There should be little need for an Audio Book, since a PDF Reader program can read a file out aloud. Depending on the PDF prgram, the option is available under the Menu heading of "View" or "Tools".
Doug
Doug Mason
JoinedPosts by Doug Mason
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SURVEY QUESTIONs
by Terry ini'm on the brink of publishing my book.
here are some survey questions that will help me make some important decisions.. if you were ever going to actually buy a book about an ex-jehovah's witness conscientious objector who went to prison, would you:.
a. prefer the book to be 8 1/2 x 11 ?.
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I am looking for scans from a book
by Doug Mason indoes somone have a library handy that holds the book: "the bible from the beginning" (new york 1929) by p. marion simms?
i have searched here in melbourne without success, and its exorbitant price tag means it won't be sitting on my bookshelf.
if you can find a copy, i need scans of pages 74 to 76. it would be even better if i could obtain scans of the immediate context.
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Doug Mason
Pterist,
Thanks. Interesting. I look forward to seeing the book when it arrives, which usually takes 2 to 3 weeks from USA.
A porime example of selective quoting of course, since more recent discoveries, such as in 1947, blow these ideas out of the water.
I am stewing on an idea which means I need to find a copy of "Reasoning from the Scriptures", or at least pages 63 and 195 (and their immediate contexts). Time to make another search.
Doug
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I am looking for scans from a book
by Doug Mason indoes somone have a library handy that holds the book: "the bible from the beginning" (new york 1929) by p. marion simms?
i have searched here in melbourne without success, and its exorbitant price tag means it won't be sitting on my bookshelf.
if you can find a copy, i need scans of pages 74 to 76. it would be even better if i could obtain scans of the immediate context.
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Doug Mason
Pterist,
THANK YOU!
My (Aussie Google) search engine gave me Amazon Books, who want $140 for the book(!). What a great relief. Thank you, my friend.
A pity for JWs is that the WTS relies on old outdated opinions. Am I correct in suspecting that "Answer 4" in the piece you cited might come from page 63 of the WT book "Reasoning from the Scriptures"?
I managed to copy the item you cited from acm.uestc.edu.cn into Word, so no problem about the formatting. That's life.
But who or what is: acm.uestc.edu.cn ?
Doug
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I am looking for scans from a book
by Doug Mason indoes somone have a library handy that holds the book: "the bible from the beginning" (new york 1929) by p. marion simms?
i have searched here in melbourne without success, and its exorbitant price tag means it won't be sitting on my bookshelf.
if you can find a copy, i need scans of pages 74 to 76. it would be even better if i could obtain scans of the immediate context.
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Doug Mason
Does somone have a library handy that holds the book: "The Bible from the beginning" (New York 1929) by P. Marion Simms? I have searched here in Melbourne without success, and its exorbitant price tag means it won't be sitting on my bookshelf. If you can find a copy, I need scans of pages 74 to 76. It would be even better if I could obtain scans of the immediate context. Many thanks,
Doug
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The Fullfillment of Prophecy about the last days in 70AD
by cassuk11 inthe prophecies of the messiah were about the destruction of jerusalem and the temple.
it has nothing to do with the end of the world etc.
jesus told those people in that 1st century generation that some of them would still be alive to see him return and he aslo told the high priest he would see the son of man coming on the clouds.also they would not finish going through all thecities of israel before the son of man returns.
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Doug Mason
Not only that, but the Gospels were written after Jerusalem had been destroyed. Do we therefore sense a degree of anti-Semitism creeping in, telling the Jews that the coming Messiah had nothing to do with Jerusalem?
Hence Jesus says to his followers (part of his group, anyway), that events such as wars and earthquakes have no relevance to Messaih's Coming.
Doug
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How do we know Satan was evil?
by truthhurts13 ini believe a good judge would have to hear both sides of the story before making a final judgment.
however, i don't ever recall hearing satan's side of the story in the bible.
i remember only 3rd party hearsay evidence (which is not evidence).
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researching polytheism of the Jews
by DeWandelaar ini was researching the history of the jews and in wikipedia it is said that in origin the jews were polytheists by default and became monotheist in a later period of time.
i was not aware of this (neither do many others) and am therefore putting some of my findings here:.
first of all the obvious things.
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Doug Mason
"The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel", by Mark S. Smith
"Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan", by John Day
"The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts", by Mark S. Smith
"Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel", by William G. Dever
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Exactly what did Geza Vermes write?
by Doug Mason in[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>normal</w:view> <w:zoom>0</w:zoom> <w:trackmoves /> <w:trackformatting /> <w:punctuationkerning /> <w:validateagainstschemas /> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:saveifxmlinvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:ignoremixedcontent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext> <w:donotpromoteqf /> <w:lidthemeother>en-au</w:lidthemeother> <w:lidthemeasian>x-none</w:lidthemeasian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>x-none</w:lidthemecomplexscript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables /> <w:snaptogridincell /> <w:wraptextwithpunct /> <w:useasianbreakrules /> <w:dontgrowautofit /> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark /> <w:enableopentypekerning /> <w:dontflipmirrorindents /> <w:overridetablestylehps /> <w:usefelayout /> </w:compatibility> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser /> <m:mathpr> <m:mathfont m:val="cambria math" /> <m:brkbin m:val="before" /> <m:brkbinsub m:val="--" /> <m:smallfrac m:val="off" /> <m:dispdef /> <m:lmargin m:val="0" /> <m:rmargin m:val="0" /> <m:defjc m:val="centergroup" /> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440" /> <m:intlim m:val="subsup" /> <m:narylim m:val="undovr" /> </m:mathpr></w:worddocument> </xml><![endif].
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the following is from how can you have a happy life, watchtower bible and tract society, 2013:.
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Doug Mason
It is quite telling that this 32-page booklet has been released at the 2013 Convention "God's Word is Truth", with the talk being entitled: "What is Truth?".
There is no "truth" in the way that Watchtower misuses Geza Vermes.
Doug -
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Exactly what did Geza Vermes write?
by Doug Mason in[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>normal</w:view> <w:zoom>0</w:zoom> <w:trackmoves /> <w:trackformatting /> <w:punctuationkerning /> <w:validateagainstschemas /> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:saveifxmlinvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:ignoremixedcontent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext> <w:donotpromoteqf /> <w:lidthemeother>en-au</w:lidthemeother> <w:lidthemeasian>x-none</w:lidthemeasian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>x-none</w:lidthemecomplexscript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables /> <w:snaptogridincell /> <w:wraptextwithpunct /> <w:useasianbreakrules /> <w:dontgrowautofit /> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark /> <w:enableopentypekerning /> <w:dontflipmirrorindents /> <w:overridetablestylehps /> <w:usefelayout /> </w:compatibility> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser /> <m:mathpr> <m:mathfont m:val="cambria math" /> <m:brkbin m:val="before" /> <m:brkbinsub m:val="--" /> <m:smallfrac m:val="off" /> <m:dispdef /> <m:lmargin m:val="0" /> <m:rmargin m:val="0" /> <m:defjc m:val="centergroup" /> <m:wrapindent m:val="1440" /> <m:intlim m:val="subsup" /> <m:narylim m:val="undovr" /> </m:mathpr></w:worddocument> </xml><![endif].
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the following is from how can you have a happy life, watchtower bible and tract society, 2013:.
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Doug Mason
The following is from “How Can You Have A Happy Life”, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 2013:
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From ancient times, such devoted men as Ezra, “a skilled copyist in the law of Moses,” exercised extreme care in order to preserve the text of the Scriptures. (Ezra 7:6) The Dead Sea Scrolls are an outstanding example of the success of their efforts. These scrolls were discovered in caves near Qumran, beginning in 1947. They include fragments of nearly all the books of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Although the scrolls were written more than 2,000 years ago, they differ very little from one another and from the traditional Hebrew text in use today. “None of these variations affects the scriptural message itself,” notes Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Geza Vermes. Such accurate transmission provides evidence that our copies of the Scriptures faithfully represent the inspired originals.
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Exactly what did Geza Vermes write in the context cited by the Watchtower Society?
The following is from pages 38-40 of his book “The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls”
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The Qumran finds have also substantially altered our views concerning the text and canon of the Bible. The many medieval Hebrew scriptural manuscripts, representing the traditional or Masoretic text, are remarkable for their almost general uniformity. Compared to the often meaningful divergences between the traditional Hebrew text and its ancient Greek, Latin or Syriac translations, the few variant readings of the Masoretic Bible manuscripts, ignoring obvious scribal errors, mainly concern spelling.
By contrast, the Qumran scriptural scrolls, and especially the fragments, are characterized by extreme fluidity: they often differ not just from the customary wording but also, when the same book is attested by several manuscripts, among themselves. In fact, some of the fragments echo what later became the Masoretic text; others resemble the Hebrew underlying the Greek Septuagint; yet others recall the Samaritan Torah or Pentateuch, the only part of the Bible which the Jews of Samaria accepted as Scripture. Some Qumran fragments represent a mixture of these, or something altogether different. It should be noted, however, that none of these variations affects the scriptural message itself. In short, while largely echoing the contents of biblical books, Qumran has opened an entirely new era in the textual history of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Community’s attitude to the biblical canon, i.e. the list of books considered as Holy Writ, is less easy to define, as no such list of titles has survived. Canonical status may be presumed indirectly either from authoritative quotations or from theological commentary. As regards the latter, the caves have yielded various interpretative works on the Pentateuch (the Temple Scroll, reworked Pentateuch manuscripts, the Genesis Apocryphon and other commentaries on Genesis) and the Prophets (e.g. Isaiah, Habakkuk, Nahum, etc.), but only on the Psalms among the Writings, the third traditional division of the Jewish Bible. From the texts available in 1988, I collected over fifty examples of Bible citations which were used as proof in doctrinal expositions, thus indicating that they were thought to possess special religious or doctrinal importance.
On the other hand, the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11 contains seven apocryphal poems, including chapter L1 of the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira, not annexed to, but interspersed among, the canonical hymns. This may be explained as a liturgical phenomenon, a collection of songs chanted during worship; but it may, and in my view probably does, mean that at Qumran the concept ‘Bible’ was still hazy, and the ‘canon’ open-ended, which would account for the remarkable freedom in the treatment of the text of Scripture by a community whose life was nevertheless wholly centred on the Bible.
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A SERIOUS investigation of the identifying date of CHRIST'S RETURN
by Terry instep one.
the foot of the ladder can be moved closer or farther from the wall.. the closer to the wall the higher the ladder reaches.. but, the length of the ladder never changes.. .
height is a function of the angle created when you scoot the base closer or farther from the wall.. .
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Doug Mason
You are wrong about 537 being agreed on. Search the www and you will find dates ranging from 538 to 535. It is possible that a statistical analysis would make 536 as a more popular alternative.
The WTS has a horizontal ladder that stretches from 537 as its starting point.
The reason is that no one knows and the Bible writers did not think it important enough other than to indicate the "70 years" ended when Babylon fell in 539 BCE. Not that that date has anything to do with anything either. The ladder is sitting on ice and there is no wall for it to rest against.
Doug