When "mainstream establishment" Christianity (or as I like to call them: "the Swamp") talks of the New World Translation, the charge of "bias" is levied against it in the strongest terms possible. The worst language is usually reserved for John 1:1. When this happens, quotations from a handful of "scholars" from the swamp are paraded out in order to portray a notion that a majority, if not all (let's just go with a "97% consensus") of those in the know are against a certain reading. But like the famous (or infamous) other "97% consensus" we are only introduced to a few, out of possibly hundreds or thousands of scholars that have remained silent.
Now if the NWT translators were truly biased why didn't they change John 20:28. Here the New World Translation has:
"In answer Thomas said to him [Jesus]: 'My Lord and my God!'"
Now the NWT translators could have changed that and they certainly had precedence to do so with Harwood's and Wakefield's New Testaments.
If the NWT translators were truly biased against the trinity why didn't they change Matthew 28:19, 20. There is a school of thought that sees this Scripture as spurious, so they could have used that as an excuse to omit any mention of the Father, Son and spirit.
If the NWT translators were biased they would not have translated Isaiah 9:6: "or there has been a child born to us, there has been a son given to us; and the princely rule will come to be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. "
They could have gone the way of other Bibles:
"Wonder-Counsellor, Divine Champion, Father Ever, Captain of Peace." Byington's The Bible in Living English
"A wonder of a counsellor, a divine hero, a father for all time, a peaceful prince." Moffatt's The Bible
"in purpose wonderful, in battle God-like...." New English Bible
"Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty Hero, Eternal Father...." Revised English Bible
"Great Leader, Time's Father, the Prince of Peace." The Complete Bible in Modern English by Ferrar Fenton
"his name is called the Messenger of great counsel." Brenton's LXX
"divine hero, father of spoil, prince of peace" Isaiah 1:12 Old Testament Library-A Commentary by Otto Kaiser
The reason that the translators of the NWT did not change the above is because the renderings they settled on were what they felt were the best possible renderings of the original languages. That is also the reason they translated John 1:1c as "the Word was a god." This translation in John's Prologue is a far superior version than those of the mainstream establishment Swamp Bibles, albeit an uncomfortable one if you adhere to a 4th century Catholic understanding of Christology.
Now, when Bible scholar Kenneth S Wuest translates John 1:1c as "And the Word was as to His essence absolute deity" or other Bible Scholars such as Daniel Wallace translate this passage in the NET Bible as "and the Word was fully God"...you have full blown cases of theological bias. There is absolutely nothing in the Greek that warrants these horrific renderings.
Do Bibles like these, and many others like this get condemned as "biased?"
Of course not!These texts are saying what the Swamp wants them to say.
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