Posts by kepler

29

Even after reading Crisis of Conscience, one thing (at least) still puzzled me

by kepler in

it was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.

all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.

when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.

kepler

Darth, Farkel,

Then I guess you are all done, right?

Xanthippe,

I believe you are right about that. That's one of those things I have gone back to look at many times. And then later Carl Olaf Jonnson gets an interview at headquarters via Ray Franz's intercession. But the funny thing is, since the chapters of the book move from one issue to another, such as predictions of the end or the Mexico-Malawi issue, I get the feeling that the consequences of the 607 are never spelled out. I don't recall Franz saying that someone comes up to him and says, "Look, Ray, we've had enough about this chronicle issue: drop it or else." He first says that he wrote a ringing but empty defense of the doctrine over a couple dozen pages of the "Aid" and when he visited with Assyrianologists at Yale (?), he couldn't find a scintilla of archeological evidence to support it.

What I gather from this is that he did report back, but we don't get to hear the reaction. We are left to draw a conclusion about whether the GB decided to Deep Six what they heard. Deep six it in every possible way.

I got from that was that as far as that GB was concerned, if you were within hearing distance of controversy, you were on a pathway out. In the corporate world I have seen similar successful experiments in the behavior of breeding sheep; but the guys in dark suits should stand in awe of the results I've seen in local congregations and what used to be my household. Disfellowship for association with the disassociated must have helped.

S+G,

Good you mentioned all that. Because as I read that material, it was hard for me to tell where things were and where things had gone. In that sense I am as dumb as a box of rocks since the talking points from my background were different.

51

Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler in

belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.

darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.

he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .

kepler

It's been a while since I've added anything to this topic, yet by the very nature of this forum, elsewhere I see ideas built on foundations which the discussion here would indicate are all sand.

In a largely unrelated historical discussion someone pointed me to in another e-group. In a historical essay describing the events leading to the siege of Vienna in the 1680s and the earlier confrontations between European christendom and the Islamic East ( ~1529) I came across the following paragraph:

Suleiman I, called "the Magnificent" in Europe, saw himself as the heir of Alexander the Great, the "last world emperor" who would destroy his rival Charles V and then march west and conquer Rome. Like his competitors in the West, Suleiman was also eager to see himself as the beneficiary of an apocalyptic tradition, based loosely on the Book of Daniel, that foretold of a time toward the end of the sixteenth century when the Great Year would dawn, in which one true religion (Catholic Christianity for Charles V, Sunni Islam for Suleiman) would triumph over all others, ruled by one divinely appointed ruler—the sahib-kiran, "Emperor of the Last Age."

What's the difference? They had plenty of time to read, they were ethno-centric and they were sure that the lines were addressed to them...

29

Even after reading Crisis of Conscience, one thing (at least) still puzzled me

by kepler in

it was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.

all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.

when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.

kepler

James_Woods, binadub and others,

Thank you for contributing your thoughts on this. I had a feeling this wouldn't be a straight-forward proposition.

When people talk about Columbus crossing the Atlantic, especially in the US, they talk about him trying to prove the world round....Really?

In the case of Crisis of Conscience, something similar has happened. People largely assume that Ray Franz wrote the book and then was df-ed. That is probably an underlying assumption in another topic started by someone who would not even acknowledge as to whether or not they had read the book!

It is tempting to write up a summary of what has been stated so far and add it to that discussion. But if anyone spots any issues in what I come up with, feel free to chime in.

I have also had a chance to think some more about comparisons to Soviet life. When I have a little more time, I would like to describe that. While one might be tempted to think of mass arrests, prison camps and physical violence, re-wind a little to where the process starts:

Revocation of the party card.

15

Why does anyone EVER use the "J" sound when translating YHWH?

by sabastious in

if you look up the tetragrammaton in strong's concordance you will see that they use the phonetic spelling of "yeh-ho-vaw" but if you scroll down to the bottom of that link you will see this:.

jehovah, the lord.

from hayah; (the) self-existent or eternal; jehovah, jewish national name of god -- jehovah, the lord.

kepler

Phizzy,

Thumbs up here too.

29

Even after reading Crisis of Conscience, one thing (at least) still puzzled me

by kepler in

it was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.

all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.

when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.

kepler

Entirely Possible,

I hope some of the posts by others between this one and yours made my question a little more plain. As some have recounted, Ray Franz was DFed on - for lack of better term - a technicality. For associating with someone who had been disciplined for associating with him. It's an Orwellian trip all right, but it never really exposes the reasons why the GB majority went after him.

When I read CoC and is sequel, I read a writer whose convictions are still very close to the world within which he grew up and labored with devotion all his life. Much of what he was saying seems like a call for reform. But I can't get the full picture. It was pointed out above that Ray Franz resigned as a matter of conscience, And as the book describes, Ray Franz was in the minority on a number of votes on issues. Now had he have been more persuasive and won those votes, then would he have stayed? Would there have been an alternate history for WTBTS like that we would suppose for Soviet Russia under Trotskij or Bukharin? Or was it already clear to Ray Franz that the system could not be reformed? Since Ray Franz's arguments are very scripturally based, he has raised some big unanswered questions.

29

Even after reading Crisis of Conscience, one thing (at least) still puzzled me

by kepler in

it was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.

all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.

when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.

kepler

It was several years back and from time to time I will look something up in the index. All manner of things about JW life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something I missed.

Please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.

When the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of Ray Franz are targeted first. There are inquiries about who said what, or have you heard this from a friend or from other people in the department - and then the ax falls all over the place. Ray was one of the last to go - and he goes down for associating with someone who is disfellowshipped for associating with him. Is that close enough?

Now in the course of writing the book, all manner of background issues are examined - but Ray Franz was dismissed before writing the book. The book is an account with a number of updates and revisions, all I presume, written after the fact. Interspersed in the narrative are accounts of things like the difficulty of constructing a case for 607 BC, meeting with Olaf Johnsson, votes sometimes in minority on doctrinal issues - but I don't recall seeing anywhere where the author says "that's why the majority came after me".

Now after being on this forum for a while, I have begun to realize that some participants have actually witnessed all this first hand - pardon the expression. And I myself am quite far removed from that. But I do see parallels in dissidence movements elsewhere. I am tempted to ramble on about that, but I fear that I am obscuring the focus on the matter at hand.

Any comments?

15

Why does anyone EVER use the "J" sound when translating YHWH?

by sabastious in

if you look up the tetragrammaton in strong's concordance you will see that they use the phonetic spelling of "yeh-ho-vaw" but if you scroll down to the bottom of that link you will see this:.

jehovah, the lord.

from hayah; (the) self-existent or eternal; jehovah, jewish national name of god -- jehovah, the lord.

kepler

Bobcat, Hamsterbait, Sabastious..

My pronunciation or discussion was hindered by having my tongue in my cheek. Growing up within the Yahweh tradition, I am sceptical of arguments to the contrary. Or at least willing to drag my feet in behalf of the Y pronunciation.

I am inclined to think that Jehovah and JHVH are the "anglicizations" of the YHWH and Yahweh. Following some of your arguments above, I've seen enough Latin script employing a V instead of a U for words or expressions such as DEVS EX MACHINA. And auf deutsch a Volkswagen is pronounced more like "Folkzvagon". I suspect that those Germanic conventions have been around for at least as long as Luther's Bible, correct me if I am wrong. While it was mentioned that English has transformed greatly over a 1000 years, in western Europe Bible translations into vernaculars occurred rather late; more toward the mid-millenium. But I would be interested to hear of accounts of earlier works. We have Luther and Tyndale working independently in Germany and England. Erasmus, prior to Luther did not so much translate as critique the Latin Bible.

Quoting from the Wikipedia on Tyndale Bible

"The chain of events that led to the creation of Tyndale’s New Testament possibly began in 1522, the year Tyndale acquired a copy of Martin Luther’s German New Testament. Inspired by Luther’s work, Tyndale began a translation into English using a Greek text "compiled by Erasmus from several manuscripts older and more authoritative than the Latin Vulgate" of St. Jerome (A.D. c.340-420), the only translation authorized by the Roman Cathlic Church."

My point here? While it is acknowledged that the Tyndale Bible is not highlighted the same way as the KJV in the English speaking public's mind, it is a significant point in bringing the Bible into the English language. But like many intellectual concepts in English, there is a transformation from a foreign source. I believe that there is something of the same going on here.

Even within the last 100 years, how did Americans spell composer Pyotr Chajkovskij's name generations ago? The way they learned from German or French sources. And as a result - until corrected - one would try to anglicize the German based phonetic spelling. In the 1950s, you would probably look his name up under T.

Another example. When I had a US map to examine in fourth grade, if anyone asked me the name of that California city nearby San Francisco, I would pronounce it "San Jossie".

Some other problems.

"Chaikovskiy" etc. is a recent example of changes in text conventions. But centuries ago the idiosyncracies of spelling were remarkable too. We know when early Bibles were printed, but when were the dictionaries compiled that governed their conventions?

Claims for the antiquity of the text and the events described in the OT where the name is introduced far exceed the age of the medium in which it is written. Whether we assign a presumed date for the Exodus around 1200 BC or 1500 BC ( like the WTS), were someone to write this story they would be limited to Egyptian hieroglyphics or Akkadian cuneiform. I doubt that either were employed; we certainly have no record of it. But if there were a delay in commiting to script a story based on oral tradition, then even at best we would be nailing down an intermediate form.

15

Why does anyone EVER use the "J" sound when translating YHWH?

by sabastious in

if you look up the tetragrammaton in strong's concordance you will see that they use the phonetic spelling of "yeh-ho-vaw" but if you scroll down to the bottom of that link you will see this:.

jehovah, the lord.

from hayah; (the) self-existent or eternal; jehovah, jewish national name of god -- jehovah, the lord.

kepler

Well, how about this: Is YHWH pronounced with an English J as in Jerome or Jersey City?

A number of names in the Bible, whether described in Hebrew or Greek, transliterated into English we have come to assume started with a J:

Joshua, Jesus, Jeremiah, Jerusalem....

Yet if I look at the rendering in contemporary Hebrew or Greek, these names are phonetically transliterated as starting with Y. Germanic languages use a J as Y: Ja, Jawohl, Johannes, Jaroslavl,... If I look up among proper names in the Pocket Oxford Greek Dictionary, one finds the English Jehovah under the Iota - Iota epsilon chi omega beta alpha. Among the names starting with iota are Jacob, James, Jehovah, Jeremiah, Jerome, Jesus, Job, Joseph and Judas. Ditto for Hebrew Jeremiah and Job begin with the Yod.

There's nothing magical about the sound of J. Evidently, if there is anything at all to this, including at Watchtower printing offices, which appears to take this into account in other languages, it's simply the way people who speak English are supposed to pronounce the name.

The prophets when they come back before or after Armageddon will be instructed to speak in accordance with this convention, of course.

Here's another way to look at it: When was the earliest organizational adoption of this idea? Did Russell speak of it at all in his books? How long was Rutherford around before he noticed the significance (?) of it at all?

78

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE TRUE RELIGION

by Fifth Column in

jesus said that the true religion would be evident in the lives of the people who practice it.

by their fruits you will recognize them, he said.

every good tree produces fine fruit.

kepler

Fifth Column,

What an irony! You are quoting the exact same passages from the pamphlet "What the Bible Really Teaches" that alerted me to the fact that the people who had come to my house represented a FALSE, manipulative and deceitful religion.

I had no focus on Babylon's or Jerusalem's destruction. But I sensed a disconnect from what history actually told. And the more I looked at what these parties of Elders were saying, the more I knew how deceitful it was.

First of all, even in your rote recitation, it is clear that Cyrus did not destroy Babylon. It simply changed management like it had before and continued MORE prosperously than it had. Alexander liked it so much he made it his capital. Herodotus certainly wasn't mourning it either. And Xenophone's mercenaries were headed for conflict there with a later Darius in a Persian civil war.

Sennacherib was the one who actually destroyed it. Not 200 years after Isaiah, but in his lifetime. The quotes from the verses stop short of how Isaiah actually tells how. Sennacherib flooded the city and carried off its people into slavery in 689 BC. He wrote about in stone.

Even the notion of a 70-year desolation is borrowed from the Assyrians. That is what Sennacherib had condemned Babylon too, but Esarhaddon his son rescinded it and that too is described in stone. He restored it because he thought it a religious desecration. True religion: Yours or his?

There is another problem with this prognostication. Jeremiah 25:12 claims that Babylon's desolation in punishment for Jerusalem's destruction (acting as an instrument of God's justice - go figure?) would be immediate and forever. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah contradict this. E.g., Ezra 8:1. The prophecy did not come to pass just as those against the King of Tyre and Egypt did not. They make me wonder about a great deal. In the case of Ezekiel, does prophet mean a spokesperson for God before power or a propagandist for Nebuchadnezzar in his war-making efforts against other mid east powers? At any rate, the Elders visiting my house have alerted me to what I had not known about before: OT roosters claiming that they were about to cause the sun to rise with their crowing and they often seemed to select completely overcast days.

I'll save some of my other fact checking expeditions for another day. Or you can just dig around here on the forum. But beside being wrong, that pamphlet is DELIBERATE in its approach. At some level in the editing and writing process, the authors know that Cyrus didn't do what was claimed and that the inclusion of Isaiah's full quote would blow the cover. They also know that Isaiah from chapter 40 on is a fully different author. If Isaiah predicted all of what was to happen to Babylon, then why didn't Daniel cite him when questioned by Babylonian kings instead of concocting still another story?

As I read more and more of this pamphlet and studied the claims, watched the coercion and experienced some myself, I began to see a multi-level marketing operation dressed in a very peculiar garb, more like the Emperor's clothes. There a pathological fascination with senseless slaughters past and an avid anticipation of them in the future could get you far.

78

HOW TO IDENTIFY THE TRUE RELIGION

by Fifth Column in

jesus said that the true religion would be evident in the lives of the people who practice it.

by their fruits you will recognize them, he said.

every good tree produces fine fruit.

kepler

Somewhere on a previous page, it was mentioned...

"You do know that this is an ex-JW forum, don't you?"...

Well, as some probably know already, I am neither current or former, but found JW issues had effected my life. And if you read some of my posts, I would happily work to dismantle the organization doctrine by doctrine.

But you can't do that by preaching to the already converted choir. And the JWs that are of concern in my life have closed so many lines of communication, that there is about a snowball's chance in a place they do not acknowledge that they would even read, hear or listen.

All I can do at this point is hone my thinking on this; speak with the people who want to defend an idea or belief and report back that that is exactly what was done. The more such encounters the merrier.

My two cents on this issue would be to welcome anyone from the other side of the barbed wire and be patient. But don't allow the trolling effect to cause you to go ballistic. Having read some topics where an actual debate has gone on, I think a number of eloquent and serious writers have done well in anwering legitimate concerns of people who are restles in the Paradise Earth holding tank.

Including this thread - I would add...