Thanks, Millie210.
I just want to keep up the pressure. Some people sound discouraged, figuring that the show is all over. But if we say it isn't over, then it's not.
A lot might depend on whether Jackson is called again to testify. If Jackson hadn't been given an open podium where he could instruct the panel and the rest of us, then he might have been much more defensive and laconic.
As for myself, if I had met the man socially without knowing he was a member of the governing board, I think his tales of life in Tasmania or the South Seas at the end of the 20th century would have been very interesting...
But that is not what this situation is all about. He was testifying as someone in charge of a very reprehensible set of operating procedures, procedures that allowed terrible abuses of women and children or most anyone who turned to KH for refuge or help. It has been going on for decades mirroring much of what it has criticized in other religious groups .
I have my own reasons to be alienated by the JW organization, discussed in other threads, but my own experience with the JW movement did not turn on this particular issue. So those who have more direct knowledge of these abuses I defer to their judgment on how to treat the matter.
Still, my interjection is that people on this forum or JWs in general should not be cowed by this man based on all this drum beat about FDS and governing board. The man's evasions, contradictions, and insistences reveals he and the rest of the magnificent 7 have feet of clay.
Your question about scholars and what they think about Deborah taps into that wider issue of what you or I or any other reader might think can be drawn from a reading of the Bible. In the case of Deborah, since I brought it up, for me it was a matter of memory more than an absolute conviction of some sort about who was a judge and who was not. Several books I have read seeking insight into the Bible have commented on Deborah, not so much dwelling on whether or not she was a judge, but noting that the Song of Deborah could be the oldest original writing contained in the Bible.
Now that idea might be controversial in and of itself from one religious group to another, depending on how the Bible is perceived. Unfortunately we do not have analogs to carbon dating for the Bible, but we can see varying stylistic forms. Looking at the Deborah episode in Judges and being aware of a "documentary hypothesis", I can for myself note a recurring chronicler convention in Judges, speaking of "the Israelites did what is evil in Yahweh's eyes"...Chapters 3 and 4 begin with such words, but chapter 5 is simply a song about Deborah. Then chapter 6 goes back to the same convention that is used in the book of Kings to describe many of them, in totality or particular deed... I don't think this expression shows up in the Pentetuch. It was more like "Yahweh saw that wickedness was great on the earth" Gen 6:5. or "God saw that it was good." Gen 1:22. Just clues of many writers and editors, sometimes in the same books.
Judges has a style similar to Kings, true enough; but whatever the level of historicity Kings might have, one would have to say that Judges does not share it. If one were to take the stories and chapters as sequential in Judges, as we are led to believe, it would be several hundred years. It results in great discrepancies with events going on with sources written in stone in Egypt, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. More likely the events described, if they happened at all proceeded in parallel.
According to the editor of the Jewish Study Bible ( "How to Read the Jewish Bible - Marc Brettler - Oxford Press), the title "shofetim" is translated as judges, but this is something of a "misnomer" since the principals acted more like chieftains, local or tribal leaders responding to crises, often leading their tribes to battle.
Nothing said about Deborah at all, though he translates from the Hebrew thus:
"Deborah, wife of Lappidoth, was a prophetess; she led Israel at this time. She used to to sit under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites would come to her for decisions"
Brettler's translation actually obscures the matter more than the NWT does; but it is unavoidable. It's just that Jackson's documentation puts him out on a much longer limb considering what he is now trying to say.
Chapter 5 verse 15 from the Song: "And Issachar's chiefs were with Deborah..." It appears to me that Deborah did not strike the Canaanite king dead in the tent, but rather another woman named Jael after Sisera fled from fixed battle to her tent. But Deborah led troops into the fray.
