The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures gets a lot of flak. Many people accuse it of being a very biased translation. Now, there's two of them, of course. There's the 1984 version, and there's the 2013. The 2013 isn't really a translation. It's more an editorial work, like a second edition. A real translation would be the 1984 version, what we call the Reference Bible. And that's the one I often refer to whenever I'm using the New World Translation. And I'll show you why. One of the scriptures that has been perhaps my favorite is Micah 6:8. And the reason I like Micah 6:8 so much is because it encapsulates in simple terms what is the essence of being a servant of God, what God wants from us to please him. Let's read it together. Here it is: Micah 6:8. “He has told you, earthling man, what is good? And what is Jehovah asking back from you but to exercise justice, to love kindness, and to be modest in walking with your God?”
Three things. He's asking us to exercise justice. In other words, not just to be just, but to practice it, to exercise it, to make justice a way of life. And he's saying, to love kindness, not just to be kind, but to love it, to love the very concept of kindness. And to be modest in walking with your God. In other words, to know your limits, not to go beyond them, but not to reach for them either. Three things, so simple. Of course, the New World Translation, because it is—especially the new one—is designed to support loyalty to the Governing Body, and that is one of the ways in which its bias shows, comes up with a different version when it goes to the 2013, which is one of the reasons I don't like the 2013 version. Let's go there now.
And here we have it. “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what is Jehovah requiring of you? Only to exercise justice, to cherish loyalty and to walk in modesty with your God.”
See the difference? Not to love kindness, but to cherish loyalty. That's a bad translation. That is not an accurate translation. And where else do they do this? This caught me by surprise, and really, it was this find that prompted me to launch this little video. I was looking at that scripture—I've forgotten how exactly…what it was that made me do so—but it came to mind there's a scripture where it says that “only Jehovah is loyal.” Now, I thought that's a little strange because Christ is loyal, too. So maybe it means only Jehovah is loyal to a superlative degree. Maybe that's what it meant. So, I'm rationalizing how that scripture could be true and yet still encompass the fact that Jesus, the very image of God is also loyal.
So, I looked it up, and here it is. And notice that I'm using the 1984 Reference Bible, which is the one I prefer to use whenever I'm using the New World Translation. And here it is.
“Who will not really fear you, Jehovah, and glorify your name, because you alone are loyal? For all the nations will come and worship before you, because your righteous decrees have been made manifest.”
Okay. But since I no longer take things for granted, I thought I'd look it up, and I went to the Kingdom Interlinear. And here we go.
So, when we come to the Kingdom Interlinear, remember, this is published by the Watchtower Bible and Track Society, so it's supposed to be a true interlinear, giving the corresponding word in English for the word in Greek. So, when we come to that and look at Revelation 15:4, we see the following,
“Who not not should fear Lord and will glorify the name of you because alone loyal. There's the the the word for, or the Greek word for “loyal”. I’ll see if I can highlight only that. I can't. It's highlighting everything, but hopefully you can see that. Now, I looked it up in the interlinear on BibleHub, and we get a different picture there. Okay, so here is Revelation 15:4 on BibleHub. And as you look at each of these translations, you'll notice something very consistent. For you alone are “holy”. “Holy” in the New Living translation, “holy” in the English Standard Version, “holy” in the Berean Study Bible. As we go down, it's “holy”, “holy”, “holy”, “holy”. It's “holy” all the way down. Why? Why did none of them translate it as “loyal”? Only the New World translation renders it as “loyal”. Going to the interlinear—maybe they're not translating it correctly—here we have the Kingdom Interlinear: “Holy”. The Greek word here, the Greek letters, are the, the same Greek letters that we saw previously.
Let me just flip you back to that. You'll notice the spelling here. The same five letters, the same ones in Greek, in both the Kingdom Interlinear and in the Interlinear on BibleHub. Same letters. If we go to 3741, which is the Strong's number, It says: “hōciós, an adjective, righteous, pious, holy. It's used as holy, pious, godly, beloved of God.” Nothing about loyalty.
So, when referring to God, Jehovah, you alone are holy. Now, what does “holy” mean? “Holy”, in Greek, refers to that which is set apart, distinct. The Christians of the first century were not called Christians by themselves. The nations referred to them as Christians, but internally, in their letters, they referred to each other as “holy ones”. Matter of fact, I've said this before, I counted 60 times in which the phrase ‘holy ones”, which is a variation of this word we've just seen, refers to Christians because they're set apart, they're distinct from the world, and that's what it means to be holy. Well, only Jehovah is truly set apart from all others, even his son, Jesus Christ. He is truly holy. He alone is holy. He alone is unique, distinct in every sense of the word.
Why does the New World translation not render it accurately as “holy”? Why put in “loyal”? Why? Because loyalty is a big thing for them, as we've seen in that recent Watchtower study we did in the previous video, which I'll give you a link to. Because Jehovah and Jehovah's organization are synonymous in the minds of Jehovah's witnesses. So much so now that loyalty to the Governing Body is a prime requisite for being an elder. Indeed, if you don't show loyalty to the governing body, you're likely to get thrown out because they have become the new God of Jehovah's Witnesses. So there you have it. They do show bias in their translation. But the bias is like all Bibles that show bias to support their ideology. Their ideology does not include the Trinity. So they're pretty good at translating verses of the Bible accurately that Trinitarians like to translate in a biased way to support their ideology. However, when it comes to scriptures that support loyalty to the organization, that's where the bias comes in. Micah 6:8, and now Revelation 15:4. Just wanted to share that with you. Bye for now.