In a way I'm nostalgic about my upbringing and heritage as a JW. I often dream at night about the Kingdom Hall, conventions, my father conducting a WT study or the sort. But as there is nothing about JWism that I agree with, I could never (want to) go back.
Posts by Cygnus
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13
Poor medical service and other rant-worthy issues
by kwintestal ini'm really pissed off at our medical services in nova scotia right now.
in janurary i was in a car accident on my way to work.
someone couldn't see me driving down the road over a 5 foot high snowbank and instead of inching out to see if it was clear, he gunned it into the front of my car.
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Cygnus
Well I hear ya, Kwin. I had open heart surgery to replace my mitral valve 3 years ago so now I take 9.5 mg of Coumadin a day (strong anticoagulant/blood thinner). I have to get that checked a couple times a month by means of a simple blood draw.Couple of months ago the lab lady who drew me tied the tourniquet so tight around my left upper arm she severed the radial nerve. By the next day my left hand went dead. I didn't know what was going on so I went to the ER, where they drew blood out of my right arm, and lo and behold THEY tied the tourniquet so tight it severed THAT radial nerve. So now I have been diagnosed by two neurologists with bilateral radial palsy. I have wrist drop and can barely move my fingers. In order to type I have to hover my hands over the keyboard, let them fall, and hope my pointer finger hits the right key (ergo, lots of typos and backspaces, and tired wrists, and frustration galore). My New York State disabilty ain't much and it's gonna run out soon, and I'll probably have to hire a lawyer to sue for social security benefits since I'm so young. My lawyer says he's talked to the neurologist and can't get him to say "malpractice" so I probably won't have a lawsuit. For the first time in my life I feel genuinely scared and helpless.
Edited to add: I'm looking at a 6 month to 2 year recovery time. Basically the nerve has to hopefully regenerate and grow back from my triceps all the way down. I am going to have to figure out a way to not lose my house.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
And I'm glad to see my old friend Joe Malik here because he asks some good questions and can get you to think matters like this through for yourself. What he was saying was basically what I was saying about jumping all over the Bible, having Jesus say "ego eimi" as if it were something more meaningful than a simple common Greek phrase (c.f. John 7 and the formerly blind man who also says "ego eimi"), and somehow the Jews paralleled that to Exodus 3:14, not in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in Greek, in particular the LXX. And, of course, Jesus didn't say ego eimi ho on, or, crudely, "I am the Being" as YHWH did, or was translated to have said.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
Hellrider,
First of all, I agree with all those who also agree with the WT that "Before Abraham was, I am" is a bad translation. Just on a grammatical basis, it is clumsy, and very poor English. It makes no sense, even a second grader would know enough that speech such as that is unacceptable. The basic meaning of the Greek in Jesus' words at Jn 8:58 are "I was, and I am." Jesus was asserting that he did exist back then "before Abraham" and has continued to exist. That's also a bit clumsy though as well. So I really think that "Before Abraham even existed, I have been!" solves it quite nicely, by satisfying the grammatical linguistics, and getting across the idea that Jesus had an existence prior and continued that existence as he was speaking.
The way I see it, and I'm certainly not insisting that everybody see it my way, is that the texts are a hodge-podge of ideas about a Jesus that evolved out of storytelling and myth. Paul is chiefly responsible for the creation of Christianity but he wasn't much concerned with who Jesus was "before Abraham" or even when he walked the earth. Paul's Jesus was a supernatural resurrected savior. The gospels are inherently so self-contradictory regarding so many stories about Jesus a reasonable person can't accept them as having literally occurred. Even Matthew has Jesus preaching the "Kingdom of Heaven" and Luke renders it the "Kingdom of God." Well, which is it? Which word did Jesus use? Did he say heaven or god?
That's why I've taken up a position that to fanatically insist that one interpretation is infinitestimably better than another is absurd. The texts themselves can't be reconciled and so trying to play Bible hop-scotch or connect-the-dots to what Jesus allegedly said, or what was recorded that he said, to other parts of the so-called scriptures and build a dogma around it is foolishness.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
Why do I think the Krauts had something to do with it? I'm sorry, maybe I should read up a little more here http://www.irr.org/English-JW/tetra6.pdf#search='j%20documents%20new%20world%20translation'
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
LT, that's what I get for neglecting sleep. I meant to say the J documents are German-Greek-Hebrew. I have to quit this staying up for 48 hours straight nonsense.
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12
I could use some help........need to get it right 1st time.
by BLISSISIGNORANCE init's been ages since i have posted anything on the forum.
i guess life outside the borg is busy and rewarding!.
to get straight to the point, my daughter rang me today to tell me her boyfriend's step dad (an inactive dub for many years........1st time i'ld heard) was studying again and was moving toward going back to the borg.
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Cygnus
Gee, I would hazard a guess that the Freeminds site would contain all the relevant info you seek.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
OK, it's late here and it's difficult for me to type but I want to add just a bit of reply:
Firstly, Bigdog, regarding the holy spirit, the Bible may be using what in literary terms is known as personification and so the spirit speaking or whatever does not automatically make it a person in and of itself.
Secondly, Hellrider, comparing "ego eimi" in John 8:58 to "ego eimi HO ON" in Ex. 3:14 in the LXX and concluding that Jesus is calling himself Jehovah ("I AM") is a ridiculous argument. It supposes that, speaking in Aramaic, Jesus' Aramaic words were instantly translated in the minds of the Jews and so understood in Greek by the Jews, who jumped back to Exodus 3:14, but, then, instead of thinking of Exodus in Hebrew, thought of it in Greek (i.e. the LXX), and entirely forgot about the HO ON part, which roughly means "The Being." Jesus didn't declare to be "ego eimi HO ON." None of your posted argument holds water unless you want to say the later Johaninne community put those words into Jesus' mouth and manufactured the Jews' vehement response. Which renders it entirely meaningless since you'd have to make an admission the conversation never actually took place.
Thirdly, there are no extant MSS of the NT that have existed. All we have are copies, and some bad ones at that, and very many that disagree with each other. None of these copies contain the Tetragram - so the WT asserts the original autographs did contain it, some 237 times, and it was removed. It's too late and I don't feel like finding my WTCDROM but in the Appendix of the big brown study version of the NWT the WTS quotes George Howard's hypothesis that it could have been there and removed. Howard thinks the WT has gone too far with his theory. All ya gotta do is read it to find the WTS' explanation as to why they used "Jehovah" instead of "Lord" in the Christian Greek Scriptures (as well as a few Hebrew-to-German translations that decided to "restore" the divine name, designated J with a corresponding #, in the footnotes).
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5
The Dream of the Image in Daniel
by jula71 injust had to suffer through a book study tonight and one idea jumped out at me.
i think the whole interpretation is being over-thought or twisted to match history.
i think the interpretation is much simpler.
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Cygnus
Sounds as good as anything else I've read........... I think.
Just remember, "Daniel" didn't write Daniel. It was composed in the 2nd century BCE. All the events it describes in that context had already occurred. It was not prophecy, it was disguised as such,
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129
Many many books from library on 586/87
by ithinkisee ini have listed all the books i found at the library that mention 586/87 as the fall of jerusalem.
i was also able to link to all of them (except the first one listed) on amazon.com!
many are out of print or unavailable as new books but you can buy almost all of them used on amazon.com ... some are only $10-12 each!
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Cygnus
Scholar said:
: I do not have to explain anything as the Bible itself provides its own chronology and history.
It most certainly does not. The Bible dates things in relative terms (such and such king reigned for so long) but in itself contains no absolute dates. The anchor date generally accepted as fact by both historians and the Watchtower is the year Cyrus overthrew Babylon - in 539 BCE. The Insight I volume on "Chronology" does a decent job demonstrating how this date is..... er.... dated. Everything has to work backwards from that anchor date. You won't find it in the Bible however. Astonomical clues and copied record keeping give us our best guess. The Society's interpretation is clearly demolished by Jeremiah 25 where the king of Babylon is said to be punished when the seventy years have expired. The Watchtower only accounts for 68 years. Besides, there were a few Jews left behind in 587. The land was not completely laid "desolate" when Zedekiah was killed. Other expatriations continued to occur. The prophecy was primarily that of servitude to Babylon, the land's desolation(s) were simply corrollarry to that. I say desolation(s) because that is what I believe Daniel 2:1 says, plural (going off the top of my head here). Jeremiah in fact urged servitude to the Chaldean monarch and the timing of such letters to the Jews therin completely conflicts with Watchtower chronology. I'm afraid you're not much more than a troll here, scholar.