Is The Governing Body A Bunch Of Over The Hill Bible Hacks?

by frankiespeakin 12 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  frankiespeakin

  The Governing Body's ban on higher education, and its naive childlike interpetation of the bible, beleiving that a talking snake started a major rebellion in the universe which will culminate in a war with God Almighty at armegeddon wipeing out 99.9% of the human population as well as innocent animal by-standers, shows them to be incorrigibly ignorant. They are resisting with all their psychic energy information that shows their so-called divine education program is willfully short on facts and logic.

  Take for instance the biblical flood: Common sense tells us that the words penned in the bible about the flood covering the whole earth up to 15 cubits above the highest mountain, would have to be understood not with our modern 20th century understanding of the word "earth" but with the understanding common to those back at the time the story was first written down. Any bible scholar worth his salt ought to know that.

  Durring the time the flood story was written what did they think the earth was? -> Dry land floating in a watery deep that's what. They had no idea at that time that the earth was a sphere held in orbit by the sun's gravitational force. That understanding had to wait thousands of years before it became known, and they had no real understanding what stars were, understanding these things all came many centuries latter.

  Yet these so-called providers of divine education teach the flood was global and the water rose so high they covered Mount Everest(29,029 ft. above sea level). Yet with a little thinking it is clear that the Genesis acount is not really saying this if we take a small amount of time find out what was the cosmology of the people of that region and that time period when written. Therefore the Governing Body are truley a bunch of delusional bible hacks that stay willfully ignorant of facts and logic.
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  mP

  Is the Bible is bunch of hacks ?

  Actually i must disagree the ancient cultures were aware tha tthe earth was round. The Greeks even measured the earth and were quite accurate. The flood story as you have highlighted however shows their lack of scientific knowledge about the rain / water cycle and what exactly is above in the sky. When Isa talks about the circle of the earth he is simply telling us what was common knowledge at the time.
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  Joliette

  Yes they are. That sums them up nicely.
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  villagegirl

  Please don't blame the Bible for the existence

  of the Watchtower Society and the governing body,

  anymore than you would blame bed sheet

  manufacturers for the existence of the KKK

  ( Klu Klux Klan )
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Mp,

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

  The concept of a sphericalEarth dates back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC, [1] but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given. The Hellenistic paradigm was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. [2] [3] [4] [5] A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastian Elcano's expedition's circumnavigation (1519−1521). [6]

  The concept of a spherical Earth displaced earlier beliefs in a flat Earth: In early Mesopotamian mythology, the world was portrayed as a flat disk floating in the ocean and surrounded by a spherical sky, [7] and this forms the premise for early world maps like those of Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus. Other speculations on the shape of Earth include a seven-layered ziggurat or cosmic mountain, alluded to in the Avesta and ancient Persian writings (see seven climes), or a wheel, bowl, or four-cornered plane alluded to in the Rigveda. [8]

  Ancient Hebrew Cosmology:

  

  Sumarian Cosmology:

  

  History

  [edit] Antiquity

  [edit] Classical Greece

  Though the earliest evidence of a spherical Earth comes from ancient Greek sources, there is no account of how the sphericity of the Earth was discovered. [ 10 ] A plausible explanation is that it was "the experience of travellers that suggested such an explanation for the variation in the observable altitude and the change in the area of circumpolar stars, a change that was quite drastic between Greek settlements" around the eastern Mediterranean Sea, particularly those between the Nile Delta and the Crimea. [ 11 ]

  According to Diogenes Laertius, "[ Pythagoras ] was the first [Greek] who called the earth round; though Theophrastus attributes this to Parmenides, and Zeno to Hesiod."

  Pythagoras

  Early Greek philosophers alluded to a spherical Earth, though with some ambiguity. [ 12 ] Pythagoras (6th century BC) was among those said to have originated the idea, but this may reflect the ancient Greek practice of ascribing every discovery to one or another of their ancient wise men. [ 10 ] Some idea of the sphericity of the Earth seems to have been known to both Parmenides and Empedocles in the 5th century BC, [ 13 ] and although the idea cannot reliably be ascribed to Pythagoras, [ 14 ] it may, nevertheless have been formulated in the Pythagorean school in the 5th century BC. [ 10 ] [ 13 ] After the 5th century BC, no Greek writer of repute thought the world was anything but round. [ 12 ]

  Herodotus

  In The Histories, written 431–425 BC, Herodotus cast doubt on a report of the sun observed shining from the north. The phenomenon was allegedly observed during a circumnavigation of Africa undertaken by Phoenicians under Necho II c. 610–595 BC (The Histories, 4.42) who claimed to have had the sun on their right when circumnavigating in a clockwise direction. To modern historians, however, these details confirm the truth of the Phoenicians’ report.

  Plato

  Plato (427–347 BC) travelled to southern Italy to study Pythagorean mathematics. When he returned to Athens and established his school, Plato also taught his students that Earth was a sphere though he offered no justifications. If man could soar high above the clouds, Earth would resemble "one of those balls which have leather coverings in twelve pieces, and is decked with various colours, of which the colours used by painters on earth are in a manner samples." [ 15 ] In Timaeus, his one work that was available throughout the Middle Ages in Latin, we read that the Creator "made the world in the form of a globe, round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from the centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures", [ 16 ] though the word "world" normally refers to the universe

  Late Antiquity

  Knowledge of the spherical shape of the Earth was received in scholarship of Late Antiquity as a matter of course, in both Neoplatonism and Early Christianity. Theological doubt informed by the flat Earth model implied in the Hebrew Bible inspired some early Christian scholars such as Lactantius, John Chrysostom and Athanasius of Alexandria, but this remained an eccentric current and learned Christian authors like Basil of Caesarea, Ambrose and Augustine of Hippo were clearly aware of the sphericity of the Earth. "Flat Earthism" lingered longest in Syriac Christianity, which tradition laid greater importance on a literalist interpretation of the Old Testament, and authors from that tradition such as Cosmas Indicopleustes presented the Earth as flat as late as in the 6th century. This last remnant of the ancient model of the cosmos disappeared during the 7th century, and from the 8th century and the beginning medieval period, "no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth." [ 25 ]

  [edit] Spread to the East

  With the rise of Greek culture in the east, Hellenistic astronomy filtered eastwards to ancient India where its profound influence became apparent in the early centuries AD. [ 26 ] The Greek concept of a spherical earth surrounded by the spheres of planets, vehemently supported by astronomers like Varahamihira and Brahmagupta, supplanted the long-standing Indian cosmological belief in a flat and circular earth disk. [ 26 ] [ 27 ] The works of the classical Indian astronomer and mathematician, Aryabhata (476–550 AD), deal with the sphericity of the Earth and the motion of the planets. The final two parts of his Sanskrit magnum opus, the Aryabhatiya, which were named the Kalakriya ("reckoning of time") and the Gola ("sphere"), state that the Earth is spherical and that its circumference is 4,967 yojanas, which in modern units yields 39,968 km, close to the value already calculated by Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC. [ 28 ] Aryabhata also stated that the apparent rotation of the celestial objects was due to the actual rotation of the Earth. The Aryabhatiya in turn influenced medieval Islamic scholarship.

  [edit] Middle Ages

  Knowledge of the sphericity of the Earth survived into the medieval corpus of knowledge by direct transmission of the texts of Greek antiquity (Aristotle), and via authors such as Isidore of Seville and Beda Venerabilis. It became increasingly traceable with the rise of scholasticism and medieval learning. [ 20 ] Spread of this knowledge beyond the immediate sphere of Greco-Roman scholarship was necessarily gradual, associated with the pace of Christianisation of Europe. For example, the first evidence of knowledge of the spherical shape of the Earth in Scandinavia is a 12th-century Old Icelandic translation of Elucidarius. [ 29 ]

  A non-exhaustive list of more than a hundred Latin and vernacular writers from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages who were aware that the earth was spherical, has been compiled by Reinhard Krüger, professor for Romance literature at the University of Stuttgart. [ 20 ]

  nnnn
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  Zordino

  Ancient Hebrew Cosmology: Marking
• 

  mP

  @Frankie

  Most of your article discusses the layers of what we would say was space, and is separate from a flat or sphere earth knowledge.

  While most people were uneducated and naturally had no idea about stuff like what shape the earth was the educated classes did know.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

  It was also typically held in the aboriginal cultures of the Americas , and a flat Earth domed by the firmament in the shape of an inverted bowl is common in pre-scientific societies. [1] The Jewish conception of a flat earth is found in biblical and post biblical times. [2] [3] [4]

  The paradigm of a spherical Earth was developed in Greek astronomy , beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on. [5] [6] [7] [8] The misconception that educated Europeans at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as the Myth of the Flat Earth . [9] In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain ) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history. [10]

  ...

  The Earth's circumference was first determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes . Eratosthenes knew that in Syene , in Egypt , the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice , while he estimated that the angle formed by a shadow cast by the Sun at Alexandria was 1/50th of a circle. He estimated the distance from Syene to Alexandria as 5,000 stades , and estimated the Earth's circumference was 250,000 stades. [62] Subsequently, ignorance of the size of a stade caused problems both to the Arabs and to Christopher Columbus.

  Im not going to deny many cultures and peoples had no clue, but there were many that did. Just because the jews had pitiful technology doesnt mean everyone else was.

  Actually I think the jewish lack of knowledge is further proof of just how little knoweldge Jehovah shared with them. I had this very discussion with a JW. I asked them why did Jehovah teachthe jews next to nothing and gave them no technology to bless his people. They had to copy pagan calendar, writing, numbers and so on. If only Jehovah had given them a better alphabet so they could capture his name with vowels we wouldnt have the nonsense that is the unknown pronounciation of YHWH.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Mp,

  Yes that's true. And the flood story writen in genesis was before a sperical earth was a given in the greek culture and was still a long way off from it becomeing accepted fact by the mesopatamian culture would mean that the flood story was written with the ancient hebrew cosmology understanding of the earth which was: dry land floating on a watery deep and not a spherical globe.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

  A flood myth or deluge myth is a symbolic narrative in which a great flood is sent by a deity, or deities, to destroy civilization in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeval waters found in certain creation myths, as the flood waters are described as a measure for the cleansing of humanity, in preparation for rebirth. Most flood myths also contain a culture hero, who strives to ensure this rebirth. [1] The flood myth motif is widespread among many cultures as seen in the Mesopotamian flood stories, the Puranas, Deucalion in Greek mythology, the Genesis flood narrative, and in the lore of the K'iche' and Maya peoples of Central America, and the Muisca people in South America.

  The Mesopotamian flood stories concern the epics of Ziusudra, Gilgamesh, and Atrahasis. In the Sumerian King List, it relies on the flood motif to divide its history into preflood and postflood periods. The preflood kings had enormous lifespans, whereas postflood lifespans were much reduced. The Sumerian flood myth found in the Deluge tablet was the epic of Ziusudra, who heard the Divine Counsel to destroy humanity, in which he constructed a vessel that delivered him from great waters. [2] In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood. [3]

  AssyriologistGeorge Smith translated the Babylonian account of the Great Flood in the 19th Century. Further discoveries produced several versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, with the account that is closest to that in Genesis 6–9 found in a 700 BC Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this work, the hero, Gilgamesh, meets the immortal man, Utnapishtim, and the latter describes how the god, Ea, instructed him to build a huge vessel in anticipation of a deity-created flood that would destroy the world; the vessel was not only intended for Utnapishtim, but was built to also protect his family, his friends and animals.

  Claims of historicity

  Ancient Shuruppak, Ur, Kish, Uruk, Lagash, and Ninevah all present evidence of flooding. However, the evidence comes from different times. [ 10 ] In Israel, there is no such evidence of a widespread flood. [ 11 ]

  Christians with a literalist belief in the bible, such as Hugh Ross, have sought to link evidence of a possibly catastrophic filling of the Persian Gulf after sea waters rose following the last ice age to the biblical flood myth. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] Global sea levels were about 120m lower up till 18,000 BP and rose till at 8,000 BP they reached the current levels, which are now an average 40m above the floor of the Gulf, which was a huge (800 km (500 mi) x 200 km (120 mi)) low-lying and fertile region in Mesopotamia in which human habitation is thought to have been strong around the Gulf Oasis for 100,000 years. A sudden increase in settlements above the present water level is recorded at around 7,500 BP. [ 14 ] [ 15

  Adrienne Mayor's The First Fossil Hunters and Fossil Legends of the First Americans promoted the hypothesis that flood stories were inspired by ancient observations of seashells and fish fossils in inland and mountain areas. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Chinese all documented the discovery of such remains in these locations; the Greeks hypothesized that Earth had been covered by water on several occasions, citing the seashells and fish fossils found on mountain tops as evidence of this history.

  Speculation regarding the Deucalion myth has also been introduced, whereby a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea, caused by the Thera eruption (with an approximate geological date of 1630–1600 BC), is the myth's historical basis. Although the tsunami hit the South Aegean Sea and Crete it did not affect cities in the mainland of Greece, such as Mycenae, Athens, and Thebes, which continued to prosper, indicating that it had a local rather than a regionwide effect. [ 16 ]

  Another hypothesis is that a meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BC, created the 30 kilometres (19 mi) undersea Burckle Crater, and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands. [ 17 ]

  It has been postulated that the deluge myth may be based on a sudden rise in sea levels caused by the rapid draining of prehistoric Lake Agassiz at the end of the last Ice Age, about 8,400 years ago. [ 18 ]

  One of the latest, and quite controversial, hypotheses of long term flooding is the Black Sea deluge hypothesis, which argues for a catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from the Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea. This has been the subject of considerable discussion
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  sinis

  Marking...
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  frankiespeakin

  I think the geneology of the anceint hebrews in genesis is made up,, as evidence we see people named geneologically as living 900+ years and I sure the ages are fake even up until Abraham and Moses.
  So that the WT dateing of the flood is erroneous and I have a strong suspision that the speculation of what cause Deucalion myths throughout that region: was a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea, caused by the eruption that occured with an approximate geological date of 1630–1600 BC, is the myth's historical basis.