Posts by kepler

49

this weeks bible highlights: Jehovah slaughters his own people to teach David a lesson

by nowwhat? in

from 2 samuel 24. i am so mad at myself for not making a comment how could anyone explain this away?

then after he slaughters 70,000 he then feels regret?

kepler

The story is vexing enough as it is, but it is worth looking at from other angles.

1. Consider that this story ends the 2nd book of Samuel, but it's simply somewhere in the midst of Chronicles.

2. Note that in Samuel, David simply gets an idea to conduct a census, something that does not seem to cause any displeasure anywhere else. (e.g., birthdays according to Bethel are pagan, but not the census every decade - and no objections raised about Joseph and Mary reporting to Bethlehem). Consequence: an ultimatum delivered from on high via a prophet named Gad. Pick your punishment,

3. The story in its second telling (Chronicles) says nothing about the events preceding it in Samuel ( David and Baathsheba).

4. In Chronicles, David got the idea from Satan...

Other than in Job, as far as I know, this is the only mention of "Satan" in the Old Testament. And he advises David to conduct a census of Judah and Israel... Can you imagine anything more sinister in the eyes of God?

Rhetorical question, of course. But look what happens as a result. David selects a site for an offering in Jerusalem to come to terms with the Lord in penance and the First Temple is erected on the site.

I see in this story a garbled, legendary explanation for why the Temple was built where it was. Re-told in Chronicles, David was a darling and not the ambiguous figure he was to the scribes of Samuel ( and Kings). David's capital has increased.

At about that time too, pretenders to the throne in the Persian protectorate of Judah were capitalizing on the lineage. But it didn't work. We've got Nehemiah and Ezra giving accounts of the early days - and then Judah appears to enter a phase of relative prosperity and happiness under a couple of centuries of Persian kings. They don't march off into exile so much as spread out within the Empire to Asia Minor and Mesopotamia...

By all indications Chronicles was written shortly after the time when its narrative concluded, with the return from Exile and a lot of influences of the Persian sponsors of the return. The Persians were emerging as a Zoroastrian nation; if not Cyrus ostensibly, then certainly his successors. They were dualistic and spoke of many things that earlier Hebrew texts did not.

2

1 Kings 6:31, Insight from archeology, other translations and the good ole NWT

by kepler in

call this a review of a recent article i noticed in the biblical archeological review, "the puzzling doorways of solomon's temple" by madeleine mumcuoglu and yosef garfinkel, bar july/august 2015, pp.

this is not something that i had been waiting with baited breath to find out about, but sometimes there is a serendipity effect when you are idly reading something over breakfast.. the authors, field archeologists working at the site khirbet qelyala in israel, based on evidence from their dig site, believe they have an explanation for a strange reference in 1 kings 6:31. essentially, according to many current translations,.

"the bible tells us that the doors of the inner shrine of solomon's temple had five mezuzot (singular mezuzah) [and] whatever they were the bible is not referring to the little parchment texts in a case on the doorposts of jewish houses that are called mezuzot.

kepler

Drop off your key Lee,

Hello there. If I remember correctly, BAR was drawn to my attention when someone who was in the organization told me of how articles written by Ephraim Stern supported the argument of a 70 year desolation from the year 607 BC. This evidence was submitted in her ministry school. So I went to look for the article - and counter arguments in the periodical where Ephraim Stern posed his position.

As it turned out no one involved in the archeological discussion made any claim that Jerusalem or the Temple were destroyed in 607 BC, but rather in 586/587. And later, about the time I went on line with this forum, I discovered that JW publications often cited Stern in such manner. It had been noted by a number of people on this forum contributing a few years ago - and it was widely acknowledged as a deliberate distortion. Or to be more blunt, WatchTower and so forth lied. Some suggested he sue.

But yes, it is an interesting publication and I have subscribed from time to time. And for the record for everyone else, beside the printed periodical there is an on-line archive available for a slight fee. Since subscribing I downloaded a number of those articles and used that file just now to refresh my memory about Mr. Stern.

The BAR also sends some weekly notices to draw attention to recent articles or to share old ones at random. These are accessible at their website - and often elicit comment - which is solicited to a degree. Somewhat akin to an all you can eat buffet diner, this attracts a few people who ruthlessly exploit the deal. And you don't have to be an OT prophet to predict who or what that attracts: a couple of verbose trolls who cite JW publications to the nines, usually non sequitur. In those waters, most of the other correspondents step around them.

But, my point on the NWT was that the translation, though often treated as a very literal rendering, is really a translation which has a lot of sophomoric problems.

23

Bible Chronology, Egyptology and the Great Flood

by cappytan in

fact: bible chronology says the flood occurred between 2348 and 2370 bce, depending on which scholar you listen to.

fact: the great pyramid of giza was constructed 200 years before, in c. 2560 bce..

so, if you believe in a literal interpretation of noah's flood, you believe that the egyptians built a great civilization, were destroyed by the flood in 2370 bce, and then somehow, they reappeared immediately after the flood, picked right back up where they left off without skipping a cultural beat.. oh, and isn't it ironic that legitimately studying the great pyramid of giza debunks jw mythology now?

kepler

Cappytan,

The simplest solution to dealing with the above critique is to look around in genuine museum collections or check out the terrain of some geophysically active regions of the Earth. In the United States, the Pacific NW is littered with the actions of volcanoes and floods - but not the Big One. Ditto the Grand Canyon. To my knowledge, there are no Noachian flood epochs discussed in geophysical conferences except in one context: Mars. And that is because the notion is an appropriate metaphor for what is observed in Mars terrains due to melts of ice generally more than a hundred million years ago, if not a billion. Ice age melting would be somewhat akin to "Noachian" flood, but these are localized events based on the accumulation of glaciers and lakes behind natural dams... And there is no evidence of communities with written records of the Ice Age thaws.

Something else seems to be at work here. But attempting to reason away the existence of Egyptian civilization prior to 2400 BC is simply sophistry. The next day if it suits the spokespeople, they will invoke the same to support another Bethel point.

The guidebook of the British Musuem to Ancient Egypt, illustrated by its copious collection of artifacts pre and post such a would be flood gives passing mention Manetho, sure. But for the most part their historical records have been obtained from the stone-engraved accounts of the monarchs, scribes and noblemen themselves. Manetho was used as a guidebook obtained from the classical antiquity in the absence of translations of ancient Egyptians.

The Bible in this case mentions names of Pharoahs less than the number of fingers on a hand and in a rather incriminating way if we are wondering about its historicity. Shoshenq's name is garbled. Pi Rameses is already built before the Exodus was undertaken and Neco II the second is attributed with defeating Josiah - in the late 7th century BC. So where was everybody else? Either they were lost in time or the writers never knew, just like it does not mention any pyramids.

The Rosetta Stone was the key to translating Egyptian - and its closest linguistic analog is Coptic. The hieroglyphics date back to 3000 BC. But according to the Guidebook mentioned above:

"Our ability to place features of Egyptian history in their correct relative place depends in part on exact modern dating techniques such as

Carbon 14 testing on organic material, and

thermoluminescence , for dating pottery and in part

on ancient Egyptian texts relating to dates and measurement of time.

Systematic astronomical charts first attested on coffin lids in the first intermediate period, about 2100 BC, [give] the names of decan stars that rose every ten days at the same time as the sun...."

Suffice to say that there are several independent methods of determining the existence of an Egyptian civilization prior to 2370 BC. The JW retort on this question assumes that the reader will not look into the matter at any length.

Note also that Egyptian sources are written in stone or clay. So are Mesopotamian ones. The written artifacts from the same Bronze age period obtained from the Canaan, United Kingdom, Judea or Israel or few and far between. Taking the Exodus and Joshua books sequence of events according to the chronology appearing in the Appendix of the NWT (1984) would have Israel arriving in Canaan while it was still an Egyptian territory ruled as a protectorate. Its a couple of centuries off - if the events occurred that way at all. Check out the correspondence in the Amarna archives, if you want to see what I mean. There is also the battle of Megiddo of circa 1450 BC ( some reckonings in the 1480s - but not the gross uncertainties JW spokespeople imply) Admittedly Thutmose tried to put a spin on this one, but note the location. He wasn't doing battle with Joshua, but Canaanitesin rebellion, supported by Syrians, the king of Kadesh. The battle is recorded in several sources, from first hand accounts, including the temple walls at Karnak.

But I am digressing. Let's talk more about floods.

The most ancient direct accounts of an ancient flood and response with an Ark comes not from Israel or Egypt, but from Mesopotamia. And one of the most recent detailed discussions of this is "The Ark before Noah" by Irving Finkel. Mr. Finkel is an Assyrianologist who has spent his career at the British Museum translating Mesopotamian clay tablets, the curator in charge of cuneiform inscriptions. You should check out the account that he recently published from a cylinder disk dating from between 1900-1600 BC. Not necessarily the oldest account of the story, but certainly the most technically detailed. Significantly the animals collected for this round reed-constructed ark "two by two the boat did enter". While there are values and insights added in the Biblical account, one would have to conclude that the Noah story itself is derivative of this one.

I've got to go.

Kepler

2

1 Kings 6:31, Insight from archeology, other translations and the good ole NWT

by kepler in

call this a review of a recent article i noticed in the biblical archeological review, "the puzzling doorways of solomon's temple" by madeleine mumcuoglu and yosef garfinkel, bar july/august 2015, pp.

this is not something that i had been waiting with baited breath to find out about, but sometimes there is a serendipity effect when you are idly reading something over breakfast.. the authors, field archeologists working at the site khirbet qelyala in israel, based on evidence from their dig site, believe they have an explanation for a strange reference in 1 kings 6:31. essentially, according to many current translations,.

"the bible tells us that the doors of the inner shrine of solomon's temple had five mezuzot (singular mezuzah) [and] whatever they were the bible is not referring to the little parchment texts in a case on the doorposts of jewish houses that are called mezuzot.

kepler

Call this a review of a recent article I noticed in the Biblical Archeological Review, "The Puzzling Doorways of Solomon's Temple" by Madeleine Mumcuoglu and Yosef Garfinkel, BAR July/August 2015, pp. 35-41.

This is not something that I had been waiting with baited breath to find out about, but sometimes there is a serendipity effect when you are idly reading something over breakfast.

The authors, field archeologists working at the site Khirbet Qelyala in Israel, based on evidence from their dig site, believe they have an explanation for a strange reference in 1 Kings 6:31. Essentially, according to many current translations,

"The Bible tells us that the doors of the inner shrine of Solomon's Temple had five mezuzot (singular mezuzah) [and] whatever they were the Bible is not referring to the little parchment texts in a case on the doorposts of Jewish houses that are called mezuzot. The word mezuzah is often defined as doorposts."...

A few paragraphs down the authors note the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and Jewish Publication Society translation provide the same footnote to the sentence, describing the inner shrine gate with its 5 mezuzot: "Meaning of Hebrew uncertain."

To sum up the authors' findings, their excavations at the above site provided a subscale limestone model of a door with five recessed interlocking door frames. This could have been a model of the Solomon temple doorway or one of a similar building. In fact it appears that a number of doorways at shrines in the United Kingdom (Israel-Judah rather than Brits, etc.) displayed this feature - and there is a high likelihood that this is what the original Hebrew passage in 1 Kings is meant to convey. Yet somehow, even among distinguished Hebrew scholars, this has been a test of ingenuity to explain.

To illustrate the problem the authors provide us with translations from five widely read Biblical translations, four of which I am somewhat familiar with - and I will presume that all take line by line translation as a serious undertaking. So here goes:

New American Standard Bible:

"For the entrance of the inner sanctuary he made doors of olive wood, the lintel and 5-sided doorposts."

New American Bible:

At the entrance of the sanctuary, doors of olive wood were made, the doorframes had beveled doorposts."

New Jerusalem Bible:

He made the door of the Debir with uprights of wild olive wood and door jambs with 5 indented sections.

Jewish Publication Society Bible:

And for the entrance of the sanctuary he made doors of olive wood, the doorposts within the frame having five angles.

Keter Crown Bible:

For the entrance of the inner sanctuary he made olive wood doors with 5 sided door frames.

---

A couple of these look fairly close. "Five indented sections" from the NJB must have been a J. R. R. Tolkien insight, but I have a bias.

And I suppose other people do too.

But this inspired me to look at what was written under divine guidance in the NWT of the 1980s, the one that was perfect but has been recently improved. Are you ready?

New World Translation:

"And the entrance of the innermost room he made with doors of oil-tree wood: side pillars, door posts [and - the parentheses theirs, not mine] a fifth."

--------------

Beside the valiant attempt to explain what the 5 was all about and bracketing an "and" [waw] which may not have been there, I also noticed the reference to "oil-tree wood", I haven't studied much Hebrew, and I would probably obtain a faster explanation for what's going on there by pointing it to out to others who have rather than continuing my homework. But I have done some study of Semitic languages overall. Modern Arabic which has so many common elements in vocabulary and constructions with Hebrew. It think it has something to say about "olive" and "oil". To wit, you might just wonder if the writer of Popeye comic strips could have helped the 1984 Revision tea, that rendered this from the original languages.

In Arabic "oil" is "zayt".

In Arabic "olive oil" is "zayt zaytu:un". Oil of olive or olives, in other words. So in Hebrew, do you suppose....?

So what we actually had in the NWT were someone's incomplete notes in an effort toward that rendering.

Post script - so to speak:

Interesting to note as well, that in Jeremiah, 8:8, scribes are "secretaries" and in NT ( e.g., Luke 20:19) scribes are scribes, When I think of the NWT, I think of Jeremiah 8:8.

23

Bible Chronology, Egyptology and the Great Flood

by cappytan in

fact: bible chronology says the flood occurred between 2348 and 2370 bce, depending on which scholar you listen to.

fact: the great pyramid of giza was constructed 200 years before, in c. 2560 bce..

so, if you believe in a literal interpretation of noah's flood, you believe that the egyptians built a great civilization, were destroyed by the flood in 2370 bce, and then somehow, they reappeared immediately after the flood, picked right back up where they left off without skipping a cultural beat.. oh, and isn't it ironic that legitimately studying the great pyramid of giza debunks jw mythology now?

kepler

Easy way to resolve this controversy.

Take travelogue book about Egypt with good photos of Great Pyramids to Kingdom Hall.

Consult with Elder and ask him to point out the high water marks.

69

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III comments on Ireland legalization of gay marriage.

by cappytan in

jw
friends

#notsatire.

thanks to wifibandit and pixel for collaborating on this.

more to come.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxce4duetw8.

kepler

Secondly, if he had any misgivings about the results, then maybe he should have interjected himself into the controversy earlier. No doubt he would have had something Solomon like to say that would have clarified the issues at hand and clearly changed the outcome. The Roman Curia didn't like the outcome, true, and we knew where they stood.., but hey, .they don't get to marry either.

Anyway JWs in Ireland non-voted as a bloc under his direction... Show's what a deciding force they can be.

69

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III comments on Ireland legalization of gay marriage.

by cappytan in

jw
friends

#notsatire.

thanks to wifibandit and pixel for collaborating on this.

more to come.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxce4duetw8.

kepler

Not much on that first entry. But had to wonder:

What would his excellency have said at the podium if he had not brought along those notes torn from a binder tablet?

17

How EARLY CHURCH divisions destroyed HISTORY

by TerryWalstrom in

can history really be destroyed?.

would otherwise moral authorities participate in such destruction?.

can we believe there is accuracy in historical documents pertaining to the early christian church?.

kepler

Full Time Student:

"The right thing to do, then, is to avoid such people and to talk to them neither in private nor in public."

So (in modern terms) - do not talk to apostates !!! ( Is the GB reading Ignatius ???? ROFL)

Interesting parallel, but it still places the GB in a difficult position. Their claim is that nearly 1900 years and suddenly an invisible miracle happens. They become "bishops" and all the old rules apply to them.

I would cite Ignatius of Antioch that THEY (the GB) should not be talked to in private or public.

17

How EARLY CHURCH divisions destroyed HISTORY

by TerryWalstrom in

can history really be destroyed?.

would otherwise moral authorities participate in such destruction?.

can we believe there is accuracy in historical documents pertaining to the early christian church?.

kepler

Terry,

As you note: Enter our hero Papius ( episkopis or ‘bishop’) of Hierapolis,... "bishop" from 98-117 AD.

-----------

Odd, is it not, that the institution of bishop and the other institutional trappings of the church would be established so early? Especially, if we are called on to give more weight of one early bishop's recollections of the early days than that of others. I would say that his testimony is there, but there are other sources and developments that contradict what he is saying - which is about par for the course.

Under different circumstances, Carl Sagan once noted that decades ago drawing from the fact that Venus was hotter than Earth and it had heavy clouds, some concluded that was life under the clouds - and others went so far to say that it harbored dinosaurs. If you want to see where the dinosaurs come in, consider the inferences surrounding the possibility that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. No one's has a copy but it must have had "The Name".

Pappias was by no means the only victim of censorship. Most of the critics of what became orthodoxy we know of largely from not very kind summaries of other writers. But distinct from most of those who wrote voluminously, we have Pappias's own disregard for the word in print - rather his reliance on oral tradition. Since the testimony of Pappias is hearsay evidence, late in his life and what he claimed he had heard from others, then what we have is something like the accounts of children and grandchildren of people who were in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Their parents or their grandparents' neighbors saw or claimed... In each case we do not know how the information is filtered. Or for that matter, which oral traditions Pappias shifted to the top of the stack over others.

What if "their " oral tradition, the other bishops, contradicted that obtained from Pappias? And how do we know that it does or does not?

Pappias had contemporaries who were bishops and "church fathers" with similar or better credentials in matters of speaking of the early days. One of these with which Pappias can be contrasted is Ignatius Bishop of Antioch who wrote a number of letters (some spurious but others uncontested) that included his beliefs on theological matters and his views on Paul, Peter and John, not to mention Jesus. As to when he was born (35-50 AD) and died ( 98-118), the brackets are rubbery, yet they seem to indicate he was at least as close to the creation as Pappias.

16

Better Bible Translation?

by Sofia Lose in

which bible translation is the best, according to biblical scholars, anybody knows?

please chime in.. i plan on getting it and doing comparison with the new world translation.

sl.

kepler

Hi, folks. It's been a while ( several months) since I logged on last. Part of the reason was that the re-boot of the web site caught me unawares; partly due to other priorities.

But all the same, I do enjoy throwing around these ideas around the metaphorical campfire...

As to whether there is a best translation, I suspect that there are only qualified answers in the sense that certain translations give you certain perspectives, the best that the money and authority of the sponsors can buy. Wherever there is ambiguity, then the sponsors are going to argue in behalf of their perspective, especially if they have centuries of time invested in the outcome. We have our own biases in research, but that is the reason why we open up the book in the first place.

So given that, I would argue that rather than relying on one version of the Bible, it would be well worth looking at at least several differing translations with differing antecedents. Plus, the commentaries associated with the books.

Maybe this sounds daunting, but it seems a lot more interesting than simply relying on what one finds in a motel room Gideon next to the telephone book.

So having said that, let's consider:

If the Bible as a word is derived from the Greek biblia, which is plural of books, then what is the word or words used by the Jews in their ostensibly Hebrew truncated version known as the Old Testament? Hint, these days its an acronym based on three divisions of the books, which Christians seldom acknowledge or have shuffled for their own devisings.

Secondly, where do chapters and verses come from and how accurately do they represent the beginning and end of an "inerrant" text? How accurately are they placed in the first book to denote a first and second chapter? If a monk had denoted the story about Nephilim with a chapter between 5 and 6, would you think about it differently? Or would the story still leave entirely too much to conjecture? Perhaps with a better translation?...

Another issue is whether translation into the English language has rendered anything any clearer than efforts of native speakers of any other modern tongue (e.g., French, Greek, Italian, Arabic). In many cases the trail to the original text or meaning is confused by accounts in Hebrew centuries after the presumed event, much like the Iliad by "Homer". Aramaic chapters appear in Daniel and deuteron-canonical texts ( adhered to by Reformation documents ) are in Greek. Events in the New Testament with exceptions such as Christ on the cross crying out in Aramaic are all related in koine Greek...

Faced all with all these issues and remembering when I used to do the high school homework of translating Caesar, I could sympathize with the biblical translator. One could leave things in the literal mess my teacher found in my papers or one could be bolstered by an assumed meaning.

We assume inspiration in the Bible, or else we would all thrown it away. But can we assume universal inspiration in translation and transcription when the manuscripts are filled with disconnects and glosses?

And how about this one: Jeremiah 8:8.