William Abaunza wrote:"Ahora bien, Jehová es el Espíritu; y donde está el espíritu de Jehová hay libertad" (2 Corintios 3:17 New World - Spanish)
William Abaunza wrote:ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν· οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου, ἐλευθερία.
What you have reproduced for us here is not a simple, direct translation from Greek to Spanish. The the name of God (the tetragrammaton) doesn't occur in Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek New Testament. The Watchtower society's used Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek New Testament to make their translation of the New Testament. In discussions I have had with people from the Watchtower society, they have been happy to use Thayer's Greek Lexicon (dictionary) to look up words. Thayer's Greek Lexicon does not say that the word Κύριος means "Jehovah". It says that the word Κύριος is used in the Greek version of the old testament to translate the name of God (the tetragrammaton). That is how that version of the personal name of God came into the New World translation.
On of the things that we discuss on B-Greek is translation, so let's look at how an idea about language (semiotics) affected the way that this translation was made.
The translators of the Watchtower society's New World Version have gone through a number of steps to get to this translation. Let's look for a moment at the way that the Hebrew represents the tetragrammaton. Κύριος (Greek) is used to translate a whole lot of Hebrew words; אָדֹן אֲדֹנָי אֲדֹנָי אֵל אֱלֹהִים אֱלֹהַּ בַּעַל גְּבִיר
יהוה מָרֵא מָשַׁל צֻר שַׁדַּי שָׁלַט שַׁלִּיט of which the name of God is one of them. You can see that all of those Hebrew words except one has little signs like dots and lines around them. Those little signs are vowels, and vowels let us read words. The only one that does not have the vowels written is יהוה. People did not want to say God's name freely, so they didn't give the name it's vowels. They used the vowels of another words there (the sixth one from the left) אֲדֹנָי and put those vowels on the name of God - and they knew those were the wrong vowels, so they didn't say the name of God. In place of the name of God, they said the word that had shared its vowels, and that word means "Lord" in English or "Señor" in Spanish. In the New Testament, which was written in Greek about 350-400 years after the Old Testament was first translated into Greek, we kept the word Κύριος for the places the Hebrew has יהוה (the name of God). It is not clear from the word Κύριος which of the Hebrew words it translates.
That type of approach to translation is more than translation, it is a re-evaluation of the way the text was read. The word κύριος doesn't have the meaning "Lord", but rather it represents the value that Κύριος had when it was translated from יהוה. The translation, therefore, has an historical disconnection with the text and the way that the text has been used from the time it was written till then. Believing that one things represented another thing or pointed to another thing is based on a philosophical system that only became popular in the 20th century. That system is called semiotics. Semiotics is a very good and useful way of understanding the world and most people with a liberal arts education in literature are familiar with it. Never-the-less, it is a way of thinking that became popular in the 20th century. That is to say, the majority of people who read the Bible for 2,000 years, understood the Greek Κύριος (and Latin Dominus) as meaning "Lord", and not as meaning the name of God.
The name of God יהוה is not the only thing that can be understood in a referential (pointing) sort of way. There is another translation of the Bible that does a lot more referring to things that are not so obvious in the Greek. That is the Complete Jewish Bible by David Stern. That Bible does a really good job of showing us everything that is Jewish in the New Testament, and let's us see how someone who heard the Greek would (hyothetically) have recognised things that would have been familar to them in the Hebrew (or Aramaic).
2 Corinthians 3:17 (CJB) wrote:Now, “Adonai” in this text means the Spirit. And where the Spirit of Adonai is, there is freedom.
I believe that Stern knows that this passage is referring to the name of God, but doesn't use the Name freely as the New World translation does. That is a very Biblical and traditional things to do. The translations of the Old Testament to Greek (and then to Latin and other languages) teach us to not use God's personal name freely - Stern uses Adonai (the word אֲדֹנָי we looked at earlier that gave its vocalisation to יהוה (the name of God). And Stern gives a complete picture of the Bible in a Jewish context, not just looking at one (albiet important) word. In that regard Stern's translation technique is comprehensive and superior to the Watchtower society's New World (Spanish) translation. Stern has done far more than just substitute one (incorrect) variant of the name of God for Κύριος, he is consistent and scholarly. Just for one example now because Christmas is coming, look at Matthew 1:18
Matthew 1:18 (CJB) wrote: Here is how the birth of Yeshua the Messiah took place. When his mother Miryam was engaged to Yosef, before they were married, she was found to be pregnant from the Ruach HaKodesh.
That uses the same idea that things, people, places and concepts that are familiar to the translator are referred to (semiotics), rather than simply translated (from Greek to another language (English or Spanish)). The Watchtower's New World Translation doesn't do that...
Matthew 1:18 (NWT) wrote:But this is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. During the time his mother Mary was promised in marriage to Joseph, she was found to be pregnant by holy spirit*+ before they were united.
Actually, Jesus refers to a person who would be known as Yeshua in Hebrew, the Greek word Christ refers to the Hebrew word Messiah, the Greek word Μαρία refers to the Hebrew name Mariyam and so on for the others, but none of them are referred to by the Watchtower Society's New World translation's translation of the Greek. The only thing that is done in that way is the personal Name of God.