JW.org answers criticism of the translation by listing favourable comments from Edgar J. Goodspeed, Allen Wikgren, Alexander Thomson, Charles Francis Potter, Robert M. McCoy, S. MacLean Gilmour, Thomas N. Winter, Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein and Jason David BeDuhn.
Claim ID claim-bible-org-scholar-endorsementsConcerns 19 September 2026Organisation's explanation
The claim and its evidence
Organisation's explanation · 19 September 2026Verified
19 September 2026 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania
“Reliability. The New World Translation is based on up-to-date scholarly research and the most reliable ancient manuscripts. . . . Faithfulness. The New World Translation strives to convey faithfully the original message that was inspired by God. . . . Literalness. Unlike paraphrased translations, the New World Translation renders words literally as long as doing so does not result in awkward wording or hide the thought of the original writings.”
The page answers criticism of the translation under the headings reliability, faithfulness, literalness, missing books, missing verses and different wording, and then lists favourable comments from Edgar J. Goodspeed (letter of 8 December 1950), Allen Wikgren (The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. I, p. 99), Alexander Thomson (The Differentiator, April 1952, p. 52), Charles Francis Potter (The Faiths Men Live By, p. 300), Robert M. McCoy (Andover Newton Quarterly, January 1963, p. 31), S. MacLean Gilmour (Andover Newton Quarterly, September 1966, p. 26), Thomas N. Winter (The Classical Journal, April-May 1974, p. 376), Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein (1989) and Jason David BeDuhn (Truth in Translation, pp. 163, 165). Footnote a, whose marker is attached to the article’s opening sentence about people who have “commented on or questioned the accuracy of the New World Translation” — that is, above the endorsement list rather than beside it — reads: “Comments apply to editions of the English New World Translation prior to the 2013 revision.”
Provenance and verification note for JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, Is the New World Translation Accurate?
Confidence note. Page fetched from JW.org and read in full on 19 September 2026; the quotations, the scholar list and the footnote were confirmed from the page text. The date recorded is the access date because the page carries no publication date and may change. We have NOT opened the underlying books and journals, so the scholars’ wording is recorded here only as JW.org reproduces it.
1993 · pp.609-611 · pars. 58, 62, 67 · Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.
“The text is based on that of Brooke F. Westcott and Fenton J. A. Hort (1881, repr.), but the translation by the anonymous committee is thoroughly up-to-date and consistently accurate.”
The chapter reproduces favourable notices of the translation in three separate boxes — "A Fresh Translation" (p. 609), "A Text With Instant Vocabulary" (p. 610) and "The Opinion of a Hebrew Scholar" (p. 611) — including Alexander Thomson in The Differentiator (June 1954, p. 131), Thomas N. Winter in The Classical Journal (April-May 1974, pp. 375-6, quoted here) and Professor Benjamin Kedar of Israel (1989), who is quoted as saying he has “never discovered in the ‘New World Translation’ any biased intent to read something into the text that it does not contain”.
Provenance and verification note for Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, Chapter 27: Printing and Distributing God’s Own Sacred Word
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026; the quoted reviews were confirmed as they appear in the chapter. The underlying journals were NOT opened, so this record establishes only what the organisation quotes, not the full context of each review.
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.”
Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, The “New World Translation”—Scholarly and Honest
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; the issue date was confirmed by locating the article in the Online Library’s listing for The Watchtower of 1 March 1991, and page numbers were taken from the document’s embedded page markers.
Notes. This is the article the site should quote when stating the organisation’s case on the divine name in the Christian Greek Scriptures: it concedes the manuscript position and argues from inference.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID.src-nwto-w-1991-0301-scholarly-honest
A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-bible-org-scholar-endorsements/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.