Russias legal system in shambles after courts rule to ban Bible published by Jehovah's Witnesses
Despite hearing the testimony from multiple non-Jehovah's Witnesses experts who supported and validated the authenticity of the New World Translation (NWT) of the Holy Scriptures published by Jehovah's Witnesses, Russia courts favored ruling that the bible was extremist. The Russian courts assigned a team of their experts to evaluate the contents of the NWT who claimed that the NWT is not a Bible and therefore can be classified as extremist. One reason why the NWT is not a bible according to their experts is that it allegedly does not refer to itself as one, despite the forward of the NWT specifically mentioning that it is a bible. The clear bias of these so-called experts was further exposed when one of the court-appointed experts sought to defend her claim that the NWT cannot be considered a Bible unless it is marked “by the blessing of the patriarch” or matches word for word with such a translation. Russian court experts also asserted that the use of use of God’s personal name, Jehovah, was another determining factor is disproving its claim as a bible. Defense attorneys of Jehovah's Witnesses presented evidence to show how multiple other translations of the Bible that are not published by Jehovah's Witnesses also used the personal name of God. Also, when one of the experts was asked to provide an example of how the NWT was extremist, they were unable to provide one. How did the court respond? Several hours of expert testimony and overwhelming evidence in support of the NWT being an authentic Bible took court justices only 4 minutes to deliberate on. The court rejected a request for a new unbiased expert study of the NWT and ruled in favor of banning the NWT in Russia. This court case provides a taste of how the legal system works in Russia. It is obvious that the court hearing was only a pretense on the part of Russian courts to ultimately pass the desired judgment that served their own interest and agenda.
