XJW4EVR

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Posts by XJW4EVR

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  19

  Where did early Christians worship?

  by BurnTheShips in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  where did early christians worship during nt times?.

  was it only in homes?

  or did they have dedicated buildings?

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  XJW4EVR

  Christians: "Oh, He said we should create a hierarchy of clergy, demand money, make up a bunch of intricate rules, build massive places of worship and kill those who don't agree. Makes sense to us!"

  Got to love those strawman arguments.
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  4

  Early Christians

  by ZeroZen in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  iam just wondering if jw's believe they are practicing their religion as christians of 2000 years ago.

  would the early christians still follow some of the jewish traditions such as passover and other religous holidays?

  jesus did die a jew ?

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  XJW4EVR

  The Christians of Jewish ethnicity did follow Jewish customs.

  This is very true. James tells the recipients of his letter to not be impressed with rich people when they came into their synagouge (James 2:2). Sadly, this was not translated into English until the newer translations were published.
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  42

  You will never overcome your Witness past...

  by JimmyPage in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ... unless you read apostate views.. you may become inactive, like i did, and find a way to assimilate yourself into the normal world.. but you will always have at your core a view of the world that the witnesses gave you.

  their basic teachings will still be your world view.. you will never realize you were indoctrinated by a cult.. for those poisoned by jehovah's witnesses there is only one antidote.. there is only one way to understand your life and progress from there.. the only true cure for jehovah's witnesses is apostasy..

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  XJW4EVR

  This is so true. After my wife's attack, both her and I went into therapy. It dredged up some rather unpleasant stuff that I thought I had jettisoned, especially about victims of rape. Fortunately, I was able to resolve that.However, I wonder when I will ever be trully free of the baggage from the WTB&S?
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  80

  New Aussie craze KRISPY KREME doughnuts --What is in them? WHY?

  by Witness 007 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  people are driving for miles to the few shops that have opened....many pioneers leave there own congregation territory to buy some 1 hour drive away....i took a box to my witness work mates...they acted like i was giving them gold!

  poor witnesses.

  they do taste excellent fresh....coffee shops like "starbucks" never took off here....were not big on coffee.

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  XJW4EVR

  The appeal of Krispy Kreme doughnuts to me is the fact that they can be purchased fresh. When you see the red light on, you know that it's time to buy some heart attack.
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  20

  Bibles to read???

  by Troggle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  can anyone please give me a little advice on a good bible to use?

  after looking around my house i realized that i only have one bible and it is the nwt.

  i have tried using the kjv but would like a good one in regular english rather than old english and i have been brainwashed into distrusting all of them.

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  XJW4EVR

  Bibles? Depends on what you want. IMO, the best word-for-word translations into English are as follows, and in order of my preference: 1. New American Standard, 2. International Standard Version (can be found here), 3. English Standard Version, 4. King Jimmy (old & new).

  For a thought-for-thought translation, I like the New International (NIV, not to be confused with the TNIV), and the New Living Translation.

  I think that the best thing to do when looking for a Bible is toread a number of passages/chapters from different translations, and determine which one speaks to you the clearest.
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  34

  Are cats for true christians? ..... A CO's response

  by digderidoo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the following is taken from a co's homepage.

  http://www.dbhome.dk/carlo/co.html.

  are cats for true christians?.

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  XJW4EVR

  Yes, cat's are the spawn of Satan!

  Did I mention that I am allergic to cats?
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  74

  Solid Non-Biblical Proof That Jesus Existed

  by White Dove in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have not heard of one single (non-shroud of turin) piece of evidence that jesus ever walked the earth.

  please give me non-biblical and non-shroud of turin evidence that has been found that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the jesus of the bible walked the earth.. is that too much to ask?

  the bible says it happened but gives no proof to support its statements.. the shroud of turin has not been established as proof of anything beyond a good wax and dye job.. .

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  XJW4EVR

  the hypothesis of a partly original Testimonium is certainly not "undisputed" as XJW4EVR suggests (strangely, after pasting references to opposing views!).

  My mistake. I confused the James reference with the Testamonium. Thank you for catching that error.
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  74

  Solid Non-Biblical Proof That Jesus Existed

  by White Dove in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have not heard of one single (non-shroud of turin) piece of evidence that jesus ever walked the earth.

  please give me non-biblical and non-shroud of turin evidence that has been found that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the jesus of the bible walked the earth.. is that too much to ask?

  the bible says it happened but gives no proof to support its statements.. the shroud of turin has not been established as proof of anything beyond a good wax and dye job.. .

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  XJW4EVR

  My point was only that (still working under your assumption) he was dependent on the Christian story in the first place and his version of it was by no means an independent testimony about a "historical Jesus".
  

  Let me try to illustrate: a Mormon would say that Joseph Smith was shown the golden plates by the angel Moroni. A non-Mormon historian might say that Joseph Smith wrote the book of Mormon, allegedly translating them from golden plates handed by an angel. The historian would naturally distantiate himself from the Mormon narrative, because of his non-Mormon perspective, but the difference in wording would hardly make his work an independent testimony to the existence of the golden plates...

  So you are going to discredit Josephus because he did not write in a style of history which did not exist as a literary form in his time? That is a very weak argument against the Testimonium. It appears to me that you are grasping at straws in this aurgument.

  So again, Josephus was not a Christian, and the segments of the text that the majority of scholars view as authentic lay out the facts about what this itinerate preacher from Gallilee did, and what happened to him. These segments are in a style and use vocabulary consistent with the rest of Josephus' work. Josephus even uses terms that are not used by the Christian community at the time he wrote his history. In my mind, Josephus' Testamonium is a grand confirmation of the life of Jesus by an outsider of the Christian sect, an opinion that I am not alone in holding.

  Edited to remove the term "undisputed".
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  74

  Solid Non-Biblical Proof That Jesus Existed

  by White Dove in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have not heard of one single (non-shroud of turin) piece of evidence that jesus ever walked the earth.

  please give me non-biblical and non-shroud of turin evidence that has been found that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the jesus of the bible walked the earth.. is that too much to ask?

  the bible says it happened but gives no proof to support its statements.. the shroud of turin has not been established as proof of anything beyond a good wax and dye job.. .

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  XJW4EVR

  Without proof, I remain a skeptic that Josephus' mention of Jesus is a thorough and complete interpolation.

  What sort of "proof" do you demand?

  There is also an Arabic version of Josephus, that although different from the one you quote, still makes mention of Jesus.

  This is the Arabic version of the Testamentum Flavium found by a Professor Schlomo Pines:

  At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders .

  Lastly regarding Antiquities 20.9.1, i.e., the James' passage, that passage is pretty much undisputed, based on the research I have done (again that is not an exhaustive research study).

  Based on the evidence I have seen I am confident that, while there areinterpolations in the Testamentum Flavium, there is not enough evidence for me to jettison the entire passage. Might I suggest reading Paul L. Maier's treatments on thsi subject for you edification?

  Josephus and Jesus

  By Paul L. Maier, The Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History, Western Michigan University

  Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37 – c. 100) was a Jewish historian born in Jerusalem four years after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in the same city. Because of this proximity to Jesus in terms of time and place, his writings have a near-eyewitness quality as they relate to the entire cultural background of the New Testament era. But their scope is much wider than this, encompassing also the world of the Old Testament. His two greatest works are Jewish Antiquities, unveiling Hebrew history from the Creation to the start of the great war with Rome in A.D. 66, while his Jewish War, though written first, carries the record on to the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of Masada in A.D. 73.
  
  Josephus is the most comprehensive primary source on Jewish history that has survived from antiquity, and done so virtually intact despite its voluminous nature (the equivalent of 12 volumes). Because of imperial patronage by the Flavian emperors in Rome —Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian —Josephus was able to generate incredible detail in his records, a luxury denied the Gospel writers. They seem to have been limited to one scroll each since the earliest Christians were not wealthy. Accordingly, Josephus has always been deemed a crucial extrabiblical resource, since his writings not only correlate well with the Old and New Testaments, but often provide additional evidence on such personalities as Herod the Great and his dynasty, John the Baptist, Jesus' half-brother James, the high priests Annas and Caiaphas and their clan, Pontius Pilate, and others.

  Against this background, we should certainly expect that he would refer to Jesus of Nazareth, and he does—twice in fact. In Antiquities 18:63—in the middle of information on Pontius Pilate (A.D., 26-36)—Josephus provides the longest secular reference to Jesus in any first-century source. Later, when he reports events from the administration of the Roman governor Albinus (A.D. 62-64) in Antiquities 20:200, he again mentions Jesus in connection with the death of Jesus' half-brother, James the Just of Jerusalem. These passages, along with other non-biblical, non-Christian references to Jesus in secular first-century sources—among them Tacitus (Annals 15:44), Suetonius (Claudius 25), and Pliny the Younger (Letter to Trajan)—prove conclusively that any denial of Jesus' historicity is maundering sensationalism by the uninformed and/or the dishonest.
  
  Because the above references to Jesus are embarrassing to such, they have been attacked for centuries, especially the two Josephus instances, which have provoked a great quantity of scholarly literature. They constitute the largest block of first-century evidence for Jesus outside biblical or Christian sources, and may well be the reason that the vast works of Josephus survived manuscript transmission across the centuries almost intact, when other great works from antiquity were totally lost. Let us examine each, in turn.

  Antiquities 18:63The standard text of Josephus reads as follows:

  About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him, and the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day. (All Josephus citations, except the next, are from P. L. Maier, ed./trans., Josephus –The Essential Works (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1994).

  Although this passage is so worded in the Josephus manuscripts as early as the third-century church historian Eusebius, scholars have long suspected a Christian interpolation, since Josephus could hardly have believed Jesus to be the Messiah or in his resurrection and have remained, as he did, a non-Christian Jew. In 1972, however, Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem announced his discovery of a different manuscript tradition of Josephus's writings in the tenth-century Melkite historian Agapius, which reads as follows at Antiquities 18:63:

  At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.

  Here, clearly, is language that a Jew could have written without conversion to Christianity. (Schlomo Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its Implications [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971.])

  Scholars fall into three basic camps regarding Antiquities 18:63:

  1) The original passage is entirely authentic—a minority position;

  2) it is entirely a Christian forgery – a much smaller minority position; and

  3) it contains Christian interpolations in what was Josephus's original, authentic material about Jesus—the large majority position today, particularly in view of the Agapian text (immediately above) which shows no signs of interpolation.

  Josephus must have mentioned Jesus in authentic core material at 18:63 since this passage is present in all Greek manuscripts of Josephus, and the Agapian version accords well with his grammar and vocabulary elsewhere. Moreover, Jesus is portrayed as a "wise man" [sophos aner], a phrase not used by Christians but employed by Josephus for such personalities as David and Solomon in the Hebrew Bible.

  Furthermore, his claim that Jesus won over "many of the Greeks" is not substantiated in the New Testament, and thus hardly a Christian interpolation but rather something that Josephus would have noted in his own day. Finally, the fact that the second reference to Jesus at Antiquities 20:200, which follows, merely calls him the Christos [Messiah] without further explanation suggests that a previous, fuller identification had already taken place. Had Jesus appeared for the first time at the later point in Josephus's record, he would most probably have introduced a phrase like "…brother of a certain Jesus, who was called the Christ."

  Antiquities 20:200
  This is an extremely important passage, since it has so many stunning parallels to what took place on Good Friday, and yet it seems to be largely ignored in revisionist New Testament scholarship. It tells of the death of Jesus' half-brother, James the Just of Jerusalem, under the high priest Ananus, son of the former high priest Annas and brother-in-law to Caiaphas, both well-known from the Gospels. Josephus's text reads as follows:

  Having such a character ["rash and daring" in the context], Ananus thought that with Festus dead and Albinus still on the way, he would have the proper opportunity. Convening the judges of the Sanhedrin, he brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, whose name was James, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned. But those of the city residents who were deemed the most fair-minded and who were strict in observing the law were offended at this. Accordingly, they secretly contacted the king [Herod Agrippa II], urging him to order Ananus to desist from any more such actions, for he had not been justified in what he had already done. Some of them even went to meet Albinus, who was on his way from Alexandria, and informed him that Ananus had no authority to convene the Sanhedrin without his consent. Convinced by these words, Albinus wrote in anger to Ananus, threatening him with punishment. And King Agrippa, because of this, deposed him from the high priesthood, in which he had ruled for three months.

  This, Josephus's second reference to Jesus, shows no tampering whatever with the text and it is present in all Josephus manuscripts. Had there been Christian interpolation here, more material on James and Jesus would doubtless have been presented than this brief, passing notice. James would likely have been wreathed in laudatory language and styled, "the brother of the Lord," as the New Testament defines him, rather than "the brother of Jesus." Nor could the New Testament have served as Josephus's source since it provides no detail on James's death. For Josephus to further define Jesus as the one "who was called the Christos" was both credible and even necessary in view of the twenty other Jesuses he cites in his works.

  Accordingly, the vast majority of contemporary scholars regard this passage as genuine in its entirety, and concur with ranking Josephus expert Louis H. Feldman in his notation in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Josephus: "…few have doubted the genuineness of this passage on James" (Louis H. Feldman, tr., Josephus, IX [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965], 496).

  The preponderance of evidence, then, strongly suggests that Josephus did indeed mention Jesus in both passages. He did so in a manner totally congruent with the New Testament portraits of Christ, and his description, from the vantage point of a non-Christian, seems remarkably fair, especially in view of his well-known proclivity to roast false messiahs as wretches who misled the people and brought on war with the Romans.

  Furthermore, his second citation regarding the attitudes of the high priest and Sanhedrin versus that of the Roman governor perfectly mirrors the Gospel versions of the two opposing sides at the Good Friday event. And this extrabiblical evidence comes not from a Christian source trying to make the Gospels look good, but from a totally Jewish author who never converted to Christianity.
  

  For further discussion of Josephus and his significance for biblical research, please see Paul L. Maier, ed./trans., Josephus – The Essential Works (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1994).
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  74

  Solid Non-Biblical Proof That Jesus Existed

  by White Dove in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have not heard of one single (non-shroud of turin) piece of evidence that jesus ever walked the earth.

  please give me non-biblical and non-shroud of turin evidence that has been found that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the jesus of the bible walked the earth.. is that too much to ask?

  the bible says it happened but gives no proof to support its statements.. the shroud of turin has not been established as proof of anything beyond a good wax and dye job.. .

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  XJW4EVR

  Non sequitur. Even if the passage were original to Josephus the very mention of a Christian group would imply an awareness of this group (remember Josephus was contemporary to the Christian community, not Jesus) and its foundational narrative. All the author would have to do is selecting from this source and rephrasing it from a "non-believer" perspective (btw, all the conjecture about a partial interpolation rests on the subjective assessment of what a "non-believer" would be likely to retain from the Christian narrative). In any case it would still not stand as an independent witness to a historical Jesus (and, as I said, this applies a fortiori to 2nd-century Roman writers).

  Let me make sure that I understand what you are saying. Josephus used non-Christian terminology in order to appear neutral? If that is the case then I guess there are no ancient written histories that can be trusted. Sorry, but I cannot stoop to that level of skepticism.