Posts by fulltimestudent

6

The Earliest Printed Book Still in Existence - the Buddhist Diamond Sutra

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the british library has a copy of this important historical work (dated to may 868 ce), and has been working to conserve its copy.

this film made by the international dunhuang project (formed to conserve relics from the silk road (the east-west trading network) backgrounds the sutra's story:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgn5hqxtlmc.

fulltimestudent

Nathan Natas: More TRUTH here than The Watchtower ever dreamed of.

Smile, Nathan. Umm! Not sure if any religion has 'truth.' And, for us English speakers, prevented by our ignorance of the original language (in which some text may have been written) and its nuances, from fully understanding what the original writer was trying to say, we should always acknowledge the possibility that we've got it wrong.

For anyone interested - here's a modern translation of this Sutra.

http://diamond-sutra.com/read-the-diamond-sutra-here/diamond-sutra-chapter-4/

The fifth chapter reads:

Diamond Sutra: Chapter 05“Subhuti, what do you think? Can the Buddha be recognized by means of his bodily form?”
“No, Most Honored One, the Buddha cannot be recognized by means of his bodily form. Why? Because when the Buddha speaks of bodily form, it is not a real form, but only an illusion.”
The Buddha then spoke to Subhuti: “All that has a form is illusive and unreal. When you see that all forms are illusive and unreal, then you will begin to perceive your true Buddha nature.”

If you google this question: 'In Buddhism why are forms illusionary and unreal?' you will get over 700,000 pages in response. But, for us, in our world, only things that we can discern, test, measure etc. are real.

Conceptual thought may discern something that can be described as true. For example. in the Axial age (8th to 3rd centuries BCE) , thinkers like Leucippis and Democritus of Abdera first thought up the idea that everything we can see and know consists of atoms and void. They, and their successors, could not 'prove' their theory as they lacked any technology that would enable them to see 'atoms.' But they managed to get it right. However, these early 'Atomists' got the concept of 'soul' wrong, simply because they accepted the idea that humans had a soul.

I'll stop there, my mind is starting to get knotted again (grin).

6

The Earliest Printed Book Still in Existence - the Buddhist Diamond Sutra

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the british library has a copy of this important historical work (dated to may 868 ce), and has been working to conserve its copy.

this film made by the international dunhuang project (formed to conserve relics from the silk road (the east-west trading network) backgrounds the sutra's story:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgn5hqxtlmc.

fulltimestudent

The cover illustration of this ancient printed book has many allusions to Buddhist thought, In this next video, Conrad Walters discusses the symbolism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXMtjM6NSuk

6

The Earliest Printed Book Still in Existence - the Buddhist Diamond Sutra

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the british library has a copy of this important historical work (dated to may 868 ce), and has been working to conserve its copy.

this film made by the international dunhuang project (formed to conserve relics from the silk road (the east-west trading network) backgrounds the sutra's story:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgn5hqxtlmc.

fulltimestudent

The British Library has a copy of this important historical work (dated to May 868 CE), and has been working to conserve its copy. This film made by the International Dunhuang Project (formed to conserve relics from the Silk Road (The East-West Trading Network) backgrounds the Sutra's story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgN5HQXTlMc

21

Attending a same-sex wedding

by Samantharockeby33 in

my cousin, whom is not jw, but we have grown up together our whole lives has just gotten engaged to her same sex partner, i am very conflicted on wether i can/should attend the wedding or not.

i am very close with my cousin and her partner and they are very understanding to our beliefs and differences as she grew up with our whole family being jw.

some family members have already said they will definitely be attending and some definitely not attending so i just want some extra advice and guidance!

fulltimestudent

This is controversial to those whose minds are straitjacketed by misinformation. But same-sex relationships were common in the Mediterranean culture of the Graeco-Roman empires that encompassed and included Palestine.

And, interestingly, Jesus came into contact with one of these relationships. I'll let a writer in the Huffington Post explain.

"But, some people argue, what about the fact that the only sanctioned relationship in the Bible is between a man and a woman? Well, in fact, that’s not quite the case. The story of the faithful centurion, told in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, is about a Roman centurion who comes to Jesus and begs that Jesus heal his pais, a word sometimes translated as “servant.” Jesus agrees and says he will come to the centurion’s home, but the centurion says that he does not deserve to have Jesus under his roof, and he has faith that if Jesus even utters a word of healing, the healing will be accomplished. Jesus praises the faith of the centurion, and the paisis healed. This tale illustrates the power and importance of faith, and how anyone can possess it. The centurion is not a Jew, yet he has faith in Jesus (according to the Gospel story-FTS) and is rewarded."

So what was the relationship between this centurion and his pais? The writer of the above goes on to explain.

"But pais does not mean “servant.” It means “lover.” In Thucydides, in Plutarch, in countless Greek sources, and according to leading Greek scholar Kenneth Dover,pais refers to the junior partner in a same-sex relationship. Now, this is not exactly a marriage of equals. An erastes-pais relationship generally consisted of a somewhat older man, usually a soldier between the ages of 18 and 30, and a younger adolescent, usually between the ages of 13 and 18. Sometimes that adolescent was a slave, as seems to be the case here. It would be inappropriate, in my view, to use the word “gay” to describe such a relationship; that word, and its many connotations, comes from our time, not that of Ancient Greece and Rome. This is not a relationship that any LGBT activist would want to promote today. However, it is a same-sex relationship nonetheless."

Some Bible teachers promote the erroneous view that ancient Israel and Judah were culturally isolated from the surrounding cultures. That is an unsupportable view from all the other written and archaeological evidence that we have available.

So does the above information help your decision. Well, your witness family will likely opt NOT to believe that Jesus could assist such a relationship, and of course we cannot prove definitively that the centurion and his servant had what we may call a 'same-sex relationship,' but a large body of scholars who study the era, would agree that it's a likely interpretation.

There is one other (also controversial) Biblical incident that is worth thinking about. But I'll have to post that later.

28

Chinese Communist Party to commence nationwide crackdown on Christianity including Jehovah's Witnesses

by jwleaks in

jw
friends

8 october 2016. china's governing communist party is set to launch a nationwide crackdown on the christian church.. by matthew carney - abc.

the communist party has just enacted much tougher laws that criminalise christians if they do not pledge loyalty to the state.. chinese president xi jinping has warned that all religions now have to become "chinese" and the new laws will attempt to bring churchgoers and their leaders under party control.. the new laws will put the state firmly in charge, giving the communist party the ability to hire and fire church leaders and change religious doctrine to make it more chinese.... that means churchgoers will have to pledge loyalty to the communist party first.. there is good reason to be afraid.

chinese authorities have already started the crackdown in the christian heartland in the southern province of zhejiang.. it's been extensive and brutal.

fulltimestudent

sir82 : As far as I know, the WTS owns no real estate in China.

That's probably true. In Chinese cities, rights to land use are usually held on leasehold (except in villages, where land is owned by the village). In cities, a corporation would have to have a legal existence to lease land or even lease an existing building, and I doubt very much that the witnesses have a registered entity.

It's different in Hongkong as the legal forms existing at the time that sovereignty of HK was returned to China, were to continue for another 50 years.

JW.org gives the branch address as:

Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
22/F, 1 Hung To Road,
Kwun Tong,
KOWLOON, HONG KONG

Its in quite a substantial building, but if 22/F signifies a floor, it would appear that they are leasing the space, although it could be owned on some sort of strata title. I suspect that they do not look after their activities in China from that office. In fact may only look after HK activity*. I imagine that it would be relatively easy for the Chinese authorities to monitor the space.

Probably, the work in China is supervised from NY, all of the nearby branches (Taiwan, Japan, S.Korea) have all sorts of political/patriotic complexities.

-------------------

an interesting note about the activity in HK, from what seems to be a page from JW-org.

"My congregation is fairly typical of the situation here in Hong Kong. We have 230 publishers, 220 of whom are SISTERS! Out of the 9 brothers in the congregation we have 2 elders and 1 ministerial servant: myself."

link: http://www.needgreaters.com/HongKong.htm

-------------------------------------------

My gay xjw friend here in Sydney knows an interesting story about Cambodia, when it was under the care of the HK branch.

Two Gilead graduates (male) were sent to Cambodia, the WTS rented a small apartment for them, paid for apparently through the HK office. Some time later, one of them became ill and died. In Cambodia (a hot country) bodies must be disposed of quickly and are cremated. The surviving brother (an Australian btw, from Adelaide) did not have enough money to pay someone, and not enough money to buy the full amount of firewood needed to do it himself (i.e.to fully burn the body). So he carted the body of his partner and the firewood to the cremation site and someone showed him how to stack the wood and put the body on top. But as told, once alight the body kept falling out of the fire because of not enough wood, and the survivor had to keep pushing it back into the coals.

Bad enough, you think? The surviving missionary had a breakdown and returned to Australia. The HK branch sent someone out to terminate the lease etc. and this guy found evidence that these two missionaries had become lovers, and that the emotional impact of the incident was not just from having to cremate a body, but the much deeper emotions coming from the body being someone you loved deeply.

28

Chinese Communist Party to commence nationwide crackdown on Christianity including Jehovah's Witnesses

by jwleaks in

jw
friends

8 october 2016. china's governing communist party is set to launch a nationwide crackdown on the christian church.. by matthew carney - abc.

the communist party has just enacted much tougher laws that criminalise christians if they do not pledge loyalty to the state.. chinese president xi jinping has warned that all religions now have to become "chinese" and the new laws will attempt to bring churchgoers and their leaders under party control.. the new laws will put the state firmly in charge, giving the communist party the ability to hire and fire church leaders and change religious doctrine to make it more chinese.... that means churchgoers will have to pledge loyalty to the communist party first.. there is good reason to be afraid.

chinese authorities have already started the crackdown in the christian heartland in the southern province of zhejiang.. it's been extensive and brutal.

fulltimestudent

A number of JW missionaries were jailed in China in the past. Most were caught in the first rush of enthusiastic nationalism when the Communist armies finally swept into power in 1949 and started to sweep away the unequal treaties behind which Christian churches had sheltered. Some may recall the shelling of HMS Amethyst, a British vessel that the Brits used to patrol the Yangzi River far inland, a source of humiliation to Chinese people. That was another symbol of the same feelings.

Among those jailed was Harold King.

His wife tells a strange story of their marriage at http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2004085#h=13

(An Aside: The Bill and Linda Schneider she mentions were a well-known couple in the Sydney area. I rather liked Bill, when the WTS in Australia began to become commercialisedduring WW2, Bill was instructed to take charge of some building project and point blank refused to stop pioneering.)

Another was Stanley Jones. (See - https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19600815&id=cYRAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qZsMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3321,6260441&hl=en )

Nancy Yuen, a Chinese JW was also jailed. ( See - http://bringonthegoodnews.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/imprisoned-20-years-in-communist-china.html )

During the disorder of the Cultural Revolution there may have been worse things happen to local Christians. Its hard to know what was happening in many places. That's not to defend that time, which did have a good ending, in that it led directly to the CPC selecting Deng Xiao Ping as a sort of leader. Deng had opposed some of Mao's more radical ideas and had been jailed by Mao. Mao called Deng a 'capitalist roader' for his advocating more personal (private) initiative and of course that's what we now see in China. But all that is another story.

Now to NK. I do not think any outside advocates of Christianity have been executed in NK, and strange as it may seem there is (or was) a small Protestant church in Pyongyang with all local (NK) membership.

MY personal belief is that most churches are so tied up with their own nationalism that the both the first generation of Communist rulers and the NK administration sees them as potential spies. Any deluded Christian who thinks he's bringing light to the blind should be aware that he may be sentenced to years of hard labour.

28

Chinese Communist Party to commence nationwide crackdown on Christianity including Jehovah's Witnesses

by jwleaks in

jw
friends

8 october 2016. china's governing communist party is set to launch a nationwide crackdown on the christian church.. by matthew carney - abc.

the communist party has just enacted much tougher laws that criminalise christians if they do not pledge loyalty to the state.. chinese president xi jinping has warned that all religions now have to become "chinese" and the new laws will attempt to bring churchgoers and their leaders under party control.. the new laws will put the state firmly in charge, giving the communist party the ability to hire and fire church leaders and change religious doctrine to make it more chinese.... that means churchgoers will have to pledge loyalty to the communist party first.. there is good reason to be afraid.

chinese authorities have already started the crackdown in the christian heartland in the southern province of zhejiang.. it's been extensive and brutal.

fulltimestudent

Bonsai : Fei cheng hao! 非常好！

Or more simply: Hen Hao - 很好 (pronounced more like hun how), also 很棒= hen bang = wonderful! and 很不错 = great!

--------------------------------------------------------

The JWs in China want to act like supporters of ISIS do in western countries.

That's not an accusation that they engage in terrorism, but that they act furtively (with extreme secretism). That's because their policy of refusing military service is against Chinese state policy. (NB- they are also banned in Singapore for the same reason).

Since they act secretly, then the Chinese government is entitled to screen them.

I have no idea as to what the JWs will do in response to any further action to identify them and winkle them out, except that whatever they will do can only be a continuation of past actions.

WHY may the Chinese government want religions to register?

Judged on the past 150 years, when Christian religions acted as subversive agents of western colonialism, the Chinese state has no reason to trust any Christian religion. However, Christian religions that register and promise loyalty to China are permitted freedom to hold services.

And we may like to remember that the Taiping rebellion of the mid-nineteenth century, a rebellion that nearly toppled the Manchu Qing dynasty, was started by a Christian convert and highly praised by western missionaries, who wet themselves with joy in the expectation that China may become Christian. That rebellion failed, when the (Christian) British government gave more support to the Qing government.

Are there 100 million Christians in China?

Seriously doubted!

Lets compare China to Taiwan, where a similar ethnic mix exists, after the USA supported Nationalists were defeated and Chiang Kai Shek and the remnants of his armies fled to Taiwan.

Despite having freedom to preach and few restrictions, and in spite of members of Chiang Kai Shek's own family being Christian, the total number of Christians in Taiwan are only 3.9% of the population. Extending that percentage to the PRC would give a membership of about 50 million. But even that is likely to be an exaggerated number.

The really important aspect of the claim of 100 million, is that churches in western lands have always lied about their success in mission fields, in order to extort more donations from credulous churchgoers.

-----------------------

Why should anyone worry about Christians in China?

Christianity is a pernicious superstition, the sooner it is forgotten the better for humanity.

11

The Jewish Temple(s) In Egypt. (Circa 5th Century BCE)

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the web address on the above sketch is misleading as the sketch (it seems) was included originally, in a article in a peer reviewed archaeological journal by a stephen rosenberg.. there is little doubt that the temple was genuine and it demonstrates that the ot stories about the role of egypt in the formation of judaism do not tell the truth about the complete relationship between israel and the egyptian empire.. we know that this temple on elephantine island was genuine.

some papyrus correspondence has survived .

there is also another (claimed) jewish temple that an archaelogical team explored last century, but the precise location has been lost.. more on the above temple tomorrow..

fulltimestudent

So back to the Jewish temple at Elephantine....

Who were these Jews? from the surviving documentation it appears that they were a group of Jewish mercenaries. At first, it is thought, they were in the employ of the Egyptians and were absorbed by the Iranians (Persians) when Cambyses II of Persia conquered Egypt in 525 BCE.

The discovery of papyri from that site has provided us with a lot of information about these Jewish worshippers of YHWH:

Quote (from Rosenberg's article):

"The papyri, written in Aramaic, are judicial and family documents that list property and marriage contracts and describe the colony's temple, where sacrifices were offered to YHW (Yahweh). One well-known document, known as the Passover Papyrus (dated to 419 BCE), sets out instructions to the colony in the name of Darius II to celebrate the feast of Unleavened Bread on the 14th of Nissan (the first month of Spring) and to drink no beer for seven days. Another papyrus records the destruction of the temple by the Egyptian priests of the nearby temple of Khnum in 410 BCE and the subsequent permission given for it to be rebuilt four years later (Porten 1968: 295)."

Perhaps the most important thought we can learn from this temple's existence is that temple worship need not have been confined to the Jerusalem temple.

In Marty E. Stevens exhaustive study of temple worship in west Asia (Temples,Tithes and Taxes: The Temple and the Economic Life of Ancient Israel, Publisher: Hendrickson, 2006, pp. 59-63) she lists five temples outside of Jerusalem.

In the Palestine area, there is one at Mt Gerizim, that Josephus described as being modelled on the Jerusalem temple.

Another at Arad in the Negev resembles the layout of the Jerusalem Temple. records recovered from the site indicate a connection with the Jerusalem Temple.

There are two more in the northern kingdom at Dan and Bethel.

And finally, the two in Egypt, the building at Elephantine, and the second mentioned in my first post but not discussed. It was built at Leontopolis in northern Egypt by High Priest Onias IV, circa 150BCE and also modelled on the Jerusalem temple and likely served Jews who lived in Egypt.

-------------------------

Reference for Rosenberg's article:

The Jewish Temple at Elephantine Author(s): Stephen G. Rosenberg Source: Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 4-13

Published by: The American Schools of Oriental Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149987 .

11

The Jewish Temple(s) In Egypt. (Circa 5th Century BCE)

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the web address on the above sketch is misleading as the sketch (it seems) was included originally, in a article in a peer reviewed archaeological journal by a stephen rosenberg.. there is little doubt that the temple was genuine and it demonstrates that the ot stories about the role of egypt in the formation of judaism do not tell the truth about the complete relationship between israel and the egyptian empire.. we know that this temple on elephantine island was genuine.

some papyrus correspondence has survived .

there is also another (claimed) jewish temple that an archaelogical team explored last century, but the precise location has been lost.. more on the above temple tomorrow..

fulltimestudent

Crazyguy : Could it be that many of the stories of the Jews in the Old Testament could be a throw back to a people called the Hyksos who conquered Egypt but were then pushed out by the Egyptians to settle in Jerusalem?

That's the understanding presented by Josephus, but its a view disputed by some/many modern historians.

Wikipedia has an entry on the hyksos, part of which states:

Origin hypotheses[edit]
Manetho and Josephus[edit]
In his Against Apion, the 1st-century AD historian Josephus Flavius debates the synchronism between the Biblical account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and two Exodus-like events that the Egyptian historian Manetho apparently mentions. It is difficult to distinguish between what Manetho himself recounted, and how Josephus or Apion interpret him.
Josephus identifies the Israelite Exodus with the first exodus mentioned by Manetho, when some 480,000 Hyksos, wrongly interpreted as "shepherd kings" by Josephus (also referred to as just as shepherds, as kings and as captive shepherds in his discussion of Manetho), left Egypt for Jerusalem.[8] The mention of Hyksos identifies this first exodus with the Hyksos period (16th century BC).
Apion identifies a second exodus mentioned by Manetho when a renegade Egyptian priest called Osarseph led 80,000 "lepers" to rebel against Egypt. Apparently, Manetho conflates events of the Amarna period (in the 14th century) and the events at the end of the 19th Dynasty (12th century).[citation needed] Then, Apion additionally conflates these with the Biblical Exodus, and contrary to Manetho, even alleges that this heretic priest changed his name to Moses.[9] Many scholars[10][11] do not interpret lepers and leprous priests as literally referring to a disease, but rather to a strange and unwelcome new belief system.
Josephus records the earliest account of the false but understandable etymology that the Greek phrase Hyksos stood for the Egyptian phrase Hekw Shasu meaning the Bedouin-like "Shepherd Kings", which scholars have only recently shown means "rulers of foreign lands".[12]

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Hyksos

Lots of references in that entry to check out at your leisure.

In any case, the Hyksos only ruled a northern section of Egypt, and native (however you want to understand that term) kings ruled the remainder.

In other periods of history, various Egyptian Empires ruled over the land of Israel.

By the time, that this thread deals with, the Hyksos were long gone.

11

The Jewish Temple(s) In Egypt. (Circa 5th Century BCE)

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the web address on the above sketch is misleading as the sketch (it seems) was included originally, in a article in a peer reviewed archaeological journal by a stephen rosenberg.. there is little doubt that the temple was genuine and it demonstrates that the ot stories about the role of egypt in the formation of judaism do not tell the truth about the complete relationship between israel and the egyptian empire.. we know that this temple on elephantine island was genuine.

some papyrus correspondence has survived .

there is also another (claimed) jewish temple that an archaelogical team explored last century, but the precise location has been lost.. more on the above temple tomorrow..

fulltimestudent

The web address on the above sketch is misleading as the sketch (it seems) was included originally, in a article in a peer reviewed archaeological journal by a Stephen Rosenberg.

There is little doubt that the temple was genuine and it demonstrates that the OT stories about the role of Egypt in the formation of Judaism do not tell the truth about the complete relationship between Israel and the Egyptian Empire.

We know that this temple on Elephantine Island was genuine. Some papyrus correspondence has survived

There is also another (claimed) Jewish temple that an archaelogical team explored last century, but the precise location has been lost.