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In Crisis of conscience, written by Raymond Franz, the translators of the New World Translation are identified as Nathan Knorr, Frederick Franz, Albert Schroeder, George Gangas, and Milton Henschel.

Where, if at all, did any of these study Biblical Hebrew or Greek?

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    Did the translators have any knowledge of Hebrew or Greek texts?
    – Tonya
    Dec 16, 2014 at 0:02
  • @Onlyheisgood Those are offtopic and distracting comments.
    – curiousdannii
    Dec 16, 2014 at 2:19
  • @curiousdannii If they do not know that elohim means object, and they think it means God. Then the translators do not know Hebrew enough to translate the bible. Seems pretty on topic to me. For it is said "did any of these study Biblical Hebrew". If it is assumed because of history to mean God. Then No, they did not study "Hebrew Enough" and it answers the question. So it is indeed very important to know. If the right answer is to be given.
    – Decrypted
    Dec 16, 2014 at 4:14

1 Answer 1

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Frederick Franz studied Biblical Greek at the University of Cincinnati with the intention of becoming a Presbyterian preacher (Penton, M. James (1997). Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press. p. 174. ISBN 0-8020-7973-3.) He was also quite the linguist, speaking about half of the major Western European languages.

Albert Schroeder was a bit of a linguistic genius as well, earning his degree at the University of Michigan (according to his Dutch Wikipedia page, he did this in just one year, although there's no source to back it up - http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_D._Schroeder).

George Gangas lived in Athens, where he learned Greek. Not sure which school he studied at (if at all).

As for Hilton Menschel and Nathan Knorr, I'm not certain. My Dutch colleague who tends to know these kinds of things said he was confident that Knorr had not contributed to the New World Translation, but he couldn't tell me where he knew that from.

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  • Can you give a reference to Frederick Franz graduating from the University of Cincinnati?
    – Tonya
    Dec 16, 2014 at 4:29
  • 1
    The reference is included above, along with its ISBN number.
    – Adam
    Jan 13, 2015 at 21:24

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