careful

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Posts by careful

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  14

  question from readers: with all the animal sacrifices, wouldnt the temple smell worse than a stockyard?

  by nowwhat? in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  with all the cattle, sheep and others wouldn't they be shitting and peeing all over the place?

  along with the gallons and gallons of blood being drained and then the flesh being burned as well.

  wouldn't the stench be unbearable?.

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  careful

  It would also have smelled like Burger King with all that beef sizzling on the altar. Maybe one smell worked against the other.

  It is good to remember that such was the case in most, if not all, of the other ancient societies. In Homer's Iliad "hactaombs" (the sacrifice of groups of 100 animals, though probably not always to be taken literally at exactly 100) are mentioned regularly (for example, at 1.431-447, 2.306, 4.120). The only way people could eat fresh meat was to slaughter an animal and cook it right away. Since meat was not a regular part of most people's diet, it was offered to the masses at festivals/holidays/celebrations, and these were centered in the temple. The priests were the cooks, their assistants, the slaughter men. It wasn't just the Jews in Jerusalem. If you were an average Syrian, Babylonian, Greek, it was the same story.

  Temples were also the banks since they were the most secure places in a city. Hence the common temple robbers, and the money changers Jesus threw out. Knowledge of the temples of antiquity helps one today appreciate why they were so important.
  
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  12

  What is the vow of poverty

  by Jafox in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i was told by someone that in 2007 two members of the branch committee in greece were removed because they breached the vow of poverty.

  the matter was over a small amount, in the range of a few hundred euro.

  is there a copy of this vow available and how would this be applied here?

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  careful

  Partly on topic was a question I had asked about this matter here, just a few weeks ago:

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/4800253062545408/question-on-special-order-document-implications
  
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  21

  Aid to Bible Understanding - can you help summarise any useful sections?

  by Fernando in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  randall watters presents the fascinating backstory of the "aid book", and the brouhaha surrounding it, in this article:.

  "the watchtower bible and tract society: the critical years 1975-1997".

  so far it seems the project to research and write the "aid to bible understanding" revealed serious doctrinal and institutional flaws that the gb wanted to preserve nonetheless.. it seems what ray franz and his team were learning, and were largely blocked from presenting:.

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  careful

  SBF, a good observation.

  Crazyguy,

  He even helped out on some of the Greek translations of the new updated Septuagint bible that was published a few years ago
  

  Do you mean the revised NWT of 2013? Surely you are not thinking of the translation of the Septuagint done by real scholars in 2007 and published by Oxford, and slightly revised in 2009. That was the first English translation of the Septuagint into English in over a century. Do you think that Reinhard Lengtat "helped out" with that?

  Fernando, I think it is in the old Aid book that I first saw a reference to the translation of the New Testament by George Woosung Wade (1934), an Anglican scholar, trained at Oxford with a doctorate of divinity, and who was a professor of Latin at St. David's College in Lampeter, Wales for 40 years. He was a liberal academic theologically and his NT translation is quite good. The Aid book cites it, if I recall correctly, at Rev. 19:1-6 because Wade used "Jehovah" in his translation of the four instances of "Hallelujah" there. Unfortunately, I never saw this excellent translation used again in any WTS publications. It has a lot to offer beside the use of the divine name at Rev. 19. I suppose it was deemed too liberal by WTS writers, a real shame.
  

  So there is one useful thing in the old Aid book that I can remember.
  
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  7

  Information Disparity

  by doublespeak in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the scriptures reveal that god never takes advantage of the ignorance of anyone.. j.rutherford, jehovah, brooklyn, international bible students association, 1934, p.19.

  would that the oligarchy followed suit.. tom..

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  careful

  Jeremiah 20:7—how does that fit into JFR's theology here?
  
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  10

  the 2013 NWT in Dutch ---- when ??

  by menrov in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  we are almost in 2017 and some 3 to 4 years have passed since the release of the 2013 revised nwt.

  also, i am supposed to believe much money has been spent on rto's.

  and as the end is even closer, i should have access to the "best translation ever" in my own language...how else can i be saved???.

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  careful

  Caminante's comment is quite interesting and revealing. If what he/she reports is true, it provides some info on the time frame it took to produce the revised NWT, namely that it had been in the pipeline for a decade or more before the English version was released. A bit more of the super secrecy is revealed!
  

  
  
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  36

  Noah a Preacher of Righteousness?

  by Spoletta in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  during the watchtower study today, i browsed genesis and looked for evidence of noah ever preaching to anyone.

  from what i could glean from the scriptures, it was a foregone conclusion that noah's family would be it on the ark.

  (unless they towed some rafts behind) my wife says that building the ark could be considered a witness of his faith to the wicked world, but that seems kind of lame to me.. so, should i just assume that god decided not to give anyone else a chance for redemption?

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  careful

  For any who care, the idea of Noah being a preacher was common in the historic milieu that 2 Peter reflects. Josephus reports it (AJ 1.74), and an extensive description of it is in the non-canonical Jewish Sibylline Oracles (1.125-129, 148-198); it's also in numerous rabbinic works (like the one referenced above), and other early Christian authors (1 Clement 7.6; Theophilus, Ad Autol. 3.19; Apoc. Paul 50). Not that the WT writers know this or are allowed to share it, if they do.
  
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  25

  JW employing pre-teens to work religious propaganda phonebank

  by oppostate in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  .

  what do you think about using pre-teens to work religious propaganda phonebank?.

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  careful

  Thanks for the info. I cannot help but wonder how this is connected to their push for child baptism...
  
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  29

  Watchtower April, 2017 Overview

  by Listener in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'll start with the first study article.. this study article deals with vows made to jehovah.

  three main vows are discussed.. 1) your dedication to jehovah.

  we are told that it is not possible to claim that our baptism was not valid .

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  careful

  Sanchy, see my comment on this post, page 2:

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5767108283596800/there-biblical-basis-separation-divorce?page=2&size=10
  
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  29

  Watchtower April, 2017 Overview

  by Listener in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'll start with the first study article.. this study article deals with vows made to jehovah.

  three main vows are discussed.. 1) your dedication to jehovah.

  we are told that it is not possible to claim that our baptism was not valid .

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  careful

  Two thoughts:

  1. Are they attempting to deal with the notion that this increasing number of children who have been baptized the last few years, since they really didn't know what they were doing, should have their baptisms declared invalid? When I was in, there was an occasional re-baptism, most often because the person involved didn't understand what he or she was doing, sometimes having gotten baptized without having gone through the 80 questions first. At some of the big assemblies with 80+ baptismal candidates, some newbies just got in the baptismal line and got dunked.
  

  Perhaps more recently there have already been problems with some Witness parents whose baptized youngsters have gotten in trouble, and such parents have told the local BOE/CO that their kid should not be subject to congo discipline because he/she was baptized without understanding the full implications of what it means. It would not surprise me if this is a cause of the first point in the WT study article: tough luck. A baptism is a baptism, regardless of how young the person was.
  

  2. It will be interesting to see whether the second point regarding a spouse separating b/c their mate learned some of the TTATT and became "apostate" has led or will lead to a new kind of problem. We all remember how many terrible marriages there are in JW land, and how some of those suffering in that situation would go to great lengths to undo their marriage, consulting together and plotting infidelity so as to get a scriptural divorce. Should we find it surprising then if now certain grossly incompatible sufferers are plotting, "Well, you 'go apostate' so that we can get a separation. After some time when we're both free to remarry, you can pretend repentance and they'll let you back in." I can surely picture such a scenario. If so, then down the line the GB and their lackeys will have to address this—in a future WT study article!
  

  
  
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  19

  Regional Kickbacks to WTS for Conventions

  by Simon in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i guess tax payers get to subsidize the conventions, who knew!.

  https://user-cb2rbzy.cld.bz/jehovah-s-witnesses-2017-regional-convention/4.

  no wonder they really push people to book through the congregation rather than privately, directly - it's all about the rebates!.

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  careful

  It surely fits in the trend we see from other sources. Thanks for the post.