Posts by cyberjesus

18

Please explain the point of being Good?

by Brocephus in

i never understood the point of being good and righteous if the only punishment for not doing so was "nothing" i would die and nothing would happen.

just nothing, no hell, no pain, no regret... just nothing.. on the other hand if i am good.... i have to deal with the jw's and their rules and boring meetings forever!!!

no worldly girls to sneak around with on saturday night.. no keg parties to sneak off too on friday?....

cyberjesus

Then the answer is : there is no point for being "good". (the jw kind) Be good your kind

16

Richard Dawkins forum

by zoiks in

jw
friends

are there any posters here who also read and/or post on the forums at richard-dawkins.net?

it seems as though a large number of xjws post there.

there are some really good and thought provoking points made, from a slightly different perspective.. just wondering!.

Finally Erased them OUT of my phone!

by babygirl30 in

it's been about going on 2yrs that i've been df'd and not even 1yr that i stopped going to the khall at all...but...i'm proud to say that as of last night i was going through my phone and decided that i needed to just cut out all those people that didn't matter anymore!

you know, the old jw 'friends' (use that term loosely) whose numbers i've held onto all this time and don't need anymore.

i mean, never going to bother with these people again.

cyberjesus

But you can add my phone number :-)

47

The dirty little secret of Watchtower PREACHING WORK you may not know

by Terry in

jw
friends

[if !mso]> <mce:style><!

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#vml);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#vml);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#vml);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#vml);} [endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>normal</w:view> <w:zoom>0</w:zoom> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser /> </w:worddocument> </xml><![endif].

here is a dramatic statement: .

cyberjesus

Excellent Job as always!

Thats why my last 3 years I would assign myself alone and would go to my car and take a nap for a couple of hours. I sort of knew it didnt really make a difference/

75

I've got a crush on a TV Preacher! Pastor Melissa Scott

by Terry in

added to .

quicklist6:46pastor melissa scott teaching on women speaking in the church part 1 - husbands wives ...pastor melissa scott teaching on women speaking in the church part 1 - husbands wives ...pastor melissa scott teaches from the los angeles university cathedral.

this is one of five brief excerpts posted here drawn from her full, one ...7 months ago4,440 viewsinthebrokenplacespastor melissa scott teaching on women speaking in the church part 1 - husbands wives .... 6:46 august 05, 2009education.

cyberjesus

Hey Terry are you implying Porn stars are dumb? Im offended. :-)

She needs to loose the outfit...com'mon unzip some buttons.

26

The Awakening

by AK - Jeff in

jw
friends

a time comes in your life when you finally get...when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out...enough1 enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on.

then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.. .

you realize its time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon.. .

cyberjesus

Thanks I m saving this

18

Satanism watch

by Weeping in

jw
friends

since some have expressed curiosit in the subject of satanic worship, this will be a running repository of current issues involving satanic cults.. http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20100219/busted/2190316.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100205/157781799.html.

cyberjesus

Actually any JW has a vested interested in watching Satan :-)

48

If someone ask you personally "Are you an apostate?", How would you answer them?

by asilentone in

jw
friends

.

cyberjesus

I was dfd for adultery 14 years ago. So I did not abandoned my religion. They kicked me out. I have not had a religion since. Right now I dont believe in the JW religion I think they all are false religion and I can talk agains them and still I am not an apostate by definition.

32

Camels werent domesticated during Abraham's time?

by cyberjesus in

one of the many factors that made me loose faith in the bible was the fact that camels were not domesticated during abrahams era.

i read this on the book "the bible unearthead".

do you know of any other evidence that shows camels were domesticated after 1000 bce.

cyberjesus

"The patriarchs first appear in our story with the journey of one of them, Abraham, who, the story tells us, led members of his tribe from the city of Ur, west towards the Mediterranean, to the "promised land" of Canaan, sometime between the 19th and 18th centuries B.C.E. Or so the story goes.

The problem is that we don't really have any good archeaological evidence to support the Abraham story, and there is much archaeological evidence to contradict it. The land where Abraham supposedly settled, the southern highlands of Palestine (from Jerusalem south the the Valley of Beersheba) is very sparse in archaeological evidence from this period. It is clear from the archaeological record that its population was extremely sparse - no more than a few hundred people in the entire region, and the sole occupants of the area during this time were nomadic pastoralists, much like the Bedouin of the region today. We know from clear archaeological evidence that the peoples known as the Phillistines never even entered the region until the 12th century B.C.E., and the "city of Gerar" in which Isaac, the son of Abraham, had his encounter with Abimelech, the "king of the Phillistines" (in Genesis 26:1) was in fact a tiny, insignificant rural village up until the 8th century B.C.E. It couldn't have been the capital of the regional king of a people who didn't yet exist!

This isn't the only problem with the account of the Age of the Patriarchs, either. There's the problem of the camels. We know from archaeological evidence that camels weren't domesticated until about the late second millenium B.C.E., and that they weren't widely used as beasts of burden until about 1000 B.C.E. - long after the Age of the Patriarchs. And then there's the problem of the cargo carried by the camels - "gum, balm and myrrh," which were products of Arabia - and trade with Arabia didn't begin until the era of Assyrian hegemony in the region, beginning in the 8th century B.C.E.

Yet another problem is Jacob's marriage with Leah and Rachel, and his relationship with his uncle, Laban, all of whom are described as being Arameans. This ethnic group does not appear in the archeological record prior to 1100 B.C.E., and not a significant group until the 9th century B.C.E."

32

Camels werent domesticated during Abraham's time?

by cyberjesus in

one of the many factors that made me loose faith in the bible was the fact that camels were not domesticated during abrahams era.

i read this on the book "the bible unearthead".

do you know of any other evidence that shows camels were domesticated after 1000 bce.

cyberjesus

Anachronism #1: Domesticated Camels

In our first example. note that there are two references to domesticated camels in the story of Abraham:

Genesis 12:14-16
[W]hen Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair. The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.

Genesis 24:10-11
And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor. And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water.

As noted earlier, Abraham’s lifetime has been estimated anywhere between the 25th century BC and the 16th century BC. The above passage implies that camels were already domesticated and in use during that time.

However, based on every other available evidence we have, tame camels were simply unknown during Abraham's time. Egyptian texts of that era mentioned nothing of them. Even in Mari; the kingdom that is situated next to the Arabian deserts; which would have had the greatest use for camels; and of which archaeologists have a large collection of documents; not a single mention is made of camels in contemporaneous text.

In fact, it was only in the 11th century BC that references to camels started to appear in cuneiform texts and reliefs. After the 11th century, references to camels become more and more frequent. [4] This suggests that camels were domesticated around the 12th or 11th century BC. [b]

Thus there could have been no domesticated camel during Abraham’s lifetime. It must be, then, that the above stories are later additions to the legend of Abraham.

Back to the top

Anachronism #2: The Arabic Camel Caravan Trade

The next anachronism concerns the story of how Joseph's brothers planned to sell him off to slavery. The brothers initially threw Joseph into a pit (Genesis 37:22-23). They then left the pit for a while and this is how the next phase is narrated

Genesis 37:25-28
And they [Joseph's brothers] sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camelsbearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content. Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.

Before analyzing further we need to make known some archaeological facts.

In the first place, as we have shown in anachronism #1, camels were not yet domesticated during that time. Furthermore excavations in the southern coastal plain of Israel found that camel bones increased dramatically only in the seventh century BCE. More importantly these bones were of adult camels, as one would expect of beast of burden used in traveling to different places. For if they were bred there one would expect to find a scattering of young camel bones as well. This means that camels were commonly used in the caravan trades during that time.

This is further supported by Assyrian sources that mentioned camels being used as beast of burdens in caravans during that time. The items being traded, gum, balm and resin, [written as "spicery, balm and myrrh" in the KJV above] were Arabian exports that were traded commonly only from the eight and seventh century BCE under the control of the Assyrian empire.

Now on to a bit of chronology. Even if we accept the rather unusually long ages of the patriarchs, we will see that the incident referred to must have happened only around 260 after Abraham was born (refer to the biblical chronology). Thus during the time of Joseph, camels were still not domesticated, there were still about (at the very best case) another five hundred years before Arabic (Ishmaelites was the Bible name for Arabs) camel caravan trade in gum, balm and resin, could be referred to in an "incidental manner" as above. [5]

Thus the story of Joseph's abduction, specifically the mention of the Arab camel caravan trade and the Arab traders buying Joseph, is also littered with anachronisms.

http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/abraham.html