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if the nwt was produced by people who can't read and write the translated languages - can it really be a translation ?
or, is it a transliteration - have they used other bibles (of english) to produce the work - altering the words as they go ?
Previous threads on this board have left the impression, that - despite himself - F.W. Franz actually produced a reasonably accurate translation (at least of the Old Testament).
In this, though (as in all other matters, let's face it) a woeful lack of scholarship on the part of the WTS is evident. Your suggestion that Fred Franz just used existing English translations - but threw in some words of his own - could well be right.
The Mayor.
btw: excluding joining jwism unless it's too intriguing not to say.
here's mine: .
it was in the day when the paraffin man went around selling to those that still had the old paraffin burners to keep their house warm.
I don't even have to stop and think about the answer to this one!
The most stupid thing that I ever did was (unquestionably) first picking up an Awake magazine:
- and thus beginning the descent down the proverbial Slippery Slide into JW Madness.
(That single unwise move far eclipses any of the other ecapades that I had with petrol & matches, shellite & matches, or methylated spirits & matches as a boy - or with firearms, motorcycles or wild women as a young man!)
This, though, is easier to say with the benfit of hindsight - an dunfortunately, Hindsight always seems to be 20/20!
The Mayor
i'd say out of 10 elders, the average "sharp" ones are 2 or 3.
Many - maybe most - of the elders that I knew suffered from a lack of education.
Given the WTS's downer on education, this is hardly surprising.
Some others had been appointed as elders while they were still very young, and as a consequence, suffred from a lack of experience in life and living.
The majority , though, did seem to be of average intelligence, or slightly above.
One I know of is of extremely high intelligence ( an IQ shared by just 5% of the population):
- How any such highly intelligent person can have allowed themselves to be deluded by the WTS is, of course, another story altogether!
I think that is the crux of matter when considering whether all elders are "dumb" or not:
- Whatever their individual levels of intelligence, ALL are deluded - and this is going to show in their beliefs / actions / attitudes.
i grew up in the borg and can remember feeling a disconnect with the portrayal of witness behavior in the literature and what i actually experienced.
the stories from the yearbook about people wanting to study with witnesses "thirsty for knowledge of the truth" were so different from the responses i got in the fs, where people just seemed annoyed.
the pictures of happy folk and families of all colors looking toward some ray of light, united in the love for jehoober and each other, did not square with what was going on in my congo.
Lowden sums it up perfectly:
"Nobody can live up to those standards - we all fail from time to time, and sometimes quite miserably."
There was a time when I sincerely thought that I was the only one failing to meet the standards, and that everyone else was a good JW - except for me.
(The again, there was once a time when I believed in Santa Claus, too!)
It must be said on this matter, though :
- JWs are no different from any other religion in failing to live up to their own standards (But man alive, they surely think that they are different!)
STATEMENT OF BELIEF:
"I believe in Unicorns, Tooth Fairies, good JWs - and all other Mythological Creatures."
The Mayor of Turiwhate.
PS: There are others around who would take matters one step further, and declare that the only Good JW is a dead one!
one of my best friends in the world pam who is a non-judgmental born-again christians told me that she thinks that we are only "pawns" in a chess game played by jehovah and satan.
at first i thought pam was joking with me but she told me she was serious as a heart attack.
she then started to explain her position.
I am having a bit of a problem with this one - perhaps somene else can enlighten me:
- What freedom of choice did Job's ten children have in their lives being snuffed out, while the principal players in the game sought to prove a point?
my original post: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/112134/1.ashx.
again, i quote from the "bible teach" book, on p.89: millions of people have been killed in wars during the past century.
one british historian wrote: "the 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history...it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few and brief periods without organised and armed conflict somewhere.
I have previously been attacked on this board for repeating this quotation (!), but I will repeat it once more:
"In this world there are three things:
1) There are Lies
2) Then there are Blatant Lies
3) And then there are Statistics!"
(Authorship unknown)
- Given the WTS record with honesty, you would want to always (seriously) question any statistics that they bandy about.
- Add to this the total lack of scholarship amongst the WTS, and it does not exactly inspire confidence in anything that they might say!
the "bible teach" book, on p.89 says:millions of people have been killed in wars during the past century.
one british historian wrote: "the 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history...it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few and brief periods without organised and armed conflict somewhere.
" a report from the worldwatch institute states: "three times as many people fell victim to war in [the 20th] century as in all the wars from the first century ad to 1899.
You would get the impression that WTS claims about the huge upsurge in deadly wars from the time of WWI onward primarily refer to the wars that took place in Europe.
Other posters on this thread, though, have drawn attention to the massive death toll of (earlier) wars that were fought in Asia.
Even in Europe, large scale warfare has run in cycles:
eg: - The Thirty Years War of the 17th Century (any war that kills 75% of a country's population has to be treated as a large-scale one!)
- The Napoleonic Wars of the first decade of the 19th Century.
Concerning the last 100 years, would it not be correct to say that the 61 years since the end of WWII is one of the longest periods of stability that Europe has known?
Perhaps W. Schnell, in his "Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave", had a point:
He maintained (when discussing this thought of "more and more deadly wars") that the WTS merely capitalised on the great upheaval in Europe that followed the First World War.
- After all, they had to do something to detract from the fact that they were completely wrong about 1914!
one of my best friends in the world pam who is a non-judgmental born-again christians told me that she thinks that we are only "pawns" in a chess game played by jehovah and satan.
at first i thought pam was joking with me but she told me she was serious as a heart attack.
she then started to explain her position.
Certainly in the Grand Scheme of Things as described by the Watchtower Society, humans are indeed only pawns:
- Not exactly a very entertaining thought!
IF there is such a thing as a Master Intelligence, surely he/she/they/it can come up with something better than this?
(After all, if a simple bushman turned electrician like me - or in the case of Candidly Nuts, a child - can see something is not right ; then surely a Master Intelligence can, too?)
Very much:
- that is one of the reasons why, at every opportunity, I load up my pack and disappear into the mountains (alone) for several days.
(Early on, this got me into trouble with the local JW administration. Instead of removing myself into the bush for the weeked, I should have remained in town to help sell WTS products for them!)
The words of the Canadian poet, Robert Service come to mind:
"....Its that great big broad land way up yonder,
Its the forests where silence has lease,
Its the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
Its this silence that fills me with peace."
He was talking about the Yukon, but he could just as easily be describing where I go (i.e. the hinterland of Turiwhate!.)
.
a group calling themselves the lord's witnesses has predicted the collapse of the wt administration in late may/early june of 2006. you can see their prediction timeline at their website.. http://www.truebiblecode.com/understanding101.html.
Notice that this lot, too, draw heavily from Daniel and Revelation?
That seems to be a common theme of all authors of whacko theology.
For nearly thirty years I was avid reader of everything that the WTS wrote - and then in the latter part, saw it all exposed for what it really was.
From that experience, I could never now take seriously any utterances like these - not even remotely!
What sort of cigarettes were these guys smoking when they dreampt up this story?
(Must be good stuff!)