A few years ago, when I was in Bible college, my husband and I were door-knocked by some Jehovah’s Witnesses (which I will refer to with the abbreviation, ‘JW’ or ‘JWs’). At the time, we were in the second year of our studies, and in our doctrine subject were learning about the Trinity. God was very gracious in his timing as he effectively showed us why such a doctrine is both relevant and crucially important for the Christian faith. Over the next couple of years we continued to meet up with a couple of the JW ladies who had door-knocked us, and even once visited their Kingdom Hall (and what a cultural experience that was! If my little artsy church gathering felt like home-brew craft beer, the JW service felt a bit like a mega fast-food chain – with content imported straight from America and re-heated locally).
Anyway, as I was at Bible college and studying the biblical languages, I was keen to examine the differences between the Jehovah’s Witness New World Translation (NWT) and the mainstream Bible translations I was using (ESV, NIV, NLT… etc.). The NWT is unique in that it intentionally narrows the meaning of many passages which would otherwise contradict JW theology – or mistranslates them. Most of these are an attempt to exclude the divinity of Jesus or the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
For example, in some places it inserts words that are neither implied nor actually there in the Greek (such as the word ‘other’ inserted twice in Colossians 1:16). In other places, it narrows the meaning of a word to include one aspect of its sense but not others – such as when Jesus says he is ‘in the father’ (John 14:10), and the NWT would say that he is ‘in union with the father’ (which focusses on the aspect of them being united in mission, but excludes the divine mutual indwelling of the Trinity). In yet more places it seems that the NWT translators have used every superficially possible but actually unlikely alternative in translation in order to deny Jesus’s divinity. Examples of this include the famous John 1:1 ‘the Word was a god’ (NWT) instead of the usual translation, ‘the Word was God’ [ie, the quality of being God in his very substance], and Hebrews 1:8, where they prefer to jumble the word order a create a non-sense ‘your throne is God’ rather than to allow it to imply that Jesus is God (i.e., ‘But of the Son he says, “your throne, O God…”.’).
If these aspects weren’t onerous enough, probably the most unique feature of the NWT is its insistence in inserting the name ‘Jehovah’ into the New Testament whenever the NWT translation team thought the word ‘Lord’ was referring to God. The tragedy of this decision is that many of these instances are actually references to Jesus. Acts 2:21 is just one such example (compare Acts 4:10-12 – the point being that in Acts the name by which we are saved is the ‘Lord Jesus’, not ‘Jehovah’). The effect of all this is to obscure who Jesus really is to the minds of everyday Jehovah’s Witnesses.
As I observed this practice of the NWT and considered this insistence on the name ‘Jehovah’, I was curious to delve deeper and actually devoted a good part of my final year at Bible college investigating a biblical theology of the name of God.
In future posts I hope to outline some of the wonderful things I discovered in this, as well as other miscellaneous matters relating to NWT mistranslations of key passages that I researched over my time at college.
My writing on this subject comes out of both extensive conversations with these JW friends, combined with my own research and reflections. I share my thoughts in the hope that they will be of benefit to anyone who likewise finds themselves in conversation with JWs.
If you are trying to evangelise some JWs who have come to your door, might I recommend the book, ‘Sharing the Gospel with a Jehovah’s Witness’ by Tony Brown and published by 10 Publishing, 2019. He has far more experience than I do and writes in a more concise manner – the book is small and very helpful!
And finally, my own reflection on the topic of evangelism to JWs is to be prepared to patiently share not only the gospel but your life as well – and this over a long time. As when trying to reach anyone from a close-knit faith community, it takes time and genuine friendship, as they will have much more reason to believe the people they know and trust than you who they may not.
Bigvai and Shiphrah 