The Great Translation Apostacy in the New Testament

There seems to be this pervasive belief among leading Messianics that the apostacy of the Church only consists in false interpretations of Scripture and immoral behavior. Could it be that their “Scripture” translations are also false at key points? Consider Churches attached to the Sunday doctrine that reject Sabbath. Did their scholars refrain from changing texts to favor their doctrines?

Many do realize there is a problem with the translations, but there also seems to be a pervasive belief that making a translation look and feel “Jewish” fixes the problem. Does window dressing fix corruption of the translations?

Some people think there are only a “few” translation problems. Are there just a few problems?

Many people think the problems are fixed by resorting to Aramaic translations of the New Testament. Are they?

Some people think that Paul should not be considered Scripture at all, or that he should take a lower place. The issues of canonicity, i.e. which books are Scripture to be considered for translation is also a good one that should be revisited. Is it impossible that the Church added a book or books that are not actually Scripture?

These are good questions, and I think we would be fools not to consider the possible answers. Let me address these points in general one by one.

The Church did not refrain from mistranslation

No. 1: It does not make any sense that a Church which leaves the Law of the Almighty would not also hire corrupt scribes to make translations for them that agree with their rejection of Torah. We would only expect them to corrupt the translations where they could “get away with it,” by making persuasive sounding arguments why their translation is correct. This is why much of the text is correctly translated. It has to seem like they did translate it faithfully. But at hidden points, where they could get away with corruption they did so. This approach was necessary to deceive the many sincere but ignorant sheep of their Churches. The wolves are at the top of the structure, or long dead, having passed their corruptions into traditions followed by the sheep. Scholars of later generations only copy the translations they received before without re-examining the correctness of the translation. Therefore, the same mistranslation is passed from version to version.

It would seem incredible that translators are so incompetent or lazy, but the truth is that they are! And it is only the belief that they are not that keeps them in business.

No. 2: It is also the case they could get away with mistranslation wherever the text was ambiguious. This is to say, were two different possible translations of the same text could be made.

No. 3: It is also the case that the Spirit of the Almighty had certain writers of Scripture make ambiguous statements, whose meaning was clear in context, but should a reader reject the Law, they would be directed to an easy misinterpretation fitting their rejection of correct teaching. I call this the parable or the riddle principle. It is called hearing but not hearing, and seeing but not seeing. This is because they are inclined not to see or hear by the false doctrines they believe.

Cosmetic Changes are not Enough

No. 1: Changing Jesus to Yeshua, or changing all the names in the text to Hebrew forms does nothing to correct the deep spiritual problems inherent in mistranslating the meaning of the text. How you pronounce a word has nothing to do with its meaning unless you know Hebrew, and even if you do, the message of the text is not communictated by the meaning of the names!

No. 2: Sprinkling the text with Hebrew terms, Yiddish, or other words borrowed from Judaism, does nothing to communicate the message, unless you are a Jew. Nor does it do anything more than warrant that the translator has done nothing more than render the same old mistranslations into a Jewish idiom.

Resorting to Aramaic Fixes Nothing

A good many messianics believe that the problems are fixed by resorting to Aramaic translations. Here, surely, must be the pure snow-white truth of the original Hebrew. Note the following points.

No. 1: All known Aramaic Translations are translations of more ancient Greek texts. The evidence, if you know Aramaic, is the numerous words transliterated from Greek into Aramaic, i.e. borrowed from Greek. For example. The Greek word for “Law” is “Nomos,” and the Aramaic word was borrowed from it, “Namusa.” The Hebrew word is “Torah,” quite unlike the Greek. The Hebrew word for “good news” is “besorah,” but the Greek word is “Euanggelion,” and the Aramaic word is borrowed from the Greek word.

No. 2: The verbs in the Aramaic texts are conjugated differently than the Aramaic spoken in first century Judea. That is, the Syriac Aramaic texts are a late form of Aramaic that was not spoken in the time of Messiah. The 3rd person singular conjugation uses a prefix "nun" instead of a "yud" as the older Aramaic and Hebrew. For this reason, the Aramaic texts are not original first century productions.

No. 3: The Greek versions are clearly more ancient. There is no reason why Messiah’s disciples could not translate what they heard from him into an accurate Greek. And they did so.

The issue of which books are Canonical

No. 1: The Church in the past has added books to Scripture that were not Scripture, and then later retracted the claim that the books are Scripture. This shows that the Church is perfectly capable of making mistakes about which books are canonical.

No. 2: The issue of canonicity depends on two criteria, (a) the writing to be considered agrees with all other Scripture, especially that which went before it, and (b) it is clear that the faithful accepted the book as authoritative, or the book has a prophetical testimony that testifies to its divine origin.

No. 3: A writing may be perfectly true, spiritual, and religous, explaining the Scripture correctly, but this alone does not make it Scripture.

No. 4: Since much rides on point 2a., and since there is much mistranslation, as I will outline in the next point, the issues of canoncity cannot be correctly judged until the problem of mistranslation is addressed. This is because a mistranslation may cause a text to contradict other Scripture, which would cause the translation to fail the canonicity test, but not the original text, if it can be translated differently so as to agree with other Scripture.

There are not just a ”few” mistranslations

No. 1: The English translations we have today do not just have a few problems. Through the evolution of corruptions, the text has come to contain mistakes intentionally made at one time, but repeated by tradition, so numerous as to greatly support lawlessness in the Church or give an excuse to the Church in rejecting large parts of the Torah.

No. 2: The problems are exposed by seeing the correct definitions of original words in Greek dictionaries (Lexicons), and by following the standard rules in the Greek grammars.

No. 3: These reference tools were written by lawless Church scribes themselves, and largely support the mistranslations they make. So the use of them is in part circular. However, certain information is contained in these tools that is not avaiable to the sheep, certainly not in Strong’s Dictionaries. Usually, the key is that the tools allow a certain word to be translated a certain other way according to the Dictionary or according to the Grammer, which may then be supported by other Scriptures and the context, except they do not translate the text this way. They follow tradition instead.

No. 4: The reason these bits of truth are left in the reference tools is that the scholars sometimes need them to translate passages where corruptions have not been introduced. These are indeed the clues by which faithful scholars can reverse the corruption through prayer, and with answers from the Spirit of the Almighty.

The Extent of the Problem

It would be best to take matters starting from the worst problems,

1. Most of the places where 'pistis' has been rendered “faith” or “belief” instead of ”faithfulness,” “loyalty,” or “fidelity.” This corruption covers an enormous number of texts, and by it the corrupt Church has succeeded in changing the criteria of salvation, namely they make it depend only on belief or trust, and eliminate repentance from the picture. Repentence is renewed faithfulness to Messiah, shown by loyalty to his Law.
2. Most of the places where 'pisteuo' has been rendered with some form of the verb “believe.” Believing certain facts about Messiah or the truth falls short of what the orginal language includes. The verb, and also its Hebrew equivalent, means 'to confirm faithfulness to' or 'loyalty to' Messiah. Often the preposition 'to' is added by John to make this clear to a first century Greek speaker. Again, loyaly is shown by listening to his word in both belief and in behaviour. The faithful obey his laws. This category also involves an enormous number of key passages.
3. A large number of places where 'dikaioo' has been translated by some form of the word “justified.” Justified in English now means acquitted or absolved, declared innocent or righteous. It did not, in fact, always mean just this in English, Latin or Greek. It meant “to administer justice” to someone, which included one of three things a judge would do in a case, 1. acquit, 2. pardon, 3. condemn. So “justify” was used at one point in English to mean to punish or condemn the guilty. The word could refer to any outcome of a trial by which a judge would decide justice to be done. The corrupt Church is always driving in the direction of acquittal of sin rather than admission of guit and a pardon of sin.
4. A significant number of places where the noun 'dikaiousune' has been translated “righteousness” instead of “justice.” If anyone reads a Romance language translation like Spanish, Latin, Italian, or French, then one will see at once that the same word means “righteousness” and “justice.” The same twofold meaning occurs in Greek also. The problem is that the English word “righteousness” does not readily evoke the meaning “justice.” The corrupt Church wishes to impute (reckon) righteousness to the believers account (in an attempt to achieve acquittal) rather than “justice.” It is punitive justice that is satisfied by Messiah’s death for the faithful, and not that their case is discharged with a declaration of righteousness (cf. Exodus 23:7; Deut. 25:1).
5. A significant number of places where the word 'nomos' has been translated 'law.' The Greek word, in fact, means “what is customary.” So for example, “you are not under what is customary, but under grace.” Condemnation would be what is customary. A pardon would be what is not customary. These mistranslations corrupt the plain meaning of the good news.
6. Places where the above words occur all in one verse, or are concentrated in a passage, such as (a) Rom. 10:4, “Messiah is the end of what is customary for justice to everyone confirming their faithfulness.” There are quite a few passages like this.
7. Places where the English translations misdirect the reader to think of their own faith rather than Messiah’s faithfulness. These passages are where the translations put “faith in Jesus,” and the Greek properly translates “faithfulness of Yeshua” (or Messiah) as the case may be. These are matters of Grammar, and are noted in Daniel Wallace’s Greek Grammar.
8. All places were the word 'sabbatwn' is translated 'week' instead of Sabbaths. There are 8 passages where this corruption occurs, “first day of the week,” instead of “first of the Sabbaths.” The purpose of the mistranslation is to cut the tie to Lev. 23:15 where seven Sabbaths are counted after Passover, and to change the resurrection day to Sunday.
9. There are numerous places where the translations have been tweaked or corrupted, which cannot all be listed here. Many of the corruptions are unique to just one verse or phrase, such as Colossians 2:16. There are simply too many of these to list, and it would weary the reader.

The Solution

These problems are solved in the Good News of Messiah, not cosmetically, not by appeal to a non-existant Hebrew text, but by using sound grammatical principles and lexical tools, which no honest scholar can legitimately reject. Most scholars, however, are conflicted because they are in the pay of traditionlists, subject to committees or other traditional oversight. Or they are still simply ignorant of the degree of corruption in the translations, and have not enough time or energy to discover them. Even scholars who grew up Jews are ignorant of the corruptions. And the few Christian scholars who have become Torah observant also have not enough time to think and reprocess what the corrupt Church has done to our translations. It would take half a lifetime of original research and prayer plus answers from the Almighty. That is how evil the situation is. That is how far corrupt the translations have become. The sheep are feeding on 2000 years of progressive corruption.