Qumran, meet Brooklyn

by Doug Mason 19 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Doug Mason

  Loyal JWs are required to obey the edicts of the GB because of whom it claims to be.

  To interpret Scripture, particularly eschatological passages, the GB does not use literal interpretation, since it promotes secondary applications, employs its own allegories, and so on.

  By analyzing another apocalyptic, eschatological group that also anticipated the imminent appearance of the Messiah, we gain an insight into the GB’s approach. This other group is the Jews who lived at Qumran during the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE.

  The following is a synopsis of the way those Jews used Scripture. The GB does not consciously imitate the Jews at Qumran, since its approach is a legacy from Rutherford in the 1930s.

  The approach taken by the people at Qumran:

  • The authors of Scripture are said to be speaking to the contemporary audience. A word, text or OT allusion is related to a present person, place, or thing. Scripture is written especially for the present. The work of the inspired interpreter is to discover the meaning for the present.
  • They apply Scripture with little to no concern for the context of the passage applied. Interpretations are generally aloof from the source context and appear to lack any coherent methodology.
  • There is no attempt to explain what the Bible meant when it was originally written, but rather what it means in the day and age of the commentator, particularly for his own community.
  • The interpreter shows little inclination to justify his wholesale substitution of the author’s intent for that of his own community.
  • Interpretative techniques are fundamentally eisegetical. That is, their hermeneutical approaches are hostile to the notion of objective interpretation.
  • All the destructive activities described by a prophet are attributed to the ‘wicked priest’ while all the good things are attributed to the ‘righteous teacher’.
  • Current events interpret scripture, rather than scripture being quoted to explain a current event.
  • Scriptural prophecies are said to be incomprehensible mysteries that can only be interpreted by the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’.
  • They fragment the text and force each phrase to cause it to bare a contemporary meaning.
  • They rarely give reasons for their interpretations.
  • It is possible that they 'invent' variants of Scripture.
  • Although all the authors of Scripture were prophets (including Moses and David), God reveals things to the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ which were not even known to the prophets, so that the ‘Teacher’s’ words come ‘from the mouth of God’.
  • They simply state that 'this means that'. For example, in the Song of the Well at Num. 21:18 'the well is the Torah', 'the diggers are the returned of Israel' and 'the nobles of the people are those who come to delve in the well'.

  Qumran, meet Brooklyn.

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  The manner in which the Qumran community treated Scripture is completely at odds to the manner that is employed by the writers of the NT, even by its most Jewish writers, Matthew, Paul and Peter.

  Doug
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  greendawn

  The very faulty way in which the FDS explains the Bible can easily be understood if we consider that their a priori concern and objective is how to utilise it to promote their own agenda which is in fact a self serving commercial agenda and one that is certainly not good for their followers.
  
  In other words the FDS and those hiding behind them are out to use religion to make money and not save any souls as they like to pretend. Inevitably their Biblical interpretations will be totally twisted in order to conform with their grand design of deception.
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  quietlyleaving

  greendawn

  The very faulty way in which the FDS explains the Bible can easily be understood if we consider that their a priori concern and objective is how to utilise it to promote their own agenda which is in fact a self serving commercial agenda and one that is certainly not good for their followers.
  
  In other words the FDS and those hiding behind them are out to use religion to make money and not save any souls as they like to pretend. Inevitably their Biblical interpretations will be totally twisted in order to conform with their grand design of deception.

  I was reading a little about Roman History and am concluding that the NT, in a similar to what you have described above, promoted Roman ends.
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  greendawn

  Quietlyliving how do you mean that, because I can't see how the apostles promoted Roman ends. That didn't happen with the church until the time of Constantine. Up to that time the Roman state was fiercely opposed to Christianity but not Judaism except when it militarily rebelled against their empire.
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  quietlyleaving

  greendawn

  Quietlyliving how do you mean that, because I can't see how the apostles promoted Roman ends. That didn't happen with the church until the time of Constantine. Up to that time the Roman state was fiercely opposed to Christianity but not Judaism except when it militarily rebelled against their empire.

  I see what you are saying but when was the NT put together?
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  quietlyleaving

  greendawn

  re my point above

  http://www.helsinki.fi/~merenlah/oppimateriaalit/text/english/newtest.htm

  The oldest manuscripts containing the whole New Testament are from the 4th century.
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  Gill

  May I just briefly give my opinion.

  Paul was a Roman. He, I reckon, was the anti christ as he came up with all sorts of baloney never advised by the Christ, who he never met anyway.

  Jesus was 'supposed' to have said, 'Pay unto Caesar, Caesar's things' ie taxes. This was a Roman agenda and Christ also did not recommend fighting the Romans but letting God sort out the Jewish problems.

  The NT was definitely a very clever Roman fix for a difficult problem in palestine and the rest of the world. They were damned clever and not just ingenious at building roads!

  We're still following their fairy tales now!
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  greendawn

  I still think the notion that Paul was an undercover kind of Roman agent to infiltrate and undermine Judaism is something far fetched and an idea promoted by Jewish scholars according to whom he was a Greek or Roman impostor pretending to be a Jew.
  
  Even the Jews that had accepted Christ as the Messiah never abandoned the Mosaic law and gentile Christians were fiercely hated by both Pagans and Jews if not also Christian Jews.
  
  So what exactly did the Romans achieve through Paul whom they eventually beheaded?
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  Gill

  The Romans achieved a minimum of disruption and a minimum of rebellion!

  Paul may well have got just a little too big for his boots, and he was certainly spouting some strange stuff but he did keep the Jews/Christians 'quietish'.

  He had them in a semi comma. They were always 'waiting for God'!
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  Leolaia

  The authors of Scripture are said to be speaking to the contemporary audience. A word, text or OT allusion is related to a present person, place, or thing. Scripture is written especially for the present. The work of the inspired interpreter is to discover the meaning for the present.

  It is striking how much the Society's method of biblical interpretation sometimes resembles pesher exegesis. The Revelation Climax book is one long example of this (e.g. all the 1919, 1914, 1918 stuff that has nothing to do with the biblical text). Or their practice going back to Russell that takes OT characters and events and treats them as prophetic of current dates and events. I would just like to point out that such an approach is not limited to Qumran but is found in the NT as well. Many of the so-called "messianic prophecies" of the OT only become so after their de facto use as such in the NT (the use of Hosea 11:1 and Jeremiah 31:15 in Matthew 2:14-18 is a good example). In fact, some of these uses are directly anticipated by messianic pesher at Qumran.

  They apply Scripture with little to no concern for the context of the passage applied. Interpretations are generally aloof from the source context and appear to lack any coherent methodology.

  Eisegesis certainly gives ad hoc results, but I would say that there can be a method to the madness.

  There is no attempt to explain what the Bible meant when it was originally written, but rather what it means in the day and age of the commentator, particularly for his own community.

  True, but again that is true of early Jewish and Christian interpretation in general .... midrash is all about making an old text (whether a law or a story) relevant to people of a later era, whether in order to give halakha to make laws relevant to new social situations or to fill in gaps to make it satisfy current questions.

  It is possible that they 'invent' variants of Scripture.

  There was a whole genre of "rewritten Bible" at Qumran.

  Although all the authors of Scripture were prophets (including Moses and David), God reveals things to the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ which were not even known to the prophets, so that the ‘Teacher’s’ words come ‘from the mouth of God’.

  Again, with parallels in early Christianity.