Answers to Questions asked using the New World Translation Bible

Answers to Questions asked using the NWT

Originally posted at http://www.webshowplace.com/question/65quest.html

It appears this site is Catholic, or at least sympathetic to them, so my answers will approach the issues from that angle.
All MY answers, unless otherwise stated, all scriptures are from the following Catholic Bibles: NJB (New Jerusalem Bible), NAB (New American Bible),  Spencer (New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Francis Aloysius Spencer, 1940), K&Lilly (The New Testament Rendered from the Original Greek by Kleist and Lilly, 1956) and references to McKenzie are to the Dictionary of the Bible, Touchstone, 1995, and references to NWDC are from the New World Dictionary to the New American Bible, 1970) all of which bear the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur giving them the approval of the Catholic Church.

Question: These questions have been put together using information from many different sources. All verses are from the NWT and if the NWT decides to change any of the verses (like they did with Heb 1:6), then the obvious question is why did the NWT change their Bible at Hebrews 1:6. [The NWT 1950 edition had: "And let all God's angels worship him" but in later editions "worship" was changed to “And let all God’s angels do obeisance to him.”)

Reply: Most Bibles I know make changes with each revision, like the Good News Bible, New International Version, New American Standard Bible, King James etc. The above complaint is obviously a reference to proskuneo in Heb 1:6. It is rendered "Let all the angels of God worship him" in the Jerusalem Bible, but changed to "Let all the angels of God pay him homage" in the New Jerusalem Bible. This is not the only Catholic Bible that has done this. The Confraternity Version had "And let all the angels of God adore him", but when it was updated in the New American Bible, it read, "Let all the angels of God worship him."

Question: If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal "active force", why does he speak directly and refer to himself as "I" and "me" in Acts 13:2?

Reply: "Spirit is the principle of life and vital activity. The spirit is the breath of life (Gn 6:17; 7:15, 22; BS 38:23; WS 15:11, 16; 16:14). The breath is the breath of God, the wind, communicated to man by divine inspiration....The spirit of Yahweh or the spirit of God (Elohim) is a **force** that has unique effects upon man...and the spirit of Yahweh is a **force** which operates the works of Yahweh the savior and the judge. The spirit of Yahweh is often the **force** which inspires prophecy (Nm 11:17 ff; 24:2; 2 S 23:2; 1 Ch 12:18; Is 61:1; Mi 3:8; Ezk 2:2; 3:12, 14, 24; 8:3; 11:1, 5, 24; 37:1; 43:5; Ne 9:30; Zc 7:12). The prophet is a man of the spirit (Ho 9:7)." Dictionary of the Bible by Catholic Scholar, John L. McKenzie, S.J.
As we can see, the spirit is breath. In the Bible it is associated with "breath" and even "nostrils." (Gen 7:22; Job 27:3; 32:8; 33:4; 34:14; Is 42:5; Jn 20:22) When I speak, breath comes out of my mouth. This is my spirit, not a separate person.

Question: Col 1:16, in talking about Jesus, says that"... All [other] things have been created through him and FOR HIM". If Jesus were Michael the Archangel at the time of creation, would an angel have created all things for himself? Isa 43:7 says God created "everyone ... for my OWN glory ..."

Reply: But the Bible does not says he created all things FOR HIMSELF (AUTON) but FOR HIM (AUTOU). The NAB links this scripture and the surrounding ones with Prov 8, 22-31; Wis 7, 22-8, 1; and Sir 1, 4, so lets take a look at those.
"Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works." Pr 8:22 NJB
"Then I was beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day after day." Pr 8:30 NAB
"For she [Wisdom] is an aura of the might of God and a pure effusion of the glory of the Almighty." Wis 7:25 NAB
"Before all things wisdom was created" Sir 1:4 NAB
The NJB has an interesting comment here at Prov 8, "Wisdom's creation by God was on a different plane to all his other works, Wisdom almost seems to be a distinct personality, sharing in God's activity, and his agent in the world. The concept given here will be used in the NT to express Christ's relationship to his Father."
So here we see that Christ/Wisdom was a created being who was God's agent in creation. The NAB even says in a footnote at Col 1:16, 17 that  "Christ (though not mentioned by name) is preeminent and supreme as God's agent in the creation of all things"
God was happy with Jesus/Wisdom (his delight). Jesus is part of God's glory (John 1:14), and we get to share in that glory, "I have given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are one." John 17:22 NJB

Question: The NWT translates Jn 1:1 as "... and the Word was WITH God, and the word was a god." How can the Word (Jesus) be "a god' if God says in Deut 32:39, "See now that I -- I am he, and there are NO gods together with me..."?

Reply: But yet the Bible talks of others as gods, such as Moses (Ex 4:16; 7:1), angels (Ps 8:5; 97:7; 138:1) and King Solomon (Ps 45:6).  Deut 32 must be read in its historical context, which includes strange gods (v. 16), new gods (v. 17) and obviously, idols (v.  37).
The NAB-St. Joseph's Edition in a footnote at John 1:1 says that, "The Roman writer Pliny mentions the Christians of Asia Minor as singing hymns of Christ as *a god.*
The NAB also says at Ps. 45:7/Heb. 1:8, "The king in courtly language, is called 'god,' i.e., more than human, representing God to the people."
Though they of course believe in a Trinity, the NWDC candidly admits, "In the New Testament, the Greek Theos with the article (The God) means the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (see Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; etc.). Thus God is almost the name of the first person of the blessed Trinity. Without the article, God designates the divinity, and so is applicable to the pre-existing Word (Jn. 1:3). The term God is applied to Jesus in only a few texts, and even their interpretation is under dispute (Jn. 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Tit. 2:13; 2 Pet. 1:1)."

Question: In Jn 20:28, John refers to Jesus in Greek as "Ho kyrios moy kai ho theos moy". This translates literally as "the Lord of me and THE God of me". Why does Jesus, in Jn 20:29, affirm Thomas for having come to this realization? If Jesus really wasn't the Lord and THE God of Thomas, why didn't Jesus correct him for making either a false assumption or a blasphemous statement?

Reply: Who says that Jesus cannot be a Lord, when Acts 2:36 says that God *MADE* him Lord, and how can he not be a god when John 1:18 calls him an "only-begotten God" (Spencer). But we know from the context of Jn 20:28 that Jesus calls his Father "my God." (v. 17) How can almighty God Jesus have a God...and one that is greater than him yet? (14:28) So let us look at Jn 20:28:
O KURIOS MOU KAI O QEOS MOU and compare it with Mt 12:49 H MHTHR MOU KAI OI ADELFOI MOU.
What does this mean? "In native [not translation] KOINE Greek when the copulative KAI connects two substantives of personal description in regimen [i.e. both or neither have articles] and the first substantive alone is modified by the personal pronoun in the genitive or repeated for perspicuity [Winer 147-148;155] two persons or groups of persons are in view."

Possessive pronoun repeated for perspicuity -
Mt 12:47, H MHTHR SOU KAI OI ADELFOI SOU/the mother of you and the brothers of you
49 H MHTHR MOU KAI OI ADELFOI MOU/the mother of me and the brothers of me
Mark 3:31, H MHTHR AUTOU KAI OI ADELFOI AUTOU/the mother of him and the brothers of him
32 H MHTHR SOU KAI OI ADELFOI SOU/the mother of you and the brothers of you
34 H MHTHR MOU KAI OI ADELFOI MOU/the mother of me and the brothers of me
Mk 6:4 TH PATRIDI AUTOU KAI EN TOIS SUGGENEUSIN AUTOU/the father of him and the relatives of him
7:10 TON PATERA SOU KAI THN MHTERA SOU/the father of you and the mother of you
Lk 8:20  H MHTHR SOU KAI OI ADELFOI SOU/the mother of thee and the brothers of thee
Lk 8:21  MHTHR MOU KAI ADELFOI MOU/mother of me and brothers of me
Jn 2:12 H MHTHR AUTOU KAI OI ADELFOI [AUTOU] KAI OI MAQHTAI AUTOU/the mother of him and the brothers of him and the disciples of him
Jn 4:12 OI UIOI AUTOU KAI TA QREMMATA AUTOU/the sons of him and the cattle of him
Acts 2:17 OI UIOI UMWN KAI AI QUGATERES UMWN/the sons of you and the daughters of you
Rom 16:21 TIMOQEOS O SUNERGOS MOU KAI LOUKIOS KAI IASWN KAI SWSIPATROS OI SUGGENEIS MOU/Timothy the fellow-worker of me of me and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater the kinsmen of me.
1 Thess. 3:11 QEOS KAI PATHR HMWN KAI O KURIOS HMWN IHSOUS/God and Father of us and the Lord of us Jesus.
2 Thess. 2:16 O KURIOS HMWN IHSOUS CRISTOS KAI [O] QEOS O PATHR HMWN/the Lord of us Jesus Christ and the God the Father of us
1 Tim. 1:1 QEOU SWTHROS HMWN KAI CRISTOU IHSOU THS ELPIDOS HMWN/God savior of us and Christ Jesus the hope of us
2 Tim 1:5 TH MAMMH SOU LWIDI KAI TH MHTRI SOU/the grandmother of thee Lois and the mother of thee Eunice
Heb 8:11 EKASTOS TON POLITHN AUTOU KAI EKASTOS TON ADELFON AUTOU/each one the citizen of him and each one the brother of him
Rev 6:11 OI SUNDOULOI AUTWN KAI OI ADELFOI AUTWN/the fellow-slaves of them and the brothers of them
[Heb 1:7 is a LXX quote and is therefore translation Greek.]

As we can see, everytime this same construction is used, it is refering to TWO different people. NO EXCEPTIONS!!

"Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God." He saw and touched the man, and acknowledged the God whom he neither saw nor touched; but by the means of what he saw and touched, he now put far away from him every doubt, and believed the other." Augustine in "Tractate CXXI"

"It is extremely significant that on the one occasion where there is no argument, in the case of Thomas, the statement is not a theological proposition but a lovers cry; it is not the product of intellectual reasoning but of intense personal emotion." p. 33, Jesus As They Saw Him, by William Barclay
Some have taken Thomas's exclamation as directed towards the Father, hence you have, "My Master, and my God" as in the 20th Century NT.
Winer , as does Beza, thinks it is simply an exclamation, not an address. (see G.B. Winer, A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, 1872, p. 183
Brown reads it as "my divine one" The Gospel According to John, 1966
Fortna finds a problem with the high Christology of v.28 and the more primitive messianism of v.31. (see The Gospel of Signs, 1970, pp. 197, 198
Burkitt paraphrases it as "It is Jesus himself, and now I recognize him as divine."
While I may not agree with Harris on everything, he does say, "Although in customary Johannine and NT usage (O) QEOS refers to the father, it is impossible that Thomas and John would be personally equating Jesus with the Father, for in the immediate historical and literary context Jesus himself has explicitly distinguished himself from God his Father." p. 124

 John Martin Creed, as Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, observed: "The adoring exclamation of St. Thomas 'my Lord and my God' (Joh. xx. 28) is still not quite the same as an address to Christ as being without qualification God, and it must be balanced by the words of the risen Christ himself to Mary Magdalene (v. Joh 20:17): 'Go unto my brethren and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.'"

The translator Hugh J. Schonfield doubts that Thomas said: "My Lord and my God!" And so in a footnote 6 on John 20:28 Schonfield says: "The author may have put this expression into the mouth of Thomas in response to the fact that the Emperor Domitian had insisted on having himself addressed as 'Our Lord and God', Suetonius' Domitian xiii."—See The Authentic New Testament, page 503.

AS Margret Davies says in her book RHETORIC AND REFERENCE IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL, 125-126,

    "Naturally, the interpretation of Thomas's words was hotly debated by early church theologians who wanted to use it in support of their own christological definitions. Those who understood "My Lord' to refer to Jesus, and 'my God' to refer to God[the Father], were suspected of heresy in the 5th cent CE. Many modern commentators have also rejected that interpretation and instead they understand the confession as an assertion that Jesus is both Lord and God. In doing so they are forced to interpret 'God' as a reference to LOGOS. But it is perfectly for Thomas to respond to Jesus' ressurection with a confession of faith both in Jesus as lord and in God who sent and raised Jesus. Interpreting the confession in this way actually makes much better sense in the context of the 4th gospel. In 14:1 beleif in both God and in Jesus is encouraged, in a context in which Thomas is particularly singled out.... If we understand Thomas's confession as an assertion that Jesus is God, this confession in 20:31 becomes an anti-climax."

Does Jn 20:28 say what trinitarians think it says? No. There is nothing there that talks of Jesus as being God the Son, the second person of a consubstantial Trinity.

    "For any Jew or Greek in the first century A.D. who was acquainted with the OT in Greek, the term QEOS would have seemed rich in content since it signified the Deity, the Creator of heaven and earth, and also could render the ineffable sacred name, Yahweh, the covenantal God, and yet was able of exremely diverse application, ranging from the images of pagan deities to the One true God of Israel, from heroic people to angelic beings. Whether one examines the Jewish or the Gentile use of the term QEOS up to the end of the 1st century A.D., there is an occasional application of the term to human beings who perform divine functions or display divine characteristics." Harris' Jesus as God, p.270

Don Cupitt describes the relationship between God and Jesus as "something like that between King and ambassador, employer and omnicompetent secretary, or Sultan and Grand Vizier. Christ's is God's right hand man; all God does he does through Christ, and all approach to God is through Christ. All traffic, both ways, between God and the world is routed through Christ." The Debate about Christ, p. 30

This reminds me of a scripture at II Kings 18:28 in the LXX, which reads:

    "And Achimaaz cried out and said to the king, Peace. And he did obeisance to the king with his face to the ground, and said, Blessed be the Lord thy God, who has delivered up the men that lifted up their hand against my lord the king." (Brenton)

Here we have Achimaaz bowing before the king, and exclaiming thanks to YHWH. No one here supposes that David is almighty God, and there is nothing strange about this type of vocalizing. Yet when Thomas does it, it carries all kinds of heavy theological baggage that was never intended in the framework of 1st Century Christianity.

    "...those who actually companied with Jesus found him fully and naturally a man. He did not seem to them to be some indeterminate person from some halfway land in which human and divine were intermingled; he did not seem to them a kind of Greek demigod, neither fully human or fully divine; he did not seem to them to be so divine as to be inhuman."  p.15,  Jesus As They Saw Him, by William Barclay

"The NT designation of Jesus as QEOS bears no relation to later Greek speculation about substance and natures." O. Cullman's Christology of the New Testament as quoted in Harris' Jesus as God, p.289.

If Thomas was actually calling Jesus hO QEOS and hO KURIOS--it is strange that Thomas used the nominative forms of KURIOS and QEOS instead of the vocative. So it still seems that Theodore of Mopsuestia could have been correct. The Father may well be the referent in John 20:28.

Do you remember and earlier conversation Jesus had with Thomas (and Phillip)? It was at John 14:5-9, and at verse 8 Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father." and Jesus replied, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." NJB

Nobody, including Trinitarians or Catholics believe that Jesus is his own Father. After all, verse 28 of the same chapter has Jesus saying, "The Father is greater than I." Thomas, after realizing like Paul, that it was "God the Father who raised Him from the dead," finally saw in Jesus the one way to approach the Father, just like Jesus was earlier trying to show to him. "No one comes to the Father, but by me." Jn 14:6 Spencer

Question: If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force, how could he: Be referred to as "he"and "him" in Jn 16:7- 8 and Jn 16:13-14; Bear witness (Jn 15:26); Feel hurt (Isa 63:10); Be blasphemed against (Mk 3:29); Say things (Ezek 3:24, Acts 8:29, 10:19, 11:12, and Heb 10:15-17): Desire (Gal 5:17); Be outraged (Heb 10:29); Search (I Cor 2:10); Comfort (Acts 9:31); Be loved (Rom 15:30); Be lied to and be God (Acts 5:3-4)?

Reply: In the Bible, even the blind can see with "eyes of your understanding" by means of "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him." Eph 1:17, 18
As we can see, the Bible employs terms that are descriptive, and often personifies the impersonal.
Sheol/Hell has a mouth and can swallow people (Numbers 16:30), it has ropes (2 Samuel 22:6), and it has soul (Isaiah 5:14).
"Sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire" (Gen 4:7 KJV). Here SIN is given desire, it lies and it is referred to as "HIS."
Blood cries out (Gen 4:10).
Names can rot (Pr 10:7)
A man of wisdom will see God's name (Mic 6:9)
God's name is near (Ps 75:1)
The apostle Paul personalized sin and death and also undeserved kindness as "kings." (Ro 5:14, 17, 21; 6:12) He writes of sin as "receiving an inducement," 'working out covetousness,' 'seducing,' and 'killing.' (Ro 7:8-11)
Wisdom speaks (Prov 8)

...but is the spirit God according to Acts 5:3, 4?
Let us see what it says:
"Peter said, Ananias, how can Satan have so possessed you that you should lie to the Holy Spirit, and keep back part of the price of the land? While you still owned the land, wasn't it yours to keep, and after you had sold it wasn't the money yours to do with as you liked? What put this scheme into your mind? You have been lying, not to men, but to God." NJB

Do you notice that the last part is directed towards Peter when it says, "You have been lying not to men?" See, they lied to Peter, who was "filled with holy spirit" Acts 4:8
And when they lied to Peter, they lied to God. Later on, in the same chapter, we have a similar situation in vss 38 and 39 where these words were directed towards Peter and the disciples, "What I suggest therefore, is that you leave these men alone and let them go. If this enterprise, this movement of theirs, is of human origin, it will break up of its own accord; but if it does in fact come from God, you will be unable to destroy them. Take care not to find yourself fighting against God." Peter and his men were not God, but representative standing in place of God, and when something is done against them, it is done against God." NJB "Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye." Zech 2:12 NJB
Acts 5 works quite well with 1 Thess 4:8 which says, "anyone who rejects this is rejecting not, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit." NJB

Question:  What is the correct spelling of God's proper name, "Yahweh" or "Jehovah"? If [the translators of the NWT] maintain that "Yahweh" is more proper, why do they misspell it "Jehovah"? If the name of God is so important, then should you not only pronounce it correctly, but spell it correctly too?

Reply: The translators of the NWT also maintain, like many others, that Jesus was called Yeshua, yet but a few purists really call him that. The Catholic Jerusalem Bible at Ps 83:18 says that God is Yahweh, the Living Bible-Catholic Edition says it is Jehovah, and the Catholic New American Bible says it is LORD! If the name of God is so important to you, then should you not only pronounce it correctly, but spell/translate it correctly too?