The word play error is defined this way: “A word or phrase from a biblical translation is examined and interpreted as if the revelation had been given in that language…”[1]
In his book, Scripture Twisting, James Sire gives the example of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which takes the word “Adam” and turns it into “a dam”—an error or obstruction.[2] Another example might be her turning the English word “atonement” into a completely different concept—”at-one-ment.”
So far as I have been able to determine, the Watchtower has never made this sort of error, but it has made a similar error of using the English measure “inch” in confirming its prophetic date system. Continue reading
The Watchtower teaches that some people will be resurrected while others will not.
A major source of biblical error is reading more into a passage than God actually put there. Sire calls this “overspecification”, which occurs when “a more detailed or specific conclusion than is legitimate is drawn from a Bible text.”
Using a reductio ad absurdum, Walter Martin demonstrated how, by collapsing contexts, we can make the Bible seem to teach anything:
The error of ignoring the immediate context is defined as follows: “A text of Scripture is quoted but removed from the surrounding verses which form the immediate framework for its meaning..”
