The Watchtower gangsters also threaten your life if dare step outside their narrow framework. Armageddon is a bludgeon and disfellowship is a shun gun.
Posts by Terry
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18WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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18
WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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Terry
Bart continues in today's Blog post:
" Most textual critics back when I started (and probably still today) considered the variants found in our manuscript (that is, the changes from the original, at least so far as we can judge) to be simply chaff to be discarded on the way to finding the kernel of wheat in the pile. What mattered was the original reading (the wheat). Everything else was simply an alteration of the text, a corruption (the chaff.
I came to think that this simply did not have to be the case. The alterations were interesting in and of themselves. They should be studied not simply to help us know what the authors originally wrote, but also to see how (and why) scribes changed the text the way they did.
That may not seem inherently interesting at first (in fact, it did not usually seem interesting for many centuries), but it was, and is, interesting to me. Here is one reason why: we have very little primary source material for what Christians were thinking and believing in the second and third centuries. All of our sources that do survive from the period were written by the very best educated, most highly placed, elite Christians. We are really handicapped in knowing anything beyond what these sources tell us about Christian beliefs and practices.
What if we uncovered another set of sources not written by such highly educated elites? Sources that could reveal information about Christianity during the period. That would be *terrific* for our understanding of Christianity in the period.
And I came to realize that this is precisely what we have in the manuscripts of the New Testament. The people who copied them were of course more highly educated than most people. But they weren’t the very upper-crust of the literary elite. If we could detect their interests, concerns, problems, practices, and beliefs, it would enable us to learn more about a period of great interest, the time between the NT writings and the conversion of Constantine, and then the empire, in the fourth century. That could be really interesting. Or so I thought. And continue to think."
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21
Sheep who mate in front of stripey trees will produce stripey offspring
by purrpurr ingenesis 30:37 leaving aside the whole "joseph cheats laham out of his flock" issue.
one passage of scripture that i've missed until now is 30:37 where it says how joseph got all the sheep to be stripey etc ( btw have you ever seen a stripey sheep?
cos i certainly haven't!).
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Terry
Rule of thumb: the Bible means what it says and says what it means----UNLESS . .
we later discover what it says is glaringly preposterous. At that point, the Bible means what we interpret it must have meant by deconstructing the statements into mere words.
Sort of like Jesus returning and every eye shall see him.
JW's managed to make him completely invisible!
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The Bible is woefully ignorant of any underlying scientific principles. The history of the world is ignorant of science until the 17th century.
The bounden duty of the religious zealot is to straddle the bottomless chasm between the words of scripture and contradictions implicit in contemporary understanding of basic science.
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85
"And what happened next was simply unbelievable!"
by Terry ini always sit in the same spot, just outside starbucks in a vestibule area with a table in the air-conditioned space.
i say "always," but not today.. somebody with two laptops and a table filled with business ledgers was in "my" favorite spot!.
so, i took a tiny wooden table inside the coffee shop on a long padded bench next to 3 other identical tables.. as the clickbait banner ads like to say: "and what happened next was simply unbelievable!".
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Terry
I have been watching daily to catch these guys when they return. So far, I've not seen either of them or the Mormons.
Of course, I am not sure how to continue the conversation. I should have something prepared, but I do find it more freeing if I just go with the flow of conversation, alert to opportunity.
I'm quite curious if these guys ever mentioned it again to each other or somebody else. I'm curious if they did any research. Sadly, I imagine they simply let it go and never thought about it again!
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126
If THIS MAN were a Jehovah's Witness 2 million babies would be dead
by Terry injames harrison has magical blood.. specifically, his blood contains an extremely rare enzyme that can be used to treat babies dying of rhesus disease.
if you've never heard of that disease and figure it's not a big deal, well, wait for the numbers.. harrison, being a generous type, has donated his rare, life-saving blood roughly 1,000 times over 56 years.
this has saved the lives of--seriously, you're not going to believe this--over two million babies around the world.. .
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Terry
I like to keep a copy of the newspaper article handy because of what it represents: one small intervention is a ripple effect on a vast life and death scale.
It's good to view the Society's blood policy in terms of CONSEQUENCES rather than martyr-hero dialogue.
Stop and think about it, a parent only risks their own judgement by Jehovah if they permit a child to receive blood. An innocent child would not be old enough to make a life and death moral choice. Consequently, what can we say about a parent unwilling to lay down their OWN life (open themselves to Jah's retribution) on behalf of their beloved child?
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18
WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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Terry
Assuming certain things for the sake of argument. . .
Whatever Jesus taught or preached was strictly an oral message.
What people heard was either understood or misunderstood; confused and garbled.
At each point, somebody shaped an opinion based on expectations, tastes, ideology, and preconceived ideas.
The viral transmission of Jesus' essential communication was ever and always one on one, one to one, AS FILTERED through the understanding (misunderstanding) of the teller and the hearer.
Repeat this degradation process thousands of times until somebody writes it down and BOOM! We're off to the races.
At this point, we are on square one.
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18
WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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Terry
CalebInFloroda6 hours ago
It does seem illogical and contrary to basic JW thinking to claim that the earliest form of Christianity is the most pure or correct--especially since JWs teach that the truth of Christianity cannot be fully understood until the Last Days.
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J-Dubs imitate Systematic Theology and the work of others, largely by filtering and rejiggering.
Their efforts have proved to be illusory and self-destructing over and over. Consequently, in this age of the WWW, the only strategy left at their disposal is
the historic ruse and a grand magisterium of revealed 'truth.'
What the Prophetess Ellen White did for Adventism is now what the GB is for the witlesses.
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18
WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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Terry
Ricky G: I am enjoying reading Bart Erhman's book Misquoting Jesus. I'm about a third of the way through and looking forward to finishing that book.
________________I know a JW who read that book and managed (by cherry-picking on the fly) to enjoy it as a support to the Society's teachings! Very flexible cognitive dissonance on his part!
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18
WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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Terry
TimDrake 1914: have you read the latest December 2015 WT (Study Edition)? The first two articles of that magazine do a very rough overview on textual criticism, and discuss why we can be confident that the Bible is the word of God
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I haven't read it. It is a source of endless palm-to-face smacking how the Watchtower leaders approach dissonant reality. They deconstruct with flights of fancy and reassemble at will. True Worship is not about history or reality, only about trust and loyalty--to the GB. All Hail!
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18
WATCHTOWER'S basic premise is false (i.e. copy the earliest form of Christianity and you get it 'right')
by Terry inwatchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while i throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under.
namely, the earliest form of christianity was the purest and least corrupt.
by trying to pattern jw's after this earliest form of "purity of christian doctrine" the so-called truth is supposed to emerge.. well--apparently this is a false premise, according to bart ehrman.. _____.
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Terry
Watchtower's so-called 'scholars' (excuse me while I throw up) have a basic premise they have always worked under. Namely, the earliest form of Christianity was the purest and least corrupt. By trying to pattern JW's after this earliest form of "purity of Christian doctrine" the so-called TRUTH is supposed to emerge.
Well--apparently this is a FALSE PREMISE, according to Bart Ehrman.
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I'm a member on New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman's Blog (about Early Christianity) because I get information there I cannot otherwise have access to which normally would only be available by attending his classes for students studying for their Masters in Theology.
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On a recent blog post, Ehrman has pointed out the split within the community of New Testament scholars. To become an expert, a scholar has to choose one or the other of two main fields of study:
1, The history of early Christian theology and 2. the textual criticism of the New Testament.
These two fields have almost always been kept almost completely distinct from one another. Scholars in one field simply have not worked in the other. Part of the reason is that to master either one of them takes many years of full-time work, and each of us has a limited number of years, months, weeks, days, and hours to devote to our work. Another part of the reason is that scholars by and large (with very rare exceptions) did not see the integral relation of these two fields of inquiry.
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The History of Early Christian Theology
- Early Christianity was incredibly diverse in terms of its theological views.
- Later theologies about Christ, the trinity, and so on were not espoused by Jesus and his apostles
- In the early church there were enormous debates over such issues
- The older view that the “orthodox” doctrines of Christianity had pretty much always been the views of the majority of Christians, and that “heresies” were secondary and late offshoots, was established by the father of church history, Eusebius.
- This view – in which the victors rewrote the history of the engagement – was the dominant view for 1600 years.
- It was not successfully challenged until Walter Bauer wrote his book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity in 1934.
- No one today accepts Bauer’s view in all its details, but its basic understanding of early Christian theological debates is widely conceded: orthodoxy did not always precede heresy in early Christianity, but in many parts of the church heresy was prior and the “original” form of the faith. It was only in a long and protracted series of debates that one view emerged as dominant in Christianity, and that view then dubbed itself orthodox and claimed (wrongly) that it had always been the dominant and true understanding of the faith, going back to Jesus and his apostles.
- The term “orthodoxy,” then, cannot refer to the “true” understanding of Christianity, but to the form of Christianity that established itself as dominant; and “heresy” does not refer to “false belief” but to a form of Christianity that was defeated and marginalized, and then squashed.
The Textual Criticism of the New Testament
- We do not have the original writings of any of the books of the NT, but only later copies, most of them hundreds of years removed from the originals.
- These thousands of copies we have – far more copies than for any other book in the ancient world – have hundreds of thousands of differences in them. There are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the NT.
- The vast majority of these differences are meaningless, minute, and immaterial, significant for virtually nothing except to show that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than students can today. And to show that scribes were sometimes careless, inattentive, tired, or even inept.
- But some of the differences matter a lot for understanding the meaning of a verse, or an entire passage, or even an entire book.
- These significant variations number in the hundreds, not in the hundreds of thousands, but they are important to know and isolate and analyze, because they show (in most instances) that scribes were changing their texts on occasion (not systematically or rigorously) in order to make the text say what they wanted it to say. Or to put it differently (and more generously), they sometimes changed the text to make it say what they thought it meant.
- Ehrman continues:
"I hope you can see why these two fields were normally not pursued by the same scholars. They really are two different areas of inquiry, requiring different training and different skill sets and different expertise and involving different historical sources and different data and different (unrelated) methodological approaches.
The idea behind The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture was to combine the two fields. Let me stress that I was not the first person who thought of doing so – not by a long shot. But my predecessors were more or less lone voices. Occasionally someone would write a book that would show the relevance of the history of theological disputes for understanding the textual changes in the NT, but this was a real rarity and almost never was it pursued with single-minded rigor. But that’s what I wanted to do.
When I got into the field of NT Textual Criticism, precisely no one was doing that. Very few textual critics knew anything about early theological controversies (apart from a general knowledge). Or if they did know about them, they didn’t see the relevance for the work they were doing on early Christian manuscripts.
But already as a graduate student I started to see how the fields related to each other. And the reason hit me like a ton of bricks. Early Christian scribes who were copying their texts were personally involved in theological controversies. And these controversies affected the scribes, as they sometimes changed the text in light of the arguments they were having with other Christians of different persuasions, leading scribes occasionally to alter the texts they were copying in order to make them embody more clearly their own theological views, and in order to make the texts less amenable to the views of their opponents. That was the thesis of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture."
_____________________Watchtower Theology is built on a shaky foundation.
I hope you are NOT surprised :)___________
A good analogy for the above is this:
When the New World Translation was being (cough cough) 'translated,' Fred Franz and the others on the translation committee were using PRECONCEIVED Watchtower beliefs to CHANGE the text and bring it into conformity! Just like the scribes in the 1st century and afterward!
FROM THE VERY BEGINNING of writing down Christian Gospels and copying them---IDEOLOGY has corrupted the ORTHODOX (i.e. correct) teachings of Jesus.)
The Watchtower has been on a Fool's Errand from the get-go.