well it is only natural to assume that a modest number of cos&wives, bethelites, and other people are becoming enlightened shall we say as to the real sinister nature of these sociopaths called the faithful and discreet governing body slave bull shit artist.. so what besides making secret documents public can these do to get some type of satisfactional revenge for being used by them in such a cruel way or like a smuck who they don't even give one shit about.
what can these ladies and men do?
how can they get some form of pay back for all the years they wasted slaving for these no good greedy bastards called the governing fucking body?
Another thought if the Watchtower Corporation is in some type of litigation that involve COs and they fire them or mistreatment in anyway because of such litigation that that is illegal and may force financial compensated in a court of law?
You can be sure that before taking any action that may even hint at legal trouble the WT lawyers will be involved in designing an action plan to minimize negative outcomes.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
@freemindface
You're putting it way too simplistically and with such obvious uncaring and dismissive fashion that it seems hardly worth it to argue with you.
But I'm going to say that the OP dealt with the opinionated poo-pooing of Raymundus Martin transliterating the Divine Name as IEHOVA and how our English Jehovah is just as good a transliteration for the tetragrammaton as Yahweh is, and perhaps even better due to the evidence presented by some researchers who are considered experts in this topic.
It's just so sad that when a topic dealing with a doctrinal point of Jehovah's Witnesses fundamental beliefs gets brought up some here make idiotic trolling remarks, proving only how unacquainted with scholarly research you seem.
The Middle East isn't in turmoil because we argue over the pronunciation of the Divine Name. It is in turmoil because bigots refuse to act in a civilized manner and use words to reason rather than guns to inflict harm. That is the root of the turmoil there.
My assertion in the OP stands. And if you wish to flap your cojones around, kindly do so in your own thread--Go title it "Freemindfade's opinion of deities and how he flaunts his swollen cojones to the heavens." If you will.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
I told you I'm not trying to offend you. And if you are offended then you find offense where there isn't any meant.
You are nit picking parts of what I said without reference to others. How much percentage of the Jewish population in Israel really sing psalms in worship?
Close to about half the population consider themselves secular/non-religious Jews. Another quarter consider themselves hardly religious, and the ones that claim to be orthodox are less than a tenth of the population. These fanatical fundamentalists act like bullies. And they should be opposed--They wield too much influence as it is.
I've not yet had a chance to visit the Wailing Wall nor any of the Holy Sites, it is something I'd like to do. I've seen how Ladinos in Turkey hide what they are, out of necessity. I've been to Germany and seen the remains of awful acts of inhumane cruelty. I've learned of the gross abuses the Catholic Inquisition perpetrated on the Jewish population who were forced into baptism in my very own home country. It sickens me such things were done, it is a testimony to the cruelty of man towards his fellow man.
I am attracted to the teaching of a certain Jew from Nazareth, who said to love your enemies and that blessed are the peacemakers. This in no way condones violence against anyone, I don't believe in looking the other way in the face of evil. Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple for a reason, these lucre-loving profit-mongers disrespected what the Temple stood for. I believe that there's a time for everything under Heaven. So be it.
Pharisee based Rabbinical Judaism doesn't take all their doctrine from the Tanakh, you are correct, and I stated such above in mentioning the tradition of Talmud loving students of Scripture. But that's not for me, sorry, and it seems it isn't for 3/4 of the Jewish population in the land of Israel. Are you declaring them non-Jews? What? Because they might have been at Woodstock and weren't hippies?
Give me a break Caleb! If the Tanakh wasn't settled until the first century, Torah certainly was, and even in the time of Josiah there was an attempt to fully establish the Law over the land.
I don't doubt you have many Ashkenazi friends who are not bigots. You remind me of WASPs who say "I have black friends!" And so what. None of that detracts from the factual point I made about the mistreatment of Jewish minorities among Israelis, and especially so by the fanatically orthodox. Why was Yitzak Rabin, may he rest in peace, killed? Who killed him? It wasn't a Palestinian, Caleb, and it wasn't a secular/non-religious Jew. Was it? Lo, no it was not.
Unlike you I do judge what Jewish fundamentalist fanatics do, and I think it's deplorable. It's inhuman, it is wrong! They are bullies and they should be opposed.
Despite what you might say, I still maintain I meant no offense and if you do take offense then you are blind to the fact that my gripe is with fanatics who impose their judgements on others, these folks deserve to be judged with the same measuring stick they whip their fellows. May God be their judge and not I, He well knows I have little patience for bullies.
well it is only natural to assume that a modest number of cos&wives, bethelites, and other people are becoming enlightened shall we say as to the real sinister nature of these sociopaths called the faithful and discreet governing body slave bull shit artist.. so what besides making secret documents public can these do to get some type of satisfactional revenge for being used by them in such a cruel way or like a smuck who they don't even give one shit about.
what can these ladies and men do?
how can they get some form of pay back for all the years they wasted slaving for these no good greedy bastards called the governing fucking body?
Although I wish so much it were so, I doubt any awakened CO & COW would dare go against the Momma WT.
There may be legal agreements one enters when accepting the position of CO, I don't know. But if other cultish religions are anything of an example I don't see ex-Scientologists or ex-Worldwide Church of God (Armstrong) or ex-Mormons bringing their religious headquarters to task before a judge on the grounds that they were duped by sociopathic charlatans.
Unless the WT hierarchy cracks down even more to the point of blatantly and physically harming these folks, all the CO's if awakened are just going to keep mum. Why? That's a good question, I think the answer lies in no longer having anything else to lose. Something like what happened to Ray Franz, Ed Dunlap, Jim Penton, Ron Frye etc. may motivate a CO to lash out and expose the WT for what it is. (Ron F. was a CO himself, and Ray F. became DO and a Governing Body member too, so there's those who did break the silence).
I think the WT is very careful these days and their legal team is quite savvy at forseeing trouble and scurrying to quench anything, even doctrines, that may spell trouble for the JW religion's Headquarters.
With so many DO's being deposed, and CO's put out to pasture in retirement, you would think that some of them, at least a few, are disgruntled enough to break the silence, but this doesn't seem to be happening and the WT seems quite able to avoid such a snafu scenario these days.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
Dear CalebInFlorida, you are totally entitled to your opinion. I make no judgement on your sense of being Jewish, as I make no claims to completely follow ancient laws written down by Moses. I used the connotation of superstition that means "belief" and not "fallacy". Others here may call such belief just that a "fallacy" to me they are traditions and customs, which are expansions and exaggerations of the precepts found in the Torah. Fundamentalist Jewish belief can be just as fanatical as Medieval Crusaders' who went slaying anyone who wasn't a Pope follower, both Eastern Orthodox Christian and Muslim cities were equally seiged, stormed and pillaged, the Jews were always found themselves caught in the middle and persecuted by all.
It amazes, it shocks me, how a Jew can excuse his murdering of a fellow Jew, a public figure like Yitzak Rabin. It appalls me that some Jews in Israel would opt to exterminate the Palestinians altogether, a Palestinian ethnic cleansing. Have we not learned from our experience as a people?
I have no problem in calling Kabbalism and Gematria superstitions, they should be called what they are, just like a religion that acts in cultish ways should be called a cult. And in my opinion that's what the JW religion actually is. As Oubliette likes to reminds us "Let's review: It's a cult!" Let's call it what it is.
Being descended from Sephardim I've also found prejudice from East European background Jews. They consider themselves more "Jewish" more deserving of belonging to the ethnic name, even secular Ashkenazi Jews show a propensity to look down on Sephardim. That's a very sad and very true fact of modern life in the Jewish State of Israel.
The Sephardim aren't alone in being ostracised. Karaite, Ethiopian and Messianic Jews are all minorities that are sidelined by the Ashkenazi Jews who have more influence.
In Bible times there were many sects, Saducees, Pharisees, Essenes, etc. We are now realizing how the Masoretic text is not as faithful as the Septuagint translation thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, these predate any masoretic surviving text by a thousand years. The Dead Sea Scrolls support readings that are found in the Septuagint but read different in the Masoretic text. Also there are "lacunae" in the masoretic text that are preserved in the Septuagint and appear confirmed in recompiled Dead Sea Scroll fragments.
One interesting point you bring up is the big impact of Babylonian captivity had on the worship of the One God. Before the Babylonian exile, archaeology reveals that in the Holy Land there was rampant disregard for unique worship of the Lord God (YHWH). There have been idol figures from pre Babylonian Exile found in every Tel just about.
The worship of Baals and fertility goddesses was quite widespread during those times. It was then that many prophets of YHWH declared condemnation for such pagan practices and insisted on exclusive worship of the One God. The use of the tetragrammaton was very obvious as can be deduced from the Biblical narrative and from archaeological finds from that era.
Yet the archaeological record also brings to light that the returning Jews worshiped the One God more exclusively than their predecessors. It is during this time that Talmudic traditions became more ingrained in Jewish culture and persist till today. It is a constant dialog of commentary on what the Torah actually means. It is not Holy Writ. The Talmud is a product of cultural tradition without the claim of inspiration.
The command to abstain from pronouncing the name of the One God isn't found in the Torah, nor the Prophets, in fact the Psalms abound with the tetragrammaton. These psalms were meant to be sung out loud, sung for others to hear, to sing together, to use in communal worship, not just personal meditation.
I maintain that the restriction to pronounce the Divine Name is a later practice/belief (and I'll not use the word superstition to define it if it bothers you, for that I apologize) that wasn't present in Biblical times. This belief/practice was a later development, and can be traced to post-exilic times.
Please accept my apology if in any of my statements you felt insulted, it was never my intention. I wish you peace. Shalom.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
I appreciate the depth of research and reasoning that Gertoux has undertaken but i still believe from a linguistic point of view that is impossible to determine the original pronunciation of The Name and therefore any dogmatic attempts to support ANY of the varients are futile,
Indeed, Wizzstick, I agree and appreciate Gertoux's exhaustive references and research. I also think Greg has done a great job of proving his preference.
That, as you assert, none of the proposed alternatives can be proved without a doubt, does not take away from the opinion I expressed in the OP. That Jehovah is not worse than Yahweh, and that in fact there seems to be good research supporting the idea that it may have been closer to Yeh-hoo-ahh rather than Yah-weh.
Anglicising Martin's IEHOVA as Jehovah (and pronouncing it djuh-ho-vuh, djee-ho-vah, or even as you hear in New England djuh-ho-vurr) is typical of the tradition of Biblical English names translation.
In Spanish Jehovah is Hey-o-ba' and Jesus is Hey-soos, quite clearly very distant from an original Hebrew and yet, Spanish comes from Latin, and Martin was a Spanish Dominican monk.
So I'm not being dogmatic, instead I'm objecting to the dogmatic view, some keep parroting, that Martin had it all wrong and that Yahweh is a better alternative to Jehovah.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
jacksonville, fl - the local newspaper had an article on the convention going on for the next two weekends.
while i could not find the article, i was able to find this slide show of this weekend's events.
the newspaper article was interesting as it discussed what a wonderful job they were doing cleaning the arena seats and bathrooms and everyone was enjoying their job.
Indeed, and the "Society" is assigning retiring CO's to the area as well. Apparently there's a need and it's considered fertile ground for expansion.
Ex-CO Tom Chin (forced to retire due to turning 70, although he looks 50) and last assigned around here (Mass.) will be heading down in August, and spending special pioneer hours in service down in Jacksonville area (poor guy, imagine the heat and humidity).
In the Spanish congregation they are bemoaning the fact that a lot of second and third generation Latinos are more at ease speaking English than Spanish and attending English language meetings.
So if we put the two together the only real increase worth noticing can be found among communities with a heavy Latino presence.
in another thread i wrote some notes about why using jehovah in english is as good as using yahweh.
i'm starting a discussion on this topic because it sounds quite ignorant to hear people talk of the monk who started using it in latin without really understanding why the monk did so.. the spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270, didn't get hoodwinked by an old jewish superstition about pronouncing the divine name with the vowel points of another word.. 1. first the vowel points of adonay and jehovah cannot be the same for grammatical reasons.
you just can't use the same vowel points because some vowels aren't paired with some consonants in pronouncing hebrew words.
Wait let me turn off troll mode for a second.Oh boy...
- Greg Stafford (former JW apologist and founder of the Christian Witnesses of Jah)???
Greg shows the extant forms found in the Hebrew Scriptures could be transliterated as Jah, Jahoh and Jahoah.
Take a look at his explanatory notes:
http://elihubooks.blogspot.com/2011/04/christian-witnesses-of-jah-jahoh-ah-god.html
