JW subtitle extractor

Jehovah’s Witnesses love the Bible.
Long before taking on the monumental task
of Bible translation,
they acquired licenses
to print already existing translations
of the Bible.
And then in the 1950’s,
the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
printed the first Bible
ever to be translated by Jehovah’s Witnesses
—the New World Translation
of the Holy Scriptures.
At least we thought it was the first Bible
ever to be translated by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Well, in the fall of 2017,
the World Headquarters Museum Department
received a Bible donated
by a brother in Germany.
Accompanying the Bible was a letter referring
to a rare Bible printed in 1934
at Magdeburg, the location
of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society’s
Germany Branch and printery at that time.
Little was known about this Bible,
and to those who did know of it,
it was thought of as something
unapproved by the then-president
of the Society, J.F. Rutherford.
By 1934, Adolph Hitler’s campaign
against Jehovah’s Witnesses
was well underway.
Our religious activities were banned,
65 tons of literature had been seized
and burned by Nazi authorities,
and the branch office and printery
at Magdeburg had already been confiscated
and released several times.
And this may explain why
the Magdeburger Bible
doesn’t have
a typical publishers’ page listing
of who published it, who translated it,
when and where it was printed.
But on the bottom of one of the last pages,
there is just one line in small letters,
and it reads:
“Printed: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society,
Magdeburg.”
Interestingly, on September 13, 1934,
the Ministry of the Interior
of the German government
granted permission for the Magdeburg office
to resume
the printing and distribution of Bibles.
However, everybody knew that the facilities
could be shut down again,
perhaps permanently, at any time.
What really could be accomplished
in the limited time they had?
The Magdeburg office informed Rutherford
that they had possession
of a New Testament manuscript
ready for printing and, additionally,
a translation of the Old Testament
was nearly complete.
In October 1934,
Rutherford approved
the printing of 100,000 copies.
But time was running out.
Brother Rutherford received
the following letter dated August 6, 1935,
and it says: “In the afternoon of July 10th
“a number of officials
of the secret Police of Berlin and Magdeburg
“appeared and sealed the factory,
“rooms and offices at Magdeburg,
closed all factory rooms,
“attached the property
“and money of the Society . . .
“Several thousand Bibles
“were just been bound
and the rest is printed.”
Sadly, only a small number
of those Bibles
actually made it out of the printery.
In November 2017,
after a careful search,
we were able to obtain three copies
of the Magdeburger Bible.
Little did we know what a treasured place
in our organization’s history
of Bible translation
and printing this Bible deserves!
It’s not a mere compilation
of existing translations
but a fresh, unique translation of the Bible.
Jehovah’s name is used extensively
in the text of the Hebrew Scriptures
as well as in footnotes
of the Christian Greek Scriptures.
The Magdeburger Bible was also
cited in German-language editions
of The Watchtower.
And nearly a century later,
the text can still be easily understood
by the German reader.
This Bible translation
truly has a remarkable story.
It’s print run was small
by normal Bible-printing standards,
and its distribution was even smaller.
And although it was produced in record time
and under highly dangerous circumstances,
its story
lay forgotten for decades
until it was rediscovered.
The Magdeburger Bible
is the first-known Bible
to be translated and published
by Jehovah’s Witnesses,
predating the New World Translation
of the Holy Scriptures.
It was able to survive in a time
of Nazi government opposition
and is now part of our
Bible Museum at Warwick.
This Bible truly is a testimony
to the words we find at Isaiah 40:8:
“Aber Jehovas Wort bleibt ewiglich!”

The Magdeburger Bible—A Rediscovered Treasure