This previous post might be of some use . . .
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/156150002/bart-ehrman-answers-my-question
Posts by Terry
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54The Divine Name in the NT: Some Reflections
by Let go of fear ini've been fascinated with this topic for some time now, almost to the point of obsession.
after researching the issue for several years, i have come to a conclusion/theory that i would love to receive some feedback on.
this theory of mine is one that will be somewhat unsettling to both those who believe the divine name was used in the original nt scripts as well as those who believe it wasn't.
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Terry
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54
The Divine Name in the NT: Some Reflections
by Let go of fear ini've been fascinated with this topic for some time now, almost to the point of obsession.
after researching the issue for several years, i have come to a conclusion/theory that i would love to receive some feedback on.
this theory of mine is one that will be somewhat unsettling to both those who believe the divine name was used in the original nt scripts as well as those who believe it wasn't.
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Terry
The evidence is evidence.
You either have evidence or you don't have evidence.
If you have it, you cite it--if you don't have it, you must make a choice requiring personal integrity.
Do you manufacture your own personal preference into shape and try bending the facts to support it----OR----do you wait on more evidence and go along with the consensus by experts?
The Watchtower religion is dishonest intellectually and factually. The belief system is corrupt and counterfeit. The basic reason for this is the dishonest manipulation of available evidence.
Jehovah's Witnesses are way outside mainstream scholarship. They ignore what they do NOT like because it doesn't fit their pet beliefs.
The corruption of their character is evident by the dishonest way they partially quote 'experts' to support their theology.
So, why do Ex-JW's follow down the same path?
Because it is the only thing they know. It is a procedure they've absorbed into their own reasoning.
Leave brain surgery to brain surgeons. Don't go drilling holes in your own head or practice on the head of others. Trepanning was attempted by primitive man with the same dire results.
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55
why did man go from living 900 years to 90?
by sowhatnow ini cant recall the scripture, where it says than only a few men will he live to be 80 years or so, can anyone recall that?.
so then im wondering, if it is a fact that men lived long years 900 in some cases, for what reason would god limit our lifespan if our time is so short compared to his?.
how on earth does man go from living 8 and 9 hundred years down to 80 to 100 ?.
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Terry
There were no NUMBERS in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. . . only LETTERS of the alphabet.
Those letters did 'double-duty' being used as symbols for quantity also.
That should clue all of us today about how lame civilization was--not even creating separate figures for purposes of arithmetic.
But, the ancients grew accustomed to using the letters both ways.
However, as you may well imagine, there were many digressions into confusion.
If you ever have a spare moment, read all about the nonsense which resulted from mixing letters as numbers.
Superstitious people relied on mystics (bullshit artists pretending to have special knowledge) to divine things using GEMATRIA.
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Just had a blow up with jw mom and she said the bible referenced angels being called gods, it that true?
by Question_Mans_interpretation inlong story short my mom was acting weird, snubbing me, when i tried bringing her grandkids to see her, so i tried again and this time i just went up and hugged her since she wouldn't hug me or acknowledge any affection.
when i released her i immediately saw her annoyed look and asked what?
bang, she unleashes a floodgate of how she's still mad at me for going to another church that believes the trinity.
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Terry
It is an unprofitable argument in every way possible. Better not to fight that battle or die on that hill. Nothing to be gained at all.
A more fundamental and foundational problem hasn't been addressed: the Bible itself.
That too is not an argument to have because it is not going to get you anywhere either.
Facts are not at issue--only CLAIMS and loyalty to who makes the claims, you see.
You may as well try to 'prove' to a Democrat what a Republican believes and vice-versa.
You may as well get a Palestinian to agree to Israeli claims about the Promised Land.
Your Mom plays for a different TEAM than you do.
The anger is over TEAM SPIRIT, loyalty and being a fan. (i.e. 'fanatic)
Step back and step away.
Don't get sucked into these word wars. Rise above.
The Christian Church has fought against itself all through history by dividing into opinions thought to be
correct. Pointing out there are 40,000 Christian Denominations, all trying love God and Praise Jesus while
refusing to grant their fellow 'brothers and sisters' the possibility of honest intent, is more to the central problem.
LOVE is really pretty important and the failure to feel it or practice it because of stubborn opinion mongering is a symptom of spiritual poverty.
Does a starving child matter more or less than an opinion about the individual definition of a transcendent God's modality? Why do I ask? Would your mom refuse to feed a hungry child who believed in the Trinity?
Yes, it is THAT STUPID to even make an issue of it. Love is all that matters.
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Impossible conversation: Jesus and Nicodemus: YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN
by Terry ini am a member on new testament scholar bart ehrman's blog, and the professor is currently outlining a new book he is writing about false memory and the life of jesus.. an interesting post occurred today in which he gives an example of a very famous scripture,.
example of a false memory of jesus teaching i turn to a famous passage in the gospel of john, jesus dialogue with nicodemus (john 3:1-15).
nicodemus is said to be a jewish leader who comes up to jesus and affirms that jesus must come from god because of the great things that he said to have done.
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Terry
In 1956, the book THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY published and became a runaway bestseller.
The book dealt with the memory of a woman named Virginia Tighe, an ordinary American housewife who’d been regressed hypnotically, seemingly into a previous life by the book’s author, Morey Bernstein.
After sensational reaction from the reading public, newspaper investigative reporting commenced ferreting out details and discrepancies in Tighe’s account of her life as an Irish girl growing up in Cork, under the name, Bridey Murphy.
Long story short: Cryptomnesia was the root cause.
__Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke, not deliberately engaging in plagiarism but rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.__
(The experts who examined the case of Virginia Tighe came to the conclusion that the best way to arrive at the truth was to check back not to Ireland but to Tighe’s own childhood and her relationship with her parents. Morey Bernstein stated that Virginia Tighe (whom he called Ruth Simmons in the book) was brought up by a Norwegian uncle and his German-Scottish-Irish wife. However, it did not state that her actual parents were both part Irish and that she had lived with them until the age of three. It also did not mention that an Irish immigrant named Bridie Murphy Corkell (1892–1957)[2] lived across the street from Tighe’s childhood home in Chicago, Illinois. Scientists are satisfied that everything Virginia Tighe said can be explained as a memory of her long-forgotten childhood. The psychologist Andrew Neher wrote that as a child Tighe was a close friend to a neighbor whose life was very similar to Bridey Murphy’s.) Wiki article______________________
The reason I cite this particular case is to highlight the fact no fraud was purposefully perpetrated, but Virginia Tighe had absorbed many details about her neighbor from listening in childhood. These details emerged as a ‘first person narrative’ when Tighe was in a hypnotic state.
Isn’t it reasonable to conclude the transmission of details of eye-witness accounts of Jesus could likewise have been absorbed as hearsay and repeated as autonomous first person memories–then transmitted with corruptions by later stories, legends, imagination? No culpable plagiarism or malicious intent need be attributed along the way.
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Impossible conversation: Jesus and Nicodemus: YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN
by Terry ini am a member on new testament scholar bart ehrman's blog, and the professor is currently outlining a new book he is writing about false memory and the life of jesus.. an interesting post occurred today in which he gives an example of a very famous scripture,.
example of a false memory of jesus teaching i turn to a famous passage in the gospel of john, jesus dialogue with nicodemus (john 3:1-15).
nicodemus is said to be a jewish leader who comes up to jesus and affirms that jesus must come from god because of the great things that he said to have done.
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Terry
I am a member on New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman's blog, and the professor is currently outlining a new book he is writing about FALSE MEMORY and the life of Jesus.
An interesting post occurred today in which he gives an example of a very famous scripture,
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". . . example of a false memory of Jesus’ teaching I turn to a famous passage in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus (John 3:1-15). Nicodemus is said to be a Jewish leader who comes up to Jesus and affirms that Jesus must come from God because of the great things that he said to have done. Jesus then tells him “Unless one if born ANOTHEN, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:3).
I have left the Greek word ANOTHEN untranslated because it is the key to the conversation as it proceeds. It is a Greek word that actually has two different meanings, depending on the context within which it is used. On one hand it can mean “a second time.” If that’s what it means here, then Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he must be “born again.” But it can also mean “from above.” If that’s what it means then Jesus is telling Nicodemus that he must have a birth from God above if he is to see the kingdom of heaven.
The reason this double-meaning matters is because Nicodemus takes Jesus to mean that he has to be born a second time, and he is incredulous. He responds by asking how a person can crawl back into his mother’s womb to be born again. But Jesus tells him that he does not mean a second, physical birth. He is talking about a birth from heaven, a birth made possible by the Spirit of God who comes from above. Anyone who has had such a heavenly birth, to accompany his earthly birth, can then ascend to heaven and have eternal life.
This is arguably the most famous passage of the New Testament Gospels that just about no one “gets” because they don’t read it in Greek, and it is only in Greek that it actually makes sense, since the double meaning of the word ANOTHEN cannot be replicated in English. And so English translators of John 3:3 and 3:5 have to decide whether they translate the word as “again” or “from above.” Either way creates problems for the translation, since the word has to mean both things for the conversation to make sense, with Nicodemus understanding the word in one way and Jesus meaning it in another.
But it is precisely this key point – that the pivotal word means both things – that shows the conversation almost certainly didn’t happen, at least as described in the third chapter of John. The double meaning that cannot be replicated in English also cannot be replicated in Aramaic. Recall: Jesus, an Aramaic-speaking Jew, is allegedly talking with a Jewish teacher in Jerusalem, where, again, Aramaic was the native tongue. They would have been speaking Aramaic. But the double meaning of the key Greek word in the passage doesn’t work in Aramaic. In other words, the word for “from above” does not mean “a second time” in Aramaic (and vice versa). And so, since the entire conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus is predicated precisely on a double meaning of a word that in Aramaic doesn’t have a double meaning, it could not have taken place as described.
The conversation is not described in any other ancient Christian source. It appears not to have been a conversation that Jesus really had, with Nicodemus or anyone else. It is a conversation that was either created by the author of the Gospel of John or by a Greek-speaking story-teller before him who passed it along until it came to be written in the Gospel. Those who recall that Jesus had this discussion with Nicodemus, telling him he must be “born again,” are misremembering what actually could have happened."
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"Some of my readers have not understood the point that I have been trying to make about this, mainly because I have not explained it very well. When I say that a Gospel passage represents a “false memory,” I am not necessarily saying that the author of the account is misremembering something. That may indeed to be the case, but it is impossible to know. It may also be the case that he’s just makin’ something up. My point, though, is that the way Jesus came to be remembered by those who *read* these Gospel accounts, and formed their impressions of Jesus from them, was based on these narratives that are not true to history. They may be religiously true or theologically true, but they aren’t historically true. It is in that sense, and only in that sense, that I am referring to them as false memories.
People still today have false memories of Jesus based on what they have read in the Bible. In this chapter 5, I deal with false memories involving the life (as opposed to the death) of Jesus – including his teachings."
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Who REALLY believed in the idea of living forever on earth??
by stuckinarut2 inseriously.....even when you were 100% in "the truth", did you really believe in living forever?
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Terry
I can say now, with a lot of years under my belt, I wasn't born with the genetic makeup of person who plunges into belief. The stress and paranoia of imprisonment, I believe, drove me into the delusion as an escape.
I also simultaneously focused my entire attention on acquiring expertise in my religion. When I was paroled, I was railroaded into Regular Pioneer work.
There was so little of my life left with__time__to be a person, I was swallowed up in a kind of rushing torrent of servitude and commitment. Call it active inertia, if you will.
But eventually on a conscious level, I knew I had to escape the prison of belief or risk losing myself and my sanity. By physically uprooting my family and moving fifteen hundred miles away, I managed to salvage my mental health, create a meaningful career and break loose from the superglue of social engineering, which is the lifeblood of the JW scam.
Now what does all that have to do with my belief in LIVING FOREVER on a Paradise Earth.
Nothing and everything!
It was the "reason" I gave for doing what I was doing. But, there wasn't any reality attached to it. I never ever visualized experiencing it. I didn't long for it. I was not convinced of it intellectually.
I'm not very good at believing things by nature, you see. I'm skeptical of happiness connected to wishful thinking, I guess you could say.
Religion is a lot of wishful thinking, imho.
From my study of the Early Church Fathers, I do know that Papius (who interviewed the remaining eye and ear-witnesses of Jesus) related a belief in the 10,000 year reign of Christ on Earth.
What that means is beyond my reckoning. The Church held him to be dangerous to the faith and branded him a heretic!
Heck, I can identify with THAT!
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Having Faith in the Bible
by william draper ini know many on here have lost faith in the bible , is it possible that is because ones do not have the right perspective regarding it .
we have usually been taught by bad teachers , or ignorant .
i believe if we take an honest look at the bible , we will see that it gives us the best answers to crucial matters , it gives us some amount of bearings ( understanding ) , which without having such knowledge we would all be more like walking zombies in amanner of speaking , we would be lacking hope in something better , for surely something better is to come , how can we be sure , .
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Terry
What is called "Bible knowledge" is really ignorance disguised as knowledge.
The amount of time which has been wasted by humanity, laboring under the false premise of 'divinely revealed wisdom,' is appalling.
I'm reminded of a fellow named Cruden.
In the mid-1720s, Alexander Cruden took on a self-imposed task of Herculean proportions, Himalayan tedium, and inhuman meticulousness: he decided to compile the most thorough concordance of the King James Version of the Bible to date. The first edition ofCruden's Concordance was published in 1737. How could he have possibly completed such a project? Every similar undertaking before or since has been the work of a vast team of people—in recent times made incomparably easier by computers. Cruden worked alone in his lodgings, writing the whole thing out by hand. The KJV has 777,746 words, all of which needed to be put in their proper place. Cruden even wrote explanatory entries on many of the words—in effect, including a Bible dictionary as a bonus. The word “Synagogue,” for example, prompted a 4,000-word essay.
Furthermore, Cruden’s day job was as a “Corrector of the Press” (proofreader). He would give hawk-eyed attention to prose all day long. Then he would come home at night, not to rest his eyes and enjoy some relaxation, but rather to read the Bible—stopping at every single word to secure the right sheet from the tens of thousands of pieces of paper all around him and to record accurately the reference in its appropriate place. He had no patron, no publisher, no financial backers: his only commission was a divine one.
Cruden’s Concordance has never been out of print. Some hundred editions have been published, many of which have been reprinted untold times; shoppers at a popular online bookstore today can choose from 18 different in-print versions of Cruden’s.
Cruden was institutionalized for madness four times in his life. His behavior was often bizarre.
On another occasion, Cruden had apparently gone to break up a brawl but ended up spending the best part of an hour admonishing disorderly soldiers not to swear while periodically whacking them on the head with a shovel. He also would propose to women with whom he had established no romantic bond (one such intended he had not even met). Being unable to take no for an answer, he would then turn himself into a persistent nuisance, if not a stalker.
Above from:http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-good-insane-concordance-maker
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Having Faith in the Bible
by william draper ini know many on here have lost faith in the bible , is it possible that is because ones do not have the right perspective regarding it .
we have usually been taught by bad teachers , or ignorant .
i believe if we take an honest look at the bible , we will see that it gives us the best answers to crucial matters , it gives us some amount of bearings ( understanding ) , which without having such knowledge we would all be more like walking zombies in amanner of speaking , we would be lacking hope in something better , for surely something better is to come , how can we be sure , .
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Terry
If 'God' truly wished to communicate with mankind in a manner both convincing and immediately productive, He would make good on His bluff to cause the very stones to cry out.
I'd listen to a talking stone. I suspect everybody else would too.
To Wit:
Luke 19:40New King James Version (NKJV)
40 But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”
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Intellectual honesty compels you to start in a neutral frame of mind rather than assuming your presupposition into 'unassailable' status and inviting rebuttal.
Your premise gives you away. You didn't ask if a good life well-lived necessarily compelled mankind to look toward ancient books as the foundation of truth and understanding. Why would anyone choose that as the starting point? The truly great strides mankind has made in the last two centuries have been IN SPITE OF the 'wisdom' of the world's 'holy' books.
Equality for Women, Equality for people of color, child protection, banning smoking, awareness of the necessity of balanced diet and a regimen of exercise, public education, etc.---these strides toward improving society were secular in nature.
Today's great battle will focus on acceptance of homosexuals as our brothers and sisters without prejudice. A free society cannot function without human rights.
The Bible is the last refuge for narrow-minded bigotry disguised as piety and submission to the 'will of God'.
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75
Having Faith in the Bible
by william draper ini know many on here have lost faith in the bible , is it possible that is because ones do not have the right perspective regarding it .
we have usually been taught by bad teachers , or ignorant .
i believe if we take an honest look at the bible , we will see that it gives us the best answers to crucial matters , it gives us some amount of bearings ( understanding ) , which without having such knowledge we would all be more like walking zombies in amanner of speaking , we would be lacking hope in something better , for surely something better is to come , how can we be sure , .
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Terry
The ultimate test of the Bible as the 'divine' gift of the living God to mankind comes down
to this challenge.
What one thing (if one can even be found) which is testable and provable, was written in Scripture which could not have been written by any mind other than the mind of God?Is there one piece of knowledge no man could have known?
Now some might say: Prophecy! But, a prophetic pronouncement made after the fact is not really prophecy, is it? The Book of Daniel is suspiciously late making its way into print.
The references to the fall of Jerusalem too cannot escape the likelihood of being post-destruction rather than Pre.
All in all, it is the exasperating contortions of apologists turning thin air into substance which has maintained for the evangelical Fundamentalists of the world, an illusion of numinous transcendence for the Bible.
The Bible had little importance for Christianity until the Protestant Reformation. The authority of the Pope had to be replaced by an inerrant guide of some sort.
Thanks to Martin Luther, the theory of SOLA SCRIPTURA replaced Magisterium of Catholicism.
The theory was this, a devout and pious seeker-after-Truth only needed a Bible and prayer for Holy Spirit to guide him to perfect understanding of God's will.
What has transpired in the practical test of Sola Scriptura since the 16th Century?
40+ thousand Denominations of Christianity!
That's like 2+2= 40,000 different answers!
Sola scriptura was one of the main theological beliefs that Martin Luther proclaimed against the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation._____________________________The work of textual criticism, archeology, paleontologists, and modern science have put to rest the claims made for inerrancy, except for the most radically disposed apologists of today. The defense made by Fundamentalists for the integrity of the Bible is couched in rather carefully parsed terms:___________________________Biblical inerrancy, as formulated in the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy", is the doctrine that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching";[1] or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact".______________________However, there exists NO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT at all to prove this assertion!