Posts by Old Goat

22

College Class about JWs .... book suggestions?

by Shepherd Book in

i have the opportunity to take an independent study class through my university this summer.

my advisor, a history professor, suggested i choose jehovah's witnesses as a topic.. we are now trying to formulate a syllabus.

she suggests i write two papers: one on the history of jws, and another on their doctinal approach.. so now my question is...what books/articles/videos do i list on my syllabus as sources i intend to read and use for the papers?.

Old Goat

If you were one of my students pursuing this subject, this would be my short list:

Cultic Histories

One can’t ignore a religion’s self-view. These are the principal Watchtower produced histories:

1. The Modern History series in the 1955 Watchtower

2. Qualified to be Ministers, first edition only.

3. Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (1959). Really good in places. Not so good on Russell’s early years.

4. 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

5. Proclaimers.

Generalist Insider Books

1. Both of Ray Franz books. I know he’s a hero to many who read this board. I still suggest you read with a critical eye.

2. A. H. Macmillan: Faith on the March (1957). Shaky on Russell’s early years. Omits key events on the 1918 separation.

3. M. Cole: Jehovah’s Witnesses. Dated but a must read.

Generalist Histories

Penton’s Jehovah’s Witnesses in Canada (really good); Apocalypse Delayed.

H. Stroup: Jehovah’s Witnesses. (Poor, but you should still read it.)

Russell Era:

1. Schulz and de Vienne: Nelson Barbour: The Millenniums Forgotten Prophet; A Separate Idenity. Both books are superior. They don’t write them better than this.

2. P. S. L. Johnson: Parousia Messenger. Very fringie. Use with caution, but full of interesting things.

3. Russell – White Debate.

Rutherford Era:

1. Manwaring: The Flag Salute Controversy. As with Schulz and de Vienne, this is top of the heap history.

2. S. F. Peters: Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution. (Excellent)

3, Norman Long: Social Change and the Individual. (African Witnesses)

4. S. A. Liebster: Facing the Lion. (Personal experiences in Nazi Occupied France)

5. Hans Hesse: Am Mustigsten Waren Immer Weider de Zeugen Jehovas: Verfolgun un Widerstand der Zeugen Jehovahs im Nationalsozialismus.

6. Milton Stacey Czatt, The International Bible Students: Jehovah's Witnesses (Yale. Studies in Religion, No. 4, 1933)

Knorr-Franz Era

1. Beckford: Trumpet of Prophecy.

2. Blackwell: Or’e the Ramparts they Watched (Rutherford to Knorr era by a Watchtower Society lawyer.)

3. W. Schnell: Thirty Years a WatchTower Slave. Read the first edition. Schnell in my personal experience was a very distasteful man. Still, the book is worth a read. Be aware that he either lied in 1935 or in this book. And the accusation that he behaved inappropriately with young Witness girls seems well founded.

4, Many of the Goodrich tracts focus on this era. Goodrich was a fruit-cake. But he wrote interesting things, not all of them especially accurate.

Anti-Cult Literature.

Most of it is crap. Use caution.

35

Critical Differences: JW's Today Vs The Past

by metatron in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses have always been a fringe, anti-intellectual movement, almost by definition.

there is nothing new about faddish health concerns, attitudes that ignore history and science or even beliefs that defy common sense ( false prophecy for what, 130+ years?).

however, there are two differences with jw's of the past that will prove critical for the survival of the organization today.. 1) poor financial conditions - in the past, it was possible to hold all sorts of nonsensical beliefs and still be a functional member of the human race, generally.

Old Goat

I was baptized in the late 1940s. When I was a new Witness, average education level was high school or less depending on the region. I visited a congregation in the deep south in the early 1950s. They met in a shack. There was a largish knot hole that was the target for tobacco chew. (I’m not kidding.) On the west coast there were a number of well-educated Witnesses. The Watchtower was written using a vocabulary meant to challenge its readers. This was purposeful. Knorr wanted an educated (within a narrow limit) body of preachers.

In the 1940s the Watchtower presented a number of studies in the book of Judges. These were prophetic expositions, presenting the Watchtower’s us against them prophetic vision. I liked the articles and believed them. I’ve read them several times since, and, while I no longer accept the Watchtower’s wild speculations, I’ve found them exceptional in other ways. The research into content is great. It’s far better than similarly presented material coming from other faiths. Someone, probably Franz, put some fruitful research hours into those articles. The prophetic scheme has no basis in Scripture. The back ground commentary is wonderful.

By the 1970s many Watchtower articles were being written by someone who was culturally and functionally illiterate. Rather than underline answers, I spent my time editing the study articles so they made sense. In the later 1990s the articles were written for six year olds. That trend continues. Even when there is a good, scriptural point to the study articles, they irritate one’s literary senses. They’re written for the illiterate and under educated. This reflects the quality of current converts.

In short, the Watchtower thinks you’re stupid. They no longer think you can be educated to any thing like a reasonable standard. They’re content to have believers be marginal. Some years ago at a KingdomMinistrySchool session the Watchtower claimed that “theocratic education” reached a college level. It doesn’t. No one who experienced both would claim that. It was a delusional claim.

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

de vienne posted about the problems. they seem to be fixed except for the cover.

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

A quick check shows only a print version of A Seperate Identity. Their earlier book, Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet, is available as an ebook.

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

they have an ebook version? not as far as i know. did you order the nelson barbour book instead?

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

No, not what you meant. Do they think they're better than anyone else? I don't get that from the book or from interacting with the authors. They're professionals. They teach history, write history. Would you have them repeat the mistakes of others just to be polite? Correcting a mistake does not mean they think they're superior.

What I see in their book is a research standard few meet when dealing with Russell and similar topics. The level of accuracy is astounding. I taught history for years. There are few writers on Witness related topics that come close to Schulz and de Vienne. An adiquate vocabulary does not mean one is elitist. It means they're educated.

Dr. de Vienne writes in her introduction (both authors wrote introductory essays):

Theologically I’m a skeptical believer. I approach historical research in the same way, which means I question everything including commonly believed “facts.” Many of those proved absolutely true. Some proved false. As you explore this first volume of A Separate Identity you will encounter the familiar and the new.

The men and women in this story, long dead though they are, produced an emotional response. I came to like some of them. Some of them are remarkably distasteful, mean spirited and delusional. No historian writes an impartial history. But we have written to the full measure of our ability an accurate one. Despite our best efforts, we have probably made some errors of fact. We hope not, but given the depth and complexity of this research – and the newness of some of it – it seems inevitable that we got something wrong. It won’t hurt my feelings if someone points out a flaw, but I expect proof, not mere opinion. I expect critics to be as competent as we are, and I hold them to the same standards of historical research we manifest here.

I've read the book three times. This is a subject that I know well. I became a Witness in the late 1940s, and I started researching Witness and Bible Student history in 1955 when a Watchtower series on Witness history was published. I am left with some questions, but I haven't found anything I see as inaccurate. All my questions concern things that are probably unknowable.

I read a lot of history. Many history books are boring. This one held my interest on two grounds. I think it's well written. And I'm interested in the subject matter. I don't see it as 'elitist,' but they're writing with a vocabluarly that is familiar to me. Most things written about Russell are excrementious. (yes, i just called them that.) It's refreshing to have someone write with a dedication to accuracy.

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

elitist? I don't think you know what that means. It's academic. It's not popular fiction. It's not the usual sensationalist crap about Russell either. It's history. Well written history. Eye opening history.

20

Have Jehovahs Witnesses Changed the Bible to Fit Their Beliefs

by KSFernando in

no, we havent.

on the contrary, when we have discovered that our beliefs were not completely in line with the bible, we have changed our beliefs.. is this correct?.

gods name in greek scriptures?

Old Goat

I only have two years of NT Greek, so I can't comment in any authoritative way. Huge sections of the NW are really good, I think. Franz relied on Vine, Grim-Thayer and Liddell and Scot. Where it fails is in the Englsh grammar. Reflexive pronouns, bad syntax otherwise, make it hard to read. I still use it. But I never used it alone. I've always compared it to other translations. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised by the NW. Sometimes I shake my head.

In my opinion (just opinion, mind you) it's more faitful to the original Greek text than New Inernational is.

I have no background in Hebrew. But my comment on English grammar applies to the old testament too.

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

I should add that sections of the book (in rough draft) are on their blog. Read them for yourself:

http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/

19

Finally

by Old Goat in

http://www.lulu.com/shop/b-w-schulz/a-separate-identity-organizational-identity-among-readers-of-zions-watch-tower-1870-1887/paperback/product-21541658.html.

dr. de vienne tells me there are some problems with ebook formatting and it will be released later.

until they review the advanced copy, it is only available on lulu.com.

Old Goat

Pissed,

I've quoted them here. they don't post here. You're drawing a false conlusion based on something that made me laugh. Their book is good solid history. Why form an opinion based on something that I noted? They do note false statements, sometimes tongue in cheek, but while that may make me chuckle, it's a very small part of the story here.

I don't see the few occasions where they note the errors of others as detracting. Don't you want to know when something is wrong? I do. And they document their claims. I can think of several books that sail under the quise of an academic work that do not do that.

You've made a claim about the book without having read it. If I've given a false impression of the book, I'm sorry. It is well worth a read.

Perhaps I should give a couple examples of what they do when they meet 'error' in the work of others:

From page 208:

The claim made by James Pellechia, a Watchtower Society writer, that Russell founded the congregation at Elyria and a group in Cleveland is incorrect. The Elyria group was originally an independent Age-to-Come body turned into a Barbourite congregation and is mentioned as such in the June 15, 1878, issue of Herald of the Morning. Creta Walker tells us that the congregation was founded by her uncle Thomas Sherwood and that it originally met in a red brick school house a few miles from the Sherwood residence. The congregation styled itself The Church of Christ, a name commonly used by Age-to-Come churches:

From page 287, the first two paragraphs of the chapter:

As with much else in this era of WatchTower history, we find significant, purposefully created nonsense and bad research. For example, Graig Burns asserts that “the Bible Students had split off from a group of Second Adventists under N. H. Barbour, which later became the 7th-Day Adventist Church.” We’re fairly certain Seventh-day Adventists would be surprised to know this. We certainly were.

They were small in number. Firm figures elude us, but we can make an educated guess. They drew from Second Adventists, primarily Advent Christians and Life and Advent Union adherents. Though Second Adventists claimed a combined membership of thirty-thousand worldwide, this was a huge exaggeration and has no basis in fact. Few Adventists found the Barbourite message attractive. Adventists turned to 1877 and then 1879 as probable dates for Christ’s return. Age-to-Come/One Faith adherents numbered less than four thousand. Many Barbourites came from this group, attracted to Barbourite theology by its Age-to-Come belief. In 1885 Barbour reported that the average monthly circulation of The Herald of the Morning was one thousand copies, including missionary and give-away issues. It was probably somewhat less, and we are probably being generous if we say that in 1877 they had something less than two thousand adherents. The regularly-published money-received column suggests far fewer committed believers. This was a very small movement.

Now while you may find the claim that seventh-day adventists were connected to Barbour strange, it's made repeatedly in 'the literature.' Do you want things like that to go unchallenged? They challenge false CLAIMS. False conclusions fall when false claims do. Are you so invested in a pet theory that you don't want it challenged? If so, you will find their book disturbing. If you want good, solid historical research into sources you've never seen, this is the book for you.

Writers commongly say things about Storrs that aren't so. Storrs magazine is not hard to find. I own all of them except the irregular first issues and the first few months of it when he restarted it. Shouldn't a writer read the source material before making claims about it? Schulz and de Vienne did, taking you to the exact issue and pages in their footnotes. Name another writer on this topic that researched Russell's connections to The Restitution, the principal One Faith journal. Restituion circulated his Object and Manner. J. L. Russell wrote to its editor up to his death. Didn't know that, did you? Restitution's readers called him 'brother.' All of this is new.

If you let attachment to a theory you got from others keep you from reading this book, you will continue to parrot it while others move "into the light of truth" historically speaking.