Question about the Word and the Son

by wannabefree 12 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  wannabefree

  The reason I ask is at a circuit assembly a year or two ago there was a part that handled the question of the trinity, it was a demonstration and the reasoning was ...

  if Jehovah and Jesus were equal, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect God to have used a different relationship to explain this other than father and son?

  ... I would think if the relationship was a father and son relationship as humans think of them and this was the case before the Word became man, then there would have been reference to this specific type of relationship in the OT.

  That reasoning seems to be a type of fallacy, I need to educate myself on identifying the different types, but I sure recognize that I hear them a lot now that I am no longer a mindless follower.
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  PSacramento

  You can't try to understand what something said by a 1st century jew to another 1st century jew means without understanding what it means to be a 1st century jew and what words and terms liek Son of man and son of God, means.

  For the Jews to accuse Jesus of making himself EQUAL to God when Jesus said God was His Father, that means for THEM it meant just that or they believed that was what he was trying to convey when he said it.
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  Leolaia

  Again, if we were to read Isaiah 9:5-6 in its literary context outside of later Christianizing interpretation, it has reference to Judean royalty in a rather specific historical moment: the Syro-Ephramite war and Tiglath-Pileser III's campaign against the Northern Kingdom in the 730s BC. Chapters 7-9 relate the birth for four children who are given lengthy clausal-compound names symbolic of God's promises: Isaiah's firstborn Shear-yashub ("A remnant shall return"), whose name pertains to the mass deportation of Israelites by Tiglath-pileser (Isaiah 7:3; cf. 10:20-21 and 2 Kings 15:29), his second son Maher-shalal-hashbaz ("Hurry to the plunder") whose naming signifies the devastation wrought by Tiglath-Pileser III against Israel in 734-732 BC (8:3-4), Ahaz's son foreshadowing the Assyrian conquest of Syria and Ephraim to be named Immanuel ("God is with us"), whose name conveys the thought that God is safeguarding the Davidic dynasty (7:14-16; cf. 2 Samuel 7:9, 1 Kings 1:37, Psalm 89:22, 25, etc.), a promise that is given its counterpoint in 8:11-22 when Assyria threatens Judah and God "hides his face from the house of Jacob" (v. 17). This child may have been Hezekiah but the problematic chronology in 2 Kings makes it difficult to be sure whether the birth of Hezekiah could have coincided with the conclusion of the Syro-Ephraimite war; the child could well have been another son of Ahaz. The fourth birth in ch. 9 is itself a counterpoint to the gloomy prospects in ch. 8; the humbled Northern Kingdom (v. 1-2; compare the locational references here with the description of Tiglath-pileser's campaign in 2 Kings 15:29) can look forward to a peace brought by the Davidic heir named Peleyoets-elgibbor-abiad-sarshalom ("A planner of wonders is the warrior God, the eternal father is a commander of peace"). This name prophesies that through the king God as a divine warrior (cf. Isaiah 10:20-21) would bring back the exiles of the Northern Kingdom and protect Judah against Assyrian conquest (a wonder) and safeguard peace for the people. The name also may be a pun on Tiglath-pileser (tglt-pl'sr), with the first phrase starting with pl' "wonder" and with the last phrase starting with sr "commander". The synoptic gospels are exegetically dependent on this material and interpret 7:14-16 and 9:5-6 as prophetic of Jesus, but this appropriation is rather different than what these passages refer to within the context of Isaiah.

  BTW, Peleyoets-elgibbor-abiad-sarshalom in Isaiah 9:5 is not referred to as a "son" per se but as a yld "child". Still the passage is likely related to the coronation/enthronment liturgies found in Psalm 2 and elsewhere. It is sometimes suggested that the passage is Hezekiah's enthronment liturgy (with a symbolic throne name), but this is only one possibility.