Actually, Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) ended today at sundown. This year it began at sundown on April 23 and just ended here where I live on the East Coast of the USA.
David_Jay
JoinedPosts by David_Jay
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Holocaust Memorial Day
by zeb inthe 25th april is commemorated in israel as holocaust memorial day.. google "times of israel"..
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This might be a good week to start a conversation about Jeremiah 29:10
by George One Time inat this week clam meeting, jeremiah 29:10 is discussed:.
jer 29:10—how does this verse demonstrate the accuracy of bible prophecy?
the mistranslation of this verse is the basis of the idea that the jews spend 70 years in exile in babylon.
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David_Jay
This is still not a historical story, as I mentioned. This is ex eventu prophecy.
Even the Catholic NABRE Bible, the official US Catholic version (produced by Catholics and Protestants) agrees. On the footnote to Daniel 9:2, we read:
Seventy years: Jeremiah was understood to prophesy a Babylonian captivity of seventy years, a round number signifying the complete passing away of the existing generation (Jer 25:11; 29:10). On this view Jeremiah’s prophecy was seen to be fulfilled in the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and the subsequent return of the Jews to Palestine. However, the author of Daniel, living during the persecution of Antiochus, extends Jeremiah’s number to seventy weeks of years (Dn 9:24), i.e., seven times seventy years, to encompass the period of Seleucid persecution.
This chapter is ex eventu describing the events that lead up to the first Chanukah (the Seleucid/Antiochus era of persecution). Even the majority of Christianity agrees about this with Judaism.
And there were only 55 prophets of Israel, 48 male and 7 female. Daniel is not on the list. While the "prophecies" are true because they deal with real history (and point to a future that Jews in general hope in), it is not a prophetic book. The author of Daniel was not "Daniel."
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This might be a good week to start a conversation about Jeremiah 29:10
by George One Time inat this week clam meeting, jeremiah 29:10 is discussed:.
jer 29:10—how does this verse demonstrate the accuracy of bible prophecy?
the mistranslation of this verse is the basis of the idea that the jews spend 70 years in exile in babylon.
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David_Jay
You mean the 70 "weeks" of Daniel chapter 9. These are not years.
The Book of Daniel is found in the Writings section of the Tanakh, not the Prophets section. Daniel is also not included in the list of prophets recognized by Judaism.
The Book of Daniel is not a prophetic book like Jehovah's Witnesses believe. It is an apocalypse, a description of political intrigue during the Hasmonean era, describing the events leading up to the first Chanukah. The political intrigue is disguised as "prophecy" and in the dramas involving our legendary hero Daniel and the Chaldean kings. The historical Daniel lived long before the Babylonian exile, but he was not a prophet. He is known for living an exemplary Jewish life among Gentiles before the era of the Prophets even began.
Chapter 9 of Daniel is known as "ex eventu" prophecy, a retelling of history as if it was prophecy, but composed only after the event happened and the author was fully aware of it. It is actually talking about the actions of Antiochus IV Epiphanies which caused the rise of the Maccabees. "Daniel" is saying that the events leading to the first Chanukah were ordained by God by recording the history as if it were a prophecy.
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This might be a good week to start a conversation about Jeremiah 29:10
by George One Time inat this week clam meeting, jeremiah 29:10 is discussed:.
jer 29:10—how does this verse demonstrate the accuracy of bible prophecy?
the mistranslation of this verse is the basis of the idea that the jews spend 70 years in exile in babylon.
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David_Jay
Jews themselves do not teach nor understand Jeremiah's 70-year prophecy as referring to the time we remained in exile.
The English rendition of this text from the NJPS Tanakh reads:
For thus said the Lord: When Babylon’s seventy years are over, I will take note of you, and I will fulfill to you My promise of favor—to bring you back to this place.
In other words, the prophet says that God has set a time limit for Babylon of 70 years. When did these years actually begin and why did they begin at this point? The prophet never says. Did they end when Israel was released? Did they end when the famous "writing on the wall" of Daniel was seen? Was it when Babylon fell to its enemies? Or was it when the first exiled Jew set foot back in Israel? Maybe it was when the Temple was built? Nobody knows any of this, at least not Jews.
The 70 years determination is merely a declaration similar to Genesis 6:3 where God says people has been given a limit of 120 years. This is determined to mean the limit of a lifespan, but just a few verses later Noah lives over 900 years. Jacob lives to be 147 years old. Then is this verse in Genesis Saying there will be only 120 years until the Flood of Noah? If so, when did those years start to count? Are they lunar years? If so, do they follow the Jewish lunar calendar with its leap years or that of a more universally accepted "year" of all the earth that has since been forgotten?
These verses have no specifics regarding what the years being discussed involved. They do share the same feature of God being spoken of setting a limit, but nothing more.
I still have to wonder how and why Christians like the JWs make such big deals over making precise determinations over them. Especially regarding the Babylonian exile, since we Jews experienced it and even we don't have precise information on Jeremiah's meaning, what gives others greater insight or over-concern about this verse? So somehow God gives the prophecy to Jews but only Gentiles get to know it's actual meaning? Yeah, right.
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The Tribe of Dan was NOT a genuine tribe of Israel
by fulltimestudent inthe claim that dan was not a genuine tribe is not new, but as the haaretz article explains there is newer archaeological evidence to suggest that the contemporary claims about the tribe of dan have some merit.. so check out the haaretz claims at: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.756385.
but there are wider implications in the story.
if this particular group of people did not travel from egypt (as god's word of truth also claims) then they must have lived in canaan all the time.. then consider that palestine (canaan) was for so long part of the egyptian empire, and we begin to see that most of story about the origins of the israelites is mythical..
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David_Jay
A lot of Jews don't support or approve of the way the situation is carrying on in Israel. Many of us believe we can get along and live in peace.
Unfortunately, a lot of people, some Jews included, are just as close-minded as Jehovah's Witnesses and see everything as "us-and-them." Being pigheaded and stupid and a grade-A asshole comes in both Gentile and Jewish flavors.
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The Tribe of Dan was NOT a genuine tribe of Israel
by fulltimestudent inthe claim that dan was not a genuine tribe is not new, but as the haaretz article explains there is newer archaeological evidence to suggest that the contemporary claims about the tribe of dan have some merit.. so check out the haaretz claims at: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.756385.
but there are wider implications in the story.
if this particular group of people did not travel from egypt (as god's word of truth also claims) then they must have lived in canaan all the time.. then consider that palestine (canaan) was for so long part of the egyptian empire, and we begin to see that most of story about the origins of the israelites is mythical..
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David_Jay
May I ask a question, David. If that is so, are the contemporary Palestinians (and possibly some others) descendants of ethnic "Jewish" people who at some point converted to Islam?
That's a good question, fulltimestudent. My bet is there is more in common then a lot of people want to admit.
Unfortunately the current government in Israel is quite taken with the conservative Orthodox movement, the very conservative, anti-liberal slice of Orthodoxy to be more precise. There are many Jews who, because they are not members of an Orthodox synagogue, are not recognized as Jewish and therefore are not granted citizenship in Israel, even though some of these people had parents and grandparents in concentration camps during the Holocaust and have a paper trail of history proving their ancestry. So you can imagine what these think of the Palestinians.
To make things worse, those governing the Palestinians are just as staunch about things. Anyone who isn't "one of us" doesn't belong. Those among them who want peace with Israel are persecuted for even recognizing that Jews may have a claim to their place on the land.
It's a powderkeg, and both sides probably have the same blood running through their veins somewhere, and there is some data that supports this: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/science/1.681385
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The Tribe of Dan was NOT a genuine tribe of Israel
by fulltimestudent inthe claim that dan was not a genuine tribe is not new, but as the haaretz article explains there is newer archaeological evidence to suggest that the contemporary claims about the tribe of dan have some merit.. so check out the haaretz claims at: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.756385.
but there are wider implications in the story.
if this particular group of people did not travel from egypt (as god's word of truth also claims) then they must have lived in canaan all the time.. then consider that palestine (canaan) was for so long part of the egyptian empire, and we begin to see that most of story about the origins of the israelites is mythical..
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David_Jay
While this may be news for many former and present JWs (and even some nominal Christians), I was raised being taught that the Biblical narrative of the Exodus is told in the genre of legend.
Jews have recognized for, I dunno, since forever that we actually merged with the people of Canaan/the Fertile Crescent (or we are them). The stories of "war conquests" are just legends describing in dramatic language how the monotheism of the Jews "conquered" the various religions of the land and made all of us one. It was as if these people "died" in conquests, but the stories are merely political legend.
The odd thing is that Jewish children know these things too, especially around Passover time since the Haggadah and stories around the Seder explain the Exodus legend in different terms than what is in the Bible. For instance, while "Ten Plagues" are still recognized during the Seder, the truth is that Judaism teaches there were 40, 70, 100, or more--or less--and the language of the Biblical Exodus is merely describing the hope of my people when we were Babylonian exiles, hoping that the "plagues" would come upon our then-present captors, the Chaldeans, and that we would be set free to return to the Promised Land in a new Exodus.
The Watchtower and other literalist Christians have taught people that the narratives in the Torah and Joshua and Kings, etc. is factual. It's not. I hear people all the time say they don't believe in God or even hate Jews because of all the "wars" we fought, believing we pillaged the peoples of the Fertile Crescent and replaced them.
The real truth is that this is what Christians tell people these stories mean. More likely than not, we who are Jews are merely the people of the Fertile Crescent, the very Canaanites we claimed to have "conquered." But I can say that a million times and people will still believe the Christian interpretation over the Jewish one.
It is good these stories are coming to light in Haaretz. With the return of Jews to Israel it is now possible to do critical archeological study and prove that the Jewish view has always been right and the Christian view (that these stories in the Old Testament are factual) has always been wrong.
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Are JW's non- violent
by notalone inokay, i keep reading something and though jw's do not get involved in national wars, my experience has always been they are very violent people.
every convention i have ever been to was filled with children being beat within an inch of their lives for just not being able to take a third day of mind-droning silence without being able to move or now even sleep.
i have seen whole congregations laugh at stories of children being beaten and calling out to "jehovah".
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David_Jay
Violence is not just behavior that results in physical damage or hurt. Violence is also, by definition, the exhibition of an intention or desire to see harm befall another.
A "mean person" who bullies with words can also be described as violent, especially when those words are delivered with force or ardor. A boss that constantly belittles, has fits of anger (even without hurting or striking another), and bullies those in her or his employ can be described as "violent."
From my personal experience, and I am certain it is that of others, many an elder and overseer exhibited violent attitudes. Some would explode in those "secret meetings," and there would sometimes be more than loud shouting but actual tossing of things in anger and threats.
This behavior did trickle down. "Hating" things and people "Jehovah hates" was often exhibited by very forceful frowns and sometimes audible insulting grumbles. I know that after I disassociated myself, I did see a few JWs once from a distance, across a crowded restaurant, displaying such horrible expressions of disgust toward me that others who saw them focusing their "hate faces" at me could see something was wrong with these people and the way they were behaving in public. "Who peed in her coffee?" a bystander whispered to someone else about one of these disgruntled, contorted faces.
Hate is merely a projection of violence. If you hate someone with your words and attitude, you've already beat them to death in your heart. When people burn books, they are merely practicing for later when they'll burn the authors and readers of the same.
Saying Jehovah's Witnesses are not violent because their hatred never goes past their heart is like saying Jesus was lying when he said adultery is committed when lust lives in the heart.--Matthew 5:28.
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Jesus Christ dead for three days and three nights really?
by Crazyguy inhas anyone done a detail research on this subject?
the gospels seem to contradict one another and christians apologists have a bunch of different ways to try to explain away the problems.
has anyone have a concrete explanation for or against him truly being dead three days and three nights as the story goes?.
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David_Jay
@snowbird
In reference to John 19:31: A "high Sabbath" is when a Jewish festival day of rest lands on a Saturday, meaning two Sabbaths are occurring at the same time.
While I applaud your work, you mentioned the "high" or "great Sabbath" occurring from sundown Wednesday to sundown Thursday. That is impossible. Only when Nisan 15 lands on Shabbat or Saturday (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) is it a "high Sabbath."
Not all Jewish festivals have a day of rest added to them like Passover does (for example, Chanukah has no additional rest day so there is never a "high Sabbath" for that celebration). This year we Jews celebrated Passover (Nisan 15) on Monday April 10. We didn't have a high Sabbath with Passover this year.
Next year, however, in 2018, Nisan 15 will land on Friday night, the same night Shabbat begins. That will be a Great or "high" Sabbath for us then. This was the same situation in the year when Jesus was crucified.
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Jesus Christ dead for three days and three nights really?
by Crazyguy inhas anyone done a detail research on this subject?
the gospels seem to contradict one another and christians apologists have a bunch of different ways to try to explain away the problems.
has anyone have a concrete explanation for or against him truly being dead three days and three nights as the story goes?.
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David_Jay
Cofty is correct.
It is actually Church tradition that Jesus rose three days after his death. It isn’t Biblical. None of the Biblical reports of the resurrection of Jesus ever say anything of the sort that “three days later” Jesus rose from the tomb. Literalist Christians, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, often use the texts of Matthew 12:40 and John 2:19 to support their stand for adopting the traditional view, but these texts are not reporting on the actual resurrection.
The Harrowing of Hell: A Tradition Based on a Jewish Legend
The Christian tradition came first, decades before the New Testament texts included actual resurrection narratives. The earliest composed gospels were “oracle gospels” or written collection of Jesus’ sayings. No narrative of any type was included. The so-called Q source is often believed to be such an “oracle gospel,” and the report of Papias in which he describes the apostle Matthew as having composed a gospel in Hebrew was likely such a sayings-source. The earliest gospel account, Mark, originally had no resurrection narrative as demonstrated in its oldest extant forms.
The original oral tradition came to be known as the Harrowing of Hell. Though viewed as genuine theology in Catholicism, for instance, the story is the legend of Jesus’ trip to the Netherworld after his death on the cross. During this trip, Jesus redeems the faithful people of God who died before his passion and death. The earliest “written” form of this belief comes in the form of primitive Christian sarcophagi art depicting the prophet Jonah and the big fish or whale. The “three days” comes from this Old Testament/Tanakh story.
The narrative of Jonah the prophet is a comedy, not literal history. While possibly the work of the actual prophet Jonah, it is a moral lesson, written in a form not too different from the genre employed by Aesop and his moral tales. Designed to teach the Jewish people that all races are God’s children and to demonstrate the evils of prejudice (shown by the negative attitudes and actions of Jonah), the story of Jonah being in Sheol for “three days and nights” and coming out to preach a message that “saved” the people of Nineveh is understood as a legend among Jews.
Matthew 12:40
It was likely viewed this way too by the earliest Christians. Note that while Matthew 12:40 has Jesus saying he “will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights,” the same gospel reports that Jesus died just hours before the Sabbath began (the day of preparation), was dead during the entire Sabbath (the day after the preparation), and rose the day after the Sabbath. (Matthew 27:26; 28:1) Apparently neither the author nor his audience had yet made a literal interpretation of Jonah’s legend to Jesus’ death or words. In Matthew, the expression at 12:40 is merely an example of Jesus rising after a death-like experience like Jonah’s, one that would end up in people being redeemed by a message to repent.--Note Matthew 12:41.*
John 2:19
John’s account is not literal by any respect. He rearranges the death of Jesus to occur on Thursday, the day of Preparation for the Passover when the lambs were slaughtered for the Seder meal instead of on Friday, as in the synoptics, which is the Preparation for the Sabbath. John does this because in his account Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29) John is concerned with teaching not a literal but a very spiritual account of Jesus. Apparently moving Jesus’ death to Thursday also fit in with the Jonah legend and helped it develop into the “three days” that became a requisite for belief in Christianity. The inclusion of “I believe...He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again,” in the Apostles Creed and “We believe...On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures” in the Nicene Creed are proof of this later more literal view.
Devising a Literal Reading to Cover a Tradition
The literalism of American NRMs (New Religious Movements) that spewed forth from the Second Great Awakening included a lack of academic scholarship which still plagues them today. Groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot honestly reconcile the lack of evidence of “three days” dead in a tomb with the tradition upon which Christianity was built, and therefore texts like Matthew 12:40 and John 2:19 get taught as if they are literal reports of the resurrection. As noted above, they are not.
The Jewish tradition upon which Jonah built his parable of being in the belly of the fish for three days and linking it to being in Sheol is from Hosea 6:2. There the expression “three days” connected to being “raised up” merely means an expectation of “soon.” Of interest is that the mention of Jonah’s experience in the fish’s belly being likened to Sheol comes from the prayer found at Jonah 2:3-10. These verses were likely not written by Jonah himself but composed later by someone who might not have been aware of Jonah’s intentions to teach a moral lesson by means of a humorous and fanciful narrative.
*Footnote: According to the NABRE about Matthew 12:40: “The sign was simply Jonah’s preaching to the Ninevites (Lk 11:30, 32), Matthew here adds Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, a prefigurement of Jesus’ sojourn in the abode of the dead and, implicitly, of his resurrection.”--Italics added.