@djeggnog wrote:
And Jesus died on Nisan 14 and on Nisan 15, right? Is this what you are saying here?
@WontLeave wrote:
No. Jesus died on Nisan 15, as I've said all along. He died on Passover, which 3 of the 4 Gospels agree on.
No, he didn't. What's wrong with you? Wasn't it Nisan 14 when Jesus was put on trial? Didn't he die on that same day "about the ninth hour"? Did Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Christ, approach Pilate seeking to bury Jesus' body on Preparation, "the day before the sabbath"? (Mark 15:42-46) Was "the day before the sabbath" Nisan 14 or was it Nisan 15?
@djeggnog wrote:
No, the Jewish day consisted of 24 hours pretty much as our day consists of 24 hours, except the way the morning hours were reckoned (i.e., "the third hour," "the sixth hour," "the ninth hour") were different than the evening hours (i.e., "the first watch of the night" (from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm), the middle watch" (from 10:00 pm to 2:00 am) and "the morning watch" (from 2:00 am to 6:00 am), or, in Jesus' day, there were "the first watch" (from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm), "the second watch" (from 9:00 pm to 12:00 pm), "the third watch" (from 12:00 am to 3:00 am) and the fourth watch" (from 3:00 am to 6:00 am)).
@WontLeave wrote:
So, there are 12 "hours", just like I said. And the night is "watches". Thank you for restating exactly what I said, but saying I was wrong in the process. Jesus didn't die at night and night divisions were never mentioned. Now, you're starting to piss me off. I already let the Aviv/Abib comment slide, because I figure you soon discovered either is acceptable.
Actually, this is what you wrote --
(WontLeave:)
The Jewish "hours" were 12 time periods between dawn and sundown, so weren't set like the hours we use now. The "1st hour" began when the sun rose and the "12th hour" ended when the sun set.
-- and this is incorrect. You had suggested that there were only 12 hours in the day when Jesus celebrated the passover, but my point that you are missing is that there were 24 hours in the day the same as there are today.
@djeggnog wrote:
The Bible indicates though that it was not "at midnight" on Nisan 15 that "the destroyer" passed over the homes of those having the blood of a lamb or a goat splashed upon their doorposts and on the upper part of their doorways, but that it was "on this night" -- Nisan 14 -- that they ate the flesh "with unfermented cakes along with bitter greens." (Exodus 12:8, 29; Hebrews 11:28)
@WontLeave wrote:
Numbers 33:3 will clear this up for you. The morning after Passover was Nisan 15, not Nisan 14....
Thanks, but you are reading scriptures and interpreting them without understanding what you are reading. The morning after the passover was still Nisan 14.
The Jews reckoned a day from sunset-to-sunset or evening-to-evening, so that when I tell you that Jesus observed the passover with his disciples on Thursday/Friday Nisan 14, which means that this occurred during the evening hours of Nisan 14 (Thursday), and that he was impaled on Thursday/Friday Nisan 14, which means that this occurred during the daytime hours of Nisan 14 (Friday), you should not misinterpret what I am saying here to be akin to using the midnight-to-midnight reckoning of a day that is in use today, for unlike what happens when the clock strikes midnight according to our midnight-to-midnight way of reckoning a day, Thursday did not become Friday after the stroke of midnight, which means that the morning after Jesus had observed the passover that evening did not become Nisan 15, but that Friday morning continued to be Nisan 14 since, again, according to the Jews' evening-to-evening way of reckoning of a day, Nisan 14 began the previous evening (Thursday, around 6:00 pm) and continued until the next evening (Friday, around 6:00 pm), when Nisan 15 began, and Jesus had been dead for about three hours when Nisan 15 began since Matthew 27:46 clearly indicates that Jesus had been put to death "about the ninth hour," and this was on the passover on Nisan 14. What don't you understand about this?
No. It looks like they took off ASAP, which would mean the Passover and the start of the Exodus occurred on the same Jewish day, Nisan [15].
Although it may appear to you that the Hebrews "took off ASAP," how do you figure that this means that the passover and that the start of the exodus occurred on Nisan 15?
@WontLeave wrote:
No. Jesus died on Nisan 15, as I've said all along. He died on Passover, which 3 of the 4 Gospels agree on.
@djeggnog wrote:
No, he didn't. What's wrong with you? Wasn't it Nisan 14 when Jesus was put on trial? Didn't he die on that same day "about the ninth hour"? Did Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Christ, approach Pilate seeking to bury Jesus' body on Preparation, "the day before the sabbath"? (Mark 15:42-46) Was "the day before the sabbath" Nisan 14 or was it Nisan 15?
@WontLeave wrote:
This is my last reply to you, because you are dense, obnoxious, and clearly taking advantage of distance and anonymity. Once again, everybody understands the Jewish day.
You forgot "right." I am dense, obnoxious, clearly taking advantage of distance and anonymity, and right. I know you left this last one out because you don't want to accept the fact that I am right and you are wrong, but you know what, @WontLeave? It happens. Sometimes I'm wrong and when I do, I will typically deal with it by driving to a restaurant and ordering a slice of humble pie. This is what I recommend that you should do. I suspect that you haven't had any humble pie of late, so why not do yourself a treat and get you some? Believe me: That's some good pie.
Numbers clearly states they left on Nisan 15, which was still the same day as the Passover - still Nisan 15.
Why don't we both review this verse that you claim to be relying upon to support this notion of yours that after the Tenth Plague had afflicted the Egyptians, after the hopelessly grief-stricken Pharaoh had summoned Moses and Aaron sometime after midnight of Nisan 14, upon his discovery that his son was dead on the same night before midnight of Nisan 14 that the Jews had observed the passover "between the two evenings" of Nisan 14, to tell them to leave Egypt and to take all of the Hebrews with him, that Moses decided, "No, Pharaoh. We're not leaving just yet. We are going to watch 'you guys' as you bury your son and as the rest of the Egyptians bury their sons and all of their livestock. I'm not going to be leading the Hebrews out of Egypt just yet."
Do you really believe that Moses decided to just stick around the rest of this dreadful night, through the morning and afternoon of Nisan 14 until the evening of Nisan 15 as the Egyptians buried their dead, and that the Hebrew people actually remained in Egypt, spending yet another night in their quarters until the morning of Nisan 15 before they finally left Egypt? Let's take a look at Numbers 33:3 in context; let's read Numbers 33:1-8 to see if there is anything in this passage to support such a strange notion as I find yours to be:
(Numbers 33:1)
These were the stages of the sons of Israel who went out of the land of Egypt in their armies by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
(Numbers 33:2)
And Moses kept recording the departure places by their stages at the order of Jehovah; and these were their stages from one departure place to another:
(Numbers 33:3)
And they proceeded to pull away from Ram´e·ses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month. Directly the day after the passover the sons of Israel went out with uplifted hand before the eyes of all the Egyptians.
(Numbers 33:4)
All the while the Egyptians were burying those whom Jehovah had struck among them, that is, all the firstborn; and upon their gods Jehovah had executed judgments.
(Numbers 33:5)
So the sons of Israel pulled away from Ram´e·ses and went camping in Suc´coth.
(Numbers 33:6)
Then they pulled away from Suc´coth and went camping in E´tham, which is on the edge of the wilderness.
(Numbers 33:7)
Next they pulled away from E´tham and turned back toward Pi·ha·hi´roth, which is in view of Ba´al-ze´phon; and they went camping before Mig´dol.
(Numbers 33:8)
After that they pulled away from Pi·ha·hi´roth and went passing through the midst of the sea to the wilderness and kept marching a three-day journey in the wilderness of E´tham and took up camping at Ma´rah.
I don't want to assume here that you understand the words, "the day after the passover," which words are contained at Numbers 33:3, so I won't assume. I'm wondering if the words, "pull away from Rameses," which words are contained in this same verse as well, mean anything at all to you. Did you notice the words "pulled away" at Numbers 33:5, Numbers 33:6, Numbers 33:7 and Number 33:8? After reading Number 33:1-8, are you able to go back to Numbers 33:3 again and figure out what Moses is describing as going on here with the sons of Israel on this "fifteenth day of the first month" of Nisan?
There are a couple of words at Numbers 33:2, "departure places." Would you say that Rameses and Succoth and Etham and Pihahiroth are all "departure places" from where the sons of Israel had encamped upon their having left Egypt the day before? At Numbers 33:1, Moses makes reference to the sons of Israel as being "armies" that "went out of the land of Egypt," so would you say that the Hebrews continued to be slaves in Egypt "on the day after the passover" when on Nisan 15 they proceeded to pull away from one of the departure places listed at Numbers 33:1-8 called "Rameses"? Or would you say that on Nisan 15, "on the day after the passover," that the sons of Israel were at this time gathered together as "armies" that "went out of the land of Egypt"?
@WontLeave wrote:
No. Jesus died on Nisan 15, as I've said all along. He died on Passover, which 3 of the 4 Gospels agree on.
No, he didn't. What's wrong with you? Wasn't it Nisan 14 when Jesus was put on trial? Didn't he die on that same day "about the ninth hour"? Did Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Christ, approach Pilate seeking to bury Jesus' body on Preparation, "the day before the sabbath"? (Mark 15:42-46) Was "the day before the sabbath" Nisan 14 or was it Nisan 15?
The straw men are too numerous to list and I'm not going to do this with you anymore.
Run, Forrest, run! What "straw men" do you mean?
I gave you the benefit of the doubt and stood up for you when it seemed everybody was out to get you.
Who are you that I should be grateful for your giving me the benefit of the doubt? I don't need you to stand up for me; my arguments are bulletproof. They're also quite sane. I cannot say that about your arguments though. You won't accept that you're wrong about the evening-to-evening reckoning of the Jewish day; you see the stroke of midnight as the determinant for what constitutes the next day. If it should be 9:00 pm on Nisan 14 right now, you've decided that at the stroke of midnight it's Nisan 15 and nothing I say here will convince you otherwise. At this point, someone that understands the evening-to-evening reckoning of the Jewish day would say upon reading what you've written here might conclude that you are a retard. Personally, I don't think you're a retard; I think you're opinionated and ignorant about a few things is all. I think if you drove yourself to a restaurant that serves up some of that humble pie to which I referred earlier, and you ordered yourself a slice, you'd feel a whole lot better.
This disdain that you have for Jehovah's Witnesses, this anti-Jehovah's Witness bias that I think you have, is interesting because I haven't always been one of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I come from a background where I know more about the Bible than do most Jehovah's Witnesses, so I probably deal with the noise from opinionated folks like yourself better than can most Jehovah's Witnesses, who might fold up their tents and not give you the time of day.
The Bible is God's word, @WontLeave; it should be respected for that reason alone, but free will permits one to make choices as to what they will or will not do. You seem to have no difficulty quoting scriptures from the Bible to support what things you believe, right or wrong, because you don't seem to me to have any respect for the Bible. You claim --
I am now done with you, because you only care about winning an argument and have no consideration whatsoever for truth or facts.
-- but I'm going to win all of the arguments, @WontLeave; I'm really that knowledgeable about the Bible. Does this mean I'm always right? No, it doesn't. Now I do not use Watchtower publications the way many other Jehovah's Witnesses do, because when I began studying the Bible, I didn't exactly have Watchtower publications. I'm not tied to them the way you are, and the way other ex-Jehovah's Witnesses are, and the way some active Jehovah's Witnesses are. As a result, I sit in a rather unique position watching "you guys" here on JWN go at one another about things that have nothing at all to do with the Bible that you may or may not have read in one of the Society's publications, and about things having to do with some beef that you or others continue to have 10, 20, 30 years (and counting!) against some elder or body of elders with whom you may have had dealings in the past.
Many of the people whose messages I've read here on JWN that engage in such bickering seem petty and bitter to me, and maybe some of them for understandably good reasons are petty and bitter, since elders are imperfect, some of them are even guilty of abusing their authority as such so that we have to remove them, but sometimes misunderstandings lead to unpleasant results like disfellowshipping and being shunned when you feel for such a result to have been taken in your case to have been extreme. Maybe so.
But the Bible urges us to exercise faith in Jesus so that if ever we should meet up with such unpleasant things in the congregations of God's people, we consider it all joy for our faith is thereby tested whenever we meet with such trials, for it is at such times that we learn if we are able to endure (James 1:2-4) "Happy is the man [or woman] that keeps on enduring trial, because on becoming approved he [or she] will receive the crown of life, which Jehovah promised to those who continue loving him." (James 1:12) Disgruntled persons do not believe this, but what about you, @WontLeave? You are here battling me, trying to draw blood from me, wanting to bludgeon me with the Bible over whether the sons of Israel actually celebrated the passover on Nisan 14 or Nisan 15, but do you believe this is true?
Now I don't say and cannot say that you or anyone else here has mental issues, but there are clearly folks here with mental problems, and were I not one of Jehovah's Witnesses, I could probably make a small fortune here, assuming I could persuade a few here to become a patient of mine, but I've made difference choices for my life, and one of them is to help the lurkers here on JWN to come to the realization that contrary to what many here believe, Jehovah's Witnesses have the truth. Even though we are all imperfect people -- as you can tell from the vast number of typographical errors I make in my posts -- Jehovah's Witnesses don't all know the same things, so that while some of us may be ignorant about some things, others are quite knowledgeable about many other things. I actually talk to my PC just about everyday. Who knows? Maybe I'm "mental," but it's because I talk to my PC that I have mouthed your arguments and they make no sense to me, not because I'm just reading them here, but because I've actually uttered them aloud.
I don't know, but we were here discussing the Memorial of Christ's death and now we're discussing, or were discussing, your take on whether the passover meal was actually eaten on Nisan 14 or Nisan 15, but at Matthew 26:26, where we read --
As they continued eating, Jesus took a loaf and, after saying a blessing, he broke it and, giving it to the disciples, he said: "Take, eat. This means my body."
-- do you know what Jesus meant when he said to the 11 apostles in that room that that loaf he broke -- I'm talking about the bread -- "means my body"? Most Jehovah's Witnesses do not know, but my question to you, even though you may no longer be one of Jehovah's Witnesses, is do you know what Jesus meant when he said to them, "This means my body"? If so, I'd like to move this topic forward and discuss just that. You wrote --
Go tell yourself you've won and if you can convince yourself of it, then one person will believe it.
-- but I don't come to JWN expecting to win arguments; I really don't. I know that in order to win an argument with someone, they must be able to discern when they have lost the argument, and I don't want to use the Bible, which I respect, in a way that makes the discussions here some kind of sporting contest. It this were a chess game, it's best two out of three, or best three out of five, depending upon how well I'm playing that particular say, but this is not a chess game, is it? You may not like the name "Jehovah," and you may even hate using this name, preferring instead to use the name "Jesus"; that's fine, but not close enough. It does say at John 17:3 that it means everlasting life for us to take in knowledge of Jesus. Check the verse and you'll see that I'm not lying; that is exactly what it says. But is that all the verse says?
The apostle Paul makes the point at Hebrews 8:11, in his quoting something that Jehovah said through his prophet Jeremiah at Jeremiah 31:34, that there will come a time when "they will all know me, from the least one of them even to the greatest one of them." Do you see my point?
It's not enough to take in knowledge of Jesus, for Jesus himself stated at John 8:18, that "the Father who sent me bears witness about me." Just as here in this verse about this One who Jesus refers to here as "the Father," we also read at John 17:3 about this "only true God" that bore witness about Jesus, that He is the One that sent Jesus forth. Jesus pointed out at John 8:19 that anyone that claimed to know him would also know the Father, the One that sent him, so if anyone knows Jesus, then he or she would also know the Father, for if anyone really does know Jesus, then they "would know my Father also."
All of this discussion we have been having here about the passover and Nisan 14 not being the same as Nisan 15 is not just a trivial matter. The date of Nisan 14 has an important significance, just as Nisan 16, the second day of the obligatory festival of unfermented cakes, the first day of which began on Nisan 15, has an important significance to Christians. Jesus was dead on Nisan 15, but the day on which the high priest at the temple would wave a sheaf of the firstfruits of the barley harvest to Jehovah was Nisan 16, and pictorially speaking, Jesus, being the firstfruits of those that had fallen asleep in death, was the first to be raised up to immortal life on Nisan 16 (1 Corinthians 15:20), and because Nisan 16 is of significance to Christians as well, it's important to get all of these dates right. I fancy myself as being a spiritual person and if you fancy yourself to be a spiritual person, then it seems to me that you, too, would want to get these dates right.
It was on Nisan 16 that seven weeks following the wave offering began to be counted, for on the 50th day -- Sivan 6, or Pentecost -- the obligatory festival of weeks began, where the high priest would make wave two loaves as a wave offering before Jehovah, the significance of which pictorially being that these loaves represented the anointed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, who poured out from the Most Holy of God's spiritual temple in heaven holy spirit upon his 120 disciples, and so it was at this time on this day -- Sivan 6 -- that they became spiritually begotten children of God.
And so why is knowing these things so important to Christians? Because it means everlasting life for us to take in knowledge of Jesus, but we also need to take in knowledge of Jehovah, "the only true God." That is what John 17:3 also says. "At the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels," 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10 says, Jesus will bring vengeance upon those that "do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus," and these "will undergo the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction."
Obviously you have some self-esteem issues which require you to amass people to agree with you. I don't need you to agree with me.
To the contrary, if you should be a stone, I have no expectation whatsoever of your agreeing with me about anything. Stones are pretty stupid, quite frankly. I don't know what you are, but stones don't move no matter what you might say to them. I might have self-esteem issues, but this is neither the time or the place to discuss those issues. In this thread, we were discussing the validity of celebrating the passover on Nisan 14 and Nisan 15; let's leave it there.
Everybody here who cares has seen the arguments for the 14th and the 15th and I'll leave them to make up their own minds. You are a lost cause and I don't have the patience or desire to see correcting you through to the end. Perhaps if you see the light, you can slink off and make a new avatar to save face.
@WontLeave, let's say that you wanted to slink off and make a new avatar to save face. How would you go about doing that?
@djeggnog
