Eze 34:10 This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, 'Here I am against the shepherds, and I shall certainly ask back my sheep from their hand and make them cease from feeding [my] sheep, and the shepherds will no longer feed themselves; and I will deliver my sheep out of their mouth, and they will not become food for them.'"
NeonMadman
JoinedPosts by NeonMadman
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28
Suggest a JW year text for 2011
by JimmyPage inhow about this one?
: "we are of all men most to be pitied.
" -1 cor.
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'OKM_October_2010_for_Britain_OCRd.pdf'
by fokyc inby popular request,.
http://www.box.net/shared/zhhrff8yp5.
remember this file is available for preview and/or downloading as you wish,.
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NeonMadman
I don't think I've ever seen an OKM before that admitted there had been no "new peaks" in a given month. Usually that's all the Theocratic News column consisted of - new peak, new peak, new peak...
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57
Let us discuss HOLY
by Terry inever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.
a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .
i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.
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NeonMadman
OK, I'm back. Sort of. Things are busy between the new job and various dental issues, but here I am...
I believe you have mischaracterized my statement. By restating it inside a strawman of hyperbole, I might add.
It's possible that I was engaging in a bit of deliberate sarcasm there.
With Jesus gone whatever things he said and did were circulated as opinions, accounts, stories, exaggerations, mythologised history depending on WHO was doing the telling.
Even apart from any allowance for the supernatural, it seems to me that we should be able to expect a reasonable degree of accuracy from accounts that were circulated by the people who were taught by Jesus and walked with him for three years. It's not like the only source of information was some sort of rumor mill. People were alive who knew Jesus well, and they were the primary ones who reported on his life. If such first-hand sources are to be dismissed as unreliable, we have very little basis for the study of history at all.
How do we know this? Paul had to face off with the guardians (eyewitnesses and fellow travelers with Jesus, mind you!) and CORRECT THEM in their UNDERSTANDING of what this NEW religion (Christianity) was and what it wasn't.
Jesus didn't teach everything about everything to his followers. He acknowledged that the Holy Spirit, whom he would send, would lead them into "all truth." It isn't surprising that there would be misunderstandings about doctrine among his followers after his death, and the conflict that arose was evidence of that. Paul was the primary one who formulated doctrine in the early years of the church - the first systematic theologian, if you will.
What Saul/Paul had was a MYSTERIOUS MYSTICAL ENCOUNTER with a vision he identified (how?) as Jesus. About this same time other divergent branches of Messianic Christianity were blossoming as GNOSTICISM!
Just as today there are "divergent branches" of Christianity like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. The existence of such groups need not be given equal status with orthodoxy. The apostles and their successors opposed Gnosticism as a heresy, right from the beginning. Your linking of Paul with Marcion sounds as if you are accusing Paul of being a Gnostic; I find no evidence for that in his writings. Paul was a Jew and a Pharisee; he was not a Greek thinker (though he was obviously well educated in contemporary philosophies).
MY POINT with Paul's letters is that they WEREN'T holy to anybody or they would have been enshrined, preserved and guarded to the death. Instead, parts were copied and handed around and the originals allowed to rot.
And so we return to your original, absurd (imho) contention that the ones who received the writings of the NT somehow held them in low enough esteem to "let them rot," but were somhow impressed enough by them to make copies and circulate them widely. Those two concepts seem inherently contradictory to me. They didn't have copiers, fax machines or "Forward" buttons on their e-mail back then. It was a lot of work to sit down and make a copy of a document. Surely they would not have seen fit to make such an effort for documents that were fit to be allowed to rot.
The point is that many Christians throughout history have, in fact, guarded the Scriptures "to the death." We know of major persecutions that happened in the early years of the church. It seems very likely that whoever possessed the autographs may well have guarded them to the death, but that the Romans acquired and destroyed them in hopes of wiping out Christianity. You intimated in an earlier post that the Roman army might have been effective enough to destroy any literature across the breadth of the Empire that was seen as "heretical," yet you refuse to acknowledge that the autographs of the NT might have met the same fate. I find it far easier to believe that the Romans could have located and destroyed single documents (such as the NT autographs) than that they could somehow have gathered up every single copy of disapproved literature across the Empire so as to wipe it from existence.
The SYNOPTIC gospels harmonize because they reference the same sources: Q and Mark.
WHAT HAPPENED TO Q? Q wasn't Holy enough to be a concern for preservation. It was only important enough to be plagarized! Then, discarded and allowed to rot.
Q is a hypothetical document. Nobody has ever proven that Q existed. It is assumed that because Matthew and Luke report similar material that does not appear in Mark (the earlier source) that there "must have" been a particular document that contained that material, but that has passed from existence. Another possible explanation is that Matthew, Mark and Luke are all reporting events as they actually happened. Of course, that explanation can't be admitted as a possibility by one who denies the supernatural a priori.
Even if a Q document did exist (and I'm not completely disallowing the possibility), it's entirely possible that it met the same fate during periods of persecution that the other autographs did; its absence does not prove that it was regarded of low value. Again, if it was seen as of little worth, why would Matthew and Luke see fit to include its material in their own writings?
Once the Gospels and Paul's letters became enough of a stimulus to encourage rabid Christianity to flourish and become a PAIN IN THE ASS for Roman overlords--the crackdown on Christian foolishenss (persecution) targeted their writings.
Which is pretty much what I've been saying all along, isn't it?
Like family photos and letters that are in a flood or fire---suddenly families who let them gather dust in a closet are beating their chests and squirting tears for the IRREPLACEABLE heirlooms and family treasures!!
Right - because they ARE irreplaceable heirlooms and family treasures. Their worth is never questioned. I only have a few pictures of certain members of my family who are no longer living. I don't pull them out and look at them every day. I keep them in a box or a drawer and I know where they are. They are precious to me; I have no qualms about the value I assign them. If someone tried to destroy them or steal them, I would strive very hard to prevent that from happening.
I have another example that might be even more germane: I had a friend when I was young who was a musician, and who is no longer living. At some point during our friendship, he made me two tapes of his music performances. I loved his music, and still sing and play some of his songs whenever I take my guitar out. One of the tapes has disappeared; I suspect it was lost one of the times I moved. I keep hoping I'll find it one of these days, but I've looked everywhere I can think of. I still have the other tape. I keep it in my drawer. One time recently, I took it out and played it so that I could record it to digital files and add it to my iPod. Now, to a certain extent this is just keeping up with the technology, but in another sense, I am preserving the original tape because it is very valuable to me, and still enjoying the music from the "copies" on the iPod.
It may have been something like that with the autographs. It isn't that they were not seen as valuable at all, rather, because of their value, they were not circulated, but were used as the basis for copies. The copies were then circulated and read precisely so that the sacred originals could be preserved. Unfortunately, the Roman persecutions resulted in their destruction nonetheless. That scenario makes a lot more sense to me than the originals being perceived as of little value, yet being copied and circulated by the thousands.
The rest is history (or speculation called: history.)
As long as you know that what you are doing is speculating and calling it history...
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Do People in Cults Really Want Freedom?
by Dogpatch inthe concept of freedom has always been important to me, and i cannot bear the thought of being like a trapped animal.... hurt, abused , mocked and then killed.. deep down inside there is as strong primal instinct in me that says, survive at all costs.
when it comes down to the line, i will do whatever it takes to protect myself.
i learned that at an early age.. as a teenager i grew up with a wide variety and culture of kids, and learned that i liked to hang with those who felt the same way.
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NeonMadman
People rarely desire what they think they already have. JW's are convinced by their leadership that they arecompletely free; that they are not being controlled, that they are freely choosing to slavishly obey every word that comes from the organization. They think that it is their own personal, uninfluenced decision to allow their children to die for lack of blood transfusions. This is why they don't feel the least bit hypocritical when they say things like, "nobody is forced to remain in the organization if they don't want to," when they know full well the loss of family and friends that will occur should they depart. They may indeed be happy with their choice to be JW's, no matter how miserable and depressed they are overall, since they have been taught to blame their misery on everything other than its true source. It's not the excessive demands of the organization or the constantly-inflicted guilt over their own imperfection making them unhappy, it's Satan, it's the world, it's their job, etc. etc.
I think it's important in the vast majority of cases where possible to restore them to a rational type of thinking and to break through the mind control, even if they claim to be happy that they have chosen to be JW's (the same could be said of members of most any cult). Like the denizens of Plato's cave, they are trapped in a substandard world. If they were released - after the initial culture shock inherent in the change - they would see that the real world is so much superior to the shadows on the cavern walls.
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Let us discuss HOLY
by Terry inever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.
a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .
i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.
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NeonMadman
I'm glad that you responded as you did, since you've finally at least laid out your scenario in a way that I can follow. Up till now, I was having trouble weaving all the bits and pieces into a coherent picture.
Now, that doesn't mean that I agree with all you have written, and I do intend to respond. However, I have a business dinner tonight and a meeting all morning tomorrow, after which I'll be driving back home to New Jersey from North Carolina, where I've been holed up with work over the last two weeks. I'm hoping to find some time to address this over the weekend, but I make no guarantees at this point. I'll get back to it as soon as I can. I do have some thoughts about several of your statements that I'd like to offer, but I need to flesh them out a bit before I write.
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What is the most secularly acclaimed Bible translation?
by sabastious ini want to start reading the bible more but i do not want to use the nwt.
the fact that the nwt took so many liberties makes me a little gunshy about other translations, which one would you recommend?.
-sab.
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NeonMadman
The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is a good, literal translation that isn't always easy to read. The New International Version (NIV) is a more fluid translation, but tends to translate thought-for-thought rather than word-for-word. It is, however, highly readable and flows very smoothly. I haven't interacted much yet with the English Standard Version (ESV), but I'm hearing very good things about it - supposedly it is quite faithful to the original words yet manages to be easily understandable to the reader of English. If you want a Bible for study, the NASB would be good; if you just want to read and get the broad strokes, go for the NIV. The ESV may combine the best of both worlds.
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Let us discuss HOLY
by Terry inever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.
a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .
i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.
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NeonMadman
Thousands of writings existed. Some of those were successfully hidden, some were destroyed. Of the ones destroyed, some were quoted. The ones NOT quoted is what you find impossible to allow into existence.
I never said that it was impossible that some "heretical" manuscripts existed at one time but were destroyed, just as undoubtedly some "orthodox" manuscripts existed, but were destroyed. In fact, I specifically said above, " I have no doubt that there may have been SOME "heretical" documents that failed to survive, even as there were very likely SOME "orthodox" documents that failed to survive." Allowing for their existence is one thing. Presuming to know their contents and use them to bolster an argument is quite another. The question we are discussing does not concern hypothetical non-canonical documents, anyway - it concerns the canonical documents and the way they were viewed at the time of their initial circulation, not centuries later in the time of Constantine.
Are you aware that Constantine was a pagan member of the cult of Sol Invictus? His predisposition to THINK in terms of Greek characterization thus paganizing christian theology is NOT A STRETCH!
No, I suppose it's not. So what? Whatever happened in the time of Constantine has nothing to do with your original premise, which was that the canonical Scriptures were seen as nothing special by the people who originally received the autographs, centuries earlier. Those people, you claimed, saw them as of little value and presumably used the autographs to wrap lunches, line birdcages and the like, even though they made and circulated thousands of copies before doing so. Whatever happened in that regard was long finished before Constantine was a gleam in his father's eye. Did Constantine contribute to some "paganization" of Christianity? Possibly so in some areas. But that's an entirely different topic than the one we started out talking about. If what you are trying to imply is that Constantine sat around with a bunch of potentially canonical books and selected the one he liked and destroyed the others, I've seen no support for that theory - or for that matter that Constantine had anything to do with establishing the canon, which was pretty much in place before his time - outside of popular fiction.
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Top 5 Flawed Teachings
by MrFreeze inthis is for all of you out there who post wells of information on the doctrines of jw's.
let's say you had to present your top 5 arguments for why jw's are not the true religion, which five would you choose?
i'd like to hear all of your thoughts.
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NeonMadman
They are false prophets according to the biblical definition at Deuteronomy 18:20-22.
If you can establish that, the other four arguments would be moot.
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The fundamental flaw with the WTBTS as "God's Organization"?
by Essan inthere are countless issues that people have with the society and which together have led to many people realizing that it is not what it claims and pretends to be.
these include things like the secret un affiliation, contradictory and hypocritical stances, (malawi vs mexico vs un/ngo), the ever changing blood policy and ever changing doctrine, failed predictions for armageddon etc, etc, etc.. but what is the consensus about what the fundamental flaw is?.
what i mean is, many jw's hear about these various issues and manage to make endless excuses for them, even though this involves gross hypocrisy and excusing the society for things they would never excuse in other religions and which the society itself has ruthless condemned other religions for over almost 100 years.
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NeonMadman
I agree that the central issue one must address with a JW is that of the F&DS being God's spokesman. There's something about JW psychology (or the indoctrination), though, that tends to divert them from that central issue. I've argued with a number of JW's about this, and even the ones who seem to agree that the organization is not what it claims to be somehow tend to get diverted to non-essential issues. "Well, what do you think about the paradise earth?" "Do you think it's OK to take a blood transfusion?" "Do you believe in hell now?" Trying to keep them on track is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall, but it's essential that we somehow do so.
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Let us discuss HOLY
by Terry inever searched for nostalgia items, collectibles or antiques on ebay, craig's list or some such venue?.
a lot of junk has become valuable with the passage of time.. yes, junk.. gradually it seemed to gather a mysterious inflation of valuation.. the items themselves receive wear and tear but they way they are regarded takes on an almost awesome patina of wonderful.. .
i'll give you an example.. i loved to play cowboy when i was a young kid; especially gunslinger/fast draw style.. my favorite guns were made by stallion.
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NeonMadman
You ASSUME this to be true.
How do you verify it?
Your turn to cite sources.
Unfortunately, I'm away on job training all this week and don't have access to my library, so citing sources isn't within my current ability. However, it seems a reasonable enough prima facie conclusion: the canonical Scriptures support the deity of Christ; the Nicean council found in favor of the deity of Christ; the ante-Nicene fathers cited the canonical Scriptures extensively. Am I reaching too far to see a relationship there? If you think I am wrong about that, from where do you think the Nicene bishops got their understanding of the deity of Christ?
Now, why take the view that Catholic Dogma was the TRUE view and the only documents destroyed were actual heretical writings/
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
Correct me if I misunderstand you here, but it seems to me that you are asserting that there were some hypothetical writings that have not survived that you are now appealing to in an effort to bolster your original claim regarding how the biblical documents were viewed by their original readers? Even if it were true that such documents existed (and I have no doubt that there may have been SOME "heretical" documents that failed to survive, even as there were very likely SOME "orthodox" documents that failed to survive), it would do little for your case, since the original readers of the NT documents lived centuries by Constantine. Even if your scenario were correct, the documents would certainly have been regarded as "holy" before the time of Constantine. So that offers nothing to explain why the autographs did not survive.
In any event, I think it's quite a stretch to hypothesize documents for whose existence we have no evidence and then use them to bolster your theory, particularly from a guy who is so demanding of evidence for positive claims. If Constantine did undertake to destroy all "heretical" documents, he was wildly unsuccessful, since many, many such documents have survived to come down to us. Read The Other Bible or Ehrman's Lost Scripture and you'll see many such works. I don't think the question is how I know that there were not lost documents, but how you know that there were, and more particularly, what the content of those alleged documents might have been.
Do you know anything about the Roman government as to efficacy of enforcement historically?
Have you read Gibbon?
No, I haven't read Gibbon, though I have no doubt that the Roman enforcers were quite capable. However, we are talking about absolute eradication of work throughout the Empire. That is a pretty tall order for any autocracy. It requires that every single copy of an objectionable work be located and destroyed. All it takes is one person hiding his scrolls in a cave somewhere, and we have the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi texts to show later generations what was written. The same sort of logic comes into play when one contends that the NT was "changed by the church" - an impossible task, given the early and wide distribution of manuscript copies. Any "change" would have stood out like a sore thumb under the light of textual criticism.
So you are dodging my question?
How is it you can demand from me various responses with impunity while picking and choosing what you will address?
Dodging your question would imply ignoring it or engaging in verbal "dancing" to give a non-answer. I directly indicated that I didn't want to have that discussion. That's not dodging. The questions I have asked you relate directly to the topic at hand. This is not a naturalistic/supernaturalistic or an atheistic/theistic discussion. Your original point, to which I have repeatedly tried to redirect the discussion, related to how the original biblical writings were regarded by their contemporaries. That has nothing to do with whether they actually were of supernatural origin, only whether people regarded them as such. Therefore, for us to start wrangling about whether the supernatural actually exists would be a "rabbit trail" - a diversion that is irrelevant to the subject at hand.
And, bluntly, you have shown such a mocking and dismissive attitude toward belief in the supernatural that I have no desire to give you an excuse for more ad hominems. My intent has been to show that your unspoken presupposition - that nothing exists that is outside the scope and purview of science - is itself unprovable and therefore no less faith-based than any supernaturalistic position I might take.