Does Jehovah need any protection?

by I_love_Jeff 7 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  I_love_Jeff

  Does Jehovah need to be protected by a zealous scribe***** (Masoretic Text) or anyone else?
  
  Deuteronomy 32:8 is a textbook example of how later scribes sometimes changed the biblical text in a misguided attempt to “protect” God’s reputation. Deut 32:8, eliminates references to other divine beings (32:8, “sons of God”; 32:43, “heavenly ones” and “gods”). Also see Psalm 82: 5-7
  
  *****This scribal practice of “protecting” God through textual changes is known as tiqqune sopherim (“emendations of the scribes”). See Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), pgs. 264–269. ↩
  
  Masoretic Text. The Hebrew Scriptures as traditionally received. The two oldest copies of it are the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex—ca. 10th century ad.
  
  Septuagint. A Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The oldest copies are in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus—ca. 4th century ad.
  
  Dead Sea Scrolls. Over 100,000 fragments of text, comprising more than 800 biblical and non-biblical manuscripts—ca. 250 BC–AD 70.

  
  
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  Crazyguy

  To me these changes were made to get to the idea of a monotheist belief. Only one god. Elohim means gods plural and I believe the original texts says Elohim not Angels or sons of Israel.

  There is also some idea floating around that the name Israel was used as the name of a god in some supposedly ancient writting from Phoenicia but I can not find the source to this idea.

  Anyway yes gods got shrunk down to god and many of the writings in the Bible aren’t even talking about the same god. There are writtings that can be traced back to Enki, Enlil, Marduk, Ammon, Osiris, El, Baal , Inanna, Zues just to name a few.
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  smiddy3

  To me these changes were made to get to the idea of a monotheist belief. Only one god. Elohim means gods plural and I believe the original texts says Elohim not Angels or sons of Israel.

  Genesis Ch.3 : 22 ...."here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad "

  The fact that God said the man has become like one of us is telling.?

  God is actually saying he has peers ,beings the same as he is , God`s.the same as he is.

  And Adam having that Knowledge now of good and bad put him on the same level in that sense of the Gods that then existed at that time.

  Not that he had the power of God but that he had the intellectual ability of knowing Good and bad right and wrong ,evil and good.
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  Doug Mason

  The Scriptural texts have over time been subjected to many deliberate amendments, including efforts to make them align with contemporary thinking. (No different from the intentions of the Watchtower Society.)

  Thus when the dominant writers were at least monolatrists (recognizing that there were gods apart from Yahweh -- "you must not have other Gods before me") the original passage was acceptable.

  I need to add that Deuteronomy as we have it comes from the 6th century BCE, when Monotheism was trying to become the dominant force. Contemporary familiarity would have limited the extent of change the Deuteronomists could invoke at the time.

  However, Monotheism had succeeded, by the time the Scriptures were translation into Greek, so the text was amended.

  The Book of Jubilees was written about that time (possibly by the Sadducees) and the following from "Crucible of Faith" pages 159-160 shows how they amended the text to suit their teachings.

  Doug

  ==========

  On earth, angels served as the leaders or rulers of particular nations or territories, and in this capacity they closely resembled the pagan gods of old. In fact, one passage in Deuteronomy shows a direct continuity in those ideas. In the original text, God assigned nations according to the number of “the sons of God,” presumably an acknowledgment of the reality of rival deities. That nod to polytheism embarrassed later readers, and in the Septuagint translation God sets nations and boundaries “according to the number of the angels of God.” Once upon a time there were gods, who were transformed into tutelary angels or spirits, who in turn became thoroughly godlike. This idea of national guardians is well developed in Daniel (10:13, 10:21, 12:1). …

  Given its pervasive hostility toward Gentiles, it is [the Book of] Jubilees that presents these figures in the most sinister and exclusive terms. Yes, says the author, “there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His, and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler, and He will preserve them and require them at the hand of His angels and His spirits.

  That ran against the common assumption that Israel did indeed have a tutelary figure, namely, Michael. But whatever the exact identity of such figures, the idea of territorial spirits lent itself to visions of earthly conflicts being mirrored in the heavens, to clashes of angelic and demonic beings.

  [And He sanctified it, and gathered it from amongst all the children of men; for there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His, and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler, and He will preserve them and require them at the hand of His angels and His spirits, and at the hand of all His powers in order that He may preserve them and bless them, and that they may be His and He may be theirs from henceforth for ever.

  Jubilees 15:31-32, at: http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/jubilees/15.htm ]

  [Doug's note: Daniel as we have it was written in the 2nd century BCE. The RC version is a bit different.]
  
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  WTWizard

  Whether that thing needs any protection is besides the point. It doesn't deserve any.
  
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  eyeuse2badub

  Does Jehovah need any protection?

  I think we need to be protected from jehober. You never know what it is that will piss him off!

  just saying!
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  I_love_Jeff

  lol
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  venus

  Apostle Paul felt he should protect God even by lying: "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged a sinner?" (Romans 3:7)