HeyThere:
The New NWT also has several chapters removed as well without anyone noticing...crazy stuff!
Sure. If by 'several chapters', you mean 12 verses from John and 12 verses from Mark.
Posts by Jeffro
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69What Happened to the Religion I Left in 1995?
by JoshJeffries injosh here, new to the board.
glad to know this site is here.. i would not be writing this if it were not 2014. i was a ministerial servant and regular pioneer who left the jehovahs witnesses back in 1995/96, around that time.
i left suddenly, didnt fade away, just left when something clicked one day in my head during the morning shower and made me realize this religion wasnt true.
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Jeffro
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75
Anyone else notice the new Terms of Use on jw.org?
by leaving_quietly ini first noticed it today... slides up at the bottom.
i wonder why they felt the need to do this?
this is just silly for a religious website..
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Jeffro
zed is dead:
They are obviously not talking about their logo, because their copyright request was denied.
Logos aren't generally protected by copyright. They are trademarked.
The JW.ORG trademark was denied because the site provides services (streamed audio and video) similar to those of JW Player.
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75
Anyone else notice the new Terms of Use on jw.org?
by leaving_quietly ini first noticed it today... slides up at the bottom.
i wonder why they felt the need to do this?
this is just silly for a religious website..
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Jeffro
pixel:
How would this affect if I copy/paste from a document? Is there a way they will know?
The terms of use on the site don't (and in practical terms, can't) preclude fair use, which includes copying text for the purposes of criticism or review. As is the case with all copyrighted material, you can freely copy (and publish) portions of their material sufficient to demonstrate the point of your own accompanying commentary.
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75
Anyone else notice the new Terms of Use on jw.org?
by leaving_quietly ini first noticed it today... slides up at the bottom.
i wonder why they felt the need to do this?
this is just silly for a religious website..
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Jeffro
steve2:
I can see it's time to bring out the smelling salts again.
There's nothing remarkable about a website having terms of use, particularly around the issue of accessing downloadable items that are copyrighted. It falls under the umbrella of intellectual property rights that most countries have legislative policies and laws on. Those who make use of such terms and conditions are required BY LAW to clearly publicise them to minimize inadvertent breaches and as an act of goodwill ( i.e., not be subject to charge of entrapment as in not warning about copyright infringements then suing a party for doing so.)
Now, please take a few nice deep breaths.Sure, it's fairly typical to have terms of use. But most web sites don't have a brightly coloured box sliding in to view drawing attention to their terms of use. That's quite odd.
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100
Can anyone disprove 607 BCE date using only the NWT and WT literature?
by Bart Belteshassur ini haven't come across any arguement that does not involve secular history and external references.
in fact the wt can not get to 607 bce without using external sources as in knowing that they need to get back from 1914 ce to 607 bce, and botching an argument using an external date as reference to create their start point at 537 bce.. i realize that to get the final date we must provide a fixed figure from somewhere which can only be a historical source, but the objective would be to disprove the wt flim flam.
once that is achieve we can use which ever fixed historical point they wish to chose.
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Jeffro
AnnOMaly:
??? I hope we are going with an approach that tries to harmonize ancient Jewish accounts of history with other historical sources. What has the subject of 'inspiration' to do with anything?
It was just a dig at the typical apologist way of 'explaining' Bible stories, not yours.
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100
Can anyone disprove 607 BCE date using only the NWT and WT literature?
by Bart Belteshassur ini haven't come across any arguement that does not involve secular history and external references.
in fact the wt can not get to 607 bce without using external sources as in knowing that they need to get back from 1914 ce to 607 bce, and botching an argument using an external date as reference to create their start point at 537 bce.. i realize that to get the final date we must provide a fixed figure from somewhere which can only be a historical source, but the objective would be to disprove the wt flim flam.
once that is achieve we can use which ever fixed historical point they wish to chose.
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Jeffro
AnnOMaly:
If Josephus wrongly assumed that 1 Esdras 2's 'Artaxerxes' was Cambyses, how can you use his mistake as support for your position that Ezra 4's 'Artaxerxes' = Bardiya, or indeed that Ezra's 'Ahasuerus' and 'Artaxerxes' have to refer to kings between Cyrus and Darius? It doesn't follow.
I do not use Josephus as the basis for my conclusion. It just happens to say something similar.
How can it be neither? You are arguing for the first scenario, believing that Cambyses and/or Bardiya were also known as Artaxerxes or Ahasuerus (circularly arguing on nothing more than speculation or assumption). You can't point your finger at my reasoning, claiming it is circular because of favoring the 'out of sequence' solution, when your own reasoning is patently globoid.
I already explained that. The author of Ezra/1 Esdras (whichever was first) could have used the wrong throne name (which doesn't identify a specific king) but known which individual and period they referred to. This does not require that the king was broadly known as the other name. The author of E[z/sdr]a[/s] could simply have confused the names, just like Josephus does. Or he could have jumbled events from kings from both periods. Or he could have made the whole thing up about the letters. (How did the author of E[z/sdr]a[/s] get the letters? Are we going with the 'inspired' [aka 'magic', aka superstitious nonsense] theory?)
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100
Can anyone disprove 607 BCE date using only the NWT and WT literature?
by Bart Belteshassur ini haven't come across any arguement that does not involve secular history and external references.
in fact the wt can not get to 607 bce without using external sources as in knowing that they need to get back from 1914 ce to 607 bce, and botching an argument using an external date as reference to create their start point at 537 bce.. i realize that to get the final date we must provide a fixed figure from somewhere which can only be a historical source, but the objective would be to disprove the wt flim flam.
once that is achieve we can use which ever fixed historical point they wish to chose.
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Jeffro
Bart Belteshassur
Jeffro - Can you give me a reference in Josephus were he equates Cambyses to Artaxerxes
Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, Chapter 2. Compare Ezra chapter 4. Josephus equates Cambyses with the 'Artaxerxes' of Ezra chapter 4. He doesn't say that Cambyses was the person who we now call Artaxerxes (I, II, III, IV or V).
I can only find two refs, one is Artaxerxes I, and he later refs another Artaxerxes which is either II, or III?
The 'Artaxerxes' in Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, Chapter 6 is actually Xerxes I, during the time of Esther.
The "another Artaxerxes" in Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, Chapter 7 is Artaxerxes I, when Eliashib was high priest.
The Artaxerxes in Against Apion, Book I is also Artaxerxes I, after Xerxes I.
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27
Did the organization admit declining growth and stagnation in today's watchtower?
by kneehighmiah indid anyone catch this quote?
"over seven and a half million witnesses of jehovah really have found him and they truly love him.".
why are they no longer touting "nearly 8 million" witnesses?
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Jeffro
steve2:
Some good work Jeffro. Could you clarify which aspects are what actually happens in counting publishers and which aspects intelligent guesswork. Otherwise, it's hard to know how helpful the tables are.
The 'congregations' and hence the specific figures used are hypothetical. However, it is not difficult to verify that the mechanisms are thosed used by JWs to count 'members', none of which is guesswork.
JWs count 'publishers', based on monthly 'Field Service Reports'.
These things increase the number of 'publishers':
- JW children becoming unbaptized publishers (baptism does not increase membership)
- New recruits becoming unbaptized publishers
- Inactive JWs starting to report preaching again
These things decrease the number of 'publishers':
- Death
- JWs failing to report preaching
- Being disfellowshipped
- Disassociating
Which element are you calling into question?
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27
Did the organization admit declining growth and stagnation in today's watchtower?
by kneehighmiah indid anyone catch this quote?
"over seven and a half million witnesses of jehovah really have found him and they truly love him.".
why are they no longer touting "nearly 8 million" witnesses?
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Jeffro
Ocean1111:
In reality JWs are probably below 7 million if the real numbers were known, and the real contraction data was published.
The number of 'publishers' is probably accurate, more or less. The way JWs count membership is skewed towards artificially inflating their growth rather than their membership.
Consider the diagram below for a couple of hypothetical congregations. Entries in blue indicate situations that increase counted membership. Entries in red indication situations that reduce counted membership.
Both congregations start with 80 people attending their services. Even when not much happens in a congregation to affect membership - in this case each congregation has one child born, and one child becomes a 'publisher' (this has no direct equivalent in churches that count all attendees) - the JW congregation reports higher growth.
A couple of years later, one year has a few other things happen in the hypothetical congregations:
In this case, a JW child becomes a publisher, 3 new converts are made, 1 person dies, 1 is born, 1 becomes 'active' again (maybe handing out a few leaflets advertising the website), 1 becomes 'inactive', and 2 'disassociate'. The net gain in both cases is 1 member. Yet the JW congregation reports higher growth.
Even when there is a net loss, so long as some born-in JWs become 'publishers', the JW congregation generally reports higher growth (in this case, a smaller loss) than a church that reports all attendees.
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100
Can anyone disprove 607 BCE date using only the NWT and WT literature?
by Bart Belteshassur ini haven't come across any arguement that does not involve secular history and external references.
in fact the wt can not get to 607 bce without using external sources as in knowing that they need to get back from 1914 ce to 607 bce, and botching an argument using an external date as reference to create their start point at 537 bce.. i realize that to get the final date we must provide a fixed figure from somewhere which can only be a historical source, but the objective would be to disprove the wt flim flam.
once that is achieve we can use which ever fixed historical point they wish to chose.
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Jeffro
AnnOMaly:
Let's say the neighbors knew who the new boss was very quickly, by mid-July. They would have to meet up and confer with everyone concerned (Ezra 4:7-10), compose and translate a letter,
They had already sent complaints to the previous king. Why would further 'conference' be required? The scribe could just write substantially what they'd previously written to 'Ahasuerus'.
send the letter to (presumably) the Persian capital Susa, allow time for the Persians to dig around the archives for historical information on the Judean kingdom, allow time for the Persians to compose a reply, have it sent back to the local Samaritans' or neighboring peoples' officials and have it read out to them before rushing over to Jerusalem to implement the order.
Or Badiya already didn't like the Jews and lied about the research. Or the research had been done during Cambyses' reign. It's not really clear why the writer of Ezra (or 1 Esdras) would have in their possession a letter sent by their enemies to Persia's king and the Persian king's response to their enemies anyway, so it's possible that some or all of the content of either letter was simply made up. There's many instances in the Bible where conversations - even private conversations among enemies - are simply made up where the writer could not possibly have been party to the conversation.
Bardiya was dead by the end of September. Soon after Jerusalem got the reply, he'd be history. His order to stop building could hardly be enforced long-term, so why did the Jews wait to finish repairing the city and its walls until (the next) Artaxerxes' 20th year - 78 years - which made Nehemiah depressed - especially if you believe Darius gave the go-ahead to rebuild the city?
Maybe they were just lazy. Apparently they only did any rebuilding in ernest when there was an order to do so. I'm not sure that Nehemiah's depression would be a particularly great motivator to Jerusalem's populace.
