Posts by David

48

Paradise? Was it?

by TerryWalstrom in

paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

David_Jay

How do YOU know what we Jews have is not worth anything?

Because you believe what you do or feel what you do or have experienced and researched what you have, are you saying I should just give up my Jewish culture and leave it all behind, not light my candles for Shabbat this evening, not go to Temple?

Should I let those who tried to smash the Jewish people into nothing during the Holocaust win?

Should I just let it all disappear like those from the KKK who littered my neighborhood with flyers the other day that read "THE ONLY GOOD JEW IS A DEAD JEW" want?

It's all just Tom Foolery to you, right?

So what if the Catholic Church tortured my family during the Spanish Inquisition and chased my family out of Spain and into Dutch Africa and across the Atlantic and later tried to murder each one of us when we reached Mexico? I should just listen to you, right, and give it up because of how you feel, right?

It's all just hooey. You have it right, correct? You know what you're talking about.

Let's let the Neo-Nazis win, and the bigots and the people who spray painted a swastika on my door have their way. At least I won't have to worry about those 12 bomb threats my Jewish Community Center got this past year or my Temple because now I will follow your fine example and just give it all up, because you have all the answers.

If you are so sure about the way you are living your life right now, then advise me to live my life just like yours, to give up everything generations of my family have fought to preserve. If it's all just crap, if it's all just imagined, and you're so sure, surely you would have no problem recommending me, pleading me to give it all up.

The lives of all my family in the concentration camps, the people who walked to Israel across Europe after the war, family members who gave their lives to save family members, sacred Torah scrolls, our culture, our way of life...fine it means nothing to you.

How can I be so sure?

How can YOU be so sure? Where are the generations and generations and generations and generations and generations of family and blood supporting your views and your standards and what you are cherishing right now?

I will show you the shoulders of everyone I stand on to show you why I am so sure. You show me yours.

48

Paradise? Was it?

by TerryWalstrom in

paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

David_Jay

For those wondering what the Jewish and the general academic critical take on Gan Eden is:

The Garden of Eden (Gan Eden) is modeled on the lush gardens of the Babylonians, most closed off to the public, protected by armed guard.

Gan Eden is allegorically Solomon's Temple. Gan Eden is described as a floorplan, much like the Tabernacle and Jewish Temples in the Bible.

Like Solomon's Temple which first had a large basin to wash in, Gan Eden is described with a prelude, beginning with river water (Ge 2:10; 1 Ki 7:23); immediately gold and precious jewels are mentioned, as if the land is laden with them, much like the Temple was (Ge 2:11, 12; 1 Ki 6:22); there are fruit trees there as there were carved into Solomon's Temple (Ge 2:9; 1 Ki 6:29), and the angel that holds the sword is a cherubim to guard the entry as was used heavily in the art of the Temple (Ge 3:24; 1 Ki 6:29).

The Most Holy was symbolized by the place in Gan Eden where Adam and Eve could speak to God during "the breazy time of the day,"* (Ge 3:8) meaning Evening Prayer at the Temple when a new day would begin. The Jews believed they lost their Temple and their King and Promised Land becaused they failed to keep the Law, especially the Sabbath, stealing from God what was not theirs, trying to be like God in a sense by doing even what God did not do, that is go beyond their own limits (symbolized in God "resting" on the Seventh Day).--Ge 2:1-3.

While Adam and Eve (who symbolized the nation of Israel) therefore lost admission to Gan Eden, their precious Temple, God still cared for them outside (see Ge 3:21). This symbolized the hope that Israel would one day be redeemed from captivity to Babylon, restored to their land and would one day rebuild their precious Temple again.

*--This phrase in Hebrew refers to the late afternoon when the day would cool off with the setting of the sun. This is also when one Jewish day ends and the next day begins and Jewish evening prayer starts.

48

Paradise? Was it?

by TerryWalstrom in

paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

David_Jay

Terry,

You are still working from the viewpoint that the Jehovah's Witness paradigm is both applicable to the original story and the culture that formed it and that this has any import to the end God concept. It is only "dehumanizing" because you're reading it unfairly, so to speak.

The Gan Eden narrative in Genesis was purposefully composed as Jewish allegory and folklore, and the figures of Adam of Eve are set upon a literary tableau of Hebrew style genre, not something historical. The story is meant for a Jewish culture, for the preserving of itself during the Babylonian exile while it faced the danger of cultural assimilation under Nebuchadnezzar's rule. The idea was about delivering Adam (symbolizing the Jewish people in captivity among the enclosed hanging gardens of Babylonia), but you aren't reading it with it's original intent .

We don't have devils or demons or Original Sin or see this story as "paradise lost," etc. You are viewing the story through a Christian lens, a Gentile lens, a viewpoint it was never intended for.

Jews never imagined that the world would ever be reading the Bible, our Liturgy. This isn't a history book. It's not the history of the world. It's not a crystal ball with a future "march of the nations" inscribed in it. It's not a Magic 8 Ball that has an answer to every question you have.

It is one of several works, along with the Mishnah, the Talmud, and other works that make up the wisdom of the Jewish culture. It can't stand alone, but it's like Western society and especially Christians demand it to do just that.

It's like you tore out the first few chapters of Gone With the Wind and are blaming the author for the story not making sense. But you are the one who took only the first few chapters.

When someone points this out and offers you the rest and tries to tell you that you are holding fiction (but you are claiming it supposed to be fact and it fails at doing so, so therefore the whole work must be faulty), it becomes very hard to convince you that you are missing the point of Gone With the Wind in the first place.

I'm definitely not trying to make a Jew out of you. We don't convert people. Though I accept the reality of the God of Abraham, technically speaking I don't believe in God or have any use for things like "faith" in the Christian sense.

What I am saying is that you are still a believer in some Watchtower concepts, at least the ones in connection with this subject about the Garden of Eden. You need to let go of these. You need to at least acknowledge what academics and scholars know about Genesis. It's about the same that Jews have.

Objective analysis means always making sure you have people check your viewpoint, test it, make sure it works, disinterested parties, sometimes people you know who have a habit of not telling you what you like, who aren't going to let things go the way you want it to, who are going to give you the facts even if you aren't ready for them and even if they make you feel badly. The real truth is what you want.

Objectivity means your viewpoint doesn't matter and you have to give up fighting for what you believe. It means you got to let others try to punch holes in what you say. If they do, then you got to admit your current belief system is faulty or current theory has to be abandoned and you need to start again. You keep doing it again and again until no one can punch holes it. Then you got it.

You're not far from that, however. And again I'm not after you. I'm trying to point out there's some "Watchtower" that's still latched on. It will screw around with your attempts at being truly objective.

25

Jehovah is Satan

by VW.org in

i found a very convincing youtube video showing that jehovah of the old testament is satan and the god of the new testament is god the father.. https://youtu.be/-eyp4n0xkxk.

David_Jay

MeanMrMustard,

That is even a better question to ask.

Even though the early Christians were not strictly Trinitarians in the modern sense, they did see Jesus as the Incarnation of YHWH.

In Hellenistic and first-century Roman thought, a "son of" something was "one and the same with" that thing in the Greek idiom, and even sometimes in the Hebrew.

For instance, calling someone "the son of David" meant "you are the Messiah," in Second Temple era theology. This explains why people are shushing the blind beggar at Luke 18:37-39. The JW explanation is that there was a social caste system in Judea and the poor and blind were not allowed to speak up. But that wouldn't be the case as the crowds that followed and listened to Jesus generally are said to have consisted of almost entirely poor and lowly people.

No, the reason the blind man was hushed is that he publicly made a declaration that, according to Jewish law, could only be made by public consensus and announced in Jerusalem after formal assemblage of the Sanhedrin. He called Jesus "son of David."

Jesus was "son of Joseph," not "son of David." Jesus was merely a descendant of David. The term "son of," however means you are the "son" or equivalent to that which you are being spoken of. The blind man was calling Jesus of Nazareth the promised Messiah.

Jesus called John and James "sons of the thunder" because of their thunderous disposition at Mark 3:17, refers to a peaceful person as a "son of peace" at Luke 10:6, and calls Judas Iscariot the "son of destruction" since he had destroyed both his own life and that of Jesus. Do you see the idiom? (Note how Pilate, a Roman, reacts when he hears that Jesus is called a "son of a god" at John 19:7, 8 due to its implications based on the idiomatic expression.)

Calling YHWH his Father and claiming that he, Jesus, is the "Son of God" does not mean he is a creation or descendant of God but the Incarnation of YHWH, the Father, one and the same.

Just as "son of David" meant Jesus was Messiah, "sons of thunder" meant the brothers Zebedee were boisterous, and that the "son of destruction" was a person who brought destruction upon himself and others, "Son of God" means Jesus was calling himself the Father, calling himself one and the same as YHWH, the Incarnation of the God of Abraham.

Therefore the creator of the videos has created a paradox. As John 1:1 states, John not only believed Jesus was with God in the beginning but was one and the same as that God. Therefore the video creator is essentially claiming himself a Satanist if he upholds his own teaching. The "son of" God is God, and, according to the video maker, Satan, the video author's god.

25

Jehovah is Satan

by VW.org in

i found a very convincing youtube video showing that jehovah of the old testament is satan and the god of the new testament is god the father.. https://youtu.be/-eyp4n0xkxk.

David_Jay

You are welcome, Wake Me Up.

25

Jehovah is Satan

by VW.org in

i found a very convincing youtube video showing that jehovah of the old testament is satan and the god of the new testament is god the father.. https://youtu.be/-eyp4n0xkxk.

David_Jay

Anony Mous,

You are closer to the way Jews explain their own theology than you might realize. It's actual somewhat of a complimentary point of view you are expressing. But there are also some serious misconceptions you cling to.

Jews don't actually "believe" in a "God." The God of Abraham isn't a deity at all. Since we are alive in a universe, this is an "effect" of a "Cause." The "Cause" came to be expressed in ancient terms borrowed from Mesopotamian society, like "god" and other such terms, but Abraham rejected the idea of gods in their entirety.

Monotheism in Judaism is not merely that there is but one God, but also that God is ineffable. In other words, God is not even a god. Deities don't exist.

The stories of the Hebrew Scriptures were not used as you describe. What you mention is a Christian take, roughly what is taught by the Watchtower. The Jewish Bible was written during the Babylonian exile.

During the exile small communities assimilated and lost their identities. Without our land, with king or shrine, we would have lost ours too. But our religious priests did something clever. Their gave our customs and folklore a religious meaning and turned it into Liturgy for the synagogue system.

The stories were for systematic readings to for a yearly calendar, to be repeated on Sabbaths in public worship, especially to give new religious meaning to festivals we had celebrated for millennia. The narratives had a basis in history but were more like modern American legends, like the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, George Washington chopping down a cheery tree as a boy, Betsy Ross creating the first American Flag, etc. These are not factual American tales, but they harbor important truths Americans hold dear.

The Jewish Bible was created to preserve Hebrew truths to preserve our cultural identity through the exile so we would not disappear, and it worked. It's not what you say it was. It had a very definite purpose. That's why we Jews treat much of it as folklore...because we know it was designed to be just that.

You are still holding on to some idea the Watchtower taught you, that the Bible is some history book. Knowing it can't be, you mix that fact up with the idea that it has been changed and rewritten over the centuries and so mixed up that nobody can be sure what it originally meant, or that it got all it's ideas from a "pantheon of gods."

Again, if you are going to ever be an authentic critical thinker, you are going to have to learn authentic world history. You might want to go to college and take a few courses. At least study the history of the Jews if you are going to criticize the Bible so you can at least get it right when you discuss why we Jews put the thing together in the first place.

I mean think about the conversation you are having with me right now. You are telling me, a Jew, what the origins of my culture and my peoples' scripture is, a text that I, as a 50 year-old Jewish man, have spent my life studying, that I can read in Biblical Hebrew, who has lost ancestors in the Spanish Inquisition, grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins in the Holocaust, studies the Mishnah, the Talmud, prays in Hebrew, keeps Jewish customs, knows Jewish history and philology, and you are saying that you with...what background and credentials in Hebrew and Jewish studies?...that what you've written in your post is not only correct but has the backing and acceptance of academia, Jewish, Christian, and secular?

Is It really the result of authentic critical thinking that you are going to tell learned Jews that they don't really know anything about their own Scriptures and history of its composition? Sure sounds like the Watchtower to me. Sure you are not still affiliated with them?

25

Jehovah is Satan

by VW.org in

i found a very convincing youtube video showing that jehovah of the old testament is satan and the god of the new testament is god the father.. https://youtu.be/-eyp4n0xkxk.

David_Jay

For the sake of argument, let us say all Jewish Scripture is mythology. (To be honest, most Jewish scholars and Jews tend to view it as folklore and allegory. It seems that only Christians and Westerners have the impression that it is supposedly held as fact by Jews, when in reality it is only held as fact by groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and other Christian Fundamentalists.)

But, let's just go with the pure mythology stand for argument sake here.

I found a very convincing YouTube video showing that Jehovah of the old testament is Satan.

The Hebrew term "Satan" appears only 13 times in the Jewish Bible or Old Testament. In all these instances it never refers to a devil.

The word HA'SATAN means someone who comes or stands against you, even at times in helping you work out a solution by helping one to see all sides to a problem.

The best example of this is the angel that God assigns to watch over earth's affairs in the folklore story of Job. In it, God decides to stop him from doing his regular work and has him work as this type of problem-solving troubleshooter in Job chapter 1 and 2.

Christians interpret and read this angelic being as evil, but Jews do not. Here this angel works much like what happens in the scientific method. Once a scientist discovers something, he finds another party to test or disprove his theory. This party must be purely disinterested, not invested, adversarial for the sake of truth. This is how Jews have written and read the story since its inception.

The other occurrences of HA'SATAN refer to either people or circumstances that stand in people's way, even angels that are at God's service to stop humanity from falling into sin. But there is no mention of a "Satan the Devil" in the Hebrew text. That particular phrase never even appears.

Even the serpent of Eden is never connected with Satan or referred to as such anywhere in the Jewish Bible or in Judaism.

And there you have it. Just 13 uses of the word without a reference to "Satan the Devil." In fact, there is no such being in Judaism as I pointed out before.

But in the New Testament, a collection of books that all together is about the size of the Psalms of the Jewish Bible, the character of Satan the Devil is spoken of, described, and referred to 36 times, 18 in the Gospels and the book of Acts alone.

Again, the entire Christian Scripture collection is tiny compared to the size of the Hebrew Bible, and Satan (not to mention Hell or Gehenna and the Lake of Fire and other torments in the afterlife) as well as evil spirits and demons get referred to constantly, in almost every book of the Christian Bible, on almost every page. Satan the Devil is a favorite subject of Jesus who is described as personally having discussions with this creature.

It would appear that the mythology of the New Testament is Satanic in competition with the mythology of Judaism, borrowing the terminology and twisting it to make new characters. It is Christianity mythos that is obsessed with Satan upon examination, not Jewish folklore.

The video presentations are quite lacking in the most basic of scholarship. There are no signs of critical methods, no group work supporting the theories to ensure they are sound (again the use of disinterested parties to ensure your work is solid), and a failure to point out the above material which any of you (who often claim to be learned in critical thinking) should be well practiced in by now.

The problem is that people who leave cults seem to be anxious for anything to fill the void of knowing something that feels as definitely sure as that promised by the cult. There is nothing is in reality that feels like that...except for another cult or stupid cult-like teaching.

Don't fall out of the frying pan just to get burned in the fire. If there was something truly academic about the Bible, do you think it would be in a cheaply produced video on YouTube? Really?

Come on, people. Either you are a critical thinker like so many of you claim to be or you are still cult bait. Don't be cult bait.

48

Paradise? Was it?

by TerryWalstrom in

paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

David_Jay

Now, back on track on the actual subject.

Since the Biblical word "paradise" carries no implications of any type of pleasures for those in it, it cannot be argued that the characters of the narrative, namely Adam and Eve, were not in one.

The Hebrew word in Genesis is GAN. It, like the Greek word "paradise," carries no meaning like the Watchtower view of that suggested by the original post.

GAN occurs 42 times in the Tanakh and refers to an "enclosure," namely a "garden," often one in which vegetables and fruits are grown or eaten. They often contained springs or wells, and could be locked by a gate or protected by a gate keeper.

It has been suggested that Eden was symbolic, an allegory of the Temple. It had gold nearby, water from rivers, and food for God and a place where God came down to regularly speak to man in a breeze. The symbol was thus like the Temple, part earthly, part celestial. The fruit of God's tree may have been the citron or even the pomegranate that decorated the Temples. The Cherub, primary to Temple decor, was present in Gan Eden as well.

Because a GAN is only an enclosed garden as a "paradise" is only an enclosed park, and Eden was God's not Adam's enclosure (note how God placed Adam inside the GAN to tend it as a caretaker for God, not as an owner as written at Genesis 2:15), there is no promise or implications that can be inferred from the word for the enclosure.

To reiterate a previous post, but now with the Hebrew information, the idea of what "paradise" entails and that Adam and Eve had immortality and somehow lost this were added by the Watchtower dreamers. Adam and Eve were therefore in paradise as the word means merely a garden or "enclosure." It does not entail the pictures or descriptions imagined by Jehovah's Witnesses in their publications.

48

Paradise? Was it?

by TerryWalstrom in

paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

David_Jay

deegee,

I agree with Terry's above comment.

I had merely stated the same thing but in different words, never blaming Terry, only the Watchtower.

I was brought up as a Witness youth too, remember, rescued by an aunt who was a Jehovah's Witness from my abusive parents. I returned to Judaism when I was able to leave (my parents were non-practicing). But I had the same JW lies drilled into me for some of my formative years nevertheless.

The Watchtower sears scars so deep that it leaves the imprint of its golden calf, Jehovah, upon so many and too often this is as Terry writes, an "emotion" that many are expressing here. It's not reason, not knowledge, not critical thinking. It's raw emotion, pain, hurt. And it seems, deegee, you have used this same emotion to jump to a conclusion against me.

Like Terry who writes he is using what he knows to debunk not other religious views, only that of the Watchtower's, I'm going one step further. I'm trying to help people see that the Witnesses may still be blinding some ex-JWs and making them hate things unnecessarily, making them prejudiced and closed-minded and even intolerant where they don't have to be.

You don't have to join us who accept the God of Abraham, but you don't have to keep believing in the lies of the Watchtower as a means to judge what we believe anymore either. As long as you still believe the Watchtower lie about us or anything else for that matter, you are still under their control. You deserve to be free from all of it, even the part of what other religions actually believe.

48

Paradise? Was it?

by TerryWalstrom in

paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

David_Jay

Deegee,

I myself am an adult survivor of child abuse.

I was victimized by my parents from infancy until I was 17. I myself have been raped. I know what that's like.

I know what it's like to be 6 years old and have your mother slap you in the face 66 times until you can feel nothing but heat rising from your skin and hear a buzzing ringing from inside your head, and to experience this weekly.

I know what it's like to have your father break your nose in the middle of the night while you are sleeping by punching you in the face when you are only 7, or having furniture thrown at you by him as "punishment" as a regular thing.

I also know what it's like to have an older sibling who would help my parents by finding me when I hid from them or chased me down if I tried to run and then held me down for them to take their abuse.

This happened daily for 17 years, the first 17 years of my life. So?

Where was God? I asked for his help then, you bet I did. Where was God?

I survived. My parents did not. The rest of my family did not. Their lives crumbled. I currently live a secure and prosperous, very happy life.

Terry survived too.

Sure you and Terry may be mad at God, but it is still the Watchtower God you have in mind, not the God of Abraham. You may be convinced they are the same, and I am sure there is nothing in the world I can say or do to change your mind because the hatred the Watchtower planted into you is strong.

But just because my parents and my brother abused me doesn't mean that all parents and brothers abuse their children and siblings. I cannot say that my experience as a child is the same experience of every child. It is not.

Neither Terry nor you can judge the God of Abraham as worshipped by Jews by what Jehovah's Witnesses claim is God. God does answer prayers, but doesn't grant every wish we have. That's how Jews understand it.

In the end, trying to point out how hard Terry may have had it is no excuse, even though he has indeed experienced some horrible things which I cannot and will not minimize. As you see, so have I, but I am not using them as an excuse or reason for my actions or decisions, am I?

Using your reasoning, how should my having been abused and raped speak to the points you've raised? Should I give up being a Jew and on living the traditions of my culture and going to Temple now because of what others did to me in the past? Is that your answer?

I don't do that. I do more than merely survive. I conquer. I find meaning out of life. I make a success of myself and make life mean something. Somebody may have tried to shatter my life into pieces, but damnit, they did not succeed.

You go ahead and keep the idol of Watchtowerland even outside of Jehovah's "Kingdom" and judge me and everyone else by what a cult taught you by it. If you are gonna do this, you don't mean anything to me, not one damn bit.

David_Jay

Posts by David_Jay