"This system of things"

MsMcDucket

Do you remember that saying? And "the New System"? Almost sounds like the Matrix. What are we computer chips are something?

TresHappy

Yes I used to say it all the time; it's all I wished for. Since I couldn't celebrate Christmas, I had to wish for something that wouldn't show up under my paganistic Christmas tree!

Oops. A poster here once explained that the NWT 'system of things' could not possibly be the correct interpretation. I'm not a Greek scholar but I would doubt the phrase ever really occurs in scriptures.

Narkissos

"System of things" in the NWT translates aiôn, which has a wide semantic range from "age" to the later Gnostic "eons," which are more or less personified "spiritual principles". The opposition between "this aiôn" and "the coming aiôn" clearly reflects the Pharisaic-rabbinical distinction between ha `olam ha-zeh and ha `olam ha-ba', "this age" and "the age to come". The painful NWT makes it overly technical (still another case of a lexicon definition mistaken as a translation), but I don't see much ideological distortion in it as far as the simple meaning of "age" is concerned. Only, perhaps, some of the temporal aspect of aiôn is lost.

greendawn

It's a phrase that is specific to the JWs it reminds me of them so much. I haven't heard of any Christian religions using it.