Leolaia, you will probably be disappointed by Bauckham’s book if you are expecting him to have analysed all these alleged 'intertextual' relationships between the gospels and other ancient documents. This is obviously a pet method for you (its an understandable mindest for a person schooled for so many years in the academic method of having to support everything they say by referring to something else similar), but it is problematic as a proper way of treating the gospels on a number of fronts, only a few of which I'll touch on below.
For instance, most, if not all, of the examples you given are later than the gospels, some much later, particularly “the third and fourth generations of tannaim (c. AD 130-160 and 160-200, respectively) in the Mishnah (c. AD 200), including stories of demon exorcisms ( b. Me'ilah 17 ) and resurrections ( b. 'Abodah Zarah 10b ), again displaying similar time depths as the NT gospels.”
This is anachronism; they are not appropriate as reliable comparisons for measuring the gospels against. They are broadly in the same boat as the Gnostic gospels, all written long after the canon gospels (with the exception perhaps of the gospel of Thomas) and they all contain a lot of what is clearly fiction.
As for this: “The healing stories concerning Emperor Vespasian (dated to his accession year in AD 69) related by Tacitus ( Historia 4.81 ) and Suetonius ( Vespasian 8.7 ) have the same "shallow" time depth attributed by Bauckham to the canonical gospels (i.e. 36 years for Tacitus and 50 years for Suetonius ) and were written by historiographers who had much opportunity and motive to consult eyewitnesses.“ The difference with Emperor Vespasian of course is that he was a pagan, and the pagans had no inhibitions about deifying and mythologizing their heroes, such as Roman emperors. The pagan world was rife with this kind of thing, but the early first century Jewish world had contempt for this practice. The hundreds of earliest disciples who knew Jesus were all Jews, and the Jewish mindset was against this kind of wholesale mythologizing and deifying of humans. This is one of the reasons why it is so remarkable that Christianity got a foothold in early first century Jewish Society; it is why many scholars find it incredulous to believe that Jesus was simply some kind of wise teacher – he must have done much more than just utter a few wise sayings to have such a profound impact on so many Jews.
The other significant difference is that the apostles and other early Jewish disciples acted as a controlling influence on the messages about Jesus. The Jerusalem church particularly had a dominant role and authoritative influence. The apostles, particularly Paul, emphasized that the congregations were following the traditions as handed on to them. Fidelity to the apostolic tradition was stressed. There is not the slightest hint of anything new being created or tolerated. In fact, following strange new teachings and pagan ideas was roundly condemned. Congregations authorized teachers also, as noted in a number of places in Paul’s letters. Unless you can show that the examples you've furnished did in fact originate from actual eyewitnesses (as opposed to being mere 'urban legends' from the start), were repeated by employing deliberate memorization techniques, and were constantly repeated in group settings, thus establishing a corporate accountability to the fidelity of the tradition, then they are clearly not in the same ballpark as the gospels.
It is inconceivable that a young Jewish Rabbi with a few new, pithy teachings could have been so rapidly mythologised within one Jewish generation, within religious groups where there was a strong emphasize on truth, where so many original Jewish eyewitnesses circulated for so many years. It is especially bizarre given that pretty much the majority of the content of the gospels is about miracles. If you take away all the miracles from them you are left with practically nothing. This kind of radical mythologizing takes many generations to occur, and it is only then that it becomes folklore. The gospels were written within a single generation.
Dismissing the gospels as nothing more than rehashed OT intertextualisations is a tempting notion, but it doesn't square with the facts.
I'm sure you'll find Bauckham's book fascinating and no doubt highly provocative.
yaddayadda
JoinedPosts by yaddayadda
-
33
Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!
by yaddayadda inanother eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.
richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.
jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.
-
-
yaddayadda
-
33
Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!
by yaddayadda inanother eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.
richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.
jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.
-
-
yaddayadda
Narkisso: "Little to add, except that Bauckham was even more expected than Dunn to jump on this boat..."
Is that all you have to say Narkissos? Resorting to a cheap ad hominem shot. Most disappointing. -
33
Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!
by yaddayadda inanother eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.
richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.
jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.
-
-
yaddayadda
Elsewhere: "Imagine if no one wrote down anything about WWII, the Holocaust and the use of two nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then today, using only word-of-mouth information, someone started trying to write the history of those events. I guarantee you the result would be terribly in error when compared to what actually happened. Hell, even with written accounts, Nazi documents, photographs and videos, people still try to deny the Holocaust ever even happened. If history can be warped that much in less than 60 years with so much documentation, how can we possibly trust what is in the gospels from over 2000 years ago that were penned at least 80 years after the actual events occurred and then were translated through multiple languages?"
You guarantee that do you Elsewhere? You are completely wrong. If there were no written records of WW2 the many millions of persons who personally experienced it would be able to provide a formidably accurate account of what happened. In fact, a lot of research has been done on the accuracy of peoples memories of events going back to WW2, and it flat contradicts what you. Bauckham touches on this in his book.
What history has been 'warped'? No one but radical fringe groups deny that the holocaust was real. Of course, some people still fervently believe the earth is flat, but that hardly means this fact has been 'warped'.
Like I said, most NT scholars now accept that the gap was only 30 - 60 years, not 'at least 80'. One of the very reasons why nothing was put down in writing for so long was because there were so many eyewitnesses still living who could corrobate the tradition; that along with the oral memorization culture of ancient Palestine.
Why don't you do yourself a favour and read some real scholarship instead of relying on corny websites for your beliefs.
Veradico, your post looks interesting but I found it incoherent and rambling thus difficult to follow. Can you redo it? -
33
Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!
by yaddayadda inanother eminent new testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.
richard bauckhams 2006 book jesus and the eyewitnesses the gospels as eyewitness testimony is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary british gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.
jesus remembered, grand rapids; eerdmans.
-
-
yaddayadda
Another eminent New Testament scholar has come out and declared that traditional form criticism is now obsolete.
Richard Bauckham’s 2006 book ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony’ is the latest in the recent trend of contemporary British gospel scholarship to re-examine many long-held assumptions about the oral tradition behind the gospels which is coming up with some rather startling conclusions.
Bauckham, professor of New Testament studies at the University of Scotland and a fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, has joined fellow British heavyweight scholar James D G Dunn in recently noting major flaws and faulty assumptions of the last 80 or so years of traditional form criticism. Relatively recent research and insights that have shed much light on the nature of ancient oral storytelling - a difficult area of study that has not been adequately treated - has led these British heavyweight scholars to come to some conclusions that will infuriate sceptics.
James D G Dunn’s conclusions have been published in his Book ‘Jesus Remembered’ (2003) and ‘A New Perspective on Jesus – What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed’ (2005). He argues that the form-critical conception of oral tradition operating like successive editions of a literary text suffers from major flaws. It has utterly failed to properly take into account how ancient oral societies worked. Rather, each performance of a tradition is a performance of the tradition as such, not a further development away from the last performance. There are no layers of tradition, only various performances, differing with strict limits where there was a balance between continuity and flexibility. Specific aspects of the oral tradition were considered inviolable, while other specific aspects can be varied to a degree. This means the story cannot change into another. It’s basic features are fixed. Although there is clearly a literary interdependency between the gospels, the relatively minor variations and ‘contradictons’ between them are a reflection of the natural variation of oral story-telling. I outlined some highlights from Dunn’s 2005 book in an earlier thread on this forum, which can be found here.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/120128/1.ashx [could someone kindly make this clickable]
In his latest book, Bauckham emulates Dunn by giving the subject of the oral tradition a thorough going over that similarly purges certain erroneous views about the oral tradition. He draws on a vast body of academic research to distil the conclusions of recent scholarship and presents a new paradigm for treating the gospels.
Expanding on the recent research of Swedish NT scholar Samuel Byrskorg that examines the gospels in light of ancient oral history, Bauckham comes up with conclusions that echo Dunn but that even more forcefully argue in favour of the essential reliability of the gospels. Here are some of Bauckham’s main conclusions:
· The form critics viewed the gospels as a kind of folklore that developed over many generations. This is no longer tenable. Even the folklorists themselves have abandoned the ‘romantic’ idea of the folk as collectively the creator of folk traditions in favour of recognizing the roles of authoritative individuals in interaction with the community.
A. The many original disciples (and especially the apostles), together with authorized ‘tradents’ in the congregations, acted to preserve the essential accuracy of the tradition in the network of congregations during the formative years of Christianity.
B. The time span between Jesus and the gospels is much shorter than the periods of time spanned by the traditions studied by folklorists. It is now accepted by most scholars that the gospels were written within one generation following Christ’s death. This fact alone seriously undermines the form critics prime assumptions.
C. The form critics assumed that the Jesus traditions quickly lost their link with the original eyewitness testimonies. They felt that the original accounts were soon absorbed into a collective and changing tradition. This view is no longer tenable given the growing body of new research into the nature and characteristics of oral communities. The upshot of this research into ancient orality is that oral community storytelling was a lot more fixed and stable than was previously assumed.
D· Ancient historians sought out and valued eyewitness testimony above all other sources and were convinced that true history could be written only while events were still within living memory. The gospels bear all the hallmarks of the writers having used this same historiographic ‘best practice’.
E. The form critics (mainly from Bultmann onwards) assumed that the tradition was freely created and modified according to the needs of the community and that the gospels represent the end product of an anonymous community tradition. This is soundly refuted by Bauckham (drawing on a wide range of work by other contemporary scholars). The evidence supports Luke’s (Luke 1: 1-3) and Papias’ declarations that they were recording what they had received from first-hand eyewitness testimony. Viewing the gospels as largely ‘eyewitness testimony’ (as opposed to anonymous evolving community traditions), and acknowledging that they were recognized by the early Christians as such, must now be accepted as the correct model for considering the gospels.
Bauckham’s new book is essential reading for anyone interested in leading edge research into the origins of the gospels.
The following is a brief essay style outline on the oral tradition in light of some recent scholarship.
Many liberal scholars maintain that in the decades between the death of Jesus (approximately 33 A.D.) and when the bible books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (“the gospels”) were written (considered by most modern scholars to be between 60 - 90 A.D), the truth about Jesus became corrupted. They claim that in this period of about 30 to 60 years, when the stories were passed on verbally, the ‘historical’ Jesus disappeared under a quagmire of elaboration and myth. The Jesus Seminar, a recent forum of many liberal scholars that received much media attention, put it this way: “Much of the lore recorded in the gospels and elsewhere in the Bible is folklore, which means that it is wrapped in memories that have been edited, deleted, augmented, and combined many times over many years.” If they’re right, then perhaps most of what we read in the gospels never happened and Christianity has no sound historical basis. Just how carefully, then, was the oral tradition about the words and deeds of Jesus transmitted in the early church? Does the evidence indicate whether or not it was corrupted before the Gospels were written? I will outline some reasons, particularly in light of some recent conclusions by scholars in this field, for contending that the original oral accounts about the person, deeds and words of Jesus (the ‘oral tradition’) did not become substantially corrupted in the period before the gospels were written.
Something that gives credence to the claim that the accounts about Jesus remained true during the oral transmission process is the extent and nature of the predominantly oral, memorizing culture that the early disciples lived in. Some prominent New Testament scholars, such as emeritus lightfoot professor of Divinity James D.G Dunn (2003, 2005) and professor of New Testament studies and a fellow of the British Academy, Richard Bauckham (2006) have recently argued that the oral dimension behind the gospels has not been treated adequately by most twentieth century scholars and as a result the last eighty five years of traditional form criticism (the method of analyzing the gospels by deconstructing them in an attempt to rediscover the original kernel of meaning) has suffered from significant flaws (Dunn, 2005, p 35, 42) and is now effectively destroyed (Bauckham, 2006, p 246- 249). But what new insights have led such scholars to these provocative conclusions? I will outline just a few:
Showing how extensive was the scope of the oral culture the earliest disciples lived in, research professor of New Testament studies Darrell Bock states: “If the role of oral tradition was important to the ancients in general, it was especially important to Jewish culture” (1995, p.79). As products of an oral culture, the disciples would have been adept at hearing, remembering, and passing on stories accurately, as distinguished professor of the New Testament Craig Blomberg confirms: “the almost universal method of education in antiquity, and especially in Israel, was rote memorization, which enabled people accurately to recount quantities of material far greater than all of the Gospels put together” (1992, p. 294). Jesus was regarded as a Rabbi and as such it would have been natural for his disciples to memorize their master’s words (Gerhardsson, 1998, 134-135). But oral memorisation techniques were not just limited to Rabbi/disciple relationships, as Bauckham emphasizes: “the actual methods of oral transmission used by the rabbis were not peculiar to them, but were in fact the common educational methods, even at elementary level, of the ancient world. Rainer Riesner’s work has particularly made this apparent.” (2006, p251). This means it wasn’t only the eyewitness disciples of Jesus who employed memorising techniques, but those persons who converted in large numbers after Pentecost (33A.D) and formed congregations would also have been concerned to accurately recall and transmit what they heard in the decades before the gospels were written. Furthermore, some of the traditions about Jesus were evidently passed on in forms that made them especially easy to remember and accurately recount. Australian academic, Dr Paul Barnett, states that “Much of [Jesus’] teaching is cast in poetic form, employing alliteration, paronomasia, assonance, parallelism and rhyme. According to R.Riesner, 80 percent of Jesus’ teaching is cast in poetic form.” (2005, p113-114). Some of Jesus’ disciples may also have written private notes during his lifetime, a practice found in some Jewish religious groups of the time. (Bauckham, 2006, p252; Gerhardsson, 1998, p195).
In addition to the oral, memorization culture the early disciples lived in, another important factor is that the recollections about Jesus were repeated in large group (community) settings where the original, eye-witness apostles and disciples were active. Firstly, a foremost characteristic of ancient oral ‘communal memory’ is that it was not prone to radical change, as in a game of ‘Chinese whispers’. New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey (1991 & 1995), who spent thirty years researching Middle Eastern oral societies, proposed what he called an “informal controlled” (1991, p34-54) model as the best explanation for how the process of oral transmission would have worked amongst the early Christian communities. In this process, there was some flexibility (informal aspect) in the retelling of oral stories but a stable core (controlled aspect) was always repeated. Bauckham notes that “in this model it is the community that exercises control to ensure that the traditions are preserved faithfully.” and “What is important here is…that specific aspects of the tradition are considered inviolable, while other specific aspects can be varied to a degree. This means that the story cannot change into another. Its basic features are fixed.” (2006, p.255 -256). The significance of this in assessing the historicity of the gospels is summed up by Dunn as follows: “Its variability, the oral principle of “variation within the same,” is not a sign of degeneration or corruption. Rather, it puts us directly in touch with the tradition in its living character, as it was heard in the earliest Christian groups and churches...” (2005, p.125). The oral accounts about the words and deeds of Jesus would also have been etched into the hearers’ memories through repeated retellings, providing a kind of collective recollection and accountability that would have made it difficult for substantial departures from the original to later creep in. In this regard, Bauckham notes “frequent rehearsal…is an important element in the preservation of memories” (2006, p.323).
Additionally, there were numerous eyewitnesses circulating in the earliest church groups who would have acted to preserve the faithfulness of the original messages. This was strongly emphasized by British scholar Vincent Taylor as far back as 1933:
“…the influence of eyewitnesses on the formation of the tradition cannot possibly be ignored. The one hundred and twenty at Pentecost did not go into permanent retreat; for at least a generation they moved among the young Palestinian communities, and through preaching and fellowship their recollections were at the disposal of those who sought information...” (Taylor, 1933, p.41-43).
Dunn echoes the same point: “Nor should we forget the continuing role of eyewitness tradents, of those recognized from the first as apostles or otherwise authoritative bearers of the Jesus tradition” (2003, p.173). Bauckham puts it even more forcefully: “…the traditions were originated and formulated by named eyewitnesses, in whose name they were transmitted and who remained the living and active guarantors of the traditions.” (2006, p.290). Furthermore, Swedish scholar Samuel Byrskog, in his book ‘Story as History – History as Story’, forcefully argues that the writers of the gospels used the same historiographic best practices employed by ancient historians such as Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus and Tacitus, particularly in how they relied on the living testimony of eyewitnesses above all other sources. Bauckham concurs with Byrskog, noting that these ancient historians considered that “good history had to be contemporary history, written in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses” (Bauckham, 2006, p.310).
If the conclusions of these scholars are correct, this ‘eyewitness’ factor presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to those who maintain that the gospels represent a hopelessly corrupted version of the real Jesus.
References
Bailey, K. (1991 & 1995) Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels, ARTICLE Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991), and Middle Eastern Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels, (Expository Times 106 (1995).
Blomberg, C.L. (1992). Gospels (Historical Reliability), in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press.
Bock, D.L. (1995). The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex? in Jesus Under Fire, eds. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.
Barnett, P. (2005). The Birth of Christianity; The First Twenty Years, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Byrskog. S. (2002), Story as History – History as Story, WUNT 123; Tubingen: Mohr, 2000; reprinted Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Dunn, J.D.G, (2003). Jesus Remembered, Grand Rapids; Eerdmans.
Dunn, J.D.G (2005). A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed, Grand Rapids: Baker.
Funk, R. and the Jesus Seminar (19980, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Gerhardsson, B. (1998). Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, Grant Rapids: Eerdmans.
Miztal, B.A. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering. Philadelphia: Open University.
Tayor, V. (1933). The Formation of the Gospel Tradition,. London: Macmillan. -
27
Article - Does the Witness stance on WAR prove they are the true religion?
by jwfacts inmany jws believe they are the only religion that doesn't go to war and hence the only true religion.
i am working on an article at http://jwfacts.com/index_files/war.htm to show that this is not valid reasoning, and would love any comments.
despite being neutral in war, jehovah's witnesses are not pacifists.
-
-
yaddayadda
For all of Jehovah's Witnesses faults, I have to side with Proplog on this one. They are hypocritical for their harsh judgmentalism, but their neutrality in times of war is most commendable. Its one of the few things I think JW's should be given a bit of credit for, no matter how much you despise them.
Attempts to justify Christians killing during wartime are always very weak. They always resort a lot of tenuous scriptural arguments and rationalisations.
If you want to undermine JW's claim to being the true religion through their not going to war, then do so by positive arguments, eg, there are many Christian individuals and a few other smaller denominations that refused to take up arms also. But arguments that try and justify war are obscene. -
7
Table of who???
by Core88 inhi everyone here is something i think is wrongly translated in the nw bible, and it bothers me.
you cannot be drinking the cup of jehovah and the cup of demons; you cannot be partaking of the table of jehovah and the table of demons.1 cor.
10:21, nw.
-
-
yaddayadda
Very good research!
"The more I really look at the New Testament the more clearly it becomes that the writers where more or less teaching that Jesus is God"
Not at all. The synoptic gospels in particular give no evidence for such a conclusion. The NT writers are, however, clearly of the view that Jesus is God's divine son and is worthy of worship and reverence of a type similar to that which was formerly exclusively given to the one God, Jehovah. The earliest form of Christianity was strictly monotheistic - but it took on a binitarian shape through accommodating worship (of a sort) of Jesus along with God the Father. It does not mean that Jesus has eclipsed his heavenly Father (God) or that God has suddenly metamorphasied into three persons; rather, it means that Jesus can be given worshipful reverence, not as God, but as the majestic Lord of all creation who is now sitting alongside God. -
15
Is the GB "Christ"?
by Doug Mason inwhere in scripture does the gb get the idea of being anointed?
jesus warned his disciples to watch out for the deceivers (matt 24: 4) who would falsely point to wars, famines, and earthquakes (verses 6 and 7) as the sign of the end of the age (verse 3).
at the same time, jesus told his disciples that these deceivers would claim to be christ (verse 5), which means anointed one.
-
-
yaddayadda
It is quite disturbing that it seems likely that this old 'mystery' teaching is about to be revived at the 2007 DCs. It should be an alarm signal to those few JW's remaining that actually pay close attention to what Jesus said. Specifically Matthew 24: 23-26:
"Then if anyone says to you, 'Look! Here is the Christ,' or, 'There!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders so as to mislead, if possible, even the chosen ones. Look! I have forewarned you. Therefore, if people say to you, 'Look! He is in the wilderness,' do not go out; 'Look! He is in the inner chambers,' do not believe it."
JW's should have a very serious think about Jesus' words here if the proclamation is about to be made that the GB and the 'faithful slave' are 'the Christ' together with Jesus. -
86
Talk on Apostates
by IslandBrother inhave you ever walked on the beach and tried following another persons footprints; matching your own steps with them as exactly as possible?
by calling ourselves christians, we have indicated our desire to do just that, to follow closely in the footsteps of christ.
have you ever noticed though that on a crowded beach, , there were several sets of footprints, many of them may look alike.
-
-
yaddayadda
Charles Taze Russell would be summarily disfellowshipped for apostasy if he was a JW today.
-
11
New Jerusalem 607 B.C.E. web Site
by jdough inthere is a new web site devoted to the false claim by jehovah's witnesses that jerusalem was destroyed in 607 b.c.e.
please feel free to link to the site.
http://www.geocities.com/jerusalem607/
-
-
yaddayadda
All creeds that hinge on the 607 chronology would have to go, or be completely reinterpreted. This would seriously undermine the WTS's claim to have been appointed by Christ over all his 'belongings' in 1918-19.
Although it would damage the Society's authority, such a change would not affect one iota the Society's core doctrines (no trinity, no immortal soul, resurrection of the dead back to earth, 1000 reign over a paradise earth, etc). All JW's are utterly convinced of these doctrines, and so most would remain loyal to the organisation no matter what happened re their 1914 chronology.
This is the real 'concept' that keeps JW's loyal to the WTS, ie, the 'concept' that only they can be the true religion because only they teach genuine, primitive, unadulterated true Christianity that is free from Babylonish false doctrines. -
27
Will the change to the Watchtower be followed by a change to the meetings?
by yaddayadda ini expect that a significant change to the meetings is on the horizon, most probably in the form of a shift of the bookstudy from a weeknight to a condensed saturday morning version.
some congregations already hold bookstudy groups on saturday mornings.
a universal change to this for the whole organisation make senses as it would help resolve a number of growing problems for the society, specifically, meeting attendance is clearly diminishing at the rate of knots in the western world, many elders are burning out and resigning because they cannot cope with all the pressure heaped up on them that so many meetings in no small measure contributes towards, and magazine 'sales' are apparently down and such a change would work in very well with the upcoming new change to the watchtower magazine in january 2008. .
-
-
yaddayadda
Please read my posts again. I'm predicting a foreseeable SHIFT in the day/time for the bookstudy, not an elimination of it.