Today's wt study article quotes a Nazi mass murderer as a reference

by fugue 36 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • fugue
    fugue

    Today's study article, "Do Not Look At The Things Behind," from the 3/15/12 study edition, which was reviewed by Blondie in her thread, has a footnote on paragraph 12.

    The original-language word here translated “refuse”
    also meant what “is thrown to the dogs,”
    “dung,” “excrement.” One Bible scholar says that
    Paul’s use of this word denotes a “resolute turning
    aside from something worthless and abhorrent with
    which one will have nothing more to do.”

    Blondie pointed out that the wt, as usual, refuses to tell us the name of the bible scholar. But as Blondie pointed out, the scholar was someone named Gerhard Kittel, and the book was the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament .

    So... who was Gerhard Kittel? Wikipedia doesn't have much on him, but what's there is very enlightening:

    Gerhard Kittel (September 23, 1888, Breslau—July 11, 1948) was a German Protestant theologian, lexicographer of biblical languages, and open anti-Semite. [1] He is best known in academic circles for his Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament).

    The son of acclaimed Old Testament scholar Rudolf Kittel, he married Hanna Untermeier in 1914, but there were no children from the union. In May 1933 he joined the National Socialist German Workers Party . A Professor of Evangelical Theology and New Testament at the University of Tübingen, he published "scientific" studies depicting the Jewish people as the historical enemy of Germany, Christianity, and European culture in general. From 1940 to 1943 he actively assisted in the mass murder of Jews in Poland .[citation needed]

    In 1945, after Hitler's Third Reich capitulated to the Allies, Kittel was arrested by the French occupying forces, removed from office and interned at Balingen. William F. Albright wrote the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg in early 1946, "In view of the terrible viciousness of his attacks on Judaism and the Jews, which continues at least until 1943, Gerhard Kittel must bear the guilt of having contributed more, perhaps, than any other Christian theologian to the mass murder of Jews by Nazis." Nonetheless, in 1946 Kittel was released pending his trial. He was forbidden to enter Tübingen until 1948, however. From 1946 to 1948 he was a Seelsorger (soul carer) in Beuron. In 1948 he was allowed back into Tübingen, but died that year before the criminal proceedings against him could be resumed.

    Kittel was a Nazi who was responsible for murdering Jews.

    Good source to use in a study article.

  • Slidin Fast
    Slidin Fast

    Upbuilding!

  • rebel8
    rebel8

    Unbelievable.

    Do you know how much manipulation they did with the Holocaust Museum? Some of us requested balanced information in their library but the dubs kept strongarming them into only telling their slanted side of the story. Took several attempts to rectify that.

    Wow.

  • breakfast of champions
    breakfast of champions

    Excellent work, both BLONDIE and FUGUE! I shall share this information with my wife at an appropriate moment.

  • charlie brown jr.
    charlie brown jr.

    Oppppps That's like Quoting Satan as a Reference LMAO!!!!!

    Holy Spirit Must be BEAMING LOL

  • wha happened?
    wha happened?

    when are they going to figure out this internet thing is killing them

  • dgp
    dgp

    Not that I would defend the Watchtower or a killer of Jews, or would try to detract at all from Blondie's analyses (which are beyond me), but I don't see the relationship between the man being a murderer and his being wrong about that particular interpretation of the word.

  • fugue
    fugue

    @dgp: That's actually a tough call. Just because he held extreme political views doesn't necessarily discredit his scholarly work as a theologian. Apparently the wtbts doesn't have a problem with the ethics of using his work, despite the fact that he was a Nazi. I would think the wtbts would reject the work of Nazi party members, since they are so proud of the fact that they stood their ground against the Nazis (according to their rewritten version, anyway.)

    BTW I searched the WT Library CD ROM and they have been quoting Kittel for years now. So I did some more Googling, and I found a couple of sites that claim that the wtbts misquotes and misrepresents the actual views of Kittel. This site: http://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-Kittel.htm asserts that the wt's "Trinity" brochure misrepresents Kittel as someone who didn't think that the trinity had a scriptural basis.

    That's standard protocol for the wtbts. They have always misrepresented the views and beliefs of their sources.

    But going back to your post... no, there is no direct correlation between the man's political life and his religious writings.

    It just seems to me that j-ho and the holy spirit should be able to find quote-worthy sources who were NOT Nazis. I mean, they're the ones directing the writing of this stuff, right?

  • NewChapter
    NewChapter

    Reb, I saw the congrats link, but when I tried to link to the background link, it wouldn't go. can you post the background link here? It looks like you did something phenomenal.

  • BabaYaga
    BabaYaga

    Bookmarked, thank you.

    Stunning, though I always wonder why I can still be surprised.

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