Torah Times Messianic Ministry

Is it possible that a translation of the Scripture might be inaccurate? Could a bible version be flawed with false teaching? Could a bible version reflect the errors that translators might believe? This is a question that we as the Torah observant faithful in Messiah Yeshua must carefully consider. Is there a Kosher translation? The faithful who realize that the Most High intends for us to observe his laws should know that when translators hold to false doctrine they will mistranslate their versions according to whatever theological bias they may hold to.

For example, the Latin Vulgate and translations made by the Church of Rome put Genesis 3:15 this way:

Do you see the change here? "She" and "her" have replaced "He" and "his." It appears the translators wanted the text to refer to Mary instead of Messiah Yeshua. I was made aware of this by a retired Lutheran Pastor, and was quite amazed. The Catholics have universties, colleges, high schools, seminaries, and special schools for biblical research. How could they support so obvious a departure from the Hebrew text?

We hold the Hebrew text to be correct, and even if one doesn't believe it, one should at least admit the Hebrew text is more likely to be correct, since it came first, and the translations are derived from it:

Non-Catholics are also guilty of mistranslation. The King James Version translates Acts 12:4 this way:

Notice the word "Easter." The word πάσχα in Greek is for Passover. In every other place, the KJV translates correctly Passover. Easter and Passover are indeed two different holidays. And they are not celebrated the same way. One is on the 14th day of the first lunar month, and the other is on a Sunday. Church tradition celebrates Easter one way, with sunrise services, and the passover is celebrated another way according to God's instructions, at night. So the text is mistranslated. Could it be that the translator wanted to find Easter in the Scripture when it was not there before? It seems that would be the most likely motive, even if it was an unconscious slip of the translator's pen.

So if translators reject the Torah in favor of their tradition, then they will translate texts with a bias against Torah. What I just showed you was just the tippy tip of the iceberg of mistranslation. It is what is obviously above the water line. But I will show you that this issue goes even deeper, way deeper, right to the heart of the true good news, right to the true answer to the question of how the faithful are delivered from the consequences of their sins, and right to the real answer to why Messiah died for us.

The Church is divided, and they divide on translations. The Roman Catholic Church uses its own versions, and regards others versions as lacking the approval of the Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses its own versions, and likewise does not approve of all the non-Orthodox versions. And the Protestant world uses its own versions, and implicitly does not trust the other versions, because they encourage only their versions. The King James Only teachers approve only that version and condemn all the newer versions among Evangelicals. There is the Message version, which many recognize as corrupt, and then there is lately that version of the New Apostolic Reformation called The Passion Translation which is even more corrupt, and is recoginzed as such by many. So be aware of the fact that the Church divides over doctrine, and this division is at the level of translations. So the principle of translation corruption is revealed by the way Churches behave and treat other denominations. So, you will find in my criticism not a new qualitative finding, but a quantitative finding. The corruption is far greater than they will admit to.

If we expand the field to Jewish translations, we will find that the same is true there also. They translate with a bias many Messianic texts taken for granted by Christians. They accuse the Christians of making false translations, and the Christians accuse them of making false translations. So realize that the Judeo-Christian Dominion is at war with itself. And the Christian Dominion itself is at war with itself. And Satan is most often on one side or the other of each battle, and sometimes on both sides of a battle. Realize that this war is fought on the battlefield of translations as well as in other ways. And full disclosure of the nature of the war is essential to mounting a proper defense. The Torah observant faithful in Messiah Yeshua must realize they should not fight the battle of truth using the translations produced by those opposing the truth.

Using translations produced by Christian scholars, who have set aside the Torah, to debate them on the topic guarantees that they win the debate. If a translation was made by someone who rejects the obligation of all the faithful, Jew and non-Jew alike, to observe Messiah's Law, then that scholar is disqualified from the start. I mean there is an obligation to keep the commandments if anyone wishes to inherit everlasting life. Yeshua said so to the young ruler.

What are my credentials? Simply this. I know enough Hebrew and Greek and grammar of the respective languages to make the necessary corrections. Sadly, however, people are trained to look for degrees from prestigious institutions to satisfy this requirement. I will tell you right now that this is circular reasoning. It did not help the Catholic version avoid error in Genesis 3:15, and it did not prevent the Anglicans from mistranslating the KJV in Acts 12:4. The institutions exist to defend tradition and they grant degrees to those they train to defend tradition. If anyone disagrees with the tradition, then they are defrocked by the culture of the tradition. So they live in a vast echo chamber, and never hear the the truth. So, I am self-taught and self trained in the wilderness by the Spirit of the Most High without the enforcers of tradition controlling what I discover or say. No one else can do the task that I have an obligation to do. It is nothing more than the obligation to love one's neighbor as oneself. I have no anointing except a private spiritual anointing, and expect no one to accept it until after they have seen the facts and know the truth. And for all to know the truth is the goal, and nothing else. The truth as taught by Messiah Yeshua.

So I will show how to judge who is correct based on easily verifiable facts. But this only works if you loose your fear of the tradition, its institutions, and its academic ranks. You need to learn to think outside the box. You need to listen to the Spirit, and not tradition. So let us begin.

I will be using the Good News of Messiah and I am its translator. That's full disclosure. I have an established position on every doctrine that matters, either against or for. And I am an expert at spotting biased translations and fixing them. I will be comparing it with other versions and giving you some simple reasoning why it is correct. Eventually, as the Most High pours out his Spirit on the house of Israel, it will be recognized that in this denominationally divided world of the exile, before the restoration of the kingdom, that at least one translator was correct, more correct than all the rest. Until that recogniztion comes, I mean to prove it to be the case with the facts.

First up is Mark 7:19. Here is a preview of it from the Good News of Messiah:

Here is what the English Standard Version (ESV) says:

Notice that in this version, it is claimed that Messiah overturns the Kosher Law declaring all food clean. That's how it is used by Christians.

When we turn to a so called Messianic Jewish version, things get no better.

David Stern, translator of The Jewish New Testament which became The Complete Jewish Bible is supposed to take a kinder approach to Torah, because he was a Messianic Jew. But this wasn't truly the case. He renders this verse like this:

If you examine the King James on this text, you will see that my translation actually agrees with it in the last part of vs. 19. This is because in the phrase "Thus he declared all foods clean" three of the six words in the ESV don't exist in the original text, and from the CJB four of the seven words in that version do not exist in the Greek text!

The intent of the ESV translators is based on their belief that things declared unclean for food by the Torah are now declared to be clean for food. This was also surely the belief of the KJV translators, but they had the integrity not to add so many words. The KJV translators massively erred in other places. Just not at the end of Mark 7:19. And David Stern appears to have doubled down on the false teaching by adding the word "ritually" to the text on top of the already false translation of versions like the ESV. This should warn us that the theology of Messianic Judaism allows Jewish believers to observe Torah for cultural reasons, while at the same time it adopts the lawless doctrines of the Church.

Messiah's point is simple, and regards eating with unwashed hands. Unwashed hands, if they had contacted something unclean do not share defilement with the heart of a man, but the body eliminates any physical contamination. Any contamination from the food is cleansed from it before entering the body. And so it is with every unintentional contamination. An Unintentianl contamination does not defile the heart. Messiah's point is actually in accord with good biology. The digestive system removes the bad from the good before it is assimilated into the body in the small intestine. So the contamination does not make it into the inner man.

Here is a faithful translation once again:

These points are obvious, but spiritual blindness is a contamination that cannot be cured. In The Good News of Messiah I have corrected this Mark passage translation to the truth in more ways than I want to go into now. It would only detract from the obvious point, but it is all according to good translation practices and sound scholarship.

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Next up is Romans 3:21:

And what do the popular versions say?

We see here the claim in two versions that the justice (or righteousness) of God is apart from the Law. But is it likely that the Most High would explain his justice and righteousness through the Torah, only to announce another justice and righteousness that operates differently than what Torah teaches? Since this is not likely, his righteousness is always according to the Law, and his justice always conforms to his Law. Further, how can his righteousness be without the Law and yet be witnessed by the Law? This much is obvious to we who observe the seventh day Sabbath, and keep the other holy days, knowing that we are joined in with Israel. And we should know that all our understandings about the work and ministry of Messiah Yeshua have their context in the Torah.

The Church interprets this text to mean that God left clues of another righteousness in the Torah, and that this righteousness (or justice) is a new righteousness or justice not according to the Torah. Now this is either the devil talking or it is a new progressive revelation. Ultimately, it ends with the Church claiming that God justifies the wicked. But this is not likely after God has already said, "I will not justify the wicked" (Exodus 23:7). So the new standard of justice claims that God justifies the sinner. But it cannot mean that God's justice has changed, because God is not a liar, nor does he judge falsely. The wicked cannot be justified in his case. That would be a false verdict. So stick around for the explanation I will give. It makes a lot more sense.

The meaning cannot be that righteousness is obtained by the faithful without obeying the Torah either. Quite to the contrary, the Torah declares that it will be our rightouesness if we guard the whole Torah (Deut. 6:25). No doubt someone speaking from the other side will say that one has to perfectly obey all of it to be righteous, and therefore another righteousness is needed apart from the Torah's definition. But the answer to a lack of perfect righteousness is not another alien righteousness from somewhere else. Rather the answer to a lack of perfection is forgiveness and cleansing from sin. It is cleansing from the very things that Torah declares are sins. And nowhere does Torah say that the faithful have to be perfect to be loved by the Most High, and to receive his forgiveness.

Read Ezekiel 18 with open eyes. We see and understand. Whoever does righteousness will live. Righteousness is defined in terms of commandments from the Torah in this passage. And further, if a person turns from evil and does righteousness, then the justice of God forgives the person so that he will live. Such a person is imperfect. In fact, to be resuced from sin requires one to admit imperfection. Keep in mind that Yeshua is rescuing us from the consequences of our sin. That's his servanthood, his sacrifice. He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousenss.

Yet the one who declares that perfection in the eyes of God is necessary believes that God must justify him a sinner. They teach that justify means "to declare righteous," or "to acquit." Let me now explain the solution to the Romans 3:21 text.

The Good News of Messiah does not translate "apart from the law," but "apart from what is customary." The Greek is literally "without custom" or "apart from custom." NOMOS means "custom" in Greek. It's in all the dictionaries used by scholars. Paul's reference is to Jewish oral law, which he regarded as the traditions of his fathers apart from the written Torah. Therefore he uses the common and usual nuance of NOMOS in Greek meaning "custom."

What became customary for justice among the Jewish teachers was that good works, called merits, could be used to cancel out sins called demerits. This is the doctrine of zechut. It was a way of compensating God for sin by gaining merits, so that he would show favor to one instead of judging. Also they taught that if one became Jewish, or was born Jewish, then one could inherit zechut from Abraham, who they say had an abundance of merit to bequeath to his descendants so that God would show favor to them. Understand that in Jewish tradition, Abraham holds the same position as Mary in the Catholic Church. Abraham is a comediatrix in Jewish theology. His merits are said to interceed for Israel.

I could explain this using the word "law" though. Only it would be another law, and not the Torah. The Jews believed that besides the written Torah, there was an oral law given at Mt. Sinai. And it is their oral "torah" that taught the doctrine of zechut. So it is their tradition. But it is necessary to avoid language that a Jewish audience might understand to refer to oral torah, and to correctly translate it custom, because the non-Jew isn't going to understand Judaism. The justice of the Most High IS apart from the oral torah of zechut, and the written Torah bears witness to his actual justice where he said, "I will not justify the wicked" (Exodus 23:7). So neither Abraham's merits nor added personal merits are going to get God to justify one who is a sinner.

A translation that declares God's justice isn't according to his Law is an abomination. It isn't kosher. It is unclean. But it says in Ezkiel 18:20, "The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." Therefore, there is no righteousenss that can be obtained without obeying the commandments. And so, for the faithful who have struggled with texts like this, and have been tempted to reject Paul, or who have come up short when attacked with the mistranslation by a mainstream Christian, there is an easy answer. NOMOS means custom and Paul is speaking of the customary works called zechut in Judaism.

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Some may have noticed that I speak of the Church disparagingly. I can do this for two reasons. Firstly, I mean the insititution that Christianity has created in the image of their traditions, and not the individuals that "go to Church." My judgment is against the institution, its traditions, and its doctrines, and not any persons associated with it. I cannot say I never judge a person. If someone personally wrongs me, and it is evident that it is rebellion that led them to it, then I might judge them. But I have no judgment against Christians. My only goal is to warn you to flee from what is false before you get judged when God judges what is false. The second reason I can speak so about the Church is that this word isn't actually in the Scripture. The biblical word is assembly or congregation, refering to the Assembly or Congregation of Israel. Therefore, since the word is an imposition on the Scripture, I see no problem in using it negatively.

To continue, God does not justify the wicked. He does not justify the sinner. It says he will not do it in Exodus 23:7, "I will not justify the wicked." Justify means to declare to be in the right, or in fancy legal language "to acquit" the defendant. Now I just got through explaining that the demerits called sin are not cancelled out on the basis of merits. God forgives sin, but he does so after a guilty verdict. Forgivness is not justifying the guilty. Yet, what do we see versions translated by the Church saying?

Here the translation is declaring the exact opposite of what we find in Exodus 23:7. It's quite shocking. If one is to be acquitted, that is justified, that is, declared in the right, it can only be on the basis that one DID do what is right. Otherwise, the whole claim to justice is a lie. To be justified requires one to have worked good deeds. Believing is not a zechut that can magically overcome the divine prohibition against justifying the guilty. But the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

So how can Paul be rescued from this unclean translation, that is short of rejecting Paul's writings? The Good News of Messiah restores the sense.

In the Greek language, the term δικαιοω mistranslated "justifies" in the ESV actually means to "administer justice," either of a favorable nature or of a punitive nature. Only in cases where the defendant is righteous can the defendant be "justified." The word actually means that the judge does justice, without saying how he does justice. So "administering justice to the guilty" perfectly agrees with Exodus 23:7, and if the guilty person has repented and now does what is right, then the justice rendered will be according to Ezekiel 18:21. He will be forgiven and his former deeds will not be remembered against him. Guilt is not overturned in the administration of justice. But the person is forgiven if he repents.

So let me explain plainly what Paul is saying. If a person seeks favorable justice from God, then he does not do works of zechut hoping that God will cancel his demerits on the basis of compensating merits. That's what Paul means by "not working." But he does hold faithful to Messiah, who administers justice to us sinners. Holding faithful to Messiah is the same as returning to righteousness after sin and rebellion. The faithfulness is taken into account for the administration of favorable justice, which means the person is forgiven, and his former sins are no longer remembered against him. See Ezkiel 18:21.

There is here more than I have explained related to Genesis 15:6. But it is best not to complicate things further, as too many new readers need to learn to adapat to the corrections I am highlighting here, and I want to keep things simple.

The goal here is simple. If you give up trusting the mistranslated versions and start reading the Good News of Messiah then I have succeeded. If you do not, then you are still being held in captivity by a corrupt tradition. There is no way to suger coat the matter.

I wish I could point you to someone else who has repaired the damage, but I cannot and someone has to be called to do it first. Being so called is a great burden to assume. Recall that Moses did not want the job when God called him. There are times when I do not want the job.

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The very heart of the good news is at stake here. We must carefully remove the cult language of the Church echo chamber and return to the sound words of Scripture. That means NOT agreeing to the apologetical foundation that our adversaries are always imposing upon us with their mistranslations. The faithful in Messiah Yeshua who recognize the necessity of returning to Torah observance must not, and should not rely on the presuppositional translations produced by those allied with our with our enemies.

The next text up is 1 Corinthians 15:3. If you are unaware of this, this text lies at the very heart of the good news of our salvation, our deliverance from sin and death. The mistranslated version is:

Now the contradiction to Torah here might not seem evident to you. But that is because most of us, (who realize we should be obeying God's laws, and then start with keeping his Sabbath) have not processed a good deal of the false theology we received from the Church. Most of us have not faced up to the truth that Messiah's death is a ransom from evil, and not a penal substitution.

I should point out that there are many, that are ignorant of Torah, that keep Sunday, and other Church traditions, who have grappeled with the problem of Messiah's ransom vs. penal substitution, and they have come out on the right side of the issue. They are found in many denominations and groups. Ransom used to be the main teaching among Christians, but it was replaced by penal substition through the work of Augustine, Anselm, and the later Calvinists who refined the cruder theory of Anselm. The name of Charles Hodge comes to mind. So with that bit of history, let's examine this issue.

Obviously if any Scripture explains why Messiah died, it is in Isaiah 53. So it is there we must look to check whether or not this translation of 1 Corinthians 15:3 is correct. What does it say in Isaiah 53:5?

Isaiah 53:5 says he suffered from our transgressions, and from our iniquities, and not for them. Some other translations translate Isaiah 53:5 because of which means the same thing as from, but all of these versions fail to make the same correction in 1 Corinthians 15:3! For example:

But in 1 Cor. 15:3:

I chose the TLV for this example because it is almost a perfect translation of Isaiah 53:5. The words "chastisement for" is an error. The text says "instruction of," but I am not focusing on this point here. I only say so, so that you will know I do not endorse the TLV! The Tree of Life Version is another Messianic Jewish version like the CJB. One can tell from their statement that they believe Jews should follow Torah for cultural reasons only, and that Gentiles are excluded from this. So the TLV version is going to simply repeat all the false Church doctrines in the regular versions just like the CJB. Here is their statement:

This phenomenon of some versions translating something right in the Tenach, but failing in the same version to do so where the passage is cited by Paul is also known with faithfulness/faith in Hab. 2:4 and Romans 1:17.

Here is how the Good News of Messiah translates 1 Cor. 15:3.

I have put "on account of our sins" which means the same thing as "from" or "because of" our sins. But to put "for our sins" is to put the false gospel of penal substitution into the text. And the TLV translators announce in their statement of faith that they believe this false doctrine.

The guilt offering bears the sins confessed over it to bear it away, to cleanse the sin. That is the ritual symbolism. The offering dies as a consequence of the evil represented by the sin, to show the cost of sin. The true good news is that Messiah forgives us and then takes our sin away to the grave, and he leaves it there, himself rising from the dead. That's the spiritual lesson. To make this spiritually work we must cooperate with him in faithfulness by allowing him to carry our sins away, remembering that every sin we do makes him suffer in Spirit just as he suffered in the flesh.

This issue of "for sin" vs. "on account of sin" is critical to understanding the true good news. The wicked will die for their own sins. The word for teaches that a deserved penalty is being suffered by the wicked. To claim that Messiah died for our sin in the sense of just penalty payment contradits the Ezekiel 18 passage cited above. The son cannot suffer judicial penalty for the sins of the fathers. To say so is to make the Most High unforgiving. Forgiveness is the good news, and not penalty payment. The suffering of Messiah therefore is in cleansing us from our sins, and not from paying for them. Messiah died as a ransom to purchase us from the nations to the Father. He did NOT die to buy forgiveness from the Father by satisfying his unremitted wrath.

The prophet predicts that Israel will consider Messiah smitten by the Almighty! But vs. 5 corrects this false assumption. Messiah was smitten from our transgressions! He is the ransom for Israel, and sin is the counter party to the ransom. The Father is giving the Son so that sin will give up Israel. So this isn't a penal subsitution to satisfy divine wrath.

What the counter party to a ransom demands is illegal. But the Most High pays it anyway through his Son because both He and his Son love us enough to even suffer from our sins to defeat sin.

It is time to stop thinking that the Son was smitten by the Father to satisfy a judicial penalty. That is pure legalism. It lies in the realm of legal fiction. Guilt cannot be transferred to the innocent nor innocence to the guilty. So the real reason Messiah suffered was because he loved us and is willing to be harmed by sin when rescuing us from sin. He wants us to know that he forgives sin, and that wrath is only for the unrepentant.

I know that some of the Jewish faithful know that their Torah observance is an obligation commanded by the Most High, just as it is for us non-Jews, who have joined with Israel. But we must be aware that what passes for Messianic Judiasm is the practice of Torah for only cultural reasons baptized in the theology of the Church institition with a few corrections to make things more comfortable for Jews, all the while seeking to put non-Jews at a distance from Torah. Some Christian Apologists have put their imprimatur and nihl obstat on Messianic Judaism as such, then they have gone to war with true Torah observance.

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Now I have discussed the above topic enough, although there is much more to it. I should at least say what motivated the false doctrine. Forgiveness of sins is contingient on pledging faithfulness to Messiah and holding faithful to Him, and to his Father. But in the doctrine of the Church, penalty payment takes the place of faithfulness. All one is urged to do is to believe the penalty is paid. This is redefinition of faithfulness to Messiah. It replaces loyalty to God by keeping his commandments with a mechanism by which they will never fear breaking his commandments, because they believe with the penalty paid, there can be no penalty, unless they stop believing the penalty is paid. And now you know that this gospel entraps people into lawlessness. The Church has become a cult through its redefinitions. But know this, wrath is being stored up for the disobedient who will not yield their loyalty to Messiah, and penal substituion will not deliver anyone in that day.

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Critics of Hebrew Roots as we are called by critics make Trinity Denial a main attack avenue. They are partially correct to be critical where they actually find someone denying the divinity of Messiah. Clearly, many are flippantly attacking the doctrine of the Trinity, which sadly more often than not is a path to denying the divinity of Messiah. I have a great criticism of the Trinity Doctrine, and this is reflected in The Good News of Messiah. But the criticism is not what some may assume. In fact, when the correction is made, Messiah turns out to be as fully divine as the Father. And I will show how the Trinity doctrine actually reduces the position of the Son.

So now, before giving the correction in the translation, I have to give you a little history. Originally, the Most High refers to himself as Us, right at the beginning. And yet Scripture speaks with a he right at the beginning. In Hebrew one member of a class can speak for the whole class. I have written another article on this. But the point is that "he" or "I" or any singular pronoun can refer to a group. Then Scripture uses the word "one" to refer to the union of two persons, the man and the woman. Now if we are told in Genesis 19:24 that YHWH rained fire from YHWH out of heaven, then it is disclosed that YHWH is more than one person. And further, if it be said that YHWH [is] one, then the unity ascribed must be of the same nature as the man and his wife. Also, it is quite evident that Deut. 6:4 may be interpreted adverbially, "YHWH is our Almighty, YHWH alone," or "YHWH only", and quite clearly Zechariah 14:9 has exactly this sense in Hebrew. The text is actually a predication with definiteness, e.g. "YHWH [is] [the] one," which means he is the Almighty, and no one else. But Deut. 6:4 itself does not disclose the nature of the Almighty. It only teaches his exclusivity with respect to other elohim.

In the Era of the Greeks, Jewish thinkers came into contact with Greek philosophy. The Greeks taught that the divine ideal was a monad, which is to say an absolute unity. The ideal of perfection for them was something that cannot change in any way. Therefore, the divine for them cannot have parts related to each other in any dynamic sense. They believed that if something was perfect, then it could only change in the direction of greater or less perfection, which in turn would be to admit that something was not perfect to begin with according to their presuppositions. This view was adopted by some Jews of the time, and eventually evolved into the doctrine of Judaism concerning the unity of God. The doctrine is man made, and as such it is idolatry. Also this doctrine has more in common with a stone idol than the living Almighty.

The gnostic Jews and later gnostic Christians adopted this doctrine of God. The Gnostics explained God as being the monad or absolute one, but then his interactions with the world was done by emmanations or manifestations. Later the Gnostic Christians came into conflict with more orthodox Christians. But contrary to what the narrative of the Church reports, it wasn't a total victory for the orthodox party! The Nicene Creed, as it turns out, reflects Gnostic beliefs based on the Greek Philosophy. And we will discover that in a bit.

To first tidy up the Jewish end of the history, Judaism did not fully adopt the doctrine of absolute divine unity until the time of Maimonides, and it should be no surprise that the Jews did so at that time. This is because Maimonides and his fellow Jews were exiled in the culture of Isalm! And Islam does teach the absolute oneness of God. And so Judaism was pressured at the time to tie the final knot with the monad doctrine.

So now, let us go back to the council of Nicea where the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity was formulated. The Nicene creed adopted the monad doctrine when it said that God was "one essence" meaning "one being." In the Latin version this became "one substance." And secondly, it Christianized the emanations doctrine of the Gnostics by defining the meaning of "the only begotten Son" as begotten before all worlds or ages. From this is logically derived the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. Logically, this makes the Son dependent on the Father, and arguably less God than the Father.

So the problem with the Trinity doctrine, and particularly the Nicene Creed is that it misrepresents the Almighty according to the Greek idea of the monad, and the Gnostic idea of emmanations of God, placing the Son in the later category. So that is enough history for the translational correction I will introduce.

It was discovered by scholars in the period of the 1950's that the translation "only begotten Son" was based on a false etymology. It turned out that in the word monogenes, the genes part of it, was not properly derived from the verb to give birth, or to beget. Hence the translation "only begotten" was incorrect. Rather "genes" meant kind or genus. And so now scholarship was faced with an insurmountable difficulty. If they were to openly correct "only begotten" then it would be clear that the Nicene Creed was false, and that the doctrine of eternal begetting before all worlds was an error. This was too great a challenge to the Nicene tradition. They had already staked all their authority and reputations upon it! Furthermore, the Nicene Creed was regarded as the main formulation for Christians teaching that God is "one substance" or "one essence," rather than the Father and Son being of similar divine nature. In AD 325 there was a significant group arguing for "similar" vs. "the same," but these were overruled by those who believed the monad philosophy, which received support both from the deity deniers and those who did not. The two greater parties struck a compromise leaving a third party with the truth on the sidelines.

What the modern scholars should have done to preserve the tradition was continue the lie, and to translate "only begotten," but apparently this dishonesty was too great for them. So what did they do? Instead of correcting begotten to kind they deleted begotten from the new versions and left γενης untranslated. So instead of contradicting the Nicene Creed, they merely removed its support. This allowed them to continue to believe the creed or say they did, but it also removed the alledged Scripture upon which the claim of the creed was based.

So here is an example of a post 1950 translation that does not translate "begotten" or try to correct it. It just omits it:

You see it just reads only Son. There is no word "begotten." Before 1950 or so, the versions have "begotten", e.g. KJV. But afterward they delete the word, and these versions are CSB, CEB, CJB, CEV, ERV, ESV, ESVUK, GW, HCSB, ... NIV, NASB, and so on. You can check your version. There are more than I want to list. Some versions after 1950 did retain "begotten." But enough of the world of scholarship has recognized the error of "begotten" to establish a crisis of authority in the Church. Those wanting to retain "begotten" are left in a minority among Evangelicals.

So now, how is this matter properly corrected? I, in the Good News of Messiah translate as follows:

You see, the proper meaning of the term is "only kindred," which is to say that Messiah Yeshua is alone kindred to the Father, to the Almighty. He is of like kind and the same nature. No longer is the Son a generation of the Father, he is right there beside him, having the same divine nature. It was never proper in the first place to impose either the monad philosophy or the emanations philosophy on the Most High. It is idolatry of the heart to do so. And that my friends is what is wrong with the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity.

One last point to finish this up. And additional reason that the modern scholars do not want "monogenes" properly translated as only kindred is that it contradicts the one essence doctrine of the Nicene Creed. The Son is kindred divinity to the Father, and not the same being as the father. The unity of the Most High is apart from the separateness of the being of the Son and the Father and the Spirit. And this point will be shown next.

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Now I would like to turn to a text which has vexed those who hold to the Nicene Creed's doctrine of "one substance" or "one essence," which in turn has been used by those denying the deity of Messiah against them. You will see, that the Nicene creed has created the weapon employed against the deity of Messiah. That text is John 17:3. It reads in the ESV:

The problem that comes up here, is that this version, and all others say that God is the "only God" and then Christ is mentioned alongside him. Since Jesus is speaking to his Father, when he says "You, the only true God" one speaking to another, he is ruling himself out. The grammar is against this, but explanation based on the Nicene Creed devolves into chaos, as if the utterance itself is self contradictory. All this difficulty goes away when we discard the Nicene Creed and translate as in the GNM:

Messiah is saying that his Father, the one he is addressing is ALONE true Almighty, that is by himself independently of the Son, and also that he himself is ALONE true Almighty, independently of the Father. They are as separate beings both being alone true Almighty. This is the difference between the word "alone" and the word "only." The original language may mean either as is proved by prior usage in John 16:32. Read the footnote also. It makes the same points.

So the Trinity Doctrine is deeply flawed, being based on the Greek monad and the gnostic emanations doctrine. The truth about Messiah's deity is much more exalted than this doctrine. His glory is the same glory as the Father. The divine nature of the Son is not dependent on the divine nature of the Father. Only as a man has the Son subordinated himself to the divine, not of necessity, but by choice, because he wanted to exist as a man also.

The monad doctrine and the emnations doctrine impose on God a doctrine based on physical restriction, and philosophical speculation. There is nothing imposed on God that contains his nature to one being or to an emanation of one being. Rather, he is what he reveals himself to be, and he interacts with himself spiritually. I speak here with the Hebrew "he" and "himself" not restricting the sense to one person.

Keep free of idols.