I understood, and enjoyed, Duncan's posts in this thread.
I don't understand coolcurrent's posts.
" ...but did you know that God has a name? A personal name?" Nine Billion of them.
by Duncan 25 Replies latest jw friends
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WontLeave
While the obvious attempts to brand "Jehovah" as the sole property of Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and claim invention thereof are disgusting and blasphemous, I don't understand the nature of the original post. Unless the claim is being eluded to that the Bible is a complete work of Jehovah's Witness fiction, this post makes no sense. The divine name "Yhwh" (or the original Hebrew version of it) has existed for thousands of years; long before any current religion adopted it.
According to Scripture, God gave us the name to identify himself. While he goes by many other monikers - Almighty, God, Ancient of Days, Father, Adonai, Elohim, King, Lord, etc. - the tetragrammaton is used vastly more than any other name for God, in the Bible. While the JWs define "Jehovah" as meaning "causes to be", this is an assumption (like many of their decrees as "God's mouthpiece"). As in Exodus, God identified himself in a way that is often translated in English version of the Bible as "I am". This was a statement of His own existence and a likely understanding and translation of the divine name is a third-person statement of being, or simply "He is".
A deeper allusion contained in the statement translated as "I am" is self-existence. Nothing caused God to be; He just is. The Hebrew ehyeh (transliterated, since Hebrew characters don't paste) is the infamous "I am", while YHWH seems to be an ancient third-person form of hayah (being/existence). It would seem God decided to stop referring to himself as "I am" for the benefit of people to use a name that wouldn't imply the speaker was God, but referred to another.
The name Jehovah, said repeatedly by JWs is like any word spoken over and over. After a while, it begins to lose its meaning and that's what has happened. The association of the name with the cult which overuses it has tainted the name and the claiming of the divine name as its own has cheapened it. Jehovah's Witnesses, under the guise of "making God's name known" have branded the name and identified it with themselves as Nike has with the "swoosh". It's now one of the clubs they use to bash dissenters with, if they deny the claims of being exclusively God's organization - "Who else is bearing God's name and making it known?" - further sullying its holiness.
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Terry
BRANDING.
Giving God a name is selling a brand.
This brand isn't "other" brands.
Jehovah's Witnesses have made a brand based on how different or UN their God is.
Like 7UP being the UNcola.
Jehovah is the UNgod.
Look at the theology. It is based on negatives:
No Cross, No soul, No trinity, No hell, No Christmas, No birthdays, No this and No that!
It is just BRANDING.
When I first became a JW, even Jesus was a brand of UN.
He of the UNbeard!
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WontLeave
The JWs have fallen into the trap of just rejecting everything mainstream. While the mainstream may be wrong about a lot of things, this is hardly a scientific method; to assume everything must be wrong, without any investigation. This is what happened with the date of Passover. The mainstream who celebrate Passover are Jews and they do so in 15 Nisan. A tiny minority did so on 14 Nisan, so JWs jumped on that date. Of course, they turned over every rock and managed - in typical JW fashion - to find "experts" to agree and tout those minority reports as proof positive of their position.
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Mickey mouse
Great thread Duncan. Terry is right about the branding.
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Room 215
It's superfluous, if not demeaning to assign a name to this Transcendent Being -- the First and only Cause of the Universe and its Sole Sustainer