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The New World Translation-a translation of the Holy Bible primarily used by Jehovah's Witnesses-has been considered by many renowned Bible scholars to be one of the most accurate modern-day translations of the Bible today. Some have even said it is the most accurate.

However,not all agree. Critics of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower Society have argued that it is not. Some have claimed that the New World Translation has been "tampered with" or "doctored up" to make it "fit" the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses. In fact, a common rebuttal Witnesses have faced in their Christian ministry has often been "You people have your own Bible. You have changed the words around to make it say what you want it to say".

But is this really true? Have Jehovah Witnesses really 'changed the Bible around' as their critics have claimed? In order to answer that question, we need to understand how the New World Translation came into existence in the first place and why its translators deemed it neccessary so that sincere persons can come "to an accurate knowledge of truth" (1 Timothy 2:4).

Anyone who has an accurate understanding of the modern-day history of Jehovah's Witnesses would know that they had not always used the New World Translation in their ministry and Bible study. In fact, in the early days of the Watchtower Society, the Bibles they mainly used was the much-loved "King James Version", the American Standard Bible and others. And yet they were still able to grasp basic Bible truths, despite not having the New World Translation.

For example, through the above versions of the Bible, they learned that God was not a Trinity (John 14:28;20:13, 1 Cor.11:3); that Hell is not a hot place or eternal punishment (Eccl.3:19,20;9:5,10;Rev.20:13 ); that the Human Soul is not immortal but mortal (Ezek..18:4,20; Jas.5:20), among other religious misconceptions. And yet they learned this from popular versions of the Bible. Why couldn't Christendom's churches do the same?

Ecclessiates 10:10 says that in effect like a blunt iron tool being sharpened, the "using of wisdom to success means advantage". In this spirit, in time the Watchtower Society, while recognizing the truth-transforming power of God's Word, found that many sincere persons found it difficult to understand the obscure words of the King James Version, for example. And because it was written in the 17th Century,many of the terms that were common in King James' day were no longer commonly used, words

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