by stocwach 5 Replies latest watchtower bible
Once again you appear to selectively choose not to respond to legitimate rebuttals to your mumbo jumbo, just as you never responded to repeated efforts for you to reveal your letter to the WT Society, although you were more than happy to provide a letter from the WT to you. Don't you realize how your credibility is affected by your cowardly actions?
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=23413&site=3
just a guess, stocwach
he doesn't respond because your apologetics are just lame....maybe???...do you think???
gweedo, I think that Joseph Al(whatever) does not respond to anyone who says anything directly to him. When I see a thread started by him I do not go to that thread. Initially I did but after a while I felt like we are a bug under a microscope for him. Like a lab rat. Joseph has an agenda that I don't totally understand but what I do know is that he is here to bait all of us.
Dude, for god sakes,
Life doesn't have to end because someone isnt
resonding to your posts.[8>]
Why not just consider maybe you've won the arguement
if someone isn't responding?
gweedo, I think that Joseph Al(whatever) does not respond to anyone who says anything directly to him.
well..he responded to cellomould in fig tree thread.
maybe he's a busy guy. I personally dont understand why he has to respond. Whats the prob with him putting up something and not defending it to the hilt. Everyone can see what he's put up...if you agree, fine...if you disagree, thats ok. Take it or leave it. It's the same with stocwach. Everyone can see his response. Why stocwach needs JA to respond to have his own post somehow validated beats me!
You know what I think, I think JA wont respond because he knows no matter how he responds to religious fruits they will just come up more twisted apologetic dribble and the thread will go on and on and on. Religious fruits always gotta have the last word...JA just has the sense to know when to drop it...which in this case is before it even began...
But anyway...lets see
From memory, Stocwach is saying that Jesus trashed the temple twice[8>]haha...I think tyydyy's idea about there being 2 trees is more plausible....REALLY!!!
The problem with responding to JA is that, aside from being patronizing bordering on inflammatory in some of what he says-IMHO-he does something that The Watchtower (and many JW's)has caused me to be a little shy of.
He states a conclusion...then states HIS reasoning. Now mind you, in real life, we have a question. Then we need a WAY to ge the answers. Then we gather together everything we want/can, go over what we have, and reach a conclusion. The Watchtower does not do this, and neither does JA. It makes it very difficult to respond intelligently to anything he says when he does this. Many of his postings are like reading carbon copies of Body of Elder letters..anti Bible maybe, but the principle is the same.
Example # 1: Paul couldn't have really existed. Nobody ever wrote about him except for four times, so he couldn't have existed. HUH? This is like reading a Watchtower magazine--shades of Orwell, anyone?
Example # 2: Luke was----because he wrote about Micah, and it says there----. You can't respond to this. Which Bible is he using? The Watchtower bible(s)? His confusion would make perfect sense. But as I have said many times, Jesus/apostles/ no speeka da Englis!!!!
Much of this stuff could easily be reconciled by using various translations together, or going directly to the Hebrew/Greek/Aramaic (there's even one of those online; look up 'gune' (greek for woman/wife) and you will get quite a surpirse..Paul doesn't say the things people SAY he said!!
Scholarly debate aside, I agree with JA about one thing, and also Thomas Paine (Age of Reason). If we're going to accept the Bible as a social history (that's what I believe it is, not historical or scientific or any of those things) we need to do more research of a personal nature than we usually do about things.
One of my favorite examples is the calendars we use with the times of 'sunrise' and 'sunset' marked on them. Two hundred years from now (or longer) some explorer comes along and uncovers the remains of the old American cultural ruins. They find these calenders. Now they've been told the Americans were a culture advanced enough to go into space, increase life expectancy to a hundred <gag, choke> and so on. They wonder if it's true. They dig up the remains of these old calenders. They translate the remarks about 'sunrise' and 'sunset'; they well know (I hope) that the sun does not really rise and set; therefore they come to the conclusion that this race/culture could obviously not have been advanced enough to have gone into space. They don't go looking anymore.
What went wrong? They took a document (the paper calendar) that is a written timepiece, and reached a conclusion about our scientific capabilities. Well, a calendar (usually) is not a scientific or a historical item. It's for keeping time.
And so it is with the Bible. It is a book of cultural and sociological history of a group of people. If it is used that way, you have way fewer of the problems JA (and others)seems to be having with it. Just look at the trouble the Watchtower got into by using two Biblical accounts as CHRONOLOGIES instead of the GENEOLOGIES that they really were!
Must EVERYONE walk repeatedly down that same road?
Thansk for listening.
Dungbeetle..
In 1975 a crack team of publishers was sentenced to death by a judicial commiteee. They promptly escaped from the cult and now live life on the run. If you have a problem ... and if you can find them ... maybe you can contact the A--postate Team"
