Given that most everyone on this topic reads as sceptical about what the WTS will do in this situation - and that includes myself - I would suggest that serious consideration of alternate means to help people in the Philippines should be pursued here and off-line. Three organizations I can think of that would get aid to the affected areas and will not limit it to sectarian considerations. But before I give my own list, I would say that it is not all inclusive and I would encourage others to give their own recommendations. 1. In my own case I have worked with Child Fund since the early 80s and all my sponsorships have been in the Philippines. Formerly they were known as Christian Children's Fund. The aid will get there. 2. Same with Catholic Relief Services. In the case of Haiti, I phoned in inquiry Monday and I heard how they were active in the field on public radio the next day. 3. Unicef had an e-mail partition the next day. So that's my short list. No doubt someone will find fault with one or all three. What's more, when disaster strikes, the magnitude is overwhelming and you and I have budgets that probably tanked after 2008 or 2009. We're drops in the bucket. Still, I pose this question or challenge. And for many it has probably been taken up already. But all the same, if you think the WTS approach to disaster and those in need if fake or self-serving, then why not get involved with a group that is more likely to get something there? See if it makes you feel any better than wondering if you contribution did anything other than getting this week's WatchTower in the hands of people in the storm's path.
kepler
JoinedPosts by kepler
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Emergency relief fund for the Philippines. How will it work.
by joe134cd ini was just thinking it will be interesting to see how the wts emergency relief fund will operate in the philippines.
ok it worked well with the storm in florida, with cashing in on the insurance cheques.
sorry to generalize, but americans have the disposable income, and the insurance polices for things like this - a thing the wtbts finds very attractive.
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Caveat Lector: Jerome's of the Vulgate's Caution on Daniel
by kepler inrecently, started reading gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire.
i discovered that the printed versions i had access to were abridged, but the entire book is available on line in pdf or more detailed forms.
one reason it is worth reading chapter by chapter is that abridements seem to convey different messages.
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kepler
Phizzy,
Good to hear from you. Thanks for the encouragement.
There were a couple of on-line sources for public domain classics. Liberty on line had various full versions of Gibbon. And I believe it was CELSUS which had the Eusebius and Jerome.
I checked to see if Olaf Jonsson had examined the work of Eusebius on BC chronologies. It looks like he did, but he was mainly interested in the 607 BC problem. Eusebius uncovers some other stones though. He uses the several kings' lists that Jonsson describes in his book and never uncovers a "Darius the Mede". When you read the kings lists in contexts, you wouldn't expect to find one either. When the Medes close down they are closed and Cyrus takes over.
Separating political tracts and "scripture" could be a difficult matter. Letters of the Apostles or disciples can be taken at face value - the epistles. But if the Gospels were written decades later by ghost writers or non-eyewitnesses, then there could be motive in what was included as well. And how much we might never really know, save that each new gospel over the original(s) reflected a lot of further thought. In the Old Testament the issues could be much the same when whe see duplication and revision of what could be earlier messages. This continues to fascinate me, but I can't make up my mind about what should come away from this other than wisdom - I hope. Perhaps wisdom to conduct ourselves differently than if we had never grasped what might have been going on.
But going back to the writings of church fathers ( whom few on this board probably would NOT suspect political motive), Eusebius in that same BC era writing remarks on another interesting problem. Among what was available to Eusebius, the Syraic, Samarian, the Hebrew and the Greek versions of the Pentateuch do NOT agree on chronologies from the time of Adam to the time of Moses and then the construction of the Temple in Solomon's time. The question arose with Paul's speech in Acts - with some of the discrepancies arising due to estimates of Josuah's age and life span - but it extends further than that in Eusebius's mind. And from our own perspective, ignoring scientific or forensic evidence of human origins, access to Egyptian records throws another curve in these estimates that compresses the 3 or 4 centuries of Judges to a muchshorter error or one of concurrent reigns...
But I don't think the NWT, in its introductory claim to have sifted through all these versions of the OT, that these discrepancies in dating have been addresed. According to the 1984 version, Moses was a figure in the Egyptian court of 1500 BC. Period.
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Caveat Lector: Jerome's of the Vulgate's Caution on Daniel
by kepler inrecently, started reading gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire.
i discovered that the printed versions i had access to were abridged, but the entire book is available on line in pdf or more detailed forms.
one reason it is worth reading chapter by chapter is that abridements seem to convey different messages.
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kepler
Recently, started reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I discovered that the printed versions I had access to were abridged, but the entire book is available on line in PDF or more detailed forms.
One reason it is worth reading chapter by chapter is that abridements seem to convey different messages. Often the various editors want to highlight particular points Gibbon made and let other matters drop. From what I can tell reaching chapter 20, he had a full agenda.
Secondly, when I read Gibbon I wonder how he became aware of anything. He is quite detailed about many matters and he backs it up with footnotes. Often I discover he is quoting continuously from several sources, e.g., Cassius Dion for events in the second century. In the case of Dio or Dion, it is often not from his original text but a surviving abridgement or "epitome" compiled centuries later. What an irony. In some cases, I have to wonder if some of the more fantastic claims or accounts are glosses. But, I'll try to get back on message.
In some of the notes Gibbon cites Eusebius. Some of it is from his Ecclesiastical History and then some of it is from his more general chronology of ancient writers. In the 1914 edition of Gibbon the editor said that Eusebius takes issue with Paul the Apostle's chronology of Israel recorded in Acts. I thought I would track it down. Going on line I found this and quotes of his successor in ecclesiastical studies, Jerome the translator of the Bible from Hebrew, Syraic and Greek into the Latin, the document known as the Vulgate.
In the course of uncovering Eusebius and Jerome, I encountered a wealth of 4th and 5th century controversies and some Gibbon history too. It was Diocletian that was responsible for the Christian persecution prior to Constantine's Edict of Milan. And that Diocletian persecution was most effective in the east. Most historians say that the count of martyrs was much exaggerated just as were the sizes of armies and casualties in battles. But the Diocletian's method was very effective in that it attacked the physical institutions of the church. It demolished the churches, libraries, exiled officers. Books and bibles were burned. The Greek originals.
This made Jerome's position in the west key: translating for a sheltered but less versed in traditions population. Jerome corresponded widely and his letters are preserved, but also his introductions to various books of the Bible.
Here he is on Daniel:
The churches of the Lord Savior do not read the Prophet Daniel according to the Seventy interpreters, using (instead) the edition of Theodotion, and I don’t know why this happened. For whether because the language is Chaldean and differs in certain properties from our speech, (or) the Seventy interpreters were not willing to keep the same lines in the translation, or the book was edited under their name by some unknown other who did not sufficiently know the Chaldean language, or not knowing anything else which was the cause, I can affirm this one thing, that it often differs from the truth and with proper judgment is repudiated. Indeed, it is known most of Daniel and some of Ezra were written in Hebrew letters but the Chaldean language, and one pericope of Jeremiah, and also Job to have much in common with the Arabic language.
When I was a very young man, after the reading and flowery rhetoric of Quintilian and Cicero, when I had opened myself to the drudgery of this language and with much effort and much time I with difficulty had begun to pronounce the breathy and buzzing words, as though walking in a crypt to see a little light from above, I finally dashed myself against Daniel, and I was affected by such weariness that, sunken in desperation, I wanted to despise all (my) old work. Indeed, a Hebrew was encouraging me, and he was often repeating to me by his language "Persistent work conquers all," as in me (?) I saw an amateur among them, I began again to be a student of Chaldean. And so I might confess the truth, to the present day I am better able to read and understand than to pronounce the Chaldean language.
Therefore, I have shown these things to you as a difficulty of Daniel, which among the Hebrews has neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three young men, nor the fables of Bel and the dragon, which we, because they are spread throughout the whole world, have appended by banishing and placing them after the spit (or "obelus"), so we will not be seen among the unlearned to have cut off a large part of the scroll.I heard a certain one of the teachers of the Jews, when he derided the history of Susanna and said it to have been forged by an unknown Greek, to propose that which Africanus also proposed to Origen, these etymologies to come down from the Greek language: "to split" from "mastich" and "to saw" from "oak" (απο του σχινου σχισαι και απο του πρινου πρισαι). On which subject we are able to give this understanding to those of our own (language), as we might, for example say it to have said of the oak tree (ilice), "you will perish there (illico)" or of the mastic tree (lentisco), "May the angel crush you like a lentil bean (lentem)" or "You will not perish slowly (lente)" or "Pliant (lentus), that is, flexible, you are led to death" or anything which fits the name of the tree. Then he jested for there to have been so much leisure time for the three young men, that in the furnace of raging fires they played with (poetic) meter, and called in order all the elements to the praise of God. Or what miracle or Divine inspiration is it, either a dragon having been killed by a lump of tar or the tricks of the priests of Bel having been discovered, which things are better accomplished by the wisdom of a clever man rather than by the prophetic Spirit? When indeed he came to Habakkuk and had read (of him) having been carried off from Judea to Chaldea carrying a dish, he requested an example where we might have read in all the Old Testament any one of the saints to have flown with a heavy body and in a short time to have passed over so great a space of lands. To which, when one of us rather a little too quick to speaking had brought Ezekiel into the discussion (lit. "middle") and said him to have been moved from Chaldea to Judea, he derided the man and from the same scroll proved Ezekiel to have seen himself moved in the Spirit. Finally also our Apostle, namely as an erudite man and one who had learned the Law from the Hebrews, was also not daring to affirm himself taken away in the body, but was to have said "Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows." By these and arguments of such kinds he exposed (or "accused") the apocryphal fables in the book of the Church.
Concerning which subject, leaving the judgment to the decision of the reader, I warn him Daniel is not to be found in the Prophets among the Hebrews, but among those which they titled the Hagiographa.
Since indeed all of Scripture is divided by them into three parts, into the Law, into the Prophets, (and) into the Hagiographa, that is, into five and eight and eleven books, which is not (necessary) to explain at this time.
And to those things of this prophet, or rather against this book, which Porphyry accused, the witnesses are Methodius, Eusebius, (and) Apollinaris, who, responding to his madness with many thousands of verses, I do not know whether they are satisfying to the interested reader. For which reason I entreat you, O Paula and Eustochium, pour out prayers for me to the Lord, so that as long as I am in this little body, I might write something pleasing to you, useful to the Church, (and) worthy to posterity. I am indeed not greatly moved by the judgments of the present, which on either side are in error either by love or by hate.
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The division of the Hebrew Scriptures then, has been known by Christians for at least 1600 years. Promoting Daniel to a prophet, as in the case of Augustine, was first instituted to show that the ancients were aware of Christ's coming. Then it was used as a device for apocalyptic groups to pummel their enemies for a millenium or so. Need I say more?
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The most Disturbing Story in the Bible
by fulltimestudent ini posted elsewhere about dr. james tabor's take on the book of revelation as re-write of an earlier non-christian document.
but in browsing his site i was reminded of an early biblical story in genesis that essentially throws so much jewish and subsequent christian thinking out of the window.. .
can your mind handle the concept of yahweh standing in front of you, with a human body like yours, eating, drinking.
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kepler
Well, for a moment let's forget the competition for the title, "the most disturbing". I was wondering when anyone on this forum ( beside myself) was going to pay any attention at all to Genesis chapter 18. A year and a half I wrote a topic about it and no one responded. My search of topics turns up null as well.
Abraham addresses three individuals approaching his tent as "Lord" and they ALL reply. None of the visitors are distinguished from each other, save perhaps that two are dispatched to do Sodom and Gomorrah in.
They were a trinity. And as scriptural basis for the doctrine, as far as the OT is concerned, there is more substance to this episode than there is the satan of the NT was the talking snake of chapter 3. In as much as that chapter addresses that question it was more like a woman's first lesson in herpetology. Note that in this paradise Earth, the snake was a well known inhabitant of the garden.
Just to cover the bases, does anyone suppose the original was actually "Elohim" rather than Adonai or Yahweh?
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God does not have partners.
by Non-trinitarian ini have always thought the trinity strange, and has pursued other than trinitarian christianity for my faith.
god does not have partners.
this is monotheism.. thought i d just check out the forum.. peace..
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kepler
During the 2012 US presidential primaries, 3 men walked into a bar: a conservative, a moderate and a liberal. The bar tender said, "Hi, Mitt."
In Genesis 18...
The Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre: he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw THREE men standing near him. As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them. Bowing to the ground, he said, "My Lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, please do not pass me by."
---..."And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves."
They replied, "Do as you have said."
Abraham hastened into the tent to Sar, and said, "Quick three saehs of choice flour, knead and make cakes."
They said to him, "Where is your wife Sarah?" Then one said, "I will return to you next year and your wife Sarah shall have a son.
Probably, the original was "elohim", but the NWT substitutes "Jehovah".
Genesis 1:26...."Let us make man in our own image and likeness."
That was chapter one. Chapter one. But as Frederick Franz once said in court testimony in Scotland in 1954, there is no evidence whatsoever in Scriptures of a Triune God.
...And I just found several scriptural passages in support of the trinity concept in the first chapter and the first book. So my question is this: which was Frederick Franz, ignorant or a liar?
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What % of householders would have a clue about the "life saving " message JW`s have brought to their doors these past 100 years.
by smiddy ini`m an optimist and i would say zilch .
i would bet you a million dollars ( if i had a million dollars ) that if you did a survey in the street that you live , asking the householders what is the life saving message jehovahs witnesses bring to your door on a regular basis , they would not have a clue.. and they have been preaching this message for over 100 years .
how inefective can they be .. the probable answers you would get are : they dont take blood transfusions.
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kepler
A favorite topic!
What compelled me to find out anything about WTBTS was the fact that my ex decided she was going back and made our continued relationship conditional on that, if at all. I took instruction for months following the example of my late parents who were of mixed faith but definitely not of this persuasion.
After months of weekly visits and so-called instruction from the onerous tract, "What the Bible Really Teaches", I found that most of what I was told was about the limitations of other people and organizations, or else a search for my own vulnerabilities. I. e., Did I want peace of mind in this life or did I want to reunite with family and friends? Did I feel like I was a prisoner or a felon within this system? Back to that last question below.
There were some revelations though:
I discovered that despite Jehovah having created the world and being the benevolent force watching over it, my instructors also asserted that Satan owned it. ????
But that didn't matter, say, when it came to destroying cities; because Jehovah eradicated Babylon forever for messing with his people ("Wouldn't it be nice to have a guy like that on your side?"). At the same time though, Jehovah was using the Babylonians to punish the Judeans! Now how about that! Something did seem amiss from what I could recall about Babylon. I looked up Babylon and discovered it prospered for centuries thereafter actually, that Cyrus thought it was his kind of town, as did many other ancient commentators, including Biblical authors like Ezra and Nehemiah. And finally it dawnd on me that it was Assyrian Senacherib who did Babylon in as described in Isaiah. And it was a 100 years before Nebuchadnezzar touched Jerusalem. So I really don't know what to make of this idea of Jehovah being a city destroyer and being in my corner, other than that he was being maligned to the advantage of the Org. But I never would have investigated all this if WTBRT and my instructors hadn't brought it up.
Another remarkable thing about this was a mystical date. 607 BC. I was surprised what you could do with that date if you were good with arithmetic and oblivious of everything else in the encyclopedia or history books, and assured yourself that Daniel was a sober account of ....what?
So what else did I learn?
Anyway, Israel eventually lost this covenant to the church based on the Ransom. But the church got derailed by Greek beliefs and the Nicene Creed before they compiled Jehovah's word, the OT and NT. This was all inerrant but it had to be re-translated into the NWT - and then distributed and retranslated to all the world in native languages( including Greek) so that all peoples would know Jehovah's name. But only English speakers would have to pronounce it with a J like "jazz". A Y sound is adequate elsewhere.
It was unclear in the WTBRTeaches who exactly Jesus Christ was except that he was not part of the Trinity. In the appendix, it said he was Archangel Michael, but no one would comment on that. That was much akin to commenting on J T Russell or Rutherford.
Nor would anyone comment on the quake in Haiti, other than that it meant we were closer to the end. I sent some donations through other religious organizations that had aid workers there. My instructors looked very pained about that.
Also, that if you should take anything you read in the Bible seriously, it was the number 144,000. The universe needs certain constants like the speed of light, the permeability and dielectric constants for it to work and I guess that 144,000 annointed after the return was one of them.
They also drew my attention to chapter 3 in Genesis - and for the first time in my life I noticed something odd about it. It said specifically that the snake was a snake and the wiliest animal in the garden. Then the OT dropped the subject.
Many times they tried to back me in the corner. They said, are you going to believe this or not. If you don't, you will have to accept the consequences. I wasn't sure what they were in their minds. The consequences in my mind were that my ex was going to walk out of my life, which she did anyway over a verse in Luke (23:38-40), a dialog between Christ and a felon like alluded to above. It was clear how they "believed" and it was contemptible.
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Goodbye JWD/JWN (my last post)
by slimboyfat inafter some considerable thought i have decided that i will no longer post on this forum because i want to return to jehovah.
thank you for all the kindness and many interesting discussions over the years.
i wish you all well in the future and the decisions you make.
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kepler
I'm a little late on this "good-bye" thread, but I would like to add a sorry that SBF has left. He seemed like a nice guy with some interesting perspectives and pursued a number of studies seriously. I meant to pick up on a thread he started on good history books to read, any recommendations?
I wonder if he is still interested?
But the notion that he would go back to being a practicing JW did not take me completely by surprise. My reason for that was our discussions on a thread that I had started about a year ago.
“Truly I say to you,…” “Amen I say to you,”… Inferences from a Gospel manner of speech 2 3 The issue was whether there was any ambiguity in what Christ said to the Good Thief in Luke 23:38-40. I believed that as described by Luke, Christ was saying that the thief would be in paradise that very day. Others, including SBF, believed that the thief still had to go through an elaborate process, not to mention being vetted as one of the 144,000 elect after Christ's invisible return to earth millenia later.
And I suspect a whole lot of people on this forum would agree with SBF about that. Why? Because that was something they had been told despite the visible evidence of context and what they had just read. To be sure its readers got the point, the NWT put a comma in the text so that it was clear that Christ agreed with the translation departments a priori view on this.
I had compiled a list of all the other "Truly I say to you" expressions uttered by Christ in the Gospels and noted that this translation was inconsistent. Also, in Acts, by the same author, I found an instance where Paul swore an oath "on that day" and it was not consistent with Christ saying the good thief would be kept in a holding tank either.
SBF thought he had solved the problem for himself because he was aware of a Syraic translation, I believe, that was consistent with the requirement that Christ had to return to Earth first. It looked like the Syraic translators of Luke's Greek had syntax in it that would postpone Christ's promise. It was not elaborated, but the alert reader of Luke would realize that it would come an account payable after some formula introduced by Daniel and then detailed by revelations in Revelations and revealed even further via a printing press in Brooklyn's perishable paper.
That's just the way redemption was supposed to work.
Now I guess there are those sleeping better above ground knowing that the Good Thief is still asleep under it waiting his turn behind the WTBTS annointed and its governing board.
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WHY did we used to read this verse and think that it referred to Satan? How can anyone??
by The Quiet One inin any translation you like.... .
http://biblehub.com/genesis/3-1.htm.
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kepler
Bart B:
There is only one reference to Satan in the OT in 1 Chr 21:1. However there are other various uses of the hebrew word satan which means adversay, resitor, or opposer. The first is in Numbers 22:22, where the "Jehovah's angel" acted "as opposer" the hebrew in the MT shows "as satan".
In addition in Job the refence is to "the satan" as it is in Zechariah 3:1,2. The use of as satan and the satan only show that, and we can assume whoever fills this roll uses this title, and that they are either a single angel or the role of satan could be filled by any of them. However in 1 Chr 21 the use of Satan as a proper noun indicates a specific individual and this is the first use of the term in this way.
Did you mean to imply that the content of the NT is more likely to be Essene in its nature as opposed to Pharisee, Sadducee, or Zealot?
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Bart B,
I am familiar with your 1 Chronicles reference to David and the census - and the subsequent decision to build a temple - and had forgotten about it when I wrote that the above note. It puzzles me in the sense that every other "satanic" reference I've heard of does not seem to hold much water ( e.g., Ezekiel comparing the King of Tyre or Isaiah speaking of Lucifer or the morning star - they are denouncing earthly kings).
The most compelling argument though is that Genesis, the Penteteuch and whole OT absolutelydrop the subject after chapter 3. It does not come up in conversations between the Lord and Abraham, the Lord and Moses or anyone else. And in comparison to the lucid writing in Wisdom, the incident in Chronicles does not really tell us anything. Why that particular census was out of order or demonic is baffling. But there are hints.
Reading Job, we are confronted not with a serpent but a figure in a celestial court. And the test is a wager. This was written in a time when there were camel caravans, which dates it to some time after the Assyrians introduced them into the Mideast, perhaps the 8th century. It was certainly not Mosaic as the appendices of the NWT insist. The structure fo the book has prose introduction and epilog - and verse in between. Everything is restored to Job in this life after the end of the poem - with interest. I am inclined to think that ha satan means "the opposer" or someone who takes the antagonistic view. This was not someone that was thrown out of heaven for rebellion.
It is odd though, that if this incident is that important, then why does it not figure in Kings as well? After all, David does. When was Chronicles written? During a period of post exile, contemporary with Nehemiah and Ezra. What was a pre-occupation? Re-BUILDING the temple. Who was in control? The Persians. What was their religion? Zoroastrianism, the belief of the Magi.
On the last question, the content of the NT, I at first thought that there might be another group to consider (Persian influences such as the Magi), as indicated by what I said about the incident in Chronicles. After all, the NT with Matthew begins with genealogy in chapter one, and in chapter two we have visiting Magi ( check the Greek) looking for the birthplace of a "leader" who will shepherd the people of Israel. ..
When I read the Zoroastrian texts, to say the least, they resembled the Book of Enoch or Milton's Paradise Lost more than anything I read in the Old Testament. And as far as I know, they are the oldest version of this cosmology. Manicheanism seems to be a re-birth of it centuries later, originating again in the East, but infiltrating into early Christian churches. For example, Augustine of Hippo had to decide whether he would be a Manichean or a more orthodox Christian. He chose the latter, but a lot of his views were probably formed from his earlier life.
But the parsing of Jewish beliefs by Josephus in that early chapter of "The Jewish Wars" does not give any credit to the Persians for anything. He attributes such beliefs as the Essenes had to the Greeks. Still, the Persians ruled Judeaa much longer than the Greeks and without significant revolt. And the Hellenic Empire was a thin veneer of Greeks over regions that simply treated the whole affair of Alexander the Greate as a change of hands, save for improved communications medium their alphabet and language provided. To a certain degree the Greek heirs of Alexander were assimilated just like the Mongols were in China.
So, when Josephus speaks of Essenes resembling Greeks, what was Greek about their beliefs? It wasn't the gods of the Iliad or Olympus, but maybe the notion of Hades. Was it Neo-Platonism? Perhaps, but I don't think the Essenes were all that given to meditate on perfect triangles. I would say that their Greek influence was some sort of adaptation of Zoroastrian, Greek and Judean beliefs. And at the time, that meant seeing a great evil spirit in contest with the Creator.
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WHY did we used to read this verse and think that it referred to Satan? How can anyone??
by The Quiet One inin any translation you like.... .
http://biblehub.com/genesis/3-1.htm.
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kepler
My own researches is that the explanation of Genesis serpent is a very late idea. It appears in the deutero-canonical book "Wisdom", written in Greek by an Alexandrian Jew.
The last words of Chapter II, verses 23-24.
For God created human beings to be immortal , he made them as an image of his own nature.
Death came into the world only through the Devil's envy as those who belong to him find to their cost.
New Jerusalem Bible. Accordingly it notes it was used by church fathers in the second century AD. It is suspected to have been written sometime before Philo, probably around 2nd half of 1st century BC.
I agree that elsewhere in the OT, there is no reference to the devil, and yet in the NT he or a demon stands behind every tree.
Josephus says in the Jewish Wars that there were three parties of belief in Judaea and that the Essenes most closely resemble this point of view ( he does not mention Wisdom there, however, if he mentions it at all elsewhere). He claims that the Essenes must have got their notions from the Greeks. I had thought he was talking about Aegean Greeks until I encountered this piece probably from Alexandria. I am unaware of any copies of this among the Dead Sea Scrolls, however.
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1914 not Christ's Return anymore?
by pacloc inlooking at the public dec 2013 watchtower under bible questions answered it looks like they are saying that the invisible return of christ is completely in the future.
i thought that they always said it started in 1914?
am i reading this wrong?.
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kepler
Hmmm, I think I follow that, I think. Arriving and then leaving. And then returning and leaving again. To return... etc.
So where has he been. Or when he arrives where did he come from and when he leaves where does he go?
How does this affect communication?
Does the quality of life here on Earth change considerably between arrivals and departures visible or invisible? Does history take a different turn? Visible presence I can see some impact, yes; but the announced invisible arrivals and departures I only observe individuals forcibly trying to draw my attention to the imperceptible as well, even more elusive than climate change or global warming to someone living on the coast at the equator.
In the more recent cases of invisible arrival and departure, how was it perceived? Granted, since I am of the lower forms (non GB, non-annointed, non-baptised in the faith) or simply the target, a simple householder, I cannot perceive the invisible passages. But I am supposed to take the assurances of the GBs and their printed productions that Christ has returned and left and will return again, I guess, to pick some things up that were left behind.
The title Witness implies testimony, but name Witness also denotes observation. How can you witness an event that you cannot observe or sense? By reasoning a linkage among apocalyptic writings, numerological interpretations and pyramid corridors that supposedly represent ages of creation?
The GB and the like do not profess to have any senses that I do not have, but just a sensitivity to these passages and reams of paper for printing presses plus a distribution system similar to Walmart's or McDonald's...
And a penchant for declaring whatever might suit them as they stare out from a corner of a larger room where they are waiting for the paint to dry.