How Jehovah's Witnesses Changed the Bible

The New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses has been published in more than 130 complete languages, with portions available in 327. Their website, jw.org, is the most translated site on Earth, available in over a thousand languages. Watchtower is proud of this achievement, and they should be — it is a genuine logistical feat. But in the one language that actually matters for the New Testament, the language it was originally written in, their Bible contains words the Apostle Paul never wrote.

I spent 40 years inside this organization. I sat in Kingdom Halls every week. I studied, taught, and preached from the New World Translation my entire life, and what I'm going to walk through here is something I never heard anyone mention in four decades of being inside. Everything that follows is built from Watchtower's own publications, their own Greek Bible, their own word-for-word reference work, and a court transcript from 1954 where their vice president was placed under oath and asked to read a single Bible verse in Hebrew.

What Watchtower Claims About Their Bible Translation

Watchtower describes the New World Translation this way, in their own publications:

a translation of the Holy Scriptures made directly from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into modern-day English by a committee of anointed witnesses of Jehovah.

Made directly from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Hold that phrase.

They'll point to jw.org as the most translated website in the world — over a thousand languages. They'll cite the New World Translation in more than a hundred languages. They'll show photos of translation offices around the world, volunteers working on Bibles in languages most people have never heard of. They built proprietary software for this work called MEPS — the Multilingual Electronic Publishing System — developed in 1979. It is a genuine achievement, and they present all of it as direct translation work: Witnesses everywhere opening their Bibles and reading text that came straight from the ancient originals into their own language.

That is the official story.

What Their Own Publications Actually Say

Here is what Watchtower's own documents say about how the translation process actually works.

From Awake! magazine, 2016, issue three:

a team of translators in Spain receives the original text in English from the headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States.

From the jw.org booklet How Is Literature of Jehovah's Witnesses Written and Translated:

the original text is prepared in English. The Governing Body oversees the activity of the writing department at our world headquarters. The text is forwarded to the translators.

From a Jehovah's Witnesses spokesperson in the Philippines, describing the MEPS system to a major newspaper in 2024:

The MEPS is a computer software that is used by translators to access the master text in English.

And from Wikipedia's article on the New World Translation, summarizing Watchtower's own documented workflow:

Translation into other languages is based on the English text supplemented by comparison with the Hebrew and Greek text.

In plain language: the New World Translation that a Jehovah's Witness reads in Greece, Mexico, Japan, Nigeria, or the Philippines is not translated from Hebrew and Greek. It is translated from English. The English text is the master. Everything else is a copy of a copy.

When Watchtower says the New World Translation was made "directly from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek," that description applies to only one edition: the English original. Every other language — all hundred-plus of them — is translated from that English text, not from the Hebrew and Greek sources the English was itself translated from. If the English edition got something wrong, added something that wasn't there, or adjusted a passage to fit a theological preference, every other language in the world inherits that. Every Witness reading Colossians in Spanish is reading what the English editors produced, not what Paul wrote.

Why Greek Exposes the Pipeline

For most languages, detecting this kind of distortion is nearly impossible. Most translations have passed through English at some point in their history, and tracing changes back to ancient Aramaic requires a specialist.

But one language breaks the pipeline open.

The New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek — the common trade language of the Roman Empire in the first century. Paul wrote his letters in Koine. The gospel writers wrote in Koine. Every word of the New Testament in its original form exists in Koine Greek manuscripts.

Modern Greek is different from Koine — a modern Greek speaker can't read Koine fluently any more than a modern English speaker reads Chaucer fluently. But the relationship is close, much closer than the relationship between English and Koine. A native Greek speaker, with an asterisk and a footnote here and there, can follow most of the original New Testament. A junior-high student in Athens can read Paul.

Which means that when Watchtower produces a Greek edition of the New World Translation — which they did in 1997, revised in 2017 — they are not translating a foreign text into Greek. The New Testament is already in Greek. It never stopped being in Greek. Every word of the original Koine is sitting right there in the manuscripts. But Watchtower doesn't translate from those manuscripts. They translate from the English edition. Their own documentation is clear: the original text is prepared in English.

What they actually produce is a modern Greek translation of an English translation of the original Greek — a back translation, a copy of a copy. And because it's Greek on both ends, we can place Paul's original Koine directly next to Watchtower's modern Greek and see exactly what changed on the trip through English.

Romans 13:9: "For the Law Code" — Words Paul Didn't Write

Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 13, verse 9 begins with two small Greek words: to gar, meaning "for the." It is a connective phrase — Paul's way of introducing the list that follows: do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not covet.

Watchtower's own word-for-word reference Bible, the Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures — first published in 1969 so their members could examine the underlying Greek — renders Paul's opening phrase literally:

the for

That is it. Two function words. Nothing else.

Here is the English New World Translation, same verse:

For the law code, you must not commit adultery, you must not murder, you must not steal, you must not covet, for the law code.

For the law code. That phrase is not in Paul's Greek. Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear confirms this: the word-for-word rendering shows nothing there. The English editors added it — a clarifying expansion, probably meant to signal to English readers that Paul was introducing a list of commandments.

When Watchtower produced the Greek New World Translation, they did not return to Paul's Koine and translate his actual words into modern Greek. They translated "for the law code" into modern Greek. The phrase they landed on is, in English, "the legal code."

So a Greek speaker opening Watchtower's Bible at Romans 13:9 reads Paul introducing his list of commandments with a reference to "the legal code" — a phrase that traveled from a translator's desk into English and from there back into Greek, and Paul never wrote any of it.

Colossians 1:16–17: Five Insertions of a Word That Isn't There

Romans 13:9 is the smaller version. Colossians 1:16–17 is where the pattern becomes a documented practice with a stated theological motive.

Paul's letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 16 through 20, is one of the most studied passages in the New Testament. It is where Paul describes Jesus as the one through whom everything was created, and the phrasing has been precise for 2,000 years.

Paul's word is ta panta: "all things." He uses it four times across five verses — twice in verse 16, once in verse 17, once in verse 20. Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear confirms this: every instance of ta panta in those verses is rendered word-for-word as "all things." No qualifiers, no additional words.

Now read the English New World Translation, current edition — the 2013 revision that every Jehovah's Witness carries in the JW Library app:

By means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible.

And verse 17:

Also he is before all other things and by means of him all other things were made to exist.

And verse 20:

And through him to reconcile to himself all other things.

All other things — not all things. The word "other" appears five times across those verses. It does not exist in Paul's Greek. Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear shows this. Every major English Bible translation — Catholic, Protestant, and everything in between — renders the phrase as "all things," because that is what Paul wrote. Watchtower alone adds "other."

How the Brackets Disappeared Between 1984 and 2013

Here is where Watchtower's own publishing history makes the addition visible.

The 1984 edition of the New World Translation — the reference Bible — rendered this passage with "other" in square brackets: all [other] things. In standard editorial practice, brackets signal a word not in the original text — an insertion the editors are acknowledging to the reader. Watchtower was marking the addition for what it was.

In the 2013 revision, the brackets are gone. "Other" now appears as plain text. A Witness reading Colossians in the current edition sees "all other things" with no indication that anything was added. The editorial insertion has been absorbed into what reads as original text.

And in the 2017 Greek edition — the one Greek-speaking Jehovah's Witnesses use today — the same insertion appears five times, in plain text, without brackets. A Greek reader opening that page has no way of knowing that "other" was never in Paul's Greek. The word simply sits there as if Paul put it there, which he did not.

Three editions, three stages of the evidence being removed. In 1984, they marked the insertion. In 2013, they removed the marks. In 2017, the insertion was carried into Greek — the original language of the source text — without any indication it was ever an addition.

Watchtower's Own 1970 Admission

This is not speculation about intent. Watchtower told us exactly why they did it.

Watchtower magazine, April 15, 1970, page 255, writing about Colossians 1:16:

The New World Translation adds the word other, which clearly is what the apostle had in mind. But even here it might be added that were it not for the prevalence of the Trinitarian teaching that Jesus was not created, it would not have been necessary for us to add the word other.

Read that last sentence carefully. Were it not for the prevalence of the Trinitarian teaching, it would not have been necessary for us to add the word.

That is not a translator's judgment call. That is a theological edit, acknowledged in print. A word Paul didn't write was inserted into their Bible specifically to rebut a doctrine they disagreed with. And that admission from 1970 is now embedded in a modern Greek Bible, in the language Paul's letter was originally written in, presented without any indication it was ever added at all.

The Five-Step Pipeline

So how does a phrase travel from Paul's Greek through English into modern Greek with an extra word attached that he never wrote? Here is the mechanism.

Step one: the English edition is produced. This is the only edition with any relationship to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts. It is the master text — Watchtower's own term.

Step two: the English editors make interpretive choices — clarifying additions, doctrinal renderings, theological insertions. Some were originally marked with brackets. Most of those brackets have since been removed.

Step three: the English master text is loaded into MEPS, the Multilingual Electronic Publishing System. Every other language edition passes through this hub.

Step four: translation teams around the world — in Spain, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Greece — receive the English master text through MEPS. Not the Hebrew. Not the Greek. The English. According to Wikipedia's summary of Watchtower's own documented workflow, translators are given a list of words and expressions commonly used in the English New World Translation with related English words grouped together, and are asked to produce vernacular equivalents. They can access a database of Greek and Hebrew terms when they get stuck, but the source document they are translating from is English.

Step five: the translated text comes back through MEPS and is published.

The critical point in this pipeline is that no editorial insertion made in step two can ever be caught downstream, because the translators in step four are not looking at the original Greek. They are looking at the English. If "for the law code" is in the English, it goes into Spanish. If "all other things" is in the English, it goes into German, Chinese, and Korean — into every language — and no downstream translator is in any position to notice. Except in Greek, where a reader can look up what Paul actually wrote and see that the word isn't there.

Every editorial change in the English New World Translation silently propagates into every language Watchtower publishes. The only language where a native reader can compare the output directly against the original source text is Greek — because Greek is the language the source text was written in.

The 1954 Walsh Trial: The Man Who Checked the Translation

The remaining question is who actually built this translation, and what were their qualifications.

The answer is in a court transcript from Scotland. Edinburgh, November 1954. The Scottish Court of Sessions — a case called Douglas Walsh v. The Right Honourable James Latham Clyde — concerned military service exemptions for Jehovah's Witnesses. For our purposes, what matters is who Watchtower sent to testify: Frederick William Franz, their vice president. In Watchtower's own organizational hierarchy, Franz was the highest authority on their Bible translation work. By his own testimony in that courtroom, he had personally checked the accuracy of the New World Translation and recommended its publication.

On direct examination, Franz told the court he was familiar with Hebrew, that he could read Spanish, Portuguese, and German, and that he had a reading knowledge of French. He confirmed under oath that he was:

able to read and follow the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and French.

Seven languages, including Hebrew, stated under oath.

The following day, on cross-examination, opposing counsel had a copy of Watchtower's own Hebrew Scriptures translation in hand. He opened it to Genesis chapter 2, verse 4 and asked Franz directly:

You yourself read and speak Hebrew, do you?

Franz's answer from the official transcript: "I do not speak Hebrew."

Counsel followed up: "You do not?"

Franz: "No."

Then the question that matters:

Can you yourself translate that into Hebrew, that fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis?

Franz's answer, preserved in the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh:

No, I won't attempt to do that.

Twenty-four hours separated the claim that he could read the Bible in Hebrew from the refusal to translate a single verse of Genesis when a book was opened in front of him — a verse any first-year seminary student with two semesters of Hebrew could handle.

That was the man who checked the accuracy of the New World Translation. That was the man who recommended it for publication.

In the same cross-examination, Franz was asked to identify the other translators. He refused:

That is a question which I, as a member of the Board of Directors, am not authorized to disclose because when the translation was donated to the society at a meeting of the Board of Directors there, the translation committee made it known that they did not wish their names to be disclosed and the Board of Directors, acting for the society, accepted the translation upon that basis that the names would not be revealed now or after death.

The names would not be revealed now or after death.

The Committee Behind the English Master Text

Watchtower has never officially disclosed the identities of the New World Translation Committee. But in 1983, Raymond Franz — Fred Franz's own nephew, and a former member of Watchtower's Governing Body, the top leadership body of the organization — published a book called Crisis of Conscience. In a footnote on page 50, Raymond identified the four committee members.

Nathan Knorr: no biblical language training. Albert Schroeder: no biblical language training. George Gangas: a native modern Greek speaker, but with no formal training in Koine Greek. And Fred Franz. Raymond wrote:

Fred Franz, however, was the only one with sufficient knowledge of the Bible languages to attempt translation of this kind. He had studied Greek for two years in the University of Cincinnati, but was only self-taught in Hebrew.

Two years of university Greek. Self-taught in Hebrew. That was the highest credential on the committee — and it belonged to the man who, years after the translation was published, refused under oath to translate a single verse of Genesis when someone opened a book in front of him.

The other three had no formal training in the source languages at all. None had a degree in biblical Hebrew. None had published scholarly work on Koine Greek. Only Gangas could speak any form of Greek, and it was modern Greek — not Koine, the language Paul actually wrote in.

This is the committee that produced the English master text. This is the source of the editorial insertions in Romans and Colossians. Four men, working anonymously behind closed doors, produced a translation that Watchtower distributed to every country in the world as the most accurate Bible ever made. Even today, in 2026, Watchtower has not published the names or credentials of the people who produced the 2013 revision or the 2017 Greek edition. The methodology hasn't changed. The secrecy hasn't changed.

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When Watchtower describes the New World Translation as a Bible published in over a hundred languages, what they are describing is an English translation — produced by an anonymous committee, with documented editorial insertions, made by men who by their own courtroom testimony could not read the source languages — rendered into every other language from that English edition, not from Hebrew and Greek. What Jehovah's Witnesses read in Mexico is not what Paul wrote. What they read in Seoul is not what Paul wrote. What they read in Athens, in the country where Paul's letters were delivered, in the language those letters were originally written in, is not what Paul wrote. The brackets that once disclosed the additions have been removed. The names of the people who made them have never been released. But the documents are still there.