Posts by Leolaia

13

Behemoth

by peacefulpete in

i'll not pretend to be as thorough as leolaia in discussing ancient mythology, but i felt it might be of interest to some to learn more about the monster behemoth from job 40. recently leolaia did a bang-up job providing a mythological background for the leviathan imagery in job and a number of other places.

the partner of leviathan is behemoth.

first it must recognized that no literal creature is being described there.

Leolaia

My article on Leviathan and Rahab is found here:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68098/1.ashx

I mostly concur with peacefulpete. Hebrew bhmh "beast" and especially the plural form bhmwt closely resemble the Egyptian compound p3-iH-mw "water-ox", but this is only a hypothetical form and corresponds to no actual Egyptian term for the hippopotamus or other creature. It is the plural form (with the ending -t) that occurs in Job 40:15-24, which is an important sign that a supernatural creature is meant. In the singular, it usually denotes beasts of burden like cattle and oxen, and in the plural refers to plural beasts (cf. Psalm 8:8, 50:10; Joel 1:20, 2:22; Habakkuk 2:17), but in Job it refers to a singular, but super-majestic creature. One intriguing text that has bhmwt that directly alludes to the mythological conflict myth is Isaiah 30:6-7 which is designated as an "oracle on the bhmwt of the Negeb" and refers to such mythological beasts as the "flying serpent" and "Rahab the vanquished one". What is remarkable about the creature described in Job 40:15-24 is that the text alludes not only to characteristics of the beast but also a conflict myth between Behemoth and his creator:

"He is the masterpiece of God's work, but his Maker threatened him with the sword, forbidding him the mountain regions where all the wild beasts have their playground. So he lies beneath the lotus, and hides among the reeds of the swamps" (Job 40:19-21).

Just as the Sea is banished from the land, so is Behemoth banished from the "mountain regions". Even more to the point is v. 23 which says that "the Jordan could pour down his throat without his caring". Now, in the Baal Epic, the sea-monster Yamm (analogous to Lotan/Leviathan) is paired with Judge Nahar, that is Judge River and both were vanquished by Baal. We can certainly envision here a creature very much like Judge River, a monster living in the mountains of Hermon through whose mouth pours the Jordan River. But an allusion to a personification of the sea/deep is probable since Psalm 104 shows that the domain of the deep was also originally the mountains:

"You fixed the earth on its foundations, unshakeable forever and ever; you wrapped it with the deep (thm) as with a robe, the waters overtopping the mountains. At your reproof the waters took to flight , they fled at the sound of your thunder, cascading over the mountains, into the valleys, down to the reservoir you made for them; you imposed the limits they must never cross again, or they would once more flood the land . You set springs gushing in ravines, running down between mountains, supplying water for wild animals, attracting the thirsty wild donkeys... from your abode you water the uplands." (Psalm 104:5-11, 13)

A related but different "banishment" myth occurs in 1 Enoch 60:7-9 which pairs Behemoth with Leviathan as consort and directly refers to both as connected with the primeval watery abyss. This is a great example of the primeval conflict myth living on in post-exilic Jewish tradition:

"Two monsters will be parted -- one monster, a female named Leviathan, in order to dwell in the abyss of the ocean over the fountains of water; and the other, a male called Behemoth, which holds his chest in an invisible desert whose name is Dundayin, east of the garden of Eden, wherein the elect and the righteous ones dwell.....Then I asked the second angel in order that he may show me how strong these monsters are, how they were separated on this day and were cast, the one into the abysses of the ocean, and the other into the dry desert" (1 Enoch 60:7-9)

This tradition is clearly distinct from Job since Behemoth is banished to the desert instead of the swamp, but the allusion to the desert clearly recalls Isaiah's oracle to the "Behemoth of the Negeb," and as my recent post on Tartarus shows, the desert of Dundayin is derived from the mythological Twin Breast mountains of Mashu that Gilgamesh seeks in the Epic of Gilgamesh -- might this be a link to the mountainous abode of Behemoth in Job? In either event, we here have a legend that is closer to the Tiamat-Apsu myth of the Enuma Elish in some respects than the material discussed in my Rahab/Leviathan thread. A cognate variant of the same myth appears in 4 Ezra:

"During that time [i.e. during creation, discussed in v. 38-48], you kept in existence two living creatures; the name of one you called Behemoth and the name of the other Leviathan. And you separated one from the other, for the seventh part where the water had been gathered together could not hold them both. And you have Behemoth one of the parts which had been dried up on the third day, to live in it, where there are a thousand mountains; but to Leviathan you have the seventh part, the watery part; and you have kept them to be eaten by whom you wish, and when you wish" (4 Ezra 6:49-52)

This remarkable text comes very close to describing the parting of Leviathan and Behemoth as cosmology, which echos the separation of the body of Tiamat in the Enuma Elish. The unity of Leviathan and Behemoth is associated with the hegemony of the deep over the earth, and it when land is created by restraining the primeval waters that Leviathan and Behemoth must also be separated. There is also a link here between the desert abode of 1 Enoch and the mountainous abode of Job; here 4 Ezra designates the abode as "dry land" where there are also "a thousand mountains". As for the consumption motif, this also occurs in the millennial prophecy in 2 Baruch 29:4 and the Leviathan conflict myth in Psalm 74:12-15.

The Sumerian "Bull of Heaven" in the Gilgamesh Epic is a plausible precursor of the biblical Behemoth, particularly bearing in mind that bhmh often refers to beasts of burden, and there may be a Canaanite analogue as well in the texts from Ras Shamra. The goddess Anat declares her former victories:

"Surely I smote the Beloved of El, Yamm? Surely I exterminated Nahar, the mighty god? Surely I lifted up the dragon, I overpowered him? I smote the twisting serpent, the close-coiling one with seven heads. I smote the Beloved of El, Arsh, and I finished off El's calf Atik. I smote El's bitch Fire, and I exterminated El's daughter Flame" (KTU 1.3 iii 39-45).

It is thought that the "dragon" and "twisting serpent" refer to Lotan but the identity of Arsh and Atik remain obscure. Arsh is similar to Yamm in bearing the epithet "Beloved of El," and this character appears with a dragon in KTU 1.6 vi 51 as an enemy of Shapsh during her nightly subterranean journey, driven away by Kothar:

"Shapsh you rule the chthonian gods. Your company are the gods; lo, mortals are your company. Kothar is your associate and Hasis is your companion. In the sea are Arsh and the dragon. Kothar-and-Hasis, drive them away! Banish them, Kothar-and-Hasis" (KTU 1.6 vi 51)

Here we find a close parallel to the pairing of Behemoth and Leviathan in 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra. The dragon (= Leviathan) is paired with Arsh as residing "in the sea" and a god is delegated with the task of "driving them away" and "banishing" them. The broader myth is exactly that in Egyptian mythology of Seth driving the dragon Apepi (or Apophis, related to Akkadian abubu "storm flood"?) in his nightly threat to Ra's subterranean bark. Arsh is not described but Margalit suggests an etymological meaning of "Sprayer" and suggests that Arsh may have been a whale. The "whale" possibility also evokes an important text in the Baal Epic where Mot declares that "my appetite is the appetite of the lion of the wasteland (thw), as the desire of the whale (anchr) in the sea" (KTU 1.5 i 15-16). The pairing between creatures of the "wasteland" and the "sea" is shared not only with 1 Enoch, but also with Isaiah 30:6-7 which under the rubric of the "Behemoth of the Negeb [desert]" mentions both the lion and the Rahab monster of the sea. And since thw is very close to thm, there is a possibility that the desert/wasteland motif in the Behemoth myths originally derived from allusions to the Deep (thwm).

Atik, on the other hand, is explicitly described as bovine. Here we find a creature possibly answering to Job's description and the Sumerian "Bull of Heaven". The "Prayer to Rapiu" in the Ugaritic corpus also makes reference to Atik: "May Anat fly, may the kite soar in the high heavens, (who) ate the calf of El, drinking ? from the horn. And may the god Rapiu drink, the god who subdued the calf of El. And the god ? Shad, may the King of Eternity hunt" (KTU 1.108 R 9-12). Compare with the Bull of Heaven from the Gilgamesh Epic:

"Holy Inanna brought the Bull of Heaven out. At Uruk, the Bull devoured the pasture, and drank the water of the river in great slurps. With each slurp it used up one mile of the river, but its thirst was not satisfied. It devoured the pasture and stripped the land bare. It broke up the palm trees of Uruk, as it bent them to fit them into its mouth. When it was standing, the Bull submerged Uruk. .... When Enkidu had spoken thus to Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh himself smote its skull with his axe weighing seven talents. The Bull reared up so high, so high that it overbalanced. It spattered like rain, it spread itself out like the harvested crop. The king took his knife in his hand, just as if he were a master chef. .... As he spoke, he consigned its hide to the streets, he consigned its intestines to the broad square, and the widows' sons of his city each took their share of its meat in baskets. He consigned its carcass to the knacker's, and turned its two horns into flasks for pouring fine oil to Inanna in E-anna" (Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, Nippur MSS. Seg. A-D)

Here we have the same consumption motif from the Ugaritic myth and 4 Ezra, the river-swallowing motif from Job, and the horn-drinking motif from the Ugaritic myth. King Rapiu the "hunter" thus stands as a parallel to Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. The calf Atik may thus have contributed to the Behemoth myth in Job and in extracanonical sources. As for the other figures in the Anat boast, El's bitch (klbt 'l) named "Fire" appears to be related to the male Kerberos, the three-headed guardian of the netherworld in Greek mythology and the name "Kerberos" may be etymologically derived from klb 'l "El's dog". "Fire" and "Flame" may also be linked to the Lamashtu demonesses in Akkadian mythology.

67

Did Noah really build an ark?

by frogit in

this might be worth a watch for us uk ers.

noah's ark will be broadcast in the uk on bbc one on sunday 21 march at 1900 gmt.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3524676.stm.

it's also an interesting read.

Leolaia

Were you trying to argue against what I said, or make my point?

Because you just said in your two posts that

You believe that empirical evidence is of little value in assessing whether a global Flood is "reasonable" as a historical event, and that scientific "interpretation" of geological and climatological evidence is of little consequence.
Your "outlandish" theory of what happened is not outlandish because the Flood was a miracle, so essentially anything could have happened, and thus without any knowledge about the physics and dynamics of waterspouts, winds, cosmic forces, etc. you can simply speculate on what might have happened, and that is of greater merit than what ice cores, tree rings, geological strata, and countless other types of empirical evidence might say about what happened in earth's past.

Having little knowledge of areas of scientific expertise, it is easy for you to speculate wildly about what could have happened without facing evidence of what did happen and how things can happen. It's like being on a jury during a murder trial and saying, "Oh, the forensic evidence could be interpreted in all sorts of ways, these experts seem to think they know what blood splatter, DNA, and fingerprints mean, but I don't know anything about these areas, and I think it's all just their interpretations. I think it is just as likely that Satan murdered the victim, as proven by the victim saying "My God, help me!" when he was killed, and anyway Satan could've made things look like someone else did it anyway, since the murder was done through his supernatural powers -- essentially being a miracle. This seems just as likely as whatever these scientific 'forensic experts' make up, since they don't know anything about Satan and do not realize that he is the cause of evil things like murder on this earth."

23

Do any of you now believe in the hellfire hell of eternal physical torment?

by True North in

jw
friends

i know that many ex-jws have joined various christian denominations or have become non-denominational christians.

do any of you now believe in the hellfire hell of eternal physical torment?

if not, do you now have some other view of hell that differs from the jw view of it?

Leolaia

The doctrine of hell is both biblical and influenced by pagan thought. For example, the "lake of fire" in Revelation 20:10, 14 directly recalls the "Acherusian lake" in Plato, Phaedo 114a (the same word limnes "lake" occurring in both) and the "Lake of Fire" in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The "second resurrection" after the thousand years in Revelation 20:5, 12-13 is also a motif from Plato, as well as the Aeneid:

"After death, some ingrained evil remains, which must be purged by punishment through wind, water and fire. Each of us must undergo our own treatment as spirits, until at last we are sent to Elysium, where in the fulness of time, when the last stain of sin is gone, a few of us become ethereal fire. All the rest, after a cycle of a thousand years, are called by the god to Lethe to prepare for rebirth." (Virgil, The Aeneid, vi. 734-751)

In fact, the biblical belief in the resurrection is tightly connected with a belief in hell. You might recall that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They were influenced by Stoic, Epicurian, and Cynic teaching and their philosophy (preserved in such post-exilic Hellenistic works as Ecclesiastes, Sirach 14:16-19, 27:26-27, 41:4; Wisdom 2:4-6) aspired to material wealth and pleasure. It was this philosophy that the synoptic Jesus was opposed to (compare Luke 12:18-21 with Ecclesiastes 9:9-10 and Sirach 11:19-20) and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus dramatized the fate of the rich who will reside in "a place of torment" and lack in the hereafter what they had in life (cf. Luke 16:19-31). The Pharisees had a similar view, believing in hell and a future resurrection, and their beliefs are preserved in rabbinical literaure; a good survey of the Jewish rabbinical belief in hell can be found here. The WTS makes much of the fact that the belief in an immortal soul was influenced by pagan philosophy and religion; and this is true. The ancient Israelites did not believe in body/soul dualism but did believe in a liminal afterlife in Sheol as spirits (see the recent book SHADES OF SHEOL: DEATH AND AFTERLIFE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT by Philip S. Johnston [2002] for a complete survey of the evidence). What the WTS does not realize is that the notion of immortality, in a post-exilic Jewish context, is exactly that of the hope of a resurrection (cf. Wisdom 3:4; 2 Maccabees 7:9, 16-17; Daniel 12). Some, such as the writers of 2 Maccabees and the Testament of Job (4:7-11), limited the resurrection as a reward to the righteous. The righteous would be raised, while the wicked would remain dead in Sheol. Others viewed the resurrection as twofold; the eschatological belief was that at the time of the end (e.g. Judgment Day), the resurrection would bring "some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace." (Daniel 12:2). The Testament of Benjamin (second century B.C.) similarly foretold:

"And then you will see Enoch and Seth and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob being raised up at the right hand in great joy. Then shall we be raised, each of us over our tribe, and we shall prostrate ourselves before the heavenly King. Then all shall be changed, some destined for glory, others for dishonor, for the Lord first judges Israel for the wrong she has committed and then he shall do the same for all the nations." (Testament of Benjamin 10:6-11)

This doctrine was elaborated in other pseudepigrapha of the intertestimental period. Righteous and wicked presently resting in Hades will be judged at the end of time and will be given eternal sentences: eternal glory for the righteous and eternal torment to the wicked. 2 Baruch has an extensive discussion on the resurrection and the judgment of the righteous and wicked:

For the earth will surely give back the dead at that time; it receives them now in order to keep them, not changing anything back in their form. But as it has received them so it will give them back. And as I have delivered them to it so it will raise them. For then it will be necessary to show those who live that the dead are living again, and that those who went away have come back. And it will be that when they have recognized each other, those who know each other at this moment, that my judgment will be strong, and those things which have been spoken of before will come. And it will happen after this day which he appointed is over that both the shape of those who are found to be guilty as also the glory of those who have proved righteous will be changed. For the shape of those who now act wickedly will be made more evil than it is now so that they shall suffer torment. As for the glory of those who proved to be righteous on account of my law, those who possessed intelligence in their life, and those who planted the root of wisdom in their heart, their splendor will then be glorified by transformations, and the shape of their face will be changed into the light of their beauty....Both these and those will be changed, these into the splendor of angels and those into startling visions and horrible shapes, and they will waste away even more....Why do we weep for those who go into the realm of death? The lamentations should be kept for the beginning of that coming torment; let the tears be laid down for the coming of that destruction which will then come....The torment of judgment will fall upon those who have not subjected themselves to your power...for at the end of the world, a retribution will be demanded with regard to those who have done wickedly in accordance with their wickedness." (2 Baruch 50:2-52:5, 54:14, 21)

The text goes on to describe the bliss of Paradise for the righteous and the torture of chains and everlasting darkness for the wicked. This is not yet the Christian view of hell but it comes close to the later NT view of the final judgment and resurrection. Matthew 25:46 refers to the wicked going "away to eternal punishment and the virtuous to eternal life," and John 5:27-29 says that "the Son of Man has been appointed supreme judge, for the hour is coming when the dead will leave their graves at the sound of his voice: those who did good will rise again to life and those who did evil to condemnation." Revelation 20:11-15 gives an extended vision of the resurrection of the dead, Hades being emptied of its dead, followed by the judgment of dead, and the punishment of the resurrected wicked in the lake of fire.

As for exactly what the punishment will be, there is great diversity in the Jewish apocalyptic writings. 2 Baruch mentions the punishment as grotesque physical form and chains in everlasting darkness. The darkness is the same experienced by the fallen angels bound by chains in Tartarus (cf. 1 Enoch 10; 2 Peter 2:9; Jude 6). The motif of darkness is also mentioned in Matthew 8:12, 22:13; 25:30. The motif of fire, influenced by Persian and then Greek ideas (but also possibly influenced by the mention of fire in Sheol in Deuteronomy 32:22 ), appears throughout intertestimental literature as well and shows that this was a common idea in Jesus' day as well. It is not a late Christian invention. It first appears in the post-exilic prophecy in Isaiah 66:22-24 referring to God's final judgment on the world and regarding those judged as wicked, "their worm will not die nor their fire put out." This prophecy was very influential in later conceptions of the final judgment; Sirach 7:17 (2nd century B.C.) states that "the punishment for the godless is fire and worms," and Judith 16:17-21 (2nd century B.C.) states: "Woe to the nations who rise against my race! The Lord Almighty will punish them on judgment day. He will send fire and worms on their flesh and they shall weep with pain for evermore." The text in Isaiah is itself quoted in Mark 9:47-50, showing that it directly influenced the conception of Gehenna in the NT.

So as you can see, the belief in hell was closely related to the belief in the resurrection and Judgment Day. The general belief was that the righteous and wicked both reside in Hades until Judgment Day comes, when both would be resurrected, judged, and sent to their respective punishment or glory. Hades was also commonly believed to be subdivided in different regions with the wicked and righteous residing in different places, and some believed that even in advance of Judgment Day the wicked were tortured in Hades. 1 Enoch 22 depicts Hades as containing four subdivisions containing both the righteous and the wicked:

They prepared these places in order to put the souls of the children of the people there until the day of their judgment and the appointed time of the great judgment upon them. I saw the spirits of the people that were dead, and their voices were reaching into heaven until this very moment...At that moment, I raised a question regarding the judgment of all, 'For what reason is one separated from the other?' And he replied and said to me, 'These three have been made in order that the spirits of the dead may be separated. And in the manner in wihch the souls of the righteous are separated by this spring of water with light upon it, in like manner the sinners are set apart when they die and are buried in the earth and judgment has not yet been executed upon them in their lifetime, upon this great pain, until the great day of judgment -- and to those who curse there will be plague and pain forever, and the retribution of their spirits. They will bind them forever -- even if from the beginning of the world. (1 Enoch 22:4-5, 8-12)

1 Enoch 102:1-11 presents the sinners as residing in Sheol in a separate region as the righteous. This attests the view of some Jews (especially the Alexandrian Jews) who believed that the righteous and wicked were separated immediately at death (others believed that the separation did not occur until the day of judgment). Luke 16 similarly presents the wicked in the righteous in the same abode, separated by a "great chasm" with the wicked tormented by flames. Others, identifying Paradise with the Garden of Eden, viewed Paradise as a region at the easternmost edge of the world (cf. the beliefs of the Essences cited in Josephus' BH, 2.8.11). And still others began to view Paradise as "third heaven" (2 Enoch 8:1-3; Apocalypse of Moses 37:5, 40:1; 2 Corinthians 12:14 ). In Christianity, the relocation of Paradise to heaven was itself influenced by the belief of Christ having ascended to heaven and that the later resurrection of the righteous would involve a similar ascension (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). This relocation emptied Hades of an abode of the righteous and thus left the entire underworld as the scene of punishment of the wicked.

Gehenna was the term used by Jewish apocalypsists to refer to the region of Hades or Hades itself where the resurrected wicked would be tormented by fire after Judgment Day. It is used in this sense by Jesus, who specifies that both "soul and body" and the "body" would go to the "judgment" of Gehenna -- that is, after the resurrection (Matthew 5:29, 10:28, 23:33 ). This has nothing to do with punishment of a disembodied immortal soul; it is punishment of a resurrected person, of both body and spirit. Other Jewish apocalypses describe the Gehenna that the resurrected wicked will face:

This accursed valley [e.g. Gehenna] is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all those accursed ones, those who speak with their mouths unbecoming words against the Lord and utter hard words concerning his glory. Here shall they be gathered together, and here shall be their judgment, in the last days. There will be upon them the spectacle of the righteous judgment, in the presence of the righteous forever....There was produced from that bronze and fire a smell of sulfur which blended with those waters. This valley of the perversive angels shall continue to burn punitively underneath that ground....The Most High will arise on that day of judgment in order to execute a great judgment upon all the sinners...Woe unto you sinners, when you oppress the righteous ones, in the day of hard anguish, and burn them with fire! You shall be recompensed according to your deeds. On account of the deeds of your wicked ones, in blazing fires worse than fire it shall burn ....You yourselves know that they will bring your souls down to Sheol and they shall experience evil and great tribulation--in darkness, nets, and burning flame. Your souls shall enter into the great judgment; it shall be a great judgment in all the generations of the world. (1 Enoch 27:2-3, 100:4-9, 103:7-8)

I will burn with fire those who mocked them and ruled over them in this age...I have prepared them to be food for the fire of Hades, and to be ceaseless soaring in the air of the underworld regions of the uttermost depths, to the contents of a wormy belly....For they shall putrefy in the belly of the crafty worm Azazel, and be bburned by the fire of Azazel's tongue....And behold, in this light a fiery Gehenna was enkindled, and a great crowd in the likeness of men. They were all changing in aspect and shape, running and changing form and prostrating themselves and crying aloud words I did not know. (Apocalypse of Abraham 15:6-7, 31:2-6)

The souls of the wicked are brought down to Sheol by two angels of destruction, Za'api'el and Samki'el....Za'api'el is appointed to bring down the souls of the wicked from the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he, from the judgment of the Sekinah, to Sheol, to punish them with the fire in Gehinnom, with rods of burning coal. (3 Enoch 44:2-3)

The Lord will come with his angels and with the armies of the holy ones of the seventh heaven and with the glory of the seventh heaven, and he will drag Beliar into Gehenna and also his armies, ... the Beloved will cause fire to go forth from him, and it will consume all the godless. (Ascension of Isaiah 4:14, 18)

Gehenna is even mentioned frequently in rabinnical literature in the Mishnah: "The best of the physicians is destined for Gehenna, the most seemly among butchers is a partner of Amalek" (Rabbi Judah, Kiddushin 4:14).

The judgment of hellfire taught in 1 Enoch is very important because the Epistle of Jude directly quotes 1 Enoch to discuss precisely the judgment of the wicked:

Jude 14-15: " And about these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.' "
1 Enoch 60:8: "...the garden of Eden, wherein the elect and the righteous ones dwell, wherein my grandfather [Enoch] was taken, the seventh from Adam."
1 Enoch 1:9: " Behold, he will arrive with ten million of the holy ones in order to execute judgment upon all. He will destroy the wicked ones and censure all flesh on account of everything that they have done, that which the sinners and the wicked ones committed against him."
1 Enoch 5:4: "You have not been long-suffering and you have not done the commandments of the Lord, but you have transgressed and spoken slanderously grave and harsh words with your impure mouths against his greatness."
1 Enoch 27:2: "This accursed valley is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all the accursed ones, those who speak with their mouth unbecoming words against the Lord and utter harsh words concerning his glory."

Jude also alludes to 1 Enoch in many other places (see my thread on the use of 1 Enoch in the NT). It is thus clear that the kind of judgment that Jude had in mind is that taught in 1 Enoch, and Jude directly confirms this by referring to those who "indulge in gross immorality" as "undergoing punishment in eternal fire" (Jude 7). The doctrine is thus biblical because it appears in the Bible, constituting a key ingedient to the belief in Judgment Day -- and is mentioned in allusions to Judgment Day in Isaiah 66, the gospels, Jude, and Revelation. I agree that the doctrine of hell is distasteful and at odds with other parts of scripture, but one needs to recall how the Bible does not present a single point of view and the diversity of eschatological belief in Judaism is reflected to some extent in the NT. I personally do not accept it as a matter of belief, but I do recognize that it appears in the Bible and I also expressly reject the WTS teaching that the concept of hell is foreign to the Bible.

33

Coming Out With Pride & Confidence!

by Corvin in

jw
friends

i have only been visiting this board for a couple months, but wow, how it has helped me!

thanks to everyone who has shared information and their stories, given advice, listened, reasoned, confessed, vented, cussed, challenged and supported.

i am formerly known as "hunyadi", but i made the decision to come out a few weeks ago.

Leolaia

Corvin....Kudos!! It is so liberating taking back your identity and integrity from the Tower, and exhilirating for us to "witness" (*wink*) you take that step.

218

Another great picture posting Thread.

by Stefanie in

jw
friends

here is mine and my hubby's.

i might take it down latter so my crazy ex dont find it.

feel free to post pics of you, your kids, your pets plants anything will be grrreat!

Leolaia

Hunyadi....All this time I thought u looked like Elvis!!

66

Passing the time at JW Assemblies

by Leolaia in

jw
friends

love_truth, in describing the utter dullness of jw assemblies and conventions, just gave me an interesting idea for a thread.

what were some of the ways you tried to make the hours pass?

some of mine: looking at the interesting refracting patterns the arena floodlights made on my eyeglasses when looking thru them at an angle.looking for people i knew from my congregation and others in the mass of people in the arena.counting the number of people leaving the section to go to the bathroompractice writing people's names in elvish scripthaving a conversation with friends a row behind me by passing notes back and forthseeing how many pages of my bible stick together when i slam a wad of gum in between its pages.. what else?

Leolaia

Yes!! This thread has passed the 50 post mark! This is the longest thread I ever started.

13

The Governing Body and the Board of Directors

by hooberus in

the governing body and the board of directors

modern society claims

"from the incorporation of the watch tower bible and tract society of pennsylvania in 1884 until 1972, the president of the society exercised great authority in jehovah's organization, while the governing body was closely associated with the society's board of directors.

Leolaia

Farkel....I would love to see this research of Barbara's when it sees the light of day, it sounds very interesting! I think Russell on his own terms was pretty terrible and he only seems angelic when placed in comparison with Da Judge, plus Russell had his own measure of charisma and charm that masked his arrogance and self-deceit.

13

The Governing Body and the Board of Directors

by hooberus in

the governing body and the board of directors

modern society claims

"from the incorporation of the watch tower bible and tract society of pennsylvania in 1884 until 1972, the president of the society exercised great authority in jehovah's organization, while the governing body was closely associated with the society's board of directors.

Leolaia

Love_Truth.....It's a nice story but that pericope is a later interpolation into the text of John, missing in the early manucripts, and which even the New World Translation sets off from the main text (like the spurious endings of Mark) because of its problematic textual history. The same story was reported by Papias of Hierapolis (c. A.D. 135) in his work on the life of Jesus and it is possible that the story was added to John by Papias (who was a disciple of John the Presbyter, the latter likely having a hand in John, especially in adding chapter 21 which is verbally very close to 2 John and 3 John) or a disciple of his. Aristion the Presbyter, an associate of John according to Papias, is the author of the longer ending to Mark according to the Armenian manucript, and curiously the legend about drinking poison related in Ps.-Mark 16:17-18 is also reported in Papias as having occurred Justus surnamed Barsabbas.

The story is certainly something many of us wish Jesus said and did.

63

Feb 15 Watchtower: Apostates - Guard Against Deception

by truthseeker in

jw
friends

feb 15 watchtower: apostates - guard against deception

don't you wish this were the real title of the 2nd study article?

well, it is, minus the word apostate.

Leolaia

This article reads just like the crazy strident stuff that came out in 1981, and later on -- was it 1986 or 1987? The article that showed a woman throwing away "apostate literature" just as the mail deliverer is walking away.

8

Trial Scene Reconstruction

by peacefulpete in

since we ave discussed the trial of jesus scenes and reconstructions of urmark etc.

i thought i'd just post this comment made on another forum.

the author is john abrowus who is working on a reconstruction of urmark.

Leolaia

Very interesting peacefulpete.....though I am skeptical that the Markan passion narrative can reduce to an ahistorical judgment and execution at the hands of the Pauline archons. I view the whole narrative endeavor as historicizing whereas the primitive Pauline notions need no narrative framework. And if there was an original narrative involving nonhuman archons, why is there no trace of this in subsequent literature, especially gnostic -- or have I missed this? Existence of such narratives would strongly support the thesis while their absence would not disprove it but they would weaken the case somewhat. Indeed, it seems the whole gnostic enterprise is disinterested in the narrative genre, whereas the historicizing proto-orthodox and proto-Ebionite factions make copious use of the genre.