Every Translation Interprets
There is no such thing as a Bible translation made without interpretation.
Greek and Hebrew do not line up word-for-word with English. Translators must decide how to represent grammar, idioms, ambiguity, word order, supplied subjects, tense, and context. Sometimes two excellent translators will make different decisions without either being dishonest.
That matters when discussing the Jehovah’s Witness New World Translation.
Critics sometimes talk as though every page is deliberately corrupted. That is unfair. Large portions of the translation are perfectly ordinary, and biblical scholar Jason David BeDuhn has famously argued that the New World Translation performs better than many critics assume in several disputed New Testament passages. Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves appeal to his work in defending the translation.
A serious critique therefore should not begin by calling the translation fraudulent.
It should examine particular texts.
And in several places, the translation’s theological commitments become difficult to separate from the English wording placed before the reader.
John 1:1 — “The Word Was a God”
The most famous example is John 1:1.
The final Greek clause is:
θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος
theos ēn ho logos
Most English translations render it:
“The Word was God.”
The New World Translation reads:
“The Word was a god.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses commonly point out that theos—“God” or “god”—does not have the Greek definite article in this clause.
That observation is correct.
The conclusion that an English indefinite article must therefore be inserted is not.
Koine Greek does not use its definite article in the same way English uses “the,” and Greek has no direct equivalent of the English indefinite article “a.” An anarthrous noun—that is, one without the definite article—can be indefinite, definite, or qualitative depending upon syntax and context.
Philip Harner’s influential study of predicate nouns like the one in John 1:1 argued that the construction is predominantly qualitative: John is emphasizing the nature possessed by the Word. The clause distinguishes the Word from the Father in the preceding phrase while attributing to the Word the nature described by theos.
This is why the grammar cannot simply be reduced to:
“No Greek article = put ‘a’ in English.”
At the same time, fairness requires acknowledging that John 1:1 is not the strongest passage from which to accuse the New World Translation of straightforward grammatical incompetence. BeDuhn has defended its rendering and argues that traditional English translations can themselves obscure the distinction John makes between the Word and “the God” with whom he was.
The better conclusion is narrower.
“A god” is not demanded by the Greek grammar. It is an interpretive translation of a construction that many grammarians understand primarily as qualitative.
That makes John 1:1 an important theological debate.
It does not, by itself, prove deliberate mistranslation.
Colossians 1 — Where Did “Other” Come From?
Colossians 1:16–17 offers a clearer case.
Paul writes concerning Christ that:
“in Him all things were created”
and continues that:
“all things have been created through Him and for Him.”
The Greek repeatedly uses forms of τὰ πάντα—“all things.”
The New World Translation instead repeatedly reads:
“all other things”
so that Christ becomes the one through whom God created all things other than Christ himself.
This fits Jehovah’s Witness theology perfectly: Jesus is understood as God’s first creation, after which God creates everything else through him.
The important textual fact is that there is no separate Greek word corresponding to “other” in these clauses.
Even the New World Translation study material acknowledges the literal wording “all things” while defending “other” as contextually implied.
Now, translators sometimes legitimately supply English words not represented by a discrete word in Greek. That alone is not misconduct. The Greek word pas (“all,” “every”) can in some contexts mean “all other” when the context clearly excludes someone from the group being discussed.
The question is whether Colossians 1 itself provides that exclusion—or whether it is being supplied by prior theology.
That is precisely the disputed point.
Paul’s argument emphasizes Christ’s supremacy by saying that all things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, including thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities, were created in him, through him, and for him.
The New World Translation resolves the Christological question for the reader by adding “other” throughout the paragraph.
That is not a neutral reproduction of an explicit Greek word.
It is an exegetical conclusion embedded directly into the translation.
The 237 New Testament Uses of “Jehovah”
An even more consequential issue is the divine name.
The New World Translation uses “Jehovah” 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures, or New Testament. Its own appendices openly explain and defend this policy.
The textual problem is straightforward:
No surviving Greek New Testament manuscript presently known contains the Hebrew Tetragrammaton—YHWH—in those 237 locations.
The Greek manuscript tradition instead reads terms such as Kyrios (“Lord”) and Theos (“God”).
Jehovah’s Witness translators are aware of this. Their argument is reconstructive: they contend that New Testament authors would originally have preserved the divine name, particularly when quoting Hebrew Bible passages containing YHWH, and that later copyists replaced it. The New World Translation therefore claims to restore the name to places where the translators believe it originally stood.
There is some historical background behind the proposal. Certain pre-Christian and early Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament did preserve forms of the divine name rather than replacing it everywhere with Kyrios. Scholar George Howard famously proposed that New Testament writers may originally have retained the Tetragrammaton within Old Testament quotations.
But that remains a hypothesis.
We possess no Greek New Testament manuscript demonstrating the proposed original readings.
For textual criticism, that distinction is enormous.
A translator may believe that every surviving manuscript reflects an early alteration. But once a translation prints the reconstructed wording directly into the biblical text, readers need to understand that they are no longer being shown what the surviving Greek New Testament manuscripts actually read.
They are being shown a theory about what an earlier, unattested form of the text might have read.
And the New World Translation goes beyond direct Old Testament quotations, restoring “Jehovah” in additional passages on contextual grounds.
That is considerably more than translation.
It is textual reconstruction.
Why This Can Affect Christology
The issue becomes especially important because New Testament authors repeatedly use Old Testament “Lord” texts in passages involving Jesus.
Early Christian Christology often works precisely through this scriptural pattern: language belonging to Israel’s God is placed in relation to the risen Christ.
If a translator decides in advance that Kyrios should become “Jehovah” in one location but remain “Lord” in another, the translation can determine for the English reader whether a passage appears to refer to the Father or to Jesus.
That does not mean every use of “Jehovah” in the New World Translation has been chosen cynically.
It means the theological stakes of the reconstruction are enormous.
When there is no surviving Greek manuscript containing the proposed reading, readers should at minimum be told clearly that they are looking at a conjectural restoration rather than the transmitted Greek text.
What About John 8:58?
Another frequently cited example deserves more caution.
Jesus says in John 8:58:
“Before Abraham was, I am.”
The Greek ends with ἐγώ εἰμι — egō eimi, literally using the present form “I am.”
The New World Translation renders the statement:
“Before Abraham came into existence, I have been.”
Critics often portray this as an obviously impossible translation devised solely to sever the verse from the divine “I AM” language associated with Exodus.
That criticism is stronger than the linguistic evidence allows.
Jehovah’s Witness translators argue that the Greek present can describe a condition beginning in the past and continuing into the present, making an English perfect construction such as “I have been” possible in context. Their study material explains the rendering on precisely those grounds.
One can still argue that “I am” better preserves John’s striking Greek phrasing and its possible theological resonance.
But John 8:58 is not the cleanest example of an indefensible translation.
There is no reason to rely on a weaker argument when stronger ones are available.
Is the New World Translation “Corrupt”?
That word usually generates more heat than clarity.
The evidence supports a more precise conclusion.
The New World Translation is not nonsense, and it is not inaccurate in every passage. Some of its unconventional renderings deserve genuine scholarly discussion.
Yet at several passages central to Jehovah’s Witness theology, the translation does something more than reproduce the most straightforward form of the surviving Greek text.
At John 1:1, it chooses the theologically consequential “a god” where the Greek construction does not require an indefinite sense.
At Colossians 1:16–20, it repeatedly supplies “other,” a word not separately present in the Greek, thereby placing Christ inside the category of created things.
Across the New Testament, it prints “Jehovah” 237 times on the basis of a proposed reconstruction that is unattested in the surviving Greek New Testament manuscript tradition.
The pattern deserves attention.
This does not establish fraud.
It does demonstrate theology operating within translation.
And that distinction is especially important when Jehovah’s Witnesses encourage Christians to abandon supposedly corrupt religious tradition and simply accept “what the Bible says.”
Every Bible translation contains interpretation.
The New World Translation does too.
The question is whether the reader knows where the Greek text ends and the Watch Tower interpretation begins.
How Should Christians Respond?
The answer is not to tell Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop reading their Bible.
Encourage them to read more.
Compare the New World Translation with several translations representing different theological backgrounds. Consult an interlinear. Examine the Greek where the disagreement is significant. Look at the textual apparatus. Ask why supplied words appear. Ask what the manuscript evidence actually says.
Truth has nothing to fear from comparison.
If an interpretation is correct, allowing readers to see the underlying evidence will strengthen it.
Reflection
Scripture was not given to us as ammunition for winning translation disputes.
It was given so that we might hear the apostolic testimony to Christ.
Christians should therefore approach the text with reverence rather than anxiety. We need not manipulate a word to protect Jesus from scrutiny. If he is who the apostles proclaim him to be, careful study will not diminish him.
The opening of John’s Gospel invites us into something greater than a grammatical contest:
Before Abraham, before Moses, before Bethlehem, before the mountains and the seas, the Word already was.
Through him creation came into being.
And this Word “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
The proper end of biblical study is therefore not merely to win an argument about theos, Kyrios, or panta.
It is to behold the One of whom Scripture speaks—and, with Thomas before the risen Christ, to confess:
“My Lord and my God.”
—John 20:28
Sources
Primary textual sources
- Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed. (Nestle-Aland), for the Greek New Testament text.
- New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 2013 revision, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.
- New World Translation study material on John 1:1.
- New World Translation study material on Colossians 1:16–20.
- New World Translation, Appendix A5, explaining the use of “Jehovah” in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
- New World Translation, Appendix C3, documenting additional restorations of the divine name.
- New World Translation study note on John 8:58.
Academic works
- Philip B. Harner, “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1,” Journal of Biblical Literature 92, no. 1 (1973): 75–87.
- Jason David BeDuhn, Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament (University Press of America, 2003).
- Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Baker, 1992).
- Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2005).