Posts by Earnest

24

KGB infiltrated the Borg

by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

we from the old year books that some kgb undercover agents became elders in high up positions.. i wonder if this is going on today?

not just in russia but other congregations around the world?.

when you think how long it takes to become an elder and all the talks and maybe judicial committees they were involved with.. anyway i’m just throwing it out there if someone wanted to pay me i am a current elder who is pima about intelligence or chance involved with the origin of the universe.. .

Earnest

In the 1950s, the Ukrainian secret police launched several secret operations that targeted Jehovah’s Witness leadership and aimed to disclose Witness clandestine groups and their system of communication. The agent network was believed to be the main weapon in the fight against the religious dissent. There were about 200 agents and informers working in the Witness underground in the mid-1950s in western Ukraine. Most of them were recruited from within the Witness organization, many had tragic experiences with their close families imprisoned or exiled. Some of them had been and would be (after their service with the security police) arrested and tried. All of them were recruited by straightforward blackmail. However, as some historical accounts reveal, Witnesses were aware of agent infiltration and KGB surveillance and knew names of many agents and informers. They were also aware of some secret operations carried out against them. While being shadowed by the secret police, they shadowed KGB officers too. Counter-infiltration was another pattern of their everyday resistance. Some believers intentionally entered the informers’ network or were chosen to become collaborators by their own congregations. Appointed agents delivered partial or less sensitive information in exchange for getting to know KGB plans and operations. Other believers wrote fake denunciations to mislead the secret police.

The full account can be read here.

The 2002 Yearbook p. 192-193 also discusses this :

During the mid-1950’s, the security services discontinued immediate arrests of all active and responsible brothers and began to spy on them. These brothers were regularly called to the offices of the security services. They were told that they would receive money and enjoy a good career if they cooperated. Refusal to cooperate would lead to imprisonment and humiliation. A few, lacking faith in God, compromised on account of fear or greed. They remained in the ranks of the organization, informing the security services about the activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Also, they obediently carried out instructions from the authorities, causing innocent brothers to appear as traitors in the eyes of other faithful brothers. All of this promoted a spirit of distrust among many of the brothers.

42

JW current stance on Vaccines?

by lcarter017 in

it came to my attention that the covid-19 vaccine works by editing the genetic code of the mitochondrial dna, using gene therapy.. you should seriously question the moral implications of allowing a part of your dna to be modified.

does anyone have any concerns about this?if anyone has any questions, i can do my best to explain.

i personally find it very suspicious how they chose to word it, and conveniently inform us of this fact "after" people have taken the vaccine..

Earnest

Anony Mous : mRNA and some other vaccines are developed however with the assistance of aborted babies’ stem cells, which (strict) Catholics ... won’t accept...

"All vaccinations recognised as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal co-operation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive," the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced in a statement on Monday, 21 December 2020.

33

"How Long Would Jesus' Reign Be?"

by BoogerMan in

simple enough question for a jw to answer, because the org has told them for over 100 years that, .

a) jesus would reign for 1000 years, and.

b) that his reign began in 1914 when he became king.

Earnest

slimboyfat : That “short period” [between the Devil being cast down and Harmageddon] is now well over 100 years and counting,

Now that we know it is not limited to a generation in the normal sense of the term, it can effectively be any length of time. In Revelation 1:1 it refers to a revelation given to show his slaves the things that must shortly take place. Quite possibly some parts of Revelation were fulfilled in the first century (if, indeed, Revelation was written that early), but shortly can obviously be stretched for as long as you need to.

8

An interesting book

by joao in

can anyone tell me the reason why jw.org has never mentioned this book: the obedience of a christian man, by william tyndale?

i mean, they talk and write articles about his translation of the bible, about him being against the pope, etc.

so, why didn't i ever read or hear about this interesting book?.

Earnest

joao : In the end, that book was one of the reasons why the English church broke with the Vatican!

The reason the English church broke with the Vatican was because Henry VIII wanted to annul his marriage and marry Anne Boleyn, and the Pope refused.

Amongst other things, the book advocated the ideology that the King of a country was the head of that country's church, instead of the Vatican. Anne Boleyn owned a copy and asked Henry to read it, so no doubt the book influenced his justification in declaring himself to be head of the Church of England. But there is little doubt he would have broken with Rome anyway.

8

An interesting book

by joao in

can anyone tell me the reason why jw.org has never mentioned this book: the obedience of a christian man, by william tyndale?

i mean, they talk and write articles about his translation of the bible, about him being against the pope, etc.

so, why didn't i ever read or hear about this interesting book?.

Earnest

The Watchtower of 15 November 1995 has an article William Tyndale - a Man of Vision in which it refers to The Obedience of a Christian Man :

Between 1526 and 1528, Tyndale moved to Antwerp, where he could feel safe among the English merchants. There he wrote The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, The Obedience of a Christian Man, and The Practice of Prelates. Tyndale continued his translating work and was the first to use God’s name, Jehovah, in an English translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

Earnest

pizzahut2023 : The Watchtower accepts "MarYah" and/or "MarYa" as being equivalent to "Jehovah".

The word māryā is a transliteration of the Syriac characters into the Latin alphabet. The Syriac of Mark 12:36 is shown below.

The word māryā (meaning "the LORD") ends with an aleph which represents long ā, as I said previously. When you are transliterating it you can add an 'h' on the end but it is not there in the Syriac, so there is no basis for treating it as the word yāh simply because it is used as a substitute for God's name in the OT.

aqwsed12345 : On the one hand, this distinction exists only in Hebrew...

You will note above that it also exists in Syriac.

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

Earnest

aqwsed12345 : A similar thing can be observed in Syriac Christianity, where the Lord is marked as "maryah" in the Peshitta. According to linguists, this is a combination of "mar" (master/lord) and "yah", and in the Peshitta NT, Jesus, the Son, is also referred to as "maryah" ("Lord Yah").

The word used in Syriac is māryā not māryāh. It ends with an aleph (a) which represents long ā, while yāh ends with he (h), which is a consonant not a vowel, so there is no linguistic reason why yāh should be a part of māryā. While one of the five primary meanings of mar is "master" or "lord", the yā ending (in māryā) represents the determined form, making it definite (i.e. the lord) and can be compared with the article ha in Hebrew. So it does not mean "Lord Yah" as you suggest, but means "the Lord" and in the Syriac OT it is exclusively used with reference to God in the same way haAdon is used in Hebrew.

The word yāh only occurs one time in the Peshitta, namely in Exodus 15:2. In the Hebrew text, yāh stands alone, but in the Syriac text it is followed by māryā, i.e. yāh māryā (Jah the Lord), which corroborates that yāh is not the last part of māryā.

In the Syriac NT it is used with reference to Jehovah, for example at Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42 and Acts 2:34 which all allude to Psalm 110:1 "The LORD (māryā) said to my lord". There are also instances where māryā is used with reference to Christ where he is referred to as "the Lord", as he often was.

In his article "The Translation of kyrios into Syriac" (Filologia Neotestamentaria, XII, 1999, p. 25–54) A-G Martin comments:

To summarize the use of māryā to render κυριος in the New Testament, it can be said that this word is found in the quotations of the Old Testament, but it can also refer to God in a more general way as the one who leads men and the Church. But Jesus Christ can also be named māryā [the Lord] to emphasize his divinity and the continuity of his action with the God of Israel.

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

Earnest

aqwsed : Since, according to the majority of scholars, only Kyrios was in the original version of the Septuagint,...

In the T&T Clark Handbook of Septuagint Research, 2021, Patrick Skehan, Emanuel Tov and Eugene Ulrich all agree that the writing of the divine name as IAW in 4Q120 is more original than Kurios.

In Greek Biblical Texts from the Judean Desert, p.8, Tov writes regarding 4Q120 :

This papyrus represents an early version of Greek Scripture, as shown by several unusual renderings, including the transliteration of the Tetragrammaton as Iaw, instead of its translation as kurios in the later Christian manuscripts of the Septuagint. 4QpapLXXLevb probably reflects a version antedating the text of the main manuscript tradition of the LXX.

aqwsed12345 : I don't know why you want to go back to the era of Judeo-Christianity and reproduce its theological climate.

Because that is when the New Testament was written and where we must go to establish the most likely original text.

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

Earnest

aqwsed : And importantly, the Talmudic text does not refer to "the divine name" but to "names of God" (plural), which does not necessarily refer to the Tetragrammaton.

Earlier you quoted Karl Georg Kuhn as arguing that

sifrei minim should be understood not as gospels but as Old Testament texts belonging to heterodox Jewish groups such as those at Qumran as well as to Jewish Christians; and gilyonim should be understood not as gospels but as Marginalia cut off from Biblical texts;

Are you seriously suggesting that these did not contain the tetragrammaton, or that "names of God" in these texts do not include THE name of God? Whether or not they pronounced it, we are talking about what was written, but there is evidence that the divine name was used by Jews in and around the first century as discussed in this thread earlier.

aqwsed : You don't get my argument: the very fact that SO MANY readings of the text have survived, just not [those containing God's name], proves [they didn't exist].

As far as we know, NO readings of the text have survived from the time the church was primarily Jewish. Put aside your fixation of a conspiracy and consider the first audience of the gospels, particularly Matthew, and letters like Hebrews and Jude. Let us just suppose that these writers used a form of God's name when quoting or alluding to the OT. If we look at copies of the LXX from that time, they had the tetragrammaton although they were written in Greek. Other copies had the Greek form of the name, IAW. Let us suppose that the writers quoting or alluding to the OT wrote down what they read. Of course, copies of these are made and circulated. After the destruction of the temple, the nature of the church changes from a predominantly Jewish church to a predominantly Gentile one. Now that the copyists are gentiles, they do not understand what the tetragrammaton is and so do the obvious thing and replace it with a word they know fits the context, usually Lord or God. Maybe this happened, maybe it didn't. But it is not surprising that among the texts copied more than a hundred years later the use of the tetragrammaton had died out. After all, that is exactly what happened with the LXX texts of the OT. And it did not require a conspiracy or a central church authority, it only required the change of the church from Jewish to Gentile.

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

Earnest

aqwsed : I think it follows from [textual variation] that there must have been "Jehovah" in all such places. Well, that's a pretty unscientific proposition.

Of course I never made that proposal. I was specifically addressing Jude vs 5 and was proposing 'Jehovah' as a possible cause of the variation in that verse. When addressing variation in a text there are certain common principles that can be observed but each text is different and it does not simply follow that the cause of variation will be the same. One common principle considered is whether the text contains a quotation of the Old Testament which includes God's name, and in these cases greater weight can be given to the probability that the use of God's name in some form by the writer gave rise to variation among the copyists. In the case of Jude vs 5 it alludes to Exodus 12:41 and Numbers 14:35, both of which contain God's name. When the reading ("Jesus") is "difficult to the point of impossibility" (UBS Committee) you have to consider what may have caused the variation. It is unlikely that a copyist would replace "God" or "Lord" with "Jesus" in a verse referring to God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt, which leaves you with the plausible option that the text contained God's name in a form that Greek copyists did not understand.

Regarding the passages in the Tosefta that specify that the gilyohnim and the books of the minim which contain the names of God do not have to be saved from fire, I accept that gilyohnim may not refer to the gospels specifically. You say that the books of the minim refers to the writings of the Jewish heretics (e.g. Sadducees, Nazoraeans, Samaritans etc.), but it is not clear why you exclude those Jewish heretics and their writings whose "heresy" was belief in Christ. At any rate, I am pleased to note that you now accept that the minim (whoever they were) did use the names of God in their books, which certainly included the tetragrammaton as the context shows.