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Part 38—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”The Watchtower—1960 | May 15
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the “last Adam,” their beloved “Father for eternity,” Jesus Christ. Together with the judicial declaration of their being righteous, Jehovah God will confer upon them the gift of eternal life, with the right to it. Forever they will enjoy their Paradise in Jehovah’s new world, doing his will on earth as it is done up in heaven.—Rom. 8:33; 6:23.
31. What prayer taught by God’s Son will thus be fully answered?
31 According to Jehovah’s unchangeable purpose from the beginning, his holy, perfect and loving will will thus have “come to pass, as in heaven, also upon earth.” The prayer that his dear Son taught us to pray will have been fully answered.
(To be continued)
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Questions From ReadersThe Watchtower—1960 | May 15
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Questions From Readers
● Dr. Bruce M. Metzger, a member of the faculty of Princeton, New Jersey, Theological Seminary, writes: “In the New World Translation it is stated (page 9 of New Testament volume), ‘To each major word we have assigned one meaning and have held to that meaning as far as the context permitted.’ My question arises from the failure to abide by this self-imposed rule at Philippians 2:11, where the word kyrios, elsewhere rendered ‘Jehovah’ 237 times, is not rendered ‘Jehovah’ despite the clear allusion to Isaiah 45:23 and following where the word Jehovah appears. Could it be that the Arian theology of the translators overrode their expressed rule of translating?” Do you deem this inquirer’s question deserving of a sound and thorough reply?—U.S.A.
A number of Watchtower readers, evidently unacquainted with New Testament Greek, have written us a similar question, apparently inspired by the publicity that Dr. Metzger has given to a discussion of this matter. The doctor quotes from the second paragraph on page nine of the Foreword, where we read:
“To each major word we have assigned one meaning and have held to that meaning as far as the context permitted. This, we know, has imposed a restriction upon our diction, but it makes for good cross-reference work and for a more reliable comparison of related texts or verses. At the same time, in order to bring out the richness and variety of the language of the inspired writers, we have avoided the rendering of two or more Greek words by the same English word, for this hides the distinction in shade of meaning between the several words thus rendered.”
The theological doctor quotes part of the above and leaves his reader to imagine that the translators of the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures were arbitrary, or self-determining, in their rendering of the Greek word kyʹrios (without the Greek definite article) by the divine name, Jehovah. But in its very Foreword the translators show that they were not acting arbitrarily in rendering the Greek word kyʹrios (without the definite article) into English as Jehovah. If Dr. Metzger has read the Foreword of the above volume through, then he should have learned on what basis the New World translators restored the divine name, Jehovah, to the English translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. Beginning on page 19, he should have read the following:
“RESTORING THE NAME: What is the modern translator to do? Is he justified, yes, authorized, to enter the divine name into a translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures? Every Greek reader must confess that in the LXX the Greek words kyʹri·os and the·osʹ have been used to crowd out the distinctive name of the Supreme Deity. Every comprehensive Greek-English dictionary states that these two Greek words have been used as equivalents of the divine name. Hence the modern translator is warranted in using the divine name as an equivalent of those two Greek words, that is, at places where Matthew, etc., quote verses, passages and expressions from the Hebrew Scriptures or from the LXX where the divine name occurs.”
Then to that paragraph there is added a footnote of three paragraphs quoting from three different Greek-English lexicons to show that in the Greek Septuagint version of the
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