Posts by fulltimestudent

15

Just read "Zealot - The Life And Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth"

by EdenOne in

so, keeping in mind that mrs. eden isn't so comfortable with english, i have been searching for books on the subject of the historical jesus and who wrote the bible, and i got very frustrated because there's not a lot of those in my native language.

most of what i read in english simply hasn't been translated, which is a shame.

in any case, i managed to get two: bart ehrman's "misquoting jesus" and reza aslan's "zealot".

fulltimestudent

EdenOne: Finally, one of my favorites. It's a scholarly article (Book? Thesis?) about how the first Christian gatherings.I have found it a fascinating reading. I found it very useful when I had to research for an article I wrote about shunning.
THE EARLIEST HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN GATHERING - ORIGIN, DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN GATHERING IN THE FIRST TO THIRD CENTURIES
by Valeriy Alexandrovich Alikin

Thnx for posting this item. Looks interesting, and I'm pleased to have it, although other scholars have published studies examining the many similarities between Graeco-Roman social fellowships and Christian gatherings.

The paper appears to be Alikin's dissertation for his Ph.d.

The book may be an expanded version of the dissertation, havn't had time to check that. A partial version of Alikin's book can be found on google books: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=dBuzG2enXxMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

71

Living with Islam

by fulltimestudent in

indonesia is a large nation to the north of australia.

more than 250 million people live there, and around 204 million (88%) are muslim.

the indonesian armed forces have nearly a million personnel, either as active servicemen or reservists.. australia, with a population of 23 million, and an armed forces of 80,000 (active and reservist), has no choice but to live in co-operation with indonesia, though the relationship is sometimes strained.

fulltimestudent

Indonesia is a large nation to the North of Australia. More than 250 million people live there, and around 204 million (88%) are Muslim. The Indonesian armed forces have nearly a million personnel, either as active servicemen or reservists.

Australia, with a population of 23 million, and an armed forces of 80,000 (active and reservist), has no choice but to live in co-operation with Indonesia, though the relationship is sometimes strained. Most recently, because Indonesia insisted on executing two Australian citizens convicted (without doubt) of drug smuggling. The transit of refugees through Indonesia has also been an issue. On the other hand, many Indonesians recall Australia's (sort of) support during their struggle against a tyrannical Dutch military effort to regain control of their empire after the Japanese occupation in WW2. The Dutch launched a major offensive against Indonesian freedom fighters in July, 1947 and in support militant Australian wharfies banned Dutch vessels and vessels taking munitions and equipment to Indonesia.

15

Just read "Zealot - The Life And Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth"

by EdenOne in

so, keeping in mind that mrs. eden isn't so comfortable with english, i have been searching for books on the subject of the historical jesus and who wrote the bible, and i got very frustrated because there's not a lot of those in my native language.

most of what i read in english simply hasn't been translated, which is a shame.

in any case, i managed to get two: bart ehrman's "misquoting jesus" and reza aslan's "zealot".

fulltimestudent

EdenOne: I recommend it, but as I said, it keeps things on a relatively accessible level, but for more in-depth research, there are better works. Have you read it?

I have not read it, although I understand the general position that Ehrman takes. Of course, there may be better books, but I think that Ehrman may have written for a wider audience. A really scholarly analysis of any topic will likely lose most readers who are not part of the academic community. (And some books-papers may even lose the academic community - grin).

There's a really intriguing book named, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian, by an Allen Brent, in which Brent argues that the way that early Christianity was organised, was as a response to the Imperial Cult, (Emperor worship). But having tried to read it, I suggest that most people wont go past a few pages.

Brent btw is an excellent scholar. His wikipedia entry reads:

The Rev. Prof. Allen Brent is a scholar of early Christian history and literature. He is a Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, formerly Dean (2012-2013), was an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge in 1998-2010. At present he is Professor in Early Christian History and Iconography at King's College London where he is joint researcher (with Professor Markus Vinzent), on a two year BARDA project: Early Christian Epigraphy and Iconography after Dölger. He is also Professore Invitato at the Augustinianum (Lateran University), Rome. He was formerly Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Huddersfield, and has previously been Professor of History at James Cook University. He was ordained a deacon for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 28 April 2011 and a priest on 15 June 2011. His webpage ishttp://www.allenbrent.co.uk.

All of which doesn't make him correct, but does demonstrate that he may know a little more about Christian history than the average elder, and, I think there's a possibility that he's correct in some of his ideas.

Certainly, the organised church that Constantine accepted as an alternative to the Imperial Cult, fitted easily into the slot previously occupied by the Imperial cult.

A more readable book, in which Brent presents some of his arguments, and that may interest readers on this site, is: "A Political History of Early Christianity."

An editorial review quoted by Amazon describes the book:

'Allen Brent is one of the boldest and most seminal historians currently writing about Christianity in the ancient world. In his works on Hippolytus and Ignatius, he has already displayed his magisterial learning and his ability to shed new light on the history of ideas by the investigation of social and cultural backgrounds. If he is not one to be carried away on a bandwagon, he is also not one to neglect a theory merely because it is difficult or because it has become dangerously fashionable in other disciplines. His aim in the present book is to examine the relation between metaphysical theories and their political contexts, with a broad remit in the interpretation of the terms "metaphysical" and "political". The introduction promises an astute engagement with such figures as sociologist Peter Berger, intellectual historian Quentin Skinner and the virtuoso of the social sciences, Max Weber. In his opening chapter he plunges dauntlessly into the thickets of New Testament scholarship, doing ample justice to the arguments of those who deny an eschatological character to the original preaching of Jesus, but showing at the same time that their attempts to cast Jesus as an ascetic teacher for the present world exaggerates the significance of non-canonical texts and is patently motivated by contemporary interests. The writing is characteristically lucid, the scholarship impeccable, the argument brisk but incisive; if this chapter is an augury of the rest, we can expect another distinguished addition to a corpus of scholarship that is already impressive.' — Mark Edwards, Christ Church, Oxford, UK.

52

1914—The Turning Point in History - Really?

by berrygerry in

1914the turning point in history.

30 from the human standpoint, the world troubles and global wars foretold in the bible were far from the thinking of the pre-1914 world.

german statesman konrad adenauer said: thoughts and pictures come to my mind, .

fulltimestudent

Lieu: As for WWI, it may have been a terrible war in modern times, but it isn't the worst war or even the first worldwide war. It was nothing but another war between Europeans.

True, The Jws continually try to paint WW1 as the worst in history, and certainly a terrible time. But as Lieu says, it was essentially a European war, and was only extended to the rest of the world through the imperial colonies held by the protagonists. Even WW2 is misnamed, though it is more deserving of the tag, world wide war, than WW1.

The wikipedia gives a total for deaths as

The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 38 million: over 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.

Though some give a higher number.

For sheer bloody butchery though, its hard to go past the mid-nineteenth century civil war that raged for something like a decade within China, as the Christian Taiping attempted to defeat the ruling Qing dynasty. A recent Chinese study places the death toll as fifty seven million.

A Muslim revolt occurred at the same time, and I'm unsure whether the above figure includes the death toll from that war in the southern (Yunnan) and western (Xinjiang and Gansu) provinces. If they are NOT included the death toll must be around 65 million.

4

Galillee, heartland of paganism in Palestine

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

my thread title is somewhat tongue in cheek, because we all know that galilee is where jesus family lived and where he started his ministry.. but, the little village of nazareth, where father joseph started his carpentery business and his sons continued the business, was only about 6km from sepphoris.

its conjectured by some that the family business was not very prosperous, being dependent on rural work when, joseph started it.

nazareth was a typical rural village, houses constructed from mud and brick, with maybe a few constructed from stone.

fulltimestudent

Precious posting: Was this the source of family wealth that allowed Jesus time to read, to wander the country side preaching, and for James to become President of the later Jerusalem Christian congregation and family members to continue in that position after his death? We can only make some assumptions.

Let's have a closer look at the family Jesus belonged to. I'm sure everyone's read Mark 6:3, but just in case anyone has already forgotten the verse, it reads:

Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. (NIV).

The New Living Translation translates it somewhat differently (not sure about the scholarly basis for their selection of words):

Then they scoffed, "He's just a carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us." They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him.

But we get the drift, after Jesus got up and preached in the Nazareth Synagogue, everyone was surprised (to say the least). They had known him as a carpenter, and they knew his brothers. And, it's possible that the family accept some of the husbands of the daughters into the business. Likely with all working together in the family business, and with their proximity to Sepphoris, they did well, and they all became prosperous.

We can also wonder about the role that Jesus had in the business? It seems he had a charismatic personality, so maybe he was something like the sales manager in a contemporary business, handy with words and carpentery tools, we see from his parables that he knew, and was on familiar terms with farm owners and managers, the middle class people employed by the wealthy to manage their investments.

In the beginning, outside of Mary, it seems that no-one else in the family believed he had a divine mission and it certainly is not clear when any of his brothers began to believe. But it is also clear that James and Jude did, and according to the church historians Eusebius and Epiphanius, that James and also Simon (Simeon) were the first two 'bishops' of the Jerusalem congregation. There's other evidence that Jude's grandsons played a role in the church during the end of the first century CE, that was back in Galilee, after all Jews were driven out of Jerusalem by the Romans. So in some ways, it seems, the early church was dominated by the family of Jesus.

We ought to be asking what their influence was? To what extent did they influence doctrine? And to what extent were they influenced by Jewish-Hellenistic culture? Some scholarship argues that more than 20% (conservatively) of the population spoke Greek in public. There were even schools in Jerusalem that trained Jewish teachers in Greco-Roman rhetoric. Its also estimated that between 125,000 and 500,000 pilgrims from outside Palestine would visit Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. (Refer Acts 2:5-11) Greek was the common language used by nearly all.

3

Holiday time (at least in the southern hemisphere)- Here's a suggestion. Northern Sri Lanka

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

not many years ago, this visit may have been dangerous.

but now that the civil war is over, even if the tamils lost their fight for independence, its safe to visit:.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/sri-lanka-by-train-the-formerly-war-torn-north-is-rebuilding-a6736001.html.

fulltimestudent

Simon: Why are so many of the interesting places in the world in the middle of war zones?

Easy question. Because, so many of these 'nations' are artificial, in the sense that they were likely comprised of different political entities that were conquered by Imperial military forces and administered by colonial powers who used ethnic suspicions to control two or more different ethnic groups.

But you could think of Europe in the 19th and the first half of the 20th C in a similar way. Almost continual wars.

In the case of Sri Lanka, I suggest its quite safe. And, it is beautiful>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpZI2oGPsio

19

Can you prove that WT policy of shunning is unscriptual? Will soon be discussing with somebody, give me all your ammo!

by EndofMysteries in

will soon be discussing w/ somebody still in about that.

i want to make sure i am not missing anything good.

so any scriptures, articles whether wt articles or secular about effects of shunning, etc, or your arguments against how wt interprets their scriptures, etc.

fulltimestudent

No matter what interpretation you may place on the witnesses favourite texts, that deal with shunning and disfellowshipping, you are still faced with the problem that, at least, some Jewish cults and the newer Christian cults punished 'sinners.' often by isolating them, and on occasion with violence.

3

Holiday time (at least in the southern hemisphere)- Here's a suggestion. Northern Sri Lanka

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

not many years ago, this visit may have been dangerous.

but now that the civil war is over, even if the tamils lost their fight for independence, its safe to visit:.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/sri-lanka-by-train-the-formerly-war-torn-north-is-rebuilding-a6736001.html.

fulltimestudent

Not many years ago, this visit may have been dangerous. But now that the civil war is over, even if the Tamils lost their fight for independence, its safe to visit:

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/sri-lanka-by-train-the-formerly-war-torn-north-is-rebuilding-a6736001.html

19

Too Much Discontent in the Congregation Part 3

by Simon Templar in

now, 80-85 years later, we are still here.

if i was to do the counsel with a brother who had this much experience, i would have just thanked him for doing the talk, and marked him good on the point.

this is a good way to get money though.

fulltimestudent

LoveUniHateExams: From when I first started studying to when I left, I wasted 15 years of my life in the cult. This is bad enough, but I can't imagine what it would be like wasting 50 years in the cult.

haha - Well, I can tell you. I wasted 42 years, and perhaps would've wasted more, except they disfellowshipped me and that gave me a chance to wake up.

I try not to be angry, what's the point? I did it to myself. I didn't really question anything, accepting that their viewpoint was correct. Can't say it was all bad, and maybe I could not have done the things I now see as desirable. The early 1950's were a lot different to now.

Daily routines in or out the truth are much the same, and yeah! I had some interesting and good friendships - all destroyed of course, by the leadership's megalomania.

The biggest loss, of course, has been financial. Wasted years on useless preaching, putting the YHWH/Jesus combo god first in my life. The problem of divorce and family splitting (emotional blackmail on the part of the megalomaniacal leadership) and the fact that I felt obligated to care for my family by giving them all of what I had accumulated to that point, thus finding myself out on the street with nothing. But by hard work and careful saving, I wont have a deprived old age. Contacts tell me that my foolish ex-wife is having a difficult time. Deluded, she still is 'in' and confident that the end was coming, wasted her money (including my share of what we had) and is now doing it tough..

But how much more sensible now. You can just fade. More and more are doing just that. And, its the best way. They cant stop you, they cant control you. Just refuse to discuss it

And, I now have a reasonably good life since I don't need much, except my study room with too many books that seem to breed in quiet corners, and that teach me that I was once deluded into thinking that the world was coming to an end - grin!

And, I can have an overseas trip once a year to China, where I can watch a billion people who were poor 50 years ago, but have now (by hard work and good leadership) transformed their nation into a much better place, in fact its true to say, that in many cities its approaching a condition that you could call paradise - all without either YHWH or Jesus.

I've often sat on the edge of Xihu (the west lake) with friends. We buy some really beautifully made french style pastries or cakes at a little pattisserie near by and watch the sunset somewhat like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4VH-TnSkU

My paradise - what more could I ask for?

121

No more printing of WT and Awake in my country.. Shit just got real

by cognitivedizzy in

jw
friends

guys .

a letter was just read in out kh stating that all printing of wt and awake is ceased for the coming year and we will just place tracts on fs, countries which were cared by our branch will be cared by other countries...along with this they read the new fs form and stuff about reporting links of videos wtf..lol.

i can't tell which country perhaps that will give away a lot, any one with a similar information.

fulltimestudent

Vidiot: I don't think it ever occurred to the XJW community that the potential loss of tax-exempt status could actually cause serious problems for the Org...
---------------------
...but the more you think about it, the harder it is to argue that their entire "business model" (as done4good put it) is very tightly adapted to said status.

Haha- so much for divine wisdom guiding the Jovial witnesses. (or, any other brand of Christianity)