Posts by aqwsed12345

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81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
"can any Trinitarian explain why Jesus as “Lord” adoni/kyrios is distinguished from and subordinate to YHWH in Psalm 110.1?"
On the one hand, this distinction exists only in Hebrew, and according to the original context of the Psalm, it referred to David, a man.
It's very simple: the Messianic King is the one in whom change can take place, in whom there is a novum, that after his resurrection and ascension he was seated at the "right hand of the Father". Jesus is the Messianic King according to his human nature, so his human nature is exalted and glorified. And according to his human nature, he is indeed not God, not YHWH, but a man.
You are asking the same question as stated in Matthew 22:45: "If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" The answer is simple: The Messiah is the son of David according to his human nature, and his Lord according to his divine nature.But the Pharisees considered their expected political Messiah to be a wonderful king sent from heaven, but not the son of God.
Psalm 110 prophesies the eternal royal and priestly dignity of the Messiah-King and is of a strictly messianic nature. This was the interpretation of Jewish scripture, the New Testament authors, and even the Jesus himself, who applied the first verse of Psalm 110 to himself during a dispute with the Pharisees and also testified to the suggested intent of the psalm (Matthew 22:43, 44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42, 43). Peter interpreted the first verse of Psalm 110 as referring to the Ascension of Jesus Christ in his first Pentecostal speech (Acts 2:34, 35), Paul deduced the eternal rule of Jesus Christ according to his human nature from the same Psalm verse (1 Corinthians 15:25), and proved the Savior's divinity (Hebrews 1:13), as well as his eternal priestly dignity (Hebrews 10:12, 13). All New Testament passages where it is mentioned that Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of the Father (Acts 7:55; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20, 22; Hebrews 8:1; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22; Revelation 3:21; 5:1, 7) are referring to Psalm 110:1. The fourth verse of Psalm 109 is the basis for the exposition in the seventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, which states that the New Testament priesthood is superior to the Old Testament priestly order; the same psalm verse is quoted in Hebrews 5:6. The Church Fathers and Christian commentators in general apply this psalm directly to the Messiah without exception. Added to this is the fact that certain expressions of Psalm 110 could not possibly apply to any earthly ruler or high priest (e.g., sitting at the right hand of God, having a share in God's world domination, being an eternal high priest). Therefore it rightly can be listed this Psalm among the messianic psalms.
Psalm 110 is one of the most important parts of the Old Testament from a dogmatic point of view, because it teaches most clearly the royal power, world domination, priestly dignity of the Messiah, and thus the cessation of the Old Testament priesthood of Aaron and the establishment of the New Testament priesthood.
In this Psalm, a majestic king is glorified, whom God has taken as a co-regent (verses 1 and 2), who, surrounded by holy warriors (verse 3), not only holds royal, but also the priestly dignity in the order of Melchizedek (verse 4), and those who do not want to submit to his rule, he crushes with the mighty power he gained in poverty and warfare (verse 7) (verses 5 and 6). That this glorious king is the Messiah was unanimously believed by the ancient Jews, as Matthew 22:43, Mark 12:36, and Luke 20:42 reveal, where Jesus assumes this belief in them and proves the superhuman nature of the Messiah from this psalm to the Jews of his time. Just as Jesus in the mentioned places, so the apostles in Acts 2:34, 36, 5:31, 1 Corinthians 15:25, Ephesians 1:20, Hebrews 7:17, as well as the church fathers and the entire church have understood this psalm from the beginning as referring to the Messiah.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

The pronunciation "YHWH", no matter what vowels we add to it, the "H" sound is weak, almost silent, so the scientific consensus already says "Yahweh", but it's actually more like "Ya'wee".
The Tetragrammaton refers to every person of the Holy Trinity, thus Jesus and the Holy Spirit as well. This follows from the meaning of the Name. According to Scripture, God once named Himself and sees the expression of His own essence in existence: "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14). He then continued: "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: the 'I AM' has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:14). This means that God possesses all existence, in other words: God necessarily exists, He is the most real existence, pure existence, Existence itself, the self-existing being (ens a se). If Jesus is God, then these also apply to Him. Moreover, Jesus also says: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father." So, His name too. This also follows from His divinity. "He is the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15) This is exactly why the Jews wanted to stone him: "You claim to be God." If Jesus is the son of the Almighty God, then He inherits God's power, rights, and Name. This is why Eastern icon painters write the letters 'Ho ón' (who is) into the halo of Christ.
The Tetragrammaton is also a sacred name for Christians, which is why we use it in our churches, but according to Ecclesiastical tradition only rarely, and with the greatest respect. Therefore, we believe it was correct that in the Bible translation they used the Lord instead of the name Jehovah, just as the Jews read Lord (Adonai) instead of Jehovah. The Jehovah word is actually the result of this practice. YHWH consonants with Adonai vowels. The Catholic truth is therefore in the middle: We neither say that the Name cannot be pronounced, nor that it can be used indiscriminately, as is the case today in some modernist-liberal theological faculties, or among the JWs.
The Mosaic Law indeed did not require the Jews to read Adonai instead of YHWH, but it was a pious tradition which embodied "do not take the Lord's name in vain!" Let's not go into what it means to take the Lord's name in vain.
When we say God, depending on the context of the text, we mean either the Father, or the other persons of the Holy Trinity, or the most supreme Trinity. Generally, if we say God in prayer, and it is not expressly aimed at any one person, then I think of the Trinity, who is three in unity and oneness in Trinity.
The teaching of the Holy Trinity is perfectly justifiable based on the Bible.
Arius also used the alleged distinction between 'theos' - 'hó theos' to support his claim. He just couldn't answer to the fathers of Nicaea how Scripture could sink into idolatry by consistently presenting a man as a little god.
For example, Jn 1:18 ("No one has seen God") uses 'theos' (well, here "theon") without an article, yet it is clearly about God. Even the Jehovah's Witnesses' own translation brings "God". This immediately topples their logic. But this is just one example of many.
The incarnation of the Holy Tetragrammaton is the name Jesus. The Sacred Tetragrammaton expresses the essence of God, thus as a Name it refers to the WHOLE Holy Trinity, each divine hypostasis specifically possesses it, and it was pronounced in Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.
On the other hand, the Holy Tetragrammaton is "unpronounceable" in human or angelic language because it is a mystery, not because it is a taboo. God's essence surpasses the world. In comparison to Him, we do not exist. Huber rightly writes about this, that the purely linguistic variant of the Holy Tetragrammaton was used by other Semitic peoples, and even the Jews before Moses. However, this embodiment into a purely human word was a prefiguration of the embodiment into Jesus, just as the burning bush was a prefiguration of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. If we deny the incarnation of Christ, it leads to denial of the Holy Tetragrammaton. They just utter a Semitic god designation generally used, moreover, in the Latin reading of the Latin Holy Tradition (Iehovah => read in Latin the Holy Tetragrammaton), so they just do as if someone would scrutinize Jesus' human nature, which is possible, because he was truly human. However, this way they don't reach the essence of the Holy Tetragrammaton, only its "garment", and they never pronounce it, like heretics, for they can't "possess" the knowledge of the Name, they can only scorn it. This also confirms that they really don't know the Shem-ha Mephorash, as they deny the Incarnation.
This, as well as the interpretation of the Name in Jewish tradition, and even in Kabbalistic interpretations, are reflections of God's inner, essential emanations. Moreover, this led to prefigurations of the Trinity in the Old Testament, so we can rightly say that there is a kind of Trinitarianism in the Old Testament.
It's important to note that one cannot rely solely on the Scripture, as it was written, compiled, approved, declared as revelation, i.e., divinely inspired by Christ's Church, and it's the Church that has always interpreted it, because that's its mandate. This is also reflected in the Scripture itself, which means, even if we were to start with the Scripture alone, we would inevitably have to arrive at the Church. That is, at minimum, we cannot disregard the word of the Church and the Holy Tradition preserved by it. The Nicene and other councils clearly, and the Christian writers preceding them unanimously, testify to the divinity of Jesus, and they have consistently rejected the Arian heresy. We must not let doubts arise because of sophistry (2 Pet 3:15-16) and "foolish controversies" (Tit 3:9).
Regarding the Tetragrammaton, we must consider that God does not have one Hebrew name, as He transcends all languages and, in fact, He does not need a name, or more precisely, He cannot have one, because He is Everything, the Alpha and the Omega. So what are we talking about? Hebrew names were primarily not used as nominal emblems to distinguish someone from others, or to define, identify someone (as in the modern age), but in every case they expressed a certain description, characterization of the person's essence, attributes, etc. (like in the case of Native Ameircan names: "Swift Arrow", "Rising Sun", "Big Bear"). God revealed His name in this sense, which stands the same in every language: His name is YHWH, i.e., "Who Is", "Who Exists", "Who Is Existence". He revealed Himself to the Jews, so it became YHWH, however, if He had done the same to the Greeks, His name would be "Ho Estin" (if to the English, then "Who Is"). The parallel to this can be found in the New Testament in the 'egó eimi' (i.e., "I Am") declarations of Jesus. This is most visible in Jn 18:5-6, where when Jesus says "I Am", they retreat and fall to the ground. But see also Jn 8:24-28 (cf. also Mt 14:27; Mk 6:50; 13:6; 14:62; Lk 22:70; Jn 4:26; 6:20; 13:19).
The Greek-language New Testament uses the word Kurios instead of the Hebrew YHWH (or we could say the Jehovah, created by the Masoretes in the 9th-10th centuries AD) – following the practice of the Septuagint, made for Jews around 300 BC – (cf. for instance, Deut 6:5 – Mt 22:37) (this also shows that there is no NEED to refer to God in Hebrew). And this word Kyrios is also used for Jesus (many times, e.g., Mk 16:19-20; Acts 5:14; 9:10-17; Rom 14:8; 1 Cor 6:13-14; Col 3:23-24; Eph 6:6-11; as a confessional formula: Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; cf. 8:6; Phil 2:11, especially: Jn 20:28).
Jesus did not reject the Jewish tradition altogether. He specifically stated what He objected to, and where we need to follow His word. He said nothing about the Sacred Name. It doesn't matter whether the Jews thought, whether by mistake, that the Sacred Name could or couldn't be pronounced. (This should not be seen as a scandalous mistake, but as a pious mistake.) As can be seen from the above, it can be pronounced, but it's not necessary to refer to God only in this way. Out of respect for its own tradition, the Church does not use the Name. This was confirmed again by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2001 and 2008: it should not be used in liturgical occasions, scripture translation, and outside of these with respect only.
In addition, Jesus is also referred to as "ho theos": E.g. Jn 20:28; Rom 9:5; Heb 1:8; cf. also Tit 2:13; 1 Jn 5:20; 2 Pet 1:1. In some Eastern Christ icons, the inscription "Ho Theos" can also be found in Christ's cross-divided glory.
The Holy Tetragrammaton is, on the one hand, a revelation, on the other hand, a refusal of the Name. God's essence, His existence is fundamentally different from this world, so we cannot "essentially" know God - we can only say "what He is not". He is unnameable. This is spiritual emptiness (kenosis), the theology of asceticism - apophatic (negative) theology. The "hidden divinity", sought by the prophet in everything, and finally found in the gentle breeze.
This emptiness (kenosis), "darkening", the "dark night of the soul" stands in blindness from the Light (three apostles on Mount Tabor), "gnophos" and not "skotos". This leads to the theology of mysticism, the cataphatic theology, which is filling up with God - theosis -, enlightenment (phótismos).
Then we experience God as a Reality existing in three Persons, a Flow of Love, in His "activity" (énergeia) permeating the world.
And the fact that Jews did not pronounce God's name is not superstition, and I don't know of Jesus speaking against it. What we do know, however, is that Apostle Matthew - obviously under the influence of inspiration - preserved this Jewish custom. He never pronounces God's name, in fact, he doesn't even use the word God (cf. what is Kingdom of God in Luke, is Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew).
We do not know the exact pronunciation of YHWH. One thing is for sure: "Jehovah" was never the correct pronunciation. The Jews - due to the second commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" – eventually decided that since it's sometimes hard to determine what constitutes taking the name in vain, they rather would never utter it. Once a year, the High Priest would pronounce the Name in the Sanctuary, so by Jesus' time, common people couldn't know exactly how to pronounce it, since Hebrew writing only records consonants, not vowels. The vowels were added to sacred texts (with dots under, next to and above the letters) around the 9th-10th century AD (in many cases in Europe) to prevent further text corruption. The vowels of the word Adonai (= Lord) were dotted under the sacred four letters, so that the reader would immediately remember not to say the word, but to read Adonai instead. Christian readers, not highly educated but having learnt the Hebrew alphabet, read the vowels of YHWH and the vowels of Adonai (a-o-a) together, and through the inevitable phonetic change, this produced "Iehovah". This is a simple misunderstanding arising from a lack of familiarity with scripture and the Hebrew language. The Old Testament calls God by several names: YHWH, El, Elohim, Adonai - and that's not even mentioning other names (Lord of Hosts, Most High, Majestic, etc.). Of these, only the first was not pronounced, because it's the name Moses inquired about in the burning bush episode, and God Himself denied its pronunciation - this is when He says: "I am who I am," in another translation: "I am that I am". So, behind the prohibition to pronounce it is the deepest respect, based on God's decision - He did not publicly reveal this name, it could only be voiced inside the Sanctuary, once a year, only from the mouth of the High Priest, without ear-witnesses. This is a sign of the deepest respect for the infinitely Majestic God, whom no human word can describe or comprehend. He is ineffable (Deus ineffabilis, as phrased by the Latin Church). When we say God, it's not His name, but His nature (like we have a name, say Nicholas, and we have a nature: we are human). In other words, we Christians also do not pronounce God's name. Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us several times that Christians must also respect God's name, and therefore warned against the irresponsible use of the form YHWH, even more so against its irresponsible pronunciation. The four letters often appear in churches because it is God's name, the incomprehensible Mystery, the ultimate Mystery before which we also kneel in adoration. We only write down the consonants, so the exact pronunciation remains hidden, and we do not pronounce it. It is also written like this on the pages of the Bible. The Bible translations - following the millennial tradition - translate it as Lord (Adonai) wherever it encounters the Sacred Tetragrammaton.
Indeed, when the New Testament uses the expression 'ho theos' (the God), it almost always (apart from the exceptions mentioned above) refers to the Father. The form without the definite article, referring to Christ, appears several times (Jn 1:1c. Tit 2:13). However, this does not affect the question of divinity; it is a question of usage. The Redeemer's name was Jesus; "Christ" is not a name but a title, a titulus, and theologically a function. In a word: the term "Christ" in New Testament theology clearly refers to the Anointed One (Messiah), sent by God, equal with God, of the same essence. Therefore, the word "Christ" - just like the word "theos" - is used with a definite article (Iésous ho Christos, literally: Jesus the Christ).
God's name is not a name in the sense that the names of the ancient gods were, which could be invoked at any time. God revealed Himself to Moses as "I am who I am (ehyeh asher ehyeh) ... I am (ehyeh) has sent me... the LORD [YHWH] has sent" (Exodus 3:14-15). Hebrew writing only recorded consonants, and when the Jews read the Scripture aloud and reached the four letters (YHWH), they respectfully said Adonai (the Lord, my Lord) instead, causing the precise pronunciation to be lost. According to scholars, the word originates from the verb "to be", so the currently most probable variant Yahweh essentially means the future tense, causative form of the verb "to be": "He who will cause to be" = He who will sustain life? (This is grammatically acceptable, though an unused form.) Most modern Old Testament translations indicate the word Yahweh as "LORD", using small capital letters. The "Jehovah" variant, known from the older translation, literature, and Jehovah's Witnesses, is a theological term of medieval origin. They wrote the vowels of Adonai under the consonants of YHWH, so that one reading YHWH would say Adonai, but certain medieval theologians read the consonants of YHWH together with these vowels. This is how the variants Iahovah or Iehovah etc. were created.
Even today, Jews call God "the Name" (ha Shem). In biblical Hebrew, there is no word for "person", so the word "name" is used: e.g., "to call upon the name of God" = to call upon God Himself; "to exalt the name of God" = to exalt God Himself for who He is. This unusual usage of language also passed into the New Testament, e.g., Acts 1:15 "the company of persons was in all about 120" (literally "the number of names together were about 120") or Acts 4:12 "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" = there is no one else.
In Hebrew thought, a name not only distinguishes (a way of addressing someone), but also expresses the character and qualities of the person. God also has many names based on His attributes and actions, and the experiences of the faithful, e.g., the Lord, the Almighty, the Most High, King, God of Comfort, God of Tender Love, Rock, Father, etc.
In the writings of the Watchtower, they consistently confuse the justified demand to indicate in the translation at appropriate places in the Old Testament that Yahweh or Jehovah - and the fabricated demand that they should also attempt this at the 200+ places in the New Testament set by them, even though here they are completely devoid of even the slightest semblance of manuscript and historical evidence.
These insertions are only described as "easier" and "reasonable" reading by the Watchtower. In reality, it is a sectarian stigma: the brand pressed onto your group body by the "wise slave" out of an insatiable desire to be different. The shameless setting aside of the Greek text at hand. Double standards. Because they do the same thing as the "great harlot" they condemn, only they are in theory willing to give up their custom and release many translations that abound in the name Yehovah / Jahweh, while the Watchtower is not willing to do the opposite.
The fact that the New Testament refers to the Old Testament in certain places does not make your underlying assumption a fact, a text, or data that in the original apostolic-evangelist text, YHWH was also present. However, you yourself say in your own writings (although you cannot defend this in a factual argument) that "apostate copyists" omitted the Name etc. But you cannot provide a single New Testament manuscript that would support you here. The "apostate copyist" hypothesis is good for everything and for nothing. With this method, one could also prove that reincarnation was in the Bible, but those damn "apostate copyists" left it out.
Don't forget: the authors of the New Testament often quote the Septuagint, not the Masoretic Hebrew text. And despite a few manuscripts the refer to, the Septuagint contains the tendency (and not only as a sideline but as a mainstream, and well before the New Testament was written) to replace the YHWH name with the word "Lord". One may argue with this tendency and qualify its cause as superstitious - but it seems the authors of the New Testament did not consider it superstitious or offensive to God, because whenever they quote the Old Testament, they do not transliterate the tetragrammaton into Greek letters, but call it Lord. Therefore, they approved of the Jewish custom you call superstitious. And they at least testify against you that the YHWH name in the New Testament is so important and indispensable that without proclaiming it, the Church itself would collapse.
In response to the question that if it is permissible to rewrite the YHWH name in our translations of the Old Testament, why it is not permissible for you to "rewrite" it in the New Testament, I answer this: you overlook a very important aspect. We are free to consistently write out the YHWH name as Yahweh or Jehovah in our translations (like J. N. Darby, for instance), and we don't bite off the head of anyone who perhaps, out of excessive fear due to the "do not take in vain" commandment or for some other reason (e.g., not wanting to mispronounce it) prefers to circumlocute the Name. So there is freedom with us: the saying (not) and translating (not) of the YHWH name is not a matter of faith with us. Moreover, newer translations also distinguish between Lord (Adonai) and LORD (YHWH), so anyone who wants to can reconstruct the original for themselves by looking past the usual substitution.
You can't use this freedom of ours to justify the way you falsify the New Testament Greek manuscripts, which - as I just demonstrated - deal just as coolly with the tetragrammaton and translate it into Lord as freely as we do. What's more, you "brand" anyone who removed the YHWH name from both covenantal documents as "apostate". But it turns out that this accusation of yours hits the apostles first. For if they had considered it a matter of faith, what you take as such, they would have avoided the Septuagint like the plague.
No one has claimed against you that "YHWH is not the name of God". Only that it is not the only name of God, and not an indispensable name for him. Learn to understand your opponents' claims in the sense they represent, and don't project some concocted, obviously easily attacked nonsense in their place. And don't expect me to defend this nonsense on behalf of everyone. No: it is your schizophrenic, either-or logic that has led you astray, which shouts in your ear that God can only have one true and indispensable name (the YHWH), and whoever denies this is already denying that the YHWH name is God's.
Has God changed? The answer is a clear no. God did not change when he said that his YHWH name was not yet known to the patriarchs. And he did not start to change when he declared himself in Jesus as Father (as the Father of Jesus Christ and our Father). This would lead to another thread of debate, so I won't elaborate on it here.
Since it is undeniable that the YHWH name does not appear in the existing manuscripts of the New Testament, apart from the four Hallelujahs*, but only the transcription of Kyrios (Lord), what prevents us from keeping these in the translations of the New Testament? The fact that the New Testament writers (following the Septuagint) grecianized the names of Jeremiah and Jesus, why wouldn't we accept their grecianization of the YHWH name into "Kyrios" as well? And it can't be argued against this that "apostate copyists left out the YHWH name from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament", because 1. there is no evidence for this, 2. why couldn't anyone say that "then let's also restore the names of Jeremiah and Jesus in the New Testament to Hebrew!"?
* According to this, those "apostate copyists" were not vigilant enough to weed this out as well. These four examples actually weaken the JW's case, because while it preserves the name 'Yah' in the New Testament in a liturgical formula, it's not a pervasive use. So the copyists could not have been led by superstition or pagan prejudice, as JWs are prone to presume.
I see the storm with which JWs force the YHWH name onto the New Testament as very recent and artificial. How the Septuagint and today's translations have dealt with it, I don't consider it a matter of salvation, and I read Darby as willingly as the King James. I don't know if this is a laid down program with them, but I feel that the JWs were the first to make this a matter of salvation. If the debate has come to this point (that one party brands the other as heretical and apostate based on (among other things) their wanting to translate the YHWH name into Kyrios, LORD, or Eternal), then those who wanted to maintain their previously free and innocent custom as a custom feel quite helpless. Because we acknowledge that with us it's not a law, not a matter of salvation, and in principle could change at any time (of course, rewriting translations doesn't happen overnight, especially if there's no compelling reason) - but they attack us and label us all sorts of things because of it.
The Watchtower and its apologists often refer to the discovery of some very old fragments of the Greek Septuagint, which were in use in the days of Jesus, and that these fragments can be found with the form of YHWH in Hebrew characters. The question is how this script, which was not universally known in Jewish circles according to various sources, could have made its way into the New Testament in such a way that not a single instance has survived. One of the Bodmer papyri (p66) contains the section from Jn 1:1 to 6:11 in its entirety, including for example Jn 1:23: "I am a voice crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as Isaiah the prophet said." According to the JWs, the tetragram should be here. Well, this papyrus dates from the 2nd century, and we have hardly any longer New Testament sources from before that time. I haven't checked what text witnesses there might be for the places in question, but you already have to place the "apostate copyists" team's flawless operation at a very early date.
The Watchtower is sitting on the horns of a dilemma here. Because if that stack of Greek manuscripts, on which it is forced to base the authenticity of God's Word in other respects, fell victim to the tendentious "apostate copyists" at this point, then what stopped them from inserting whole doctrines into the Scriptures elsewhere so that they appear uniformly in all surviving copies? And then the JW's own sect is compelled to make itself the measure of authenticity not only with regard to the New Testament occurrences of the YHWH name, but also in regard to many other text-critical and theological questions. However, this would indeed be a real FDS "papacy".
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
Origen (Commentary on Psalms 2.2) said "In the more accurate exemplars the (divine) name is written in Hebrew characters; not, however, in the current script, but in the most ancient." (thus paleo-Hebrew letters) While Pietersma interprets this statement as referring to the Septuagint, Wilkinson says one might assume that Origen refers specifically to the version of Aquila of Sinope, which follows the Hebrew text very closely, but he may perhaps refer to Greek versions in general (Wilkinson, Robert J. (2015). Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God: From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century., Andrew Phillips: "The Septuagint").
So Origen did not see any Greek Old Testament that contained ΙΑΩ, only ones that contained 𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄‎. By the time of Origen, the Jews no longer used the Septuagint, but largely returned to the Hebrew version in the spirit of closure, or they used Aquila's translation. Jews corrupt the Synagogue Septuagint Tanakh: Jews altered the LXX, then abandoned it forever. So your claim that the Jews were using the Septuagint containing ΙΑΩ at the time of Origen is wrong.
Furthermore, not only does Origen not mention a single New Testament manuscript containing the name YHWH, but no one has ever claimed to have seen one. According to them, you are not only accusing the copyists of the earliest centuries of changing the text, but that someone destroyed the previous one.
The fact that there were many versions of the manuscripts also proves that there was no direct will or central authority that wanted or was able to make a single established version of the NT text exclusive and destroy all others without a trace. So in Christianity there was no such figure as, like Uthman in Islam, who ordered the compilation of the standard version of the Quran, and destroyed other versions.
By the way, I think that this "ΙΑΩ" does not refer to the fully pronounced Tetragrammaton ("Yahweh"), but to its short, liturgically preserved form (יָהּ‎, Yāh), which is also preserved in mainstream Christianity in the form "Halleluyah" (Alleluia). While pronouncing the tetragrammaton is forbidden for Jews, articulating "Jah"/"Yah" is allowed, but is usually confined to prayer and study (Clifford Hubert Durousseau, "Yah: A Name of God" in Jewish Bible Quarterly). A similar thing can be observed in Syriac Christianity, where the Lord is marked as "maryah" in the Peshitta. According to linguists, this is a combination of "mar" (master/lord) and "yah", and in the Peshitta NT, Jesus, the Son, is also referred to as "maryah" ("Lord Yah"). So the statement of the Watchtower that the early Christians "hated" the divine name YHWH and destroyed all manuscripts containing it with fire and iron is not true either, nor that they used "Yah" exclusively for the person of the Father, and would have been contrasted with the demigod-archangel Jesus of the WTS.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

Yes, there are those who argue in favor of this, while others (who are the majority) say that this is a later reading. What is certain is that there is a total of ONE manuscript containing such ΙΑΩ, from which no far-reaching conclusions can be drawn without any doubt. The fact is that all five of the oldest manuscripts of the LXX now extant (in fragmentary form) render the Tetragrammaton into Greek in a different way.
What is already a matter of faith is that, if God had attached such a degree of importance to this, as according to the Watchtower, then he would have surely ensured its safe survival. But he didn't, in fact Jesus didn't even condemn all the traditions of the Pharisees in general, he only objected to certain, concretely marked practices and attitudes, that is, only those faulty human traditions that are contrary to the divine Law ("your traditions" - Mt 15,3; "human traditions" - Mk 7:9; Col 2:8) he rejected, but not the rejection of "the" tradition itself, which Christ and the apostles left us ("tradition handed down" - 1 Cor 11:2; "tradition received" - 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6)
"Because that is when the New Testament was written and where we must go to establish the most likely original text."
No, the most significant part of the books of the New Testament (practically all of them apart from the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Hebrews) were written to the Gentile Christians, so why should we go back to the Judeo-Christian branch? The "original text" can only be established by textual witnesses, not based on speculations. What about the biblical promises that God's word will always endure? Where is it mentioned in the Holy Scriptures that the "true faith" must be "restored" some two thousand years later?
66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345

The doctrine states that God is completely unchangeable.
Already at the Council of Nicaea, anyone who says that the Son of God is changeable (against the Arians) is excommunicated. Similarly, at the Fourth Lateran and the First Vatican Council ("God is an unchangeable spiritual entity"). Opponents include not only the Arians but also pantheists, Gnostics, and even Orthodox Protestants, partly for supposed religious-moral interests: God changes His previous condemnatory attitude towards the penitent; and partly in the manner of the Arians: The Incarnate Word, in order to be a real human, renounces the excellences of his divinity, empties himself. The modern-day Jehovah's Witnesses also deny this, they have a deeply anthropomorphic image of God. They initially interpret the name YHWH as "I Will Become What I Choose to Become" or "He Causes to Become". The Watchtower's interpretation of the YHWH name comes from a Hebrew verb that means “to become" (ha·wah). However, it actually comes from the verb "yahway," which means "to be," "to exist." The Hebrew Bible explains it by the formula 'Ehye ašer ehye' ("I Am that I Am"). The word אֶהְיֶה‎ (’Ehyeh) is the first person singular imperfective form of הָיָה (hayah), 'to be'. So, God does not "become" anything, since he does not change. The Watchtower's image of God is anthropomorphic: He has a body, he literally dwells in the sky, he is not innately omniscient but has the "capability" to foresee "the future" if he so desires.
In fact God is the actuality of every actuality (or pure Act, actus purus) and the perfection of all perfections. God's immutability also follows from God's simplicity: He is the completion of existence (actus purus), therefore there is no potential existence in him that would still be waiting for unfolding or realization, likewise, he cannot lose anything. His existence and everything he possesses are with eternal necessity, and it could not be otherwise. He cannot gain anything new, neither in knowledge nor in value. His outward acts do not change Him either. The act of creation in Him is such a free act that has always been in Him, is one with his essence, and has its temporal effect outwardly. When he communicates himself in grace, it is not he who changes, but man enters into a new relationship with him and perceives his supernatural effects. The mystery of the Incarnation must be understood in the same way. It was not the deity or personality of the Son that changed, but the humanity of Christ entered into a unique relationship with him.
a) The Scripture generally states that God is always identical with Himself, unlike the creatures: "In the beginning, O Lord, thou foundedst the earth: end the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish but thou remainest: and all of them shall grow old like a garment: And as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art always the selfsame, and thy years shall not fail." (Psalm 102:25-27) "Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration." (τροπὴς ἀποσκίασμα, James 1:17) Cyril of Alexandria comments on this: "But what else would it be than change and gross variability, if God were to migrate from potency to actuality?" (Cyr. Al. Dial. ad. ar. 2.) The Scripture even identifies the metaphysical basis of unchangeability: "I am the Lord, and I do not change". (Malachi 3:6; cf. Augustine, Sermo 7:7)
b) However, Scripture, more often in its usual method of discussion, concretely and in detail describes God's immutability in His individual actions and positions: "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor as the son of man, that he should be changed." (Numbers 23:19) "Though she remains the same, she renews everything." (Wisdom 7:27; cf. Sirach 42:16.) The Lord's plan remains forever, His heart's intent from generation to generation". (Psalm 33:11; cf. 1 Samuel 15:29, Proverbs 19:21) God alone is uncorruptible and immortal. (Romans 1:23, 1 Timothy 1:17, 6:16, Psalm 35:10)
Therefore, the strong anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of Scripture, especially the Old Testament (God shows anger, regret, etc., Genesis 6:6, Psalm 106:40, Hosea 1:6, etc.), must be measured and adjusted to the basic truth of faith of God's unchangeability. These, i.e., are spoken not because of the similarity of the observable effect to the emotion. Therefore, "God regretted making man" means: what God did because of the degradation of people shows effects like when people regret their actions. The church fathers specifically defend the unchangeability of God against the Arians, who distinguished the changeable Son from the unchangeable Father; against the Gnostics, who argue that God creates the world of spirits through emanations emitted from His own essence; and against the Stoics, who attribute emotions, passions, especially anger, to God; finally against the Patripassians. (See especially Tertullian, Prax. 17; Augustine, Civ. Dei XI 10 k.; XII 17, 2; Conf. XII 7; in Jn 23, 9.)
Reason thus concludes:
a) God is utterly simple. But what changes is essentially complex, at least metaphysically; because if change occurs, something remains and something else becomes (quidquid mutatur, quantum ad aliquid manet, quantum ad aliquid transit).
b) God is infinitely perfect. But what changes either gains or loses perfection; therefore, it is not the most perfect.
c) God is self-existing. However, what changes is changed by something else; therefore, the changer in his change is not self-existing but from something else. The first proof of God of Thomas Aquinas, infers the first unchangeable cause from the changing being (primum movens immobile). Denying or obscuring God's unchangeability falsifies the Catholic conception of God and sooner or later leads to monism; if God is changeable, then He is not wholly transcendent, but shares with that world which shares in its most noticeable property, changeability. A question arises here: If God is unchangeable, how does He change the things? According to Aristotle, God as a final cause moves the world: by attracting the spiritual heaven (the primum mobile) directly as a goal, which then communicates its movement to the other heavens and ultimately to the earthly beings; however, it itself remains motionless and inactive. According to Plato and the Platonic school of thought, in spite of His immutability, God as an absolute fullness of being is also absolute and constant activity. This is also the understanding of revelation: "Wisdom is quicker than any motion… she is one, yet can do all things; remaining in herself, she renews all things". (Wisdom 7:24–27) Here is the main weakness of Aristotle's conception of God.
Difficulties.
1. God is free in the creation, governance, salvation of the world, and in the establishment of the supernatural order of existence. But if He is free, He could establish another world and world order, and could govern the existing one differently. Therefore, He is changeable (at least in thought: He could change His intentions); or else, He is not free.
Solution: The essence of freedom is to take a stand based purely on the real value of things, excluding all foreign perspectives and influences not related to the matter. The more the decision is based on the actual value of things and the more full of mental energy it is, the freer it is; changeability is not essential; after all, the highest degree of experiential freedom, moral freedom, is manifested in the steadfast moral behavior of a mature character. Now, God makes His eternal decisions based on the fullest knowledge and assessment of all possibilities and perspectives, and with His absolute power, He carries them out exactly as He conceived them. Therefore, there can be no new perspective or event that He has not considered since eternity, and which could therefore prompt Him to revise His decisions; nor can any external difficulty or obstacle arise, which would induce Him to try to realize His plans in a different way. God's intentions are free; but precisely because they were born out of the fullest freedom, they are unchangeable. The decisions of creatures can be changed, partly because new perspectives may arise, which were not previously considered, partly because obstacles to realization may necessitate the modification of original plans.
2. God's outward works change. Not only does the world, maintained and governed by God, continually change in big and small ways, but God intervenes in the world's course through miracles, and what's more significant: He created the world in time, the second divine person became flesh in time. Therefore, if God continually creates new works in time, He does something He has not done before; that is, He changes.
Solution. Three aspects can be distinguished in God's outward activity:
A) The decision regarding outward activity. As an immanent fact of God, it is eternal and unchangeable.
B) The change; this takes place in God's works, it does not affect God Himself. With the creation of the world, with the incarnation of the second divine person, God Himself does not change; nothing new happens to Him; because this aspect: "in time" the world should be created etc. was also included in His eternal unchangeable decision; only the creature enters into a new relationship with Him, just as the Sun does not go through a change because it makes winter or summer on Earth.
C) The creation of the changing work, that is, the divine activity that carries out the eternal and unchangeable divine order relating to change. This activity, viewed from the side of God, is identical with God's essence and does not represent a change in God, but only in the result of divine activity. When a doctor not only prescribes medication for a patient but also specifies the time to take it, this provision is the cause of a change that occurs at a specific time; but when it occurs, it does not cause a change in the prescriber; and if the doctor's will were absolutely effective, the patient's time-bound medication intake would occur without the help of any foreign factor, simply as a result of that medical order. That is, the result appearing in time does not necessarily mean a change in the cause. The divine provisions containing changes, however, contain the change only as an intention, as a thought; even in humans, thoughts relating to change do not represent the same type of change for the thinker: if I decide to run, I am not physically running yet. In any case, it is not easy to imagine how the unchanging God creates changes; because our perception is stuck in the world of changes. But there is no logical stumble in the concept. Indeed, if we consider how difficult it is to conceptually process the concept of change, it is logically easier to conceive of God's immutability than the changeability of the creature. That's why the Eleatics and Plato considered being itself to be unchangeable, just like the thinkers of Vedanta.
3. In governing the world, God often adapts to the changing behavior of creatures: He hears the cry of the needy, gets angry at the sinner, is appeased against the penitent. So, He changes.
Solution. It's true, and indeed a matter of faith, that God behaves this way. However, these significant practical truths cannot be interpreted in a way that contradicts the equally fundamental, dogmatic assertion of God's unchangeability. Nor is it necessary, because God does not make and execute decrees on the course of the world in the manner of human beings. He does not first set certain goals and then search and select suitable means; He does not first devise the abstract universal law, and then tailor and apply it to specific cases. Instead, He relates and assigns all events to each other with one overview and decision, providing them with the appropriate levels of value, bringing every path and end, every goal and means, every individual being and individual case, and every general law into perfect harmony. No new element can then arise that was not already considered, which would subsequently require the course of the world to be supplemented or corrected. In this immutable eternal divine decree, every human need and every human prayer were taken into account, and the course of the world is aligned with it; every individual sin was known, and every aspect of the moral order has been adjusted accordingly: the merits and punishments, praises and reprimands, salvations and condemnations. Therefore, prayer, sin or repentance, justification or damnation does not change God, but the creature's relationship to God, in the words of St. Augustine: God "changes if you change"; "the same light is painful to the weak eye, pleasant to the strong." (August. Serm. 22, 6; cf. Trinit. V 16, 17; XIII 11, 15; in Jn 110, 6; Origen De orat. 3–15; Ambr. Noe et arca 4, 9; 45. § 3.)
4. If God is completely immutable, and looks down on the course of the world like some harsh formula or law, then the immediacy and intimacy of religious life freezes before His Medusa-like face. The harsh law and logical formula are deaf to pleas, unyielding to entreaty, indifferent to pain and misery, unresponsive to loyalty, trust, and sacrifice.
Solution. God is not a senseless harsh law, as Hegel's pantheism teaches, nor is He a Shylock who rigidly represents the letter of the law with merciless one-sidedness. Although He is entirely true and holy, meaning He is utterly devoid of caprice, irrationality, whim, or bias (there is no "irrational" or "non-putarem" in God, see Lk 20:15), He still stands as a Creator opposite each of His creatures, each of their existential moments. He created everything with the utmost care, wisdom, and gentleness; He is incomparably closer to each of His creatures than any two creatures are to each other, and therefore He has the most profound love and interest for all their manifestations, including their religious aspects. As an absolute personal being, He takes everything into account in its proper place and for its own value. The fact that He overlooks the entire order of existence does not diminish the strength of His devoted interest and sacred stance against any aspect of existence. Just because He sees the repentance of the sinner as well and incorporates it into His world plan, sin is no less abhorrent to Him; just because He has established the whole course of the world with all its aspects, the righteousness of the righteous and their plea do not become of lesser value to Him. It may happen to people that, due to their constraints, they do harm or injury despite their best intentions by handling a certain aspect one-sidedly (e.g., parents' monkey-love, a clumsy friend's desire to help at all costs); God, because He thinks about everything and everyone, judges man best in individual cases.
Indeed, God's immutability provides new and irreplaceable impetus to religious life. God's immutability is most directly manifested to man in the reliability of His promises and the immutable sanctity of His holy will, the moral law; thus, it is the root and foundation of trust in Him. True, God is not as malleable as humans, He does not adapt to the tastes and moods of people at any given time, and He is not willing to measure with the measures of humans. This is often unpleasant for humans, who, in their stubbornness, whimsicality, and weakness of principles, would inevitably like God to be less holy, to act according to less universal perspectives, and to become biased (see the vine-growers and the prodigal son's brother). But precisely because God is in no way similar to humans, the person leading a serious religious life is most effectively called upon to adapt to God in everything. Our only refuge against the stubbornness of our own nature and the transience of life is the eternal Silent Ocean of divine immutability, where all the noise of passions, party fights, and hustles fade away, where the tossing soul finds its peace. "And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." (1 Jn 2,17; cf. 4,16.)
* * *
It is also dogma that God is eternal in absolute sense. This is a tenet of faith according to the teachings of the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Fourth Lateran Council, and the First Vatican Council, against all those who denied God's immutability and thus cast doubt on His eternity.
Divine eternity is God's perfection in relation to time, and it negates the following: that the divine existence has an end, a beginning, or a sequence; it affirms: God is the creator of time; it increases: whatever positive content is in time, it is infinitely present in God. Time is the real possibility of real connection between causes and effects; in God, who is the creator of time and eternal, timeless existence is not emptiness, but the fullness of activity, as Boethius's classic definition says: eternity is the complete and perfect possession of endless life (interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio). And in this sense, God is eternal.
The Scriptures often denote a very long duration with the term "eternity" (עוֹלָם, αἰῶν = ἀεὶ ὂν, ἀίδιον), mainly infinity (e.g., Gen 17:8, Lev 3:17, Ps 5,12. In this sense, the Creed says: "I believe… in eternal life."), and that's why it often attributes it to creatures, especially spirits. (Mt 25:46, Lk 1:3 etc.) However, it calls God eternal in the above-defined sense, and Him alone; not formally, but in terms of content.
The Scripture denies the elements of time about Him: the beginning, the end, the succession, and declares Him to exist before all time: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." (Ps 90,2; cf. 2,7, 102,27.) "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." (Jn 8,58.) "I the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he." (Is 41,4; cf. Gen 1, Ps 93, 102,26–28 Deut 32,40 Dan 7,99 [ʿatīq yōmīn, antiquus dierum, the ancient of days], Rev 1,4–18.)
God and time are not commensurate quantities: "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Pet 3:8; cf. Heb 1:10, Gen 1:14–19, Deut 33:26, Job 36:26, Ps 74:16, 90:4, 119:89–91, Is 43:3, 48:12, Jer 10:10, 1 Tim 1:17, Rev 4:8–11, 10:6.)
The Church Fathers, already against the pagans, emphasize and regularly discuss divine eternity, especially frequently and wittily by St. Augustine (Tatian. Graec. 4; Athenag. Legat. 4 10; Iren. III 8, 3; Tertul. Marc. I 8; III 28; Nazianz. Or. 38, 7; 45, 3; August. Conf. XI; Ver. relig. 49; in Ps 101: 2, 10 et al.).
Reason also sees that
a) eternity is the direct consequence of immutability. Time is indeed the measure of change based on succession (numerus motus secundum prius et posterius); there is no change in God, so there can be no time either.
b) It is also a consequence of self-existence: self-existence excludes in God the conjunction or succession of potentiality and actuality. However, time only exists with these: the present is potential compared to the past, the future compared to the present. Therefore, God is above temporality (Thom I 10; Gent. I 15 III 68.).
Questions.
The relationship of divine eternity to temporal entities. – God, by virtue of His eternity, is outside and above all time, but as its author, He is present at every moment of time; there is no moment in the flow of time, neither past nor present nor future, in which God does not exist simultaneously; in every actual or thought time, we must say: God is now. Some theologians (like Halens. Summa I 12, 1, 1.) call this God's always-existence (sempiternity) and rightly compare it with ubiquity (omnipresence). Thus, the eternity of God equals each moment of time and the entire timeline, and coexists with it; not like a long line is parallel to a shorter line, but like the center of a circle is with every single point and arc of the circumference (Anselm. Monol. 18; Thom Gent. I 66; Less. Perf. IV 4.). However, this relationship should not be understood as if a part of the timeline, or even the entire timeline, would correspond to a shorter or longer duration in divine eternity; there is no duration in God; eternity is not an infinite sum of durations, as Aureolus thought; time, as the projection of change, cannot be asserted about God in any form.
The coexistence of temporal things with divine eternity. – Temporal things, when they actually exist, are simultaneous with divine eternity. For God is present at every single moment and duration of time; therefore, every single temporal thing is also present before God at every moment of its existence and throughout its duration; and since the eternity of God does not allow time gaps, temporal things are present with the entire divine eternity throughout the duration of their existence; of course, not as commensurate quantities, not like a mayfly or a fly spends a period of time with a longer-lived human, but only as a creation, as a work that essentially and intimately depends on its creator, its thought and sustaining activity. Can it also be said that things are present not only during their actual existence but also before and after their existence with God's eternity, which has no past or future, but only an eternal present («nunc aeternitatis»), which extends over every created moment and duration of time with its power? Thomas Aquinas answers yes (Thom 1 dist. 19, 2, 2 ad 1.). Other theologians, however, see this as endangering both the temporality of creatures and the absolute simplicity of eternity, which excludes even the concept of time intervals.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

Earnest
"Are you seriously suggesting that these did not contain the tetragrammaton, or that "names of God" in these texts do not include THE name of God?"
No, it's just that you don't necessarily have to think of the Tetragrammaton, that it's about "the divine names", in the plural. I think those may have been magical papyri, or versions of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, on which it was added for the purpose of re-Hebraization. Since, according to the majority of scholars, only Kyrios was in the original version of the Septuagint, and the Tetragrammaton in some form (Paleo-Hebrew, square Hebrew, or "ΙΑΩ") was a later re-Hebraization attempt, which mainstream Judaism considered sacrilegious, that be included in the basic text of a "pagan" language, thus it's associated with some minor heterodox branch.
"As far as we know, NO readings of the text have survived from the time the church was primarily Jewish."
I don't know why you want to go back to the era of Judeo-Christianity and reproduce its theological climate. What we mean today by "Christianity" is in fact the Pauline Gentile Christianity, as the Judeo-Christian branch quickly melted into the main Church. The Judaizing trend was at least suspect from the second half of the apostolic age (see Epistle to the Galatians), and keeping the Law (Sabbath, circumcision) was tolerated (but unnecessary) until the destruction of the Second Temple, but after that it became unacceptable.
"the copyists are gentiles, they do not understand what the tetragrammaton is and so do the obvious thing and replace it with a word they know fits the context, usually Lord or God"
It is also not clear that if, according to the Watchtower's claim, the Tetragrammaton had theological significance even in the apostolic age and was a central part of the primitive Church's faith, then how can you now claim that the copyists "did not understand" what it was. If the Watchtower's claim were true, that YHWH was as central to the primitive Christian church's faith as it is to them today, then how could they not have known what it was, and no one would have objected to the reading text changed?
It was difficult for Christians to accept even theologically insignificant translation changes (for example, the changing of the Latin term used for 'qiqayon' (likely castor oil plant) in Jonah 4:6 from 'cucurbita' (“gourd”) to 'hedera' (“ivy”), and a bishop had caused a great disturbance just by reading aloud it, and had nearly lost his flock), which is why it took centuries until Jerome's Vulgate finally replaced the Vetus Latina in Western Christianity. Don't you not that the doctrine of God's being himself would have passed without a word, without it being noticed by any one, and causing considerable rebellion?
"And it did not require a conspiracy or a central church authority, it only required the change of the church from Jewish to Gentile."
However, the Watchtower does not claim this, but instead assumes a deliberate, conscious falsification of the Bible, according to which "wicked apostates hated the name of God and falsified the Bible." Compared to that, you are talking about a coincidence, or rather a natural process. But that doesn't stand either, since the converts from among the Jews lived among their fellow Jews, it is also impossible that they would have followed the Watchtower manner of "using" the YHWH name, since this in itself was a crime under the Jewish law, deserving of the death penalty, which would have caused serious riots to break out.
66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345

Blotty
Wondering what could be the cause of the fact that handling, listening and interpreting longer texts could possibly be indicative of ADHD (or the uncluttered writing style - answering your comments takes almost as much time as figuring out what the factual statement is -, and non-standard grammar for dyslexia), it is not a personal attack, since these conditions are not moral categories, the people involved are not responsible for them.
"Jesus isnt said to be created or "come into being" so he never was shall I list the instances of things that arent stated in the bible?" - You can compile a list of them, but this is only a problem for such denominations that - in principle or in fact - stand on the principle of 'sola Scriptura' (Scripture alone), such as the Watchtower Society. This is a serious problem for them, if the Bible does not state one of their most important doctrines.
No matter what your sources claim (they are not scholars, nor linguists, but WTS apologists), you can check in any grammar book that the Greek copula (eimi, "to be") does not have an aorist form, so the verb γίγνομαι (gígnomai, "to come into being", "to become") was used for this. Consequently, "en archē ēn ho Logos" (John 1:1a) is not aorist, but simply imperfect indicative.
" The combination of "beginning" and "was" doesnt always equate to "eternity", actaully never does.." - Since this is the only place in all of Scripture where this phrase ("In the beginning was X...") occurs, especially in such a solemn context as in the Prologue of one of the Gospels, you can't go anywhere else to understand its meaning. If "in the beginning" refers to Genesis 1:1, then it is understood in the sense of 'bereshith' found there, which denotes "the beginning" in absolute sense, the creation of the world. John says that the Logos already "was", thus existed then. And he continues in verse 3 "apart from him nothing was made that has been made", so John does not classify the Logos among the things that "that has been made", in fact he explicitly separates and distinguishes them from them. Also: the Watchtower forgot to put the word "other" in the NWT here as well ;-)
It is not clear why other persons should be declared "only-begotten" and "firstborn" etc. in other contexts, if according to the Holy Scriptures this title belongs only to the Son, also according to the Watchtower. Anyway, "only-begotten" (monogenes, μονογενής) has two primary definitions, "pertaining to being the only one of its kind within a specific relationship" and "pertaining to being the only one of its kind or class, unique in kind". [Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BAGD, 3rd Edition)] Its Greek meaning is often applied to mean "one of a kind, one and only" (LSJ Dictionary Entry).
You say that "the language I use" is "Greek philosophy", well that's enough for me to reject, that's just the Watchtower's stupid rant against anything more sophisticated reasoning, anyway according to my belief "the philosophy" is usually not some satanic horrible thing in itself that has to be feared. According to Catholic Teaching, "faith seeks understanding, reason seeks faith" ("fides quaerens intellectum..."), and this fideist-fundamentalist-bibilistic approach is anything but a Christian requirement.
"There are also signs of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God. One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a “biblicism” which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth." (John Paul II - Fides et Ratio)
Chapter 1 of the Epistle to the Hebrews clearly distinguishes the Son from "all the angels" (v14: "Are not all angels ministering spirits ...?"), the translators of your denomination must have forgotten to insert their favorite word "other" here as well ;-)
I have given several examples where we can see that the Holy Scriptures do call creatures "creatures", so it knows the category it classifies as creatures. But where does he list the Son among them? He just contrasts the only-begotten of the Father with all the creatures, who were all "made by/through him".
""The genitive does not at all mean that he is included" - again show me an instance where this is not the case..." - Why should I do such a thing for it to be like this, if the Son is unique, why should the Scriptures declare similar things about anyone else. The phrase "something of something" does not at all mean "belonging to a category" in any language (not even in English), in itself it just expresses a kind of relation. What that relation is, is expressed by the specific statement and the broader context.
It is not difficult to understand what the "Firstborn of the whole creation" means. It is enough to see what the title "Firstborn" title means: preeminent, distinguished heir, ruler, etc., therefore it's a lordly title, is also related to the Davidic-Messianic title - even according to the Watchtower, cf. Aid to Bible Understanding p. 583-584.
What kind of relationship this "Firstborn" has with "the whole creation" mentioned after it, well, that it is a part of it, does not follow at all from the linguistic meaning of this term, nor from a narrower or broader context. Once "Firstborn" is a lordly title, and "the whole creation" (which by definition is subject to this ruling Firstborn - also according to the WTS) mentioned mentioned after, then it is much more reasonable that this person enjoys the status of the "Firstborn" over "the whole creation" rather than being classified as a part of it. The whole context is a passage glorifying the Son, it is completely foreign if you rewrite the second half of Col 1:15 to say that he is "the first created being", then it would become completely meaningless. Is he "the first created being, BECAUSE all [other things was created in him"? What?
The funniest thing is that this is the standard interpretation of these words ("the firstborn of all creation"), that this means that the Son is "the Firstborn", therefore the Lord, the Ruler of the whole creation, otherwise it is completely compatible with the theology of the Watchtower too, but they still cannot admit it, they have to stick to it until they break the nails, because they NEED this "one-liner" "proof" text, if the Scriptures do not declare the Son to be a creature anywhere.
""any more than "Lord of worlds" means that the Lord is also a world himself, or "the king of the country" means that the king is also a country himself." - no but they are part of the "world" they are king of and the king is part of the country he is king over - however king and lord are superior titles so they are above what they are connected too." - Wrong. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, for example, the king was not considered part of the nation over which he ruled. The king is not part of the nation, but a supranational agent. And with that logic, if God is the Lord of the created world, then he is also a creature, since according to you the classification as being "part of" always follows from the genitive.
"Christ is a highly exalted divine being - yes, but never said to be God in the NT" - There are no demigods, "gods" (only the so-called "false gods" of the pagans) in the New Testament, and in fact, the New Testament calls the Son "THEOS" in many places, the Watchtower does not dispute this either, they only play tricks with the initial letter, even though in the time of the apostles there was no distinction between lowercase and uppercase letters, the Son just is declared the same initials "THEOS" as the Father.
This is where the Watchtower brings in the completely baseless argument that if the Holy Scriptures say "THEOS" without the article ("HO", "the"), it actually means only a demigod, and only the form provided with the article ("HO THEOS") means full deity. In addition to being a completely artificial construction, Matthew 1:23 and John 20:28 use "HO THEOS" in relation to Jesus. In the case of the latter, the text specifically indicates that apostle Thomas said this to Jesus (αὐτῷ, "to him", cf. Kingdom Interlinear Translation), who, according to the testimony of the next verse, interpreted these words of Thomas as a confession of faith.
""The Son is eternally begotten, not made or created" - you will have to prove that with scriptural references..." - I've already done.
On the one hand, the burden of proof is on you, thus, being founded only in 1879, claiming that we were all wrong for two thousand years, well, the minimum is that you should prove your claim, along with all the other claims, including whether there is such a prophecy in the NT, that "true Christianity" will disappear for 1800 years, and then Russell will "restore" it. The New Testament verses used by Jehovah's Witnesses to allegedly predict the alleged "great apostasy" do not claim that those specific false teachers will completely take over the Church to the extent that they will completely erase the "original" teaching without anyone noticing, and that it will then need to be recreated from scratch in 1879. Rather, they simply say that "there will be some false teachers" whom the apostles caution against, but there is no mention of the complete deterioration of the Church. Moreover, if they were going to take over power anyway, why caution against them? The inspired apostles should have known that everything would be in vain since the first-century Church was destined to burst like a soap bubble within a few decades. Therefore, there was actually no purpose in establishing local congregations or the entire existence of the first-century Christian community, as the only goal was for the New Testament writings to be written so that Russell could calculate 1914 from the Scriptures 1800 years later.
However, the argument also refers to the positive promises that the true Church will not disappear ever, that the Holy Spirit will always be with it, that "the gates of hell will not prevail against it," and so on. Consequently, according to the Scriptures, only a Church that has continuously and visibly existed since the time of the apostles, with historical continuity, can be true. The later arrival of "gurus" and self-proclaimed "pastor" does not hold any weight according to the Scriptures.
It is very easy to prove the statement, the New Testament declares countless times that the Son is "begotten" (gennao), "born" (tikto) of the Father, but that he was "created" (ktizo), or "made" (poio), precisely nowhere. The Scriptures clearly state that the Son receives his existence from the Father in a qualitatively different way than the creatures. If you claim that this strict terminological difference means nothing, then the burden of proof is on you.
"being eternally begotten makes no sense (by definition in general)" - Why wouldn't it make sense? It is very reasonable: temporality and temporal succession is a character to the created world, only the processes within the created world are characterized by temporality, there is no change in God, there is no time, no temporality in God, so what God doesn't do in relation to the created, world is his eternal act. This is what the Epistle to the Hebrews also says, that the Father begot the Son "today", but in God the "today" is the eternity.
""You should just answer the rhetorical question YHWH God asks in Isaiah 44:24" - ok I will. Job 38:5-8 The angels were with YHWH" - ... but it doesn't say that they participated in the creation, on the contrary, Job 9:8 declares that God "alone" created.
"now to the actaul context of Isaiah (you isolate that scripture from its immediate context)" - The context does not flatten the meaning of what Isaiah 44:24 states, that is, that YHWH God created "alone", and this "alone" excludes not only false gods (who actually don't exist), but everything and everyone else. So there is no room left for a secondary co-creator demigod-archangel participating in creation, where the Watchtower tries to put the Son. Thus, if the Scriptures state that the Son also participated in creation, then it also follows from Isaiah 44:24 that then the Son is YHWH God, just like the Father. If YHWH God creates actually "through" and "in" someone else, who is not YHWH God, then he does not create "alone".
"So in some sense this is strictly between God and the man made idols, it does not exclude anyone from being with God at all as Job 38:7 proves outright." - This verse doesn't excludes that they may have been present with him, but it excludes that anyone other than YHWH God participated in the creation, and the New Testament expressly states this about the Son, moreover, on numerous occasions. Neh 9:6, Isa 45:12, 48:13, Psalm 95:5-6 also say the same thing. Consequently, all persons of whom creation is claimed in Scripture must be God. Hebrews 3:4 says the same thing.
The New Testament doesn't restricts the description of the Son's participation in the creation to the preposition "dia" (=by/through Him) in John 1:3, but also with "en" (=in Him) in Colossians 1:16, and Hebrews 1:10 attributes the creation of the world to the Son in the most explicit way possible. (On the latter, even the Watchtower admits that this is an Old Testament quote originally referring to "Jehovah" applied here to the Son). If you combine these statements with all the Old Testament statements above that only YHWH God created "alone", nothing else comes out than that the Son is just as much YHWH God as the Father.
"Wisdom was assosiated with Christ" - Association and typology is not identification. For example, Jesus, as a messianic king, also draws a typology with David, yet we do not apply the statement about David one-to-one to Jesus.
"the nicene councel never denied this" - The council did not discuss the extent to which the concept of Chokhmah, which can be read in the Old Testament wisdom literature, can be identified with the Son, so it did not "not deny" it, but did not even deal with it.
"This isnt an invention by the Watchtower either as other ancient texts prove." - No one said that they invented it, but they use this place to support their doctrinal claim, even though according to the established exegesis, the Chokhmah of the Old Testament is not literally the Logos of the New Testament, but at most a type, a foreshadowing. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament, which also includes the book of Proverbs, cannot be used to support doctrinal teachings, taking into account its genre characteristics. Wisdom is personified. It is a quality within a Person, and the quality, itself, is personified. That Person is not yet revealed. "From everlasting was I poured" is an everlasting begetting. It is not a creation, it is a begetting, everlastingly. 'Time' has no meaning in this context.

Also, translations of Proverbs 8:22 in the Septuagint, word κτίζω can mean with a double accusative "to make somebody something", e.g., "to make/set somebody free" (cf. Aeschylus "Choephori" 1060), that is to say, cause somebody's getting free. In this last meaning the adequate literal translation of the Septuagint will be: "Lord caused/made me (brought me forth) to be the beginning of His ways towards His deeds", for there is not an "ἐν ἄρχῃ" in the text, but a double accusative ("[ἔκτισεν] με ἀρχήν"), like in the abovementioned quote from Aeschylus ("ἐλεύθερόν σε [κτίσει]"). Therefore, the translation "He created me in the beginning of his ways" is totally misleading, while "He caused/made me to be the beginning/principle" is grammatically more plausible with the double accusative construction. Thus, the Septuagint suggests that God was necessitated to bring forth, bring about, or cause something to be the principle ἀρχή for doing His deeds (ἔργα); therefore, by logic of this, this something is not included in those ἔργα but is outside of them as the God-derived principle for their coming into being.
Later in theology, through the Arian controversy, there happened a clear technical division between "creation" (κτίζω) and "begetting" (γεννάω). However, Septuagint translators did not yet have this terminologically tense agenda and thus put the verb in a looser sense of "making somebody something" or "bringing forth", not at all investing this term with a necessity of a contingency and createdness,i.e. non-eternity, of a being that God has brought about (ἔκτισεν).
"should be noted all the meanings to the word imply "something that was not possesed before" or in other words a new thing to the subject." - But there is no temporality, temporal succession in God, and because of God's perfection, immutability, and being an "actus purus" it is impossible that there was a time when he did not possess, lacked something.
""while "begotten" suggests an eternal relationship, with no beginning" - it really doesnt... "born" and "begotten" are used as parralels and basically mean the same, only slight variations" - God should not be understood with concepts taken from the created world and with logic (see Isaiah 55:8-9, Acts 17:29), so from the fact that e.g. people are born in time, it does not follow that when God begets "today", thus in his eternal-timeless reality, it also happens in time. Generation in the created world comes with a (temporal) "beginning", but within God, since there is no temporality, change, succession, no. At the same time, the concepts of "birth" and "begetting" are apt, since if a man begets, then not an ontologically inferior being is born from him, but also a human being.
""sharing the same divine essence with the Father." - but humans also share the divine nature with them? are they then God?" - The saved are God's adopted sons of God, and Sonship in the same sense as that of the Son is not declared about them. Eph 3:14 means that the faterhood of Father to the Son is the pattern, model to our adopted filiation, this is to be understood as Matthew 5:48.The adopted child is also an heir, and the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance (Romans 8:17). In the writings of John, there is also a linguistic distinction: Jesus is the Son (huios), and we are the children (teknon). Divine sonship is the true characteristic of the believer's state. The grace transformation is indicated by being "born of God." Not by natural means, but by the gracious action of the Holy Spirit. The new birth happens through water and the Spirit (John 3:5), but for now, it is hidden and will only become evident when Christ appears, and we will see what we have become (1 John 3:2).
If you are referring to 2 Peter 1:4, it is about the essence of Christianity, that through redemption and sanctification, we enter into a relationship and communion with God, since through this we are born again as His children, and in this rebirth, God imparts His grace and, in a sense, Himself to us. However, this does not mean becoming gods, of course. The Greek Church Fathers used the term "theosis" to express the effect of grace, but it always remained a more neutral expression than the "deification" used in paganism. In the formulation of Paul the Apostle, the salvation of mankind became a reality through God's initiative in Jesus Christ, and everyone can attain it through faith (Romans 3:21), which includes repentance and forgiveness of sins. Baptism is a holy act that aims at perfection (Romans 6:4-10; Titus 3:12), so it is quite different from the deification in myths. In the writings of John, fellowship with Jesus establishes fellowship with God. The original model is the unity of the Father and the Son (John 10:30). We are in communion with God only analogically (1 John 1:3), and we remain in Him (2:5), but it is still a real life-communion, and alongside it, there is the hope of eternal life that is achievable for everyone. The characteristic features of "theosis" are: God remains as the creator and lord with absolute personal authority. His presence has an eschatological effect, pointing towards salvation, not an immanent mystical event. It contains the tension between the present and the future and the moral requirement. In this sense, the other statements in the Johannine literature should also be interpreted: being born of God (1 John 2:29), being children of God and being born again, putting on Christ (Galatians 3:27), and the formation of the new man (Ephesians 4:24). However, if you want to reduce the divine nature of the Son to this, you are on the wrong track.
"what about angels? (Who are literally called gods)" - Yes, I know this WTS argument in connection with John 10:30-36, but Jesus does not say that he is "god" only in the same sense as the angels and judges were called "elohim" in the Psalms. First it should be noted that while in the Old Testament this usage of the word "gods" (elohim) does occur, in the New Testament it does not, there are only two categories of "THEOS": 1. the one true God, and 2. the false gods of the pagans (possibly Satan, as "the god of this world "). In John 10 Jesus gave a parable to his accusers which means: if even they can be called gods (in a certain sense), then how much more the only begotten Son then? So it's clearly in the text He is God in a superior sense than the judges were called "gods" in the Psalm. In what sense namely then? He does not explain here exactly, but he makes it clear that it is not just in the same sense, but in a higher, superior sense. "Argumentum a fortiori" arguments are regularly used in Jewish law under the name kal va-chomer, literally "mild and severe", the mild case being the one we know about, while trying to infer about the more severe case. The Jews understood this and that's why they wanted to stone him "again" (v39).
"Athanasius was well known to state things that contridict the bible - you can research that yourself, infact he was sometimes downright dishonest." - This are not very specific statement, and anyway, no one claimed that Athanasius was infallible, but the Council of Nicaea was. And the truth of the Nicene Creed does not depend on the person of Athanasius.
"should also look up teh history of that councel.." - I did what are you referring to specifically?
""God created the time for man when He separated the days from each other " - dont think so, not according to other bible commentators and scholars.." - I did, and according to Christian teaching, time and temporality did not always exist (only God is eternal, nothins else, the time either), time is also God's creation, and "in the beginning" there was no time.
""the Son is begotten from the Father before all aions, not made" - meaning "the world" "the system of things" as in not time itself" - This term "system of things" occurs exclusively in the terminology of the Watchtower, so why do you claim that you are not a member of the JW denomination? But here, of course, we are not talking about the punctual English translation of the Greek word αἰών, but how do you accept the statement of the Nicene Creed that Son "was begotten from the Father, before all αἰώνs"?
"Jesus being the archangel would put him in an elevated class over the other angels that appeared after him." - Yet where does the Scripture call Jesus an archangel? The term "other" that I highlighted in bold is not in Hebrews 1, there it is contrasted with "all angels" and the Son is distinguished, and by definition he is not included among the angels And the archangel is just as much an angel as the archbishop is a bishop.
Where does the Bible declare that Son is the same as archangel Michael? Nowehere. Jesus Christ, "who is over all, the eternally blessed God" (Rom 9:5), "through whom everything was made" (Heb 2:10; cf. Jn 1:2-3), in whom "all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Col 2:9), who is "the true God and eternal life" (1Jn 5:20), the "only Lord" (Jude 1:4), "the first and the last" (Rev 1:17-18; 2:8; cf. Is 44:6), "the Lord of lords and the King of kings" (Rev 17:14) cannot be identified with an angel, with Michael, who is "one of the chief princes" (Dan 10:13, cf. Hebrews 1). The New Testament never calls Jesus an angel (cf. Hebrews 1:5), let alone Michael.
The difference between Jesus and Michael is also well illustrated by their relationship with Satan: Jude's letter establishes the truth that Satan has greater authority than Michael. The apostle Jude writes that Michael "did not dare" to bring condemnation/judgment on Satan (Jude 9; cf. 2 Peter 2:11), but Jesus pronounced a clear judgment on him (Jn 16:11; cf. John 5:22, 27; 1 John 3:8; Col 2:15).
The verse they refer to (1Thess 4:16) is so forced that I can only marvel at anyone who falls for it. It does not say that the voice of Michael is Jesus's voice, but rather that it's the voice of the archangel, accompanying the arrival of Jesus. The phrase "His archangelic voice" is not present in 1 Thess 4:16, instead it simply states: "with the voice of the archangel." It continues to say "with the trumpet of God." Therefore, if Jesus, according to this misinterpretation, is an archangel, then the same logic proves His deity.
81
Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament
by pizzahut2023 in
1. watchtower
2. bible
ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.
aqwsed12345

You don't get my argument: the very fact that SO MANY readings of the text have survived, just not "Jehovah"s, proves that there was never a central church authority that could or intented to carry out such a corruption of the text of the NT as that Watchtower assumes. So many versions have survived, just not the "Jehovist" one?
That the more difficult reading is better (lectio difficilior potior) is a main principle of textual criticism. Of course, this principle can be disputed, but then why did the Watchtower use Westcott-Hort edition as the base text of the NWT, which was also compiled based on this principle of textual criticism?
There are indeed Bible translations that were made on the basis of principles that are in direct contradiction to the established ones, such as the New Heart English Bible, for example, in which it is remarkable that its Old Testmanet was made on the basis of a supposedly older text than the established Masoretic text, and even the one used by Jerome, based on the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Heretics are basically those who in principle belong to the same religion, but due to significant differences in certain issues, they have fundamentally different beliefs compared to the main branch of the given religion, and are therefore considered heterodox. The Jews did not consider Christianity, especially the Pauline Gentile Christians, as a heterodox branch of their own religion, but as a new religion different from theirs. That is why, according to Talmudic sources, the Jews did not call Christians "minim" but "notzri". The Christians which consisted mostly of uncircumcised gentiles (goyim) already by the second half of the first century, could not even be classified as heretical Jews, since one had to be born into Judaism. So when it comes to "minim", it does not apply to Christians, but to some heterodox Jews.
And importantly, the Talmudic text does not refer to "the divine name" but to "names of God" (plural), which does not necessarily refer to the Tetragrammaton. We know that some pagans already used certain forms of YHWH in mystical and sorcerous contexts before the time of Christ, but the fact that this was limited to this shows that in the main branch of Judaism, it was a fact that the avoidance of pronouncing the divine name YHWH was already a fact.
66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345

It's really not clear what the the issue is here, especially as the early Greek philosophers denied the reality of time, thinking of existences as eternal. In contrast, according to the Scriptures, God created the time for man when He separated the days from each other (cf. Gen 1). The world was created in time, the history of salvation takes place in time, time is the form of existence in our world, which began with creation.