Examining the Jehovah's Witness Bible

I think a case can certainly be made that it's it's it's not a linguistic thing.

It's it's they have a a priori Commitment to something they want

Jesus to be which is not fully God Therefore they're going to make they're going to do whatever they need to do to come to that conclusion.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Yeah, that seems to be the case. Yeah You Your Calvinist podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

And welcome back to your Calvinist podcast My name is Keith Foskey and I am your Calvinist want to thank you for being a part of the show today

We're going to be talking with my guest about the New World Translation now if you don't know what that is

That's the Bible that was translated by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society Otherwise known as the

Jehovah's Witnesses We're going to be talking about how they handle certain texts and why we believe that translation is not a good

Translation of the Bible, but before we do that I want to remind you that this podcast is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church If you're in the

Jacksonville area come visit us and you can learn more about us at SGFCJaxx .org Also, we are sponsored by tinybibles .com

if you're interested in getting the smallest Bible on the market it is able to be hidden anywhere taken anywhere passed down as an heirloom or given away as a friend and Also, they now have a tiny gospel of John and the great thing about the tiny gospel of John is you can read it without Any type of eye assistance or eyepiece

But both of those are available at tinybibles .com And if you use my first name Keith as a coupon code, you'll get a good percentage off Finally before we get to the show,

I want to also remind you about our new show Friday night live every Friday night I'm going live and I'm answering questions that you're sending in through email or directly from the

YouTube channel as people are sending in their comments while I do the show if You want to send me an email for me to respond to you can send it in through the website at Keith Foskey .com.

All right. Now I'm gonna bring my friend in He's an expert in biblical languages and we're going to be talking about the

New World Translation. Here we go Well again guys, I want to thank you all for being with me today as I welcome a guest to the show

Daryl Burling He was the founder of Biblical Mastery Academy previously known as Master the

New Testament Greek this Institute offers online seminary level education primarily focusing on teaching biblical

Greek and Hebrew his mission with the Institute is to equip Christians to read and understand the

Bible in its original languages aiming to deepen their theological study and Personal engagement with the scriptures.

So Daryl, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it. Thanks Thanks for having me

Keith. It's a it's a joy and a blessing And now I can tell talking to you right away that you're you you're automatically smarter than me because you have that great accent

But can you tell us where your accent is from? The I am I live in New Zealand.

I was born and raised here And I would say that it's probably the least educated accent on the planet

Certainly the more time I spend here the compared to the States particularly where I would did my education

Certainly, I would say that I feel much more educated He over educated here compared to in the

States, but no, I think I'm from New Zealand It's a joy to live here. Really. It's it is challenging from a

Christian point of view It's a challenging country to live in a lot of ways, but it's a beautiful country. There's lots of freedom

There's I live in a small town. We have Wonderful mountain biking trails, you know, so there's very little to complain about Amen so you are a

Biblical language teacher, but I'm sure that's not I'm sure that's not how you began I'd like to hear first simply how you became a

Christian and then talk about how you got into teaching the Bible So so so were you brought up by Christian parents, or were you engaged by some friends?

How did you come to know the Lord? Yeah, so no, I was not born in a Christian home at all

To this day, unfortunately, my parents are still not believers but I had a friend whose family did come to Christ in high school and His parents were going to check out a

Bible college So they went away for a week or so and while they were away I stayed with my friend in his home and next to the beard that I was sleeping in there was a

NIV Bible and Years before I'd started reading from the beginning of Genesis and got as far as about Exodus 30 ish and Gave up as an eight -year -old boy would and so this time

I picked it up and I started reading from the Gospel of Matthew and was you know, certainly as I got into the

Sermon on the Mount was arrested by the authority of Christ and you know the power he wielded and at the end of that week at Evangelist came through town.

My friend invited me to church and Yeah, that guy preached the word preached it faithfully and At the end of the evening, that's the evening service the morning and the evening service first time ever in church really by my own volition and Yeah at the end of that evening.

He asked me I think my friend introduced me to the preacher and He asked me if I wanted to become a

Christian and I said yes, and he helped me to you know Give my life to the

Lord there. So so that's kind of how I became a Christian I was working at that stage in a in a meat processing plant just as a 17 year old just left school kind of thing and Yeah, I was it was a dead dead job for me it really wasn't an enjoyable job

But it's time when I moved from there into information technology. I Went did a number of different jobs for different companies eventually worked for Microsoft But got to a point where it was where I was just kind of like I don't know what

I This is not what I want to keep doing And at that point there was a yacht, you know,

I was I seriously considered, you know going off to seminary at this point I was in my mid 30s ish and you know, eventually, you know when

I was about 38 eventually we did we ended up Uprooting my family selling our home and using that money to travel to the

States Spend four years living in California where I trained at the Master's Seminary Didn't in the

Master's University as well. And then I end up doing a PhD at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary graduating well into my 40s, but But better off for it by a long shot and one of those things

I kind of wish I'd done a little earlier, but you know, the Lord has his plans and I'm very thankful to you know, just this just to enjoy and cherish all that he does for me.

So Yeah, that that's an amazing story and and a wonderful training that you were able to receive

Getting to go train at Masters and train at Southern where you were there. I guess when Al Mohler was there. Yeah So there

I believe yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's that's what I mean. Yeah Yeah, he came in the night in the 90s.

So he's been there ever since. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so that's saved in 1990 So I think he was he started there as the president about the same time.

I was saved. So yeah Gotcha, gotcha. So in regard to your biblical language training

What what made you decide this not only is this where I want to focus, but this is what

I want to teach This is what I want to make my life's ministry and and give the people what is it about the languages that inspired you?

Yeah, so when I was going through my master's degree, I did my under in my undergraduate degree

We did a I did went through Mounts as basics of biblical Greek and learned the basics and then once we got into Seminary I did

Two classes on Greek exegesis. It was a pretty Greek intensive end of Certainly compared to a lot of endives.

But yeah Greek intensive. So I did two semesters of Greek exegesis I did one two, three four

Additional electives on Greek and I just sort of what I wanted to do is before I started seminary

I kind of thought well, I could probably learn some Greek, you know, and before I you know I had no idea what

I was doing So I got mounts as a second edition and picked it up opened it up and I got through I think is about the alphabet

I think that was about as far as I got writing out the alphabet repeatedly And when

I got to seminate my undergraduate degree and I had to actually figure out how to actually complete this to get the grades

That was really where I had to figure out. Okay, how am I actually gonna do this? How do you actually learn a language just like someone asked me the other day?

When did you to find out that you were gifted with languages and my answer was I'm not gifted with languages I am

I have just worked really hard to understand what I You know the length of Greek language in particular and the work that I put in has really benefited me and paid off So that's really the focus that I've had.

And so when I was doing my undergraduate degree I came up with some systems that really helped me to internalize everything

I was learning and then to be able to reproduce that consistently for exams and I graduated with you know really solid grades

Went on to my master's degree and then sort of continued to work on that basis. Okay.

What do I have to what systems? Do I need to develop for myself so that I can actually master this language?

And so that was really what a what it was really So when I was going through my master's degree

One of the challenges we had was vocabulary and I knew because when I started learning Before I even started seminary.

My goal was to be able to read the New Testament in Greek so as I went through my exegesis classes.

I realized that they actually weren't going to provide us with that level of knowledge And so I worked at what how am

I going to achieve this goal? And so for me it was really well Okay, so I need to start learning the vocabulary. I can't do it by occurrence.

We did that now our classes It was horrible. All the words were that context makes it much more difficult to learn to read

You know, it's not terrible. Once you get down to 20 occurrences and below it gets much less valuable

I mean lower than that. So anyway, but I ended up saying okay well let's just learn the words for one book and then we'll go on to another book and at that point

I had thought about it From the point of view of well, I'll just do whatever books I'm doing for seminary But eventually what

I did is I realized that actually the best way to do this is start with the easiest books and move to the hardest books and so I created my own vocabulary set to do that and Eventually when

I was doing my doctorate I was like well I could actually probably make some money off this and Help support my doctoral work because I wasn't earning any money even though I was back here in New Zealand at that point

We were broke. We had no money We'd spend it all on our master's degree and whatnot and traveling living expenses in the

States is what really sucked it all up But the point is that we started with money. We had no money I needed to earn some money and I didn't have time to go and get a full -time job.

So I was like well Let's try and pump bundle this up and sell it and so that was started off master New Testament Greek and then eventually

I came across a system for how to turn that into a membership and Master New Testament Greek as a membership was born in our biblical mastery

Academy So it's just growing a little bit a lot quite a lot really from there So yeah so it's really about developing the systems

I needed as somebody who's not gifted with the languages to be able to to master the language

Yeah, absolutely and again, that's all interesting especially how it kind of was almost worked out of necessity

You know, here's a way that I can use this to benefit and are you were you or are you serving?

In ministry as well in a church, or is this your primary ministry? This is my vocation. This is my primary ministry

So I'm a I'm an elder slash pastor and I would say elder more than pastor perhaps

But um, you know, I serve in the local church here as well preaching, you know a handful of times a year

I'd do a bit of preaching in other churches a few conferences here and there But no, this is my main job by yeah for sure.

Yeah, so and I see this as an investment in the local church I mean how can it be bad for the church to have even even if it's not pastors people in the pulpits who

Who are following along the pastor with the Greek New Testament's? Understanding it knowing it and and even challenging the pastor on his

Or use of Greek which sometimes unfortunately does happen, right? so it's good to and my thinking is even if I don't because we don't have as many pastors in our program as I would like Us to have we have a lot more lay people in our church and our program rather And I think the benefit of that is that it should be pushing from the bottom up to require more of pastors

And to set higher expectations for them because honestly the number of pastors who have zero knowledge of Greek is shockingly high not that I'm saying necessarily every pastor should learn

Greek, but Certainly, I think if you're a pastor, you should be educated and part of your education should be the languages and so I think this you know, it used to be one time in England at least that the

The educated class were all clergy. I'm not all perhaps but you know clergy was a large part of the educated class it's probably a better way of putting it, but those days are well and truly over now and You know now we kind of we suffer really from ignorance

I think if anything in the local church And so if we can sort of shore that up and we do that in a number of ways not only by teaching people the language

But we also have a pretty heavy Focus on church history, particularly the early church the

Septuagint. We talk a lot about that We talk about the Old Testament We also talk about Bible culture and backgrounds all these kinds of things and the point of all of this is just to raise

The base level of knowledge. We don't really focus on theology We talk about exegesis how exegesis leads into theology, but we don't push a particular theological system

We really want people to sort of be in the scriptures and let the scriptures do the work of transforming people's minds and hearts

So yeah That's great now I have to know I have to ask this because I'm so curious and and you know

I told you I think it was off -camera, you know My level of Greek is certainly not where I'd like it to be.

But how did how long did it take you to go? from Basic understanding of Greek to being able to read the

New Testament because you said that was your goal and you you set that goal How long did it take you to? Achieve that goal to be able to read the

New Testament Directly from the original language. Yeah, so I think when

I started my Learning Greek in my undergraduate degree. I think it was about From that point.

So so bear in mind that I then had three years of seminary And then

I went on and finished the you know built the system and basically then use the system adapted and use it so for me really,

I think it was The bulk of the work was done in about three years

But I'd already had three years of Greek prior to that where I'd done a sort of a base level if you like And I've probably used

I probably learned maybe a thousand words in those first three years Vocabulary and then

I learned the other four thousand or so Following on from that in three to four years somewhere around there.

So yeah, so that's my experience I've had people do it in two years like learn the vocabulary and read through the

New Testament I've had other people, you know take much much longer So there's no there's no right or wrong amount of time and I think

The the challenge with thinking about it from a time point of view too is you kind of think of it as a all -or -nothing

But what we need to remember is that while I was doing that I was still reading the New Testament in Greek I just wasn't reading all of the

New Testament in Greek, right? So there were words that I hadn't learned to Luke or an axe But I was able to read

Matthew Mark, you know, John, you know and a whole bunch of other things Two years, you know two years after I finished my

MDiv kind of thing or even while I was doing my MDiv I there was like five or six books that I had to learn all the vocabulary for there so I could learn and you and read

Those books pretty consistently without too much trouble as well. So so even so it's kind of like this

It's a building thing if you like So the problem is that we sort of think of reading the New Testament as a whole and really what we're doing is we're kind Of going like this and just the circles get bigger and bigger and bigger and there's more of the

New Testament if you like That we actually can read And so the joy just increases in that sense as you go because you've got this basic stuff

You know how to read say like if you finish our first milestone It's seven books of the New Testament if you finish that while you're in a good place to just keep going seven books

That's pretty good to be able to read seven epistles and you know, and then greet without without looking words up, right?

So that's a good foundation. So that's kind of how we structure it and that's how that's how long it took me as well

So yeah Yeah, that's that's great and I mean very intrigued very interested it's good stuff and I I do want to I want to change our attention in just a moment over to the

Question at hand which is I know a lot of people are going to click on this video because the thumbnail is going to mention that we're going

To be talking about the New World Translation, which is a bad Translation from the Greek and we're going to talk about why that is but I do have one other quick question and this is about your your program and that is

You said there's you know a thousand words and then there's five thousand words There's the vocabulary is huge you have to learn

Do you did your program use things like do you have like a flashcard program? I'm just curious how it works.

Like is it a flashcard based program? Is it a is it like I think a Rosetta Stone type thing where Rosetta?

Yeah So that's a great question. We started this initially. I just started by My goal initially for the program was to help people who had been through seminary who learned

Greek But who wanted to develop their Greek further? So when we started I developed these I took that vocabulary and I turned them into Milestones and basically for for every basically made a whole series of lessons for each lesson

You get 30 new vocabulary words to learn you get a video you get a reading from the

New Testament that you can actually read because you've learned the vocabulary for it and then you would get

Like a little a little video lesson five to ten minutes was my goal Explaining some of the something of the grammar of that text not like you're not going to get the same

Explanation the goal was to sort of go through a different element of grammar in every lesson And we broke this up in the number of words and the amount of text there is a

New Testament It worked out to about seven milestones. Each milestone has got between 25 and 30 ish on average

Weeks worth of lessons in it and so you just sort of work your way through each week You learn more vocabulary you read more scripture and that's kind of the way it's structured

As people started to join we had people saying well, I've my rusty my Greek is a bit rusty Could you help me out with that and I had other people saying odd Do you teach

Greek because I actually don't know the basics and I want to do this because this is doable And so we ended up teaching

Beginning Greek and I started with mounts And taught through that for a few years found it to be really challenging for people who have jobs and responsibilities and whatnot

So we switched to beginning with New Testament Greek by Merkel and plumber Which we use for a few more years, but we struck the same kind of problem

It's better, but it was we still broke every lesson into two lessons But now what we do is we actually have our own beginning

Greek course. I've finished writing my beginning Greek grammar now and We've got 60 lessons

So you do a lesson a week if you want to we can some of them are designed to be condensed together So you can get through it in about a year with a job and whatnot

It's structured a little bit differently to most other grammars. We start with the errors not the present We break it into much smaller chunks and sort of introduce you to things and a lot more

There's a lot easier to sort of get into the different elements. It's also it's also based on verbal aspect not tenses

We don't have dependency. So it's up to date with the latest scholarship and so on So yeah, so that's that's how we do it now

And so basically you go through beginning Greek at the end of that You'll be able to read first John some of some of the second

Thessalonians will have the vocabulary from some of the second Thessalonians and also We get you to read through a little portion to dedicate at the end of that beginning

Greek course as well and then you're into reading first John second John third John second Thessalonians Philemon first Thessalonians and Colossians and We have a reading

Greek course that follows on from that as well So there's a mixture of self study and some cohort based courses that we offer you as well.

So We have we use a third party vocabulary app that works great

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it does work and Yeah, most of us in our online community.

So there's a community you can ask questions get help There's you know, there's badges you earn as you go through all that kind of thing just to keep you going

So yeah, that's but being made up to slash get started as if you if you want a bit of an overview of What it looks like?

Nice. Okay, and and I have to ask is it When you're teaching the reading do you also are you overly concerned with pronunciation like I know there's an argument between Erasmus pronunciation and the more modern way of Pronouncing what what do you use?

What do you prefer? That's a great question I started with Erasmus pronunciation and a few months ago.

We decided to make the switch to modern pronunciation So we now recommend that people use modern pronunciation and At this date.

I am still improving my pronunciation of modern because it's notoriously bad But some people want to come in and use

Erasmus and that's okay. We don't we don't want to judge them for that But some people want to use reconstructed.

That's very similar to modern really. It's not much different So we we encourage that as well. We provide an out

Alphabet and pronunciation guide we explain. In fact, there is a pronunciation guide You can get for free that we provide

Which provides you with a pronunciation of each of the letter of the alphabet the diphthongs monophthongs And so on and if anyone wants that BMA dot

TO slash pronunciation And that'll give you a difference between Erasmus and modern pronunciation Which makes a little bit easier to sort of start making that change if you want to but there's no pressure to inside our system

Okay, so I want to have some fun real quick before I move on so if I say John one one and in the only way

I know how which is Erasmus It would be something like in our K ain't hollow gas.

I hollow gas ain't proston. They on Kiteos and hollow gas. Am I Getting that about right?

Yeah, that sounds pretty good. It's pretty good. Erasmus pronunciation. Yeah How would it sound in the modern or the reconstructed with can you do it remember

I can have a crack at it my My pronunciation, like I said is not as good as probably even your

Erasmus pronunciation but I would say something along the lines of In our K in our logos key or logos in proston the on Keith the on in our logos

Yeah, I noticed the Chi is key That's one of the things I'm that I pick up when I hear people when

I hear people giving a Greek sentence or reading a Greek sentence I can always Tell whether they're going with the

Erasmus or the other typically by that right away. Yeah. Yeah. Also we don't pronounce

Breathing marks. So we you know logos. We would just go all logos Okay, the the road is be just a regular are in Erasmus It would be a you'd use your tongue at a kind of sound cross rather than cross

Yeah, so those are some initial distinctions You've got some other ones like the way an oops alone or epsilon is it's more likely to be pronounced

Is use those sounds more like an e sound? Unless of course, it's got certain letters after in which case it can come either a

V or an F sound So there's a little things like that that sort of and those are the ones that the epsilon or epsilon song

Sounds are the ones that often will throw you off the most. So yeah Awesome.

Well, you know we could we could geek out for a while and I could I feel like at this point.

I've just sort of taking you down a little rabbit hole to Satisfy my own question.

Yeah, but I but I do want to take the audience into consideration because not everybody's like me So when it comes to the

New World translation and The for those who don't know the the

Jehovah Witnesses or Jehovah's Witnesses Have their own translation of the Bible So when they come to your door and they offer to talk to you about the

Bible They have a Bible that was translated by their own religious establishment and it is intended to promote an understanding of who

Jesus is based upon their reading of the Greek and translation into the

English and so what I want to talk to you about Daryl is is Primarily some of the texts that I that I know for certain there are going to be major disagreements on Specifically what we just talked about John 1 1 and the the use of the indefinite article there in the third clause

Yeah, and then of course there is in Colossians and I think in a few other places but I know specifically in Colossians because I preached to it last year where they they

Interject the word other when it when it speaks of Jesus creating all things

They would say well, he created all other things and there's the interjection of that which

I think is more of a theological interjection than it is a necessarily a linguistic

Imposition but but starting out If someone came to your door You the you the

Greek scholar and and they don't know because you just look like a normal guy, you know handsome But still just normal.

Yeah somebody came and said Daryl, I want to tell you about this

The Jehovah with this religion and I want to show you that your Bible says

Jesus is God But my Bible says Jesus is a God What is it about?

The original language that helps you be confident that it should be translated and The word was

God rather than the word was a God Yeah, so in terms of just dealing with the argument with reference to the

Greek specifically The assumption is that the use of the article in Greek and the use of the article in English is pretty you know

Parallel and that's just not the case The Greek article does a fundamentally different task to the

English article Which is one of the reasons why in English we have a definite and an indefinite article the article then the use of the article in English definitizes or Indefinitizes something now in Greek if you want to make something indefinite you're not going to use an indefinite article to do it you're going to use an indefinite pronoun or Something like a marker of indefiniteness like the arm particle

Or Ian can one of those creases with on built into it And those are the things that make something indefinite if you wanted to say this is a

God Then there are ways to make that really clear most of the time though bear in mind that even that idea of definiteness in Greek applies to a verb and Not so much to a noun

So the use or miss or non use of an article is neither here nor there

With the with reference to whether something is should be translated in English with an article a definite article or an indefinite article

You can have words in Greek that have no article that should be translated as definite and you should you can have words in Greek that do not have the article that need the article in English, so the

There's just no connection It's not to say that there's no relevance to the yin the

Greek article at all But the purpose of the Greek article is primarily to point And the idea of this pointing depends on the context and what it's doing in each context

So in this particular case, the word was God what we have here is a predicate nominative and a predicate nominative construction the question is which of these two nominatives because remember normally the nominative of Shouldn't say remember should

I but the nominative construction in Greek is Normally going to be this in fact

Yeah, the nominative is going to be the subject of the verb right the subject of the verb is the is the person

That the verb is focused on now in an active verb form Which is kind of what you've got here in this third clause

I say kind of because it's really a state of verb, but nonetheless it's active in form The the nominative is the subject that the verb is talking about effectively

The verb is telling us the state of the subject So in this case, we've got two nominatives though And the verb is on in the middle between these two now

Greek and English That wouldn't be a problem because you just say well, we just follow the word order right because that's how

English works Subject verb object that's consistently how we structure things the boy the subject hurt.

That's the verb the ball That's the object but Greek doesn't care for word order at all

This is why it's what's called an inflected language so that they can Make the word order change the word order up so that it suits their own purposes and what they tend to do is they tend to front load ideas that they believe are more important within the sentence and then

Things that are less important will trail off Toward the end of the sentence because it's really you're trying to make that impact with the beginning of the sentence and so with this

Because you don't need a word order for this purpose You have two nominatives.

You don't have any inclination toward word order And so you're left wondering or which of these two nominatives is The subject of the verb and the article points and in this case with every predicate nominative

Well, not every predicate numbers of the most predicate nominatives it actually points to the subject of the verb and that you should be careful with that because there are rules around predicate nominatives and What the article does and how to determine which which one of these two is the subject but in this case, you've got two nouns

They are equivalent in many ways. There's no like pronoun there or anything like there's no proper name

It's just two nouns. So they're equal in that status and so the question is which one of these is a subject and the answer is the one with the article is a subject the

Role of the article there is to point to the subject of the verb So the subject of the verb here is the word was

God, right? so the lack of article doesn't make Theos less definite is just allowing it to be left as the object of the verb

And so you have in the word order So the lack of article has absolutely no bearing on the definiteness or indefiniteness of Theos in fact in the same context

You've got in RK The RK does not have the article on the beginning of it and yet the new world translation is happy to translate it in the beginning

Right because it's obvious There is only one beginning and obviously within this context from John's point of view.

There is also only one God There is no need for an article in Greek to make

Theos definite Yeah, exactly and It is interesting too.

I would have to look at the new world translation I'm not holding one in my hand right now, but does it when they translate tossed front?

they are crossed on the on in The second clause do they translate that the

God or do they say was with God with God? Yeah So so there is a case where they have the definite article, but they're not translating.

Yeah, actually, let me just write that Yeah, I might be wrong on that because I haven't looked at this trans this this in their

Translation for a little bit, but let me just have a quick look online. You might have to edit this piece here

No worries. I Yeah, I've changed their home page how inconvenient

They don't want us they don't want us to know that's what it's a big secret It's that they they don't want

Daryl coming for them. That's what There is I found it. All right new world translation

The so I'll just find the passage. There is John chapter 1. Yeah They translate this in the beginning was the word and the word was with God Yeah, so that I put an article prior to Theos in their second

That second clause either Yeah, I just thought that was interesting because you mentioned the the in front of our

K that there's no there's no article in front Of our K yet. They put it there. There is an article in front of Theos the first time it's used

They don't put it there But they insist on the necessity of the indefinite article in front of Theos or Theos and be in the final clause

Yeah, so it just seems to be it's I think a case can certainly be made

That it's it's it's not a linguistic thing. It's it's they have a a priori

Commitment to something they want Jesus to be which is not fully God Therefore they're gonna make they're gonna do whatever they need to do to come to that conclusion.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely Yeah, that seems to be the case. Yeah. Yeah Well, I Am I correct to say that you're going to be doing some work on the

New World Translation or am I miss miss understanding that Really? No, it just seems to be that it's one of the subjects people want to talk about with me recently.

So Yeah, yeah, well I didn't I didn't know if you knew much about the history of it

You know as far as when and why it was translated and how long they've been using it I didn't know if you and you don't have to go

Yeah, no, so The I don't know a huge amount about it, but when it was originally done.

I don't know when it was done either I think it was in there. It was the first half of the 20th century.

I'm pretty confident of that But when the New World Translation first did this translation

They were very quiet about who would who what who it was. It was on the translation committee

They they said that the translators wanted to remain anonymous because they were humble people giving glory to God The problem with that of course is that you know

What if you if you're truly humble you're going to allow yourself to be open to criticism you're going to be allow yourself to be open for Scrutiny and particularly when you come up with something as important as a

Bible translation So I find that claim to be in disingenuous to some extent

But anyway when eventually Somebody was converted from Job's Witness the

Job's Witness group to the watchtower Society to Christianity He wrote a book and he did actually explain who the people were who translated the text there were

Five translators of those five translators four of them had no

Greek or Hebrew training at all So one of them did the one who did he claimed to know

Hebrew and Greek But when he was examined, he actually failed a simple

Hebrew test. So he did some University, but he didn't study anything related to theology and But nonetheless he was the most educated person on that committee

So what you've got really is a translation that has been put together by people who are

Not working from the original translation at all They're working if anything from you know written grammars

Early written grammars not the we've got so many grammars today. They would have had much fewer to work from They would have been working from Strong's dictionary and things like that So they're really not and and even today

I would say that there is a risk even amongst scholars There are scholars who know enough

Greek to study the Bible but not enough to actually read it and I actually think that's bad for scholarship because There should be an organicness to our understanding of this language

That means that we're not as dependent on those books And so when we are really dependent on those books

We kind of there's a degree of sort of fighting in the dark to kind of work out Well, which one of these solutions is the best?

But a more organic and understanding of the scriptures the ability to read the Greek Actually gives you you know, you start to see patterns you start to see the way words are used that gives you more understanding of the flexibility of words and the differences between English and Greek Which which is significant so, you know, here's men who are by no means qualified whatsoever picking their way through coming from a very

Slanted theological perspective and trying to put something out there that's going to support that theological View rather than actually trying to be faithful to the original text.

It's been handed down to us for thousands of years Prior to them coming along and you know for me, you know, even even if we've got a fear of God We should fear to do such that sort of thing

I mean the book of Revelation warns us about adding to the scriptures and and I don't think the idea there is, you know to not to extrapolate things from the scriptures, but to really say well

Let's make the scriptures mean something that it doesn't mean and that's effectively what they've done here. So yeah, so I Don't I haven't got an in -depth knowledge of the history of it

But there's a few little nuggets that I've slipped away there and that might be useful No, no, that was that was very helpful and I know we we

I Think we would both agree on this because I did mention this earlier and that is If we stepped away from John 1 1 and looked at other places where there would be the most egregious examples

I think probably the best examples would be the interjection of words like all other things

In the book of Colossians saying that Christ has created all All things and I remember when

I was I was preaching through Colossians and I had posted a picture of my notes

From Colossians and maybe I should take a second here and look this up because I wanted to ask you

This particular question from Colossians 2 so give me one second here to pull this up Actually, it may be

Colossians 1 because I think it's from first beginning at verse 15 He is the image of the English Standard Version He's the image of the invisible

God the firstborn of all creation for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities all things were created through him and for him and He is before all things and in him all things

Altogether I Posted a picture of my notes because I had done something creative with the original language and had just made this really pretty graphic I'm a graphic guy

So I I make pretty I make pretty notes, right? Like so sometimes I'll take pictures of the pretty is probably not the best word.

I'm very very unmanly So let me give that I make handsome notes But I posted something and and and the guy was somebody from Twitter Went on a went on a rant against what

I had had put and he basically insinuating that that POS here

Did not in fact encompass Everything that when it says for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth and And he was arguing that the that the use of POS there was limited was not to include all things

I said, but in my argument back then and you tell me if you think this was bad or good I said

But but yes, but right after that Even though POS can't have can be limited doesn't always mean all it can be it can mean all without exception not all without distinction

Right, like you have different different things. I said, but in this it goes on to say that he has

All things were created in heaven on earth visible invisible thrones or dominions or rulers all things

It To to say that he didn't create all things You would have to say that Paul when writing this didn't include, you know, what's what what is there other than visible and invisible?

What is there other other than? In heaven and on earth is there a third dimension?

Is there something we can't you know? So have you ever heard someone say that that the that POS here is limited and maybe had that argument?

Yes Yeah, so the yeah your argument though in response is exactly right

The what you've got following on from that is a figure of speech In fact two figure of speeches the same figure of speech used twice is probably more accurate.

It's called a mirror them, right? A mirror ism is where you've got two opposite things which are intended to make up the whole right, so You know preach the word in season and out of season.

Well, that's all the time, right? That's a mirror ism. Yeah, here is the same thing, you know in the heavens and upon the earth

So all things that are created are either in the heavens or they're on the earth, right? Therein that lies therein lies the kind of explanation of all things and then you've got the visible and the invisible

Well things are either visible to create it or either visible or they're not created. Well, they're not visible So that's all things again, and then he goes on and he says well

What about things that might be outside of the authority or the scope of that from a Greco -Roman point of view?

So he goes on thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, you know, there is nothing

So you can't say then that the Emperor is a God and therefore was not created, right?

So, you know because we're the thrones or dominions or rules of our authority all things were created by him and for him

And so and then of course it repeats at the end of verse 16 again, you know Tapanta the up to you know, all things were created through him and for him

So it's very very explicit that verse and yeah Oh that and I don't mean

I don't mean interrupt you but it was tapanta. That was the one that he was saying Yeah, the all he was saying the personal definite article in front of Ponto would make it be all

Referring to a specific set not all Yeah, yeah, no the use of the article again the article doesn't have the same use in English as it does in Greek, right

The young the article here is just making explicit the plurality of the all things if anything

So I don't think that that argument holds I think the bigger argument here that I've heard from this passage is that if you go down a little bit into verse

Yeah verse 19 and 20, you know, he was he was through him to reconcile

He was pleased through him to reconcile all things to himself So the argument is the wall if he's reconciling all things

Then that must be the all things that he's talking about back up in verse 16 the problem with that argument, of course, is that There is a problem with that argument trust me

I Have some notes on this hang on a second Yeah, the problem with here it is yeah

So the problem with this argument is that these are all the things that require peace, right

So all the things that have been alienated Those are the things that need to be reconciled now not, you know so you can't say on the one hand that all creation was created by God and all creation needs to be

Reconciled in the same way through Christ. That's not the point here The cross the making peace by the blood of his cross

You know There's a specific redemptive purpose in mind here

And I and I think again going back to your original statement All things can mean different things within this even within a similar context here and I would argue that what we've got down in verse 19 and 20 is really specific to that act of Reconciliation rather than the act of creation now you can make an argument that all

Things actually do in a sense need to be reconciled to Christ, right? And I think there's a reformed argument just to argue for that position

And so even if you do go down that track and saying those two all things are all things It's the same in both cases

I don't think that actually undermines the argument that that we hold that Christ is still

God that he is the creator So yeah, and just one last comment on that is as you mentioned right at the beginning

The word other is just not there. There's no way you can infer it from the context

There are two Greek words for the word other one means other of the same kind The other one means other of a different kind neither of those words are found in this context anywhere

And so there's just no warrant to import that here into this and so if you did want to Bring that in here

You would say if it was if Christ was created and all other things were created you would use that word to say all

Other unlike things things that are unlike Christ were also created But you don't find that here.

So there's no argument for it within the context Okay Greek test for me

It's is it a loss and heteros or that are the all other is the use of other for other of the same and other

Different am I correct? You don't heteros is other that is different kind. I'll also is other of the same kind.

Yeah Yeah nailed it I don't always get to talk to I don't always get to talk to Greek professors.

I'm gonna check myself out. Yeah Yeah, and it goes back to things like marriage and stuff right heterosexual

The whole idea is that you marry someone who is other than this of a different kind to yourself, right?

So, yeah Yeah, absolutely Well brother, I've enjoyed talking to you.

I again I could pick your brain all day I think this is helpful though for people especially as we're heading into the

Christmas season the the question of Whether or not

Jesus is truly God Really? It hits us in every area

But specifically when we start thinking about the question of the incarnation Then we begin to think about and I know we're a couple months away

But in my house Christmas music starts right around this time of year because about Halloween, right? Yeah, yeah

Christmas season is already upon us and But you know every year we celebrate at our church

We celebrate the the incarnation that you know People want to talk about Christmas and and and people want to debate about celebrating

Christmas I said, but you know what? We should never debate whether or not we should celebrate the incarnation and we should celebrate that reality all the time

God became a man that the second person of the Trinity entered into his own creation and through that brought with him redemption and And and a sacrifice to be made for our sins.

So that's it. That's a tremendous blessing and I there's nothing in the text that should cause us to question whether or not we are here

We truly have Christ as the God man. Absolutely. No, I agree You know and for those who do wonder about Christmas You know

During the up to about the fourth century or so Christmas was universally celebrated. Well, the birth of Christ was universally celebrated around the 6th of January, but there was this celebration on the 25th of December which was to the

Sun God and Christians because the Empire became Christian eyes Christians really wanted to overtake that pagan festival

And so they relocated the date of Christmas from the 6th of January to the 25th of December so that they would be celebrating the birth of Christ rather than the worship of the

Sun God and so it was really taking a pagan holiday and Diminishing the pagan the

Soviet and replacing it with something good and holy and right Something that reminds us that God united himself with us so that we could be united with Christ to paraphrase and if Athanasius So, um, so it's a it's a really good holiday,

I think and you know, whatever traditions come with that you know Christmas trees or Whatever.

I think you know, those things are far less important than reminding ourselves That Christ became

God became incarnate. He became you know, it's a Latin term meaning in flesh So that we could become one with him

You know, that's the joy of the Christian of faith really is that we don't what we have is not because of our righteousness

It's because we're in Christ and and that's really we're all out all his blessing all his inheritance all his

Throne his rights are all given to us without any deservedness on our part

Because of the incarnation without the incarnation none of that would be possible. So it's a good holiday to celebrate

Hey, man, amen and Over in New Zealand. Is there any particularly distinct?

Way of celebrating that might be different from us over here in the United States So not from a

Christian point of view But one of the most disarming elements of New Zealand Christmas is and I could say this is probably true of Australia as well

Is seeing Santa Claus in a bathing suit and is with a surfboard under his arm on Christmas year around Christmas That's that's kind of what we have because of course this summer here not winter

So we have this twisted kind of form of it all so that gets weird.

I Never thought about that the fact that it is summer and not winter. Yeah, that's interesting and Okay, so I guess when

I think about Santa Claus punching areas at the Council of Nice here, which I which I Every year

I joke about that. I talk about that so I can now picture Santa Claus punching areas in a bathing suit

Yeah I'll have to get AI to work on that.

That's a good idea. Actually, we should think of AI for stuff like that Shouldn't we that's a great use of it that Santa Claus punching areas at the

Council of Nice here wearing a bathing suit holding a surfboard that That's an AI picture right and don't forget your suntan lotion as well

You got it. You got to protect yourself from the Sun, right? Yeah, yeah. Well my friend

I want to thank you for coming in sharing with us about your ministry giving us a portion of your testimony and also telling us about the importance of learning the biblical languages that I I Truly believe it is a very valuable thing for everybody not just the pastors

But as you said even for light folks who who are able to invest the time to study

I think it's a useful tool for everybody and you get you're making that accessible So I want to thank you for that and thank you for all that you're doing.

It's a joy I'm thrilled to be able to serve. So yeah, it's great. Thank you for having me on.

I really appreciate it Absolutely. I want to thank you guys all for being a part of the show today again

Remember if you want to get a hold of Daryl and look at his ministry I'm going to have all of his information in the links below Also, if you want to help this show out you can do the easiest thing in the world

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Thank you again for listening to your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Bosky and I'm in your Calvinist may