Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  22

  WT now promoting literature officially at book fairs

  by StarTrekAngel in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  can there really be any doubt now on how commercial it is?

  if you thought the new kh design seemed commercial in nature, now imagine one of those halls turned into a jw store.

  we know they exist.

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  Half banana

  Have you noticed that for a publishing company with such impressive print runs, not one of their books has any merit at all (unless you call indoctrination a merit) to the extent that none of the titles are ever quoted in scholarly use except in exposing the stupidity of its contents?
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  15

  WTS competition

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  just now 10am friday morning, had a phone call from central london to tell me that opposite the houses of parliament outside westminster tube station the wts (wobbly trolley society) are standing there being overshadowed by others with loudspeaker and taller placards declaring "jws are a cult".

  sounds like fun!.

  but will this sort of publicity harm or benefit the jw org?.

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  Half banana

  Just now 10am Friday morning, had a phone call from central London to tell me that opposite the Houses of Parliament outside Westminster tube station the WTS (Wobbly Trolley Society) are standing there being overshadowed by others with loudspeaker and taller placards declaring "JWs are a cult". Sounds like fun!

  But will this sort of publicity harm or benefit the JW org?
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  18

  Joseph and Potiphar's wife

  by StarTrekAngel in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  what are the real reasons joseph refused to sleep with potiphar's wife?.

  the watchtower and others teach that joseph refused to commit adultery.

  specifically to the jws, we teach that joseph, somehow, knew that adultery was wrong, despite not having any specific rule or writing to teach him so.

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  Half banana

  I can't remember the actual source of this myth at the moment but this tale of seduction by a high ranking female, like most of the Bible, it is not original and not historical. I think I have come across this before, possibly to be found in the writings of the Egyptian Sinuhe but I'll look it up.

  The tease of this story must be that women were possessions of the male but here was a woman made powerful by her marriage to a state official and a moral dilemma for the Israelite.

  So Billy, I don't quite agree with you. It was not written for the purpose you say but it was borrowed, copied and bound into the portfolio of scrolls labelled 'sacred' by Jews for the reasons you give. There is a difference and this difference denies the text being God's pure unadulterated word.
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  6

  Serve Jehovah get everlasting life don't serve get everlasting death

  by Brokeback Watchtower in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jehovah's personality is explosive with no guarantees he won't blow a head gasket and destroy your ass for some petty offense.. i know the jws claim jehovah always keeps his word and once you get to heaven or pass the final test you got guaranteed everlasting life.

  but when we look in the bible jehovah seems to kill even his worshipers over trifles, so who is to say that someday he won't get pissed off and destroy the whole human race and start all over again?.

  while i don't believe the bible or what the wt corporation teaches about jehovah personality, if what they say is true then i would much rather die than live an eternity under the whims of such a capricious jehovah.. the reward system the bible has promoted is really terrible and not to be grasped at..

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  Half banana

  Touch my ark?..I'll kill you!

  I'm glad now not to worship anything...everyone: stop worshipping, it does your head in!
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  4

  Emblems

  by Harold Mourning in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  food for thought: .

  why didn't jesus (as the sacrificial lamb) choose bread and wine to signify his life instead of the (if it was actually on the passover) lamb that would have been there per jewish practice?

  also using a lamb would have been consistent with the law...the symbolic ideas would have been linear instead we have lamb represents "passover lamb"/messiah represented by bread and wine?

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  Half banana

  I get the picture that Roman religion had been dominated by Mithraism peaking towards the end of the second century and as it declined, Jesus- Christianity amongst many others, was replacing it. If we had been able to take a sociological survey at that time, namely finding out what people were actually doing as opposed to being bamboozled by the entirely biased Bible writings, we would probably find that Mithraic practice was the norm and was the source ritual for the ‘Christian’ last supper (remember the Saviour Mithra or Mithras was a christ too). The specific parallels can be explained by the later Roman Church under Constantine taking this prevailing pre-Jesus, Mithraic ‘eucharist’ symbolism of bread and wine into the syncretised Catholic worship. Mithra was called both the ‘Lamb of God’ and the ‘Good Shepherd’ and is depicted standing above a cross.

  Since the Vatican was built on top of the Roman Mithreum (underground church) its continuity with that cult is palpable. There exists in the caverns there the Mithraic inscription “Whoever does not drink of my blood and eat of my body, the same will not be with me in paradise”.

  So indeed eating the lamb would seem superfluous and innovative, best stick with tradition. The Jewish converts by now in the fourth century (when the Bible books were selected and edited) having been thoroughly Romanised.
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  25

  Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

  this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

  the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

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  Half banana

  Yes Opusdei it does look like the Ebionites did have some influence and possibly the major one for Jewish converts. The difficulty is lack of documentation but even that fact in this instance, may indicate the suppression of texts from the Christ cultists or the Roman Church denying the promiscuous origins of their religion and possibly by destruction of antecedent sect literature in the fourth century under Constantine.

  It seems the Ebionites were related doctrinally to the Essenes if not the very same sect. What I find interesting is that Judaism was generally not disposed to asceticism neither before nor after this time yet it seems that their thread of self-denial was introduced to Greek and Roman Christianity which later became expressed in monasticism (culminating in the unhinged St Francis of Assisi and ten thousand other self flagellating monks!).

  @Mr P, thanks for the reference of Gandy and Freke's Jesus book, I'll have to look that up.

  @Cofty, now I'm also looking forward to Richard Carrier's book.
  
  
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  16

  How the Watchtower organization does, in fact, claim to be an inspired prophet.

  by Island Man in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  draw any jw's attention to watchtower's history of false predictions and invariably, somewhere down the line of the conversation, the jw will tell you that watchtower never claimed to be an inspired prophet and therefore cannot be accused of being a false prophet.

  but is it really true that watchtower has never claimed to be an inspired prophet?.

  technically speaking, the answer is yes - i think (if i'm wrong i'd love to see the quote).

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  Half banana

  I think it’s worth considering why the ghastly Watchtower magazine was published in the first place back in 1879. It was because the wealthy entrepreneur Chucky Russell had defended the most recent Adventist prophecy failure of the heavenly coming of JC in 1874.

  “No! Don't be disappointed, you are wrong, it did happen after all!” he said addressing his invisible friend Noddy, because Jesus did arrive but came invisibly! Ta dah! That means, thought Chucky, stroking his beard and polishing his Rosicrucian badge, that given forty Biblical years, God’s enemies will be destroyed, the saints will be raptured and the paradise will be restored, brilliant! Noddy wasn’t impressed... "So!" thought Chucky "I’ll tell the world of my invisible discovery by printing Zion’s Watchtower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, that’ll show em!"

  So surely the whole enterprise was explicitly ‘prophetic’ by Russell's self professed mandate foretelling a divine event? And Russell permitted his followers to give him the accolade of "God's channel". He personally relished that flattering image of being God's spirit driven appointee. This founder effect has never been cancelled by the subsequent presidents and governors of the WTBTS.
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  25

  Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

  this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

  the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

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  Half banana

  @Opusdei, you make a good case for the un-likeliness of 90% of the gospels being historical. To my mind in the absence of any contemporary secular corroboration of gospel stories, virtually the whole thing looks like propaganda and not history... and that includes JC. IF there really was a wonder working god-man who could raise the dead, don’t you think he would be brought to the attention of the highly literate Roman authorities? People who can really raise the dead would be somewhat in demand.

  I understand the general protest we all make: “but surely it was built around a real person.” As I said, this is generally not the way of the Bible; the Bible puts flesh on a prevailing skeleton of myth which has far greater psychological leverage than raising up and idolising some Jewish conjuror for example. The reason the prevailing myth theory (such as the god-man) is more successful than glorifying an existing individual, is that the belief is already present when the story is told.

  The substitution of “Jesus” for the Roman “Mithras” or “Dionysus” was clearly an expediency of the early christ-cult to attract the disaffected and messianic minded Jews who already had, by the way, a story in the back of their minds told from about 100BCE of a wonder- working Rabbi called Jesus.
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  25

  Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

  this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

  the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

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  Half banana

  @Village Idiot, I haven’t investigated enough to know the answer or even to know whether it’s possible to arrive at a conclusion as to a reality of Islam’s founding figure. I think the strongest parallel is in the sacralising of the text which appeared in the Roman Church also took place with the Koran with similar results.
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  25

  Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

  this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

  the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

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  Half banana

  @Village Idiot “cults like Christianity do not invent leaders; their members won’t have the imagination to do so.”

  I quite agree with the second half of your sentence, they had no need for imagination when there was a ready-made and universal myth of a holy superman which could be elaborated upon.

  Was it necessary to have a charismatic leader to jump start Christianity?

  There are two strong arguments against this. Firstly as already stressed the virtually complete story of christ the superman, demi-god born of a virgin in a cave in midwinter with oxen, visited by three Persian astrologers, healed the sick raised Lazarus ,walked on water, turned water into wine and died at Easter on a cross etc . This tale was told from antiquity. Again, Christianity with a capital C began in the fourth century with the Roman Church. It became ‘Catholic’ or universal by the deliberate absorption of all significant religious beliefs syncretising them into the Christianity we recognise today.

  The idea of Christ already existed in people’s minds so a man of flesh was not necessary and it was the Roman Church and Emperor Constantine, not any charismatic Jew which jump started the religion. In fact there is no extant written evidence that ”Jesus” was used in the first century. The most widely distributed Christian literature of the first two centuries, The Shepherd of Hermas, called the saviour hero ”Lord”.

  As regards myth it is worth appreciating that the obvious does not apply here. The obvious assumption is that a historical person or event, a kernel of truth is elaborated and ‘mythologized’ over time. Whereas this is completely possible; this is not mythology, it is not the pattern of transmitting myth. For what it is worth; the opposite is true.

  I would maintain that much of the Bible texts are built around myth and not history. It is critical in understanding that what has occurred is that writers have historicised the myths and not mythologized history. In other words they have clothed the myth to give it a recognisable personality or plausible historical setting. As with the question of who is the real James Bond; the character (the myth) is fiction but comes to life by elaboration of his exploits and by the actors who play him. Once this perception has been fully grasped it makes for real progress in understanding what the Bible is all about. (IMHO)

  @ finklestein

  "And wasn't the reason why the Romans eventually adopted Christianity was because it was deemed better than their old previous pagan practices ?"

  I would say that they adopted Christianity because IT WAS ALREADY their pagan practice!

  Consider...
  1) Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.

  2) Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.

  3) According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

  4) After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.

  5) Mithra had a celibate priesthood.

  6) Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).