by psyco 24 Replies latest watchtower bible
I'm still stuck on the summary of the bible as the sanctification of God's name.
I've only ever heard the word "sanctification " used by JWs. I don't think it's intuitive at all.
I wonder what JWs mean when they use that word. It's obviously a JW buzzword.
I don't think someone reading the Bible on their own would come up with that as the theme of the bible without previous JW input.
To add on to the OP frustration, we were taught to offer our prayers "in Jesus' name" as Jesus is the intermediary between God and imperfect humans. "Jesus" is English for the Latin version of the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous) as there is no way to translate the Hebrew name ישוע (Y'shua) into Greek. Some words and names just don't translate into other languages.
So Jehovah's Witnesses are told by the Watchtower to pray to Jehovah (a made up name created by a Catholic monk) through Jesus' name, which is also made up.
If you were born in England, the U.S., or any other nation whose language is English and your name is John I am sure you would appreciate it if people called you John even if you were to travel to Spanish speaking nations where they would use Juan instead of John. A person's name doesn't change based on geography or national language of translators.
I call bullshit on your conclusion that "If [you] wanted to summarize the entire Bible in one phrase [you] would say (even before the Kingdom): God’s name sanctification."
That definitely sounds like something you got from Jehovah's Witnesses and from my reading of the Bible and from reading the thoughts of people who study this stuff much more than even Jehovah's Witnesses do, the name remains unclear throughout. "Jehovah" or whatever is a warrior God of the early Bible and most people worshipped EL or Elohim, Eloah, Elohai, El Shadda. The Old Testament doesn't clearly point to the New Testament or to the Son of God.
What I get from the Bible is that God is vengeful and has a bunch of rules and you should obey him or he will mess you up.
Yeah, OTWO, I agree. I always thought the bible could be summed up this way:
Old Testament: "I'm the biggest and baddest and I win! Love, God"
New Testament: "Aww, He ain't that bad! Love, Jesus"
You would think that in Man's existence God would tell us his name. There would be no mystery. All groups have their ideal what God's name is. Why has God not just come out and tell us? I smell a rat.
Think about it, if the pronunciation of god's name was that important, the most important thing to an all knowing, all powerful being ....why didn't he ensure it was clearly stated, kept alive and not altered?
We have thousands of old Greek testament manuscripts from as early as the second century, yet there is not one extant example of the tetragramaton in any of these Greek testament scriptures. Why???
Either God is not all powerful or his name is not that important to him. Really, if you were God would you be worried about your reputation? Would you need to be? Or would a loving God be more preoccupied with the salvation of his children? In other words his kingdom?
Well the interpretation that god cares about his name is very JW-centric. The JWs added the name in a ton of places where they interpreted it should be but no extant texts do have it in those places. Not because it was removed, but because the writers never put it there.
The first few books of the Bible would have no knowledge of a named god as Judaism hadn’t yet formulated, thus you would see more proto-names which is believed to be Yahweh Asher Yahweh, which is not a name but more along the lines of a royal title of the deity and by the time the later books came around, most Jewish sects would’ve stopped using it already. So yes, you would see shortened versions like Yahweh as a “name” in some places in the Bible (around Kings and Psalms) but it would quickly disappear after the diaspora (the prophets).
By the first century CE the Jews would not have used the name at all and Jesus and most early Christians being a Jew and all wouldn’t have either, else you’d be seeing that debate all over the biblical texts.
The name Jehovah is anglicized, if god cared about his name, surely he would want his “witnesses” to pronounce it correctly and thus it would be “Yahweh Asher Yahweh’s Witnesses“ for the earliest “name” and Yahweh is the closest to what we know it used to sound like but that would also make them sound like some Rastafarian.
The JWs did not add Jehovah to the New Testament they just followed other bibles mostly that did this already. Some bibles add it even more then 237 times.
The original poster has come to a very odd conclusion. With 66 books in the canon you have many views of god.
I would recommend before you get hung up on Jehovah's name check out 'Yahweh' on Wikipedia (and check the sources at the bottom!) and find out where Yahweh came from....The Shasu tribe.
The OP is talking WT language.
Anyway, a more logical thinking approach:
- why does God need to sanctify his name? Did he do something that de-sanctified (is this English??) his name?
- if name was so important, why is only Jesus name used in the Greek books? Was the almighty not powerful enough to ensure his name would be in ALL scriptures?
- Satan is supposed to be equally against God as he is against the son. So, why in the Hebrew scriptures you can find the consonants of his name and in the Greek scriptures the name of his son? If Satan wanted to have the consonants removed from the Greek scriptures, why not also in the other scriptures?
- Why is someone who is above all, superior to all, cannot be touched, almighty etc JEALOUS. Jealousy means fear of losing something to someone else.
- If the scriptures say he could make the stones cry out if his disciples are stopped (Luke 19:40), why not use the stones to ensure all people are aware of his name?
You can ask yourself: how many people in the world know the following brand names: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Shell etc or even Maradona, Pele, Cruijff? Now compare this to how many people in the world are familiar with the name and which version of the name of the God of the bible?
If his objective is to sanctify his name, would you not expect that after the thousands of years, that about all people in the world would at least know what his name is?
Or may be it is not that important and you and WT are wrong? What do you think?
The JWs over use the name, genericizing it to the point of being offensive. Well offensive if you are Jehovah. They don't seem to have any reverence for it. They even try to cleverly use it in the name of their religion. Yet after all these years, I bet 99% of the world has no clue what the term Jehovah's Witness even means. It wouldn't surprise me if half the JWs out there hadn't made the connection. If god is who they say he is you'd think they would treat his name with a lot more respect.
