The most successful teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses and an amazing new book on the divine name
by slimboyfat 332 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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waton
Jehovah is such an ugly word.
Albert Einstein used it to describe an ugly situation, when it become apparent in 1915, that "god" would not use his good offices to stop the useless slaughter on the front.
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LV101
I recall the name in the Indiana Jones movie. I've been shocked hearing it in a couple of funerals (non-JW) in past decades. We're really only use to hearing witnesses use it.
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Ruby456
cofty15 hours ago15 hours ago15 hours ago15 hours ago
I can't recall where I read it now but the most interesting idea I ever encountered regarding the divine name linked "yah-weh" with breathing.
Breath in through an open mouth and out through the lips and you say yah-weh with every breath.
It made sense in terms of the Abrahamic God being a "spirit".yes it definitely is an interesting idea. with three syllables one has to extend the out-breath even more. language requires a concatenation of abilities. And with so many climate changes taking place over a short span of time (Clive Finlayson, 2009 the humans who went extinct) our ancestors urgently needed to remember things and pass them on. imagine the end is coming and new dawn scenarios played out during this early period (Boyd and Richerson, 2005 the origin and evolution of cultures).
my contention, following Finlayson, Boyd and Richerson above, is that humans have lots of very old scenarios shaped into memory structures that can be called upon consciously or unconsciously and that people who want to control or restrict certain behaviours can tap into intentionally or unintentionally for the good of individuals or for their peril - all depends on which group one wants to belong to.
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cofty
eh?
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Ruby456
nothing more than that language is powerful if we think in terms of algorithms (Boyd and Richerson discuss this) and memes (Boyd and Richerson also discuss Dawkins memes).
I agree with slimboyfat regarding the name Jehovah - that it is a success story for Jehovah's witnesses as recent evidence backs up their claims - it occurs nearly 7000 times in the Masoretic text.
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cofty
I agree with slimboyfat regarding the name Jehovah - that it is a success story for Jehovah's witnesses as recent evidence backs up their claims
It occurs nowhere in the NT. The cult have used deception to cover up this inconvenient fact. If this is a success I would be curious to know how you define failure.
" Recent evidence" does not back up their claims at all. The data in the recent book has been around for years. It hasn't exactly caused any stir in NT studies.
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Ruby456
pls see my previous link re the use of the tetragrammaton in the new testament before 150 AD.
It is recent evidence in the sense that most people seem to base their view on Baudissin 1929 and Pietersma 1984. The new evidence refutes them enough to make me question the hostility to the use of the divine name by Jehovah's witnesses. Okay they do use it a lot more than is needed to make a distinction between the use of Kurios for Jesus and kurios for Jehovah but there is a strong argument for the use of the tetragram to make this distinction. The tetragram or its greek transliteration IAO was probably in the NT 121 times before 150 AD as in the LXX the tetragram was never replaced by Kurios before 150 AD - this is a problem for those who insist otherwise to maintain their hostility.
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slimboyfat
Indeed Ruby there is a lot of evidence that the Yaho form of the divine name was commonly used in the first century, and the preponderance of the evidence is that forms of the divine name were used in the LXX of the period. The question then becomes, why assume that the Christians in this period didn't likewise use the divine name? Other than religious bias against the name, there don't seem to be very good reasons for making that assumption. Have you read the book? It sounds like you have. It's really an amazing book for someone like me, who has been interested in this topic for nearly 20 years, since I was a teenager, and thought I knew most of what there was to know about it. And now to read this book and all the additional evidence it contains about onomatica, Roman and Jewish sources, and from a textual criticism perspective, that shows Yaho was commonly used in the first century and likely used by the first Christians is an eye opener. It is crammed full of interesting information on every page and every footnote. -
Ruby456
I haven't read the book slim but am reading around it.
I was reading some of your past debates on this site. I think scholars slice up the period of the early christians and the outcome is that areas of influence on the NT can be sidelined or even dismissed. the influence of gnosticism for example. In truth there was probably huge overlap and diversity.
edit: I wonder if the wts has the book on its library shelves? I've never seen any quotes.