I agree. It "tends to be insulting" instead of educational.
— PioneerSchmioneer
So the attempts to insult are admittedly intentional.
Yet does one then avoid exposing the lack of ability, capacity, and credibility of the members of the Governing Body who call themselves Bible scholars and appoint themselves and others as members of the translating committee of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures?
— PioneerSchmioneer
And we saw how this is done in the case of Jonsson. How have you taken up the call to stand in the role of Jonsson? I submit that your responses have been more in line with being a Johnson than being a Jonsson.
[I]f you think I am saying you MUST have some form of higher education, then you are wrong.
— PioneerSchmioneer
But then we read,
[The Watchtower] tells people they can do without a formal education if they want to be involved in academia. You cannot. That is the very substance of it.
— PioneerSchmioneer
So you may not be saying everyone needs to have a higher education, but you are saying that people must have a higher education before they can say anything of academic value. But the examples of Jonsson and Muro show that even non-specialists without higher education can make contributions to academic knowledge. So your position which ignores such people as irrelevant is certainly an elitist one. And you explicitly state such,
What I am saying is a person shouldn't claim to be or act the part of a scholar or an academic without being on the same educational level of others in the same field. If they know Hebrew, Latin and Greek, for example, you should too.
— PioneerSchmioneer
So I understand what you are saying. You are saying that the course you advise is to accept Furuli's position as correct because he is a credentialed academic with knowledge of "Akkadian, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Phoenician, Syriac, and Ugaritic" and disregard Jonsson's because he is "acting the part of a scholar" and is not credentialed. But since I understand that valid
arguments are valid arguments regardless of who makes them, I will continue to accept Jonsson's position since his is the one which best explains the evidence.
It insults then when you point out their shortcomings, and doing so many not educate these people. They are so self-convinced that they don't need a former academic education, often demonizing scholars, so there is nothing you can do for these kind of people.
— PioneerSchmioneer
But I already stated that I am a university graduate. My point is that it is irrelevant to reference academic credentials as if that establishes the case. The case is established based on the evidence brought in its support. And so I continually try to draw you back to the evidence in my paper and ask you to deal with that. And you just as continually avoid dealing with that evidence as if it were the plague. One can only suspect at this point that you actually have no valid criticism of my paper to offer that would prove fatal to my thesis and are just trolling. So what is insulting is not your questioning as such, but your questioning in the absence of examples from my paper which would sustain your assertions.
I have also not “demonized” scholars. Scholars are cited all
throughout my paper. Three pages of bibliography show the scholars
consulted. What I have said is that in this case scholars regularly
assume a certain narrative structure in Genesis 1 which evidences
problems, problems which scholars themselves have
admitted for more than a
hundred years, while the one I present does not suffer from
these problems and ultimately offers far greater explanatory power.
Therefore their assumption of a symmetrical arrangement is wrong. And this would be the case whether I was the head of department for
Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union or a homeless
unemployed baker who was only home-schooled to the equivalent of
second grade using some kind soul’s phone to type out this post over the free WiFi from Starbucks. What is true is true no
matter who is saying it. If it is not true, overturn the case made in the paper. For an exceptionally seniored academic such as yourself it should be no problem to refute the thesis I advance in my paper if it is indeed wrong.
It's hypocritical to criticize JW leadership for being uneducated and frowning at higher education opportunities but applauding people who attempt to spread their personal ideas in a similar fashion without proper peer review process and procedures that critical methodology at the university level ensures.
— PioneerSchmioneer
You mean people like Carl Olof Jonsson?
The reason the book [Gentile Time Reconsidered] can be reviewed in [in the journal Archiv für Orientforschung] is that the Watch Tower Society heavily depends on a date from the Neo-Babylonian period in order to calculate its time table for the fulfilment of Biblical prophecies. Jonsson was thus able to refute the JWs’ teaching by showing that their chosen date (607 B.C. for the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar!) is irreconcilable with NB chronology. The result for us [=academics] is that Jonsson produced, — in Chapters Three and Four, — the finest overview of NB chronology available, establishing the reign lengths and the exact years of sixth-century kings of Babylon on the basis of chronicles, prosopographical materials, Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions, synchronizations with the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs, synchronizations with some OT passages, and the absolute dates provided by ancient astronomical texts.
…
Although Jonsson is not a specialist, his use of the pertinent literature is nearly impeccable and he has consulted Assyriologists when addressing uncertain points. Especially gratifying for me is his showing once again that the many decades of painstaking work in Assyriology can yield results which are meaningful for the broader public.
— W. Gallagher, review of Carl Olof Jonsson, The Gentile Times Reconsidered, Archiv für Orientforschung 51 (2005/2006): 423.
And I already told you,
The problem is not with higher education. The problem is with your apparent belief, also shared by others in academia, but certainly not everyone, that your education somehow imbues your every pronouncement ex cathera status. It is this snobbishly dismissive, “holier than thou” attitude which places you “in the clouds,” not your education.
— Mebaqqer
So I will reiterate that the problem is not higher education. It is
that you think higher education makes someone’s views
unassailable to those who have not had a higher education. That is an
inherently elitist position to take.
You cannot criticize the Jehovah's Witnesses one way while embracing someone else else by different standards without a betrayal for what you stand for. You become a liar when you do that.
— PioneerSchmioneer
Exactly. The translators of the New World Translation are criticized on the basis of inaccuracies found in the work they produced and for their failure to address these criticisms, not simply a failure to produce academic credentials when prompted, as the example from Jonsson makes clear. So by all means use the same standard to evaluate my paper as Jonsson does. You have yet to do so even after numerous appeals.
I would rather insult every member of the Governing Body and idiot who acts like them, while proclaiming to people that education is freedom of mind and life.
…
I want you and everyone to be educated so everyone can be empowered to make up their own minds and live the fullest most independent lives possible.
And I don't want you to accept my view. I want people to be educated so they can develop their own views and make their own dreams become reality.
— PioneerSchmioneer
Yet whose argument assumes authority and consensus itself establishes a view as unquestionable while avoiding a consideration of the evidence itself? I have presented a paper and asked for “substantive criticism.” If I didn’t respect other people’s ability to think for themselves, I wouldn’t ask for their criticisms. It is your position which implicitly argues, “Others who know more have a different view. Therefore everybody should ignore this paper which says something contrary.” Isn’t it actually that position which makes you just like the governing body who tells Jehovah’s Witnesses to only use Watchtower publications in their studies since all the research has been done for them already by the governing body? Would you really ask people to replace the unquestionable authority of the governing body with an unquestionable authority of scholars? Again I cite the fine words of Cicero here,
Quin etiam obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui se docere profitentur; desinunt enim suum iudicium adhibere, id habent ratum, quod ab eo, quem probant, iudicatum vident.
In fact the authority of those who stand forward as teachers is generally an obstacle in the way of those who wish to learn, for the latter cease to apply their own judgment, and take for granted the conclusions which they find arrived at by the teacher whom they approve.
— Cicero, De natura deorum 1.10 (trans. Brooks)
Mebaqqer2 just wants his view and paper to be accepted as true.
— PioneerSchmioneer
Let me correct that for you, “If the observation proves true,
Mebaqqer hopes to see the narrative structure of the Hexaemeron explicated
in his paper utilized in future discussions of the Genesis 1:1–2:3.”
Yes. Of course. Obviously.
And for those readers just joining the discussion, the present version of the paper in
question may be viewed online here at Academia.edu, here on the
Internet Archive or here
on my private .onion page on the TOR network.
Fin.