Jeffro

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Posts by Jeffro

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  5

  Current Member Stats/Numbers

  by NotFormer in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i remember that the wt used to regularly publish their membership and memorial attendance numbers.

  was that in the watchtower?.

  how would i find the current numbers by country?

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  Jeffro

  https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=Jehovah%27s+Witnesses+by+country
  
• 
  14

  Facts or Biasedness?

  by Ardian in

  1. social
  2. current

  the watchtower and awake have been listed as the most popular magazines.the figures are astonishing.

  i am not sure whether it is based on reality or not.. source: https://tingtopten.com/2020/01/top-10-most-popular-magazines-in-the-world/.

  i have seen the link on many social media networks.

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• 

  Jeffro

  FFGhost:

  How can a single 16 page "magazine" (with maybe 6 actual pages of text after you take away the 2 inch margins and multiple photos and triple-spaced bullet points) be the "most popular"?

  Indeed. The latest Public Edition not only has less than a third of the word count of the last 32-page edition (2012), but with all the whitespace and dumbing down, it’s less than two thirds of the word count of the first 16-page edition.
  
  
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  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

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  Jeffro

  🤦‍♂️
• 
  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  Vidqun:

  He was there as an eyewitness.

  😂 No. He’s wasn’t. Ezra want even born yet in 539 BCE.
• 
  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  🤦‍♂️'What you have' is simply deference to your chosen religious tradition which is not supported by any direct evidence, and is contradicted by direct contemporary evidence.

  The funny thing is, Ezra and Josephus both claim to quote a written decree, which not only isn't verifiable from any contemporary source, and contradicts the contemporary sources, but Josephus inserts a remarkable claim about Cyrus supposedly including mention of the 'prophecy' in his decree, which Ezra doesn't include even though he was much closer to the purported events. This on its own is a glaringly obvious clue to the fact that the claim inserted by Josephus (that Cyrus was supposedly aware of the 'prophecy' from Isaiah) was a tradition made up either by Josephus himself or after Ezra's time at the earliest.

  Vidqun:

  Lot of hearsay there.

  No part of what I said was hearsay (unless you mean the claims made by Ezra and Josephus, but somehow I don't think so). I'm not sure you understand what the word means.
  
• 
  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  Neither of those people is my source, so your attempted false dichotomy is irrelevant. The Cyrus Cylinder, a contemporary document, indicates that various people were repatriated, with particular focus on Mesopotamia and with no specific mention of the Jews. Ezra and Josephus are later sources, and have an inherent bias. No contemporary document shows that Cyrus wrote the statement claimed by Ezra several decades later, nor the interpolated written statement claimed by Josephus several centuries after that. You are the one asserting that Cyrus wrote something that isn’t in any available contemporary source and inconsistently reported only by later Jewish sources.

  Even if it could be demonstrated that Cyrus accredited anything to Yahweh, for which there is no evidence, it would at best indicate that Cyrus simply said what the Jews wanted to hear to placate them. We know Cyrus made decrees benefiting the people of Babylon and crediting their deities, which at the very least contradicts the claim that he recognised the Jews or their deity as unique or special.
• 
  14

  Facts or Biasedness?

  by Ardian in

  1. social
  2. current

  the watchtower and awake have been listed as the most popular magazines.the figures are astonishing.

  i am not sure whether it is based on reality or not.. source: https://tingtopten.com/2020/01/top-10-most-popular-magazines-in-the-world/.

  i have seen the link on many social media networks.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  Something given away for free or sometimes just dumped doesn’t have to be popular. And a 32 (or more recently 16) page magazine made with free labour is not really comparable to magazines with hundreds of pages.
• 
  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  🤦‍♂️ The Jews weren’t the only ones who were allowed to go home and rebuild temples. The claim that the Jews were given special treatment by Cyrus is simply false and your sources for the claim that Cyrus gave the Jews special attention are obviously biased, with no independent corroboration. You put far too much stock in subjective stories.
• 
  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  Fallacy: shifting the burden of proof.

  Later Jewish traditions are not evidence of anything Cyrus did, and the Cyrus Cylinder indicates that Cyrus focused more on Mesopotamian groups including placating the people of Babylon. Repatriation of other captives also occurred as a general policy but no special attention was given to the Jews.
• 
  20

  Did Isaiah even predict Cyrus' name 150 years ago?

  by pokertopia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  did isaiah even predict cyrus' name 150 years ago?.

  there were two types of prophets: individual prophets and court prophets.

  for example, before ahab went to war, 400 court prophets predicted ahab's victory, but michaya, an individual prophet, predicted his defeat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Jeffro

  🤦‍♂️ For a start, the Cyrus Cylinder doesn’t mention the Jews at all let alone suggest they got special treatment.