Well I'm convinced! Get me back to the Kingdom Hall...
I've long suspected that you're a bit too easily easily convinced or swayed in general, but nevertheless welcome to the fold! I won't look a gifthorse in the mouth.
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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slimboyfat
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jwfacts
The divine name was in use in certain circles in the first century, but as yet there is no evidence of the divine name being in the New Testament. SBF, this has always been an important topic to you, yet as I mentioned, it is irrelevant to Watchtower longevity. There will be little more than a ripple if a fragment of a NT book is found with the divine name in it, partly because JWs are not aware of how dishonest Watchtower has been in propping up this doctrine.
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jwfacts
It should be "obvious" that a scholar who argues for a position agrees with the position he is arguing for.
Not at all. It should be obvious people set out to make a name for themselves, and presenting a theory with the hope that it may later be proven is how scholars and scientist set themselves up to make that name for themselves.
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Fairlane
@sbf...I think it would be appropriate for jws to look their 'gift horse' in the mouth, a bit of proper scrutiny wouldn't go amiss! !
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slimboyfat
no evidence of the divine name being in the New Testament.
Oh for crying out loud. Just because you don't accept the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There is plenty of evidence including how the LXX of the same period treated the divine name, statements in the NT about the divine name, the actual physical presence of the divine name in Revelation 19, allusion to it in Revelation 14, variants involving Kyrios, Jewish references to gospels with the divine name, plus a number of scholars who support the divine name in the NT. Apart from all that evidence, and much more, you're completely right, there's "no evidence".
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jwfacts
I would hate to have you on a jury. Evidence it was in use at the time is not evidence it was in the NT, it is circumstantial evidence at the very best. What I see is a list of rhetorical fallacies - straw-man arguments and arguments from authority.
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jwfacts
But the one teaching where they have been consistently ahead of the curve is the importance of Jehovah's name. I'm going to run through a (necessarily selective) timeline of JW events and scholarly publications that demonstrate the phenomenal success of this teaching in the last days.
They are only ahead of the curve if it eventually is proven that the divine name was used throughout the NT, until then they are not ahead of any curve. Neither is this a phenomenal success. JW growth is just a fraction of that of Pentecostals, whom number over 100 million. I thought you were joking with this introduction, but it seems you were serious.
I would like to understand is why you think finding YWHW in a NT fragment would have any significant affect on JWs. I have presented why I think it would make little difference.
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Anony Mous
Typical apologist BS. There are scholars that do these things for a living, practically all of them say that the NWT use of Jehovah in either the OT or the NT is "biased" at best to "deliberate distortion" at worst.
They even insert Jehovah where it refers to Jesus according to every other translation and have inserted it where no extant manuscript uses it.
The use of Jehovah or Yahweh isn't also very unique to Jehovah's Witnesses, plenty of early 1800 hymns up to the early 1900's used the name which was quite new to Christianity at a whole and actually was unique to 'new world religions' like Anabaptists, Adventists and every other church you only see in the USA (Jehovah's Witnesses themselves starting as a form of Adventists).
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steve2
But the one teaching where they have been consistently ahead of the curve is the importance of Jehovah's name.
Only if doctrine is the end all and be all.
On the other hand, if you're yardstick is policy and procedures, then JW organization's abysmally uninformed approach to child safety stamps this organization as one any "true" God would not want on his side. Ahead of the curve on a name, well behind the curve on children's wellbeing.
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Listener
Slimboyfat, there's an interesting thread on this site that was written 6 years ago. I don't know if you have ever seen it but here is the link
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/210035/new-world-translation-holy-scriptures?page=7
The Watchtower claims that they restored God's name in the New Testament. You can only restore something if it was there originally and in the majority of instances it was not, so their claim is false.