Posts by NeonMadman

i had been following active posts here for a while through the rss feed, first through google reader, then through feedly after google reader shut down.

but in the last few weeks, the feed seems to have stopped working.

anybody know why, and how i can get it back?.

Since the forum changed over, I've been unable to get the new "Latest Posts" to feed through my Feedly, as I used to do before the forum change. Is there a solution to this, or is the new format simply RSS inaccessible?

4

why we do not have to read the bible daily,

by sowhatnow in

or for that matter at all, from my perspective ,.

the only place in the bible that there is a mentioning of reading something [in an undertone day and night] [that i can find].

is in the hebrew scritures.

NeonMadman

JWs talk a lot about reading the Bible daily, but I don't know of very many who actually did, unless you count the verse or two that appeared in the Daily Text. Most of the JWs I was aware of read the Bible only when directly assigned, as in the reading for the Ministry School (which was relatively small; it took 3-4 years to read through the whole Bible if you just followed that), or else looking up proof texts found in the publications. As far as just reading the Bible for its own sake, I think we were too convinced that we couldn't understand it on our own, so it was easier just to read the publications.

4

Jehovah's "perfect earthly organization"

by troucul in

hello friends,.

it has been a while for me since i last posted.

i've been busy getting some degrees, now working on my doctorate.

NeonMadman

I just searched the terms on the 2013 WT Library (which has WT mags back to the 50s), and the phrase does not occur. In fact, every combination of the three words I could find stated that the earthly organization is not perfect.

10

Bob Dylan: The Basement Tapes Complete (the Bootleg Series Vol. 11)

by Simon in

bob dylan is an artist like no other.

while some spend months or even years working on and crafting an album, some of his have been cut over a long weekend.. some have been great, some are near misses - some seem awful at the time and then come into their own a decade later.. the mistique around the man has always driven demand for his music especially the unrelease stuff.

the original bootleg album was "the basement tapes" recorded with the band after his motorcycle accident of the late 60's.

NeonMadman

I got mine from Amazon a few days ago, and I'm enjoying listening through it. Some of the stuff on the first disc was sort of bland, with a similar sound to all the tracks. I suspect a lot of that was covers of old folk songs, not Dylan's own material. But moving on through, there are some fascinating alternate versions of the songs that are already well-known, either from earlier releases or cover versions (including a version of "Tears of Rage" in slow waltz time). Well worth the investment, but Dylan always is.

Dylan has been my favorite musician since the 60s; my friends used to kid me that if Dylan made an album of himself burping and farting, I'd buy it. They were probably right, and he's come close once or twice. But, heck, I even like Christmas in the Heart - Christmas carols croaked out by an old Jewish guy. The guy's a genius, that's all.

82

Do you remember the 15 minute break at the Sun. meeting?

by 3rdgen in

a poster on another thread reminded me of when there was a 15 min.

break between the talk and the wt study on sundays.

the break was supposed to be to allow jw's time to drive their bible studys home from the talk.

NeonMadman

They had them when I first started going to the meetings in 1967. I believe that by the time I got baptized in 1969, they had already gone away. Of course, congregations in other areas may have done it differently.

13

Does ANYONE use RSS anymore?

by nicolaou in

.

just wondering .

.

NeonMadman

When Google Reader went away, I switched to Feedly, which took a bit of adjustment, but now that I'm used to it, works just as well. I use it to keep track of posts on this site, among others.

36

I'm tired of the org misquoting scholars to support there heretical NWT

by yogosans14 in

day after day jws are constantly fighting with me over the internet that the nwt is the most accurate translation and then they prove it by quoting scholars from the watchtower magazines.

they tell me i'm biased and there rendering of john 1:1 as "a god" is approved by scholars but i have researched there so called "supporters" and i have found they have tooken what they said out of context to twist the scriptures to there liking.. .

dr. julius r. mantey (who is even recognized by the watchtower as a greek scholar since they quote his book on page 1158 of their kingdom interlinear translation): calls the watchtower translation of john 1:1 "a grossly misleading translation.

NeonMadman

According to Walter Martin, Mantey carried the KIT with him as he traveled. This brings up a question. Why would a scholar of his caliber bother to take the WT KIT with him if it was so badly translated? Me thinks, he found a lot of good in it which he did not want to admit publicly. If that wasn't the case, and his motive was to criticise it at every oportunity he got, it would show that Mantey was emotionally obsessed in proving the WT wrong, which would indicate he wasn't much different from WT and Evangelical fanatics.

I can think of a couple of reasons why Mantey might have done that (if, indeed, he did - I'd be interested in seeing the quotation from Dr. Martin).

First, it may have been something about which he was confronted frequently, therefore felt he should have the book with him in case it came up.

Second (and more likely, imho), the KIT contained a perfectly good reproduction of the Westcott and Hort critical text of the NT. The Watchtower had nothing to do with producing that Greek text; they simply lifted it in toto as the "original Greek" in the KIT. If I recall correctly, the KIT sold for $2.00 when it was first issued - probably a whole lot cheaper (and hence more replaceable, if something happened to it while traveling) than other critical text editions available at the time. The only part of the KIT that was actually the work of the WTS was the NWT rendering in the margins. The interlinear English renderings were probably simply taken from various lexicons. So the KIT could have just been an inexpensive means of carrying the W&H Greek text while traveling.