Christians deliberately corrupted Isaiah 9:6 to make it support their doctrine. Your response?
Question:
Christians deliberately corrupted the Jewish Scriptures to prove that Jesus is God, for e.g. they altered the translation of Isa. 9:6. They translate: “And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” but the Jewish translation is: “The wondrous adviser, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, called his name, “the prince of peace.” What will be your response? Did Jews corrupt their scriptures or did Christians?
Answer:
No one is corrupting Scripture here! This is not a question of corruption of the Hebrew Scripture. It is a question of which is the proper translation of Scripture. Technically, a biased translation does not corrupt the Scripture, because the Scripture is the original text, in Hebrew in this case. Besides, there is more than one Jewish translation, and there are more than a dozen Christian translations of Isaiah 9:6. You would do well to consider all the evidence, especially by looking at the original Hebrew text. Have Christians ever produced a translation with some Christian bias? The answer is a definite yes! Have Jews ever produced a translation with some Jewish and anti-Christian bias? The answer, again, is yes. So, we can look at the text, not only of Isaiah 9:6, but of the entire chapter of Isaiah 9 for context. Then we can answer this charge.
I would like to suggest that you go to the following website https://biblehub.com/interlinear/isaiah/9-6.htm to look at the actual Hebrew, and a literal translation of the words in the Hebrew. Here is what I find: Unto us is given a Son unto us is born a child For his shoulder upon the government and will be unto us counselor wonderful His name and will be called of peace Prince everlasting-Father Mighty God
So, whose translation is the most faithful to the original Hebrew, and whose appears to show more bias toward their particular perspective? I notice that your Jewish translation does not include what they did with the first part of the passage “Unto us is given a Son, unto us is born a child. For his shoulder upon the government…” This is key. As for the part of the verse I see from the Jewish translation you gave me, I see no major problem with either the Jewish or the Christian translation, but the Christian is closer to the original. I do notice that the Jewish translation puts “he will be called” rather significantly out of place. Might this be out of bias? Very possibly. Indeed, quite likely. They seem to have rather radically rearranged the order of the phrases in the original in order to produce a less-Christian-like translation. They place “the mighty God, the everlasting Father” before “called his name,” when in the original it comes after. That is a bit fishy to me, as it radically changes the meaning. It smells of biased translation.
My response is that neither Christians not Jews corrupted Isaiah 9:6, but the evidence appears to show that the Jewish translation you produced is the one which evidences more bias than the Christian one. You should look at the evidence and decide for yourself.
John Oakes
