Posts by David

36

Many of the atheists are doing better than religionists!

by anointed1 in

i got up today to listen to the shocking news that russia’s ambassador to turkey was assassinated at an ankara art exhibit, and assassin was acting in the name of god.. it seems things have evolved to the other extreme that atheists are doing the work of religionists and vice versa.

while religionists take delight in killing fellow humans in the name of god, there were many atheists who followed very elevated morality.

the french existentialists and writers jean-paul sartre and albert camus were some of them.

David_Jay

Viviane,

Sorry, I tried to accept what you wrote but I couldn't get my head as far up my ass as you got yours. Probably need to have parents who are siblings like you in order to do that.

8

If you give a present, Jehovah will kill you.

by schnell in

jw
friends

if you tell someone "merry christmas" or simply respond with "you too", then god is angry with you and you will answer for every such violation at your day of judgment.. if you eat some leftover birthday cake and a thin-skinned witness sees you and gets offended even though there's nothing wrong with the cake itself, you have become a stumbling block and god wants you to fix it before judgment day or else.. if you watch a cartoon featuring characters that may or may not be hilariously gay, it turns out that it does matter because this is an affront to god and he will judge all those who entertain such cartoons.. there are a lot of implications about god that jehovah's witnesses seem to make but never consider.

the problem is that they don't follow it all the way through.

in keeping themselves in god's love, and considering how they think he feels about matters in their daily lives, they submit to what is basically an ecclesiastical opinion that has terrible implications about god's character.

David_Jay

OUTLAW,

No. I think you're wrong. All those people in that picture celebrating Christmas--they're dead now. See? Schnell was right!

36

Many of the atheists are doing better than religionists!

by anointed1 in

i got up today to listen to the shocking news that russia’s ambassador to turkey was assassinated at an ankara art exhibit, and assassin was acting in the name of god.. it seems things have evolved to the other extreme that atheists are doing the work of religionists and vice versa.

while religionists take delight in killing fellow humans in the name of god, there were many atheists who followed very elevated morality.

the french existentialists and writers jean-paul sartre and albert camus were some of them.

David_Jay

Viviane,

North Koreans aren't a good example of atheism. Neither is what happened under many violent communist regimes that did things in the name of atheism.

If you believe the opposite, that they are, then go ahead. I was illustrating that these views of history were NOT correct, not that they are.

I think the problem is that you might not want to admit that you didn't read my comments correctly. For such a wise person, I am not sure why you think this is my point. You obviously have not done your homework about me or read my other comments. Sorry that you got the wrong idea.

8

If you give a present, Jehovah will kill you.

by schnell in

jw
friends

if you tell someone "merry christmas" or simply respond with "you too", then god is angry with you and you will answer for every such violation at your day of judgment.. if you eat some leftover birthday cake and a thin-skinned witness sees you and gets offended even though there's nothing wrong with the cake itself, you have become a stumbling block and god wants you to fix it before judgment day or else.. if you watch a cartoon featuring characters that may or may not be hilariously gay, it turns out that it does matter because this is an affront to god and he will judge all those who entertain such cartoons.. there are a lot of implications about god that jehovah's witnesses seem to make but never consider.

the problem is that they don't follow it all the way through.

in keeping themselves in god's love, and considering how they think he feels about matters in their daily lives, they submit to what is basically an ecclesiastical opinion that has terrible implications about god's character.

David_Jay

One of the things I am still confused over (even though I've heard the reasons) is that I still cannot fathom how the Jewish concepts of God became this "worry" and "fear" and "be concerned about your eternal life instead of the present" that it has become for others like Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jews are taught to question God as did Abraham. Wrestle with God as did Jacob (Israel). Plead your case with God as did Job. Argue to change God's mind about things as did Moses. And we live in the now, not tomorrow.

It's like these things don't mean anything to Jehovah's Witnesses. Aren't these examples from the "Old Testament" supposed to be imitated and followed? Weren't these men the most righteous among the Patriarchs and Job among the Gentiles? There's no fear in questioning, pleading, debating, and wrestling God. That is what real faithfulness is.

What a petty golden calf "Jehovah" of the Watchtower is. You sing "Jingle Bells," you get disfellowshipped, and then you are slaughtered by their idea of God for being disfellowshipped. Oy vey! Gentiles!

16

Jesus not perfect and here's why.

by Crazyguy in

the bible is a inspired book of god and like and elder told me when i was young , there's no contradictions in the bible and all the prophecies have come true except the two or three that are supposed to come true in the future.

so with that said the messiah jesus christ himself must not be perfect and here's why.

in mark chapter 2 jesus is telling his followers that it's ok to pick wheat on the sabbath and mentions the story about david eating bread that was in the holy place ment only for the priests to use.

David_Jay

FInklestein,

That's the point I have a trouble getting across to people. It often seems when the Hebrew Scriptures are being their most allegorical that people want to treat them as literal. Should the Hebrew text ever hit on any point literal, people want to shoo that away as fictional.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him understand it.

36

Many of the atheists are doing better than religionists!

by anointed1 in

i got up today to listen to the shocking news that russia’s ambassador to turkey was assassinated at an ankara art exhibit, and assassin was acting in the name of god.. it seems things have evolved to the other extreme that atheists are doing the work of religionists and vice versa.

while religionists take delight in killing fellow humans in the name of god, there were many atheists who followed very elevated morality.

the french existentialists and writers jean-paul sartre and albert camus were some of them.

David_Jay

Viviane,

My view of atheism is that it is a very noble use of one's intellect. I think you read my words with just a surface reading, because as a Jew I support atheism. Please don't let a quick surface reading cause you to make a mistake, as you have quite a record of making very reasonable and well-presented arguments.

The point I was making is that neither a claim to atheism or religion prevents violence done in their names.

21

Garden of Eden

by Onager in

where is the garden of eden?.

i don't mean where in the world, i mean where in history.

adam and eve get booted out of this place.

David_Jay

Schnell,

Funny. Jackson County, Missouri to be exact, right?

Now as for the Garden of Eden, it might interest people to know that the Jews have never thought of it as a literal place on earth or in history.

The Jews placed their moral lessons and legendary retellings of their own history onto the paradigm of the cosmos that existed when they wrote it. Imagine that you lived back in the 1930s and wrote about living on the planet Mars. You might mention the "canals" people often thought they saw on the planet's surface when looking at red world through a telescope. It would not be until the 1970s when the NASA's Viking program sent back pictures verifying that the "canals" were an illusion. Since then the idea of the "canals" surfaced no more, in science or fiction. But prior to then the "canals" played a major part in describing Mars, and in a similar way the whole Garden of Eden thing is merely stuck in ancient ideas of the past.

Which brings us to the story of Adam and Eve. The setting is based on the cosmology of the ancient Mesopotamian culture of the time. They thought the cosmos was a giant ocean of water and that the sky was a literal dome holding this water back. The subsequent air pocket made by this firmament allowed the flat plate of the earth to stay dry and support life (an earth which, by the way, stood in place in the cosmic ocean waters by sitting on pedestals).

The idea of the Garden of Eden was shared by practically all who held to the same cosmology. Babylonian mythology was influenced by the same cosmology. It served as the backdrop for many of their stories, though the references to it are more vague and even more obscure as those found in Genesis.

In Jewish theology, the Garden of Eden is likely Heaven itself. The story is saying that humans had a sort of access to God and currently live as we do due to choosing to "go at it alone," so to speak. The trees therein are not literal, neither is the angel with a sword at the entrance (how do you have a single entrance to the Garden of Eden as described in Genesis?). The Church Fathers actually adopted this view themselves as seen in Roman Catholicism's view that the Tree of Life is fulfilled in the Cross Jesus was nailed upon, the fruit of life being his body and blood, and Jesus being the New Adam and Mary the New Eve, thus making the way back into Heaven by means of the Crucifixion.

19

Jeremiah 10:23 - "...It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step."

by HereIgo in

i have been accused recently of "trying to direct my own step" because of my questioning the org and refusing to come back to the "truth" for the past 6 years.

i personally still believe in god, i just doubt that he is behind the jw org, that's all.

why is that so hard for jw's to understand?

David_Jay

Actually the Scriptures do encourage independent thinking, even debating God and wrestling with the concept of God...well, if you're a Jew.

While Jehovah's Witnesses believe in being silently obedient to everything that comes down from Heaven, if you read the Hebrew Scriptures you will note that this is not the way of Judaism.

The reason Jews are called the nation of Israel and not the nation of Abraham is because our central theological concept, that of God, is a concept we "wrestle" with. Jacob's wrestling match is a symbolic explanation regarding our approach to the Divine.--Genesis 32:22-32.

No, you don't have to become Jewish or join another religion for that matter, but it helps to know that the people who came up with the monotheistic God concept so central to the Jehovah's Witnesses have a totally different take on God, a take that might put your mind at ease.

Abraham questioned God. Jacob took providence into his own hands. Moses changed God's mind by arguing on behalf of sinful Israel. Job questioned God's way of doing things...Need I go on?

In our view God is not all-knowing, perfectly just, or totally complete. God is the personification of love, true, but God is too intelligent to think there is never something more to learn. Jews hold that God created humanity in order to grow more compassionate, to gain greater wisdom, to become a better God. God even tested Abraham because he didn't know how far humans would go to demonstrate their love for him (albeit that Abraham kinda got the wrong idea of what to do, and that's another story).--Notice the "now I know" at Genesis 22:12.

The point is that if there is a God, then God is not locked up and restricted to the static ancient stories of the Bible. These stories are meant to tell you to question God like Abraham, to try to change God's mind about things like Moses did, yes, even to wrestle with God as did Jacob (whose name got changed to "Israel" for doing so and whose new name we Jews take upon ourselves).

Merely believing in God is not enough, not for Jews anyway. God is meant to be interacted with. The "Jehovah" of the Watchtower is meant to be kept on a pedestal and silently listened to with fear, without question. That "Jehovah" is a golden calf. The God of Abraham is an encounter of participation.

As for Jeremiah 10:23, if you read it in context it is saying that humans screw up when they don't engage God through life as they are supposed to. As the NRSV puts it "mortals as they walk cannot direct their steps." This text doesn't say they shouldn't attempt to do so. In fact, in verse 24 the author asks God for the ability to overcome this failing so that he can direct his own steps better in the future.

The whole thing about the Governing Body is control. They have colored the Scriptures to look like they back up their demands. If you want to keep believing in God, I say you chuck their golden calf and just let your conscience be your guide. You don't have to be a Jew or religious to do so. God speaks not just in the pages of a Holy Book but in the heart of all people who will listen...and occasionally wrestle with the One who's speaking to them.

16

Jesus not perfect and here's why.

by Crazyguy in

the bible is a inspired book of god and like and elder told me when i was young , there's no contradictions in the bible and all the prophecies have come true except the two or three that are supposed to come true in the future.

so with that said the messiah jesus christ himself must not be perfect and here's why.

in mark chapter 2 jesus is telling his followers that it's ok to pick wheat on the sabbath and mentions the story about david eating bread that was in the holy place ment only for the priests to use.

David_Jay

SimonSays,

The answer as to why Peter (Cephas) was still eating kosher, why the Jewish Christians were still observing the Law at Acts 21, and why Paul's words in Romans 14 are different about observing holy days than in Galatians is that Jewish Christians of the past observed all the Mosaic Law. They still do to this day.

One thing you seem to make no note of is that we have the history of the original Jewish Christian congregation. From the time of Christianity's beginning until the Romans banned all Jews from Jerusalem in 135 CE (due to the Bar Kochba recolt), Jerusalem had 16 bishops from St. James the Greater to Judah Kyriakos. The high number of bishops came from the Roman slaughter of members of the house of David, as it appears from St. James onward all bishops were relatives of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is why Peter tells God he is still eating kosher even right before before Cornelius, the first Gentile convert to Christianity, is baptized. And if you read Paul's words in Galatians (written to Gentile Christians) though he claims Peter is wrong, he never says that he, Paul, wins the argument. He doesn't. That is why at Acts 21 Paul is made to give a public display that his teachings to the Gentiles do not apply to Jewish Christians. Much later, when Paul writes his letter to the Romans, a church made up of Gentiles and Jews, in chapter 14 Paul grudgingly agrees that some Christians can indeed abstain from eating certain foods (kosher) and observe certain days above other days (Jewish holy days) and should not be judged for doing so.

Not only does this agree with the history we have from the original Jerusalem Church, there are still Jewish Christians today. In the Roman Catholic Church they are called "Hebrew Catholics," and in other denominations they sometimes identify as merely "Jewish." They follow the Law as well as enjoy full membership as Christians in their respective denominations.

Remember Paul was the apostle "to the Gentiles," not to the Jews, yes? The understanding that the Law was removed for Jewish Christians was abandoned by the time Paul wrote Romans, but literalist Christians resurrected it by the 5th century. The problem created the pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition, and eventually led to antisemitism that was the foundation of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. This connection was made in the years following the Shoah by the major denominations of Christendom leading to the historic release of Nostre Aetate by the Catholic Church. You may need to do far more research to catch up with this information you seem to have missed.

I am Jewish, so if in your mind all Christian doctrines are null by my statement, that is your view. Catholicism and Orthodoxy teach that their doctrines are all inspired whether written or transmitted by oral tradition. So if I were going to choose a Christian religion, I would NOT go with one that taught their doctrines were possibly mistaken like the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses says of their teachings.

And Jews don't believe in Original Sin, so your last comments don't mean anything to me.

16

Jesus not perfect and here's why.

by Crazyguy in

the bible is a inspired book of god and like and elder told me when i was young , there's no contradictions in the bible and all the prophecies have come true except the two or three that are supposed to come true in the future.

so with that said the messiah jesus christ himself must not be perfect and here's why.

in mark chapter 2 jesus is telling his followers that it's ok to pick wheat on the sabbath and mentions the story about david eating bread that was in the holy place ment only for the priests to use.

David_Jay

SimonSays,

Thanks for making the minor correction on the numbering of verses. I was writing on a tablet that oddly doesn't believe I intend to use the numbers or words I am typing, changing them all the time for something different. It's like a wrestling match. I am off it at the moment and back on a solid computer with a real keyboard (they still make those, thankfully).

Bar Enosha: Messianic?

The expression "son of man" as used by Jesus is actually a play on words in Jewish idiom, and it doesn’t mean “Messiah” to Jewish ears. At Mark 2:28 the Greek term is HUIOS TOU ANTHROPOU. I am sure you know that Jesus was not speaking Koine Greek here. Mark merely wrote in his account in Greek, but all the conversations were likely in Aramaic and perhaps some of them were in Hebrew (maybe even Latin, if you count the conversations with the Romans).The expression in Aramaic is BAR ENOSHA and in Hebrew it is BEN-ADAM. The expression literally translates as "son of man" in formal equivalent English, but translations like the Common English Bible use the phrase “the Human One” here at Mark 2:28. Why?

While it comes from the literal expression meaning “offspring of,” the phrase "son of" in Jewish idiom has a very peculiar meaning which unfortunately English does not share. In Jewish expression, a "son of" something or someone has either the qualities of or is of the same substance as their "father." Since it appears you favor Watchtower theology, let’s use Christian texts to show you what I mean (though the Hebrew Bible is filled with these examples too).

At Mark 3:17 both James and John are called “sons of thunder.” At Luke 10:6 Jesus tells his followers that the peace they bring will surely rest on finding a “son of peace.” At John 17:12 Judas Iscariot is referred to by Jesus as the “son of destruction” or “perdition.” Thunder, peace, and destruction cannot have sons, so what do these expressions mean?

The New World Translation (2013) renders Luke 10:6: “If a friend of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him.” The previous edition (1984) has a footnote on the word “friend,” saying that the word in the Greek is literally “son.” A “son of peace” is a “friend of peace.” Other translations render “son of peace” as “anyone...who shares in peace” (NRSV) or “a peaceful person” (ISV) or even just someone who is “peaceful.” (NLT)

Along the same lines, “sons of thunder” means “boisterous.” James and John were “boisterous” men, or even “all bark, no bite” as a possibility. Judas Iscariot was not an offspring of “destruction,” but he ended up being destroyed by his own actions. As the “son of destruction” he was “one doomed to destruction” (NIV) or he was the “one person, [who] became lost.”--GWT.

Now about Mark 2:28 you wrote:

Who was Jesus speaking to? The Pharisees. The people who knew the law, but used it to benefit themselves, by refusing to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, therefore NOT accepting the abolishment of certain commandments, thus not willing to relinquish their authority to a higher authority which was Jesus.

But did the Pharisees understand Jesus calling himself the Messiah by the use of the expression “Son of Man” and thus someone who has the ability to ‘abolish certain commandments,’ as you claim? The answer is “no.”

The phrase “son of man” simply means “human being” in Jewish speech (oddly the Greek expression means the same thing, “human”). Because it simply means “human” (more literally, “son of Adam”) the term also means “me, myself.”

Explains the Jewish Encyclopedia: “Among Jews the term ‘son of man’ was not used as the specific title of the Messiah….As such [it] could have been understood only as the substitute for a personal pronoun, or as emphasizing the human qualities of those to whom it is applied. That the term does not appear in any of the epistles ascribed to Paul is significant….Most [Christian scholars and theologians] have come to the conclusion that Jesus, speaking Aramaic, could never have designated himself as the ‘son of man’ in a Messianic, mystic sense, because the Aramaic term never implied this meaning.”

Jesus was either saying: “So a man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Or: “I’m the master over the Sabbath.” The expression means that the Sabbath doesn’t control people and tell people what to do, but people can exercise their own conscience on how to properly observe the Sabbath. The needs of humans come first, and this is a Jewish tenet that existed then and now as I mentioned above.

Was Sabbath Keeping Abolished by Jesus?

The Watchtower comments you posted were quite incorrect on answering these questions, and you can help me prove it by answering these questions.

Why did Peter tell God he was still obeying kosher laws and had never broken them during the vision at Acts 10:12-14? Was Peter lying? Didn’t Jesus abolish kosher laws too along with the Sabbath? If so, why did Peter tell God he still ate kosher? Around 50 CE Paul writes that Peter was still eating kosher and it was an issue of contention at Galatians 2:11-13. Wouldn’t Peter have already understood that the Mosaic Law was abolished?

At Acts 21:20-26 we read that Jewish Christians still observed the Law, and that Paul himself performed a Nazarite ritual to show that he still saw himself under it.

If Sabbath keeping was abolished by Jesus, why were Jewish Christians still observing the Law in Acts? Why was Peter telling God he only ate kosher and Paul arguing with Peter about this some 20 years after Jesus’ death?

At Romans 14:4-6, Paul tells the Romans not to judge those who observe certain days as more important than others. If this is so, why would keeping the Sabbath be wrong?

Also Paul’s letters to the Ephesians, the Colossians, and the Galatians where he tells these Christians they are not to observe the Law, that they are not under it--were the Ephesians, the Colossians, and the Galatians ever under the Law? Wasn’t the Law given only to the House of Israel? How could God release the Gentiles from the Law if they were never obliged to keep it?

I would like to see you provide answers for all these questions.

And I would prefer you to not paste and copy from the Watchtower or any JW publication. Why not? The Watchtower Study edition of February 2017 states: “The Governing Body is neither inspired nor infallible. Therefore, it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction.” (“Who Is Leading God’s People Today?” paragraph 12). I would rather not hear an explanation that comes from a group whose leaders “can err in doctrinal matters.”

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay