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Protestant Apologetics

Titus 2:13

NT Letters
Titus 2:13
13as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Read in NWT ↗
JW Usage

The NWT renders the verse "while we wait for the happy hope and glorious manifestation of the great God and of the Saviour of us, Christ Jesus" — inserting a bracketed article before "Saviour" to split the address into two persons. JWs read this as a clear distinction: "the great God" (Jehovah) and "the Saviour" (Jesus) are two separate figures awaiting manifestation, and Paul is naming them side by side rather than identifying Jesus as God.

Protestant Usage

The Greek follows the textbook Granville Sharp construction: one article (tou) governing two nouns (theou and sōtēros) joined by kai, with no second article before sōtēros. By a grammatical rule that Daniel Wallace (Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics) describes as "without exception" in the NT for personal, singular, non-proper nouns, both nouns identify the same person. Paul is calling Jesus "our great God and Saviour." The same construction at ("our God and Saviour Jesus Christ") makes the rule even harder to evade — and the NWT itself renders the parallel construction at ("our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ") as one person, exposing the inconsistency: the NWT applies the rule when the title is "Lord and Saviour" but breaks it when the title is "God and Saviour."

NWT Issue

The NWT inserts a bracketed article "[the]" before "Saviour" — a word not present in any Greek manuscript — to manufacture two persons out of a single Granville Sharp construction. The KIT interlinear column shows the literal Greek with one article governing both nouns. The NWT's rendering at (identical grammar, identical pattern) treats the construction as one person — but at and the NWT splits it into two. The only difference is doctrinal: calling Jesus "Lord and Saviour" is acceptable to JW theology; calling him "God and Saviour" is not. The rule is bent exactly where Christology is at stake.