What is the blindness Jesus referred to in Mathew 15:14?

by Ireneus 3 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Ireneus

  In the context of speaking about human teaching and its teachers (Mathew 15:8, 9) Jesus said: “They are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” (Mathew 15:14)
  

  Its application need not be too limited because what is being subjected to our senses is very limited. Even with regard to our own body, we have a limited vision. It’s like seeing only the tip of our nose because our bodies are continuously being recycled with even 98% of all our atoms being replaced in less than a year. Heraclitus stated that one can’t step into the same river twice because there is constant change occurring. There is always something preceding to something which means there cannot be a beginning for anything—even for universe. Not seeing this endless aspect would amount to blindness.
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  Giordano

  “They are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

  Actually if they are on a familiar path they won't fall into a pit. If they have a stick to touch the pathway going forward...........

  Jesus didn't always get stuff right....actually very little.

  The same with the WTBTS that is a better definition of the blind leading the blind.
  
  
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  myelaine

  Jesus had just finished rebuking the Pharisees for making God's torah void by their traditions. King David said that the torah was a lamp unto his feet, a light to his path. The Pharisees had made all kinds of extra-biblical laws that superceded and obscured the teaching of the torah. For people who relied on these teachers and their "laws" for direction (instead of the torah) the Pharisees were the blind leading the blind.

  Isaiah 50:10-11
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  Half banana

  The first century Palestine was a Roman province and benefitted from most of the mod cons which came with Romanisation; roads, education, sewerage and baths etc. The Jews were at a low ebb and heartily influenced by the prevailing Classical civilisation with its focus on power, control and citizenship, they were urbanised and secularised. Not at all the picture we get from the Bible!

  The saviour cults including the Jesus cult were irritating the state authorities because of their disregard for the liberal Roman religious attitude which consisted of respecting a plurality of gods. The Jews being monotheist helped in saviour cult recruitment and especially with a Jewish saviour figure at the centre as opposed to a Roman or Greek yet they were considered a threat to stability for persuading many uneducated peasants to their anti-state viewpoints with what the Romans considered the most frivolous claim, namely the coming to life of a traditional saviour hero. This idea in the Jesus cult was a new departure and a low point in the history of logic.

  When we have Jesus' words referred to, they could not be from the Bible character, had he actually lived it was a generation after his purported death when the writing attributed to him took place. There never was a contemporary record of his presence as a miracle working god-man in the Roman world let alone a record of verbatim speech.

  The words attributed to Jesus were the writings probably in the second century which would have been from the minds of the leaders of the Jesus Christ cult. (That is in contrast with the Mithras Christ cult or the Dionysus Christ cult) The "blind leading the blind"as many clever figures of speech would have been in circulation in the literate Roman world and in that milieu of religious sects publicly declaring their wares and seeking converts, such rhetoric would have been ammunition to put down traditional religious views which had become ossified.

  King David and Jesus are literary characters not real beings, Heraclitus was right, ideas grow out of earlier ideas.