The JEHOVAH game (a modern fetish)

by Terry 97 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Terry
    Terry

    1.We use a NAME to distinguish one entity from another to avoid confusion.

    2.If there is only ONE of something it is one of a kind. Elivis is Elvis and those who pretend to be him are impersonators. Those who pretend to be Jesus are false or pseudo-christs. The Anti-Christ, for example , is just an early way of saying Elvis Impersonator :)

    3.The idea of god (el) as opposed to gods(el-ohim) and such leads to regional proprietary deity naming. A Local Lord (Baal) needs to be distinguished from the neighboring enemy's Lord (Adonai) or you might piss him/her/it off.

    4.Fear of pissing off a local deity by damaging the reputation of the deity leads to all sorts of superstious cautions. These superstious cautions are Rituals. Kind of like approaching a strange dog for the first time. Cautionary Ritual often becomes (eventually) formal religion.

    5.Israel's deity was no exception. Do you risk defaming your all-powerful deity by misusing the spoken word? This is a special crime of BLASPHEMY and carries a harsh penalty. If you speak a NAME you represent a closeness, familiarity and relationship with the personage represented by that name.

    We don't say, "Hi Barack; we say "Hello Mr.President." This is respect more than fear, but, the principle is the same. We do not PRESUME in the presence of a greater power.

    6.Invoking the name of a Diety for calling down special favors is dangerous as well. When you bless or curse others with the power of your deity behind your words the risk is getting your ass kicked (which will reflect badly on the power of your deity and the reputation of that deity.)

    7.Israel suffered defeats at the hands of its enemies although they represented a special relationship with a specific deity. (yhwh) Damage control required a strong reason be given which would NOT reflect badly on that deity. The popular excuse was that they themselves were BAD and were being punished (wink wink: our Deity is powerful, you see!) by the deity (yhwh)by being allowed to experience defeat at the hands of enemies.

    8. The mythos of Israel became a pattern vis a vis the relationship of that POWERFUL deity (yhwh) and historical events (good or bad) in this way (Rewards vs Punishments).

    9.When Babylonia swallowed up a vast portion of Israel it could have been a horrible refutation of yhwh's power and existence had the mythos not portrayed this event as a punishment.

    10. Mingling with Babylonian religious ideas produced a new way of portraying setbacks, defeats and calamity under yhwh. The Ahura Mazda mythos of Evil as a being. The idea of an opposing personage (satan) appeared suddenly in Jewish religious doctrine.

    11.Returning to their homeland (restoration from the Diaspora) caused and required a RE-telling of all their previous history with yhwh to include the new mythos-character satan.

    12.The Tanach is a vast revision of everything that went before in terms of yhwh's power ethos clashing with evil satan.

    13.Christianity continued and amplified the duality of good vs evil personifying it further. The death of Yeshua as a Messiah was merely a temporary blow by Satan AND----a fulfillment of yhwh's plan from way back in Eden (Genesis 3:15).

    14.The greek pagan Neo-Platonic ideas, religion and philosophy of the Christian era caused the Messiah/Yeshua to further meld with the Jewish deity identity (yhwh) and a Triune understand became more comprehensible.

    15.After the death of Yeshua, a retelling in epic proportions was required to make sense of his death to convert it into a powerful triumph over evil.

    16.Yeshua was Jesus and Jesus was yhwh (Jehovah) and he would defeat Satan SOON (a return and battle for triumph).

    From that point forward every Christian denomination has pushed and pulled those basics into their own brand of mythos.

    For Jehovah's Witnesses, as merely one brand of that hybridization, a distortion of JEHOVAH above all else emerged and got twisted into a modern Second Advent triumph with a latter-day Israel (the anointed/governing body).

    Voila! The whole tale told over again. JW's are Israel. Using the name Jehovah requires careful use, etc.

    The name of Jehovah is a superstitious fetish. It is a way of creating a Brand name. Judge Rutherford was the inventor of this contemporary branding of a modern Second Adventist cult movement.

    Accuracy has little to do with their policies and programs.

    Terry

  • cantleave
    cantleave

    Interesting and very logical take on things. It is amazing how these mythologies still persist in this scientifically enlightened society.

  • donny
    donny

    As usual, another excellent post Terry. It is amazing how we are all conditioned to accept the tales of the deity that is predominate in the culture in which we are raiaed, yet we can easily scoff off the "other" deities.

    Donny

  • Slayerbard
    Slayerbard

    Ya know it's funny I remember watching Highlander the series, and I remember it being mentioned in one episode that the Jews didn't HAVE a devil til they were captive by the Bablyon. I looked it up..and it was TRUE I almost fell over. There is no mention of a devil or anything til after that. Sure Satan is there, but he is considered just a naughty trouble making angel, and only mentioned in Job, 1 chronicles where he get david to number the people. but the term DEVIL isn't there til the NT, and suddenly used quite heavly I might add.

  • Perry
    Perry

    14.The greek pagan Neo-Platonic ideas, religion and philosophy of the Christian era caused the Messiah/Yeshua to further meld with the Jewish deity identity (yhwh) and a Triune understand became more comprehensible.

    15.After the death of Yeshua, a retelling in epic proportions was required to make sense of his death to convert it into a powerful triumph over evil.

    Everyone is of course entitled to their own opinion. Mine is that the above is interesting fiction. Facts suggest otherwise.

    http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Miscellaneous/messianic_prophecies.htm

  • wobble
    wobble

    DearPerry,

    I would hardly call using the Bible to prove the Bible is a use of "Facts", it is a bit like using Grimms tales to prove the existence of fairies.

    Terry's excellent post is possibly just his opinion, although I suspect most on this board would concur with him, I for one feel that his is a fair summary of how God has evolved in the mind of man, but mere mud-slinging like your reply does nothing to further the Christian cause, it just looks as though you have no argument to offer.

    Love

    Wobble

  • Perry
    Perry

    Wobble,

    You are welcome to your opinion as well. However, unquestionable dated historical writings absolutely refute Terry's claims made above. It was all written in advance for this very purpose. The fact that writings are "biblical" is irrelevant to the time stamping of documents which destroys Terry's after-the-fact premise.

    You seem biased against the bible, why?

  • Terry
    Terry

    My opinion is that the oral tales oft repeated from generation to generation were themselves changed gradually.

    Every time a deeply held belief meets with a challenge of being refuted it triggers a moment of sanity.

    That moment of sanity is a decision to accept facts and reality or to "explain" why they actually "prove" what appears

    to be refuted. This is called INTERPRETATION. Psychologists have a fancy name: Cognitive dissonance. The ability to hold

    two contradictory states of mind simultaneously and believe them both fractures a person's sense of reality.

    You cannot have two realities to live in. You end up choosing the one which best serves your EMOTIONAL well-being.

    A woman beaten by her lover may start making excuses for him and convincing herself she did something to "deserve" it, for example.

    Religious beliefs are constantly tested by every day reality.

    Faith is the ability to imagine the constant refutations are actual "proofs" you are right.

    A commitment to non-reality in the service of an emotionally reassuring falsehood is what makes so many Jehovah's Witnesses depressed, negative, afraid and unwilling to face the fact they are living a shabby lie.

    I think Judaism never was a single unity; it was a loose accumulation of varied beliefs shared as a family "history-myth".

    Christianity was hundreds of wacky belief systems only finally unified by the power of Rome when Constantine took the trouble to demand a test of orthodoxy beginning in 325 c.e.

    Protestantism is yet another vast loosely related belief system endlessly self-contradicting from denomination to denomination all under the bland banner of "Belief in Christ" whatever that may actually mean to the believer.

    There is no "there" there.

    There can be no Israel as told by the bible. There can be no Christianity. It is a way of describing something that never really happened.

    It is a shorthand and a very loose one at that.

    Terry

  • quietlyleaving
    quietlyleaving

    Jehovah is the supreme God and he is supreme over everything, every thought, he is beyond question and challenge - no one, nothing else is allowed the light of day. Surely this will make him topple like the huge image in Daniel's prophecy

  • Perry
    Perry
    Christianity was hundreds of wacky belief systems only finally unified by the power of Rome when Constantine took the trouble to demand a test of orthodoxy beginning in 325 c.e.

    This is foundational bedrock doctrine among JW's, Mormons, and Atheists alike. They all teach that Christianity was totally corrupted and that truth didn't enter back into the world until C. T. Russell, Joseph Smith, Science entered into the world thousands of years later.

    The simple and PROVEABLE fact is that fundamental, non-hierarchial Christianity has alwasys existed just exactly like Jesus said that it would here:


    Matthew 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

    See Chart Here

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