sounded nothing what I was expecting to hear. I was thinking that perhaps it was a case of the Psalms being numbered differently, such as the NJB.



But upon further examination and asking her to translate what the verses said before and into the next psalm, I figured out that verse 18 was TOTALLY MISSING from the translation. Not just the name of God - Jehovah - but the WHOLE verse - making it very easy to side step the issue.



This shows that it is not just a problem with English translations, but there are changes, deletions, etc in foreign language Bibles also.



And this WAS the translation that was used by the Methodist churches in Sri Lanka.

Answer 4

I'm Christian and don't read the Catholic bible. It is entirely written for Catholicism. Trying to talk the Truth to a Catholic is like talking to a steel door. Their devotion is to the religion of Catholicism and not to the Truth given by God. Theirs are not considered respected translations among Christians.

The more translations there are, the weaker the true Word is presented. A translation from a translation is nothing unlike the child's game of "telephone" played in the children's classroom. If you ever played that as a child, you know how the final word or message was so perverted/changed along the way to the final word or message.

Yes, "Jehova" means God, but "Jehova" is actually only part of the name. God has many "Jehova" names such as "Jehova Jira" (sp), which indicate a particular role of God. I don't know those names, however, if one is asking for healing, one would speak to "Jehova ________"; if one is asking for a different kind of help, one would speak to (pray to) "Jehova ______"-a different name after the "Jehova". Liken it to initials after a person's name, -R.N., CEO, etc, that define a person in a particular capacity. So just "Jehova" is incomplete. As for the criticism of it being in the New Testament, Jehova was an Old Testament name. Jesus fills the role of the "Jehova____" names.

The world (people) are slowly being tricked to accept names, meanings, and the watered down scriptures simply because they see the word "Bible" and go on blind faith that it is a true Bible. Also, they want a Bible that fits with their beliefs, not the other way around. Yes, it is a dangerous time regarding Bible translations. I've seen some that are little different than Chicken Soup for the Soul.

The King James Version is held to be the last and closest version from the original script. (in America)The New King James Version was a translation to make all the "Thees and Thous" that people complained that got in the way of their understanding of what they were reading. As yet, I know that the NKJV is acceptable. Jesus spoke Aramaic but there is not a Christian Aramaic Bible. One can go back and get the version closest to it, I forgot the translation name, but it is quite expensive and the KJV seems to have been preserved to the original and is readily available.

I hope I understood your question correctly. Pls forgive if I'm way off of what you were asking.

Answer 5

Because the "conjectural emendations" support the beliefs systems of the churches of Christendom. In other words, the translator is NOT happy with the thoughts expressed by the text, and comes up with something that fits HIS agenda.

Answer 6

The many conjectural emendations found in, for example, the New Jerusalem Bible (one of my favorites) are emendations that the translators felt necessary **in order for the verses in question to make logical and grammatical sense**. There is no sound reason to dispute such emendations.



The reordering of a few passages (which I admit make me feel a bit uneasy) are based on the careful analysis by **appropriately accredited scholars** regarding the **probable** original order of the text, it seeming (to those appropriately accredited scholars) in those few cases to have been rearranged haphazardly by some ancient editor or copyist. Note that the reordering does nothing to change the meanings of the words / sentences themselves!!! Note that the reordering does NOTHING to support Roman Catholic doctrines in comparison to the Masoretic ordering.



One cannot safely equate the Jerusalem Bible with the New Jerusalem Bible; the editor of the New Jerusalem Bible notes that the translators of the Jerusalem Bible Old Testament often relied on a French translation of the Bible more heavily than they did on the Hebrew (original language) source texts! His criticism makes it clear that this was not the case with the New Jerusalem Bible.



Some of the problems with the "insertion" (the technical term used by translators) of "Jehovah" into the New World Translation (NWT) New Testament are:



a) it is an "insertion" - the **adding / changing** of an important word that does not appear in the eminently comprehensible original language text. The NJB emendations, by comparison, usually involve the changing of a ***single letter*** in order to produce a comprehensible phrase from one that is incomprehensible and/or grammatically incorrect when not emended.



b) Several of the sources used to support the insertion of "Jehovah" in the New Testament (NT) are themselves translations from the Greek. In the only one of those sources (a translation of the Greek New Testament into Hebrew) that I was able to locate online, I discovered that the tetragrammaton appeared **far more often** than it does in the NWT. In other words, that source used the tetragrammaton to refer both to the Father and to Jesus - repeatedly! However, the NWT translators determined that this source was **incorrect** whenever it used the tetragrammaton in reference to Jesus, but **superior in reliability or accuracy to the Greek source text** when it used the tetragrammaton in reference to the Father!!! They preferred this translated source text to the original language source text when it agreed with their beliefs but then **rejected** this source text when it did not agree with their beliefs!!! This is clearly NOT proper (from the scholarly point of view) translation practice!!!



c) You wrote, "the NWT is continually scorned for one conjectural emendation" but, in fact, there are several dozen such individual emendations found in the NWT NT.





Conclusion: personally, I do not have a *complaint* against the NWT using "Jehovah" in the NT wherever it happens to agree with Jehovah's Witness doctrine. In many passages, it clarifies the meaning. However, it is clearly the result of very biased decisions based on practices not found acceptable among scholarly translators. It is not linguistically consistent. It shows tremendous bias ("cherry picking") in the acceptance and preference of source texts. To put it simply: it clearly prefers the promotion of Jehovah's Witness doctrine above the scholarly and accurate translation of the original language text. This very obviously is NOT the case with the emendations and text reordering found within the New Jerusalem Bible.



- Jim, http://www.bible-reviews.com/

Answer 7

Hypocrites feel fully justified in paraphrasing at least 6,831 instances of God's name as "LORD", but heaven forbid that anyone paraphrase 237 instances of "Lord" as God's name!