Unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize they have inherited myths in history as you will find out in that pdf book http://www.biblestudy.org/maturart/indefens.html . One of the best books I've ever read on the subject! Much better than Gerard Gertoux's book which beats around the bush too much. Carl Franklin uses clear and precise English. Gerard is obviously not a native speaker and it's hard to understand what he means sometimes (with his English grammar and his technical information), but all respect to him all the same, very sincere.
So Kristofer, I hope you will see there is more than one side to the story.
inquirer
JoinedPosts by inquirer
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17
The Name Jehovah
by Kristofer ini know the research is out there.
who can educate me on this.
where did it originate from?
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inquirer
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17
The Name Jehovah
by Kristofer ini know the research is out there.
who can educate me on this.
where did it originate from?
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inquirer
I've done some new research on the topic, and I know people will disagree, but... early protestants were influenced by Sephardic Jews, the Masoretes who went to Spain, a very influential group of people regarding this subject. Ashkenazi Jews even know how good they were. People like Wycliffe used the name "Iehovah" in his Bible translation at that time, because Jewish scholars used this particular pronunciation, which they got from Masoretes (like Ben Asher who was a leader of all of this.) For some reason, Wycliffe didn't use the letter "J" back then and used "I" for Jehovah, but THE SOUND WAS THERE. It is a myth that Raymond Martini invented the name Jehovah, because, again, the knowledge was given by the Jewish scholars as said above who got their info from the Masoretes -- Tiberian Jews.
-- highly recommened reading on the subject. -
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The Earliest Trinity Statements
by Amazing1914 in[note: i am not promoting a religion, a church system, nor a set of beliefs.
i am merely reporting history as i find it.
the early, ante-nicene church fathers spent much time fighting heresies.
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inquirer
If people started being Trinitarian in the middle of the second century... God that's a long time! 50 years! Anyone could have changed their beliefs by then. I don't know why you trinitarians can't see that!
Say, leolaia, if you were born in 1956 when the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, and you think about now? Don't you think a lot of things have changed? So many changes have gone by. People's attitudes, multiculturalism, globalization, shopping on the Internet amongst many other things? -
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Is There Any JW Belief That You Still Believe In?
by minimus inwould you have any qualms about taking blood??
do you believe in a paradise earth?
do you think there is only one "truth"?
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inquirer
littletoe,
JWs do have a doctrine of Hell. They just package it up with pandas
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Witty UK humor! :D -
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The Earliest Trinity Statements
by Amazing1914 in[note: i am not promoting a religion, a church system, nor a set of beliefs.
i am merely reporting history as i find it.
the early, ante-nicene church fathers spent much time fighting heresies.
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inquirer
Leolaia,
Like the Trinity broshure, the Watchtower article
reproduced above only tells half the story. Yes, you do not find the
Trinity doctrine spelled out or even presumed in NT and early patristic
sources. As the sources presented by Amazing1914 and I show (particularly Athenagorus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria),
it is not until the second half of the second century where you find
statements expressing explicit trinitarian (or even full-blown
binitarian) ideas.
Inquirer,
Why the hell do you and Amazing 1914, ignore the basic facts of what took place! There is no need to talk about this anymore. I wonder why others like Blondie didn't quote from this article? Maybe others are sick of the issue? Don't know. Doesn't matter... Just a thought.
Amazing1914, I looked up Clements article on wiki... and they don't even know when he was born, so that gives my article even more weight. -
86
The Earliest Trinity Statements
by Amazing1914 in[note: i am not promoting a religion, a church system, nor a set of beliefs.
i am merely reporting history as i find it.
the early, ante-nicene church fathers spent much time fighting heresies.
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inquirer
amazing1914,
First, notice that the Society left out the early Church fathers that I quoted. They claim that the Trinty was not fully developed until the 4th century, which is a bold-faced lie. It was fully taught by 150 to 190 AD. See the quoted Clement of Alexandria I put into my post. That cannot be discounted, simply because the Watchtower says so.
Second, do you ever check Watchtower source references? They often appear to be quoting from the early fathers, when in fact, they are quoting "opinions" about what these Fathers stated.
Third, even when they use direct quotes from the early Fathers, none of these disprove a Trinity. They are lifted from context, and have no direct bearing on God's nature.
I honestly don't have time at the moment to deal with these two Watchtower articles [11/1/91 and 2/1/92]. However, after Wednesday, I will deal with them.
Finally, Inquirer, I wish you could learn how to post in smaller font, with less space in between paragraphs. It is quite simple to do, and it makes your postings a lot easier to read.
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Well, they obviously had different doctrines back then... Those ones the society quotes from is from the LATE second century! Well, according to wikipedia anyway. I'll have to see this Clement of Alexandria bloke some other time... But people had all kinds of doctrines and I said in another post about Paul talking about people preaching "another Jesus."
What I find amazing is that the trinity doctrine was not taught til about 2nd century as you AND leolaia was saying. It's either they did or they didn't teach it "explicitly" as leolaia says.
REMEMBER NOT TIL 150 AD DOES THE TRINITY DOCTRINE DEVELOP INTO THE DOCTRINE WE KNOW TODAY! :) AHH, BLISS! :D :)
I always have to squint my eyes when I read your posts and others on here because it's too small!!!!!!! The default size should be atleast 12 point (or about 3 in metric.) I always have to press ctrl + to get it to the normal size. I can read a little bit with default size 10 size, but when people have a lot to say and get emotional (nothing wrong with that) I have to push ctrl + to get it to normal. You should see the way Danny Haszard posts! There are quite a few on here that don't post with "normal size." The reason why formatting (spaces between the lines) is like that because I use Firefox and refuse to use Internet Explorer while I browse this message board. -
86
The Earliest Trinity Statements
by Amazing1914 in[note: i am not promoting a religion, a church system, nor a set of beliefs.
i am merely reporting history as i find it.
the early, ante-nicene church fathers spent much time fighting heresies.
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inquirer
I FORGOT TO MENTION (CAPITALS FOR EMPHASIS, NOT SHOUTING) THAT I CHECKED THE SOCIETY'S QUOTES BY LOOKING AT WWW.EARLYCHRISTIANWRITINGS.COM AND THEY ARE NOT TELL A FIB! One of their quotes is even from Ignatius who says IAO as the divine name... I double checked that. Gerard Gertoux mentions that in his book. The WTS does have a obsession with the elipses (...) but I did check a few of the quotes here and there yeah... and how could they have believed in the trinity? If Clement was a contemporary of A. John, why would he change his doctrines? Unless he was a traitor.
But with any given case, it's like the issue of the cross... Unless you could go back in time and speak to Apostle John or Paul who wrote part of the INSPIRED SCRIPTURES, and ask them their believe on the trinity, it's all hearsay. And I don't believe the NT puts a trinitarian spin on God. I agree with Spectrum and think to myself "no way in hell would Jesus die on the stake." God's the CEO or manager and Jesus is like an assistant manager (I know from experience assistant managers always do work than managers.) -
86
The Earliest Trinity Statements
by Amazing1914 in[note: i am not promoting a religion, a church system, nor a set of beliefs.
i am merely reporting history as i find it.
the early, ante-nicene church fathers spent much time fighting heresies.
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inquirer
Did the Early Church Teach That God Is a Trinity?
(edit - NO THEY DID NOT! SEE BELOW!!!)
The Didache includes the following confession of faith in the form of a prayer:
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Ignatius did not say that the Son was equal to God the Father in such ways or in any other. Instead, he showed that the Son is in subjection to the One who is superior, Almighty God.
“There is one God, the Almighty, who has manifested Himself by Jesus Christ His Son.” 11
“The Lord [Almighty God] created Me, the beginning of His ways.”12 Similarly, Ignatius said: “There is one God of the universe, the Father of Christ, ‘of whom are all things;’ and one Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord, ‘by whom are all things.’”13 He also writes:
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Polycarp stated:
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, who wrote in the first part of the second century. In his work the Shepherd, or Pastor, does he say anything that would lead one to believe that he understood God to be a Trinity? Note some examples of what he said:
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“This is the revelation given by God to Jesus Christ.” (The Jerusalem Bible) Again, the resurrected Christ in heaven is shown to be entirely separate from God, and the holy spirit is not mentioned. If Jesus were the second person of a Trinity, knowing all things, how could he be “given” a revelation? -
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Is There Any JW Belief That You Still Believe In?
by minimus inwould you have any qualms about taking blood??
do you believe in a paradise earth?
do you think there is only one "truth"?
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inquirer
Yes.
*Jehovah is the only one that's God Almighty.
*Jesus is his spiritual son.
*Literal paradise earth (like how it was in Genesis chapter 1 and 2)
*Use of the name Jehovah as opposed to Yahweh.
*Believe it's the end of the world... But don't want to put a date on it.
*The canon the JW's use like many Protestants, the canon that the Jews use for the Old Testament, based on the Palestinian canon.
*Believe that the New World Translation is an accurate translation.
*Believe that Jesus died on a stake, but disagree with translating it as "torture" in front of stake.
*No hellfire just "eternal nothingness" for unbelievers. Like when you are in a deep sleep at night without a dream.
*Sympathize with JW's for not taking blood with all the advances in medicine it's ridiculous how people force you to use it... but I don't agree it should be mandatory on the individual because I think people should take it if there is no other way (the blood transfustion that is.)
*Religion is a snare and a racket!
AND...
Spectrum. You are my hero. God bless you.
(I watched Passion of the Christ recently and Jesus really depended on his father's help and loved him and looked up to him as someone who CREATED him. :) ) -
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are we free?
by nomoreTRUTHplz ini don't mean this is as a debate, but merely an observation.
i have noticed that a lot (not all) of us post and participate in topics that are nothing but arguements and debates over what should be believed.
i have also been guilty of this, but just began to wonder, are we really free?.
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inquirer
nomoreTRUTHplz,
What a great post! You are absolutely right! But I think people are passionate about what they believe in. This board does a good job in helping people out and exposing the WT. But there are other times we debate issues probably too much at times over things like: the divine name, trinity, creationism vs evolution, does God exists, ex JW gays and so forth. But I think we are all passionate about what we believe here. We all ultimately think that WE are right and we go into great lengths (me included) into why we feel right about such issues that are important to us.
What happens is that topics get repeated because NEW members come to the board. One person (poster a) explains why topic x is wrong and then another person (poster b) explains why they think topic x is right. MOst people will sympathize with poster a but some people (a minority of posters like myself) will side with poster b... You'll see a "flame document" for a thread because everybody has their say. This board is diverse there are many people who are NOW non-religious, or Born Again, or Atheists... some people are STILL JW'S too! So you can see why it gets so busy on here and why debates are common on here. People want a NEW point of view. People ask questions about their faith and want to shrug of JW belief and start over again.
I think it's the "way the cookie crumbles" in a lot of cases. Most people on the board are sincere and want to help others they think are mislead.
Also, this is about RELIGION. No matter what religion you are (Christianity would have to be one of the worse cases) debates are going to arise and in real life (at least in my experience) people don't talk about religion all that much and don't get "spiritually feed." They don't want to go to the library or go online and surf site after site so much because you do go into a "loop" on the Net sometimes and at times you MAY NOT get the answer... you do get that "run around" at times online. So SOME may think think maybe I'll post here and a famous message poster will come up with the answers! But of course others on the thread will give their input because there's "more than one side to the story."