The
Jehovah's
Witnesses are organised by the
Watchtower Tract and Bible Society, which they are bound by their
faith to
obey. This organisation produces, amongst other things, the
New World Translation of the
Bible, and the magazine the
Watch Tower. The basic
creed of the Witnesses is
Arian in form. They deny the true
divinity of
Jesus, and also have some somewhat contradictory beliefs about the
afterlife. It may be plausibly argued that the New World Bible is not a
translation at all, but a subtly modified version.
For example, most bibles render
John 1:1 as 'In the
beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with
God and the Word
was God.' (emphasis mine). The
NWT offers '...and the Word was with God and the word was
a god.' (emphasis again mine). This is a trifle at odds with the meaning of the original
Greek, in which the same expression for 'God' is used in each place.
The WtT&BS has several times failed to predict the
apocalypse accurately, a fact of which most Witnesses are not aware.