Well he kinda, sorta has a point. A translation that bills itself as literal shouldn't be attempting to interpret idioms. That's what free translations are for
Posts by TD
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53New World Translation is not much different other translations
by Abraham1 inkey scripture 2 timothy 3:16 should have been translated as “every scripture inspired of god is also profitable for teaching” like many other serious translations (such as american standard version ; douay-rheims bible etc) as it is what the greek text says.. this is in harmony with the contents of bible and also with the writer paul himself who knew after his departure ‘even from his own number men will arise and distort the truth.’ (acts 20:29-30) for example, verses such as romans 7:19 is such distortion.
such verses cannot originate from real paul who was “holy, righteous and blameless.” (1 thessalonians 2:10) hence paul had the freeness of speech to tell others to be “blameless” like him (1 thessalonians 5:19-23; ephesians 5:24) there are many things in the scriptures which are not inspired such as words of satan, words of job’s wife and his false friends, words of judas, lot’s daughters …etc.
apostle peter never disowned jesus because if he had done so, his contemporaries would have interrupted him when he rebuked jews, saying: “you disowned the holy and righteous one and asked that a murderer be released to you.“ (acts 3:14) his listeners would have asked him “what right do you have to reprove us for ‘disowning jesus” when you yourself have done it first?” all such verses or accounts were later adoptions.
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TD
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If Ever GB Members Deserved To Be Thrown in Jail It's When ...
by smiddy3 init was when the governing body started to disfellow-ship jehovah`s witnesses from taking blood transfusions in an effort to save their lives .. resulting in many hundreds if not thousands of needless deaths of men women and children who by this coercion died from this doctrine.. and to this day they still go unpunished .
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TD
Brock,
Suppose I were to tell someone casually, "Hey, why don't you jump off that bridge? You know, just for kicks?"
The average intelligent (i.e. Mentally competent) adult would have no trouble grasping the risks of jumping off a bridge.
The average intelligent adult does not and cannot reasonably be expected to understand a subtle misrepresentation of an esoteric medical study.
Hell - Even if all you're doing is writing a fluffy article about a diet or exercise program for a trendy health magazine, you still have to disclaim it with, "Always consult your physician first." (Or something to that effect.)
It is only the distaste for prosecuting a religion for anything except the most heinous crimes that allows JW leaders, policy makers and writers to get away with something that you or I would certainly be prosecuted for.
Free will is a good and sound principle, but taken to an extreme, non-coercive crimes like fraud, swindling and misrepresentation cease to exist.
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Congregation in PA sues over mandatory reporting
by Corney inivy hill congregation of jehovah's witnesses is currently suing the pa department of human services.
it requests "a declaration that its elders are entitled to" clergy privilege, or, in the alternative,.
to the extent that the clergyman privilege is determined to exclude its elders on the basis that they are "members of [a] religious organization[] in which members other than the leader thereof are deemed clergymen or ministers," the court declare the statute to be unconstitutional.
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TD
The quote from the '94 Watchtower was from page 11, paragraph 4
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19
If Ever GB Members Deserved To Be Thrown in Jail It's When ...
by smiddy3 init was when the governing body started to disfellow-ship jehovah`s witnesses from taking blood transfusions in an effort to save their lives .. resulting in many hundreds if not thousands of needless deaths of men women and children who by this coercion died from this doctrine.. and to this day they still go unpunished .
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TD
Free will is a good and sound principle, but people can be misinformed to the point where their free agency is compromised.
--That's why practicing medicine / law / engineering / architecture without a license are illegal.
If the JW's had presented their views on blood as purely a matter of doctrine / faith / biblical interpretation it would be one thing.
But they have not.
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Funniest insults
by LoveUniHateExams inso, i was wondering what are the funniest insults i've heard/been called.. the woman who taught me the arabic alphabet did a lesson about insults in colloquial palestinian arabic.. the one that stuck out to me was iniqbir or ini'bir.
literal meaning: bury yourself.
"go and bury yourself".
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TD
"Arschgeige" - Literally "Ass Violin"
- Semantic equivalent to words like fucktard, asshat, wanker, etc.
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Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews
by peacefulpete indeut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.
for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..
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TD
Fisherman,
There is no contraction between the quotes we have both provided, although I would view organizational and reference works as more authoritative than entry-level primers used to acquaint the public with basic JW beliefs.
--Unless of course, it is your contention that the mention of blood in the Decree was more than simply a reiteration of the prohibition against eating it, which predates the Law.
I've already addressed the JW selective quotation of Chumash sources. You might want to read the SC in context if you're actually interested in that sort of thing, but as you said yourself, Judaism "...is not the standard for interpreting the Bible according to JW."
You and I have already discussed (In other threads) the grammar of the Decree at length. -That the infinitive use of the middle voice was used to reiterate existing prohibitions, which The New World Translation accurately renders as, "To keep abstaining...from blood."
Invoking a partial predicate apart from the context that completes it (As you have done above) is ungrammatical and you should know better.
Additionally, I can assure you that JW's can and do hold professions in the medical field and that the position of the JW parent organization for at least the last 30 years has been that any use/handling of blood that arises thereof is a matter of conscience, provided it is not for the purposes of transfusion or consumption.
Finally, your insistence that transfusion and consumption are physical (As opposed to moral) equivalents is incompatible with JW views on medicine as they have evolved over the years. Specifically, it sets up glaring contradictions with current positions on the allowance of hemoglobin based blood substitutes; the allowance of organ transplants and the prohibition on autologous transfusion.
Like I said, they abandoned that argument years ago and that they no longer teach it can be confirmed via letter or phone call.
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53
New World Translation is not much different other translations
by Abraham1 inkey scripture 2 timothy 3:16 should have been translated as “every scripture inspired of god is also profitable for teaching” like many other serious translations (such as american standard version ; douay-rheims bible etc) as it is what the greek text says.. this is in harmony with the contents of bible and also with the writer paul himself who knew after his departure ‘even from his own number men will arise and distort the truth.’ (acts 20:29-30) for example, verses such as romans 7:19 is such distortion.
such verses cannot originate from real paul who was “holy, righteous and blameless.” (1 thessalonians 2:10) hence paul had the freeness of speech to tell others to be “blameless” like him (1 thessalonians 5:19-23; ephesians 5:24) there are many things in the scriptures which are not inspired such as words of satan, words of job’s wife and his false friends, words of judas, lot’s daughters …etc.
apostle peter never disowned jesus because if he had done so, his contemporaries would have interrupted him when he rebuked jews, saying: “you disowned the holy and righteous one and asked that a murderer be released to you.“ (acts 3:14) his listeners would have asked him “what right do you have to reprove us for ‘disowning jesus” when you yourself have done it first?” all such verses or accounts were later adoptions.
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TD
Out of curiosity, what language did you grow up speaking?
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25
Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews
by peacefulpete indeut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.
for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..
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TD
How modern is modern?
The idea is at least as old as the Talmud.
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25
Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews
by peacefulpete indeut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.
for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..
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TD
Fisherman,
The position of Jehovah's Witnesses, stated in multiple publications is that, "People of all nations were bound by the requirement at Genesis 9:3, 4, but those under the Law were held by God to a higher standard..."
The position of Jehovah's Witnesses, stated in even more publications is that the Apostolic Decree was, "...based on the Bible record concerning events that predated the Law. So there was not an imposing on Gentile Christians of a responsibility to conform to the Mosaic Law or some portion of it but, rather, there was a confirming of standards recognized prior to Moses."
The abstention of blood in the Decree was therefore not a reiteration of the strict requirements of the Law. It was (According to the JW parent organization) a reiteration of the simpler Noahide requirement.
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Even strictly within the context of the Law, there is no prohibition on the storage of blood. The ceremonial uses of blood mandated in the Law actually required the storage of blood and there were pitchers and bowls among the temple accoutrements for that purpose which are described in Deuteronomy.
The idea that blood cannot be "used" comes from the Oral Law and Chumash sources, which Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept. -More specifically, you could not profit from the use of blood in any way, which is not quite the same thing, but is pretty close when it comes to using animal blood as an ink, dye, stain, paint, gelling agent, etc.
Throughout all of this, Jehovah's Witnesses steadfastly ignore the fact that blood had a "use" long before the fall of Man and the need for a Redeemer ever arose. All of us "use" blood in this sense, which is what transfusion is all about. It is a use of blood in accordance with its design purpose and not comparable to anything you can find in the Bible.
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You've reiterated a flawed argument that the Jehovah's Witnesses abandoned in the late 1960's, which is that, ..."the recipient of a BT "consumes" blood by using it inside his body and in time absorbing it."
Hemoglobin, through a series of enzyme reactions is converted into unconjugated bilirubin which gives excreta (i.e. bile and stool) their characteristic colors and is the polar opposite of absorption.
The one single component of blood that actually can provide a nutritional benefit when transfused is serum albumin. We have much better and more cost-effective solutions today, but it was used in post-war Japan for example to bring people back from the brink of starvation when they were too weak to eat. Serum albumin, even when administered as a transfusion to burn patients has been allowed under JW policy for decades now, so that secondary benefit is of no consequence and the JW parent organization does not make that argument today.
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25
Eating of blood prohibition specifically not forbidden for non-Jews
by peacefulpete indeut 14:21 you shall not eat anything that has died a natural death; give it to the stranger in your community to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner.
for you are a people consecrated to yhwh.... it seems quite self evident the ritual of blood letting prior to eating meat was understood by the deuteronomist as binding only on jews..
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TD
Therefore, what about taking a pint of blood from an animal or human without killing anybody and consuming the blood putting it into a person’s vein for medical reasons, is such blood sacred to God or is it the same as that of a dead animal?
The symbolism attached to blood was transferred by Jesus' own command to the sacraments of Communion (i.e. Emblems of Memorial) Sacrifices no longer have any sin atoning value whatsoever and it therefore cannot reasonably be argued that the blood of such is sacred. --Not if you're Christian and literate.
Even were that not the case, the transfusion of blood is physically, morally, ethically and ontologically distinguishable from the consumption of blood and it is the fallacy of equivocation to attempt to lump them into the same category.
Jehovah's Witnesses themselves recognize this distinction in a number of transfusion scenarios today and the scope of the prohibition has dwindled over years down to just the intact, cellular components of blood.
Unfortunately, this has introduced a number of contradictions that are not defensible from a medical or scientific standpoint, which makes arguing in favor of the prohibition a thorny proposition.