Posts by Doug Mason

9

Were any of the bible writers a Gentile ?

by smiddy in

Doug Mason

No one knows who wrote the Gospels, although we can be certain that the Matthew Gospel was written by people with a Jewish background.

Likewise, the authors of several letters attributed to Paul were written by unknown authors. Paul, of course was of the diaspora and he had no affiliation with the community at Jerusalem. He shows this at Galatians, despite the religious fiction written by "Luke".

No one knows who wrote 1 Peter and 2 Peter, the latter most likely written about 100 years after Peter's death. The latter is an exposition of Jude, which in turn is based on 1 Enoch (a book commonly used throughout the NT). The author of Revelation is not known but he was definitely had a strong Jewish background.

The people who decided which writings would be accepted as Christian Scriptures and hence form the NT were not Jewish.

Each writing had to reflect the culture of the community that produced it. None of these original texts exists, and those texts we are left with have been modified to include the views and opinions of successive copiers and their communities. Thus we need to identify the idioms, understandings, religious and secular politics, geography, interplay with neighbouring communities at each time, and so on.

Further, when we come to the NT writings, the feature known as Pesher comes into play. This term, which finds its genesis in the Dead Sea community, says "this is that", applying Scripture to their own times while totally disregarding the original context of the text. We see this practice in Jesus' "explanations", as well as in Paul's and Luke's. Today, we see the WTS employ this method, when they say that the Scriptures which were written thousands of years ago, are speaking of them. This, I believe, is the reason they reject Higher Criticism while at the same time as accepting Lower Criticism.

Doug

17

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad

by God_Delusion in

hi guys and gals!.

i've just put the finishing touches to my latest article, which talks about the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.. you see, i've always been fascinated with the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.

both are incredibly weird stories.

Doug Mason

[continues from previous post]

The renaming of the woman as Eve, chavvah ("progenitress"), "because she was the mother of all the living" (Gen. 3:20), happens only after eating from the tree. This too bolsters the "sexual" reading of this story—eating of the tree of ultimate "knowledge" turns the wife of Adam from ha-ishah ("the woman") into a (potential) mother.

God's response to the woman after she eats from the tree is not a curse. The words "And to the woman He said, / 'I will make most severe / Your pangs in childbearing; / In pain shall you bear children. / Yet your urge shall be for your husband, / And he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16) are a description of women's new state: procreative, with all the "pains" connected to procreation in the premodern world, including the natural pain of childbirth. This verse is not stating (as a harmonistic reading of Genesis 1-3 might imply) that before eating the fruit women gave birth painlessly, but now they would have labor pains. Furthermore, it notes that women will not do what most people do—try to avoid pain at all cost—because "your urge shall be for your husband, / And he shall rule over you." The meaning of this last section is ambiguous. The root m-sh-l ("to rule") has a general sense, so that its use might suggest an overall hierarchy of male over female. However, the context of this verse suggests that it means merely that men will determine when couples engage in sexual intercourse.

It is difficult to determine the attitude of this mythmaker toward the new state that he is describing. Is he happy that a boring life as asexual immortals in Eden has been traded for a challenging, sexual life outside of Eden? Or does he miss immortality? Or is he being merely descriptive, noting how humankind moved from an earlier stage to its current one? The Bible (in contrast to much of Victorian and post-Victorian society) has a generally positive attitude toward human sexuality, as may be seen most clearly from the Song of Songs. In various places, it sees women in particular (in contrast to men) as very sexual beings (see especially Proverbs 1-9). Thus, it is quite reasonable within a biblical context to see Eve as a type of Pandora figure, who is to be commended for bringing sex into this world.

Implications and Conclusions

Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-3:24 are two separate stories, written by different authors using different styles. They are both myths—neither aims primarily at offering a scientific description of "the earth and everything upon it" (Neh. 9:6). They are metaphors on the story level, traditional tales dealing with issues of collective importance. As such, they are "creating" worlds.

The first story describes a very good world, which is highly structured and controlled by a most powerful God who in some ways is so dissimilar from humans that he even has his own word, bara, to express his creative activity.

The world of the second story is much more ambiguous. Its God, a master potter (Gen. 2:7), is much more humanlike, walking and talking, even sewing (3:21). Also this world is unlike that in the previous story: it lacks the gender equality of the previous story, and it is not "very good."

Modern "critical" biblical scholarship fosters these observations by allowing the stories to be disengaged from each other, allowing each to be seen as an independent story, reflecting its author's perspectives. It understands them as constructive myths, which helped to frame the very essence of Israelite self-understanding, as well as their understanding of their relationship to their God, and to the world that they believed He had created. (“How to Read the Jewish Bible”, Marc Zvi Brettler, pages 45-47)

17

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad

by God_Delusion in

hi guys and gals!.

i've just put the finishing touches to my latest article, which talks about the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.. you see, i've always been fascinated with the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.

both are incredibly weird stories.

Doug Mason

[Part 1 of 2] - from Jewish Scholar Marc Zvi Brettler:

The Meaning of Genesis 2:4b – 3:24

The story as widely known has been filled out through various (Christian) interpretations. For example, nowhere does the text itself tell us what the forbidden fruit was. In early Christian tradition it was generally understood as an apple, whereas early Jewish tradition offered several opinions as to the fruit's identity, with the fig being the most popular—and contextually the most appropriate (see especially Gen. 3:7).

Other dearly held views of this text are also not borne out by a close reading. Thus, we might believe that its main theme is the curse received by the woman (and all women), yet the word "curse" is absent in God's comments to her (Gen. 3:16), while it is present in God's statements both to the serpent (3:14) and to the man (3:17). Moreover, the doctrines of the Fall of Man or original sin are nowhere to be found in this passage, though they appear in early Christian interpretation of the text.

The Garden Story is about immortality lost and sexuality gained. It begins from a simple premise: originally, people were immortal. In fact, the huge life spans recorded in the early chapters of Genesis are part of an effort to make a bridge between that original immortality and "normal" life spans. As immortal beings, they were asexual; in the Garden story God does not tell them to "be fertile and increase" as they were told in the first creation story (Gen. 1:28). Sexuality is discovered only after eating from the tree, when "they perceived that they were naked" (3:7). In fact, the divine command of 2:17 should not be understood as often translated—"for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die" (so the JPS translation)—but rather "for as soon as you eat of it, you shall become mortal." The connection between (procreative) sexuality and mortality is compelling and was well understood even in antiquity—if people were to be both sexually procreative and immortal, disastrous overpopulation would result.

Many details within chapters 2-3 support this interpretation. The tree that is first forbidden is (literally) "the tree of knowledge of good and bad." Here da-at ("knowledge") is being used in a sense that it often has in the Bible: intimate or sexual knowledge. "Good and bad" is being used here as a figure of speech called a "merism": two opposite terms are joined by the word "and"; the resulting figure means "everything" or "the ultimate." (Amerism is likewise used in Genesis 1:1, "heaven and earth," which there means the entire world.) The words "good and bad" have no moral connotation here.

[continues in following post]

3

The end was near

by Doug Mason in

nearly wiped out.. https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/24549348/earth-survived-near-miss-from-2012-solar-storm-says-nasa/.

doug.

Doug Mason

Nearly wiped out.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/24549348/earth-survived-near-miss-from-2012-solar-storm-says-nasa/

Doug

5

Attack is the best form of distraction

by Doug Mason in

while the wts attacks evolution, it needs to prove its hypothesis that each "day" of genesis 1 is actually 7000 years.. at least evolution has the evidence that enables it to reach the status of a scientific theory, whereas there is no tangible evidence for the wts to lift its idea above that of a mere hypothesis.. as an aside, it is interesting to note that lamarck published his evolutionary theory in the year that charles darwin was born.. doug.

Doug Mason

Even today, not all evolutionists are Darwinian. The WTS is superficial in laying the foundation and execution of Evolution at Darwin's feet.

I simply put it as an aside to show that many others, such as Lamarck, proposed models of Evolution. Charles Darwin had to rush his book into publication in order to beat others to the punch.

Doug

++++++++++++

“In recent times, some fundamentalist religions have put forward creationism as the answer to evolution. But in doing so, they make a claim that is both unscriptural and unbelievable. It is that the heavens, the earth, and everything on the earth were created by God in 6 days of 24 hours each—yes, in just 144 literal hours! This teaching has caused many to ridicule the Bible. But is a “day” in the Bible always 24 hours in length?” (“The Watchtower”, April 1, 1986)

“The Genesis account of creation allows for the earth to be billions of years old and does not limit each creative day to 24 hours.” (“The Watchtower”, Dec. 1, 2000, page 31)

“A study of the fulfillment of Bible prophecy and of our location in the stream of time strongly indicate that each of the creative days (Genesis, chapter 1) is 7,000 years long. It is understood that Christ’s reign of a thousand years will bring to a close God’s 7,000-year ‘rest day,’ the last ‘day’ of the creative week. (Revelation 20:6; Genesis 2:2, 3) Based on this reasoning, the entire creative week would be 49,000 years long.” (“The Watchtower”, Jan. 1, 1987, page 30)

“Since the seventh day has been continuing for thousands of years, it may reasonably be concluded that each of the six creative periods, or days, was at least thousands of years in length.” (“Insight on the Scriptures”, Vol. 1, page 545)

“The Bible shows us that God proceeded to rest from his creative works some 6,000 years ago” (“Insight, Vol. 1, page 1129)

“The Bible does not reveal exactly when [God’s rest day] started. It was some time after the creation of Adam’s wife, Eve, about 6,000 years ago.” (“The Watchtower”, Oct 15, 2012, page 22)

“World events as well as Bible chronology indicate that we are now [in 1980] rapidly nearing the time for the thousand-year-long reign of Jesus Christ to start. His reign of a thousand years … will occupy the last thousand years of Jehovah’s rest day or Sabbath day of seven thousand years” (“The Watchtower”, Nov, 15, 1980, page 19)

5

Attack is the best form of distraction

by Doug Mason in

while the wts attacks evolution, it needs to prove its hypothesis that each "day" of genesis 1 is actually 7000 years.. at least evolution has the evidence that enables it to reach the status of a scientific theory, whereas there is no tangible evidence for the wts to lift its idea above that of a mere hypothesis.. as an aside, it is interesting to note that lamarck published his evolutionary theory in the year that charles darwin was born.. doug.

Doug Mason

While the WTS attacks Evolution, it needs to prove its hypothesis that each "Day" of Genesis 1 is actually 7000 years.

At least Evolution has the evidence that enables it to reach the status of a scientific theory, whereas there is no tangible evidence for the WTS to lift its idea above that of a mere hypothesis.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that Lamarck published his Evolutionary Theory in the year that Charles Darwin was born.

Doug

21

For those in the Watchtower who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible

by opusdei1972 in

the watchtower says:.

9 while most major books of religion say very little, if anything, about god, the bible acquaints us with jehovah god and his activities.

it helps us to see the many facets of his personality.

Doug Mason

The Hebrews were the hill-dwelling, low-caste Canaanites. In their dreaming they created mythical heroes and mythical adventures, like Moses, the Exodus, and king David.

The Arabs are also descended from the Canaanites.

The theory of "fallen man" and "original sin" is likely to have originated with Augustine.

Doug

21

For those in the Watchtower who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible

by opusdei1972 in

the watchtower says:.

9 while most major books of religion say very little, if anything, about god, the bible acquaints us with jehovah god and his activities.

it helps us to see the many facets of his personality.

Doug Mason

When did Jesus become a Christian?

Doug

21

For those in the Watchtower who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible

by opusdei1972 in

the watchtower says:.

9 while most major books of religion say very little, if anything, about god, the bible acquaints us with jehovah god and his activities.

it helps us to see the many facets of his personality.

Doug Mason

opus,

What interesting observations you create.

The different versions (Septuagint versus Masoretic, Symmachus, Theodotian, etc) reflect the biases and amendments made by the translators and copiers, right from the outset. The WTS does the same with its NWT version, which in turn is based on which OT and NT sources that it selected. Consider the enormous differences between the versions of Jeremiah in the Septuagint (LXX) and in the Masoretic Text (MT). And it is not as if there is one version of the LXX; there are several.

If the NT references from the LXX indicated that the verses being cited were "inspired" but the rest of the LXX is not inspired, what does this say of the people who created and edited the LXX? Was their "inspiration" switched on and off as they worked their way through the pile of Hebrew scrolls? And it must be noted that the Hebrew text they worked from was at least 1300 years older than the earliest Hebrew text that is available to us.

If an NT writer had to resort to the Greek text of the Hebrew ("OT") scrolls, then using the WT's logic, what does this say of the equivalent text in the Hebrew OT scrolls? Does this show that the Hebrew passage was not inspired?

Inasmuch as NT writers regularly resorted to Hebrew scrolls that were later deemed to be non-canonical, what does this say of these non-canonical writings?

Doug

21

For those in the Watchtower who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible

by opusdei1972 in

the watchtower says:.

9 while most major books of religion say very little, if anything, about god, the bible acquaints us with jehovah god and his activities.

it helps us to see the many facets of his personality.

Doug Mason

opus,

At (document) pages 22 to 26 of:

http://www.jwstudies.com/God-breathed_Scriptures.pdf

you will find a listing of allusions to and citations of non-canonical writings such as 1 Enoch throughout the New Testament, including Jesus' words at the Sermon on the Mount. See also (document) page 21 of my Study.

(I wrote "document pages" because the "PDF page" numbers are 26 to 31).

Doug