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La Bible et la traduction · Claim record

La page de JW.org intitulée “Is the New World Translation Accurate?” cite le verdict favorable de BeDuhn tiré des pages 163 et 165 de Truth in Translation, et ne mentionne pas l’appendice commençant à la page 169 dans lequel il qualifie d’inexactitude l’emploi de « Jéhovah » dans le Nouveau Testament par cette traduction.

Claim ID claim-bible-jw-quotes-half-of-beduhnConcerns 19 septembre 2026Contexte
Contexte · 19 septembre 2026 Vérifié

La page de JW.org intitulée “Is the New World Translation Accurate?” cite le verdict favorable de BeDuhn tiré des pages 163 et 165 de Truth in Translation, et ne mentionne pas l’appendice commençant à la page 169 dans lequel il qualifie d’inexactitude l’emploi de « Jéhovah » dans le Nouveau Testament par cette traduction. JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 septembre 2026Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003

Position de l’organisation ou explication ultérieure : La Tour de Garde du 1er décembre 2004 a bien dit à ses lecteurs que BeDuhn était « critique à l’égard de certains de ses choix de traduction », sans préciser en quoi consistait cette critique.

Afficher les preuves (3 sources)
Publication primaire des Témoins de Jéhovah Vérifié

JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, “Is the New World Translation Accurate?”

19 septembre 2026 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Based on his analysis of nine major English translations, Jason David BeDuhn, associate professor of religious studies, wrote: 'The NW [New World Translation] emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared.' Although the general public and many Bible scholars assume that the differences in the New World Translation are the result of religious bias on the part of its translators, BeDuhn stated: 'Most of the differences are due to the greater accuracy of the NW as a literal, conservative translation of the original expressions of the New Testament writers.'—Truth in Translation, pages 163, 165.”

The page sets out three reasons the New World Translation differs from other Bibles (reliability, faithfulness, literalness), explains the omission of the Apocrypha and of later manuscript additions, and then, under the heading 'Positive comments about the New World Translation from non-Witness scholars', gives nine favourable comments: Edgar J. Goodspeed (a letter dated 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 (a statement of 1989) and Jason David BeDuhn. A footnote states that the comments 'apply to editions of the English New World Translation prior to the 2013 revision'.

Source officielle

Note de provenance et de vérification

Note sur la fiabilité. The whole page was fetched and read on 19 September 2026 and every quotation above was transcribed from it. The page is undated, so the access date is recorded as its date; its content may change. [Independent audit, 19 September 2026] The page was fetched and read again. The BeDuhn quotation above is verbatim. One correction: the page carries nine favourable comments, not eight — the earlier version of this record enumerated eight and left out Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein, who appears between Winter and BeDuhn. The claim built on this record has been corrected to match.

Corroboré par. src-nwt-beduhn-2003-verdict, src-nwt-winter-1974-classical-journal

Notes. The page quotes BeDuhn's favourable verdict (pp. 163, 165) and does not mention his appendix (pp. 169-181), in which he calls the use of 'Jehovah' in the New Testament an inaccuracy. Of the nine favourable comments, four are cited to journals or reference works (Wikgren, McCoy, Gilmour, Winter), one to a scholarly monograph (BeDuhn) and four to a private letter, a privately circulated magazine, a general-readership book and an undated personal statement (Goodspeed, Thomson, Potter, Kedar-Kopfstein). Of the nine, only the Winter and BeDuhn items have been checked against their originals in this research, and the Winter one checks out.

Date de consultation. 19 septembre 2026 · Identifiant de la source. src-nwt-jw-faq-accurate

Évalué par des pairs / universitaire Étayé

Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, “Appendix, 'The Use of “Jehovah” in the NW New Testament'”

2003 · pp.169, 171, 174, 175, 177 · Jason David BeDuhn (Northern Arizona University) · University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland

“Having concluded that the NW is one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available, I would be remiss if I did not mention one peculiarity of this translation that by most conventions of translation would be considered an inaccuracy, however little this inaccuracy changes the meaning of most of the verses where it appears. I am referring to the use of 'Jehovah' in the NW New Testament. … But the name never appears in any Greek manuscript of any book of the New Testament. So, to introduce the name 'Jehovah' into the New Testament, as the NW does two-hundred-thirty-seven times, is not accurate translation by the most basic principle of accuracy: adherence to the original Greek text. (p. 169) … To suggest such a reading not supported by the manuscript evidence is called making a conjectural emendation. It is an emendation because you are repairing, 'mending,' a text you believe is defective. It is conjectural because it is a hypothesis… The editors of the NW are making a conjectural emendation when they replace kurios, which would be translated 'Lord,' with 'Jehovah.' (p. 171) … The inconsistency of the NW translators in not using 'Jehovah' in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, 1 Peter 2:3, and 1 Peter 3:15 shows that interpretation rather than a principle of translation is involved in deciding where to use 'Jehovah'. (p. 175) … [The zeal of the NW editors …] has carried them too far, and into a harmonizing practice of their own. … Their principle of 'emendation' does not seem to work. (p. 177)”

In the appendix that follows his favourable overall verdict, BeDuhn argues that putting 'Jehovah' into the New Testament, where no surviving Greek manuscript has it, is a 'conjectural emendation' (p. 171) — repairing a text one believes to be defective — rather than translation, and that the translators applied their own rule inconsistently. He lists five verses at which they used 'God' instead (Romans 11:2; 11:8; Galatians 1:15; Hebrews 9:20; 1 Peter 4:14), saying 'I cannot say why the NW editors abandoned their principle of conjectural emendation in these five cases; it makes no difference in the meaning of the text' (p. 174), and then three at which, by their own principles, 'Jehovah' should have appeared and did not: 2 Thessalonians 1:9, 1 Peter 2:3 and 1 Peter 3:15 (pp. 174-175). Of the last two he writes that 'the NW translators have deviated from the principles by which they would normally use “Jehovah”, and they have done so quite obviously because of bias'. He nevertheless ends the appendix still defending the translators' motive.

Source officielle Lien non vérifiable automatiquement

Note de provenance et de vérification

Note sur la fiabilité. The book itself was never opened. The previous confidence label of 'verified' rested entirely on Google Books' in-volume snippet search, which no longer runs from this environment at all: books.google.com, books.google.co.uk, books.google.de, books.google.ca and www.googleapis.com/books/v1 all answer HTTP 429, and WebFetch is redirected to Google's 'sorry' interstitial. An auditor cannot reproduce the retrieval, and a snippet is in any case not the document. Downgraded to 'supported' on 19 September 2026. What was confirmed independently on that date, from two reproductions that do not depend on each other: the p. 169 sentence (tetragrammaton.org, which reproduces the opening of the appendix in full); the p. 171 definition of conjectural emendation (same); the p. 174 and p. 175 material about the eight verses (same); and the p. 175 sentence and both p. 177 fragments (Trevor Allin's critique, which quotes them with page attributions and is hostile to BeDuhn, so has no motive to soften him). BeDuhn's own sigla for the New World Translation is 'NW', not 'NWT': Allin quotes him with 'NW', the reproduction of pp. 124-125 has 'the NW translation', and JW.org expands it as 'The NW [New World Translation]'. The tetragrammaton.org reproduction silently prints 'NWT' throughout. Where the two differ, 'NW' is used here. Until the printed book is in hand, do not present these quotations as letter-perfect. Two fragments that appeared in the earlier version of this record have been removed because no reproduction anywhere attests them: a second p. 177 sentence, 'I personally do not agree with that practice, and think that identifications of “Lord” with “Jehovah” should be placed in footnotes', and a p. 170 phrase, 'denominationally preferred expressions for God'. Neither may be published unless the book is read.

Provenance de la numérisation. Not opened. The quotations below are transcribed from two independent published reproductions: the long review at tetragrammaton.org, which quotes pp. 169 and 171-175 at length, and Trevor Allin's critique (src-nwt-allin-2026-review), which quotes pp. 175 and 177 with page attributions. The two agree word for word on the p. 175 sentence.

Corroboré par. src-nwt-allin-2026-review

Notes. This is the half of BeDuhn's assessment that Watch Tower publications do not quote. [Independent audit, 19 September 2026] The opening clause matters and was missing before: BeDuhn introduces the criticism by restating his favourable verdict in the very same sentence — 'Having concluded that the NW is one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available, I would be remiss…'. A page that quotes the 'inaccuracy' half without that clause is doing to BeDuhn what JW.org does to him in the other direction.

Date de consultation. 19 septembre 2026 · Identifiant de la source. src-nwt-beduhn-2003-jehovah-appendix

Évalué par des pairs / universitaire Étayé

Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, “Chapter 12, 'A Final Word'”

2003 · pp.163, 165 · Jason David BeDuhn (Northern Arizona University) · University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland (ISBN 0761825568 / 076182555X)

“While it is difficult to quantify this sort of analysis, it can be said that the NW emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared. Holding a close second to the NW in its accuracy, judging by the passages we have looked at, is the NAB. (p. 163) … The NW and NAB are not bias free, and they are not perfect translations. But they are remarkably good translations, better by far than the deeply flawed TEV, certainly better as a translation than the LB and AB, which are not really translations at all, consistently better than the heavily biased NIV … (p. 165)”

BeDuhn compares nine English New Testaments (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NAB, Amplified, Living Bible, Today's English Version and the New World Translation) across a set of disputed passages. The same summary paragraph continues: 'Both of these are translations produced by single denominations of Christianity… I have pondered why these two translations, of all those considered, turned out to be the least biased.' On p. 165 he also writes of 'bias in the NW, where in my opinion accuracy was impaired by the commitments of the translators', adding that 'the biases of the NW translators do not account for most of the differences of the NW from the other translations', which are due to 'the greater accuracy of the NW as a literal, conservative translation of the original expressions of the New Testament writers'.

Source officielle Lien non vérifiable automatiquement

Note de provenance et de vérification

Note sur la fiabilité. The book itself was never opened. The previous confidence label of 'verified' rested entirely on Google Books' in-volume snippet search, which no longer runs from this environment at all: books.google.com, books.google.co.uk, books.google.de, books.google.ca and www.googleapis.com/books/v1 all answer HTTP 429, and WebFetch is redirected to Google's 'sorry' interstitial. An auditor cannot reproduce the retrieval, and a snippet is in any case not the document. Downgraded to 'supported' on 19 September 2026. What was confirmed independently on that date: the p. 163 sentence, in full and with its opening hedge, is reproduced at tetragrammaton.org; the p. 165 sentence is attested down to 'certainly better as a translation than the LB and AB'; and the fragments 'remarkably good', 'better by far' and 'consistently better' are quoted from pp. 163, 165 by The Watchtower of 1 December 2004, which has been read. The tail 'consistently better than the heavily biased NIV' is attested only in part — 'consistently better' is in the Watchtower, 'heavily biased NIV' is not — so the trailing ellipsis must stay. BeDuhn's own sigla for the New World Translation is 'NW', not 'NWT': Allin quotes him with 'NW', the reproduction of pp. 124-125 has 'the NW translation', and JW.org expands it as 'The NW [New World Translation]'. The tetragrammaton.org reproduction silently prints 'NWT' throughout. Where the two differ, 'NW' is used here. Until the printed book is in hand, do not present these quotations as letter-perfect.

Provenance de la numérisation. Not opened. The quotations below are transcribed from two independent published reproductions of the passage: the long review at tetragrammaton.org, which quotes the summary paragraph in full, and — for the second half — the partial quotation in The Watchtower of 1 December 2004 and on JW.org.

Corroboré par. src-nwt-jw-faq-accurate, src-nwt-w04-remarkably-good

Notes. This is the passage Jehovah's Witnesses quote. The organisation's 2004 Watchtower article says BeDuhn compared 'eight major translations'; the book compares nine (BeDuhn writes on p. 133 of 'the other eight translations we are comparing'). [Independent audit, 19 September 2026] The earlier version of this record began the quotation at 'the most accurate of the translations compared', with the preceding words supplied in brackets. That dropped BeDuhn's own hedge, 'While it is difficult to quantify this sort of analysis, it can be said that…', which is exactly the half JW.org also drops. The hedge has been restored and must be printed with the verdict.

Date de consultation. 19 septembre 2026 · Identifiant de la source. src-nwt-beduhn-2003-verdict

Page de l’affirmation Corriger ou mettre à jour

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/fr/evidence/claim-bible-jw-quotes-half-of-beduhn/. 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.