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Review: Jehovah's Witnesses Defended (2nd edition) by Greg Stafford
By Dr. Robert Morey
Having dealt with Jehovah's Witnesses for over 40 years, I have come to the
firm conviction that they are pathological liars by religious conviction. Dealing with them is like listening to President Clinton say, "I never had sex with that woman."
I wondered for many years why they
lie with such boldness. Then the book, Aid To Bible Understanding, was published by the Watchtower Society. In the article under "Lies, lying, etc.", I finally found the reason why Jehovah's Witnesses could look me in the
eye and say, "We never said anything about 1975." According to the article, a "lie" is not telling the truth to someone who deserves it. Someone who is not a Jehovah's Witness does not necessarily deserve the
truth. Jehovah blesses JW's when they lie to those who are fighting against the Society. At last I had documented proof that the Society taught its troops to lie whenever they were backed into a corner.
Once an organization
states in print that it will lie whenever it feels it is in their best interests, how can you trust anything it says? I decided to put this insight to the test each time I dialoged with Witnesses. I put two sheets of paper on the
table and wrote on my sheet, "I, Robert Morey, promise to tell you the truth and not to lie to you at any time," and then signed it. I pushed the other sheet toward the Witnesses and ask them to write and then sign a
statement that they promised not lie to me. How many Witnesses have been willing to sign such a statement? In twenty years, not ONE Witness would promise not to lie to me! Not one! I then pointed out that by refusing to promise to
tell me the truth and not to lie to me, they are telling me that they will lie to me if it will serve their god.
This is what makes a review of Stafford's book difficult. The individuals behind this book feel it is
their religious duty to lie whenever it is in the best interest of the Society. This means that you cannot take anything they say at face value. Everything they say is suspect. Nothing can be taken for granted. Of the author, we
are told nothing. Since the book is self-published, do we have any guarantee that his name is really Greg Stafford? Did he even graduate from high school? Did he go to college or university? If so, where and when? What was his
major? Does he have any graduate degrees? Did he take any college level courses in Hebrew or Greek? This does not seem to be the case from his book. He is too dependent on secondary sources for the most part. For all we know, he is
a fictional person or a "front" who represents a committee of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The Forward is supposedly written by someone by the name of Rolf Furuli. All we are told about him is the phrase "University
of Oslo." Does this mean that he is a student at this University? Or that he graduated from it? If so, what major did he have? Or does this mean that he teaches at this University? If so, what subject does he teach? Pottery?
Basket weaving? Greek? Hebrew? Logic? Philosophy? History? What is his area of competence? Oslo is sufficiently far enough away that these questions cannot be answered easily. Was this deliberate? Rolf, if he exists and that is his
name, praises Jehovah's Witness for "preaching the gospel of the kingdom" and Stafford for "delivering logically sound argumentation." He gushes like a schoolgirl in heaping adulations upon Stafford. In our
opinion, the book fails to deliver the goods as promised by Furuli.
One interesting development that has transpired since this book appeared is that the Watchtower has forced Stafford and other Jehovah's Witnesses off the
internet. Thus there is now no way to dialog with any of the author(s)of the book. The cultic power of the Society is now revealed. A Witness cannot even dialog on the internet without their permission! Given this situation, we
will review the book on the basis of logic, hermeneutics, philosophy, linguistics, and exegesis.
Observations:
As I read the book, I looked in vain for a positive presentation of Watchtower theology.
There was no discussion or defense of the finite god presented in Aid To Bible Understanding who chose not to know the future. A god not quite omniscient is an interesting oddity reminiscent of the pagan gods of Greece and Rome.
The philosophical and theological implications of a limited deity are staggering. I trace the history of limited deities in my book, Battle of the Gods.
I then looked for a discussion of the epistemological principles upon
which the book is based. In a limp response to my book, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues (World), there is a brief discussion of this on pages 78-80. He claims that he does not begin with a "preconceived view." This is,
of course, a lie. He is a self-confessed Jehovah's Witness who is writing in defense of the Society's teachings. He assumes as his apriori that the Society speaks for Jehovah and thus the Trinity is a false doctrine.
That this is the case is clear from page 87 where he sweeps aside my exegesis of John 10:30 with these words, "Morey imports a post-biblical view into John 10:30..."
If you begin with the assumption that the
Watchtower is the prophet of God and thus true in its doctrines, then the Trinity doctrine is "post-biblical," i.e. it was invented centuries after the close of the New Testament. Then, using circular reasoning, you end
up with the following syllogism: Since the Trinity is a post-biblical concept, Then it cannot be found in the Bible. Since it cannot be found in the Bible, Then the Trinity is a post-biblical concept.
In this sense,
Stafford's entire book is an exercise in circular reasoning. Behind every discussion of every text is the apriori assumption that whatever that text says, it CANNOT teach the Trinity because the Society teaches that the Trinity is
not biblical. Pretended neutrality is nothing more than veiled deception.
Stafford's claim not to have any preconceived assumptions is just another example of lying for Jehovah and his Society. A first year philosophy
student understands that when someone claims not to have any presuppositions, he has just revealed one of his presuppositions!
I then looked in vain for a discussion of the hermeneutical principles that guide his
interpretation of Scripture. Again, I was met with disappointment. But this is to be expected, as a cultist must follow the inspired interpretation given by his "prophet," hermeneutics goes out the window.
Since I
devoted a large section in my book to the exegetical evidence for OT theophanies, i.e. where God appeared in human form, I assumed that he would deal with this vast exegetical evidence. But he avoided any discussion of theophanies
in general and only gave a brief shallow discussion of Isa. 6:1 (pgs. 174f). He quotes the Watchtower's interpretation of Isa. 6:1 and John 12 as the final word on the issue.
How could he omit the theophanies from his
review of the arguments used by Trinitarians? The only reasonable explanation is that the evidence is too strong to bring up. He simply cannot handle it.
In terms of logic, I began a list of the fallacies he commits and
when it reached several pages, I gave up. He commits so many logical fallacies so often that it would take an entire volume just to list them!
Another problem is his failure to understand how real publishers work. When you
have books published by mainline publishers, there is a time lag between when you give them the manuscript and when they publish it. The normal time lag is two years. This means that any research that was written between when you
sent in the manuscript and when it is published will not be found in your book.
Scholars understand that you cannot criticize an author if a source he quotes changes after he has sent in his manuscript. Evidently, this is
not understood by Stafford.
Seeking to avoid having to deal with the major arguments given in my book on the Trinity, Stafford decided to focus on one minor intertestamental evidence for the deity of the Messiah and turned
it into an ad hominem attack against my character. In the Aramaic "Son of God" Scroll there was a reference to the Messiah as "a great God of gods."
Some translators use the lower case and put it as "a great
god of gods." Whether you translate it with a capital "G" or lower case "g" is not in the text but in the judgment of the translator. Since I had already stated that I would use my own translations at times, I had the freedom
to use capital "G" because it fit better with the context. Since I am the translator of the Psalms for the International Standard Version, my qualifications for using my own translations cannot be questioned.
Stafford chose this minor point to utilize two logical fallacies. First, one of scroll scholars I cited changed his translation AFTER my manuscript was finished and sent in to the publisher. Stafford used this later translation to
imply that I was dishonest! But if the scholar later changed his translation, that does not mean I was dishonest since my comments refer to his earlier translation.
Second, one of the laws of logic is that the attributes of
a part cannot be attributed to the whole. If later research on a scroll reveals that earlier translations were in error (This happens all the time!), this is fine with me. I can change my book when it is reprinted. But what does
Stafford do? He uses this minor point, on which Scroll scholars still disagree, to broad brush my entire book as unreliable!
I must also point out that he omitted any discussion of the mass amount of intertestamental
material I cited. Evidently, he did not deal with those quotes because he could not figure out a way to wiggle out of them.
I personally think the scholar changed his translation for theological reasons. The liberal
zeitgeist has exerted this power before. Thus his change of translation does not logically imply that my entire book is erroneous. Stafford only reveals that he could not handle my book and decided to dismiss it by using character
slurs.
Now, if I wrote a book in which I stated that I believe in lying when it serves my purpose, then he could question my honesty. But I don't believe in lying. I must speak the truth in love. Since Stafford is in a
Society that teaches lying when it serves its purposes, he is suspect.
The same holds for his partial quotations and misrepresentations of Trinitarians in general. Witnesses have a long history of doing this. He twists what
Trinitarians write and does not tell people what they really said on an issue. But this is what I have grown to expect from Jehovah's Witnesses.
Over all, I was disappointed with the book. The same old tired arguments
developed by 19th century Unitarians were regurgitated by Stafford. Same old, same old...boring!
Califronia Institute of Apology
PO Box 7447 Orange,
CA 92863 |
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Review: The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation by Rolf Furuli
By James Stewart
If you are looking for a book on The Role of Theology and Bias in
Bible Translation, (in my opinion) you won't find it here. This book claims to be, "...a philological and linguistic approach to the issues, rather than a theological one."(Page xvii) On page 155, Mr. Furuli states,
"As we proceed with our discussion, we should keep in mind that the following section of this chapter (or any other part in this book) is not written to defend the renditions of the NWT or the arguments behind them."
Again on page 292 he states, "There is therefore, a need for literal Bible translations with extensive footnotes and appendices, so as to inform the reader of the different choices that have been made on his or her behalf.
Because the NWT is just such a translation, it was chosen as the object of our study." Mr. Furuli does state in note 8 on page xvii, "Any work will, to a certain extent, be colored by the author's theology, this is of
course also the case with this book." This is too weak of an admission. What you find is a book that should have been entitled 'New World Translation Defended.' This book is just a Jehovah's Witness apologetic.
In the
description of the author, it does not state that he is one of Jehovah's Witnesses. This book picks out three books critical of the New World Translation to refute. These three books are Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus Christ, and The
Gospel of John by Robert M. Bowman, Jr.; The Jehovah's Witnesses' New Testament by R.H. Countess; and So Many Versions by S. Kubo and W.F. Specht. Considering the author's claims of providing an objective analysis, it is surprising
that he attempts to refute books that are critical of the New World Translation.
On pages XV and 45, he states that translation is interpretation. On page 27, he criticizes the TEV for some of its translations of SARX
stating, "...thus, the interpreting is done for the reader, when it should be done by the reader." But didn't he say that translation is interpretation (rhetorical question)? Again on page 31, he states, "Idiomatic
translations convey words that represent the interpretations of the translators. Literal translations convey concepts that the readers can interpret." But didn't he say that translation is interpretation (rhetorical question)?
On page 42, he states that Nida & Taber's translation (interpretation) of Eph. 1:4 is forced upon the reader. But this is a two-edged sword. The New World Translation of Eph. 1:4 is forced upon the reader. The largest
problem with all of this is that he is contradicting his organization! In The Watchtower, 7/1/73, page 402, it stated, "Only this organization functions for Jehovah's purpose and to his praise. To it alone God's Sacred Word,
the Bible, is not a sealed book." And, in The Watchtower, 10/1/67, page 587, it stated, "Thus the Bible is an organizational book and belongs to the Christian congregation as an organization, not to individuals,
regardless of how sincerely they may believe that they can interpret the Bible. For this reason, the Bible cannot be properly understood without Jehovah's visible organization in mind."
One glaring deficiency in this
book is no discussion of the concepts of 'marked' and 'unmarked' meanings of words. This is fundamental to any book on translation. If you want to read a real book on Bible translation, Mr. Furuli references two books I would
highly recommend. They are The Theory and Practice of Translation by E.A. Nida & C.R. Taber published by Leiden: Brill, 1974 and From One Language to Another by J. de Waard & E.A. Nida published by Nashville: Thomas Nelson,
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