Discussion about the bible.

by Anti-Christ 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Leolaia

  Here are a few notable examples of variants between versions:

  Deuteronomy 32:8, 43

  4QDeut j : "When Elyon gave the nations as an inheritance, when he separated the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (bny 'l[hym]). For Yahweh's portion was his people; Jacob was the lot of his inheritance .... Rejoice, O heavens, together with him, and bow down to him all you gods ('lym), for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will recompense those who hate him, and will atone for the land of his people".

  LXX: "When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God (aggelón theou). And his people Jacob became the portion of the Lord, Israel was the line of his inheritance.... O heavens, rejoice with him, bow to him, all sons of God. O nations, rejoice with his people and let all the angels of God strengthen themselves in him. For he will avenge the blood of his sons. Be vengeful and render vengeance and recompense justice on his enemies, and recompense those who hate him, and the Lord will cleanse the land of his people".

  MT: "When Elyon gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel (bny yshr'l). For Yahweh's portion was his people, Jacob was the lot of his inheritance.... Rejoice, O nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his enemies, and will atone for the land of his people".

  Judges 6:6-11

  4Judg a: "So Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the Israelites cried to Yahweh. Then the messenger of Yahweh came and sat under the oak in Ophrah which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while Gideon his son was beating out wheat in the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites".

  LXX A: "And Israel was greatly impoverished from before Midian, and the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord. And it came about, when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord on account of Midian that the Lord sent a man, a prophet, to the sons of Israel, and he said to them: 'This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am the one who made you come up from Egypt, and I led you out of the house of slavery, and I delivered you from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and I drove them out from before you and gave you their land, and I said to you, "I am the Lord your God, you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorite, among whom you dwell in their land." And you have not given heed to my voice.' And an angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak which was at Ephratha, which belonged to Joash, father of Abiezri, and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in a winepress to escape from before Midian."

  LXX B: "And Israel was greatly impoverished from before Midian, and the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of Midian. And the Lord sent a man, a prophet, to the sons of Israel, and he said to them: 'This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am the one who made you come up from Egypt, and I led you out of the house of slavery, and I delivered you from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and I drove them out from before you and gave you their land, and I said to you, "I am the Lord your God, you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorite, among whom you dwell in their land." And you have not given heed to my voice.' And an angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ephratha, which belonged to Joash, father of Esdri, and Gideon was his son, beating out wheat in a winepress to escape from before Midian."

  MT: "So Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the Israelites cried to Yahweh. When the Israelites cried to Yahweh because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, 'This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I snatched you from the power of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them from before you and gave you their land. I said to you, 'I am Yahweh your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not listened to me." Then the messenger of Yahweh came and sat under the oak in Ophrah which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites."

  1 Samuel 10:26-11:1:

  4QSam a: "Saul also went to his house in Gibeah. The valient men whose hearts Yahweh had touched went with Saul. But certain worthless men said, 'How will this man save us?' And they despised him and brought him no gift. Then Nahash king of the Ammonites oppressed the Gadites and the Reubenites viciously. He put out the right eye of all of them and brought fear and trembling in Israel. Not one of the Israelites in the region beyond the Jordan remained whose right eye Nahash king of the Ammonites did not put out, except seven thousand men who escaped from the Ammonites and went to Jabesh-gilead. Then after about a month, Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-gilead."

  LXX: "Saul went to his home in Gibeah, and with Saul went the valient men whose hearts the Lord had touched. And some pestilent men said, 'What, will this one save us?' And they despised him and brought him no presents. And it happened about a month later that Nahash the Ammonite went up and encamped against Jabesh-gilead."

  MT: "Saul also went to his house in Gibeah. The valient men whose hearts Yahweh had touched went with Saul. But certain worthless men said, 'How will this man save us?' And they despised him and brought him no gift. But Saul kept silent. Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-gilead."

  Psalm 22:15-16:

  4QPs f, 5/6HevPs: "My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue melts in my mouth. They have placed me as the dust of death. For a pack of dogs are all around me, a gang of evildoors encircles me. They gouge my hands and feet".

  LXX: "My strength was dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue is stuck to my throat, and to the dust of death you brought me down, because many dogs encircled me, a gathering of evildoers surrounded me. They gouged my hands and feet."

  MT: "My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. And you have laid me in the dust of death. For a pack of dogs are all around me, a gang of evildoors encircles me. Like a lion are my hands and feet."

  Psalm 145:13

  11QPs a: "Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations. Blessed be Yahweh and blessed be his name forever and ever. God is faithful in his words, and gracious in all his deeds. Blessed be Yahweh and blessed be his name forever and ever."

  LXX: "Your kingdom is a kingdom for all the ages, and your dominion is in every generation and generation. Faithful is the Lord in all his words, and devout in all his deeds."

  MT: "Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations."

  I could post more examples if there is any interest, but you get the idea.
• 

  wozadummy

  StAnn "I took ONE class on the OT." Does this seem enough then to base one's life on by being a christian since the OT is the foundation of the NT? Also strange is the WTS reliance on a Catholic inspired canon with scripture texts contested all over the place(eg John 1:1 etc) and yet Babylonian texts which are in harmony with each other in relation to dissproving 607 are discounted.
• 

  Anti-Christ

  Also strange is the WTS reliance on a Catholic inspired canon with scripture texts contested all over the place(eg John 1:1 etc) and yet Babylonian texts which are in harmony with each other in relation to dissproving 607 are discounted.

  It shows that they are not interested in truth but in control. "They must find it difficult those who take authority as the truth and not the truth as authority".

  I could post more examples if there is any interest, but you get the idea.

  That's alright, I get the idea but I would like to know were I can get these different version.

  It's funny that you don't see much JW apologist comment on topics like this one. They claim to know the bible better then any other christian religion so were are they to put their knowledge to the test?
• 

  PrimateDave

  Cameo-d, with all due respect, you ought to take some foreign language courses, or even Latin. Your post shows a glaring ignorance of how language works. Seriously, you come off sounding no better than C. T. Russell's pyramid measurements. You mix a bit of fact with a bit of fiction and wind up with nothing credible in the end.
  
  Dave
• 

  cameo-d

  Primate, what I posted was not intended as a cohesive dissertation. I was just tossing out some ideas for exploration.
• 

  Anti-Christ

  For more information about the OT I will mention a few more things then I will move on with the NT.

  The WT and other religions claim that Moses wrought the Pentateuch, there is absolutely no proof for this claim, there is actually a lot of proof against it. First like Leolaia said

  Of course Moses did not write the Pentateuch in the sixteenth century BC. If he had, it wouldn't have been written in Hebrew -- it would have been written in an older Canaanite dialect closer to Ugaritic or Amarna Canaanite. The language contains unmistakable signs of a later age. As just one example, the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 is written in a far more archaic dialect (Early Biblical Hebrew) than the surrounding narrative which was written in Classical Biblical Hebrew. The poem is thought to date to the twelfth century BC, whereas the narrative dates to a time about 500 or 600 years later. That they belong to different eras is plain from the fact that the redactor places the poem on Moses' mouth. He does this because he misinterprets the yiqtol verb tenses as predicting the conquest of Canaan as lying in the future. But the archaic preterite yiqtol verbs in the poem were more like those in Ugaritic and referred to the conquest of Canaan as a past event (in Classical Biblical Hebrew, yiqtol is a jussive/imperfect whereas the preterite forms became prefixed with way-). So Moses did not write the Song of the Sea (which belongs to the period of the judges), and the author who inserted the poem into the text could not have been Moses either.

  There is also proof in the verses of the bible itself, for example the books that are claimed to be written by Moses are in the third person when it mention Moses, then there is this verse

  Genesis 36:31 (New International Version)

  31 These were the kings who reigned in Edom before any Israelite king reigned. and this one

  Numbers 12:3 (New International Version)

  3 (Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

  And this one

  Deuteronomy 34:5 (New International Version)

  5 And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said.

  Now these verses were clearly written years after Moses ( if he realy existed ) death.

  I await your comments.
• 

  Leolaia

  Just to take Deuteronomy as an example, consider these details in the book that indicate a late date (e.g. tenth century BC for some of the poetic material, the late seventh century BC for the narrative and legal material):

  (1) In a number of passages the expression "down to this day" (`d h-ywm h-zh) indicates a substantial passage of time between the time of Moses and the time of composition: "Since Jair son of Manasseh occupied the whole confederation of Argob as far as the frontiers of the Geshurites and Maacathites, he gave his name to those towns that are still called down to this day the Encampments of Jair" (3:14); "After that Moses the servant of Yahweh died there in the land of Moab at the order of Yahweh. And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab in front of Beth-peor and nobody has come to know his grave down to this day" (34:6).

  (2) The Israelite conquest of Canaan is also described in the past tense, even as an event in remote antiquity: "The Horites too lived in Seir at one time; there however were dispossessed and exterminated by the sons of Esau who settled there in place of them, just as Israel did in their own land, the heritage they received from Yahweh" (2:12); "Think back to the days of old, think over the years, down the ages, ask of your father, let him teach you, of your elders, let them enlighten you...Yahweh along led him [Israel], no foreign god was with him. He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields. He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag, with curds and milk from herd and flock and with fattened lambs and goats, with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat. You drank the foaming blood of the grape. Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food, he became heavy and sleek. He abandoned the God who made him and rejected the Rock his Savior" (32:7-15); "And he drove out the enemy from before you, and said, 'Destroy!' So Israel dwelt securely upon a land of corn and wine" (33:27-28).

  (3) The frequent use of the phrase "beyond the Jordan" (b-`br h-yrdn) for the land east of the Jordan River in 1:1, 1:5, 3:8, 4:41, 4:46-49, exactly as in Numbers 22:1, Joshua 2:10, 7:7, 9:10, Judges 5:17, 10:8, etc. shows that the author was a resident of western Palestine. Similarly, in 33:16-24 we encounter geographical details about where the tribes were located in the land of Israel: Dan "springing out of Bashan" (v. 22), Naphtali inheriting the land "southward to the lake" (v. 23), the Temple in the allotment of the tribe of Benjamin (v. 12), etc. The absence of Simeon from the list of tribes reflects the later absorption of this tribe into Judah (cf. Judges 1:3 on the alliance between Simeon and Judah, the towns allotted to Simeon also being allotted to Judah in Joshua 15:26-32, 15:42, 19:2-6, the migration of Simeonites into Judah and elsewhere in 1 Chronicles 4).

  (4) The laws of the book are sometimes either unknown to earlier writers, or presuppose a time subsequent to the purported time of Moses: (a) 12:1-28 insists with great emphasis that all sacrifices are to be offered only at a single sanctuary, the spot chosen by Yahweh "out of all the tribes to set his name there" (v. 14), i.e. the Temple in Jerusalem. The older law in Exodus 20:24 however permits altars to be built anywhere in the land and the building of altars in 1 Samuel 9:12-14,10:3-5, 1 Kings 18:30, etc. were done in accord with this provision and would have been forbidden by the later law in Deuteronomy. The section discussing the single sanctuary in 12:1-28 also presupposes not only the existence of altars throughout the land but also widespread idolatry and thus prescribes a reform intended to destroy the altars, the sacred stones, and the Asherah poles in fire (v. 2-3). Such a reform is decribed in 2 Kings 23:5-16, on the basis of what is precribed in the "book of the law" discovered in the Temple, in almost exactly the same terms as what is prescribed in Deuteronomy. (b) 14:1 forbids the Israelites to "gash yourselves or shave your foreheads" in mourning, whereas Isaiah portrays Yahweh as commanding the people to "weep and mourn, to shave their heads, to put on sackcloth" (22:12), in apparent ignorance of the law in Deuteronomy. (c) 16:22 instructs that "you shall not set up a standing stone which Yahweh your God hates", yet the prophet Isaiah again seems to be ignorant of this since he adopts a standing stone "dedicated to Yahweh" as a symbol of the future conversion of Egypt to the worship of Yahweh (Isaiah 19:16), and Moses, Joshua, Absalom and the patriarchs of old are all portrayed as erecting standing stones (Genesis 28:18-22, 31:45-52, 35:14-20, Exodus 24:4, Joshua 4:20, 2 Samuel 18:18); (d) the judicature is not prescribed in 17:8-13, 19:17 but presumed to already be in existence, and there is no trace of it in the other books of the law. According to 2 Chronicles 19:8-11, the judicature was instituted in the ninth century BC by Jehoshaphat; (e) 17:14-20 anticipates the institution of kingship in Israel and is strongly colored by reminiscenes of the monarchy of Saul, David and Solomon (compare v. 14 = 1 Samuel 8:6-20, v. 16 = 2 Samuel 8:4, 1 Kings 10:26-29, v. 17 = 1 Kings 11:1-6, v. 18 = 1 Samuel 10:25, 1 Kings 2:3, etc.
• 

  reniaa

  hi I will state first I have no way got laialeo's knowledge of this subject but I did look a little, this was interesting point...

  The Torah itself contains no explicit statement ascribing its authorship to Moses, while Mosaic attribution is restricted to legal and ritual prescription and is hardly to be found in connection with the narrative material." [ 17 ] Deuteronomy 31:9 and Deuteronomy 31:24-26 describe how Moses writes "torah" (instruction) on a scroll and lays it beside the ark of the Covenant. [ 22 ] Statements implying belief in Mosaic authorship of the Torah are contained in Joshua, [ 23 ] Kings, [ 24 ] Chronicles, [ 25 ] Ezra [ 26 ] and Nehemiah. [ 27 ]

  The rabbis of the Talmud (c. 200-500 CE) discussed exactly how the Torah was transmitted to Moses. In the Babylonian Talmud Gittin 60a it is written "Said R' Yochanan, the Torah was given in a series of small scrolls," implying that the Torah was written gradually and compiled from a variety of documents over time

  Could moses have written various bits that a later author put together and a cohesive whole came about?

  one interesting fact is Jesus did acknowledge moses as the author

  "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" (John 5:46-47)
• 

  Anti-Christ

  Thanks again Leolaia, very interesting and helpful.

  Could moses have written various bits that a later author put together and a cohesive whole came about?

  one interesting fact is Jesus did acknowledge moses as the author

  Hi, nice to have you join in. This is the rabbinic traditional belief but there is no evidence to support this claim. It is also believed that the Torah was created before the creation of the world, again there is no proof for this claim either. The problem I have is not that it might be possible that Moses did write the first 5 books of the OT it's that it's accepted as fact in many religions including the JW and that they have no evidence to support this claim just like many other claims they make on the bible.

  The other point you made is that In the NT it is mention that Jesus acknowledge that Moses did write these books, I'm sorry to say that this in my opinion is not evidence, it's circular reasoning, first you must prove that the NT is a reliable source before using it as proof, this is for a later discussion. I will later mention some facts about the NT that put serious doubts in the belief that the NT was inspired.

  Thanks for you input.
• 

  OBVES

  If you have doubts study my posts how I am using the numbers from the Bible to prove we live in the end-time era .

  Also you should listen to Open Forum program by Harold Camping from the Family Radio Stations,Inc . Go to

  http://www.familyradio.com

  and hear what Camping is speaking about the Bible as the inspired Word of God.