by Joliette 25 Replies latest jw friends
If wanted to know who wrote Huckleberry Finn, theres a simple answer: Mark Twain
Mark Twain? Or Samuel Clemens?
Not to be nitpicky (although I am) using an example like that might not be a good idea with your mother.
And of course the authors of Genesis and Revelation are for another topic entirely.
Still, when an article has multiple authors, I like to see the authors, like in scholarly journals.
Scholarly journals don't plagarise and quote out of context, they are also subject to peer review and can be critised by the community.
^LOL.
There are two reasons why you can't get a straight answer, dear Joilette (peace to you!):
1. Those you ask don't know
2. The articles are not written by "the anointed," which causes some a problem
The WTBTS did publish, however, how articles are written. It is in their first organizational video (the one after "Purple Heart" that has the mountain scenery on the cover). In it, they show a large room filled with filing cabinets and a couple of YOUNG men perusing the articles in those files. Per the narrator, the Writing Committee simply decides on a subject (based on "need"... or the publishing cycle)... gives it to these young men (and women, yes)... and such ones pull the info from the files and use to write the new article.
Yeah, blew me away, too, when I heard of it. I heard of it when Carey Barber told me that "the GB hasn't had anything to do with the Watchtower and Awake since 1972, when we handed everything over to the 'Joshua Class' in anticipation of 1975." He was referring to the time when the GB consented to forming six "committees" of which one was the Writing Committee. This Committee is comprised of non-anointed individuals (however, my recollection is that the "head" is "usually of the anointed." It oversees the Writing Department... which publishes the material.
I think Barbara Anderson and others can give you even more, in-depth information on how the articles are literally written, literally by whom, and how.
Otherwise, I hope this helps.
Again, peace to you!
A slave of Christ,
SA
I love seeing that tract, "The End of False Religion Is Near!"
They're going to have to redefine "near" like they did "generation." Five years is actually one year because the years overlap, lol.
LOL @ MadSweeney
Thank you Aguest ;) Peace to you always.
Your poor mother - being asked a question that even she doesn't know the answer to! Go easy on her - take her out for coffee or give her a hug . All this arguing sounds very tiring.
Did you ever wondre how a "New Light" is introduced? Does some guy sitting at a desk suddenly get a revelation? In a dream? Or possibly his wife?
We do know that many written articles are not from the "annointed".
Snoozy..Who knows a red herring when she reads one..
My mother mentioned a writing department, and she said that they kept the writers hidden for their protection. I'm like WTF?
I found this interesting article written a few years ago by a editor that interviewed some witnesses and accompanied them in service. I believe even visited Bethel. They comment on the picking of articles and who writes them etc towards the bottom of the article..pretty interesting!
http://nyrm.org/2010/05/13/the-most-widely-read-magazine-in-the-world/
Snoozy
One quote I enjoyed..
While some magazines have religious followings, few have actually started religions. The Watchtower did just that. Back then, it was Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, so named by its founder, the writer and preacher Charles T. Russell. A former assistant editor of the Second Adventist magazine The Herald of the Morning, Russell released the first edition of Zion’s Watch Tower on July 1, 1879. It looked much like a newspaper of the time, with two columns, simple headlines and no images. Inside, readers learned that “we are living in ‘the last days,’ ‘the days of the Lord.’”
Russell, a charismatic Pennsylvania preacher with a big graying beard and an even bigger bank account, amassed followers in the years leading up to 1879 through public speaking tours and writings in newspaper columns and the Adventist magazine. He began questioning Adventist doctrine when the world failed to end, as it had predicted, in 1878. Russell used the monthly Zion’s Watch Tower to expound a new brand of Christianity to small congregations of Bible Students, as Witnesses were then known, mostly in the Northeast.
I am sure the "Bigger Bank Account" attracted many back then!
I doubt Noo Lite originates in the Writing Department. My guess is that if Service, or GB, or Legal wants something changed, they run it by the rest of the GB, get it rubber-stamped, and then send it along to Writing. Writing then sticks it in to a Watchtower article about a completely different subject.
