In the Watchtower’s “Reasoning” book (Reasoning from the Scriptures, WTBTS, 1985), on page 212, we find the following quote in support for the Watchtower’s mistranslation of John 1:1:
John 1:1, RS: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [also KJ, JB, Dy, Kx, NAB].” NE reads “what God was, the Word was.” Mo says “the Logos was divine.” AT and Sd tell us “the Word was divine.” The interlinear rendering of ED is “a god was the Word.” NW reads “the Word was a god”; NTIV uses the same wording.
It’s so easy to get lost in abbreviations that the reader might think some of these translations support the Watchtower’s “a god” translation of John 1:1 and that others are authoritative. So, to support the translation of “….the Word was God” we have the King James, the Jerusalem Bible, the Douay Version, the Knox Translation, and the New American Bible. There are many more than these five that agree with “….the Word was God”.
In addition, the article in the Reasoning book states that the New English Bible translates it as “what God was, the Word was.” All these six translations disagree directly with the Watchtower’s mistranslation of the verse.
Then the article lists Moffatt’s (Mo) A New Translation of the Bible, An American Translation by Goodspeed and The Authentic New Testament by Schonfield which all translate the verse using “divine” instead of God. “Divine” doesn’t deny Jesus is God. These three translations are trying to show John 1:1c is only speaking of the Word’s nature, not that He was the same Person as God.
Now we’re left with” The interlinear rendering of ED (The Emphatic Diaglott) is ‘a god was the Word.” and the NW (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, WTBTS, 2013). At the end of the paragraph, they cite the NTIV (The New Testament in an Improved Version, London 1808) stating it translates John 1:1c as “the Word was a god.”
It’s these last three I’d like to address. The first, the Emphatic Diaglott, is an interlinear translation purchased by the Watchtower and they began republishing it in 1902. The work is done by Benjamin WIlson, a Geneva, New York newspaperman and a Christadelphian. Wilson was not a scholar and had no appropriate credentials to lend to his work.
Next the above article mentions the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. This is the Watchtower’s own translation. It is circular to use the very translation in questions to support iteslf.
Last of all we have the NTIV, this is a translation by a Unitarian named Gilbert Wakefield and first pubilshed in 1808. This is a translation of a translation, a correction by Wakefield to create a text which matched the Unitarian doctrine of Jesus not being truly God.
So, you can see that the scholarship behind the paragraph in the Reasoning book is sketchy at best. The three works they use to support their mistranslation of John 1:1c are either their own or less than scholarly and obviously biased “translations.”
AnswersAZ 