Posts by dropoffyourkeylee

29

Newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls with the tetragrammaton within the Greek text

by dropoffyourkeylee in

big news from israel, some previously undiscovered dead sea scrolls have been found with portions of the ot in greek.

it says the name of god is included in hebrew letters within the greek text.. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/world/middleeast/dead-sea-scrolls.html.

"the new fragments contain verses from zechariah 8:16-17, including part of the name of god written in ancient hebrew, and verses from nahum 1:5-6, both from the biblical book of the twelve minor prophets.".

dropoffyourkeylee

Update:

For any who are interested and follow stories like this, The latest BAR (Biblical Archaeology Review) Summer 2021, contains a story and a couple photographs covering this story.

"New Scrolls from the Judean Desert", p17.

The scrolls are the first scrolls discovered in the Judean desert through official excavation in about 60 years, and include parchment fragments of Zechariah and Nahum dating to 2nd Century CE. They are in Greek, with the YHWH tetragrammaton included as four Hebrew characters. The takeaway from the BAR article that I did not pick up on in the first reports was that the Hebrew characters used are 'Old Hebrew' (Paleo-Hebrew), which differs quite a bit in appearance from the Hebrew characters we are used to seeing. The Old Hebrew characters were used in the pre-Exilic period, so for these characters to be used in a 2nd Century CE manuscript is interesting.

The BAR also has a lengthy article (pp 48-55) discussing the Old Hebrew characters, though this article doesn't directly mention the newly discovered scrolls.

50

Completing the Scan of All WT Publications - Bibles List

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

i am working with paul grundy from jwfacts and with the administrator of avoidjw.org, and they are ok with me doing the work that i am doing right now, which is to try and complete, as much as possible, the availability of everything the wt has ever published, in pdf format.therefore, i will start listing in this thread what i have not been able to find anywhere online.

please let me know where i can find the pdf's for the following:(now, i know that there are multiple versions of these and that there are some that seem the same but they are not.

i am looking for the wt published versions of these publications.

dropoffyourkeylee

I don't recall this thread from four years ago, so I am reading through it the first time. First, I have a copy of the 1950 first edition of the NWT Greek Scriptures and it indeed has 'the' in the verse at Matt 24:45, as dsp demonstrated. If there was some limited edition with 'a' in that verse, I haven't seen one. I doubt it even existed in print. I think Losch was simply mistaken, or at most was referring to some pre-publication draft that he may have access to.

What I think this thread discussion is missing is that at the time of translation, the main 'enemy' of the WT were the Bible Student groups (the 'evil slave class') who believed that Pastor Russell was 'that Servant'. This was a big issue from the '20s into the '60s, and there was a lot of bantering back in forth between the writers of the WT and the writers of the various Bible Students. I used to have some of Paul S L Johnson's books, and you wouldn't believe how many pages he devoted to this inane subject.

The WT belief they espoused at the time (1950) was that the 'faithful and discreet slave' was not an individual, certainly not Russell, but rather was the faithful and discreet slave 'class', which they interpreted as entire body of anointed, all of them. The application of this verse to the Governing Body only, and not to all anointed, is a relatively recent change in doctrine.

20

GOTCHA!

by JTrottigy in

so i noticed one of the members here came to my jwtalk website, where i am an important administrator, and tried to join my site.. i check in here every so often and i was able to deduce that person was an apostate fraud, likely bent on polluting my site.

i denied their request to join.. ha!

gotcha!

dropoffyourkeylee

I call BS

11

The Queen's Gambit (2020) One of the most enjoyable miniseries I've seen in awhile

by TD in

the queen's gambit is a 7 episode netflix miniseries about a female chess prodigy in the 1950's and 60's.. the story chronicles the life of the fictitious character, elizabeth harmon (anja taylor-joy) from the time she learns the game as an orphan clear up to the point where she defeats russian grand master, vasily borgov (marcin dorociński) to become the world champion.. female grandmasters are a rarity, so i was afraid the series was going to morph into an anti-male screed.

(it easily could have).

nearly every male character in the series, from the gruff but kindly william shaibel, the custodian at the orphanage who taught her the basics of the game and fronted her the money for her first tournament to vasily borgov himself is gracious and clearly delighted to play against a woman so talented in a sport dominated by men.. two notable exceptions were her pos adopted father who didn't care about her or his wife and a russian player who got a little salty when she kicked his butt in 21 moves.

dropoffyourkeylee

There has been a lot of discussion, writing, and opinions over the years as to why the majority of top chess players are men. There are some notable exceptions, of course, but the disparity remains.

My own observation is that reaching the top levels of chess takes more than simply intelligence, but requires hours and hours of study and practice in addition. Some say as much as 10,000 hours of study and practice to reach grandmaster level, much of it during the formative pre-age 20 years. Girls for some reason tend to lose interest in the game about then, at least from what I have seen.

2

Vince gill high on that mountain

by road to nowhere in

if you saw any of the 2021 show on pbs.

a touching and beautiful song.

i thought i had a link copied, but not.

dropoffyourkeylee

Always one of my favorites.

I especially like this recording he did on the Grand Old Opry with Allison Krauss and Ricky Skaggs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwFiWCUkk4M

Incidentally, I read somewhere that his exwife is a JW.

11

The Queen's Gambit (2020) One of the most enjoyable miniseries I've seen in awhile

by TD in

the queen's gambit is a 7 episode netflix miniseries about a female chess prodigy in the 1950's and 60's.. the story chronicles the life of the fictitious character, elizabeth harmon (anja taylor-joy) from the time she learns the game as an orphan clear up to the point where she defeats russian grand master, vasily borgov (marcin dorociński) to become the world champion.. female grandmasters are a rarity, so i was afraid the series was going to morph into an anti-male screed.

(it easily could have).

nearly every male character in the series, from the gruff but kindly william shaibel, the custodian at the orphanage who taught her the basics of the game and fronted her the money for her first tournament to vasily borgov himself is gracious and clearly delighted to play against a woman so talented in a sport dominated by men.. two notable exceptions were her pos adopted father who didn't care about her or his wife and a russian player who got a little salty when she kicked his butt in 21 moves.

dropoffyourkeylee

I am an avid chessplayer (see my avatar)! very average in skill, but I surely love it.

20

So telling that there are no little children

by eyeslice in

watching in on my wife's zoom meeting last night, there was an item about discipline is love.

they played a 'caleb' animated cartoon and then the instructions were 'if possible, ask selected young children' several questions.. it seems however, that there are no children in my wife's current congregation so the questions were all answered by retired brothers and sisters.

the congregation mainly consists of elderly people (like us) and the few of childbearing age seem not interested in having children.

dropoffyourkeylee

My observation as well (midwest US). I think it is caused by a combination of things.

2/3 of children raised in the religion leave.

very few 20-40 age couples join as new converts (unlike the 70's and 80's when you would see whole families join in)

They do very little/close to nothing specifically for the young people to have fun (many churches have youth ministers, special activities for youths, etc)

The relatively few young people who stick around and remain active (uber pioneers, etc) may get married but usually do not have children.

I think there is an underlying demographic trend going on also, at least in the US, where people are waiting to a later age to start having children, and having fewer children.

45

The three wise men

by Simon in

just a thought.... looking through the greatest man book, something just occurred to me which i can't recall has ever been highlighted (but please correct me).. i always thought it a bit strange that jehovah allowed the three pagan astrologers to find jesus especially as they were obviously guided to him by satan's star (remember they were led to herod first who wanted to kill the messiah).

what purpose did it serve?.

well, a few pages earlier in tgm book, we see mary presenting a dove as a sin offering at the temple - this was the cheapest offering that was acceptable which must have meant that they were pretty poor at the time.. shortly after the three wise men visited the family had to flee to egypt when herod started to kill all the young boys in an attempt to kill jesus.. what would they need to travel and live as exiles for a couple of years?.

dropoffyourkeylee

Wow, a 21 year old thread is resurrected! Hallelujah!

It seems very unlikely to me that the magi/starguide event ever happened. It probably was written in much later to make it appear that Jesus' birth was accompanied by a celestial event. This was a common artifice in biographies of famous people. There have been some who have believed it was based on a real celestial event, an eclipse or a comet maybe, which was then used to support the mythology.

28

Watchtower takes parody poster to court.

by Lost in the fog in

another youtube presenter falls foul of the wt society's legal team.

the watch tower copyright lawsuit targets creator of "dubtown" lego animations.

https://www.toptutorials.co.uk/watch-tower-copyright-lawsuit-targets-creator-of-dubtown-lego-animations-torrentfreak/.

dropoffyourkeylee

I watched a couple of his videos, which I find quite funny and to the point. I think he would have been better off to omit anything copyrighted, whether in print or even snippets of songs. His content wouldn't be negatively impacted by omitting it and he could have avoided a lot of headaches.

46

Have You Been “Gaslit”?

by minimus in

jw
friends

gaslighting is a form of sustained manipulation that causes the victim to question or doubt their sanity, judgment and memories.

it’s a form of emotional abuse.

i think jehovah’s witnesses have been gaslit.

dropoffyourkeylee

This subject came up a few years ago on this site, which introduced me to the term and to the movies which popularized the term 'Gaslighting'. Both were great films, one was British made and the remake was American made.