Posts by kepler

18

Oh my God, I now have proof that Adam was made from dust.

by James Mixon in

bro.

e. soriano set matters straight for me.. you people alleged that the creation of adam is an "anti-scientific nonsense; and god did not.

create adam from a handful of dust, like the bible says, (ok maybe a bucket full).

kepler

OK.... So what was going on in chapter one around verse 26. The poetic description in the first chapter sounds more scientific than the prosaic one in the next. And by the way, how big is God's hand?

14

What did early Christians believe about the dead?

by fulltimestudent in

as witnesses we were truly convinced that we knew the truth about the dead.

they were truly dead, and we often quoted ecclesiastes 9:4-6, our favourite proof text on that topic, to prove the point.

that text reads (just in case you've already forgotten it - smile), (from the niv):.

Without saying specifically what was the consensus back at the BC-AD transition, I've noticed in reading Josephus that there were both adherents to an afterlife and not among the three communities he mentions: the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. Judea was surrounded by civilizations that differed on this matter too. The Mesopotamian valley peoples such as Sumerians and early Assyrians thought of man as mortal. The Egyptians were obviously obsessed with the after life. Persians had a view about the after life - and about the battle of good and evil - Zoroastrianism. And the Greeks offered Platonism and a host of other philosophies that included after-lifes. Some offered resurrection; others, not.

All of these civilizations over ran or influenced Judea.

A hung jury was the status when Christianity arrived on the scene. It was influenced, but made some calls of its own.

34

Hebrew Was The First Language

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

according to the newest watchtower:.

jehovah communicated with adam in the garden of eden, using human language.

god likely did so in an ancient form of hebrew.

kepler

Yeah, so aside from claiming that Adam read Haaretz over his morning cup of coffee, ...

I'm not a linguist and I don't play one on TV, but now and then I do study languages. I am aware that Hebrew is a Semitic language and that makes it a relative of other languages in the area with civilizations that came on the scene millennia before anything was derived from Abraham's covenants or migrations. Egyptian was not Semitic. It's got more in common with present day Coptic. But many of the peoples of Mesopotamian were. If you study Babylonian, you see a lot of cognates. Ditto with Arabic, though what it was doing before Islam is not clear to me. Sumerian was not Semitic, however, and it precedes in cuneiform tablets much of the later Mesopotamian writings. We have grammars of Sumerian contributed from Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets. So that gives us two languages that really crowd the fundamentalist's clock. The trouble with Hebrew is that it looks like it was borrowed or derived from what Canaanite peoples were speaking. Writings in the Bible, it is difficult to determine how old the original stories are, but when they are submitted to writing, they become dated by many of the anachronisms they include when describing events that supposedly occurred earlier. Camel caravans in Genesis, for example, is an anachronism. They arrived with Assyrian conquests. The Hebrew calendar borrows from Babylon ( rather than the Egyptian which is solar) and the months sound much the same, almost with as much affinity as the Arabic calendar does to the Hebrew.

These are not conclusive arguments that Hebrew isn't the oldest language, but arguments I would counter to such claims.

Another, speaking of Australia, as we have been so much of late, is what did aboriginal people of Australia speak? There is not a single reference to Australia in the Bible and yet cultures in New Guinea and Australia date back tens of thousands of years. ... I guess these societies must have been talking in original Hebrew and had never realized until the WT authorities helpfully pointed it out.

34

Hebrew Was The First Language

by Bloody Hotdogs! in

according to the newest watchtower:.

jehovah communicated with adam in the garden of eden, using human language.

god likely did so in an ancient form of hebrew.

kepler

Usually the old saw is that you can't make s**t like this up, so it has to be true story.

But actually quite the opposite. Some group has to sit down and make this stuff up and decide to write an article about it.

And under whose direction is this concoction dreamed up and set in print?

Why the governing board member in charge of writing, that friend of letters that dropped out of school at 15 to spread the WORD.

I wonder how much lead time there was on this article? How much review was there?

If he had been asked by the Royal Commission whether Hebrew was the original language from the Garden of Eden, would he have suggested that that claim might have been "presumptuous" too?

22

What Qualifications does Geoffrey Jackson have as a Translator of the Bible ? In any Capacity ?

by smiddy in

geoffrey jackson left school at the age of 15 and began pioneering , he never attended a university ,never studied ancient greek ,hebrew or aramaic at any recognized teaching academy , he has no certificates or credentials / qualifications from any place of learning that is approved by a competent body of religious instruction .. and by his own words at the australian royal commission , under oath he stated that was his primary role as a translator of scripture into other languages .. a 15 year old drop out from school in australia is the chief/ prime translator of the bible for jehovah`s witnesses world wide in their many languages that they preach in .. it would be very interesting to see his report cards for those few years he did attend school .. is it just me , or does anybody else see that his qualifications don`t come up to scratch to be a translator of the old testament or the new testament scriptures , and be taken seriously as a translator of either , into any language.. if i am wrong anywhere in this post feel free to correct me .. smiddy.

kepler

Raised the same question elsewhere. He's been involved with some translation from English to Micronesian tongues, OK. But about Hebrew or Greek to English? His arguments on stand reminded me of Humpty Dumpty.

"The words mean whatever I say they mean."

Years ago, cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo ( a talking Possum living in a Florida swamp) and a disciple of Tenniel, caricatured J. Edgar Hoover as a bulldog with the FBI chief's face. In a small box he kept trained spider that infiltrated into books serving as asterisks. ( Did I see something about asterisks in the RC transcripts?).

J. Edgar in the cartoon said pretty much the same as Jackson. "He who controls the asterisks controls the meaning of the word."

And you could look at WatchTower as one of the world's biggest manufacturers of asterisks.

One of Pogo's friends observed, "Hey, I thought spiders had 6-legs!"

"Yes," reflected J. Edgar, "that was two too many...."

10

SOLA SCRIPTURA VS THE MAGISTERIUM

by Nicholaus Kopernicus in

the reinvention of the magisterium.

in catholicism, the magisterium is the authority that lays down what is the authentic teaching of the church.

for the catholic church, that authority is vested uniquely in...... a) the pope and.

kepler

Nicolaus K., Half Banana,

Want to thank you for starting and contributing to such a great topic. And nice book by the way back when, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. I know a guy who used to swear by it. namely...

Since I'm on short break, wish there was more time to reflect on this topic. But what time and inspiration allows:

Some of this is fresh from reading an account of the Reformation; other points from events leading to this forum.

1. Outside of JW-land, Magisterium vs. Sola Scripta sounds like a simple dichotomy; but I suspect that only narrow sects or sectors of Christianity adhere to it these days in pure form. Even during the Reformation when armies rallied to the latter, the leaders of the movement such as Luther and Calvin took exception to many doctrines. Both Luther and Calvin clearly had reservations about Revelations. The former questioned its validity in an introduction to his German NT and Calvin, a graphomaniac when it came to Biblical book commentaries, provides us with not a single word on the same. Both seemed to think they were living in the last days - and couldn't agree with each other on fundamentals. Even more: with the given shared assumption, they seemed to distrust the principal bearer of such message.

2,The Magisterium doctrine - perhaps - might have come out of a church history of "been there and done that". Athanasius of Alexander in the late 3rd century was one of the first proponents of a unified scriptural canon, Old and New and the ratification awaited another century in general councils of bishops in Asia Minor, not the Goth over run west. Most of the western church's philosophy came through the filter of Latin speaking Augustine. And when it came to Bible, he was straining with some of the same inconsistencies that trouble anyone who takes an analytical approach about it today. For one, he couldn't figure out how Methuselah fit Flood chronology. (He was probably aware that Eusebius couldn't get ancient histories of the world to match from one language collection to another). And at one point he just gave up and said that if pagan observers of nature could counter the "physics"and origins derived from scripture - accept it.

3.Can you see where I am going with this? The catholic church of antiquity was not interested in sending martyrs to be broken on a wheel over whether or not Joshua had an extra day of daylight from a fixed sun. On the other hand, a political trial of Galileo a millennium or more could involve submitting such evidence for heresy to contain a public nuisance. Meanwhile, Jesuits occupied themselves with pursuits telescopes charting a Copernican system no matter what the trial outcome was.

But you can imagine how Galileo and Copernicans stood with the Sola Scripta group at the time. They had even less interest, no contribution to the study and had no need to bother with a trial.

4.The Magisterium principle does provide an exit for an untenable situation. Inerrancy is obviously wrong if you can identify explicit internal contradictions or contradiction of observable facts. Authorship and origin is another problem. But yet if every book of the Bible were subjected to strict scientific and historical scrutiny, we might have an effect like a raccoom washing a lump of sugar in a creek.

5. This is all the heritage that we have. And we have to make of it what we can. And part of that is what are we going to do on Earth or in life after the birth and passage of Jesus Christ. The modern era Catholic Church would have us concentrate more on Matthew 25 vs. Matthew 24. Its liberation theologists in Latin America would have us address the inequities of rich and poor, miscarriage of justice... That's where there Magisterium seems to be headed after some moral and philosophical train wrecks.

10

PM to Geoffrey Jackson ( with cc-s): Read the NWT, especially Judges Chapter 4 vs. 1-20 or so

by kepler in

dear sir: .

regarding your recent testimony in australia on the nature of judges and elders in scriptures being male:.

read judges 4, and if you can hang on, chapter 5. it is with regard to a judge who succeeded ehud and performed similar services.

kepler

Also:

I would assume that somehow Mr. Jackson became quite fluent in languages of peoples in the South Pacific.

But in the course of defending his view of interpretation of Old and New Testament original texts, did he give a single piece of linguistic evidence by discussing the meaning of a specific Greek or Hebrew word? Did he explain how they were used in a text?

10

PM to Geoffrey Jackson ( with cc-s): Read the NWT, especially Judges Chapter 4 vs. 1-20 or so

by kepler in

dear sir: .

regarding your recent testimony in australia on the nature of judges and elders in scriptures being male:.

read judges 4, and if you can hang on, chapter 5. it is with regard to a judge who succeeded ehud and performed similar services.

kepler

Sir82,

I think you're right.

But I did neglect to mention the very important point that Angus Stewart et al brought up:

Mr. Jackson claims his appointment to the governing board is in accordance with a tradition originating with the early church congregation appointing elders.

Q. Do correct me, Mr Jackson, if I misunderstand this,

29 but this does seem to me to suggest, in the use of the

30 words "brothers select for yourselves seven reputable men",

31 that a broader congregation of believers would make the

32 selection, rather than the seven themselves?

Mr. Jackson, of course, retorted to this:

33 A. Well, this is one of the difficulties we have when

34 a secular Commission is trying to analyse a religious

35 subject. I humbly would like to mention that point. Our

36 understanding of the scriptures is these ones were

37 appointed by means of the apostles. Your point is well

38 taken. Let's assume, hypothetically, that others selected

39 these seven men, but it was at the direction of the

40 apostles.

If anyone listening to that video thinks he Jackson got off the hook with that explanation ( contemplating him and his associates)... well, indoctrination just does wonders.

Maybe he could explain the parenthetical nature of the eight or twelve GB members as well?

As close to an actual explanation I ever found was Fred Franz appointing his nephew...

10

PM to Geoffrey Jackson ( with cc-s): Read the NWT, especially Judges Chapter 4 vs. 1-20 or so

by kepler in

dear sir: .

regarding your recent testimony in australia on the nature of judges and elders in scriptures being male:.

read judges 4, and if you can hang on, chapter 5. it is with regard to a judge who succeeded ehud and performed similar services.

kepler

Thanks, Millie210.

I just want to keep up the pressure. Some people sound discouraged, figuring that the show is all over. But if we say it isn't over, then it's not.

A lot might depend on whether Jackson is called again to testify. If Jackson hadn't been given an open podium where he could instruct the panel and the rest of us, then he might have been much more defensive and laconic.

As for myself, if I had met the man socially without knowing he was a member of the governing board, I think his tales of life in Tasmania or the South Seas at the end of the 20th century would have been very interesting...

But that is not what this situation is all about. He was testifying as someone in charge of a very reprehensible set of operating procedures, procedures that allowed terrible abuses of women and children or most anyone who turned to KH for refuge or help. It has been going on for decades mirroring much of what it has criticized in other religious groups .

I have my own reasons to be alienated by the JW organization, discussed in other threads, but my own experience with the JW movement did not turn on this particular issue. So those who have more direct knowledge of these abuses I defer to their judgment on how to treat the matter.

Still, my interjection is that people on this forum or JWs in general should not be cowed by this man based on all this drum beat about FDS and governing board. The man's evasions, contradictions, and insistences reveals he and the rest of the magnificent 7 have feet of clay.

Your question about scholars and what they think about Deborah taps into that wider issue of what you or I or any other reader might think can be drawn from a reading of the Bible. In the case of Deborah, since I brought it up, for me it was a matter of memory more than an absolute conviction of some sort about who was a judge and who was not. Several books I have read seeking insight into the Bible have commented on Deborah, not so much dwelling on whether or not she was a judge, but noting that the Song of Deborah could be the oldest original writing contained in the Bible.

Now that idea might be controversial in and of itself from one religious group to another, depending on how the Bible is perceived. Unfortunately we do not have analogs to carbon dating for the Bible, but we can see varying stylistic forms. Looking at the Deborah episode in Judges and being aware of a "documentary hypothesis", I can for myself note a recurring chronicler convention in Judges, speaking of "the Israelites did what is evil in Yahweh's eyes"...Chapters 3 and 4 begin with such words, but chapter 5 is simply a song about Deborah. Then chapter 6 goes back to the same convention that is used in the book of Kings to describe many of them, in totality or particular deed... I don't think this expression shows up in the Pentetuch. It was more like "Yahweh saw that wickedness was great on the earth" Gen 6:5. or "God saw that it was good." Gen 1:22. Just clues of many writers and editors, sometimes in the same books.

Judges has a style similar to Kings, true enough; but whatever the level of historicity Kings might have, one would have to say that Judges does not share it. If one were to take the stories and chapters as sequential in Judges, as we are led to believe, it would be several hundred years. It results in great discrepancies with events going on with sources written in stone in Egypt, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. More likely the events described, if they happened at all proceeded in parallel.

According to the editor of the Jewish Study Bible ( "How to Read the Jewish Bible - Marc Brettler - Oxford Press), the title "shofetim" is translated as judges, but this is something of a "misnomer" since the principals acted more like chieftains, local or tribal leaders responding to crises, often leading their tribes to battle.

Nothing said about Deborah at all, though he translates from the Hebrew thus:

"Deborah, wife of Lappidoth, was a prophetess; she led Israel at this time. She used to to sit under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites would come to her for decisions"

Brettler's translation actually obscures the matter more than the NWT does; but it is unavoidable. It's just that Jackson's documentation puts him out on a much longer limb considering what he is now trying to say.

Chapter 5 verse 15 from the Song: "And Issachar's chiefs were with Deborah..." It appears to me that Deborah did not strike the Canaanite king dead in the tent, but rather another woman named Jael after Sisera fled from fixed battle to her tent. But Deborah led troops into the fray.

10

PM to Geoffrey Jackson ( with cc-s): Read the NWT, especially Judges Chapter 4 vs. 1-20 or so

by kepler in

dear sir: .

regarding your recent testimony in australia on the nature of judges and elders in scriptures being male:.

read judges 4, and if you can hang on, chapter 5. it is with regard to a judge who succeeded ehud and performed similar services.

kepler

Millie210,

I think we are in agreement about that ( they do not consider her a judge, no matter what), but that does not mean anyone should make any concessions to them on that. Mr. Jackson presented himself as a member of the governing board, head of the writing committee. He SHOULD have expertise in such Biblical matters - and he cited certain parts of the Bible ( Acts, Deuteronomy and Timothy ) to support his view, presenting the Bible as a Constitutional document.

OK, then let's look at it structurally. The Hebrew Scriptures as the WT likes to refer to the Old Testament, is referred to as the TaNaKh, an abbreviation that refers to Law, Prophets and Writings. Law is Torah, the first 5 books through Deuteronomy. Prophets (Nevi'im) begins with Joshua and proceeds to Judges, Samuel I & II, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the minor prophets. Daniel is in Writings, Kethuvim. But back to Prophets and Judges.

The book of Judges divides into chapters and describes the reigns and activities of Judges.

Admittedly, some translations of Judges try to obscure Deborah's role more than others, but the NWT of 1984 did not have the foresight to do so. It's pretty clear that in Chapter 3 Othniel and Ehud are judges. Same with Samgar. As much as they were judges they were warriors. In chapter 4, the story of Deborah is structurally the same and gives much more evidence that Deborah was a judge than it does that Shamgar was. "She judged Israel", they awaited her judgments. She led rebellion against Sisera and did him in much the same way that Ehud dispatched Eglon, make what you want of it, assassinations or executions.

But the notion that Mr. Jackson as a governing board member, or the governing board itself, can declare that she was something else than what she was in the text, why should anyone play that game. If one were to believe that the Bible is everything Mr. Jackson claims it is, then one would have to take the prima facie evidence that it presents rather than his claims about it or third party interpretations.

The result of accepting his claims is acceptance of a system that hides abusers, shuns their accusers and denies women of all ages any representation in councils studying these matters the presence, voice or judgment of women who might be sympathetic or understanding of their situation.

Should I even get started on Jackson's constitutional concept of the Bible? HIs cherry picking approach is what WatchTowerism is all about. As structured above, it appears to be more like Common Law with precedents and re-interpretations since Mr. Jackson has not cited the Bible or Hebrew Scripture as a basis for prohibiting the consumption of pork. Nor has he offered us a definition of prophet vs. judge, save that judges have to be male...

That's where I see the Lewis Carroll Humpty Dumpty aspect of conversations with WT authorities.

If there is no intent to reform on any of the vital matters, the simple solution is to reject their authority. Instead, I see many still trying to rationalize the system of faithful and discreet slaves with 3-piece suits and (yes) Apple watches.