It Was a Terrible Translation

[TrueTomHarley]

Thirty years ago I studied the Bible with a refugee from Czechoslovakia who adopted me like a grandson. I used ‘The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life’ in English, she in Czech. Several times she mentioned that Jehovah’s Witnesses in her country were the most crude and backward (she said ‘ignorant’) of people. Several times she mentioned that her book was a terrible translation. What was amazing was that it was a translation at all. Our people at the time were denied education. The regime saw to it they were fired from their jobs. If they subsisted, they did so because they had picked up shoe repair skills or somesuch. (photo: Valarietarico.com)

Everyone else found it too inconvenient to not be able to buy nor sell without the mark of the beast. Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to give in (photo: valerietarico.com)

[Anna]

On 12/23/2016 at 7:10 AM, TrueTom said:

Thirty years ago I studied the Bible with a refugee from Czechoslovakia who adopted me like a grandson. I used ‘The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life’ in English, she in Czech. Several times she mentioned that Jehovah’s Witnesses in her country were the most crude and backward (she said ‘ignorant’) of people. Several times she mentioned that her book was a terrible translation.

Still now they do not have a very good translation of the "New World Translation". If fact it regularly receives criticism form the "educated". Czech is a pretty complicated language and only the well educated have proper mastery of it.  Hopefully the revised (silver) version will be much better! An interesting point though, many intellectuals and educated people balked at the communist regime in those days, and thus were made outcasts, and as a result embraced the Truth because they were looking for answers and the meaning of life. There are many stories of brothers starting studies with such individuals while in prison. Apparently even former president and playwright Vaclav Havel (who was imprisoned for his dissident views) received a witness. He is quoted as having said something to the effect of  "that all sounds very wonderful, but I don't think I can wait....I want change now"....