i am trying to find out more on the translators of the jw's bible.
they claim and so it claims in the front of their bible that it was translated by experts in greek and hebrew.
what training if any did these people actually have in these ancient languages.
<Believe it or not, the King James is actually based on more reliable texts, even though not the oldest. But I will explain that another time>
Suggest you inform yourself more than superficially, and read Metzger and other authorities before you attempt to do anything like that.
to whom it may concern,.
the witnesses are often condemned for refusing blood transfusions and "permitting" their children to die.
such a religious position is untenable, opponents of jws will argue.
<DS: I think one's living habits have a lot to do with the issue of blood transfusions.>
Finally a simple sentence.
But it makes no sense! Living habits and blood transfusion?
Call Harry Peloyan and John Wischuk, they've got the perfect candidate for the Writing Department.
Eusebius
in one or two recent threads i've seen reference to the possibility of a rising number of jw suicides being another of the organization's very dark realities about which it is vigilant in keeping concealed from its pub populace.
is there anyone reasonably informed regarding this?
is there reason to suppose the incidence ratio among jws is any higher than among any peoples/religion?
For D wiltshire, whose sensitivity to the problem is greatly appreciated
to whom it may concern,.
the witnesses are often condemned for refusing blood transfusions and "permitting" their children to die.
such a religious position is untenable, opponents of jws will argue.
You are avoiding the issue. Did you not read what I said? I chose NOT to take a transfusion for MEDICAL reasons!
Blood and health risks are MEDICAL concerns. We understand this in an enlightened society. You are not keeping up with medical progress, a subject I need not go into here, with regard to blood safety. But this is MEDICAL.
The Governing Body should concern itself with SCRIPTURAL issues.
Right now they are concerned that if they tell the flock the truth, there will be further "disillusionment" just like that surrounding the generation "adjustment."
You seem particularly naive or uninformed about those situations in which ONLY a particular infusion can save a life. I do thank you for not implying I am making the issue merely an emotional one.
You spoke earlier of risk/benefit. Blood or no blood should be MY decision, not that of a GB who in actuality allows no choice. It is ready to enforce its position by a shortcut to shunning, utilizing the disassociation category.
<I personally think the matter deserves more study, prayer, and meditation>
How long, O Lord? How many more decades? Till the stones cry out? Do you naively think they sit around a table, pray, and wait for God to speak?
What if the GB is right? What if the Flat Earth Society is right!
The inconsistencies in the policy have been made abundantly clear to everyone. Avail yourself of the opportunity to do so. To make a decision just because the majority of the GB holds to a position, would not proceed from faith. And that would be sin. Cf my comments elsewhere.
I've made my point, you have made yours. I appreciate what Greg Stafford has said to you and I understand full well what he means. Finis.
to whom it may concern,.
the witnesses are often condemned for refusing blood transfusions and "permitting" their children to die.
such a religious position is untenable, opponents of jws will argue.
<Nevertheless, I'd like to ask you, do you think there are certain dangers associated with taking blood?>
Absolutely. I came out of a surgery with a hemoglobin of 7.7 because I took no blood. But that was for MEDICAL not SCRIPTURAL reasons from my hearing qol YHWH through Scripture.
Right now JW theology is weighted toward the medical and is not doing a very good job of that either. (Its new video does not address many situations such as sudden trauma in which packed red cells may be life-saving, and some physicians have said the film is downright insulting.) The Society has not refuted the material at http://www.jwbloodreview.org.
They merely restate their position without addressing the issues. They say that if a blood policy "adjustment" is to be made, Jehovah will do so in His good time. Meantime we should wait, be humble. They are in a holding position, and keen observers--and participants--know it.
There many be benefits from avoiding shellfish as well, but good Lord we're talking about life-or-death situations involving babies who have no voice!
I do not hear God's voice giving me a test, I hear the Governing Body telling me that if I do not obey them they will brutally punish me and my family simply for "running ahead." Yes, I can separate myself. What an enormous price to pay! Is that the message of the Christ?
Dunsscot, there are quite a few on this board who have been part of the organization for MANY decades. We're not stupid. Some of us watched persons DIE during the period of time between acceptance of Factor VIII and the too-long period of time before it was officially announced.
We're watching a Governing Body defend an emotional position they've staked out that is blurred by their misunderstanding of physiology and medicine, and we see all the signs--and internal leaks--that indicate they hope to hang on for a few more years when "blood substitutes" will save the day--and save face. Many at the top know that is wishful thinking at best.
THAT'S IN THE FIELD OF MEDICINE, NOT SCRIPTURE,
AND THAT'S NOT THEIR PURVIEW!
What's coming back to bite them in the posterior is that the GB has made decisions in every area of human life, accumulating a veritable Talmud. Only in hindsight has it become clear to top decision-makers that this is an enormous liability, from many standpoints.
How to appear less hierarchical, and yet maintain control. 'Equipped for every good work'? No, the elders are termed "untrained volunteers" when it suits the Society's legal purposes. Inconsistent?
Call up the BioPure corporation, and ask them if Jehovah's Witness reps did not assist them in development and "marketing" of HemoPure, the hemoglobin fraction from cow's blood, now "acceptable," kosher, according to the Society rabbis. Ask BioPure if they had advance notice of the w 10/15/00 QFR on blood. Ask if they know this was PURPOSEFULLY obfuscating? Ask them if the Society has stock in their company or owns part of it.
Hear me well: the truth will out.
I agree with you that such ones are reprehensible who misuse their authority no matter how well cloaked it may be.
to whom it may concern,.
the witnesses are often condemned for refusing blood transfusions and "permitting" their children to die.
such a religious position is untenable, opponents of jws will argue.
Ah, yes, Abraham. Who heard qol YHWH, the voice of God, for himself.
If I hear the voice of God through Scripture, must I not obey it? Is it not "sin" for me if I do not? You have not addressed my previous simply put questions.
Does anyone really think that the Governing Body hears the actual voice of God today? Ask them individually and they will tell you they do not. They generalize about His spirit on the organization, point to buildings, property and past "growth" as evidence of blessing. Yet ONE GB vote can make the difference between what is to be brutally enforced by shunning or what is merely a line of reasoning. They are not unanimous on life-and-death matters, hardly a clarion voice of God.
The blood policy is just that. Embryonic? Hardly. It's been evolving for decades. An ill chosen metaphor. Surely you must understand that a real battle is going on internally among both GB and top decision-makers, not to let a doctrine come to full growth but to change it. Period.
It is not God, but the governing body that asks me to suspend my own clear hearing of the voice of God with regard to letting my child die LITERALLY in some SYMBOLIC grand gesture of respect for the sanctity of life. If I listen to qol YHWH, I will be punished by countless family members, my life ripped apart. This is not a philosophic issue being discussed in vacuo.
You've evidenced good reasoning on a number of points, but to trot out Kierkegaard on Abraham completely obfuscates and misses the point. A red herring, actually. I detest that when the Watchtower purposely does that as well.
my inactive sister who is very much a jw at heart recently discovered (i told her) that i was a budding agnostic.
she was quite intrigued and wondered why.
coming to an agnostic viewpoint has been a long journey.
The Nourishment for the Spirit thread lists some outstanding books that do not embrace and either/or philosophy. Evolution and science are not mutually exclusive to a belief in God. Glad someone cleared up the Nietzche quote.
..............................."NIETZCHE IS DEAD."
---God
.
does freedom of thought really obtain in this forum?
are those who have left god's organization and jehovah god himself actually now more open-minded and unbiased?
if those who espouse atheistic thoughts or those who believe every vile utterance spoken against jehovah's people think they are now speaking from some olympian perspective, i beg to differ.
<Should taking blood thus be a matter of conscience? I personally think it should. And by this statement, I do not mean that we should consider those who take blood transfusions to be our former brothers, who have shown they did not want the truth. A matter of conscience should be a matter of conscience.
<On the other hand, there are those who, after weighing the scriptural and medical evidence (either in a perfunctory in-depth manner), decide to abstain from blood transfusions. They also make this decision for their offspring and thus allow situations tat MAY involve the death of their very dear beloved children. They act in this way--suspending what to many might seem ethical--for a higher telos. They believe that they hear the voice of God (bath qol) in Scripture and through God's congregation, and they act accordingly. I cannot fault such individuals who take this course. In a way, they are akin to father Abraham.>
I am in agreement, good Doctor Subtilis. Your points are made very well. My long-time personal experience as an elder, however, suggests that the majority of JWs do not weigh these matters at all, preferring to listen to what I believe you have termed 'law emanating from' a specific group of individuals who themselves are in disagreement on this dogma. That is to say, they prefer to ask, "How does the Society [obviously not a corporation] feel about this?"
When the Society first published information in QFR form regarding the acceptability of the blood fraction gamma globulin, it was categorized as "in the field of conscience." When asked whether it was "right" to have an injection in the ER after a spider bite, many of us painstakingly discussed the need for developing the conscience so that it could flourish and act. For naught, because the repeated reply was almost invariably, "Yes, yes, I understand; but what does THE SOCIETY think about it?" I need not further burden this point.
In your opinion, what should a person do who has conscientiously examined Scripture, hears God's voice, and comes to the conclusion that "abstain ... from blood" has no application to the infusion of, say, packed red cells?
"Each of us will be accountable to God," says the inspired writer of Romans 14:12. If I follow an edict, policy or doctrine because an ecclesiastical body tells me I must (because I want to continue in its fellowship), I do not act from faith. Is that not sin for me? "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."--Rom. 14:23, NRSV.
For those to whom the historical Duns Scotus is unknown, a word or two.
Scotus changed his doctrine in the course of time, or at least he was not uniformly precise in expressing his thought; "now he follows rather the 'sententia communis,' then again he goes his own way."
Of him it is said: "In the heat of controversy he often uses expressions which seem to go to extremes and even to contain heresy. His language is frequently obscure; a maze of terms, definitions, distinctions, and objections through which it is by no means easy to thread one's way."
I think I understand your approach. Am I reading this correctly?
Jerry
i see that a lot of posters and possibly lurkers are from canada.. can you please mention briefly what part of canada you're from.
maybe some of us can get together.. i'll start; i am in vancouver.
What's with you people, eh? Especially in
T'ronto. Where's that hoser Percy Chapman when you need him?
TORONTO JOURNAL
Shedding a Bit More Than Its Image
By ANTHONY DePALMA
John Hryniuk for The New York Times
TORONTO — When Carmen Russo goes to work, she routinely does something that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable in a city so conservative about so many things that it was known throughout Canada as Toronto the Good.
Ms. Russo is one of the principal anchors for an Internet newscast, reading national news and business briefs in steady, sober tones for a global audience. And she does so in the nude.
Ms. Russo's program, "Naked News," and a companion program from Toronto called "The Male Edition," in which Lucas Taylor and other young men deliver the news in the buff, have become two of the most popular sites on the Internet, getting almost as many viewers as The Wall Street Journal's site.
The success of "Naked News," and the city's sanguine response to its production, is seen by many here as the most revealing sign of how much this city has changed as it has become a metropolitan center and left behind an image of prudery and oh- so-proper English restraint.
It has been three years since Toronto merged with five suburbs to form a metropolis of more than 2.3 million people. As it grows in worldliness, the new city, Canada's largest, has been letting its hair down in many ways.
In April Toronto got what is called North America's first talk-radio station for guys, a bar-stool blend of sports, schlock and sex on Mojo Radio-AM (640). And a former paper plant and junkyard on the eastern waterfront has grown into an enormous party zone, an open-air meeting place with a pool, a foam-covered dance floor and Canada's newest drive-in movie theater.
And each June Toronto holds one of North America's largest gay pride parades, where bare breasts and buttocks seem to be no more unusual than pretzels and balloons.
"Something is changing out there," said Stewart J. Meyers, operations manager for Mojo Radio. He said he still considers Toronto a conservative city compared with its flashy French-accented big sister, Montreal, but he said much had changed.
"Societal standards are what we're talking about here," Mr. Meyers said. "Are they what they were 25 years ago? Hardly."
Some longtime Torontonians say it was the gay pride parade that set a new tone. Though the parade has been held since the 1970's, in recent years it has grown tremendously in numbers of participants as well as in acceptance.
One reason the parade has become more risqué, perhaps, is that a few years ago an Ontario court ruled that it was legal for women to appear in public without covering their breasts, as long as they did not do so for commercial gain.
Toronto has been developing a more European sensibility about nudity and sex, which is reflected on the Internet and on the radio. But there has also been a shift from its rigid Protestant past.
"This is a city that's having a lot more fun than before," said Robert Bothwell, a professor of history at the University of Toronto and a longtime resident. "At least it's having more fun publicly."
Whether discussing pick-up lines or the advantages of one sexual act or another, Mojo Radio caters to an aspect of culture that was held in check in a more reserved Toronto.
Mojo Radio's billboards — showing a barely clad woman reclining against drapery and holding a drill — are also a departure from the classic architecture of Toronto. "What this says is that it's okay to be a guy again," said Mr. Meyers.
On summer weekends, thousands of Toronto's men and women jam into the Docks patio on Lake Ontario to meet, drink and dance in a way that the old Toronto would never have abided.
"We might have had a lot of trouble getting this project approved in Toronto 10 years ago," said Jerry Sprackman, who developed the Docks, which describes itself as "limited only to your imagination."
"There was a very negative connotation about clubs in the city," Mr. Sprackman said. "They were considered places for sex, drugs and bad characters."
But to the greatest number of Torontonians, it is "Naked News," taped in their midst every day, that most clearly reflects the change of the city's attitudes.
Canadians boring? Hardly, said Ms. Russo, one of the four "Naked News" anchors. The 42-year-old former model and mother of a teenage daughter thinks it is about time that Toronto loosened up a bit. "Maybe the city should be called `Toronto the Daring,' " she said.
The show was created by two Toronto entrepreneurs with financial backing from eGalaxy, a company chartered in Barbados. (A similar concept is used for television newscasts in several European cities.)
Toronto's "Naked News" (www.nakednews.com) first appeared on the Internet in December 1999. Producers say it has six million individual viewers a month worldwide. An independent count performed by Jupiter Media Matrix indicated that the program had 1.2 million individual viewers in the United States in May. "Naked News" covers international and national news, business, movies and other topics covered by most Canadian newscasts. The anchors' accents sometimes reveal their Canadian origins, but nothing on the set identifies it as being in Toronto.
During most of the program the anchors stand completely nude while they read the news. The exception is the opening segment in which a clothed woman disrobes while she reads the foreign news.
"I don't know about you," said Ms. Russo, "but I think foreign news is kind of boring and needs a little something to make it exciting."
"Naked News" has become difficult for Canadians to ignore. Some of Canada's most prominent broadcast journalists confess to having watched it, of course to find out what it was about.
Dale Goldhawk, a reporter for CTV, a national television network, said the show's popularity was a response to an alarming trend. "Some newscasts I've seen are so bad," he said, "I think the people should take off their clothes to make it more interesting."
in one or two recent threads i've seen reference to the possibility of a rising number of jw suicides being another of the organization's very dark realities about which it is vigilant in keeping concealed from its pub populace.
is there anyone reasonably informed regarding this?
is there reason to suppose the incidence ratio among jws is any higher than among any peoples/religion?
