I find it interesting to see how many times questions are asked here that impute bias and ill motives to the translators of the NWT. Of course, it is even more interesting to see how often people offering an answer are willing to jump aboard and do the same, since, presumably, those offering answers would be persons more disposed to objective analysis.
To the person who asked this question, let's consider a few points.
The big question here is whether the NWT translation is motivated by some anti-Trinitarian bias or is simply a case of translators doing what translators are supposed to do, which is to conscientiously choose a grammatically and contextually allowable way to render an original-language phrase into the target language. You contend that it is the former while the evidence supports the latter. In fact, the evidence suggests that if there is any bias involved here, it is running the other way to support your favored translation.
First of all, as others have mentioned, Heb. 1:8 is a quote of Psalm 45:6. In determining whether bias is playing a significant role at Heb. 1:8, it would certainly be of value to look to the NWT rendering of Psalm 45:6. Here is how it reads:
God is your throne forever and ever; The scepter of your kingdom is a
scepter of uprightness.
So, when the NWT translators translated the quote of Ps. 45:6 at Heb. 1:8, they did so in a way that was consistent with their own rendering of Ps. 45:6 and in a way that has been acknowledged even by other critical commenters here as being perfectly consistent with the somewhat ambiguous original Greek construction of both Heb. 1:8 itself and Ps. 45:6 as found in the LXX.
Now, what can we glean from the fact that Heb. 1:8 is a quote of Ps. 45:6? Well, we can consider the rather significant point that Ps. 45:6 is addressed to a very human king of Israel (though one leading an idealized life), not to God. The king of Israel ruled by divine appointment. The authority of the Davidic kingship itself came from God. God was the source of the king's rightful rulership and throne. In other words, God was, metaphorically speaking, the king's throne. This is how the 45th psalm was understood within the Jewish tradition. That tradition did not take the king to be identified as Almighty God in this passage. And, of course, the translators of this passage in the LXX were working within that same Jewish tradition. They took it in line with the rendering offered by the Jewish Publication Society Bible, which reads, "Thy throne given of G-d is for ever and ever".
Does it seem odd that God would be called someone's throne here in Heb. 1:8 and Ps. 45:6? It shouldn't. Consider Isaiah 28:5.
NIV - In that day the LORD Almighty will be a glorious crown, a
beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people
ESV - In that day the LORD of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a
diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people
NASB - In that day the LORD of hosts will become a beautiful crown And
a glorious diadem to the remnant of His people
RSV - In that day the LORD of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a
diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people
ASV - In that day will Jehovah of hosts become a crown of glory, and a
diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people
HNV - In that day will the LORD of Hosts become a crown of glory, and
a diadem of beauty, to the residue of his people
If God can be a crown for his chosen people, why not a throne for his appointed King? It makes perfect sense.
Furthermore, Psalm 45:6, like Heb. 1:8, continues with the following:
You loved righteousness, and you hated wickedness. That is why God,
your God, has anointed you with the oil of exultation more than your companions.
Given this co-text and context, it simply doesn't make sense to read either passage as identifying the person being addressed as Almighty God, since the one being addressed has a God. This indicates to us that even a reading such as, "Your throne, O God", would have to take the designation of "God" as being representative rather than literal[1] (i.e. making use of the Jewish custom of addressing a person [including servants] by the name or title of the person they are representing or standing in for).
Returning to the Greek of Heb. 1:8 and Ps. 45:6 in the LXX, it is interesting to note that if the author did want to say "Your throne is God", as the NWT renders it, there is no way to say this in Greek other than with the construction that is used there. Conversely, he could have unambiguously said "Your throne, O God" by using the vocative form in the same construction he does two verses later in 1:10 ("O Lord").
In fact, ho theos is only used three other times in the entire NT as a direct address ("O God"), whereas it is used several hundreds of times as the subject (nominative) form of the noun, "God". Admittedly, one of those three times is by this same author, in Hebrews 10:7, where he quotes Psalm 40:8. However, the author of Hebrews uses ho theos dozens of times in its standard form to simply mean "God" (and hundreds of times, actually, if you accept the author of Hebrews to be Paul).
Consider this passage on the subject from the book, Truth in Translation, by Dr. Jason Beduhn (note, Beduhn is not a JW):
Both translations ["Your throne is God" and "Your throne, O God"] are
possible, so none of the translations we are comparing can be rejected
as inaccurate. We cannot settle the debate with certainty. But which
translation is more probable?
First, on the basis of linguistics, ho theos is more likely to mean
"God," as it does hundreds of times throughout the New Testament, than
"O God," a meaning it has in only three other places in the New
Testament. Furthermore, there is no other example in the Bible where
the expression "forever" stands alone as a predicate phrase with the
verb "to be," as it would if the sentence were read "Your throne is
forever." "Forever" always functions as a phrase complementing either
an action verb, or a predicate noun or pronoun....
Second, on the basis of literary context, we can say that Jesus, who
is the subject being discussed in Hebrews 1:8, is not called "God"
anywhere else in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the immediate context
of Hebrews 1:7-9, the author is making a contrast between angels and
Jesus. Quotes from the Old Testament are used to make this contrast.
Verse 7, quoting Psalm 104:4, shows that God talks about the angels as
"servants." The contrast is made in verse 8, which says, "But (God
says) about the Son..." and then quotes the words we are trying to
figure out from Psalm 45:6-7. In contrast to the angels who serve, the
Son is enthroned....
....{snipped discussion of Hebrew literary context supporting the NWT
rendering, which I've already addressed}....
So we must conclude that the more probable translation is "God is
your throne ...," the translation found in the NW and in the footnotes
of the NRSV and TEV. Three giants of modern New Testament Scholarship
-- Westcott, Moffatt, and Goodspeed -- came to the same conclusion independently. The fact is, if this verse were quoted in the New
Testament in reference to anyone else, the translators would have not
hesitated to translate it as "God is your throne ..." It seems likely
that it is only because most translations were made by people who
already believe that Jesus is God that the less probable way of
translating this verse has been preferred. I am not criticizing their
belief; I am merely pointing out that such a belief can lead to bias
in the choices people make as translators. The issue for the
translator is not whether or not Jesus is God, it is whether or not
Jesus is called "God" in this biblical passage.
Some variety of "God is your throne" is offered as the better translation in versions by Westcott, Moffatt and Goodspeed (all mentioned by Beduhn), as well as Barclay's, Byingtons's, and many others, and as alternate readings provided in the footnotes of (at least) the ASV, the RSV, the NRSV, the NEB, and the TEV.
If you have any interest in NT translation, you're likely familiar with the name of Dr. A. T. Robertson (a Trinitarian). Here's what he said regarding this passage:
It is not certain whether ho theos is here the vocative [‘your
throne, O God’] ... or ho theos is nominative (subject or predicate)
with estin (is) understood: ‘God is thy throne’ or ‘Thy throne is
God.’ Either makes good sense.
Word Pictures in the New Testament, p. 339
Young's Concise Bible Commentary makes the following comment on this verse:
[Heb. 1:8] may be justly rendered ‘God is thy throne ...’ in either
case it is applicable to the mediatorial throne only.
Here's what Westcott, himself a Trintarian, writes on the subject:
The LXX [Septuagint] admits of two renderings [at Ps. 45:6, 7]: [ho
theos] can be taken as a vocative in both cases (‘thy throne, O God,
.... therefore, O God, thy God...’) or it can be taken as the subject
(or the predicate) in the first case (‘God is Thy throne,’ or ‘Thy
throne is God...’), and in apposition to [ho theos sou] in the second
case (‘Therefore God, even Thy God...’) .... It is scarcely possible
that [elohim] in the original can be addressed to the King. The
presumption therefore is against the belief that [ho theos] is a
vocative in the LXX. Thus on the whole it seems best to adopt in the
first clause the rendering: ‘God is thy throne’ (or, ‘Thy throne is
God’), that is, ‘Thy kingdom is founded upon God, the immovable
Rock.’
The Epistle to the Hebrews (1889), pp. 25, 26
In summary, if anyone tells you that the NWT rendering of Heb. 1:8 should be considered suspect, misleading, or clearly the result of bias, that person is either misinformed or is attempting to deceive you in service of their own agenda.
Of course, when you yourself offer a comment on someone else's answer like the following, it certainly raises a red flag regarding the matter of an agenda. You said:
The question for me really is why they deviated from the accepted
standard translations. The Answer is that The New World translators,
were following a doctrinal position, when translating and this is Just
another example of their Denial that the unborn God was born of a
woman an walked among us. They have deliberately obscured a very clear
text because it categorically declares the Godhood of Jesus of
Nazareth! Those who have met Him know who He is, The Alpha and the
Omega, the beginning and the end..Colossians 1:15 says, "first born
over all creation" not "first creation" as you say.!
Your claims are highly problematic. First, you are measuring the accuracy of the NWT against "accepted standard translations" rather than against the likely meaning of the original-language text based on considerations of linguistic probability and literary context. Second, to account for your mistaken perception of inaccuracy in the NWT based on an obviously flawed methodology, you impute bias and wrong motives to the NWT translators, claiming that they are trying to deliberately obscure a 'very clear text' when, in reality, their rendering has been favored even by many Trinitarian titans of Biblical scholarship, who have all recognized that this is anything but a 'very clear text', even though the evidence does ultimately suggest the NWT rendering as the correct one.
In fact, as a general point, it should be noted that that 'giant of modern New Testament Scholarship' Edgar Goodspeed (mentioned in the quote from Beduhn above) and many other able scholars have commented on the vast amount of scholarly acumen that was clearly possessed by the NWT translation committee, as evidenced by the translation they produced. Yes, the translation committee for the NWT has remained anonymous (rumors of the members are just that ... rumors), but the same is true of the committees for the NKJB and the NASB, and numerous detailed explanations have been provided for translation choices made by the committees in passages that might be considered controversial.
When it comes to criticism of the NWT, the harshest critics are consistently Trinitarians who are put out by the NWT renderings of passages they typically like to use to prove "the Full Deity of Christ" (such as the verse currently under consideration). It is in THESE passages where the NWT translators are suddenly accused of being either incompetent or dishonest (which it is changes based on the needs of the accuser's agenda) and supposedly straying from the meaning of the original text in favor of "theological translations" to support their preexisting beliefs about Jesus. This fact is what makes Beduhn's book, Truth in Translation, so very interesting. He compares 9 of the most commonly used English translations of the NT, including the NWT, in precisely those Christologically significant passages where the NWT is accused of being biased and/or misleading. His consistent finding is that where the NWT differs from the other versions, it does so in favor of greater accuracy, and that in those passages where the NWT is most often accused of bias in comparison to more mainstream versions it turns out that it is the more mainstream versions that have allowed theological bias to guide their translation decisions to support their preexisting belief that Jesus is Almighty God, in some cases rendering passages in ways that fall completely outside of the possible range of meanings found in the original texts (your quote of Col. 1:15 from the NIV being a good example by its insertion of "over" in place of "of", moving from translation to interpretation in an effort to remove the implications of the partitive genitive).
You see, most do precisely what you have done. Rather than measuring the NWT against the original languages, it is against these largely Trinitarian-biased English renderings that most people compare the NWT for accuracy. When they see the NWT is different they simply assume it must be the NWT that is biased and inaccurate in these places since it departs from the "accepted standard translations". As Beduhn shows in some detail, however, it is typically the other way around. Unfortunately the situation is not much better even when it comes to qualified scholarly critics, since they are typically arguing from their own biases and a vested interest in those same "accepted standard translations" and are simply looking to give their biased attacks on the NWT a facade of scholarship.
[For a more detailed consideration of Heb. 1:8, including several of the references I've included here and many more, see this page: http://examiningthetrinity.blogspot.com/2009/09/heb-18.html ]
Having addressed the matter of Heb. 1:8, I would like to take an opportunity to address a comment you made on your own question. You said:
I heard a story 20 years ago to the effect that Mr Russel claimed that
he understood koine Greek. Apparently he was taken to court and asked
to read the alphabet in Greek which he failed to do. Maybe it was just
propaganda !watchman.org/jw/jwcourt.htm Just found this..!it was true
after all..!
I followed the link you provided to see if this source you cited truly confirmed the story you heard 20 years ago as you remember it. Alas, the page is gone, but if it did confirm the story as you told it, then you can be sure that it is a wholly unreliable source. As it happens, while this story you half-recall has some very loose basis in an actual event, literally every detail you described was entirely wrong.
The person who was testifying was not Russell but Frederick Franz, the language was not Greek but Hebrew, the task that was asked of him was not to read the alphabet but was actually a courtroom stunt in which he was asked to translate a verse FROM English back INTO the Biblical Hebrew, and he did not fail in this task but simply chose not to attempt it.
Does it seem to you that someone qualified to translate the Bible from Hebrew into English ought to be able to easily translate the English back into Biblical Hebrew? If so, you would be mistaken. Consider this comment from William Sanford LaSor in his Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, Vol. 1:
All learning is in context. The context, however, is not artificial,
composed perchance by one who does not use the language naturally, but
rather it is the actual language of those who used it as their
mother-tongue. For this reason, I refuse to ask the students to
compose sentences in Hebrew. To do so is to impress errors on the
student's mind. And, frankly, most of us who teach Biblical Hebrew
do not have sufficient fluency in the language to speak or write in
it. I differentiate here between Biblical and Modern Hebrew.
And consider this from The Translator's Handbook, by Morry Sofer, pg 34:
A distinction must be made between the languages one translates from
and into. Generally speaking, one translates from another language
into one's own native language. This is because one is usually
intimately familiar with one's own language, while even years of
study and experience do not necessarily enable one to be completely
at home with an acquired language. The exceptions to this rule are
usually those people who have lived in more than one culture, and have
spoken more than one language on a regular basis. Those may be able to
translate in both directions. There are also rare gifted individuals
who have mastered another language to such a degree that they can go
both ways. They are indeed extremely rare. Given all of this, one
should allow for the fact that while the ability of the accomplished
translator to write and speak in the target language (i.e., one's
native tongue) may be flawless, that person may not necessarily be
able to write excellent prose or give great speeches in the source
language (i.e., the language from which one translates). Then again,
it is not necessary to be able to write and speak well in the language one translates from, while it is to be expected that a good
translator is also a good writer and speaker in his or her native
language.
Finally, Rolf Furuli, author of The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible Translation, made the following comment regarding the passage that Franz was asked to translate from English into Hebrew:
I asked two of my colleagues who teach Hebrew at the University of
Oslo, to translate the passage. Both had problems with the
translation from English to Hebrew, even though they both are
experienced teachers, and their results were very different.
Not only do many sources comment on the difficulty of translating from English into Hebrew, and particularly Biblical Hebrew, but we must also remember that Franz was asked out of the blue to translate the passage from English into Biblical Hebrew without any translation aids. On that point, the The Translator's Handbook also says:
No translator, no matter how accomplished or well versed in both the
source and target languages, can do without dictionaries and
reference literature.
And, by all accounts, Franz was rather accomplished and well versed. He had a knack for languages, took university courses in Greek, Latin and German, and had an interest in further developing his linguistic skills in these and other languages through personal study / self-directed learning, such that, in addition to English, he was able to read in Hebrew, Greek (both Classical and Koine), Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and French, and was able to speak in Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Furthermore, there was a little over 30 years between the time he took the language courses in University and the time the Hebrew scriptures of the NWT were first released (assuming he was a member of the committee), during which time he continued to develop his skills in these languages, including Biblical Hebrew.
And, again, with respect to the task that was asked of him, Franz did not actually say he was unable to translate the verse into Hebrew, nor did he attempt this task and fail. He simply chose not to attempt it in the first place. Contrary to your recollection of the story you heard 20 years ago, the court case was not even remotely over someone's knowledge of a particular language or their ability to translate from or into that language, but over whether Jehovah's Witnesses had the right to ordain ministers. What was being asked of Franz was, quite transparently, an irrelevant courtroom stunt that he chose not to play along with.
Unfortunately, the popular retellings of this event that are floating around the web run a lot closer to the fictional version you remember hearing than they do to the facts. When it comes to attacking the NWT, facts are largely unwelcome because they often lend little or no support to the agenda of the attacker.
[1] In fact, this is one of the two possible senses assigned to the passage by the New American Bible, St. Joseph Edition, 1970. In a footnote for this verse it explains: "The Hebrew king was called ... ‘God,’ not in the polytheistic sense common among the ancient pagans, but as meaning ‘godlike’ or ‘taking the place of God’."
