The magazines didn't used to be so dumb and boring

by Lore 28 Replies latest jw friends

  • Lore
    Lore

    Here's an excerpt from this weeks watchtower study in 1950:

    *** w50 6/15 p. 180 A Victory Dedicated to Jehovah’s Honor ***

    THE STRATEGY, AND THE ATTACK

    5 Up! Arise! Prepare for battle! Gideon returns from his nighttime reconnoitering and rouses his little band to fighting zeal. He divides his force into three companies of one hundred each, and deploys them into the night’s blackness for action. Down from the heights of Mount Gilboa they file, a silent line of figures that finally encircles the sleeping Midianite camp that sprawls in the valley of Jezreel, at the foot of the hill of Moreh to the north. Well armed, these three hundred? No, not militarily speaking; they would draw scornful laughter and ridicule from haughty militarists. Each one had a trumpet, a pitcher, and a torch within the pitcher. Each one knew the instructions, had his assigned place in the thin line that stretched round about the camp, and looked to Gideon’s location for the cue. At the given signal each one blew mightily upon his trumpet, broke his pitcher, held aloft the firebrand thus uncovered, and shouted, “The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon!”—Judg. 7:1, 15-20, Am. Stan. Ver.

    6 A scene of wildest confusion and terror broke loose in the Midianite host. The night’s silence shattered by the blasts of three hundred trumpets, its stillness broken by the shouts from three hundred throats, its darkness pierced by the eerie flames from three hundred torches, and added to this the frightened stampeding of Midianite livestock, the unnerved terror of the invaders is understandable. The shouts and blasts rolled across the camp to strike the sides of Moreh, only to bounce back over the confused scene and bump into Mount Gilboa’s bluff, and as the noise was magnified and the echoes answered back, it seemed that the very hills awoke and took up the cry against Midian. The reverberating echoes converged upon the enemy, and as they stumbled from their tents sleep-filled eyes widened in startled fright at the leaping flames that highlighted shadowy shapes and fired superstitious imaginations. Believing the trumpets were of a numerous army that had penetrated their camp, the Midianites supposed their enemies were among them and turned their swords against every man they met, against their own numbers. They were confused and rattled, and rushed about wildly, and added to the din by their own cries, till they could straighten out their aimless dashing and take flight toward the fords of Jordan and their own land. The war of nerves had shattered their control and they flew at one another before finally breaking into headlong flight. The fear that was catching spread like a plague, and terror gave wings to the rout. (Deut. 20:8) No strategem was ever better laid, better executed, or more completely successful. Judges 7:20-22 reads:

    7 “The three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands wherewith to blow; and they cried, The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon. And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran; and they shouted, and put them to flight. And they blew the three hundred trumpets, and Jehovah set every man’s sword against his fellow, and against all the host; and the host fled.”—Am. Stan. Ver.
    I dunno if you guys would agree, but that's actually kind of well-written and interesting, like listening to a story. I can imagine the WT reader actually being able to read it with emphasis and passion. Notice how they didn't feel the need to cram a repeatable moral in every paragraph that they could ask a question about later. Compare that to this weeks article, every other sentence is a question directed at the reader like an episode of Blue's Clues which tries to put things as simply as possible so that all the 2 year olds can answer every question with one-word.
  • Curtains
    Curtains

    pace, atmosphere and captivating narrative - so distant from the snooze inducing cheap morality we are peddled today.

  • Band on the Run
    Band on the Run

    I was born in in the 50s. Oh, yes, they were!

  • Twitch
    Twitch

    Sorry but I don't recall the mags being anything but,...;)

  • Giordano
    Giordano

    I remember the 1960's pretty well and they were dumb and Fred Franz was the village idiot.

  • DesirousOfChange
    DesirousOfChange

    Someone care to ad this week's lesson for comparison?

  • bigmac
    bigmac

    "oh yes they did"

  • Chemical Emotions
    Chemical Emotions

    Hmmm, I'll admit, that's far more lively then their magazines have been for a few decades. The writing seems now to be aimed at little children. As a little kid I thought I was SO mature to understand everything in these articles, till I realized that they were just immature, I wasn't mature.

  • Wonderment
    Wonderment

    Thanks Lore for the excerpt.

    I am one of those who thinks that earlier WT writers had a bit more leeway than writers today. Earlier writers were allowed writing articles which displayed more depth and imagination, at least perceptibly more than today.

    Some of WT writers are obviously potentially capable enough to write well. But they are so restricted by the controlling-prone Governing Body. It must not be easy being a WT writer, and having this ability to write ideas well, but not allowed to do so. They write withing very rigid guidelines, thus are hampered by WT theological agenda. WT study articles of the last few decades show this restrictive tendencies very well.

    On the positive side, I have seen a polishing of some of their articles, where they seem more refined than earlier articles... less depth, and more tendentious, but more polished.

    I was a Watchtower study conductor for some time, and I became increasinglly annoyed at the WT tactics of indoctrination. I remember that for some articles, I would ask another elder to conduct the WT meeting, because I could not conscientiously do so, until I decided to resign as an elder.

  • Alfred
    Alfred

    It would appear that the writing committee already suspects or knows that the GB really doesn't care about any articles being well written (as long as they remind the rank & file to "obey the slave" in some form and at regular intervals)...

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