Obvious OT Exception to the Two Witness "Rule"

by NotFormer 6 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  NotFormer

  In the Torah, where the need for sanctuary cities is being established, a hypothetical situation is described where a bloke is swinging an axe, and the axe head flies off and kills another bloke. The dead man's brother is designated "the avenger" and pursues the original guy in order to kill him for being responsible for the death. He is allowed to do so, if the original guy doesn't make it to a sanctuary city. If both victim and the person who "manslaughtered" him are dead, then there are not two or three witnesses to establish the avenger's story, yet the avenger's testimony is accepted.

  Yet WT still insists on two witnesses in a CSA case. 🙄🤢
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  EasyPrompt

  Here's another time that "two witnesses" were not needed in the OT...

  Deuteronomy 22:25-27

  
  

  "If, however, the man happened to meet the engaged girl in the field and the man overpowered her and lay down with her, the man who lay down with her is to die by himself, and you must do nothing to the girl. The girl has not committed a sin deserving of death. This case is the same as when a man attacks his fellow man and murders him. For he happened to meet her in the field, and the engaged girl screamed, but there was no one to rescue her."
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  EasyPrompt

  Two Witnesses

  
  

  In context, Deuteronomy 17:2-7 is talking about the sin of false worship. No one could be put to death for false worship unless there were at least two witnesses.

  
  

  In context, Numbers 35:30-32 is talking about the sin of murder. No one could be put to death as a murderer unless there were at least two witnesses.

  
  

  In context, Deuteronomy 19:15-19 is not talking about sexual sins. It is talking about any other kind of sin between two men, like moving back a boundary marker or attacking another man (those are the sins talked about earlier in chapter 19).

  
  

  When the Mosaic Law is talking about sexual sins, it always mentions "woman" or "daughter" or something like that specifically (like at Leviticus chapter 18; Deuteronomy 27; Deuteronomy 22:25-27), and they don't mention two witnesses.

  
  

  The accounts that mention "two witnesses" being required to convict someone are not about sexual sins. WTBT$ does not have scriptural support for their "two witness" rule.
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  Vidiot

  I’ve long suspected that Jaracz & Co. essentially weaponized the “two-witness rule” to deliberately and specifically make it as difficult as possible to expose sex offenders in the WTS.
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  NotFormer

  Is the fact that Ted Jaracz weaponised the two witnesses rule to apply mainly in CSA cases a clue as to what he may have done to have been removed from the Australian branch? No-one seems to know what it was that he did, but it does look like, with the benefit of hindsight, that there are dots that can be connected.

  Was the heavy enforcement of the two witnesses rule in CSA cases Jaracz's revenge upon his victims? If CSA had been on law enforcement's and society's radar in the 50s as it became in later decades, would Jaracz have ever made it to the same levels within the org that he did?
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  EasyPrompt

  I don't know the details about all that stuff with Jaracz, I know there is some info on him in the CoC book, but I think the old ARC videos are quite eye-opening as to what goes on in JW-land in Australia, and it is also clear that Jehovah is with Angus Stewart in the courtroom and not Geoffrey Jackson, even if Jackson claims to be part of G.O.D. ("Guardians Of Doctrine", lol😆...)

  
  

  Part 1 ARC, Day 8

  
  

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erWV8YnTFto

  
  

  Part 2 ARC, Day 8

  
  

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBE_oof1RzE
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  Vidiot

  NotFormer - “Was the heavy enforcement of the two witnesses rule in CSA cases Jaracz's revenge upon his victims?”

  Unlikely.

  Simpler explanation is the one I gave…

  …to make it as difficult as possible to expose the problem.

  For all kinds of reasons.

  IF Jaracz was a sex offender, his reason would have been self-preservation.