Posts by kepler

20

It's easy to gloat about WTS problems ...

by Simon in

jw
friends

.. and fun too !

:d. what?

were you expecting a "but"?

kepler

Thanks to that photo with the gang up there, I can now visualize that favorite JW publication term:

FRUITAGE

Do you suppose the choir director is the guy really running the show?

4

If there are 4 Gospels, then why only 1 book of Revelations

by kepler in

one can picture authors with agents submitting canonical manuscripts to a publishing house.

but who is the house?.

how about "athanasius press"?.

kepler

One can picture authors with agents submitting canonical manuscripts to a publishing house. But who is the House?

How about "Athanasius Press"?

Then you get re-issues of the anthologies. Especially in the 16th century. And finally a statement on what is canonical, about the same time Bibles were wielded by the laymen like the cross would be wielded against vampires in horror movies. Odd?

Then along came the re-issues and anthologies.

I notice the more adamant people are about inerrancy, the fewer loose ends and "deutero-canonical" segments are included. I mean, suppose Daniel chapter 14 were included connecting Daniel to Cyrus... Or one could read Maccabees and wonder if Nebuchadnezzar might not have been comparable to Antiochus... Would one suppose that apocalyptic (and inerrant) speculations might be a little overblown?

27

For me the worst thing is not having a helper anymore

by John Aquila in

one of the things that gave me confidence in life was that i believed i had the almighty creator/god watching over me, directing me, guiding my every step, protecting me from harm, and answering my prayers.

i now know that is not the case anymore.

i finally stopped praying.

kepler

I think one of the most damaging things about an organization like the WT is the after tase it leaves in the mouths, minds and soul of those who were caught in its path.

In this forum I usually come down with the rationalist side - looking at Biblical texts from a different point of view.

And since the effect of the WT was to tear up things in my life because of the people it influenced, I have to say that I never believed in what it said. I was just brought up on grounds where its seeds wouldn't grow. It was not something I had any demonstrable control over as a child or adolescent - it was circumstances.

But I can't buy the idea that prayer is useless or that no one or nothing hears.

I don't believe that if the WatchTower falls, so does God or Jesus or anyone else who stood for what was decent.

If we don't have an afterlife, I disagree with Dostoevski. I believe that integrity is not meaningless and that we should conduct our lives as if there were. I can't think or understand any better choice.

Our parents, our friends and those that cared about us, but we did not care about while they lived or never knew, somehow perhaps they are watching over us. While Protestantism "protested" because Catholic authorities seemed to dangle the fate of the dead in their hands with the notion of indulgences, the movement got it wrong thereafter. Those that are dead and alive, their fates are still mingled, I believe. And if that is true, it is because of a creator and purpose. Our purpose is to leave this campsite in better shape than we found it. To do so, sometimes a few moments of prayer and reflection are required.

No, a lot of moments. And don't give up.

21

A problem with the book of Daniel

by wozza in

left the wts some years ago, but just before i left we were studying the daniel book that they produced in the book study .. i noticed something wrong in the bible account of daniel and brought this up at the end of the study when the conductor asked if everyone understood that nights study,.

i think i may have started a topic here some years ago about this event ,it was a time when i started to question the wts in my heart and mind.the scriptures are lengthy so i will just shorten things by describing the stories in daniel and how one point really got me thinking about things and perhaps made the brothers wierd out about me sand distance themselves ,here it is..........dan ch 1-4. daniels ( who came to be called belteshazzar)in babylon along with shadrach,meshach & abednego ,daniel,after praying with these 3, interprets and states what nebuchadnezzars dream is( we all know this ,the image with the head of gold body of iron and copper etc) and they are rewarded by being positions of authority.

daniel made ruler of the province and chief prefect over babylons wise men ,the 3 were made overseers of the administation of the province ,all very important jobs ,.

kepler

Thank you, Caleb. This is an interesting subject. I am glad that families who lost so much in Spain have been invited to return with some recompense. But as to the question of how or when they arrived, I still have to wonder.

It seems like plenty of more likely opportunity in subsequent centuries. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Phoenician cities, but I don't see how he inherited regions that ended up as part of the Carthaginian Empire. Very murky part of history.

21

A problem with the book of Daniel

by wozza in

left the wts some years ago, but just before i left we were studying the daniel book that they produced in the book study .. i noticed something wrong in the bible account of daniel and brought this up at the end of the study when the conductor asked if everyone understood that nights study,.

i think i may have started a topic here some years ago about this event ,it was a time when i started to question the wts in my heart and mind.the scriptures are lengthy so i will just shorten things by describing the stories in daniel and how one point really got me thinking about things and perhaps made the brothers wierd out about me sand distance themselves ,here it is..........dan ch 1-4. daniels ( who came to be called belteshazzar)in babylon along with shadrach,meshach & abednego ,daniel,after praying with these 3, interprets and states what nebuchadnezzars dream is( we all know this ,the image with the head of gold body of iron and copper etc) and they are rewarded by being positions of authority.

daniel made ruler of the province and chief prefect over babylons wise men ,the 3 were made overseers of the administation of the province ,all very important jobs ,.

kepler

Caleb,

I know this is a little off topic, but I can't help being curious about the assertion of a Hebrew community in Spain since the 6th century or so BC, connected with a Diaspora induced by Mesopotamians ( Assyrians or Babylonians).

How were they supposed to have reached there? Via Tyre or some other Phoenician trade route? What's the evidence?

Granted the community got there somehow between "then" and 1492, but more obvious routes would be via the Roman and Islamic civilizations that arose in the meantime.

Kepler

21

A problem with the book of Daniel

by wozza in

left the wts some years ago, but just before i left we were studying the daniel book that they produced in the book study .. i noticed something wrong in the bible account of daniel and brought this up at the end of the study when the conductor asked if everyone understood that nights study,.

i think i may have started a topic here some years ago about this event ,it was a time when i started to question the wts in my heart and mind.the scriptures are lengthy so i will just shorten things by describing the stories in daniel and how one point really got me thinking about things and perhaps made the brothers wierd out about me sand distance themselves ,here it is..........dan ch 1-4. daniels ( who came to be called belteshazzar)in babylon along with shadrach,meshach & abednego ,daniel,after praying with these 3, interprets and states what nebuchadnezzars dream is( we all know this ,the image with the head of gold body of iron and copper etc) and they are rewarded by being positions of authority.

daniel made ruler of the province and chief prefect over babylons wise men ,the 3 were made overseers of the administation of the province ,all very important jobs ,.

kepler

Sorry. Did I say 480 BC? Top of my head and on my way out the door. It was 490 BC.

But here's the thing, in Belshazzar's feast Daniel is summoned to interpret the dream of the supposed son of Nebuchadnezzar on the eve of the fall of Babylon to the Persians and Medes. Nebuchadnezzar's son was not reigning or acting as regent at the time. Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus the king who was off in Arabia most of the time doing cultural anthropology. And should Daniel have been doing any prophesying to Belshazzar - whatever his genealogy, he should have been quoting Isaiah, right? According to the fundamentalists Isaiah predicted Cyrus the Persian would take the city.

Cyrus is identified in Daniel - but in chapter 14, the Bel and the Dragon episode included in the Septuagint. It's a polemic against idolatry and introduces Daniel as a mystery solver in the court of Cyrus, figuring out how an idol consumes its offerings in the middle of the night. But it's no longer included in many Protestant Bible editions - too embarrassing, I guess.

14:1 "When King Astyages joined his ancestors, Cyrus of Persia succeeded him. Daniel was very close to the king who respected him more than any of his other friends."

But then in chapter 9 we start with, "It was the first year of Darius son of Artaxerxes, a Mede by race who assumed the throne of Chaldea..." Artaxerxes is the father of Darius II. Darius III got slain by Alexander the Great. None of them were Medes - except in the eyes of 5th century Greek historians.

It would appear that Daniel was supposed to have been captured in the late 7th century, judging by the text of chapter one - and then sent to Babylonian priest school. Surprisingly we learn little about what Babylonian priests do - which is record the positions of planets and stars. But we sure get word that they are supposed to interpret dreams of kings. Are we sure? When did formal astrology get underway - and what evidence is there?

But for some reason we are supposed to believe that Daniel had the same gifts in that regard as did Joseph in Genesis. Coincidence? Awful lot of chapter one is about resistance to Gentile eating habits - but evidently NOT to Gentile priestly training. Go figure. What's more, Daniel is so good at what he does, Nebuchadnezzar promotes him and compliments the God whom he serves - and turns around and destroys the First Temple anyway.

And that would make Daniel one of his first ministers during the occupation and captivity.

When the ceremony of the idol proceeds in chapter 3, Nebuchadnezzar calls out for "satraps, magistrates, governors, counsellors, treasurers, judges..." He starts the list with satraps, a Persian convention, set up by Cyrus. Though Chapter 6 of Daniel gives credit to Darius ( the Mede) to appoint 120. This chapter seems to begin in mid sentence with Chapter 5 trailing off about Darius the Mede receiving the kingdom at age of 62...

I encountered these stories as a child and was very confused. But once someone alerted to me that they were probably composed during the time of the Maccabees, a lot of things began to fall into place. I noted that some claim that Darius the Mede is unknown to history. Well, I discovered for myself when reading Thucydides that this is not true. Thucydides calls the invading Persians "Medes" about 50 times in his account of the later Peloponnesian Wars between Sparta and Athens.

It also strikes me that not just the JW translation team likes to obscure this matter. I would say that were it not for Daniel, most of the tele-evangelizers that clog US airwaves would have little or nothing to say.

21

A problem with the book of Daniel

by wozza in

left the wts some years ago, but just before i left we were studying the daniel book that they produced in the book study .. i noticed something wrong in the bible account of daniel and brought this up at the end of the study when the conductor asked if everyone understood that nights study,.

i think i may have started a topic here some years ago about this event ,it was a time when i started to question the wts in my heart and mind.the scriptures are lengthy so i will just shorten things by describing the stories in daniel and how one point really got me thinking about things and perhaps made the brothers wierd out about me sand distance themselves ,here it is..........dan ch 1-4. daniels ( who came to be called belteshazzar)in babylon along with shadrach,meshach & abednego ,daniel,after praying with these 3, interprets and states what nebuchadnezzars dream is( we all know this ,the image with the head of gold body of iron and copper etc) and they are rewarded by being positions of authority.

daniel made ruler of the province and chief prefect over babylons wise men ,the 3 were made overseers of the administation of the province ,all very important jobs ,.

kepler

Wozza,

Daniel is filled with anachronisms. Hence, if it can't keep its "present" or "past" straight, it can't be predicting anything about the future. Wrote a lot about it on this forum.

In a nutshell, Darius the Mede is the same king that Thucydides reports the Athenians defeated at the battle of Marathon. He called him a Mede too. Trouble was, the year was 480 BC.

Nebuchadnezzar didn't have satraps - Persians did. Etc. A semi Hellenized Jew in the time of the Maccabees wrote most of this stuff talking about an occupation as severe as Nebuchadnezzar's or worse.

In the Hebrew TaNaKh, Daniel is in the Writings, not the Prophets.

That's all the time I've got right now.

Kepler

22

Inspiration, inscripturation

by Doug Mason in

the apostle paul stated at 2 timothy 3:16: all scripture is inspired of god.

the phrase inspired of god translates the compound greek word theopneustos, meaning, literally, god-breathed or breathed by god.

this is the only occurrence of this greek term in the scriptures.

kepler

Great summaries and commentaries!

27

New light!, says JW-Archive. The inspired word can have mistranslations, says Dec 2015 WT

by StarTrekAngel in

sorry, i know i posted this earlier but i believe the title did not gather enough attention.

i think is a topic worth discussing.. http://www.jw-archive.org/post/127866869178/new-light-the-inspired-word-of-god-can.

kepler

Doug Mason,

You've provided some interesting background on text origins and variations already, but I hope that you might share a few more observations. I started looking at some Dead Sea scroll summaries, but didn't get very far. One of the things I wondered about was what a document like the Isaiah scroll might show us: i.e., how it might differ from the Masoretic texts that were compiled later on. Did the Isaiah scroll say much the same in Hebrew as what the Septuagint did? Or is it different?

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?