Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the many pseudo- Christian sects that emerged in the 19th century in the United States. That century abounded in the proliferation of pseudo-Christian sectarianism. Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded by Charles Taze Russell in 1851. The sect was, at that time called the “Bible Student Movement”, later becoming the “International Bible Students Association.” Since 1931, they have been known by the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, which they still use today. Their headquarters is in Brooklyn, USA, with a European affiliate in Germany, which branches out in a pyramidal structure across the Continent, including Serbia.
A lot could be written about Jehovah’s Witnesses – primarily whether this religious organisation, with its dogma about prohibiting blood transfusions, threatens the lives and health of the general population. Based on this, it could be rightfully asked whether their activities could be classified under the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion, or whether we are dealing with the manipulation which belongs to the sphere of criminal liability. In any case, their dogma is an agglomeration of almost all known heresies, which have been condemned by the Church. Their dogma contains not a single accurate aspect of Christian teaching, so it may rightfully be asked whether Jehovah’s Witnesses are Christians at all (even the Islamic teaching about Jesus Christ is closer to Christianity, than the Christology of Jehovah’s Witnesses). The fundamental heresies in the dogmatics of Jehovah’s Witnesses are: the anti-Trinitarian theology and Arian Christology. In other words, Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the Holy Trinity and claim that God, whom they call Jehovah, is a monad. Thus, they reiterate the ancient, long- ago condemned Arian heresy – that God is only the Father, while the Son and the Holy Spirit are merely created beings ( for them, the Holy Spirit is not even a hypostasis, but rather merely signifies divine action). According to the dogmatics of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Son is God’s first created being, through which God (Jehovah) then created everything else. This is precisely what Arius, the condemned heretic taught in the fourth century.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have adapted and falsified the biblical text itself to fit their teaching. Specifically, they have falsified the parts of the Bible which clearly speak of the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Every person who attempts to read the Bible in the “New World Translation” (NWT), whether in electronic or printed form, ought to be aware that it is a translation by Jehovah’s Witnesses. I will present the evidence concerning the falsified biblical parts in several posts on our blog.
Let’s start with the Gospel according to John 1:1. First, we quote the Greek original:
Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
The Serbian translation reads:
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.
The Logos is the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. The Logos can be translated as the Word (Slovo in Old Church Slavonic). The Logos is said to have been in the beginning and that it was with God. The imperfect tense of the verb to be ( ἦν) points here to the eternal existence of the Logos.
The phrase ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν – the Logos was with God speaks of the eternal relationship of the Logos with God, that is, of the Logos the Son with the Father. The phrase can also be translated as: the Logos was with God, as the English translation states (King James Version of the English Bible, The New American Standard Bible): the Word was with God. Finally, it is said of the Logos: θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος – the Logos was God.
Let us now look at the translation and interpretation of Jehovah’s Witnesses:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Word was god. (John 1:1)
It is apparent that the imperfect tense of the verb to be, which in this context refers to the eternal property of the Word (Logos), is missing. Also, it is apparent that Jehovah’s Witnesses use both the upper and the lower case for the noun God. According to them, “God” with a capital initial letter refers to Jehovah, and a lower case initial “god” refers to the Word (Logos). Therefore, the Logos is not “God”, but “god”. What seems to be the difference – is it just in the upper and lower case initial letter? No. When they say that the Word was god, Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that here the word god denotes an adjective – the Word was divine, it is of divine origin, that is God had created it – there was a time when it was not, as the heretic Arius claimed. Here we have an absurdity and a falsehood (a lie). The absurdity is: if god denotes an adjective, meaning, of divine origin, or that which was created by God, then the whole Creation could also be called god, for it also has a divine origin, that is, its Creator is also God. The falsehood (the lie) is that the word θεὸς (God) denotes an adjective, and that it can be translated as divine. θεὸς is a noun, and can only be translated as – God. The adjective divine in Greek would be θεῖος, as we find it, for example, in 2 Peter 1:3: Ὡς πάντα ἡμῖν τῆς θείας δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ τὰ πρὸς ζωὴν καὶ εὐσέβειαν δεδωρημένη – Since His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life…
In order to support their interpretation that the Logos is not God, although it clearly states that the Logos was God, Jehovah’s Witnesses in their falsified version of the Bible, added a footnote to the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Philippians 2:5-6:
Τοῦτο φρονεῖτε ἐν ὑμῖν ὃ καὶ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ.
Jehovah’s Witnesses translate this passage as follows:
Think the same way as Christ Jesus thought. Although he resembled God, he never even considered trying to be equal to God…
It would be an error to even call this a bad translation, because it is a complete distortion of the passage in question, and an absolute falsification of the words of the Apostle Paul. The correct translation reads:
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God…
The cited passage does not contain the phrase although he resembled God, as Jehovah’s Witnesses write. The phrase says the following – ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων. Here is the analysis of the individual words: ὃς is a relative pronoun – who; ἐν is a preposition –in; μορφῇ is the dative singular of the noun μορφή – form, shape, appearance; θεοῦ is the genitive singular of the noun θεός – God; ὑπάρχων is the nominative singular participle of the present active of the verb ὑπάρχω – to exist, to be present. A literal translation would thus be: Who existing in the form of God. The meaning is clear – Christ exists in the form of God, which denotes his divine nature, which he has in common with the Father. Therefore, because of the fact that Christ, or the Logos exists in the form of God (i.e. that he has a divine nature), He (Christ) did not consider it robbery that he is equal to God, or that he is appropriating something that does not belong to him – οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ. Here is the analysis: οὐχ is an adverb – a negation not; ἁρπαγμὸν is the accusative singular of the noun ἁρπαγμός – robbery, plunder, appropriation of something that does not belong to us; ἡγήσατο is the aorist third person singular of the verb ἡγέομαι – to consider, to think, to hold an opinion; εἶναι is the present active infinitive of the verb εἰμί – to be; ἴσα is an adjective form of ἴσος – the same, equal; θεῷ is the dative singular of the noun θεός – God. A literal translation would be: he did not consider it robbery that he is equal to God.
In the following verse, the Apostle Paul mentions that Christ humbled himself by taking the form of a servant, becoming identical to men – ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος, which speaks of His human nature, which He assumed in the Incarnation, by being born of the Virgin Mary. Thus, the key Christological syntagmas of the Apostle Paul are μορφὴ θεοῦ – the form of God and μορφὴ δούλου – the form of a servant (or μορφὴ ἀνθρώπου – the form of a man).
If we look at the translation by Jehovah’s Witnesses, we notice that they initially translated these syntagmas correctly – the form of God and the form of a servant. The translation was revised, however, in 2019, whereby μορφὴ θεοῦ (the form of God) was translated as Christ’s likeness to God and μορφὴ δούλου (the form of a servant) in the sense that Christ was like a slave. Specifically, they significantly shortened the Philippians 2:7 verse, which in their translation reads as follows:
Rather, he gave up everything and became like a slave. He became a man.
The Greek original, however, says the following:
ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος• καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος.
The accurate translation is:
But he humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming identical to men, and being found in appearance as a man.
It is obvious that Jehovah’s Witnesses, in their revised 2019 translation, falsified the syntagmas μορφὴ θεοῦ (the form of God) and μορφὴ δούλου (the form of a servant), translating the noun μορφὴ as the adjective similar (in Philippians 2:6) and the preposition like (in Philippians 2:7) – not only did they miss the meaning of the noun μορφὴ, but they also got the parts of speech wrong – they translated the noun with an adjective and a preposition. The aim was clear – to adapt the biblical text to the heretical Arian Christology, which Jehovah’s Witnesses confess.
While we are dealing with the quoted passage from the Epistle to the Philippians, let us also mention that Jehovah’s Witnesses have translated the noun σταυρός (stavros) – the cross (Philippians 2:8) as the torture stake, which is another falsification of the biblical text, with the aim of adapting it to their teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ was not crucified on a cross, but was nailed to a stake instead (without a vertical beam).
Beware that you are not deceived. (Luke 21:8)
Deacon Dr. Aleksandar Milojkov
