Marcus Scriptus, I do enjoy your comments.
BTS
The bible crisis thread
by Joey Jo-Jo 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Black Sheep
I don't want to hijack your thread Joey, but I just noticed that your local library has the Encyclopedia of Religion.
The Jan 2011 public boasting WT quotes it to polish their cup.
Is there any chance you could have a look at the article on JWs and check it out?, or, if you could take your camera and photograph the section so that we can all dissect it, that would be great.
Jan Awake, stating JW's are only true religion
Cheers
Chris
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Joey Jo-Jo
Hi Marcus
You were a bit philosophical at the end there lol. I completely agree with your comments but you have to understand that coming from someone that thought everyone outside JW happy land is stupid, and then finding out that the jokes on me was a huge shock, and then as you said thinking that the bible is Gods word which is still a JW belief (I didn't know this until recently - post 155) finding out the bible is not what it was meant to be was another huge shock, it was like finding the truth of the truth of the truth. But I can now agree that the bible is a human book and look even deeper.
I did a search on this forum, I knew there were contradictions but not complete different stories of Jesus, Judas and others, thats why I posted this, from my current conclusion, God is either playing a prank or he is not what the bible says HE is, the question needs to be asked, whats with all the religions, confusion, lies, hunger, murders and corruption.
And I don't think I was attacking anyone, I can only speak the (real) truth, if I am mistaken please correct me.
Black Sheep:- Will do.
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Satanus
Likewise in the ot. There are two flood stories and 2 sets of 10 commandments. They have some contradictions.
S
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Black Sheep
God is either playing a prank or he is not what the bible says HE is
It's so nice to see that I am not the only one who 'gets it'.
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cyberjesus
marcus, great post once again
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MarcusScriptus
Thanks for the compliments, friends. And I do understand where you are coming from, Joey, because I’ve been there.
Last words here before my blabbering becomes a question for philosophy students (i.e., “Mr. Marcus, like the proverbial tree that falls in the woods that does or doesn’t make a sound, if no one is around to hear you pontificating, do you shut up?”):
People and things are not all “truth” or all “falsehood.” Everything and everyone in the world is a combination of both. This doesn’t make things or people valueless.
We need to ask ourselves, where’s the rule that states that a holy book loses its value or validity because the authors of its various books disagree or debate one another? Does this board lose its value because not all of us agree or because we often debate one another? Remember, religious scholars and even many faithful Christian laypersons know about the Bible’s literary discretions. Are these believers in the Bible blind or have we just not yet learned what they know about what these contradictions mean? (For example, the ancient way of teaching moral truths or moral lessons was to write them as “fables,” and instead of marking the spine of their books as fiction—because their books had no spines back then—they would write impossible things in the story such as talking animals, made-up lands and rulers, even a conversation between a person in the flames of Hades and another in the embrace of their ancestor; the impossible details that contradict everything else we know is just a device to tell us that the value of the story lies not in the details but in the meaning behind them. Are Aesops morals valueless because he used fables to teach them?)
Contradictions don’t mean “false” anymore than because my sister or brother walks a path contradicting makes them false or valueless. Doesn’t mean you have to believe the Bible, but it also doesn’t mean that something automatically isn’t so because it fails a few tests we have given it. Regardless of what we do outside the JW compound, there’s always going to be mystery, there’s always going to be things we can’t answer. It’s just life. Trying to control the rollercoaster and understand where it’s coming from and why it does what it does while you’re on it only means you won’t get to enjoy the ride.
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cyberjesus
where’s the rule that states that a holy book loses its value
That would be starting with the premise that a book has value. But shouldnt that be acquired? I was told the Bible had value and I just accepted without evidence of it.
What makes the bible valuable to you? Why? Who really wrote it? Why? Is the information inside really from God?
Without evidence that the bible is inspired from God then any information there would be only the thoughts of men.
There are questions that we can never know the answers, but there are some that we can and its just a matter of looking for them. they might not be what we want them to be but then its up to us to be honest intellectually to accept them or reject them.
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MarcusScriptus
It does go both ways, and if I didn’t make that clear I apologize. If it was implied that it had value to begin then that wasn’t meant to be taken as an unquestionable objective axiom for all to accept. The line of thought being discussed was the “black and white” sort of judgment the Watchtower teaches people to give things, and thus the statement you highlight should be read in that context in case others might come to the incorrect conclusion as to what I meant.
For example, Watchtower type reasoning teaches that since God wouldn’t lie, then his Word is true. If his Word is true then it must also be literal “truth,” i.e., any story it tells has to be literal history.
However especially before the stories regarding Abraham, the stories that found their way into the finished book of Genesis are considered by religious scholars to be mythological (not “myth” in the common vernacular, but “a narrative connecting something about life with divine origins, often told as a parable”). If the Watchtower were to accept this as Judaism and most of Christianity does, then they (as well as Fundamentalists who share a similar view) would have to consider the Bible as false. The Bible would never use a “fable,” because fables are false stories and God is true. Thus the only solutions are such type of reasoning would give you is:
A. Keep faith in the Bible and declare all its stories historically sound, even in the face of scientific and historical data to the contrary or
B. Reject the Bible as God’s Word because fables are lies.
This, of course, is ridiculous. Jesus Christ used parables all the time to teach things, and Jehovah’s Witnesses have no problem accepting his teachings as truth, even though a parable is a basically a fable.
A fable by some other name, be it a parable or illustration, still smells like mythology…and there ain’t nothing real about that.
Now because a deity is said to teach a moral truth by means of a fable does not mean the moral of the story is valueless. Even if one doesn’t believe in a religion (for example the mythology of the Greeks and Romans) doesn’t mean there isn’t value in their stories. Many of the voices I have read and had the pleasure hearing from who have declared the Bible a literary masterpiece were agnostics and atheists. They don’t believe the Bible is true or in any type of god, but they don’t do like the Watchtower and see the world in “black and white specs” and thus give everything an either/or view on the basis of using a certain type of narrative among many.
And just because something contains truth doesn’t mean it’s instantly worth something, does it? Reality TV contains some truth in it (not as much as it should, if you ask me), but most of it isn’t worth the time spent watching it regardless. (Sorry, Snooki!)
The novel, Gone With the Wind, places its fictional characters and dramatic narrative in historically verifiable time and place. But that doesn’t make it a true story, does it? And Gone With the Wind is the word of man. So is it valueless just because of that?
And how easy, guys, is it to prove to your wife or girlfriend that you love her when she feels you don’t? Not easy, huh? Would she accept “data” and “scientific evidence” even if you could produce it? No way! That’s not the kind of evidence love demands. It's kind of like that with the Bible which is a love story/letter of sorts, not a history book.
While I totally respect and expect people to use critical thinking regarding religious choices and study, one doesn’t put faith and hope in someone because there’s proof, but because there isn’t. That’s why we give those we love the “benefit of the doubt,” a “leap of faith,” we go “out on a limb” for those we love…act against reason and evidence to prove love. That’s what the Bible is about.
Yeah, oil and water don't mix. They ain't never ever gonna. So people are always going to find a dozen reasons plus a million not to believe in the Bible. That's fine. I think such exercise of conscience is admirable and should be imitated, regardless if the results of the person's conscience is the opposite or something totally different as well. But if I had "evidence" that the Bible was inspired of God, then God would be just another scholastic proof-text exercise like the JWs teach. Nobody, from human to deity, can or should be reduced to that.
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Joey Jo-Jo
In part 2 I pointed out the differences about Jesus accounts, these appear not be errors in translation but written by each gospel writer's agenda, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and (they did not write the gospels). I wont go into detail but just will quickly mention that starting from the oldest book Mark to last, Jesus goes from King of the Jews to King of the Gentiles, it also goes from "keeping the law(of Moses)(Matt5:17-19)" to calling Jews children of the devil (John 8:42-44).
Part 3
Jesus [the] Christ
The word Messiah means the annointed one and also means Christ.
In the OT we are told that the prophecy of the Messiah are in Isaiah 52, in Isaiah 53:1-6 apparently refers to Jesus suffering and in Psalms22:1-18 his cruxifiction,the Christ that suffered for our sins as ransom sacrifice mentioned in the NT. But the Messiah is not mentioned in these passages and what is interesting is that most of the passages that do mention the Messiah did not make it into the OT (surprise surprise, no thanks to earlie Christian Orthodox of the late 3rd century), psalms of solomon 17:21-32, 4Ezra15:1-11 and 1Enoch 69 all mention a powerfull warrior king who will destroy all God's enemies, no wonder Jew's see Jesus as a nobody criminal who went mad during passover and was cruxifide by the Jew's which he could do very little, he never raised an army to defeat the Roman's out of the promised land to re-establish Israel and more importantly he was not as God always promised, a descendent of King David 1Sam7:14-16 (Davidic monarch ended in 586BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed), also 2Sam7:14.
Is Jesus who became the Christ the Messiah of the Old Testament? NO