Posts by Narkissos

37

Original "Sin" does NOT exist in the Bible.

by sinis in

yep, you heard it.

original sin does not exist, and has never existed.

simply put - man was made for slave labor and the "gods" did not want man to ascend.... for your reading enjoyment i present a few scriptures:.

Narkissos

I perfectly agree that the "orthodox" doctrine of original sin (as defined by Augustine for instance) isn't exactly found anywhere in the Bible (although Paul has historically contributed to it) and that there is nothing even remotely resembling it in the OT. However, once again, please try to understand how the history of ideas, beliefs and texts works not to have it systematically assbackwards.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/152245/1/Sumerian-texts-and-the-Bible (this is getting old)

27

70 weeks - Xerxes, Artaxerxes: How weak is the WT position cmp. to 607?

by bohm in

so, in my bible study i can see we are approaching chapter 4 of "what does the bible really teach" about daniels profecy.

the book says: "another example is about the profecy of daniel 9:25, a profecy which many centuries in advance predicted exactly when messias would appear - in the year 29".

there is a small appendix which ties this up to wether artaxerxes 20th year was in 455bc (455bc + 7x69weeks, ie.

Narkissos

LOL. How about reading before posting? :)

53

I have a little announcement to make.

by JWoods in

jw
friends

jwoods is sixty years old this morning.. btw, the actual name is james.

james woods.

my old logon would not work, so i had to make another..

Narkissos

Happy birthday James!

18

The scientific approach to "holy books"

by behemot in

jw
friends

"remember, always, young man, that science which has become a great power in the last century, has analyzed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books.

after this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred.

but they have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous.

Narkissos

Behind critical studies of religion (which were mostly led by scholars with a religious commitment then, and are still mostly led by scholars with a religious background now) there may sometimes be more than the purely "ascetic ideal" of science (as Nietzsche puts it, observing that even this ideal itself is basically religious). There is also, in many cases, a kind of paradoxical religious quest -- to dust off, revive, refresh, renew what old dogma has eventually obscured and buried for preservation sake. Sometimes it's the priests (or prophets) themselves who set the old temple on fire (and the fire of the burning temple is still sacred fire in a sense) in the hope that what old words and notions stood for and thus concealed will "resurrect" and be manifest again, even better, phoenix style. With the obscure faith that there is something indestructible deep beneath the surface they destroy (all the more eagerly). That the truly sacred is not threatened by sacrilege but by routine and indifference.

In the long history of religion it is not a rare occurrence that a new faith rises from the destruction of an older one. What post-exilic Judaism did to old Israelite religion, Buddhism did to Hinduism, Christianity to Judaism, Islam to Eastern Christianity...

55

Love, Justice, Wisdom, Power - the Resurrection

by xelder in

i have always been taught and believed that, at the end of the day, god is a perfect balance of love, justice, wisdom, and power.

when the ransom provision and christ's kingdom correct man's fall into sin, we will see this as true, no matter what trials we and all of mankind have had to face until then.

honestly, it has never mattered which of the two groups i was in.

Narkissos

Yes, the branch was broken off in 70 AD. but, they are able to be grafted in again, as a nation at the consumation of the age.

It's not the branch, but branches (v. 17ff); not collective singular (as in "the nation"), but individual plural (have they stumbled, etc.); moreover it's past tense throughout (I doubt you would date Romans to after 70 AD). Those who are to be grafted again are those who have been rejected (hence not the "remnant"). Just read the text.

27

70 weeks - Xerxes, Artaxerxes: How weak is the WT position cmp. to 607?

by bohm in

so, in my bible study i can see we are approaching chapter 4 of "what does the bible really teach" about daniels profecy.

the book says: "another example is about the profecy of daniel 9:25, a profecy which many centuries in advance predicted exactly when messias would appear - in the year 29".

there is a small appendix which ties this up to wether artaxerxes 20th year was in 455bc (455bc + 7x69weeks, ie.

Narkissos

Doug,

This I think is a very helpful outline of how the basic 'logic' of the 70 x 7 'prophecy' works. In the detail, though, I'm not so sure. For instance, I believe that "Babylon's power" is only one of several interpretations of the "70 years" within the OT corpus and even within the extant book of Jeremiah (we have had this discussion with AnnOMaly not too long ago). So it is uncertain to me whether the author of Daniel refers to this interpretation a priori of the 70 years (his interpretation a posteriori being the 70 x 7) or another: what inclines me to think that he rather has the 70 / 70 X 7 years start with Jerusalem's fall than an earlier date is that (1) he connects the 70 years with "the devastation of Jerusalem" and nothing else in v. 2; (2) he apparently identifies the time of the exile with the first seven weeks = 49 years of the 70 x 7 period (v. 25).

16

paul makes no sense???

by highdose in

is it just me, but when i read my bible (nwt) i found whole pages of pauls writing that i didn't understand and couldn't make head nor tail of.

i also noticed that the borg tended to only quote certain scriptures that they thought they could make sense of pauls writings, and these were quoted over and over again.

but surely the whole bible is supposed to be inspired and benifical ... bla bla bla etc?.

Narkissos

Well, in that case I would strongly recommend that you pick another Bible; Pauline rhetorics is not always easy, not always convincing from a modern perspective (or even an ancient one sometimes), but it certainly makes sense (whether you agree or not). Only the JW habit of quoting separate verses about unrelated topics rather than reading entire works, added to the NWT rendering -- sometimes fanciful, always painful -- doesn't help.

55

Love, Justice, Wisdom, Power - the Resurrection

by xelder in

i have always been taught and believed that, at the end of the day, god is a perfect balance of love, justice, wisdom, and power.

when the ransom provision and christ's kingdom correct man's fall into sin, we will see this as true, no matter what trials we and all of mankind have had to face until then.

honestly, it has never mattered which of the two groups i was in.

Narkissos

I for one am interested in how a particular text (in this case Romans 9--11) works; not in "what the Bible teaches" (aka. patchwork theology) in general. So throwing in Revelation and "the antichrist" won't help I'm afraid.
Paul ends up again with the "remnant" idea in 11:5 but he's obviously not satisfied with that, since he goes on about the future of those who are notof the remnant (who have stumbled, have been rejected, are enemies etc.); it's their future which is at stake from v. 11 onward, down to the "mystery" and 'pan-climax' (pan = "all"), which is characteristic of Pauline final Stoic-like doxologies.Of course the argument really makes sense in a context of relatively short-term expectation, where the identity of those who have fallen and can be restored can still be taken for granted (which is not the case anymore almost 2,000 years later).

27

70 weeks - Xerxes, Artaxerxes: How weak is the WT position cmp. to 607?

by bohm in

so, in my bible study i can see we are approaching chapter 4 of "what does the bible really teach" about daniels profecy.

the book says: "another example is about the profecy of daniel 9:25, a profecy which many centuries in advance predicted exactly when messias would appear - in the year 29".

there is a small appendix which ties this up to wether artaxerxes 20th year was in 455bc (455bc + 7x69weeks, ie.

Narkissos

This is even more apparent, I think, in the Hebrew text than in English translation: shwb / hshyb, coordinated to bnh with "Jerusalem" as object, is naturally translated into English as "restore(d)". But when the object is thought of as being both a city and people (as is usually the case in Hebrew) the basic sense of coming / bringing back is summoned along with that of restoration, making the expression even more evocative of the return from exile and many other texts in Jeremiah (e.g. 12:15; 16:15; 23:3; 24:6 [along with bnh like 33:10]; 29:14; 30:3; 31:8,16ff; 32:37,44; 33:7,11,26, etc.); this, btw, is just one aspect on the play on this root verb which is particularly central to Jeremiah; 'coming/bringing back,' understood morally of repentance and 'changing one's mind' is another which also combines with the theme of return and building (e.g. 42:10).

That the "coming out of the word" refers to a prophetic decree "coming out from God" is apparent from the immediate context of Daniel 9; in v. 22,23 Gabriel "comes out" and says that "a word has come out" (same root yç').

55

Love, Justice, Wisdom, Power - the Resurrection

by xelder in

i have always been taught and believed that, at the end of the day, god is a perfect balance of love, justice, wisdom, and power.

when the ransom provision and christ's kingdom correct man's fall into sin, we will see this as true, no matter what trials we and all of mankind have had to face until then.

honestly, it has never mattered which of the two groups i was in.

Narkissos

No, that's not what I have been saying at all.

I meant that the theory of free election and rejection which Paul develops from chapter 9 on is not applied to the eternal / final fate of anybody (Calvin's mistake), but to the "historical" and "provisional" fall/rejection of "Israel" (with the exception of a "remnant") and subsequent election of the Gentiles, which are still both subject to change (this is precisely the point of v. 11ff: those who have been "broken off" can still be "grafted in," et vice versa).

Now the final "happy ending" (the "mystery" by which both "all Israel" and the "fulness of Gentiles" are to be saved, v. 25ff) goes beyond this: the "all" who have experienced disobedience and will be shown mercy at this point exceeds the present number of "believers," both Jews (the "remnant") and Gentiles (those who now believe). This is what I have called a "universal horizon" -- if not a positive confession of universalism.

Were the "all" just two categories as Calvin has it, it would already be fulfilled by the current "remnant" of Israel and Gentile believers. There would be no need for a further "mystery" moving it to a broader scale of fulfillment.