What I find most telling is that early Christian writers were perfectly happy to apply the phrase “the Lord created me” from Prov 8.22 in Greek to Jesus. Only in the 4th century did this become a problem in light of the emerging Trinity doctrine, and only then were various strategies developed for avoiding the implication that Jesus was created. These strategies generally took three forms: 1) the verse was only talking about Jesus’s humanity (Athanasius’s favoured explanation, but it is almost never exhibited nowadays), 2) the Hebrew word doesn’t mean “created”, and 3) the passage is only a personification of Wisdom and should not be understood as applying to Jesus. Again, none of these arguments were made before the 4th century. Earlier Christians accepted the phrase “the Lord created me” at face value as it was in harmony with who they understood Jesus to be.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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171
Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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GB's latest prophecy is already wrong!!!
by nowwhat? inat the annual meeting they said god will put it into the nations hearts to give their power to the united nations.
now that trump and the republicans have won, the united states will never give up their sovereignty to the u.n. !
trump has total disdain for the un, who and wef!
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slimboyfat
When I was in high school we were taught the Marshall plan was all about reconstructing Europe after the war and was an altruistic gesture by the United States. When I got to university and studied modern European history we were presented with the thesis that the Marshall plan’s main goal was to secure a foreign market for American consumer goods and to establish United States hegemony in Europe and globally.
When Germany and other European states began to look to Russia for its oil and gas in recent decades they were warned off by the United States. Nevertheless they carried on against the wishes of the United States until more drastic measures were required and somebody blew up the gas pipeline from Russia to Europe.
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JW WOMAN VOLUNTEER CRUSHED BY A WALL AT A KINGDOM HALL PROJECT
by raymond frantz inhttps://youtu.be/1skm8riz7qc?si=ww3ej9orl_91db4w.
the construction of a new jehovah’s witnesses kingdom hall in cybinka, poland, has once again shed light on the watchtower organization’s relentless drive to expand its real estate empire on the backs of unpaid, vulnerable volunteers.
every day, around 40 jehovah’s witnesses show up at the construction site, some traveling long distances, not for pay or proper protection, but to fulfill a sense of “spiritual duty” instilled by the organization.
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slimboyfat
The volunteer, who suffered injuries and was hospitalized, reportedly expressed a desire to return to the site—a sentiment born not from personal motivation, but from a culture of indoctrination and guilt.
How do you know? I’m tired of snide comments like this. They add nothing to the analysis whatever.
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How did JWs arrive at a clearer understanding of what the Bible teaches than other Christian denominations?
by slimboyfat infor jws who believe that jehovah had a hand in reviving the truth in the nineteenth century this is enough explanation for how jws managed to achieve a closer approximation to early christian beliefs and practices than other groups.
but is there an explanation for this phenomenon that doesn’t rely on supernatural intervention?
new testament scholar james dunn explains the difficulty of interpreting the biblical texts in this way:.
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slimboyfat
The 19th century was a time of pseudoscience,medical quackery and blatant, un-regulated false advertising.
A bit like the 21st century then, only less so. 😁
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Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap
by Nathan Natas ini saw a post on reddit by "big_routine1112" announcing that james penton died.. well, there's always the resurrec... oh, nevermind.. as always, the person expressing the most profound grief and dismay wins!.
"he was my friend" .
"there will never be another of his ilk".
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slimboyfat
You can’t plagiarise an idea. Farkel started a thread about Rutherford having mistresses and Penton mentioned Rutherford’s possible infidelities very briefly in his book on the Third Reich. Penton’s source for this was apparently Larc, who was also the source for Farkel. Maybe Farkel thought he should get some credit for writing an entertaining thread that brought up some things that many didn’t know but that some already did know. That’s a pretty tenuous basis for claiming plagiarism. In fact, tenuous is not the word. It simply isn’t plagiarism because you can plagiarise an idea, and in this case it isn’t even clear that Penton didn’t get his information from someone else, possibly the same source as Farkel. Farkel was a very entertaining and intelligent character. He was also quite eccentric and a bit of an egomaniac, if we are being real.
Farkel seemed to think that because Larc told him a story about his aunt and Rutherford and Farkel wrote a thread about it, therefore Larc had no right to tell Penton about it and Penton had no right to reference it in his book. That’s pretty nutty, right?
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GB's latest prophecy is already wrong!!!
by nowwhat? inat the annual meeting they said god will put it into the nations hearts to give their power to the united nations.
now that trump and the republicans have won, the united states will never give up their sovereignty to the u.n. !
trump has total disdain for the un, who and wef!
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slimboyfat
What Trump says and what he does doesn’t always match. He talked about leaving NATO but actually succeeded in forcing the others members to pay more. Was that the plan all along? Maybe that’s crediting him with too much strategic nous, but maybe not.
Besides, he’s only there for four years, which is like what, a couple of minutes to Jehovah, no?
I’m more worried about what he’ll do with Iran, because Netanyahu clearly thinks he can get America under Trump into a war with Iran. Netanyahu was also eerily confident Trump would win when many others didn’t expect it. Did he have an inside track through intelligence?
Plus Trump raised expectations so high that he could make a deal to end the Ukraine war, what if it goes wrong and Trump feels he needs to “stand up” to Putin to save face.
Predicting the future is a fools game now more than ever.
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2909
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)
by Simon inuh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.
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slimboyfat
Wow I watched the video (and remembered to give a dislike) - that was a laugh. LE thinks I need reassuring that Trump winning wasn’t my fault personally. Wow, thanks for that, I think.
I wonder if on some level LE recognises Trump as a fellow narcissist and identifies with him.
Somebody gave a good Frank Zappa quote in the comments, but I wonder if they recognise it applies just as much to the Democrats as the other side:
"Government is the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex." Frank Zappa
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Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap
by Nathan Natas ini saw a post on reddit by "big_routine1112" announcing that james penton died.. well, there's always the resurrec... oh, nevermind.. as always, the person expressing the most profound grief and dismay wins!.
"he was my friend" .
"there will never be another of his ilk".
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slimboyfat
Plagiarism is not a matter of opinion and is pretty easy to confirm or refute. What part of “Apocalypse Delayed” is supposed to plagiarise what part of “A People for his Name”? Let’s have a look and see either way. If I recall correctly, “Apocalypse Delayed” does cite and reference “A People for his Name” a number of times, as well as offer a positive review of the book in the annotated bibliography. We’d be looking for significant wording or structural dependence outside direct quotes. It’s perhaps unfair that Penton’s book became much more popular than White’s book, considering how good White’s book was, but that’s not plagiarism. And if your major complaint against Penton is that he remained a Christian, then I have to point out that White’s book also appears to evaluate JWs through the lens lf someone who still has faith in the Bible, perhaps even more so than Penton’s book in fact. Maybe White changed his views in later years, but in the book itself he apparently took it within his remit to evaluate the scriptural arguments of JWs.
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Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies
by slimboyfat ini don’t know a lot about james penton but i think he deserves a better thread than the one currently on offer.
james penton, who died recently, grew up in a jw family in canada and served as an elder.
unusually for a jw, he studied liberal arts at university and became a history professor.
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slimboyfat
I don’t know a lot about James Penton but I think he deserves a better thread than the one currently on offer. So here goes.
James Penton, who died recently, grew up in a JW family in Canada and served as an elder. Unusually for a JW, he studied liberal arts at university and became a history professor. He wrote a positive book about JWs in Canada that was quoted in the Watchtower and he defended some JW positions, such as on blood, in the media in Canada.
Penton disagreed with the Watchtower leadership on some issues such as whether reporting time in door to door preaching was a requirement for Christians. He formed an association with other brothers over the blood issue before Watchtower set up their own arrangements. He also heard about the rumblings in Brooklyn over Raymond Franz’s exit and visited the headquarters to see what was going on. He was researching a general history of JWs at the same time and didn’t get much cooperation in his research.
I’m not sure exactly how it went down, although it is documented in a book called “Crisis of Allegiance” by James Beverley, but due to differences with Watchtower leadership and some JWs locally, Penton’s son, other family members, and various friends in the congregation and neighbouring congregations left the JWs in Calgary, Alberta, over a hundred in total, all at the same time. It was one of the biggest mass defections from the JW religion on record and Penton was perceived as being at the centre of it.
As a former JW, Penton went on to complete his history of JWs titled “Apocalypse Delayed” which has come to be the most cited academic history of JWs. It covered a lot of aspects of Watchtower history that had been swept under the carpet and was quite scathing in its approach. Some academics have criticised the book on the basis of its tone and apparent bias against JWs but it remains a useful source of information. Its most notable impact is that it has probably impacted how Watchtower, and thus how JWs understand and present their own history.
Penton wrote another book about JWs during the Third Reich intending to expose alleged Watchtower attempts to compromise with the Nazi regime. This book did raise some valid issues that Watchtower wished to forget, but also suffered from being one sided and biased and it was criticised by some academics for that reason.
Penton maintained belief in God and the Bible after his exit from JWs, apparently in association with a small network non-Trinitarian believers, although he rejected various other doctrines of JWs.
In recent years Penton spent some time living in Mexico, maintained friendships with other former JW authors and researchers, and was continuing to research the early history of Watchtower for other projects. I don’t think these were completed or published: work on biographies for Russell or Rutherford? Does anyone know?
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PRESIDENTIAL predictions...let the prognosticators have their say!
by Terry inmy only prowess in making predictions stems from my 77-years of life in the united statesgrowing up under president truman, eisenhower, kennedy, nixon, .....etc.
etc.i was a widdle kid sitting in front of a tiny black and white tv set when the very first broadcastsof political conventions, deal-making, debates (nixon vs kennedy), assassinations (jfk, rfk, martin luther king, etc.
) i grew up with duck and cover under my elementary schooldesk, the cold war, the iron curtain, the korean war, the vietnam war and i went to federal prisonas a jw conscientious objector while hippies, flower children, political activists protested and universitystudents were fired up on by troops.i grew up reading newspapers (2 of them).
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slimboyfat
Oh, oh it looks like I was WRONG!
Trump wins !