Russia: Court Bans Jehovah’s Witnesses New World Translation

In an effort to continue to persecute and discriminate against Jehovah’s Witnesses the Vyborg City Court in Russia has ruled to ban the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT).

In Russia, it is illegal to ban a Bible. However, a court-appointed “expert study” claimed that the NWT is not a Bible. The decision to ban the NWT came even after the powerful testimony of experts proving undeniably that the NWT is a Bible.

Article 3 of the Federal Law of Russia states that the Bible, the Quran, the Tanakh, and the Kangyur, their contents, and quotations from them cannot be recognized as extremist materials.

For over a century, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia worshipped using a variety of Bible translations, including the Russian synodal and Makarios translations. In 1994, the Witnesses embarked on what would be a 12-year project to translate the Bible into contemporary Russian. In 2007, the complete New World Translation in Russian was released. Since then, over 4.8 million copies in Russian have been produced. The New World Translation is available, in whole or in part, in 137 languages, with over 217 million copies printed.