Still not a single woman around. But I bet they are lurking.
As George Carlin said, "Urinals are 50% universal."
Robert Frazier
take the first annual, choose-a-urinal challenge!
men should ace this test (or suffer the wrath of men everywhere)... women are on their own.
but, there is a code of the rest room that must be followed.
Still not a single woman around. But I bet they are lurking.
As George Carlin said, "Urinals are 50% universal."
Robert Frazier
maybe this is just my observation but.... with the exception of crimal offenses, is not disfellowshiping by the wts unconstitutional?
at the very least they violate the right to freedom of speech.
(i know about the separation of church and state...).
Doesn't violate the constitution anymore than letting an employee go or kicking a member out of a club for infringement of rules. As far as i can see.
Sadly, I think you're right. In court, the obvious question would be, "What real power does the WBTS have to make people refuse to associate with ex-members?" Without the willing participation in shunning by the rank and file, the whole sick practice would collapse. Easy to say from the outside, I know. The JW's really believe they have to go along with this policy. It can't be easy to imagine being the one to stand up and refuse to play along. The normal human instinct is to go along to get along. Remember the TV show "Candid Camera"? Alan Funt was once interviewed by Psychology Today about what he learned from doing the show. He said the biggest surprise to him was how very willing people are to obey authority -- any authority, no matter how outrageous the demand or how little proof was given of the reality of the "authority". For example, they once set up a roadblock on a country road at the state line. They put two men in state trooper suits (no badges, of course) and had them turn motorists around by saying, "Sorry, the state of Tennesee is closed today." Nobody questioned how a state could be closed down, or asked to see their badges. They just turned around, cursing their bad timing.
Spooky.
Robert Frazier
take the first annual, choose-a-urinal challenge!
men should ace this test (or suffer the wrath of men everywhere)... women are on their own.
but, there is a code of the rest room that must be followed.
And don't forget, the entire urinal must be hosed down before attempting to disintegrate the cigarette butts at the bottom. If any survive, go load up on the diuretic of your choice (iced tea or beer) and return to finish them off.
Robert Frazier
I'll take sloppy seconds! This guy is too perfect. The ultimate mascot for WBTS paranoia. "Oh, Jehovah! Those persons over there have Bibles! And they are not part of US!"
Robert Frazier
as the text containing alpha and omega in revelation 1:11 has no uncial support or any manuscripts prior to the ninth century it clearly lacks authority and that is why it is not included in most recent translations including the nwt.
the textual support available then was primarily two rather inferior manuscripts in the university library at basle, both dating from about the twelfth century, as well as the singular incomplete manuscript of revelation mentioned in my previous post.
earnest.
Thanks for keeping me honest.
No problem, and thank you for your honesty and candor. There are two sides to this issue, and it's important to hear both sides out before reaching a conclusion. Thanks for listening.
Robert Frazier
some historians date the beginning of the end of the soviet empire to the chernobyl disaster, for the reason that for several days after the explosion, as the radioactive cloud floated quietly over europe, the soviet government said nothing to warn people of the dangers that may have minimized some of the exposure.
it ruined their credibility, from which they never recovered.
presently, the whole capitalist system has an even worse credibility problem.
"There are in fact numerous prophecies that speak to this very test that God has arranged, which I am not at liberty to speak about presently, except in generalities."
Ooooooooooooooohh! Good thing anybody can read the Bible without your help, then, since you're not at liberty to tell us what it says.
You are so full of yourself, or you would be if the rose fertilizer left any room.
Robert Frazier
Edited by - robert_v_frazier on 26 June 2002 10:18:4
22. if the holy spirit is god's impersonal active force, how could he: be referred to as "he" and "him" in jn 16:7- 8 and jn 16:13-14; bear witness (jn 15:26); feel hurt (isa 63:10); be blasphemed against (mk 3:29); say things (ezek 3:24, acts 8:29, 10:19, 11:12, and heb 10:15-17): desire (gal 5:17); be outraged (heb 10:29); search (i cor 2:10); comfort (acts 9:31); be loved (rom 15:30); be lied to and be god (acts 5:3-4)?.
how can this be since if jesus had been created by god, then he would have been with god when everything else was created?
why is the word "other" inserted?
My copy of the New English Bible reads "and what God was, the Word was."
This translation is no paraphrase except in the sense that every intelligent translation is a paraphrase. And it is most certainly in regular use in Christian churches, as you would expect considering its provenance.
It's debatable whether this translation of John 1:1c is a paraphrase, or just an extreme dynamic equivalence. It's certainly not a literal translation, but I would argue that it's more accurate than the literal "and the Word was God."
The meaning of this verse has been discussed ad nauseam on other threads so I just wish to limit this to suggest you are mistaken.
I don't agree, but if it makes you happier, I'll amend my original statement to "Nearly all of the translations that are in regular use in Christian churches (again, excepting paraphrases) read that way." Better? Also, I don't know about in Britain, but in America that translation is almost never used. The Bibles that are used in church services and quoted from in christian books and magazines are the KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV, RSV, NRSV, and NLB (not sorted in any particular order). All others combined wouldn't make up 1% of the actual usage of the Bible in public.
Quite clearly, to say "what God was, the Word was" is not the same as saying "the Word was God".
Actually, it is saying the same thing. Both phrases mean "the Word was God, the one and only true God, with the emphasis on WHAT the Word was, not on WHO the Word was". As I said earlier.
If it was then the translators would not have changed it.
They "changed it" to make the meaning clearer -- the Trinitarian meaning, that is. Not to make it more literal.
In fact it is more akin to saying "the Word was a God". Now where have I read that before?
It's not akin to that at all. You have simply misunderstood it. Probably due to doctrinal bias caused by bad teachers.
Robert Frazier
as the text containing alpha and omega in revelation 1:11 has no uncial support or any manuscripts prior to the ninth century it clearly lacks authority and that is why it is not included in most recent translations including the nwt.
the textual support available then was primarily two rather inferior manuscripts in the university library at basle, both dating from about the twelfth century, as well as the singular incomplete manuscript of revelation mentioned in my previous post.
earnest.
Rev, please do some homework. You have many facts wrong, and it's not helping your credibility.
All that other humeral about who had to rush to beat whom to press is a bunch of irrelevant harrumph!
No, it's not. Erasmus' first edition was full of errors because it was so rushed (by his own admission, corroborated by many others), and many of these errors were never corrected in any of the TR editions that followed.
The usual motive of writers who spend so much time deriding the TR which, by the way, was NOT derived from Erasmus' work but rather from Robert (Stephanus) Stephen's Elzevir Edition text is to suggest that somehow Bibles produced prior to the "Age of Enlightenment" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were products of some sort of heresy.
All editions of the TR, Stephanus' and the Elzevirs', were based very closely on one edition or another of Erasmus. Errors included. Nobody is suggesting that the TR is heretical, or that the men who edited the various TR's were heretics. Although Erasmus was an active Roman Catholic all his life. The motive of all textual critics is to get to the original text. Pure and simple. This is true of Erasmus, Tichendorf, Westcott, Hort, and the Trinitarian Bible Society. At least, it should be the motive of the Trinitarian Bible Society; I sometimes think their only goal in textual criticism is to somehow prove that whatever textual variants landed in the KJV, however they got there, are ipso facto what were in the autographs.
My overall purpose was to state very simply that since the UNCIALS comprise only a small fraction of the Greek MSS available and in use by modern textual critics whether there was or was not UNCIAL support for the exemplars under girding the KJV is probably of little importance.
The uncials are very important, because as a rule they are older, and thus closer to the original -- fewer generations of copying means fewer errors. Of course there are fewer of them. They're older, and mss rot and wear out in time.
The UNCIALS are also called palimpsets meaning MSS which have been written on before then written over.
No, there is no connection between palimpsests and uncials. Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus is an uncial, and it is a palimpsest, but not all uncials are palimpsests.
The problem with Ephrmi Rescriptus aside from the fact that there are only 64 pages is that the erasure was far from complete, so there are some who would consider it a corrupt MS.
Ephraemi was originally a Bible ms, which was erased long ago and the treatises of St. Ephraem the Syrian written over it. If the erasure were incomplete, that would be a good thing. Perhaps you mean the restoration is incomplete?
I won't even get into the fact that most of the 295 other UNCIALS are fragments or that most were found in genisae or trash piles.
Most old mss are fragmentary. That's the nature of the thing. There are plenty of KJV's in trash piles, too.
Constantin Tischendorf was the first outsider permitted to visit the reclusive St. Catherine's Monastery to study the texts in their library. During his excursion he literally found this manuscript in a wastebasket.
No, he didn't. He found some Greek mss, which were not from the Bible, in a wastebasket. He asked a monk about it, and the monk volunteered the information that they had an old Greek Bible, upstairs. It was not in a trash can; it was used from time to time and covered carefully with a cloth when not in use.
Furthermore nearly ALL of the papyrus MSS uncovered by Grenfell and Hunt in the 1897 and 1922 expeditions were found in genizae (trash heaps where defective and/or ruined scrolls were deposited)
Again, there are other reasons for throwing out mss. Have you ever thrown out a KJV when it wore out, the spine broke, and pages started falling out? If you haven't, rest assured it does happen. There is a simple reason most of the really old Greek mss. are found in the trash heaps -- Greek ceased being used as a language very early in Church history, except in the one part of the world where it is spoken to this day. When everybody is reading Latin, Greek Bibles tend to get thrown away. Why keep an old book with worn-out pages written in a language and alphabet you can't read? Not to mention the sharp decline in literacy in general with the collapse of the Roman empire.
The reason that some have advanced as to why the Sinaiticus MS was in the trash, rather than pressed into use by the monks was that it was DEFECTIVE:
The reason this is nonsense is that Sinaiticus was pressed into use and it was not in the trash. Whoever told you otherwise is either ignorant of the facts about the discovery of Sinaiticus or lying about it.
Robert Frazier
22. if the holy spirit is god's impersonal active force, how could he: be referred to as "he" and "him" in jn 16:7- 8 and jn 16:13-14; bear witness (jn 15:26); feel hurt (isa 63:10); be blasphemed against (mk 3:29); say things (ezek 3:24, acts 8:29, 10:19, 11:12, and heb 10:15-17): desire (gal 5:17); be outraged (heb 10:29); search (i cor 2:10); comfort (acts 9:31); be loved (rom 15:30); be lied to and be god (acts 5:3-4)?.
how can this be since if jesus had been created by god, then he would have been with god when everything else was created?
why is the word "other" inserted?
Maybe it is a little bit exaggerated, ins't it ??!
No, understated. "and the Word was God" is how John 1:1c is tranlated in all English tranlations except paraphrases and one-man translations. All of the translations that are in regular use in Christian churches (again, excepting paraphrases) read that way. And that is how millions of Christians accept it. More accurate would be hundreds of millions, but I'm willing to understate the case for the sake of discussion.
Ooh!! So you do not take seriously who do not agree with you !! Interesting....much interesting!!!
Yep, ...now i've something to think about .
No, I don't take seriously people who make claims to support their arguments that are not true. Follow the link I posted above and see for yourself.
For example, BeDuhn wrote:
The grammatical rules involving Greek genitives and datives make the definite article practically unnecessary, and used only in a limited set of circumstances. So definite nouns in their genitive and dative forms often omit the article. But the opposite is true of Greek nouns in the nominative and accusative cases. In these forms, definite nouns as a rule require the definite article, with a very limited set of exceptions. So any count of anarthrous THEOS that combines these four cases into a single statistic yields erroneous results. Looking just at the nominative and accusative occurrences of THEOS, one would be able to state the opposite of what Mr. Hommel says, namely, that anarthrous THEOS is almost always INDEFINITE. I would be happy to entertain an assessment of every anarthrous THEOS in the genitive [sic] and accusative cases to demonstrate this fact.
Robert Hommel ran the numbers in a computer concordance, and surprise! BeDuhn was utterly and completely WRONG!!! Either incompetent, or lying. Take your pick. Either way, not to be taken seriously by lovers of the truth.
You do indeed have something to think about, but I doubt you have the guts to persue it. Please prove me wrong on that!
Robert Frazier
Edited by - robert_v_frazier on 25 June 2002 16:50:48
22. if the holy spirit is god's impersonal active force, how could he: be referred to as "he" and "him" in jn 16:7- 8 and jn 16:13-14; bear witness (jn 15:26); feel hurt (isa 63:10); be blasphemed against (mk 3:29); say things (ezek 3:24, acts 8:29, 10:19, 11:12, and heb 10:15-17): desire (gal 5:17); be outraged (heb 10:29); search (i cor 2:10); comfort (acts 9:31); be loved (rom 15:30); be lied to and be god (acts 5:3-4)?.
how can this be since if jesus had been created by god, then he would have been with god when everything else was created?
why is the word "other" inserted?
Was there anyone who said the NWT translate John 1:1 in a bad way ? Perspi. Yes, millions of us say that, because it's true: The NWT mistranslation of John 1:1 is inexcusable. No matter how many others mistranslate it. BTW, "divine" in all of the tranlations you quoted means "having all the nature and attributes of the one true God", not, as you seem to think, "having some vaguely god-like characteristics". To say "The Word was divine," with or without a capitol "D", is to say that the Word was God, the one and only, with the emphasis on WHAT the Word was, instead of on WHO the Word was. Robert Frazier P.S. BeDuhn is wrong in his interpretation of Col 1:15-17, and in his empty claim that it's okay to reverse the meaning of the passage by adding "other" four times (which was done WITHOUT brackets until the Society was called on it) into the text. He is also wrong on John 1:1. See http://www.forananswer.org/Mars_Jw/JB-RH.Jn1_1.Index.htm and read all the articles. To try to prop up his case, BeDuhn has to resort to claiming that "evidence" that simply does not exist proves he is right. He has some impressive credentials, but if he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to prove his case in published articles in peer-reviewed journals. He hasn't, because he can't. He has no case.
Edited by - robert_v_frazier on 25 June 2002 16:17:5