MV's Crimen Laesae Maiestatis - Part I

[Bro. Perry]

Crimen Laesae Maiestatis (Latin) -literally, The Crime of Injured Majesty; an offense against the dignity, person, or authority of a reigning sovereign; high treason. The ungodding of God; the unwording of the Word.



After being baptized in 2005, I switched from my SBC a few months ago to an IFB church. The catalyst for me was the research I had been doing on the NWT Bible version (JW bible). After comparing many bible versions, it became apparant to me that the doctrines of the JW's are in large part supported by the faulty bible version they use. I futher found out that the Modern Versions (MV's) were more often than not in agreement with the cult bible I had grown up on. Once I understood this, it became unbearable for me to listen to chopped up and half omitted scriptures of the MV's spoken by our pastor. It's not that my old church were taking the tampered scriptures and teaching seriouosly flawed doctrine....it was more of what I wasn't hearing.

I thought that I'd post some of my bible research here so that folks could be better equipped to talk to Jehovah's Witnesses. They are truly a lost people, blinded by the New Bible Versions. They bear the full fruit descended from Wescott and Hort. May God have mercy upon them.

I still consider myself a relatively new Christian. I welcome any criticism.... especially as this progresses into solid Christian doctrine in later parts.

Most of us who have been raised as Jehovah?s Witnesses since at least the 1960?s were occasionally reminded of the scholarship of Fred Franz and his command of eight or more languages, including the biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek. While growing up in the 1960?s and 70?s, I remember hearing from different ones at times that Franz was a Rhodes Scholar. At other times I heard that he was at least offered a Rhodes Scholarship but turned it down to ?pursue kingdom interests?. This was usually presented in the context as an example to be looked up to.

I had just assumed that those who knew him well verified these facts without any doubt. I often wondered what it must be like to be so intelligent and how a person could learn so many languages. So, I recently did a little research concerning the claims that surrounded Fred Franz.

Shortly after the New World Translation (NWT) had begun to be translated in 1950, and before its completed release, The Watchtower Society made available in Kingdom Halls copies of A.H. Macmillan?s 1957 book, ?Faith on The March? (Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.).

Macmillan wrote of Franz in his book: ?he carried away the honors at the University of Cincinnati and was offered the privilege of going to Oxford or Cambridge in England under the Rhodes plan? (pg. 181). ?Besides Spanish, Franz has a fluent knowledge of Portuguese and German and is conversant with French. He is also a scholar of Hebrew and Greek as well as Syriac and Latin, all of which contribute to making him a thoroughly reliable mainstay on Knorr?s editorial staff? (pg. 182).

So, here apparently was one source of the rumors regarding Mr. Franz?s intellectual and linguistic prowess that I had heard so much about as a young boy. However, the facts I?ve found about his education prove problematic for the support of such claims. Readily available now are copies of the scholastic transcripts of Mr. Franz?s work as a student at the University of Cincinnati. They show that Mr. Fredrick William Franz quit his university education well before completing his bachelors? degree (first tier 4 year degree).

So, how could it be true that Franz ?carried away the honors of the University of Cincinnati? when he didn?t even graduate? Additionally, simply being told what a student must do or accomplish in order to be invited to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, is certainly not the same as ?being offered the privilege of going to Oxford or Cambridge in England under the Rhodes plan?. This started me to thinking that there might be more to this story than met the eye. I wondered if there was anything else here that was different than what I?d been led to believe?


First, let?s consider the other linguistic claims about Mr. Franz that was distributed in all the Kingdom Halls in the late 1950?s. Macmillan wrote: ?Franz has a fluent knowledge of Portuguese and German and is conversant with French. He is also a scholar of Hebrew and Greek as well as Syriac and Latin.?

However, according to Mr. Franz?s college transcript, his major language studies were in classical Greek (21 semester hours), not Koine Greek in which the New Testament was written. The Greek Franz studied has different grammar and syntax from that of biblical Greek. At that time, there was only one course in biblical Greek even offered at the University of Cincinnati.

According to the 1911 university catalog, page 119, that course was titled: ?The New Testament ? A course in grammar and translation.? Although Franz did take this class, this was not a full 3-hour college credit course. This was simply a survey course of New Testament Greek. Therefore it could legitimately be said that Franz never completed not even one typical college course in New Testament Greek. The one short course he did take was in a sense, well?.anti-typical; if I may use a favorite phrase of his.

As for Hebrew and Syriac, they were not even offered at the University of Cincinnati. Franz did take 15 hours of Latin, but that would not qualify him as a scholar of that non-biblical language. Since there is no record of Franz attending other universities and the one he did go to is easily checked, the additional claims of him being a scholar of ?Hebrew, Syriac and Latin? are apparently not true either.

Franz himself seemed to hold an inflated estimation of his scholarship credentials all the way to near the end of his life evidenced by what he wrote in his autobiography in 1987 :

?What a blessing it was to study Bible Greek under Professor Arthur Kensella! Under Dr. Joseph Harry, an author of some Greek works, I also studied the classical Greek. I knew that if I wanted to become a Presbyterian clergyman, I had to have a command of Bible Greek. So I furiously applied myself and got passing grades? (The Watchtower, May 1, 1987, pg. 24).

You?ll note that this autobiography gives the impression that the majority of his Greek studies were ?Bible Greek? under ?Professor Kensella? and that classical Greek was secondary under ?Dr. Joseph Harry.? The only problem with this proclamation is that the opposite is the truth. Franz only took one, shortened 2-hour credit class of ?Bible Greek.? The other 21 hours of Greek he took were Classical.

Also noteworthy, according to the course catalog of 1911, is that Arthur Kensella was not a professor of Greek as Franz claimed, but an ?instructor in Greek.? The reason was that Kensella did not have a Ph. D. degree. Therefore, Kensella only taught entry-level courses.

As if Franz?s personal academic records weren?t embarrassing enough when compared with his self-perception; he also seems to have perjured himself in a 1954 Scotland courtroom when he claimed under oath that he could read Hebrew, but then failed to translate a short verse in Genesis when challenged by the prosecutor:

Prosecutor: Have you also made yourself familiar with Hebrew?
Franz: Yes ?
Prosecutor: So that you have a substantial linguistic apparatus at your command?
Franz: Yes, for use in my biblical work.
Prosecutor: I think you are able to read and follow the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, German...
Franz: Yes. . .
Prosecutor: Can you, yourself translate that into Hebrew?
Franz: Which?
Prosecutor: That fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis?
Franz: No.

(Cross Examination of Fred Franz. Pursuer?s Proof of Douglas Walsh v. The Right Honorable James Latham, Clyde , Scottish Court of Sessions, Wednesday, November 24, 1954 , p.7, pars. A-B. and p. 102, par. F.)

Now with his scholastic record and testimony under oath in mind, please re-read Franz?s claims about himself:

?What a blessing it was to study Bible Greek under Professor Arthur Kensella! Under Dr. Joseph Harry, an author of some Greek works, I also studied the classical Greek. I knew that if I wanted to become a Presbyterian clergyman, I had to have a command of Bible Greek. So I furiously applied myself and got passing grades? (The Watchtower, May 1, 1987, pg. 24).

Does this seem like a man in touch with reality, in love with truth and animated by the humbling effect of the indwelt Holy Spirit? Or does he appear to be a fleshly man playing fast and loose with the truth, and motivated by pride to cover over his real qualifications?

The reality is that Fred Franz, although apparently above average in intelligence and somewhat self-taught in Hebrew and other languages, was not a biblical scholar at all. He did not even complete a first tier Bachelors degree, much less a Masters? degree or a Ph. D., which of course is needed for competent biblical language translation work. In the real world where you and I live, he would have simply been forgotten and would have probably had a hard time finding a good job with such incomplete college work. However, with the help of a religious publishing company he could be esteemed as much as many heads of state, revered as a quasi-prophet or ?oracle? with multitudes hanging onto his every word at conventions as if an angel from heaven himself were speaking. Not bad for a college drop out.

These findings raise important and troubling questions. Why did Franz never object to the false claims in Faith on the March? His later claims in his autobiography certainly suggest that he himself was the source of these statements distributed by the Watchtower since they closely mirror those in Macmillan?s book. So, why would someone take such a risk in promoting these claims that would someday surely be found out as false?

The answer is obvious to me as to why the risk was worth taking. It was at this time that the monumental task of translating the entire Words of God (as edited by Wescott and Hort) from the original languages into English had begun at Watchtower headquarters. This ?work? was being released piece by piece to all the brothers at this time and no doubt questions were naturally raised about the competency of this work. In my opinion, The Macmillan/Franz illusion served the purpose of creating an air of legitimacy surrounding the attempt of re-interpretation of Scripture by the Watchtower Translation Committee. People needed to believe that competent and learned people were in charge of this complicated work. And so, this competency seems to have been simply conjured up for the brothers and sent out into the congregations as ?truth?.

Although the ?translators? of the NWT are officially anonymous, according to several Bethel sources including a former Governing Body member, the translation committee included these other men in addition to Fred Franz:

Nathan H. Knorr: No training in biblical languages. Entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1923; 3rd president of WTS from 1942 to 1977. Died 1977 at age 72.

Milton G. Henschel: No training in biblical languages. Private secretary and traveling companion to N. H. Knorr from late 1940s until early 1970s. 4th president of WTS from 1992 to 2000.

Albert D. Schroeder: No training in biblical languages. Took 3 years of mechanical engineering, unspecified language courses in college, dropped out in 1932 and soon entered Brooklyn headquarters. Registrar of "Gilead School" from 1942 to 1959.

Karl Klein: No training in biblical languages. Entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1925; member of Writing Dept. since 1950. Died 2001 at age 96.

George D. Gangas: No training in biblical languages. Greek-speaking Turkish national, entered Brooklyn headquarters in 1928 as a Greek translator from English to modern Greek publications. Died 1994 at age 98.

As you can see, none of the men on the translation committee responsible for the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures had any college training whatsoever in Hebrew; and only Fred Franz had one short survey college course in Biblical Greek. With this in mind, the opening declaration of the 1984 edition of the New World Translation on the cover page seems to have special poignancy. Just under the title it reads:


Rendered from the Original Languages
by the
New World Bible Translation Committee

Perhaps it is precisely because there was no scholar educated in the original biblical languages of Hebrew and Koine Greek on the translation committee that the author chose the word ?rendered? as opposed to the word ?translated? when characterizing the New World Translation. If the Watchtower promoted a biblical ?scholar? with virtually zero college work in the biblical languages, it is certainly not surprising to me they would form a ?translation committee? that couldn?t actually translate ? only ?render?.

If this is the case, and there is no evidence I?ve found to the contrary, then this is nothing more than simply employing word-games to create an illusion of competency and accuracy.