AlanF

Joined

• started 104 topics
• posted 4,636 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by AlanF

• 
  11

  Who is Robert King

  by bob1999 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have been reading his work at the e-witness web site.

  http://e-jehovahs-witnesses.com/index.php .

  he seems to have trouble with some of the wts teachings, yet he seems to still call himself a jw.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  JW_Researcher said:

  : There used to be a "You Know" on H20 ...long ago.... wonder if it's the same fellow?

  One and the same.

  The man is completely off his rocker. Intelligent, yes, but bonkers. Somewhat like David Koresh and Fred Franz.

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  But scholar pretendus goatus buggerus!

  Armageddon has always been Real Soon Now!

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  scholar pretendus goatus buggerus said:

  : Do not fret, I will respond to your nonsense when I am good and ready and not before.

  Sure. But I think you'll be waiting until after Armageddon.

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  Nearly three weeks ago, scholar pretendus goatus buggerus said to me (in post #1136, 03-May-06 04:16), concerning my post (#4410, 03-May-06 02:10):

  : I have read your nonsense and I am more than happy to respond to your presentation of Mitchell's and Bickerman's discussion of the subject of the Return of the Exiles as I have recently obtaine photocopies of these relevant sections.

  Well, now, you old poker of the dark side of the sheep and the goats, where is your response?

  We all know that you'll never respond, since your claims are intellectually bankrupt.

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  Scholar pretendus goatus buggerus wrote:

  : Your use of Josephus or your misuse of his writings is borrowed from Alan F who fails to provide evidence against 537 BCE.

  What a fucking idiot. Read my post #4440 immediately above. Then answer the questions.

  AlanF
• 
  94

  607 bce or 587 bce

  by jw in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jerusalem 607 bce vindicated.

  why jehovahs witnesses are right for sticking to the bibles chronology of 607 bce for the destruction of jerusalem.

  arguments for 587 bce are scripturally flawed, causing four bible prophecies to fail.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  One of the supposed prophecies that the author of the website worries about is found in Ezekiel 29:12. The website explains:

  There is a third prophecy that totally and utterly fails in the 587-centered chronology of Christendom and the apostates.

  One year before Jerusalem was destroyed, Jehovah said through the prophet Ezekiel, "I will make the land of Egypt a desolate waste in the midst of desolated lands; and its own cities will become a desolate waste in the very midst of devastated cities for forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations" -- Ezekiel 29:12

  Yes, Egypt was to become a "desolate waste" with "devastated cities", and this would last for "forty years".

  . . .

  As you can see from our chart, in the 607-based chronology, Ezekiel makes his prophecy in 590 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar's 37th year is two years later in 588 BCE when he attacks Egypt. We can assume the Nebuchadnezzar Inscription is correct on this point, because it agrees with our Biblical chronology. So Egypt's 40-year desolation begins in that year.

  Counting 40 years hence, we come to the year 548 BCE as the end of Egypt's desolation, when Jehovah would "bring back the captive group of the Egyptians" for them to become a "lowly kingdom". Indeed, secular chronology also records that the last Babylonian King Nabonidus held an alliance against the Persians with Amasis II, the King of Egypt, in addition to the Lydian Empire. So far from being a competing world power, Egypt is now a "lowly Kingdom" just as the Bible said, resorting to military alliances with its previous opponent.

  We can see from the chart that the Bible chronology provided more than enough time for all of these events. Egypt has 40 full years of desolation, with more than enough time afterwards to be repatriated and to forge an alliance with Babylon as the secular records claim.

  There many problems with taking Ezekiel literally here. For one thing, there is very good secular evidence that Egypt was continuously occupied during Nebuchadnezzar's reign and all the way down through the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C. According to Herodotus and Plato, it engaged in trade with other nations and in wars. It left continuous records of its normal activities, such as via the stelae that record the births and deaths of the sacred Apis bulls, which are among the best evidences of Egyptian chronology. A complete desolation of Egypt for 40 years would necessarily have left a 40-year gap, and there is no such gap in the history.

  For example, Nicolas Grimal, writing in A History of Ancient Egypt (Translated by Ian Shaw, Blackwell Publishers, 1992, p. 361) speaks of the continuity of Egyptian history during the Saite period:

  When [Necho II] died in 595 BC he left behind a son and three daughters. His son, who ruled under the name of Neferibre Psammetichus II, enjoyed only a short reign before dying in 589 BC, but in that brief period he was able to demonstrate sufficient dynamism to justify the parallels between his names and titles and those of his grandfather, Psammetichus I. The brevity of his reign, however, means that no real comparison can be made between his internal policy and that of his namesake. He made sure that Ankhnesneferibre (`Neferibre lives for her'), his daughter by Queen Takhut, was adopted by the Divine Adoratrice Nitocris, eventually succeeding her in 584 BC. Ankhnesneferibre managed to hold this office until the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525 BC, thus perpetuating the Saite administration of Thebes; the splendour of this period can be appreciated at the magnificent tombs of the Stewards of Amun, Shoshenq son of Harsiese ([Theban Tomb] 27) and Padineith ([Theban Tomb] 197), in the el-Asasif region.

  Then there is the problem of what to do with all those Egyptians. Egypt was a very populous nation, being able to host upward of a couple of million Israelite slaves a thousand years earlier, according to Watchtower calculations. By the time of the 6th century B.C, Egypt certainly must have still had a million or more inhabitants. Just where would these people have been taken captive to? It simply makes no sense. This is especially true in view of the fact that king Croesus of Egypt, Pharaoh Amasis of Egypt, king Nabonidus of Babylon, and the Spartans of Greece allied together to fight against Cyrus the Persian sometime between Cyrus' ascension to the kingship in 559 B.C. and the death of Croesus in 547 B.C.

  Note how the JW-apologist website dates the "40-year desolation of Egypt" in the above quotation: 588 to 548 B.C. According to this claim, Egypt was desolate in 548 B.C. -- yet just a year later its king, Pharaoh Amasis was back in power along with a million or more subjects, and powerful enough that long-established power such as Babylon, Greece and Lydia would ally with it. Egypt was no mere "lowly kingdom".

  Accepted secular dating, which is all but unchallenged by the Watchtower Society, puts the 44 year reign of Pharaoh Amasis from 570-526 B.C. Yet the author of the pro-607 website would have readers believe that Amasis defeated his predecessor Pharaoh Apries (Hophra; 589-570) in a battle and long political compaign, and then began to reign in 570 B.C., smack in the middle of the desolation of Egypt!

  The above apparently puts Bible believers in a bind. But is it really a bind? Not if one takes the Bible less than literally. And there is absolute proof that sometimes, the Bible cannot be taken literally.

  For example, Jesus is supposed to be the greatest of all prophets, and so every word that he uttered in prophecy ought to come true. Yet one of his prophecies was demonstrably false -- if taken literally. In Matthew 24:1, 2 Jesus clearly tells his disciples of the temple and its surroundings, "by no means will a stone be left here upon a stone and not be thrown down." Yet a substantial piece of the wall of the temple complex remains standing today. It's known as "the Wailing Wall", or the Western Wall (cf. the Wikpedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wailing_Wall ). There is no way around it: if Jesus' words are taken literally, then he was a false prophet. The only alternative is to interpret Jesus' words as figurative, or as hyperbole. And the words of the greatest prophet of all must be taken as figurative or hyperbolic, then it follows that the words of lesser prophets such as Ezekiel must also be taken that way. Thus, there is no problem with interpreting Ezekiel's "prophecy" of Ezek. 29:12 as figurative or as hyperbole. Otherwise it is simply false, and irrelevant to any discussion of real history.

  Some years ago, I found an example of how some Bible believing Christians reconcile the above problems. Unfortunately, the website ( http://www.trustthebible.com/prophecy.htm ) is defunct, but here is what it said:

  Note: In Ezekiel 29 especially verses 2, 13, 19-20 and Jeremiah 43:10-13 God says he will give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar. I've read critics who say Nebuchadnezzar never conquered Egypt. However, a word search for Nebuchadnezzar via the Blue Letter Bible project website revealed quite an interesting writeup in Easton's Bible Dictionary. It seems there is a clay tablet, which says Nebuchadnezzar went to Egypt to make war in his 37th year. It also mentions Amasis' Egypt's king. in his commentary on Ezekiel, A. R. Faussett says Nebuchadnezzar did conquer Egypt. How so? Faussett thought he may have conquered Egypt in one or two ways. 1st) According to his commentary on Jeremiah 43:13 there is a tradition, among the Arabs, that Egypt was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. There is a reference to Josephus, Antiquities, 10.9,7. 2nd) Faussett believed Nebuchadnezzar was responsible for engineering Amasis' overthrow of Pharaoh Apries/ Hophra. The new Pharaoh Amasis owed his benefactor or Master Nebuchadnezzar, so he paid him tribute. In this way, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Egypt and was rewarded. This is in The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary, specifically "The Book Of The Prophet Ezekiel" Commentary by A. R. Faussett. Click on chapter 29.

  A. R. Faussett is a fairly well-known and respected Bible commentator, and so his comments ought to have some weight among Bible believers.

  A lot more could be written about the Ezekiel prophecy about Egypt, but the above should suffice to give a flavor for the many problems that the JW author of the website has simply missed, or some cases, deliberately ignored. Scholars have been well aware of the problems of this prophecy for centuries, and have shown many ways to get around the obvious fact that, if taken literally, the prophecy failed. Bible believers who respect solid historiography have no problem with any of this.

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  Scholar pretendus the goat-buggerer said to Jeffro:

  : No, you have not posted this information but as a puppet of Alan F you have onlyrelied on his nonsense.

  Your view of what constitutes "nonsense" is most certainly determined by the same lack of mind that allows you to think that Fred Franz was "the greatest Bible Scholar of all time", even while claiming that no one knows the identity of the spiritually inebriated Watchtower scholars who formulated the New World Translation.

  As for Josephus' disproof of the Watchtower Society's claim that the Jews returned to Judah in 537 B.C., answer the following questions:

  Do you deny that Josephus states that the temple was begun to be rebuilt in the 2nd year of Cyrus?

  Do you deny that the 2nd year of Cyrus spanned 537-536 B.C. (March/April 537 to February/March 536)?

  Do you deny that the 2nd month of Cyrus' 2nd year was Iyaar (April/May)?

  Do you deny that this 2nd month was in 537 B.C.?

  Do you deny that Ezra 1-3 states that the temple foundations were laid in the 2nd month Iyaar (April/May) of the year after the Jews returned to Judah?

  Do you deny that the Jews returned to Judah in Tishri (September/October) of 537 B.C.?

  Do you deny that, if the Jews returned to Judah at that time, then the 2nd month of the year after which they returned was Iyaar (April/May) of 536 B.C.?

  Do you deny that Iyaar of 536 B.C. was in Cyrus' 3rd year?

  Do you still claim that Josephus does not contradict Watchtower claims about when the temple was begun to be rebuilt?

  Of course you continue to deny it. That's what makes you scholar pretendus the goat-buggerer.

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  Simply amazing. Scholar pretendus admits to being a goat bugger, then goes on to ignore every point in everyone's rebuttals of his lies.

  Again, what an astoundingly good illustration of cult-induced braindeadness can hardly be found!

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  Here is some more information for 'scholar pretendus the goat bugger', who does not understand good citation practices, having learned all the wrong things from Mommy Watchtower.

  The above discussion around the dishonest quotation from the Watchtower Society's book Babylon the Great has Fallen! God's Kingdom Rules! involves the practice of paraphrasing a source and then giving a proper citation for it. This falls under the general category of "academic honesty". In a short time I found several college student guides that instruct students on proper citation practices and the reason for doing it. Why 'scholar pretendus the goat bugger' cannot understand such simple principles can best be explained by the militant braindeadness and moral stupidity induced by cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Here is some good information from Grinnell College ( http://www.grinnell.edu/WritingLab/CitationGuides/achondiscuss.html ):

  Grinnell College has sought in various ways to emphasize to its students the importance of academic honesty. This paper explains the importance of academic honesty and explores some of its mechanics. . .

  At Grinnell College, as at other colleges and universities, if you are caught violating the rules of academic honesty, you will face punishment, as the Student Handbook details . . .

  These rules are strict for good reasons: academic dishonesty violates the very purpose of scholarship. This purpose is to develop knowledge, which happens in a social process through which academics build it bit by bit. That is, one person makes a discovery and the next person adds to it -- correcting, expanding, modifying, and exploring it. For example, one scholar, finding some new documents relating to the outbreak of the War of 1812, may offer a new interpretation of the causes. Other scholars, reading her argument, may then agree, disagree, or modify her view. They may deem her interpretation misguided, or the documents unpersuasive, or argue that another cause is more important than the one she defends. In such a way new knowledge is created, even about an event of long ago.

  For this cooperative endeavor of scholarship to work, the scholarly community must be able to keep track of who said what; its members must trust that scholars indicate clearly and honestly what is theirs and what is others’. In the example above, those who disagree with or modify the original scholar’s idea cite her as one of their sources and then go on to give their analysis. Since in college you are apprentice scholars, you too must carefully tell your reader where you have read the words and ideas on which your own depend.

  A paraphrase is a close approximation of what a source has said, without using the exact wording. . . In a good paraphrase, you seek to convey the essence of the original without repeating the wording or structure.

  This last paragraph gets right to the heart of the Society's dishonest citation practice. The Babylon book paraphrased some material from Harper's Bible Dictionary, and then added its own view that the event in question occurred in 618 B.C., whereas Harper's specifically stated that it occurred in 598 B.C. Then it followed the paraphrase and its own view with a citation referring to Harper's. The impression given is obvious: all of the material preceding the citation is implied to be a paraphrase from Harper's.

  Now, 'scholar pretendus the goat bugger' seems to think that one can plop a citation willy nilly into a piece of writing and that all is fine if the reader is misled by its placement -- it's the reader's lookout. But academic institutions disagree. For example, Mississippi State University has published the following guideline ( http://www.cse.msstate.edu/academics/honesty.php ):

  Cite the source of any algorithm, idea, or paraphrased words obtained from anyone else using the citation style specified by the instructor. Put the citation at the end of the information obtained from the other person.

  Obviously, in honest academic practice, a citation placed at the end of some information is placed there to show where the immediately preceding information came from.

  Here is a bit more on proper paraphrasing practices, from the University of Maryland ( http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/vail/students/citation/quote.html ):

  Paraphrasing

  Paraphrasing is putting another person’s words in your own words. You may wish to paraphrase in order to maintain your particular style of phrasing things. Paraphrased material must be cited!

  Example

  "In Gorillas in the Mist, Fossey (1983) gives an example to demonstrate that gorillas are very protective mothers. As a tiger approached her offspring Effie, a mother gorilla, sensed the danger even though she was not facing Effie. The researcher observing them did not notice the danger, but the mother gorilla’s vigilance allowed her to take steps to save the baby gorilla (p. 89)."

  It seems to me that anyone with even the faintest semblance of honesty does not have to have the above principles spelled out for him. The fact that 'scholar pretendus the goat bugger' has to be dragged by his cojones toward the path of righteousness shows how deep the mental damage of the JW cult goes.

  AlanF
• 
  290

  607

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone provide me with any evidence (links to other sites is fine) that jerusalem could not have possibly fallen to the babylonians in 607?

  thanks again for your answers.

  zico

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  AlanF

  
  I want to point out that Applegate directly contradicts Watchtower teaching on the end of Jeremiah's 70 years. Note his comments:

  p. 92: The book of Jeremiah mentions the "seventy years" on three occasions; 25:11, 12 and 29:10. In each case the "seventy years" is given a different emphasis. In Jer 25:11 the emphasis is on seventy years of desolation and servitude for Judah and her neighbours. In 25:12 it moves to the punishment of Babylon after seventy years. In 29:10 it moves to Yahweh's visitation after seventy years and the restoration of Judah.

  But according to the Society, "Yahweh's visitation" occurred before the 70 years ended. Indeed, the Society claims that the 70 years ended at "the restoration of Judah". Since the Bible directly states that by Tishri of the year of the return the Jews were in their cities, they must have returned a bit earlier, likely in the month before Tishri.

  Clearly, then, the Society's chronology contradicts the Bible, and Applegate supports the Bible.

  AlanF