JW's must have some ridiculous argument to explain away Jude's references to the Assumption though, do they not? Or do they just ignore it?
Watchtower's Jesus = Michael doctrine
by Ding 31 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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PSacramento
The JW's that KNOW the Jude draws on The Assumption and 1Enoch ignore it, but the VAST majority of JW's have NO CLUE about that because they do NOT study the bible, they studt the WT literature annd go to the specific passages and read them in CONTEXT WITH the WT literature.
No JW that I knwo has ever studied or even rrad the bible without the WT literature.
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pirata
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Does
w019/15p.30EnochWalkedWithGodinanUngodlyWorld***theBibleQuoteFromtheBookofEnoch?The Book of Enoch is an apocryphal and pseudepigraphic text. It is falsely ascribed to Enoch. Produced probably sometime during the second and first centuries B.C.E., it is a collection of extravagant and unhistorical Jewish myths, evidently the product of exegetical elaborations on the brief Genesis reference to Enoch. This alone is sufficient for lovers of God’s inspired Word to dismiss it.
In the Bible, only the book of Jude contains Enoch’s prophetic words: "Look! Jehovah came with his holy myriads, to execute judgment against all, and to convict all the ungodly concerning all their ungodly deeds that they did in an ungodly way, and concerning all the shocking things that ungodly sinners spoke against him." (Jude 14, 15) Many scholars contend that Enoch’s prophecy against his ungodly contemporaries is quoted directly from the Book of Enoch. Is it possible that Jude used an unreliable apocryphal book as his source?
How Jude knew of Enoch’s prophecy is not revealed in the Scriptures. He may simply have quoted a common source, a reliable tradition handed down from remote antiquity. Paul evidently did something similar when he named Jannes and Jambres as the otherwise anonymous magicians of Pharaoh’s court who opposed Moses. If the writer of the Book of Enoch had access to an ancient source of this kind, why should we deny it to Jude?—Exodus 7:11, 22; 2 Timothy 3:8.
How Jude received the information about Enoch’s message to the ungodly is a minor matter. Its reliability is attested to by the fact that Jude wrote under divine inspiration. (2 Timothy 3:16) God’s holy spirit guarded him from stating anything that was not true.
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Finally-Free
As an aside, here's something that nagged at me when I was a JW:
The watchtower maintains that Jesus was a perfect human equal to Adam, and nothing more. In order for this to be true, Adam must have had:
- The memory of a prehuman existance.
- The power to perform miracles.
Anything less would make Jesus very unequal to Adam, so his faithfulness to Jehovah cannot be fairly compared to that of Adam, as the JWs sometimes like to do.
The whole watchtower position on Jesus, Michael, Adam, and probably everything else is screwed up.
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designs
..........doesn't that analysis apply to all of Christianity, who with a few exceptions have never set foot in a Synagogue.
The screw turns
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PSacramento
How Jude knew of Enoch’s prophecy is not revealed in the Scriptures. He may simply have quoted a common source, a reliable tradition handed down from remote antiquity. Paul evidently did something similar when he named Jannes and Jambres as the otherwise anonymous magicians of Pharaoh’s court who opposed Moses. If the writer of the Book of Enoch had access to an ancient source of this kind, why should we deny it to Jude?—Exodus 7:11, 22; 2 Timothy 3:8.
How Jude received the information about Enoch’s message to the ungodly is a minor matter. Its reliability is attested to by the fact that Jude wrote under divine inspiration. (2 Timothy 3:16) God’s holy spirit guarded him from stating anything that was not true
.If only the writer(s) of that would just pick up a book or two ABOUT the bible and its; writers and their history.
What a potatoe.
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LongHairGal
I remember this being vigorouly discussed in social settings with 'super-theocratic' types back in the late 1980s.
I kept my mouth shut and felt it was just one more crackpot JW theory that was unproven.
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Leolaia
pirata....I debunked those claims here:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/85223/1/Jude-and-1-Enoch
How Jude knew of Enoch’s prophecy is not revealed in the Scriptures.
Sure it is. The author quotes "Enoch", in exactly the same way that Paul quotes from Isaiah:
"But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed our message?' Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.... And Isaiah boldly says, 'I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.' But concerning Israel he says, 'All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people' (Romans 10:16-21).
Note that Paul does not say that he is quoting from the book of the prophet Isaiah; he's just quoting from the prophet. Same thing in Jude; the author just quotes from the prophet named Enoch. Why not similarly argue that Paul is not quoting from the book of Isaiah as well? It is special pleading to presume that there must have been an independent source that Jude used instead of 1 Enoch, when there is no evidence of such a source, whereas it is a known fact that 1 Enoch was very popular in antiquity, both among Essenes and early Christians (the author of Barnabas and Tertullian both regarded it as "scripture"). But more to the point, v. 14-15 of Jude is not the only content dependent on 1 Enoch. The author shows clear dependence on the Book of Watchers in v. 6 and content from Book of Dreams, the Epistle of Enoch, and the Book of Watchers in v. 12-13 and 16.
Jude 6: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bondsunder darkness for the judgment of the great day."
1 Enoch 12:4: "Go and make known to the Watchers of heaven who have abandoned the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women."
1 Enoch 15:3, 7: "For what reason have you abandoned the high, holy, and eternal heaven; and slept with women and defiled yourselves with the daughters of the people....I did not make wives for you, for the proper abode of spiritual beings of heaven is heaven."
1 Enoch 10:4-6: "Go, Raphael, and bind Asael hand and foot and throw him into the darkness....Cover up his face in order that he may not see light, in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment."
1 Enoch 10:11-12: "Go, Michael, and bind Shemihazah and the others with him, who have fornicated with the daughters of men, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and consummation, until the eternal judgment is concluded".
Jude 12-13: "They are clouds blown along by the wind without giving rain, autumnal trees bearing no fruit, dead twice over and uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their abominations, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever".
1 Enoch 2:1-5:3: "Contemplate all the events of heaven, how the lights in heaven do not change their courses, how each rises and sets in order, each at its proper time, and they do not transgress their own appointed order. Observe the signs of summer and winter. Contemplate the signs of winter, that all the earth is filled with water, and clouds and dew and rain rest upon it. Contemplate and observe how all the trees appearwithered and how all their leaves are stripped... Contemplate all the trees, their leaves blossom green them and they cover the trees and bear fruit.... Observe how, in like manner, the sea and the rivers carry out and do not alter their tasks from his commandments".
1 Enoch 18:14-16: "This place is the prison house for the stars and the powers of heaven. And the stars which roll over upon the fire, they are the ones which have transgressed the commandments of God from the beginning of their rising because they did not arrive punctually. And he was wroth with them and bound them until the time of the completion of their sin."
1 Enoch 21:6: "These are among the stars of heaven which have transgressed the commandments of God and are bound in this place until the completion of ten million years, according to the number of their sins."
1 Enoch 80:2-6: "In the days of the sinners ... everything on the earth will change and will not appear at their times, the rain will be withheld, and the sky will retain it. At those times, the fruit of the earth will be late and will not grow at its normal time, and the fruit of the trees will be withheld at its proper time. The moon will change its order and will not appear at its proper time ... Many heads of stars will wander from their command and will change their ways and actions and will not appear at the times prescribed for them".
1 Enoch 88:1-3: "He seized that first star that had fallen from heaven, and he bound it by its hands and feet and threw it into an abyss, and that abyss was narrow and deep and desolate and dark...One of those four who had come forth hurled stones from heaven and gathered and took all the great stars, whose organs were like the organs of horses, and bound all of them by their hands and their feet, and threw them into an abyss of the earth".
1 Enoch 101:2-6: "If he closes the windows of heaven, and withholds the dew and the rain from descending because of you, what will you do? Why do you speak with your mouth proud and hard things against his majesty? You will have no peace. Look at the captains who sail the sea! Their ships are shaken by wave and storm ... are not all the sea and all its waters and all its movement the work of the Most High?"
Jude 16: "These people are discontented murmurers, who follow their own desires. Their mouths utter proud words and they show partiality for the sake of gain".
1 Enoch 5:4: "You have not been long-suffering and you have not done the commandments of the Lord, but you have transgressed and spoken proud and harsh words with your unclean mouths against his majesty".
1 Enoch 27:2: "This accursed valley is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all the accursed ones, those who utter with their mouth improper words against the Lord and speak harsh words against his glory".
1 Enoch 101:2-3: "If he closes the windows of heaven and withholds the dew and rain from descending because of you, what will you do? Why do you speak with your mouth proud and hard things against his majesty?
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pirata
Excellent material Leolaia. Thank you. It is interesting how the book of Enoch was dismissed as "extravagant and unhistorical" myths when there are many Bible references that would seem extravagant (a world-wide flood, the sun standing still, a talking donkey and snake, etc.).
Can you recommend any good books/references that discuss the early development of Christianity and particularly the books in use at that time?
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Leolaia
Yes. Three great books I would recommend that puts Second Temple Jewish literature and early Christianity in context would be: Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins: Diversity, Continuity, and Transformation by George Nickelsburg (2003, Fortress Press), Roots of Rabbinic Judiasm: An Intellectual History from Ezekiel to Daniel by Gabriele Boccaccini (2002, Eerdmans), and Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways Between Qumran and Enochic Judaism by Gabriele Boccaccini (1998, Eerdmans). The Boccaccini books are required reading, if you ask me. The 1998 book goes into a lot of detail about the relationships and intellectual developments in the main religious documents (e.g. the Book of Watchers, Aramaic Levi, the Book of Luminaries, the Book of Dreams, Daniel, Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, the Proto-Epistle of Enoch, the Halakhic Letter, the Damascus Document, the Epistle of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Book of Parables, etc.) of Enochic Judaism and Essenism.
