do jw's still believe that babylon the great is the empire of false religion?
inquiring minds want to know .
estephan.
Fisherman,
It makes a lot of sense to me....
But isn't that what's wrong here? The book wasn't written to you. (Or me either) It's not a product of our culture, our language, our history, our sensibilities, or any other meaningful frame of reference.
The author's s usage of ideas and themes from his own culture and time period is not irrelevant and treating it as such elevates the interpreter over the audience for whom the book was written.
do jw's still believe that babylon the great is the empire of false religion?
inquiring minds want to know .
estephan.
....Babylon the Great definitely referred to 1st century Rome, 'a city with a kingdom over other kings' that 'sits on 7 hills'.
^^This^^
Seriously, the symbolism would have been blindingly obvious at the time.
Rome was already viewed as a "Greater Babylon" for having conquered Judea just as Babylon had done centuries earlier.
Rome was already personified as a goddess, which the Jews hated for obvious reasons.
This goddess was already commonly depicted as sitting upon seven hills
The pagan, bare right breast / naked justice motif was already offense to the Jews and invited the term, "whore"
(Fundamentalist Christians are offended by this symbol even today. Some might remember Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding that the larger than life statue of Lady Justice standing on the dais at the Justice Department be covered up)
All of these themes came together on a number of silver and bronze coins depicting the goddess Roma as a conqueror:
Apocalyptic can be prophetic, but it was often not. And the farther you stray from anything familiar to the immediate audience, the farther down the rabbit hole you go.
do jw's still believe that babylon the great is the empire of false religion?
inquiring minds want to know .
estephan.
The anti-Jewish interpretation dates from the 17th and 18th centuries (e.g Hardouin, Abauzit, etc.) and is frankly a little weird, given the context of Roman persecution.
do jw's still believe that babylon the great is the empire of false religion?
inquiring minds want to know .
estephan.
Seriously? Are you prepared to defend The Finished Mystery? Or even Then Is Finished the Mystery of God, which is more recent, but hasn't really aged well either.
Both are good examples of what I'm talking about
Where is the scripture about using pencil?
I don't know if this is what you're thinking of, but there is a JW illustration along those lines. (i.e. By being faithful, your name is "penciled" in today.)
Since JW's don't believe the "book of life" is actually opened until the end of the 1000 years, it's not entirely in line with what they themselves teach.
do jw's still believe that babylon the great is the empire of false religion?
inquiring minds want to know .
estephan.
It's a genre of literature known as apocalyptic. It makes sense as a message written in a specific manner at a specific time and a specific place to a specific audience in response to a specific problem, but attempts to interpret it outside that context age badly and eventually become laughable.
regardless of belief/non-belief in the bible account, why is the ark nearly always depicted by both believers & non-believers as a huge boat, with a rounded hull & stern, and a tapered bow?
https://arkencounter.com/ .
the ark was crate shaped according to the measurements.
--Two different words in Hebrew
תֵּבַת - tēḇâ is the name of the floating basket Moses was placed in and Noah's ark. AFAIK it's only used for those two things
הָאָרֹן - 'ārôn is used for box-like objects including the coffin containing Joseph's bones, the ark of the covenant and money chests
so i grew up as a witness but i’m no longer active, i have some family that still practices very seriously.
but i don’t want to ask them my question.
but what does the bible and teaching’s of jw’s say about early hominids?
but I don't think the depicted photos of the skulls are to the same scale
You're right. --Best I could do with what I had.
The point was to show a morphological gradient separate from any claim of evolutionary relationship.
regardless of belief/non-belief in the bible account, why is the ark nearly always depicted by both believers & non-believers as a huge boat, with a rounded hull & stern, and a tapered bow?
https://arkencounter.com/ .
the ark was crate shaped according to the measurements.
On the "crate" vs "boat" shape:
This is an area where Evangelicals are right and JW's are wrong.
Although the scales described in the Genesis story are unlikely, a boat shape is much more plausible. A rounded hull would absorb and spread out the force of impacts (i.e. waves) whereas a rectangular box would transmit those forces directly to the stress points (i.e. The corners)
That's why a bowl is stronger than a box of the same material (Which is something that can be easily tested)
We use width, height and depth to describe all manner of objects, from cars to trains, to airplanes, so there is really no reason to make that inference from the story to begin with.
so i grew up as a witness but i’m no longer active, i have some family that still practices very seriously.
but i don’t want to ask them my question.
but what does the bible and teaching’s of jw’s say about early hominids?
From left to right:
1. A. afarensis
2. A. africanus
3. H. habilis
4. H. erectus
5. H. heidelbergensis
6. H. neanderthalensis
7. H. sapiens sapiens
8. H. sapiens
AFAIK, JW's would draw the line between ape and human pretty far to the left. --Probably between #2 & #3 or between #3 & #4
