By no means is my scholarship affected by misspellings, and my research may appear at first sight to not mean much. But with further investigation, one should find the point I have made.
It is a very common thing among Proffesors to have misspellings, especially in lecture outlines. The main point is meaning, and I would reccomend anyone to take a Linguisticts class in Anthropology, as words are continually changing (It was a favorite for my anthropology teacher to twistr words around). I do not plan to get too invovlved with this as my research is currently in other areas.
As for the definite article, I believe it does have bearing within the scope that one recognize that both Jesus and His Father are called "King of Kings and Lord of Lords [as a philosopher there exists no way I can prove anyhting beyond a doubt, let it be P; I believe I have seen the former, but more importantly I chuckle when one proves me wrong with certainty]." Dr. Bob Countess affirms the former in his book "The Jehovah's Witnesses' New Testament" on Pg. 39. The bible verses backing this up are : Revelation 17:14;19;16; 1 Tim 6:15; Daniel 2:47; Deuteronomy 10:17. Though I do not mention the chapter and verse, I am all too familar with hit and run scholarship (I don't do this).
The fundemental pattern that I am looking for is the aforementioned plus,
(a) a compound word such Lord and God, or Lord God. see Revelation 4:11, where the Greek says "the Lord and the God of us.
(b) Verses that have completly substituted God, or the tetragrammoton (which is essentially the same as the former, but in the sense that God name is supposedly being mentioned) with Lord. Without proof, one can imply that the former is true, though proofs can be supplied in an advanced class. An example is in Ephesians 5:17. I am not going to debate over the use of the article here, but I am following the NWT guidlines .To maintain my privacy I will not mention my teachers name (he teaches the philosophy of the Old & New testaments). He comments that translation is a very difficult thing that is subject to change since it is based on historical records. The same was said by my history of early christianity teacher (the history of early christianity that I took was the real deal and was not covered up like the classes you will find in many seminaries).
In regards to the importance importance of the article Bob Countess says "...yet, when the article is used , definiteness is assured..." (46). I think one should reconsider the meaning in "Lord of Lords," as the is saying that Jesus & His Father are the Lords over all. The former also contradicts the WT contention (which very few people know) that Jesus is only the Lord on earth.
Sorry if I offended anyone, but the main is to show how the use of Lord really does mean something when used of the Son. The former "occurences of 'Lord of Lords' " coupled with places where Lord is subtituted for either God or Jehovah, shows that my thesis is correct, contrary to mainy peoples' contentions that "Lord" is meaningless. One does not have to be a full fledged scholar to understand my thesis, and I hope it will be of some use-
Happy Christmas
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by truth finder 2 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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truth finder
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Narkissos
Well, merry Christmas to you too!
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fahrvegnugen
Merry Christmas truth finder—
The texts you cite can be interpreted in the manner you have, but they can just as easily be interpreted differently. Let me address the larger issue here.
The NT (like the rest of the Bible) is a collection of writings from different authors. Each of these authors had their own understanding of religious "truth," and there own purposes for writing what they did. The more you dig into the world of textual criticism, the more obvious it is that these works did not come straight from god--they were penned, altered, added-to, subtracted-from, mistranslated, etc. As a result, they contain many beliefs, statements of doctrine, historical accounts, and so on that are contradictory.
Today we have two camps of scholars who comb through these texts looking to decipher what can be learned from them. The first camp is *the believers* who accept these texts as the inspired word of God, and on this assumption they compare various verses to decipher what the "true teachings" of the faith are. The second camp is *the secular scholars* who take the texts individually at face value. Many of these will say that there is confusion or contradiction between statements of belief made by different authors including over the nature of Christ and the relationship between the Father and the Son.
There are verses which seem to put the Son on an equal footing with the Father (God, Lord, etc) and there are other verses which seem to clearly make him subordinate to the Father. This ambiguity is of course what led to the Arian contrversy and even entire wars and much bloodshed in order to determine what the *correct* understanding was. Today *the believers* assuming the Bible to be the harmonious word of God, comb over the various texts and try to construct a belief system that can account for each text including the seemingly contradictory ones. Those who believe that Jesus and Almighty God are one and the same will interpret the texts which you've cited--the same way you have interpreted them. Those on the other hand, such as JWs who believe the Son is subordinate to the Father will interpret them in accordance with their overall understanding. Both groups start with the preconceived notion that there is *one true interpretation* which is there to found if you will only dig it out.
*The secular scholars* on the other hand do not make this assumption and are more likely to tell you that the NT books contain a lot of confusion and ambiguity on this subject. In this I believe they are correct. The fact that many sincere religious scholars/theologians who spend years studying the biblical source texts eventually come to this same conclusion is good evidence in support of it.