The organisation’s explanation for criticism of the translation is that it is attacked because of its publisher rather than its scholarship: ‘the New World Translation is criticized because it is published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, who outspokenly declare that many of Christendom’s doctrines are not found in the Bible.’

The Watchtower, “The “New World Translation”—Scholarly and Honest”

1 March 1991 · pp.26-30 · pars. 14, 17, 20 (pp. 28-30) · Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

“True, no early surviving Greek manuscript of the “New Testament” contains the personal name of God. But the name was included in the New World Translation for sound reasons, not merely on a whim.”

The article is the organisation’s fullest published answer to the charge that the New World Translation is falsified. It compares the criticism to sixteenth-century attacks on Luther’s Bible, defends the renderings at Luke 23:43 (“Truly I tell you today”), Matthew 26:26 (“This means my body”) and John 1:1 (“the Word was a god”), and answers the objection to the form “Jehovah” by saying that “scholars are by no means in agreement that the form ‘Yahweh’ represents the original pronunciation”. It offers this explanation of the criticism: “the New World Translation is criticized because it is published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, who outspokenly declare that many of Christendom’s doctrines are not found in the Bible.”

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