Anony Mous

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Posts by Anony Mous

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  47

  JWs don’t use the apocryphal, yet source them

  by Anony Mous in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  so a quick little note about a few things that i recently learned.

  if you ever had the yellow book of bible stories, there was the story of enoch, also repeated in other watchtower publications, about the angels fathering giants and being a menace on earth.

  now if you look at the nicean bible, which is the wtbts selection of the bible, it mentions enoch twice and only has a very brief passage about nephilim and ben elohim.

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  Anony Mous

  @Sea Breeze: there is no scientific evidence for any of those “facts”. They are simply articles of faith. That list is simply paraphrasing portions of the gospels and the Pauline epistles that Christians have to accept without questioning.

  But as you know many of the gospels, as well as the apocrypha have large variations of the events surrounding Jesus’ supposed death, it is very much devoid of a historically accurate and verifiable story and every single story, even in the canon, has differences that are hard to ignore both during the passion (see here: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/sites/partners/cbaa_seminar/Passion_Narratives.htm) and the ressurection (how many angels, men or Jesus himself were in the tomb, which belies at least one of the “facts” you mentioned, the tomb was not empty in any account, how many did he appear to and who first etc etc)

  As far as the lack of historicity, Pontius Pilate for example in the Biblical story is written as a kind but weak willed person, allowing the Jews to carry out their own judicial proceedings, however historical records like that of Philon and Josephus describe him as a cruel, stubborn and merciless person that oppressed the Jews and would never allow any sort of self-governance.
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  47

  JWs don’t use the apocryphal, yet source them

  by Anony Mous in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  so a quick little note about a few things that i recently learned.

  if you ever had the yellow book of bible stories, there was the story of enoch, also repeated in other watchtower publications, about the angels fathering giants and being a menace on earth.

  now if you look at the nicean bible, which is the wtbts selection of the bible, it mentions enoch twice and only has a very brief passage about nephilim and ben elohim.

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  Anony Mous

  @Disillusioned:

  There is a difference between theology (Bart Ehrman and co) and archeology (a good primer would be The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology).

  The archeological evidence for a Jesus or a Paul is very scant, no graves, no contemporary accounts at the time, no records. This indicates their existence was already a myth by the time it was written down.

  According to the The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Paul's own conversion was dated to be ~31CE based on the writings, that would put it 3 years before Jesus died if you accept 1CE as the year of his birth. Now most scholars and even the Church now date Jesus' birth to ~3 BCE just to keep everything in line, but there is a lot of compression going on.

  Basically the entire story of Christ and the expansion of the religion to all of Rome has to fit between ~1CE and 70CE with mass-conversion for the stories to make sense. However archeologically speaking, there is simply no evidence of a widespread mass-conversion.

  Most scholars therefore now believe that Christianity was an offspring of Judaism that after the loss of autonomy to the Romans concocted the messiah stories to fill in the gaps of basically where God went and eventually included stories why he allowed the temple to be destroyed. It is believed that the first Jewish rebellions Roman fought (4BCE, when they massacred 2000 messianic Jews) was basically the same group that eventually called themselves Christians.
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  47

  JWs don’t use the apocryphal, yet source them

  by Anony Mous in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  so a quick little note about a few things that i recently learned.

  if you ever had the yellow book of bible stories, there was the story of enoch, also repeated in other watchtower publications, about the angels fathering giants and being a menace on earth.

  now if you look at the nicean bible, which is the wtbts selection of the bible, it mentions enoch twice and only has a very brief passage about nephilim and ben elohim.

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  Anony Mous

  @disillusioned:

  Yes, Christianity has existed in some form archeologically speaking at least since ~100BC, there are several books that explore the archeological evidence of the Judaic traditions that eventually become Christianity, some trace back elements like a messianic 'carpenter' to 1000BCE.

  By ~50CE the religion was already well established that it threatened political stability in Rome, hence why Nero persecuted them. The oldest known Pauline letters (which are likely to be copies and edits) date back to ~30CE, according to Paul, he had not heard about Jesus before that and Paul supposedly wrote his letters towards the end of his life when he was already an established Christian "elder", this would effectively put Paul's writings and potentially Paul's own life and death and the spread of Christianity, before the death of Jesus if you accept 1CE = Jesus birth.
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  47

  JWs don’t use the apocryphal, yet source them

  by Anony Mous in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  so a quick little note about a few things that i recently learned.

  if you ever had the yellow book of bible stories, there was the story of enoch, also repeated in other watchtower publications, about the angels fathering giants and being a menace on earth.

  now if you look at the nicean bible, which is the wtbts selection of the bible, it mentions enoch twice and only has a very brief passage about nephilim and ben elohim.

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  Anony Mous

  So a quick little note about a few things that I recently learned. If you ever had the yellow book of Bible stories, there was the story of Enoch, also repeated in other Watchtower publications, about the angels fathering giants and being a menace on earth. Now if you look at the Nicean Bible, which is the WTBTS selection of the Bible, it mentions Enoch twice and only has a very brief passage about Nephilim and Ben Elohim. But it doesn’t speak of giants and the like or Enoch and what he did, it seems to be conjured up by the WTBTS. However, the book of Enoch does go into details on Enoch’s life, the giants etc, how he preached about the apocalypse.

  Likewise the story told to JW children about Cain and Abel, read the Genesis chapter, then read or remember the story in the WT literature, especially the pictures, now there are a lot of details that aren’t in the Nicean Bible, that match the Book of Jasher, the Bible says he simply killed him without details, the Book of Jasher details an iron ploughing instrument, the fact he didn’t bury him but left him bleeding in the field etc, the WTBTS depicts Cain having killed Abel with an instrument matching that description, Abel bleeding and Cain walking away from an unburied body.

  There are a lot of other things, minor details perhaps that if you read for example Book of Jubilees, Book of Enoch etc and put them in context with what’s in the JW interpretation of the Bible and additional background to the stories which suddenly start making sense. Where does the WTBTS get its explanation of year-weeks and numerology surrounding the numbers 6 and 7 - read the books surrounding Kabbalah, Jubilees and others and it starts making more and more sense, patterns you see there are reused by WTBTS although some of these practices the WTBTS itself has condemned as demonic influences.

  It’s an interesting avenue of investigation I haven’t heard much about in contemporary JW investigation. I think the mid-60s-through-90s Governing Body were very much aware of the apocryphal books and must have done significant investigation into it for it to come through in what we consider the JW canon. Question is why they rejected them, especially since the Dead Sea Scrolls indicates those books were very much in circulation amongst Christians ca 100BC and have to date existed amongst Ethiopian Churches (one of the earliest churches still in existence)
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  24

  Simon, are you affected by this Canadian trucker convoy?

  by greenhornet in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i think you live in canada.

  this convoy is starting in the usa and soon to be in europe.

  just like to know how this is effecting your daily life and like to share with us if it is.

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  Anony Mous

  I think Canada is getting desperate, lots of people talking about food shortages in the stores now that they are also blocking major border crossings, farmers especially haven’t been able to feed their cattle and are prematurely slaughtering livestock to keep up.

  Trudeau in the mean time said that you need the mandates in order to prevent the restrictions. Not kidding, that’s literally what he said.

  The media is calling it simultaneously a small insignificant number of truckers, a Trump rally, terrorists blocking the entire capital and off course they’re all racists and Nazis.
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  9

  "A thousand years as one day"

  by Awakened07 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the scripture saying: "...one day is with the lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

  " (2. peter 3:8) is often used both by jehovah's witnesses and others, to show that a day can literally mean a thousand years in the eyes of god.

  this is then used especially for the creation story, and for the fall of adam and eve.

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  Anony Mous

  If 1000 years is as 1 day to God, that seems to imply that God really doesn’t have time to deal with us individually. 86400 seconds per day, that would mean a year is just 1.5 minutes to God, even assuming he can interact with everyone individually, within 1.5 hours we are born and die, and for half of that time we aren’t even conscious or adult.

  It also means we can measure gods age and it’s 38333 god-years old and humans have existed for less than 1 of them.

  If a God really cares about intelligent life to worship him, why would he bother not creating creatures that can do it for 38332 years and then even if they devote their entire life, they can do it for a few minutes in utter misery and disappear again. Seems like he just got bored and it’s a bit of an afterthought. Dinosaurs were more his thing.
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  5

  SANG BLOOD

  by Marcial in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  courts of denmark all lands supreme court news and judicial summaries blood transfusion to a member of jehovah's witnesses was legal.

  01 feb 2022. .

  supreme court.

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  Anony Mous

  @smiddy: it already panned out, the European courts basically held that medical directives are not valid. Therefore the government (which runs medicine in EU) can make medical decisions on your behalf as long as you’re not conscious. Very dangerous.
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  4

  Any jw's play World of warcraft?

  by lemonlime in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i am jw and i do play wow.

  id like to find some other jws that play.

  preferably around the age of 35-40. if u play and ur jw whats ur character name and realm?

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  Anony Mous

  I thought WoW died a long time ago. More into Hearthstone and HotS right now. What your BattleTag, I’ll add you.
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  25

  It begins norway no money for wt because of shunning

  by Yomama in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  organized shunning will stop when money stops.

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  Anony Mous

  It doesn’t seem they are losing their charity status or anything else. In Norway, tax money pays churches for existing.

  Basically Norway was giving JWs millions per year to simply exist as a religion. This wasn’t a tax break, this was a donation, which was then sent off to the US.

  And I agree, if the giver doesn’t agree where his donations are going, they don’t have to be given. I do disagree with the whole notion that church and state should not be separated or that the state can decide what a church should or should not be saying.

  My question is why the WTBTS would even accept this money, it’s clearly a payment that makes an organization become dependent or subservient to the state.
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  8

  Call me Suspicious, but ...

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  when the president is going somewhere to talk about an infrastructure bill, and wants support for ever more endless spending, some of which is for bridge reconstruction, having a bridge collapse on the very day and in the very place he's going just seems "too perfect", doesn't it?.

  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60173771.

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  Anony Mous

  Obama did the same, right as election started a bridge collapsed triggering a major refocus into infrastructure. Then when Republicans tried to slow spending in 2011 he pointed at it, even though the bridge didn’t collapse due to lack of maintenance, it was revealed later that the bridge collapsed likely due to design flaws.