In Col. 1:16, creation is not declared to be out of the Son (the firstborn one), but is declared to be through the Son. The Son’s agency for making him to be the one through whom all things received their existence is not directly (intrinsically, immediately) his own agency as is the case, though, for the Father’s agency. No, but the Son’s agency is agency given/appointed (ἔθηκεν, Hebrews 1:2) the Son so that all things might come through him and be sustained through him. That agency in the Son is another way of saying, respecting him, that he became the Father’s instrument, the one by means of whom the Father had made him (the Son) sufficient for there to be creation of all things visible and invisible “in him,” i.e., makes all creation to be “by means of him”—yet never as though anything created may be considered as creation that is not from the One (Jehovah God, “the Father of the celestial lights,” q.v. James 1:17), for this One is he who is, ultimately, the Source/Author of all created things, and that through an agency/ability/property in Himself that he had never to acquire. (See Romans 11:36—interlinearily as “Because out-of him and through him and into him the all (things); to-him the glory into the ages; amen.”).
The verb in Colossians 1:16 is the passive verb ektísthē (“it-was-created”), but the semantic as to identification of the Creator is preserved if we were to have seen in the text a flexion equivalent as to tense, person, number, and gender so as to match the verb used in Colossians 1:16, with exception to voice, which, in the alternate construction that might have been used should be active voice. And then in the event we would translate for the verb this way: “(he)-created,” which makes the subject to be understood as “he, God.” In that event, the word formerly used as the subject now becomes the object. How do we then read? We would read “He [(God, the Father)] created all things by means of him [(the Son)].” This, too, makes it clear if not more so that by this alternate construction of a semantically equivalent expression, that it is the Son—not God, the Creator—who is presented for identification as God’s instrument he was pleased to use; the Son is referred to in the expression en autou (“by means of him”) in the text so that we read ‘by means of him,’ (“by means of the Son”). The semantic in both constructions still has God as the Creator. The “all things” has the obvious exception of the One who did the creating, such that the exception need not be expressly stated. The same goes for the Son’s role in the creation of all things. All things besides the Son—yes, with obvious exception to the Son--are things that came into existence through the Son’s agency. The summary expression we can use, namely, ‘through-him things,’ means that it is through agency given the Son that there is in existence all the other things that God created. “Other” would not be needed in English for the alternate construction “God created all things through him (the Son).” That there are things created by God through agency given the Son immediately—“immediately” per force the logic in the expression—excludes the Son, makes him to be other than the ‘through-the-Son things.’ That cannot be a difficult thing to grasp. Yes, it leaves open, unanswered just here in verse 16, the question, “Was the Son created?” That is answer given one verse earlier in the construction of Colossians 1:15 for the declaration that Christ is firstborn of all creation, a declaration given with nothing to warn us against our taking the phrase for its being on its face a temporally freighted declaration. The phrase doesn’t have the connotation that the Son’s firstborn status is as though it were an ‘as-if’ thing, a status that is positional/functional, but not ontological. If trinitarianism were truthful doctrine, then how insensitive to that doctrine is a phrase that naturally on its face rules out of court the doctrine. We know what is true about a father and his firstborn so that we quite naturally with epistemic readiness will make transference of as much knowledge for what a familial relationship like that ought at least—because it will not be fully; cf. Matthew 11:27-- to mean for the Father (Jehovah) and his Son (Jesus) as respect their unique relationship. And as to Revelation 3:14, we agree with Burney’s analysis of it. After examining the philology and grammar that informs the construction, his conclusion is that exegetes “have not a shadow of authority for limiting [“ἀρχὴ"] in meaning to ‘the source of God’s creation.’”
Now, as to Jesus’ being the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18). Yes, that is literally true from the perspective that he is the first one to be raised by God to a life “never again to return to corruption” (Acts 13:34). Anyone who was resurrected in the first century or earlier—even be he one of those resurrected by Jesus in the 1st century—did not, thereby that resurrection, escape corruption because they had to die again. After that death, there occurs a period of time before the time comes when he “will come [back] to life” (John 11:25). But what about Jesus’ resurrection? Both as to preeminence in respect to (1) the kind of resurrection that Jesus received from the Father—about whom Jesus said, “I live because of [him,] the Father” (John 6:57); and said also, “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted also to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26), this because Jesus did not own such life in his own right, as per some eternal necessity in his being—for him to return to life, and especially as respect to (2) the temporal ordering for Jesus’ kind of resurrection because his resurrection had to mean for him that he become the forerunner of a number of others who will also go to heaven, too; then for these reasons Jesus’ resurrection had to mean for him the status of his literally being the firstborn from the dead. He was not merely placed in an honorary status called “firstborn from the dead,” as though he were such a firstborn, as though it were only so by virtue of an honorary preeminence bestowed upon him. No, he must be considered to have literally become the firstborn from the dead to immortal life in the heavens in order for him thereby to be with the Father. Jesus was quite literally the firstborn from the dead, and others, then, would later become ‘born from the dead,’ too, yes, they becoming “united with Christ in the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:5).
Now, what do we say about another matter, namely about constructions in NWT for certain Greek texts where we read “other” when the Greek does not show us its own word for “other” in the text? Should the English “other” be used in such translational effort? Yes, in English we need it if we know there is a need to make explicit the logical exclusion as to all things brought into existence through the agency of one who has a unique Sonship with the Creator for him to become that intermediate agent for existence of ‘all things/persons (they not being a Son like Jesus is).’ That need for “other” may in part be amplified owing to the false doctrine of the trinity being held by many readers of the Scriptures. A pragmatic reading of a literal Greek translation will not necessarily need addition of “other” for sake of readers not steeped in paganish doctrine such as trinitarianism because they will know the history of theological teachings protected by responsible teachers present “in the body of Christ.” A similar thing occurs as respect any organization’s by-laws and practices. For example, is there likely to be any confusion on the part of any seasoned soldier when Sergeant First Class passes along the order, “All soldiers be prepared Saturday morning for marching in review past officers standing at attention on the parade grounds’ stage.” Will soldiers not realize that they have a dense fellow soldier in their midst if he be one who protests the logic of the order by displaying a critical attitude when he asks, “How can all the soldiers march in review before other soldiers (officers) when that creates an exclusion whereby “all soldiers” does not really mean all soldiers?” Maybe his fellow soldiers will tell him to use some common sense. However, if others begin to display similar confusion, then for sake of the several so confused, they may be helped by use of an instruction like this one: “Some commissioned officers will review all other soldiers as they march past the soldier-officers standing at attention on the parade ground stage. Be ready for that review Saturday.” If addition of “other” is (somehow here?) needed for sake of protecting good sense in an instruction or communication made in English with use of words/constructions that are idiomatically owned by some body of persons so that they are not in need of an expanded wording, then expansion of the wording for an instruction/communication could be deemed as unnecessarily pedantic by that body of persons, here seasoned soldiers to the manner born, as it were, whereas it might not seem so pedantic and ‘woodenly’ worded to others who are ‘outsiders.’
So, for example, “Other” in English makes evident the logical exclusion found in the context of a unique Father-Son relationship such as is exclusively owned by the Father (Jehovah) and the Son (Jesus Christ) so that by absolutely no other persons, no other “things” (entities/persons) will there be experienced that relationship. And the corollary is that the Son is logically, then, excluded from all the things (ta panta) being considered from an explicitly given Scriptural perspective by which we should view all those things as the ‘through-the-Son things’ that they are.
The Son is, however, not excluded from pas ktiseos (“all creation”), a phrase that is grammatically a partitive genitive construction by which expression is made that shows the Son as a part of the group of all things created, but even so that membership, he is one of those things in the group singled out for declaration that accords him the dignity that is naturally owned by him, since he is literally the first one in the group who came into existence.
In one of the Apocryphal books written in Greek, we find uses of a collective in which a certain member of it is singled out by a grammatical construction in which we users of English may be left wondering, “Why did the writer using Greek here not include expressly the word in Greek for “other” in the construction?” For example, we read in Sirach 49:16 this: “Adam was above every living thing in the creation,” huper pan zōon en tē ktísei Adám. (Likely that was said about Adam because he had been given a sinless start.) Context, however, is writ large enough for us who know the profile of Adam as given in canonical Scripture (particularly so in the book of Genesis) for us to surmise that Adam was not being excluded in the book of Sirach from the group of all living things, and unless we know that in certain quarters there was prevalent some mystical and mythic profile being advanced against what the Bible says about Adam, then in that case we may have been inclined to take pain to protect Sirach from any seeming endorsement of such a profile as though the myth were prominent in intertestamental Judaism, we doing so by addition of “other” in Sirach 49:16. Maybe for sake of our showing some scholarly interest as respect what all the book does teach, whether good or bad, true or erroneous, then just maybe we would prudently make addition of “other” so that the readers do not see excluded an Adam as presented in the book of Sirach's profile for Adam—that is to say, would not see him as being one excluded from being a member of every living, earthly thing.
Consider this example, too: Sirach 1:4 states: “Wisdom was created before all things” (protéra pántōn ‘éktistai sophia). The author of Sirach knew Proverbs chapter 8. Wisdom is expressly declared a created thing, but whose age distinguishes him for an existence he has owned before all created things’ existences, that is to say, created before all other created things existing or ever having existed in history. We won’t fault these additions of “other” for unambiguous English translation of the Greek that idiomatically did not make use here of the word its lexicography has for “other.”
So, responsible translation that will guard against theological error become rife in Christendom since the 4th century allows translators to add "other" in places the Greek text did not make use of its word for “other.” We can make argument for it when Greek syntax, for example, in a place where the Greek text gives us a comparison of adjectives. Consider for example where we read in Jesus' narration of an event for a comparison of “those Galileans” versus “all Galileans”; it was no problem for users of Greek to the manner born for them to understand, by habitual, conventional construction of adjectival comparisons, that a logical distinction was being implied. However, unless we can reasonably expect readers of an interlinear translation of Greek into English to know how to make disappear strange translational effect, then readers’ confusion may be our fault in large measure because we had wrongfully expected them to know how to detect that there is a Greek literary convention or idiom informing a certain construction, although it be one not readily discerned if interlinear translation alone is a reader’s tool—and if we are to the manner born, then we wouldn’t be reading a translation. So, translators who read only the words in the Greek text at Luke 13:2,4 for creating a strictly interlinear translation of those words, are doing a disservice to their readership who might readily conclude that the tower of Siloam that collapsed was not located in Jerusalem, and that the number of those killed by the collapse of the tower was a fraction of a populace living some place outside Jerusalem, and that immediately after the tower had collapsed, the total number of those living in Jerusalem at the time had not changed, had not suffered any attrition. Therefore, do we not make a valid argument that translators ought not to cavalierly ignore occasions when translation of the source text may logically require the addition of word(s) not represented in the source text, and that not to make the addition(s) creates a disservice against the readership of their translation? They ought to have built a hedge against readers making an ignorant misread of the text, a misread made more likely on the part of readers who had no knowledge that one of ancient Palestine’s 1st-century architectural features was the tower of Siloam that was in the city of Jerusalem. If we can be confident that the readership of the translation had such knowledge, then we should expect readers so educated to be able to make a pragmatic, commonsense reading of the text through mental addition of “other” in Luke 13:2, 4 for the constructions “Do you think those [murdered] Galileans were worse sinners than all [(pantas)] other Galileans” and “Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell—do you think that they had greater guilt than all [(pantas)] other men?” But NWT and many other translations expressly write “other” or semantically similar terminology following “all” as a viewable/readable addition when rendering Luke 13:2, 4. (See NAB, CEB, CEV, English Standard Version Anglicised, Good News Translation, Mounce Reverse Interlinear, NET, NRSV, 21st Century King James Version, inter al.)
And then again there can be places in certain Greek texts where there is no ambiguity likely to occur even if “other” is not written for an addition , e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:24 NWT where we read that Christ has a Kingdom, and we should know that it certainly will not be destroyed by that event “when [Christ] has brought to nothing all government and all authority and power.” No, English translation will obviously not suffer for lack of a written addition of “other” in that passage for modification of “all government and all power and authority” as in a modification for the result that the destruction is for “all other government and all otherauthority and all other power” than Christ’s own Kingdom, power, and authority. And why not? Because panta (“all”) in the context of sermons/discussions, about which Christians habitually attend/participate them, will eventually give Christians such an acquaintance with all things belonging to Christ that they will have no awareness of a need to carve out a mental addition of “other” following “all” when ambiguity is not a logically probable thing for them, even if use of the same constructions following “all” is likely to puzzle non-Christians for need of a solution. And to be sure, Christendom’s masses are not truly Christian, and accordingly have no valid concept for what “the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ” really is (see Revelation 12:10). So, we may have confidence that a logically erroneous reading of 1 Corinthians 15:24 is not likely for keen students of the Bible who early on in their study of the Scriptures learned how to distinguish between the subject “our God” on the one hand, and “his Christ” on the other hand. That understanding may well be peculiarly understood—'idiomatically,' we may say—because even though it is expressed in a Biblically derived vocabulary able to be read alike by believers and unbelievers, yet correct understanding of a text is only guaranteed by holy spirit to true believers, to those who yield to guidance by holy spirit; they will know the meaning God intends his servants (those desirous of doing his will) to apprehend, as assured us in Jesus’ words in John 7:17. Before passing along from 1 Corinthians 15:24, we should note that several translations do, in fact, add "other" or an expression for semantically similar effect. They are An American Translation, The Common Bible, The Amplified Bible,The Twentieth Century New Testament, and translations by C. B. Williams, Moffatt, Beck, and Weymouth all add “other” after “all” at 1 Corinthians 15:24 (e.g. “when he will put an end to all other government, authority, and power” - C. B. Williams, The New Testament in the Language of the People, Moody Press, 1963). As already noted, the NWT does not add “other” in 1 Corinthians 15:24, yet we cannot imagine that NWT Committee would fault addition of that “other” because it certainly reflects the intended meaning of what the apostle Paul has written. Now, John 2:10 is another place where NWT has made addition of “other” whereas most other translations did not do so; however context requires an understanding of the text such that it may be expressed as follows: "Every other man puts out the fine wine first . . . ." At 1 Corinthians 6:18 the following translations have added "other" to the text: NIV, NASB, NEB, REB. AT, GNB, TEV, and Beck (Lutheran scholar) have added "other"; NEB has added "the rest." Again, there is nothing wrong with the addition.
In none of the instances of NWT’s addition of “other” has there occurred a semantic at odds with what the Greek expressed, and in those instances there is improved translation for disambiguation of what merely an interlinear translation may have actually caused in the first place as respect ambiguity.
