Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 April 17

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April 17

Philosophical question

Hello.   I am having difficulty of my spiritual writings being accepted can you explain why this is so? No copyright is involved as they are truthfully expressed through the Holy Spirit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tmglen (talk • contribs) 10:52, 17 April 2015‎ (UTC)

If you are trying to get your writings accepted by a publisher, you need to ask the publisher why he won't publish them. If you are trying to get them accepted by Wikipedia, you need to read Wikipedia's policy regarding original research. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:33, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

If you are meaning the item you placed here, then I'm afraid it isn't really encyclopedic, and won't be added to Wikipedia. LongHairedFop (talk) 13:05, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Three Bible questions

Here are three questions regarding the Bible, involving two different denominations:

1. Is the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (the Bible translated and used by the Jehovah's Witnesses) used by any non-Witnesses? If, so, in what way (for example, independent study, Bible scholarly research, etc.)? And following from these, have any non-JW denominations made statements regarding the NWT translation? @Wavelength: @Jeffro77:

2. Has there been non-Latter Day Saint scholarship on the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible?

3. Apart from the Jehovah's Witnesses, what other Christian denominations produced their own translations of the Bible primarily for their own official use? The King James Bible does not count, as non-Anglican denominations use it as well. The aforementioned JST doesn't count either, because as far as I know officially the Latter Day Saint movement prefers to use the KJV or "any Bible so long as it is translated correctly". I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church uses some Catholic-specific Bibles, but as far as I know none of these have any official status.

Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 13:02, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Whilst it is unhelpful to say what translation any particular individual might prefer, there are no well-known groups that prefer the NWT other than JWs, largely because key texts were translated specifically to support JW doctrines. Various scholars have examined the NWT for the purposes of criticism and review. Some of these are already mentioned at the article for the NWT linked in the question above. Various denominations have commented on the doctrines of JWs, including their views of doctrinal bias in the NWT. For example, see [1].

3. There are many translations of the Bible, and it's fairly naive to imagine that 'only JWs' have come up with their own translation, regardless of any tempting argument from ignorance. The official Catholic Douay-Rheims version is a very obvious major translation—it was commissioned specifically by Cathoics to refute Protestantism and remains the preferred translation by many English-speaking traditionalist Catholics. (See also Modern English Bible translations#Catholic translations for a list of Bibles officially recognised by bishops of the Catholic Church.) Members of any denomination could claim that only their preferred translation is "translated correctly", so the 'justification' for excluding the JST (or any other translation) from your criteria is fairly weak. The (original) NWT was actually quite closely modeled off the KJV, with variations generally relating to 1) replacing Old English, 2) indicating progressive verbs, and 3) doctrinal bias. (The 2013 revision of the NWT is essentially a paraphrase of the original NWT.)--Jeffro77 (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

@Jeffro77: As a follow-up: as far as you know, do non-JW Bible students (i.e. other sects of the Bible Student movement) use the NWT? And have any of these sects made any statement regarding the NWT? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 14:11, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I am not aware that any of the minor Bible Student movement groups that separated from the Watch Tower Society after Charles Russell's death have since started using the New World Translation, and it is extremely unlikely that they would do so, as Rutherford's doctrinal alterations that form the basis of JW beliefs that differ from Charle's Russell's teachings were largely responsible for the main 1917 schism (though other splinter groups also formed during Russell's life). It is quite possible that some of the extremely small Jehovah's Witnesses splinter groups that diverged more recently might use the NWT, though I am not aware of any specific examples.--Jeffro77 (talk) 14:22, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Do you know about the academic fields of religious studies and comparative religion? Many people study many bibles, and they may prefer a different bible, or not even identify as Christian. One recent example that has made the popular press: Reza Aslan, who is a highly educated scholar of the New Testament, even though he is personally a Muslim [2]. So yes, most likely there are scholars who have studied the Joseph Smith translation and NWT, while not personally identifying as a member of either sect. SemanticMantis (talk) 13:53, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't really count as an answer for Q3, but the Conservative Bible Project (page access likely to be blocked for many users) is good for a laugh. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:05, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Is that the one where Jesus says, "Blessed are the job creators, for they shall be exempt from taxation"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Quite possibly, as Andrew Schlafly believes that many of [Jesus'] parables were freemarket economic parables. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 22:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Apparently the solution to "Christian" conservatives ignoring the teachings of Jesus in favor if the Old Testament is to change those teachings to match. StuRat (talk) 22:28, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

• Many Christians are concerned with inaccuracies in any translation, that's why Parallel text bibles are published, showing several translations side-by-side. That allows readers to get a better sense of the original text even if they don't speak it, the idea being that the differences would "average out" over several translations, or to allow one to understand the variety of possible interpretations of a passage. --Jayron32 20:24, 17 April 2015 (UTC)