Posts by Narkissos

14

The Watchtower has Created Another New Word.

by sammielee24 in

jw
friends

in the new tract today, a peaceful new world, will it come?, on the last page, there is a bit of a disclaimer.

the paragraph says that "jehovahs witnesses, the publishers of this tract though no part of christendom or judaism, accept these holy scriptures as the only basis for accurate knowledge of gods will.

so - jw's belong to the christian congregation of jehovahs witnesses = christian group = christendom.

Narkissos

The WT use of "Christendom" was discussed some time ago: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/178150/1/Christendom-Who-are-members

The conjunction "though" used in that way is quite unusual indeed. Not only is it an admission that "not belonging to either Judaism or 'Christendom'" and "accepting the holy scriptures" are normally incompatible (making their stance look like a paradoxical exception) but in that sequence it seems to make the former clause logically first (people accept the Bible because they are Jews or Christians, not the other way round). Lapsus calami(tous)?

236

I need some good sriptures & reasoning to refute Jesus = Michael Archangel

by androb31 in

i have a lot of good stuff at home on the subject but i'm at work and could use some help for a friend who was just conversing w/ a jw..

Narkissos

I for one fail to see the interest of limiting the survey of a noun like "archangel" or a name like "Michael" to an anachronistic (16th-century AD!) Protestant canon, when a broader corpus of contemporaneous Jewish literature is available. Should we deal in the same way with all Greek words which appear only once or twice in the NT and are not sufficiently determined by their "canonical" context, disregarding contemporaneous usage in other Greek works because it is "non-canonical," there would be many more artificial and unnecessary semantic "enigmas". Sounds like a very silly game to me.

That being said, the basic notion of "archangels" which clearly appears from a survey a non-canonical Jewish literature (e.g. 1 Enoch), i.e. an inner circle of (7 or 4) highest ranking angels, including Michael (and Gabriel, Raphael, etc.), does seem to be echoed in "canonical" literature. E.g. the 6 + 1 envoys in Ezekiel 9:2ff, Michael being one of the arkhontes in Daniel or "the seven angels who stand before God" and "offer the prayers of the saints" in Revelation 8:2ff -- notice the similarity in number, position and function in (deuterocanonical!) Tobit 12:15: "I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who bear the prayers of the holy ones and enter before the glory of the Holy one."

However, it must be noted that Philo of Alexandria (who shows little interest for the "apocalyptic" tradition and literature to which "the archangel Michael" definitely belongs) does use the word arkhaggelos ("archangel") as one of the titles for the one logos. Of the Confusion of Tongues, 146: "And even if there be not as yet any one who is worthy to be called a son of God, nevertheless let him labour earnestly to be adorned according to his first-born word, the eldest of his angels, as the great archangel of many names; for he is called, the authority, and the name of God, and the Word, and man according to God's image, and he who sees Israel." Who is the Heir of Divine Things, 205: "And the Father who created the universe has given to his archangelic and most ancient Word a pre-eminent gift, to stand on the confines of both, and separated that which had been created from the Creator. And this same Word is continually a suppliant to the immortal God on behalf of the mortal race, which is exposed to affliction and misery; and is also the ambassador, sent by the Ruler of all, to the subject race." Considering the influence of Philonic categories in general on early Christian theologies, it certainly leaves room for an (arch-)angelic Christology (which seems to be echoed in early church Fathers like Justin Martyr for instance), even though it is not directly attested in the NT.

An interesting article by Hurtado on the (arch-)angelic background of NT Christology: http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/2661/1/HurtadoMonotheism%5B1%5D+DSS+Handbook.doc

8

John 6:20 & John 8:58

by PSacramento in

the often ( at least from the nwt point of view) debated verse of john 8:58. jesus said to them, truly, truly i say to you, before abraham was, i am.. also translated "verily, verily," or "most asuredly", but always "i am", excpet for the nwt that translates it:.

before abraham came into existence, i have been.. now i am sure that there have been thread about this and how the words used in 8:58 - ego eimi mean:.

ego = i, me, my.

Narkissos

Well, more or less. I could understand that a highly "reader-friendly" translation (which is hardly the case of the NWT) would avoid an awkward tense accord in John 8:58 (even though it is certainly not the most normal syntax in Greek either). But in that case one would have to compensate for the loss by some expansion, e.g. "even before Abraham came to be, I was, as I am". So that the temporal scope of ego eimi would not be limited to the time before Abraham (it is clearly not the case in Greek), and that the intertextual connections are not severed.

Btw I just found the thread I was thinking of, for more information and discussion:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/174505/1/NT-ho-theos-and-John-8-58

236

I need some good sriptures & reasoning to refute Jesus = Michael Archangel

by androb31 in

i have a lot of good stuff at home on the subject but i'm at work and could use some help for a friend who was just conversing w/ a jw..

Narkissos

Hi SOM aka. brownboy,

Archer is qashat in Hebrew, from qeshet = "bow," toxotès in Greek, from toxon = "bow". Nothing to do with arkhè (beginning, principle, rule) or arkhôn (ruler). (As if you didn't know already :))

8

John 6:20 & John 8:58

by PSacramento in

the often ( at least from the nwt point of view) debated verse of john 8:58. jesus said to them, truly, truly i say to you, before abraham was, i am.. also translated "verily, verily," or "most asuredly", but always "i am", excpet for the nwt that translates it:.

before abraham came into existence, i have been.. now i am sure that there have been thread about this and how the words used in 8:58 - ego eimi mean:.

ego = i, me, my.

Narkissos

PS,

Yes, the WT explanation boils down to a matter of tense accord in the target language, which would be a perfectly acceptable argument in translation if the syntax of the text could be shown to be "normal" (not exceptional) in the source language, but here used as a pretext to obscure the oddity of the Greek text and its intertextual network of relationships (references/allusions), both within the Fourth Gospel and in the Greek OT.

332

The Son in two persons

by Deputy Dog in

the wt and jws around the world have made the evil "trinity" their reason for existence.

when in fact they have quite a mystery of their own.

one son in two separate an distinct persons with two separate an distinct natures archangel michael/human jesus.. on another thread spike tassel tried to explain this by saying: .

Narkissos

reniaa,

Do you mean unscriptural expressions and concepts like "life force," "personality pattern," "transfer," "perfect man," or just "nature" and "person"? Why not bring up "angel worship" (v. 18) while you're at it?

8

John 6:20 & John 8:58

by PSacramento in

the often ( at least from the nwt point of view) debated verse of john 8:58. jesus said to them, truly, truly i say to you, before abraham was, i am.. also translated "verily, verily," or "most asuredly", but always "i am", excpet for the nwt that translates it:.

before abraham came into existence, i have been.. now i am sure that there have been thread about this and how the words used in 8:58 - ego eimi mean:.

ego = i, me, my.

Narkissos

The WT answer would be context and English usage: the past reference to Abraham in 8:58 would justify a perfect or imperfect tense (before Abraham came to be, I have been / I was). However this overlooks (1) the oddity of the tense combination in Greek (which is no different from that of "before X came to be I am" in English), (2) the inner consistency of the specific use of egô eimi in the Fourth Gospel, and (3) its relationship to the LXX, especially Deutero-Isaiah (41:5; 43:10f etc.), which uses a similar absolute use of egô eimi as Yhwh's self-affirmation, which is also transposed in the present tencse to similar temporal clauses (e.g. Psalm 90:2, although in the second person, su ei = "you are").

This has been discussed extensively here not so long ago but I cannot find the thread so far.

30

The Cross and Crown

by TD in

jw
friends

http://www.daughtersofisabella.org/main.asp .

http://www.delawarestmary.org/virtual-tour/stained-glass-medallions.

http://www.slkschool.com/aboutslk.php.

Narkissos

What I find most interesting is how occult conspiracy theories adapt to everyone's ideology, no matter what it is, reconstructing the purported consistency of the "dark side" as everything which opposes their particular stance (much like "Satan" is always related to your enemies in the Christian tradition). From cameo-d's standpoint all religions are "in," but I have seen the same stuff (and often the same references) used by Protestants/Evangelicals who would highlight a(n alleged) Catholic connection, and by Catholics who highlight a Protestant connection, both including humanist/secular movements and political agencies in the "conspiracy". Your world has to be consistent from your perspective, and the variable geometry of conspirationism feels this need quite remarkably.

332

The Son in two persons

by Deputy Dog in

the wt and jws around the world have made the evil "trinity" their reason for existence.

when in fact they have quite a mystery of their own.

one son in two separate an distinct persons with two separate an distinct natures archangel michael/human jesus.. on another thread spike tassel tried to explain this by saying: .

Narkissos

If you step back a little, the basic Christian storyline (in all of its historical versions afaik, JW certainly included) always rests on a "frog prince" narrative device. Even the modern liberal unitarian versions, which deny any kind of (divine or angelic) pre-existence to the man Jesus and do not portray him as "perfect" or "sinless" either, believe that "God" or some "ideal" revealed him/itself in that man, in spite of his "human" limitations -- i.e. under contrary appearances (sub specie contraria) to an extent. Chase the frog prince through the front door and he comes back through the window (until you kiss him?) :)

P.S.: both the orthodox "hypostatic union" and the WT talk of "life force and personality pattern transferred to the egg-cell of Mary" are "speculative" rationalisations of this basic narrative plot, the former in late Antiquity metaphysical language, the latter into 20th-century pseudo-scientific language. In the story itself the continuity is borne by the permanence of a name or a single pronoun: he (God the Son, the Son of God, the logos, or the archangel Michael) became, descended, came down, took the form of, died, resurrected, ascended, etc.

332

The Son in two persons

by Deputy Dog in

the wt and jws around the world have made the evil "trinity" their reason for existence.

when in fact they have quite a mystery of their own.

one son in two separate an distinct persons with two separate an distinct natures archangel michael/human jesus.. on another thread spike tassel tried to explain this by saying: .

Narkissos

The WT consistently substituted a modern, abstract or quasi-technical verbiage (force, pattern) to the mythological "words-beings" of traditional religious anthropology (spirit, soul) -- especially in the 50s it seems: was some of the structuralist Zeitgeist seeping in, through some writers at least?

As shown almost clinically here by JW apologists falling back from this verbiage to scriptural formulations of a traditional/mythological kind (e.g. he became, descended, came down, goes back up, which implies unity of subject) this abstract revamping proves to be narratively unsatisfying: because a person (real or imaginary) is a mythological unit (individual = non-divisible), which qualitatively exceeds the addition of "things" like "matters" and "forces" and "patterns": no amount of "things" will add up to "someone". When the witch turns the prince into a toad the prince has to be the prince "within" the toad as it were. That's how our stories work and how "we" work.