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Quote David, before I was born again I was ignorant of God and of Scripture. When I asked the Lord to forgive me and chose to live with Jesus as Lord of my life my eyes were opened. I was born of the spirit and shortly after, baptised in water and then baptised in the Holy Spirit. My life has been for the last 28 years an experiential walk with God, led by the Holy Spirit. My prayer for you and everyone else who does not have this personal relationship with God is that you will put aside your doctrine and seek God. Let Him show you which way is true, after all, Jesus IS the Way, the Truth and the Life.
I assume most of what you said here is about being born again. Would you like me to find the “born again” thread so we can discuss what the BIBLE says about being born again.
As to accuracy of the NWT, I always like to say, that opinions are indeed like noses; everyone has one! Please feel free to pick up a University text book, that you can get on-line, or order at a Barnes and Noble, or College Text book store etc. , by the name of “Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament”, by Jason Debuhn”. Debuhn is a Professor in Northern Arizona University, whose discipline (among others) is Ancient Greek translation, who examines bias in 8 of the most popular Bibles in use today, and his results might surprise you! In the end, the students in his course can only take his course, if you use one of two Bibles, and the NWT is one of them!
Quote (david @ May 04 2007,20:08) “It Is The Best Interlinear New Testament Available” This is what Jason Debuhn said of The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures as translated by JW's.
Why does Dr. BeDuhn use the Kingdom Interlinear Translation in teaching his college courses?
He answers:
“Simply put, it is the best interlinear New Testament available. I am a trained scholar of the Bible, familiar with the texts and tools in use in modern biblical studies, and, by the way, not a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses. But I know a quality publication when I see one, and your 'New World Bible Translation Committee' has done it's job well. Your interlinear English rendering is accurate and consistent to an extreme that forces the reader to come to terms with the linguistic, cultural, and conceptual gaps between the Greek-speaking world and our own. Your 'New World Translation' is a high quality, literal translation that avoids traditional glosses in its faithfulness to the Greek. It is, in many ways, superior to the most successful translations in use today.”
See:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/newworldtranslation/kitbest.htm
he he….looks like we have an 'appeal to authority' fallacy infraction here David….Hello pot, meet kettle.
Grammatically, John 1:1 is not a difficult verse to translate. It follows familiar, ordinary structures of Greek expression.
A lexical (“interlinear”) translation of the controversial clause would read: “And a god was the Word.”
A minimal literal (“formal equivalence”) translation would rearrange the word order to match proper English expression: “And the Word was a god.”
The preponderance of evidence, from Greek grammar, from literary context, and from cultural environment, supports this translation, of which “the Word was divine” would be a slightly more polished variant carrying the same basic meaning.
Both of these renderings are superior to the traditional translation which goes against these three key factors that guide accurate translation. The NASB, NIV, NRSV, and NAB follow the translation concocted by the KJV translators. This translation awaits a proper defense, since no obvious one emerges from Greek grammar, the literary context of John, or the cultural environment in which John is writing…
* * *
“The Greek phrase is theos en ho logos, which translated word for word is “a god was the word.”
Greek has only a definite article, like our the, it does not have an indefeinite article, like our a or an. If a noun is definite, it has the definite article ho. If a noun is indefinite, no article is used. In the phrase from John 1:1, ho logos is “the word.” If it was written simply logos, without the definite article ho, we would have to translate it as “a word”. So we are not really “inserting” an indefinite article when we translate Greek nouns without the definite article into English, we are simply obeying rules of English grammar that tell us that we cannot say “Snoopy is dog,” but must say “Snoopy is a dog.”
Now in English we simply say “God”; we do not say “The God.” But in Greek, when you mean to refer to the one supreme God, instead of one of the many other beings that were called “gods,” you would have to say “The God”: ho theos. Even a monotheistic Christian, who beleives there is only one God and no others, would be forced to say in Greek “The God,” as John and Paul and the other writers of the New Testament normally do. If you leave off the article in a phrase like John 1:1, then you are saying “a god.” (There are some exceptions to this rule: Greek has what are called noun cases, which means the nouns change form depending on how they are used in a sentence. So, if you want to say “of God,” which is theou, you don't need the article. But in the nominative case, which is the one in John 1:1, you have to have the article.)
So what does John mean by saying “the word was a god”? He is classifying Jesus in a specific category of beings. There are plants and animals and humans and gods, and so on. By calling the Word “a god,” John wants to tell his readers that the Word(which becomes Jesus when it takes flesh) belongs to the divine class of things. Notice the word order: “a god was the word.” We can't say it like this in English, but you can in Greek. The subject can be after the verb and the object before the verb, the opposite of how we do it in English (subject-verb-object). Research has shown that when ancient Greek writers put a object-noun first in a sentence like John 1:1 (a be-verb sentence: x is y), without the definite article, they are telling us that the subject belongs to the class represented by the object-noun: :”The car is a Volkswagen.” In English we would accomplish the same thing by using what we call predicate adjectives. “John is a smart person” = “John is smart.” So we would tend to say “The word was divine,” rather than “The word was a god.” That is how I would translate this phrase. “The word was a god” is more literal, and an improvement over “The word was God,” but it raises more problems, since to a modern reader it implies polytheism.
No one in John's day would have understood the phrase to mean “The word was God” – the language does not convey that sense, and conceptually it is difficult to grasp such an idea, especially since that author has just said that the word was with God. Someone is not with himself, he is with some other. John clearly differentiates between God from the Word. The latter becomes flesh and is seen; the former cannot be seen. What is the Word? John says it was the agent through whom God made the world. He starts his gospel “In the beginning…” to remind us of Genesis 1. How does God create in Genesis? He speaks words that make things come into existence. So the Word is God's creative power and plan and activity. It is not God himself, but it is not really totally separate from God either. It occupies a kind of ambiguous status. That is why a monotheist like John can get away with calling it “a god” or “divine” without becoming a polytheist. This divine thing does not act on its own, however, does take on a kind of distinct identity, and in becoming flesh brings God's will and plan right down face to face with humans.
I hope this helps.
Best wishes
Jason Beduhn
Quote he he….looks like we have an 'appeal to authority' fallacy infraction here David…. yes, I know, but the point is, it's all they have. They don't even have to know what is being discussed. Just find some people that disagree with JW's about anything (throw a rock and you'll hit one) and quote them. Quote them all without question. Easy. It just bothers me HOW EASY that is to do.
In your 3 part series to me, you quoted several scholars which I don't think really helped your case. We all do it. It's the way some people do it that so bothers me.David, I think it's great that you are referencing your quotes now (long may that continue!), but do you actually understand a lot of what you are quoting?
Quote (david @ May 04 2007,20:28) Quote he he….looks like we have an 'appeal to authority' fallacy infraction here David…. yes, I know, but the point is, it's all they have. They don't even have to know what is being discussed. Just find some people that disagree with JW's about anything (throw a rock and you'll hit one) and quote them. Quote them all without question. Easy. It just bothers me HOW EASY that is to do.
In your 3 part series to me, you quoted several scholars which I don't think really helped your case. We all do it. It's the way some people do it that so bothers me.
Yes, but if you have a problem with quotes you should address the error in the content of the quoted material, otherwise you are using a fallacy to combat a fallacy….Ok, it seems that there are some scholars who seem to think that parts of the NWT are more accurate than some other versions, but some go on to say that in spite of this they are not sympathetic to the JW sect and go on to explain that it was the likes of these religious people that were responsible for Jesus' death
In other words, they may have known the Scriptures, but they didn't know the Lord. The Bible explains that unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God. I am able to see that Kingdom.
Quote David, I think it's great that you are referencing your quotes now (long may that continue!), but do you actually understand a lot of what you are quoting? EN ARKHEI EN HO LOGOS, KAI HO LOGOS
IN BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORDEN PROS TON THN, KAI THS EN HO LOGOS.
WAS WITH THE GOD, AND GOD WAS THE WORD.HOUTOS EN EN ARKHEI PROS TON THN.
THIS WAS IN BEGINNING WITH THE GOD.“God [predicate] was [verb] the Word [subject].”
God [the predicate] was [the verb] the logos [articular subject]
God (theos) was (en?) the (ho) word (logos)kai–primary particle (“and, also, even, indeed, but”)
theos–the predicate (a god or the God)
en-the verb (was)
ho–definite article (the)
logos–articular subject (Word)The noun “theos” here is was primarily qualitative as well as being indefinite. Well, that's the question, isn't it?
Anarthrous: “no article.”
Definite article: “the”
Indefinite article: “a” or “an”I've read this, and found it helpful, along with strings of other sources:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/newworldtranslation/john1files.htmI find this conversation most interesting:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/newworldtranslation/john1files.htmSeveral months ago, I disected your 3 part series on John 1:1. I found the first 3d of it to be an appeal to authority, no, actually, you simply repeatedly saying that all the authorities agree and the NWT stands alone.
Then, came the scholars, which I can disect if you like. At first read, it all seemed confusing, but after spending some time with it, it's not too too difficult.
In the end, it seems to come down to theology and what you think John was saying as a whole, and not the grammer of that specific verse. Hence, no definitive clear cut translation that can't be questioned.Quote Yes, but if you have a problem with quotes you should address the error in the content of the quoted material, otherwise you are using a fallacy to combat a fallacy…. Fighting false logic with false logic is an approach I have actually used when frustrated to the point of exhaustian.
Hi David,
I'm going to reserve comment on the grammar and context of John 1:1-4 passage at this stage, as I'll probably be using as a proof text in the debate. Feel free to offer your opinions then….I see it's 1:44am according to this site. You obviously don't have young kids yet….
I stand corrected, it's Saskatoon right? 2:48am there. That's late. I'm curious, do you work during the day?
i have added the rest of my responce to Is 1:18's previous post. I edited it in, above, rather than adding it at some point later.
On second thought, you're right. It is late, and it took me about 10 minutes just to copy and paste the first section in. And I actually do work during the day.
david
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