The Watchtower (study edition), “The 2013 Revision of the New World Translation”
“Over the years, the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures has been revised a number of times, but the 2013 revision was by far the most extensive. For example, there are now about 10 percent fewer English words in the translation.”
The article explains the revision term by term: “impaled” to “executed on a stake”, “lose conduct” to “brazen conduct”, “long-suffering” to “patience”, “loving-kindness” to “loyal love”, “seed” to “offspring” at Genesis 3:15, “kidneys” to “innermost thoughts” at Revelation 2:23, and “sons of Israel” to “Israelites”. On the text it says: “The original New World Translation was based on the Hebrew Masoretic text and the respected Greek text by Westcott and Hort,” and that the committee added words at 2 Samuel 13:21 from the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls, restored God’s name five times in First Samuel, and changed the order of ideas at Matthew 21:29-31, so that “some changes were based on the weight of manuscript evidence rather than on the strict adherence to a single master Greek text”.
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Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower (study edition), The 2013 Revision of the New World Translation
Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; wording and page markers confirmed from the document.
Corroborated by. src-nwto-nwtsty-a2-features
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-nwto-w-2015-1215-revision-2013