Professor Julius Mantey's Letters to the Watchtower Society.


Dear Sirs:

I have a copy of your letter addressed to Caris in Santa Ana, California,
and I am writing to express my disagreement with statements made in that
letter, as well as in quotations you have made from the Dana-Mantey Greek
Grammar.

(1) Your statement: "their work allows for the rendering found in the
  Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures at John 1:1,"
  There is no statement in our grammar that was ever meant to imply that
  "a god" was a permissible translation in John 1:1.

A. We had no "rule" to argue in support of the trinity.

B. Neither did we state that we did have such intention. We were simply
   delineating the facts inherent in Biblical language.

C. You quotation from p. 148 (3) was a paragraph under the heading: "With
   the subject in a Copulative Sentence." Two examples occur here to
   illustrate that "the article points out the subject in these
   examples." But we made no statement in this paragraph about the
   predicate except that, "as it stands the other persons of the trinity
   may be implied ;in theos." And isn't that the opposite of what your
   translation "a god" infers? You quoted me out of context. On pages
   139 and 140 (VI) in our grammar we stated: "without the article,
   theos signifies divine essence...'theos en ho logos' emphasizes
   Christ's participation in the essence of the divine nature." Our
   interpretation is in agreement with that in NEB and TED: "What God
   was, the Word was"; and with that of Barclay: "The nature of the Word
   was the same as the nature of God," which you quoted in you letter to
   Caris.

(2) Since Colwell's and Harner's article in JBL, especially that of Harner,
  it is neither scholarly nor reasonable to translate John 1:1 "The Word
  was a god." Word-order has made obsolete and incorrect such a rendering.

(3) Your quotation of Colwell's rule is inadequate because it quotes only a
  part of his findings. You did not quote this strong assertion: "A
  predicate nominative which precedes the verb cannot be translated as an
  indefinite or a 'qualitative' noun solely because of the absence of the
  article."

(4) Prof. Harner, Vol 92:1 in JBL, has gone beyond Colwell's research and
 has discovered that anarthrous predicate nouns preceding the verb
 function primarily to express the nature or character of the subject.
 He found this true in 53 passages in the Gospel of John and 8 in the
 Gospel of Mark. Both scholars wrote that when indefiniteness was
 intended that gospel writers regularly placed the predicate noun after
 the verb, and both Colwell and Harner have stated that theos in John
 1:1 is not indefinite and should not be translated "a god." Watchtower
 writers appear to be the only ones advocating such a translation now.
 The evidence appears to be 99% against them.

(5) Your statement in your letter that the sacred text itself should guide
 one and "not just someone's rule book." We agree with you. But our
 study proves that Jehovah's Witnesses do the opposite of that whenever
 the "sacred text" differs with their heretical beliefs. For example the
 translation of kolasis as cutting off when punishment is the only meaning
 cited in the lexicons for it. The mistranslation of ego eimi as "I have
 been" in John 8:58, the addition of "for all time" in Heb. 9:27 when
 nothing in the Greek New Testament support is. The attempt to belittle
 Christ by mistranslating arche tes kriseos "beginning of the creation"
 when he is magnified as the "creator of all things" (John 1:2) and as
 "equal with God" (Phil. 2:6) before he humbled himself and lived a human
 body on earth. Your quotation of "The father is greater than I am, (John
 14:28) to prove that Jesus was not equal to God overlooks the fact stated
 in Phil 2:6-8. When Jesus said that he was still in his voluntary state
 of humiliation. That state ended when he ascended to heaven. Why the
 attempt to deliberately deceive people by mispunctuation by placing a
 comma after "today" in Luke 23:43 when in the Greek, Latin, German and
 all English translations except yours, even in the Greek in you KIT, the
 comma occurs after lego (I say) - "Today you will be with me in
 Paradise." 2 Cor 5:8, "to be out of the body and at home with the Lord."

These passages teach that the redeemed go immediately to heaven after death,
which does not agree with your teachings that death ends all life until the
resurrection. (Ps. 23:6 and Heb 1:10)

The afore mentioned are only a few examples of Watchtower mistranslations and
perversions of Gods Word.

In view of the preceding facts, especially because you have been quoting me
out of context, I herewith request you not to quote the Manual Grammar of
the Greek New Testament again, which you have been doing for 24 years. Also
that you not quote it or me in any of your publications from this time on.
Also that you publicly and immediately apologize in the Watchtower magazine,
since my words had no relevance to the absence of the article before theos
in John 1:1. And please write to Caris and state that you misused and
misquoted my "rule."

On the page before the preface in the grammar are these words: "All rights
reserved - no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher."

If you have such permission, please send me a photo-copy of it. If you do
not heed these requests you will suffer the consequences.

Regretfully yours,
Julius R. Mantey