The New World Translation renders the John 1 as “In the beginnin there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was a god” (emphasis mine). There is nothing in the original Greek to support this.
They would argue: The Greek language itself does not have indefinite articles,and so anywhere you say an “a” or an “an” it is added by the translator; and the passage could just as easily say that Jesus is simply a divine being, and not Almight Gog himself. And so the insertion of an “a” is truth to the sense of the text.
Of course, there are counter-arguments. And I accept these. But if the Watchtower doesn’t, then I’ve no need to assume that they keep this translation out of deliberate lie.
Could you cite an example?
There’s no need to. I’m not a Biblical scholar, so it’s not my place to say with any degree of authority. However, the pressence of bias, in ANY translation, is admitted by all Biblical scholars, no matter the religion. Naturallu, where two manuscripts contain different renderings, the Catholic scholar will choose the one which sounds more “Catholic.” Look, for example, at the appendix to the RSV-CE and see changes made to the Catholic version of the RSV.
I’m speaking of the Witnesses who explicity deny that the Watchtower society ever made these predictions at all. They have to be confronted with actual copies of Awake! or The Watchtower to be convinced.
Ler’s get real. The vast majority of Catholics don’t know about all this supposed historical contradictions which Protestants bring up. If they were told that a Pope in the 14th century denied that the souls of the just experience the beatific vision until Judgement Day, they’d probably assume it was a lie until they saw otherwise. If they were told that the Angelic Doctor of Catholic philosophy did not believe that humans received a human soul until 40 days after conception, they’d probably think that was a lie. And I could go on and on.
The point is, I would expect a Witness to demand proof about historical dirt on their Society, rather than just believe it because I told him it was true.
To put it bluntly, properly speaking, evangelization is sharing the Good News with those who have not heard it. Proselytizing, on the other hand, is considered “sheep stealing.” If you aproach someone who belongs to a church and considers themself a Christian, but you convince him he is not, and that to be one he has to join your Church, that’s proselytizing.
This simply is not true. The two words mean exactly the same thing. One just sounds meaner, and so people use it to discourage any form of evangelizing at all.
Never has the word “proselyitize” carried the meaning that you’ve given it, in any context. It’s a definition you just made up now, though with good intentions.
That’s because it’s OUR job to evangelize…nowhere does it say that it is left up to the church per se
That’s a load of Bull if I ever heard it. Every Catholic before the 1960s would have known it was the Church’s sacred duty to evangelize; and in fact, this is exactly what Vatican II and the Catechism say.
The hierarchy of the obligation to lead efforts to evangelize, although we lay also have the unfortunate obligation to pick up the slack when said hierarchy fail in this regard.
I for one have no problem telling Orthodox Russia, with all non-Catholics, that the salvation of its citizens is in peril unless they all convert to Catholicism. Neither should the Holy Father.
