Euphrates or Parath, Jeremiah 13:1-11

by Bobcat 14 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  AnnOMaly

  It annoyed me that the book said,

  "Bible critics just cannot believe that he would travel so far, walking for months. (Ezra 7:9) Still, that is what God said and what Jeremiah did."

  Then this over-simplistic statement from an unnamed scholar to cast a bad light on these 'unbelieving critics,' even though it doesn't take long to find that respectable, believing scholars thought it was more likely Parah - e.g. Encyclopaedia Judaica, New Jerusalem Study Bible and other sources mentioned already - and NOT due to a 'sole' consideration, but due to MANY factors leading them to that conclusion. Grr.
• 

  sir82

  Not only do they fabricate the account to shore up support for the FDS, they totally miss the REAL meaning and nuances of what Jeremiah was alluding to.

  Well, yeah, but can you imagine the typical JW trying to follow this:

  The best explanation is probably that Jeremiah utilized word play in the parable, with consonantal prth in v. 4, 5, 6, 7 (following the Qumran text) being intentionally ambiguous between P e ratâ (to the Euphrates) and Paratâ (to Parah), allowing a wadi (Wadi Farah) to stand in for the Euphrates symbolically; in Isaiah 7:14 rock clefts are similarly mentioned together with wadis. The association with the Euphrates is central to the parable because the loincloth is to be soaked in water (v. 1), and the water damage it suffers during the seasonal wadi flooding is likened in v. 9-10 to the coming Babylonian siege and exile (cf. v. 19: "All Judah has been deported, wholly deported").

  These are JWs we're talking about here - the same people so dense that they need a bleedin' demonstration to understand how to physically separate one magazine tucked inside another.
• 

  Bobcat

  Ann:

  Thank you for your thoughts.
• 

  88JM

  Spot on sir82
• 

  Bobcat

  Bumping this thread because Jeremiah 13 is being considered in the CLAM this week.