Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

• 
  182

  Words for the Day; please share

  by compound complex in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  greetings, word lovers:.

  in my job, i work with words and wrangle them into shape, well, in a manner of speaking.

  one word might be mistaken for another, a word with either a similar or identical sound.

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  Half banana

  Sylvia: antimony, antinomy, antonymy, autonomy and anatomy........read very fast
• 
  182

  Words for the Day; please share

  by compound complex in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  greetings, word lovers:.

  in my job, i work with words and wrangle them into shape, well, in a manner of speaking.

  one word might be mistaken for another, a word with either a similar or identical sound.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  licence and license

  practice and practise

  .....both cases here are nouns followed by verbs .............(alphabetically C comes before S as Noun comes before Verb) but with;

  principle and principal

  .....they are both nouns but the second spelling can also be an adjective.

  As in; The principal (adj) argument on moral principles (noun) was taught by the school principal.(noun)

  Here endeth the lesson
• 
  182

  Words for the Day; please share

  by compound complex in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  greetings, word lovers:.

  in my job, i work with words and wrangle them into shape, well, in a manner of speaking.

  one word might be mistaken for another, a word with either a similar or identical sound.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  How about the word syzygy just for its own sake and its absence of vowels? (a pairing or alignment)

  Or in use; Sylvia, I like your syzygy of antimony and antinomy but we could also add antonymy to them as well.
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  77

  Interpret John 1:1 by John 1:1.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  interpret john 1:1 by john 1:1. .

  the greek language has the definite article which has approximately thirty variations, is translated into english as “the”, and points to an identifiable personality, someone we have prior knowledge of.

  but the greek language has no indefinite article corresponding to the english “a”, or “an”.

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  Half banana

  Towerwatchman, thank you for a long reply. The natural reaction of Christians is to defend to the hilt the position of Jesus as redeemer because if this hope was flawed it would destroy the very thing which gives meaning and value to their lives.

  Please note, (and you still prevaricate by giving special meanings to certain words) the idea of cheating death is a fundamental driver of religious belief and yet; no one has credibly benefitted from Jesus’ supposed life and sacrificial death. Apart that is from the false security in grasping the illusory straw, in hoping for eternal life.

  I was in the Ryland Library in Manchester last year and enjoyed looking at the fragment of John, one of the earliest pieces of NT text dated around the third quarter of the second century, a tiny scrap of papyrus with a few lines of smudgy Greek but important nevertheless. This is representative of the reality of the early NT texts not the thousands of documents you infer. The bigger mistake is to believe they are divine. It is hardly surprising that manuscripts which were authorised and funded by Imperial Rome became common and the evidence is that it is after the fourth century that their number proliferates. However the most widely distributed Christian literature of the first two centuries was “The Sherperd of Hermas”, which is ‘scripture’ by Paul’s definition and never uses the name Jesus but just calls the saviour figure “Lord”.

  You miss the significance of the resemblance of Christianity to Mithraism. Of course they are different, otherwise we would call Christianity Mithraism! However, Jesus Christianity palpably did derive many things from the secret cult of Mithras but by no means exclusively. Noteworthy is the borrowed eschatology, atonement by much of the Apocalypse and outstandingly the last supper, the memorial of Mithra which the Romans had been celebrating once each year with small cakes for centuries before Jesus was thought of. The home of Roman Mithraism was on the Vatican stone promontory on the very spot where St Peters stands today. Yes the Roman Catholic Church was built on the Rock of Peter; Mithraism. The last Mithraic Pope,(PAter PAtris or Papa) Vettius Agorius Praetextatus died in 384 CE well after the death of Constantine and hence the Mithraic Papal role was tolerated by him. The cult of Mithras had a celibate clergy, they worshipped on the holy day of Sunday since all pagan saviours including Jesus, are sons of Sun Gods born to die “on the cross” i.e at the spring equinox, and thence to heaven.

  But as you rightly said Christianity did not come from the Good Sheperd Mithra, he was only a part of the story. The Catholic faith was the result of politically motivated synchretism, absorbing all the major Jesus cults including the Pauline, the Johannine community as well as the cults of Attis, Dionysus, Serapis, Cybele etc.

  Whatever defence modern Christians claim in an attempt to deny this unwelcome origin, usually by protesting the differences; the historical fact is that the beliefs, rituals and words found in Christianity had already been practiced for centuries before the first century CE. Only about sixteen percent of Bible text is without precedent in secular or ‘pagan’ texts. There is irony that the city centred Roman religion which after absorbing and sacralizing every kind of peasant faith, later pontificated that this same folk belief of the villagers (pagus/pagans) and the heath-dwellers was to be condemned as “pagan” or “heathen”. . .

  And so the sentiment remains today.

  The gospel’s promise of saving or gaining life has proved to be a spurious superstition. Jesus got it all wrong, (Mark 9:1).
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  9

  Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the March 19, 2017 WT Study (JANUARY 2017)

  by blondie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  blondie’s comments you will not hear at the march 19, 2017 wt study (january 2017).

  excellent general website: www.jwfacts.com .

  bible translations www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible .

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  Half banana

  Why listen to seven clowns moralizing on the subject of modesty when they have never got anything right. . . yet presumptuously claim a hot line to the almighty and award themselves immortal life in heaven?

  It is a fantastic hypocrisy!
• 
  77

  Interpret John 1:1 by John 1:1.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  interpret john 1:1 by john 1:1. .

  the greek language has the definite article which has approximately thirty variations, is translated into english as “the”, and points to an identifiable personality, someone we have prior knowledge of.

  but the greek language has no indefinite article corresponding to the english “a”, or “an”.

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  Half banana

  I needn’t remind you that the gospel of John abounds with references to overcoming death i.e. eternal life through JC. Why do you want to prevaricate on this?

  The first thing to realize when dealing with handwritten texts is that the human impulse to edit at each re-writing was almost irresistible. To imagine a divinely guided and protected sacred scripture is a religious fantasy.

  You can see the process at work in the Gospels to which Doug Mason refers. As he said, Mark’s writings are the earliest and over time and with geographical distance between them, they were elaborated on. Note how the story of three wise men with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh were added to the later gospels. This colourful and clearly exotic tale was part of the Mithraic cult which came from Persia and more significantly applied to the virgin birth of the saviour Mithra (or Mithras as the Romans called him) about three or four centuries before the Gospels were written.

  The saviour story had been knocking around for millennia before the first century CE. Variations on the same theme of a miracle god-man saviour with twelve disciples curing the sick and raising the dead and dying at Easter was a religious trope from ancient Egypt and dispersed throughout the near east including India.

  It was expedient for the Christ cults of Judea and other Roman territories to capitalize on the myth and put a name on the hero which matched people’s expectations. Iasus was a name taken by initiates in the Dionysian cult who also believed their saviour was born of a virgin and died sacrificially on a cross at Easter (spring equinox). Iesus was also (I believe) a name of a messianic rabbi from Hellenised Judaism about a hundred years BCE.

  I must contradict your assumption that Jesus actually lived and died. Outside of the highly biased gospels there is no incontrovertible secular corroboration that the saviour god-man Jesus ever breathed.

  Such ignorant stories as a theatrical persona coming to life; a man from a story taking on a human body. . . exasperated the Roman authorities and as the Bible (this time accurately) records, “there are many Christs and many Lords”. Nevertheless, the poor peasants believed the rumour and became followers of the cult leaders, especially those with good food supplied foc.

  Any man in the civilized Roman world who really could resurrect the dead would be an international celebrity overnight and would surely have been noted by the commentators of the day. Instead there is a deafening silence in the copious records of first century Rome.

  Set these things in this context that virtually all forms of Christianity doctrinally speaking, have passed through the bottleneck of Roman Imperial sanctioning. That means that Emperor Constantine used the traditional Roman ‘piety’ or reverence for the gods to assimilate all prevailing significant beliefs and fused them into one imperial ‘catholic’, all embracing church as a means of political control. There is little mention of this 'catholicisation' of Christianity because it would have been counter- productive to show what trick was being played on the populace. The bishops were being paid handsomely to compromise. All pagan source material texts were destroyed as well by Imperial decree. All religions other than the Catholic faith were eventually banned and as Rome declined, Church authority rose under the papacy controlling doctrine with an iron fist.

  No wonder the belief in the Bible as God’s holy word and the story of Jesus; the hero saviour of mankind took root in people’s imagination. Sixteen hundred years of indoctrination is a powerful persuader.
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  22

  What We Truly Deserve Is...Death, Really WT?

  by JW_Rogue in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have seen this statement or similar ones popping up in the study edition of the wt lately.

  whenever they talk about undeserved kindness or jesus ransom they add this little gem to get the point across.

  this is sick, why do they feel the need to tear down people's self esteem?

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  Half banana

  The leaders of the Watchtower cult have elevated themselves to immortal life alongside Jesus and Big J (at least they imagine they have!) while at the same time they beat the followers into pathetic dependency on their every word. They load on the guilt as a motivator.

  Destroy a person's self esteem and they will be easily manipulated. If an 'authority' claims to be from God, the person with low self worth will more easily be taken in by it.

  Where is the sense in choosing to become a "good-for-nothing slave"?

  Isn't the answer: only if you already have low self esteem.

  It will confirm your identity as inadequate and try and make a virtue of it. Like the masochist you are you give your life to "The Organisation"!

  But everyone who does never achieves or receives anything in return and dies disappointed.
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  77

  Interpret John 1:1 by John 1:1.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  interpret john 1:1 by john 1:1. .

  the greek language has the definite article which has approximately thirty variations, is translated into english as “the”, and points to an identifiable personality, someone we have prior knowledge of.

  but the greek language has no indefinite article corresponding to the english “a”, or “an”.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  Towerwatchman, I do not have Adamic sin or any other defects curable by holy beliefs. I have no need for fairy tales to give me existential hope. You make a grave error in believing that the scriptures are something which we should respond to.

  I greatly resent the idea that I should be grateful to an unknowable god for allowing me to live! Listen to yourself and realize that you are thoughtlessly repeating tired old religious spin, something which can never be proved and therefore of no use except in religious jingoism.

  Paul's words were useful in recruiting for the early Christ cult and therefore selected for duty in the Roman Bible to rouse followers to action. It is only the the poor peasants who were led to believe this foundationless nonsense. They ditched reason for an impossible hope in a saviour figure who was renamed Jesus around 175 CE. We have moved away from peasantry.
  

  Name me one person who has actually overcome death as promised in the Bible. Two thousand years, countless billions of people born and still no results yet!
• 
  77

  Interpret John 1:1 by John 1:1.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  interpret john 1:1 by john 1:1. .

  the greek language has the definite article which has approximately thirty variations, is translated into english as “the”, and points to an identifiable personality, someone we have prior knowledge of.

  but the greek language has no indefinite article corresponding to the english “a”, or “an”.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  Only those exposed to the doctrine of the trinity would come up with a belief in a triune god.

  However the real issue raised by discussing John 1:1 is the fundamental ambiguity of the nature of the the NT God.

  The Hebrew myth shows an evolving god as the culture absorbed the ideas of its neighbours over time. Moving from a god who was someone you could talk to and argue with, to the rabid despotic deity who heartlessly would to kill all who didn't worship him. Simple reflections of a primitive society trying to raise the status of their fighting prowess. The OT god was the creator of good things and the bringer of evil as well. But although a son of El and having sixty nine brothers, Yahweh was always singular in nature.

  So we might usefully ask why the NT god is so different? Surely God doesn't change?
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  77

  Interpret John 1:1 by John 1:1.

  by towerwatchman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  interpret john 1:1 by john 1:1. .

  the greek language has the definite article which has approximately thirty variations, is translated into english as “the”, and points to an identifiable personality, someone we have prior knowledge of.

  but the greek language has no indefinite article corresponding to the english “a”, or “an”.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Half banana

  Only those exposed to it!