Posts by Jeffro

23

"The Truth"

by Ding in

we all know that jws consider the wt religion to be "the truth" and refer to it as such.. granted, that phrase is used repeatedly in the literature and from the platform.. but it's obvious that much of what the organization used to require jws to teach house-to-house as important truths--even within our own lifetimes--has been abandoned.

it's been replaced by "new light" and "refined understanding.

what's meant by "the 1914 generation" is a prime example.. in fact, i think it would be hard to find another religion that has changed so many of its teachings, especially in such a short period of time.. so why do jws still believe their religion to be "the truth"?.

Jeffro

Following is a piece I wrote about their use of "the truth" in 2010...

In this thread I'm going to analyse, word-by-word, a basic expression typical of JWs - "I know it is the truth" - to indicate how such a simple expression is in fact a manipulative method of self-indoctrination, and to demonstrate how every word in JW cliches usually carries some jargonistic meaning for them.

I know it is the truth...
When someone affirms something with "I", they internalise it (or 'make the truth their own'). Over time, any affront to the internalised concept becomes an attack on their own ego. Any negative comment about JW beliefs or activities becomes something they take very personally, reinforcing the 'us vs. them' attitude already fostered by the religion.

I know it is the truth...
JWs don't 'know' their beliefs are truth, because there is no actual proof to support the premises of their 'faith'. Like members of any religion, they *believe* they have the truth. Using the word 'know' is a convenient thought-terminating cliche to avoid actually rationally analysing what they believe.

I know it is the truth...
Many JWs only really know the fundamentals of what 'it' actually is that they believe, and quite a few even have trouble explaining those. Many 'qualified ministers' among JWs don't have a clear understanding of how they establish 1914 as the end of the 'Gentile Times', much less about 'Ezekiel's temple vision' or 'Jehovah's celestial chariot'. But they will happily say that 'whatever they believe' is 'truth'.

I know it is the truth...
JWs believe that whatever they are *currently* taught is definitely true. Things that 'were' true aren't necessarily true anymore, though they were previously taught as absolutely and unqualifiedly true before. And things that were once 'true', and then *weren't* 'true' anymore could become 'true' again at the turn of a Watchtower page, at which point the new 'truth' was always 'true', even employing historical revisionism to back up claims of what was 'always' true. E.g. predicting 1914 as the end of the 'Gentile Times' rather than the beginning of Armageddon.

I know it is the truth...
JWs believe there is an absolute religious truth. Unlike plain statements of fact such as 2 + 2 = 4, which is true unless the plain definitions of 'two', 'plus', 'equals', and 'four' are fundamentally altered, statements of belief based on scriptures that can be interpreted in various ways, often from accounts that are vague, spurious, or patently absurd, are clearly not absolute truth.

I know it is the truth...
The JW term 'truth' as used in expressions such as 'I know it is the truth' means more than the basic sense of the word. It is employed as a proper noun, Truth™, to represent whatever happens to be 'truth' at the time, whether the individual actually knows all the particular 'truths' or not. It is used to represent not only their body of doctrines, but also their community itself.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

I already explained why that fact invalidated your question. But thanks for quoting part of my sentence out of context.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

Anony Mous:

The date of 607 by the WTBTS is only reached by divining/Kabbalah from 1914 (the tail wagging the dog), and then adapting the rest of the timeline to agree with the preconceived notion that 1914 was the beginning of time.

Russell adopted his chronology from Millerism and made predictions about 1914 many years before that year, though none of what he predicted corresponds to what actually happened in that year. His selection of 606 BCE was based on counting 70 years from 536 BCE when he believed the Jews arrived in Judea. (Various Adventist groups selected dozens of years as the end point of the invented 2,520 years, and Russell wasn’t even the first to guess 1914.) They changed it to 607 BCE in 1943. They don’t say anything at all about 1914 being the ‘beginning of time’.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

Earnest:

The article I referred to which indicated that carbon-dating was not reliable at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem was in The Economist of December 18, 2021 which I copied in full in an earlier post.

I didn’t read all the comments in the thread. I was referring more generally to how far back carbon dating is reliable. Interesting, though there are methods that can assist with more accurate readings during that span. But carbon dating isn’t necessary for determining Neo-Babylonian chronology (for our purposes), which is one of the best documented periods in antiquity.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

Earnest:

That margin of error also renders inconsequential the selection of 586/587 instead of 607! However, the date of Jerusalem's destruction is irrelevant to geomagnetic dating as it is used as an anchor as the majority of scholars accept the date 586 as reliable.

Huh? “70-100” suggest an error margin of plus/minus 15 years so a difference of one year for the base date is trivial. But it’s not clear why you would say the base date used is irrelevant though.

23

Is There Life On Mars?

by LoveUniHateExams in

no, i'm not talking about the david bowie song, i'm asking does life exist on mars?.

opportunity rover (the one before the present one) took photos of strange, puffball-like sphericals seemingly sprouting on the martian surface.. these photos aren't conclusive evidence but it is an exciting area to investigate.. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9546225/scientists-claim-evidence-fungi-red-planet.html .

Jeffro

Did any real newspapers run this? Daily Mail is well known for publishing misleading or outright false sensationalist nonsense.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

Earnest:

I remember reading an article about this at the time and was excited about an alternative to carbon dating the destruction of Jerusalem as that's not very reliable during that period.

Even the Watch Tower Society acknowledges the reliability of carbon dating for that period (though it incorrectly claims that it is not reliable for samples older than 3500 years). Awake!, 22 November 1981, page 15:

Since we have no way of knowing how intense cosmic rays were in past ages, we are wise to accept carbon-14 dates only for the period for which the clock has been calibrated with historical materials, back to about 3,500 years ago. Older than that, they may be increasingly inaccurate.

Carbon dating can be reliable to around 50,000 years, setting aside errors that can be introduced due to corrupted samples or by not taking into consideration the environment of the sample.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

Fisherman:

What results does the magnetic dating method yield using 607 instead of 586? How does it falsify 607?

The initial assertion in this thread that the method 'confirms 586' was a misrepresentation of the source material, so your question isn't really valid.

Aside from that, the discrepancy between secular history and Watch Tower Society dogma doesn't remain at 20 years, but diverges to a difference of 68 years at the beginning of the Divided Kingdom.

Using the new dating method, they were able to confirm the destruction of four sites by Hazael around 830 BCE, but Watch Tower Society chronology requires that those events happened around 890 BCE. The method also determined that a fifth site was likely associated with an attack by Shoshenq "70-100 years" before 830 BCE (consistent with my reckoning of that event in 925 BCE), though Watch Tower Society chronology would require that that happened in 993 BCE. (Also note that the range of "70-100" years indicates a margin of error that renders inconsequential the selection of 586 instead of 587 for the fall of Jerusalem for their purposes.)

Additionally, the dating method confirmed that parts of Judea remained populated until decades after the destruction of Jerusalem, which contradicts the superstitious hyperbole that all of Judea was desolated for the entire period.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

Fisherman:

The wt publishes support of their interpretation in the wt online library

hahahahahahaha 😂

spoken by Jeremiah

Still no. The portion from Leviticus was not ‘spoken by Jeremiah’. Nor did Jeremiah write Chronicles.

88

New method to absolutely date Fall of Jerusalem.

by waton in

for what it is worth to those interested.

1914.. tel-aviv university.

"biblical military campaigns reconstructed using geomagnetic field data.

Jeffro

2 Kings 24:12 and 2 Kings 25:8 identify sieges in Nebuchadnezzar’s 8th and 19th years (counting his accession year as his first year). Jeremiah 52:28, 29 provide accession-year references to the same events as Nebuchadnezzar’s 7th and 18th years, and the earlier siege on Jerusalem was from late 598 BCE to early 597 BCE, ending before Nisan. Babylonian records confirm events for Nebuchadnezzar’s early years of reign including the siege in his 7th year, using Nisan-based accession dating. Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year was 605 BCE, so it is simple arithmetic to confirm that his 7th year (not counting accession year) began in 598 BCE and his 18th year (not counting accession year) began in 587 BCE, not 586.