Posts by Leolaia

24

Okay, I'm going to weigh in on this. I don't know about whether Paul talked about homosexuality, maybe he did, but this is definitely NOT what is being discussed in the Epistle of Jude and 2 Peter (the latter reference being derived from the former). Let me first quote what it says in Jude 6-8:

Jude 6-8
"Next let me remind you of the angels who had supreme authority but did not keep it and left their appointed sphere; he has kept them down in the dark, in spiritual chains, to be judged on the great day. The fornication of Sodom and Gomorrah and other nearby towns is equally unnatural, and it is a warning to us that they are paying for their crimes in eternal fire. Nevertheless, these people are doing the same: in their delusions they not only defile their bodies and disregard authority, but abuse the glorious angels as well."

From the text itself, it is clear that the sin described is not homosexuality but sexual intercourse with divine angels. The key to understanding this are the words "equally unnatural" in Jude 7: what did the situation of Sodom and Gomorrah have in common with the situation of the incarnation of angels before the Flood that was "equally unnatural"? It was having sex with angels. Note also how v. 8 applies both situations to heretics who figuratively "defile their bodies" and "abuse the glorious angels", both descriptions of the same thing. The parallel text in 2 Peter 2:6-11 is derivative of the Jude text and its secondary features arise from the author's use of the more original Jude text.

There is much extrabiblical evidence of this too. You see, Jude is heavily steeped in the pseudepigraphal literature of the time, especially the Enochian literature which tell the story of the fallen angels who had intercourse with human women. Jude 14 is a verbatim quotation from 1 Enoch 1:9. Jude 14 also matches 1 Enoch 60:8 which refers to Enoch as "the seventh as Adam". Compare Jude 6 with 1 Enoch 10:4-6 ("Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness....He covered his face in order that he may not see light; and in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment") and 10:11-12: "Bind Semjaza and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation, until the eternal judgment is concluded." What is more, the connection between the sin of the fallen angels and the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah also derives from the Enochian literature. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs quote and refer to a lost Enoch book that is related to 2 Enoch (cf. 2 Enoch 34:2 which relates sodomy to the sin of the angels), and this book clearly relates the two situations:

Testament of Naphtali 3:4-4:1
"Do not become like Sodom, which departed from the order of nature. Likewise the Watchers departed from nature's order; the Lord pronounced a curse on them at the Flood. On their account he ordered that the earth be without dweller or produce. I say these things, my children, because I have read in the writing of holy Enoch that you will also stray from the Lord."

In another reference to the fallen angels, the Testament of Reuben 5:5 says: "Flee from fornication....For it was thus they [women] had charmed the Watchers, who were before the Flood." The Testament of Benjamin 9:1 also states: "Now I suppose, from the words of the righteous Enoch, that there will be also evil-doings among you: for ye will commit fornication with the fornication of Sodom, and shall perish all save a few, and will multiply inordinate lusts with women." Here the sin of Sodom is again discussed by a work concerned with the sin of the angels, and its likening with "lusts with women" does not suggest homosexuality but rather fornication. Similarly Testment of Asher 7:1 says that Sodom "did not recognize the Lord's angels and perished forever," the sin thus being related to a failure to respect the divine angelic order in their fornication and not homosexuality. Jude, indebted as he was by the Enochian literature, is probably making a similar point.

Leolaia

24

homosexuality

by zen nudist in

how can trinitarians

Leolaia

That was damned hilarious!

8

Keeping up with new light

by stillajwexelder in

jw
friends

keeping up with new light is not easy.

as most of you now know, the wtbts has published an article in the awake march 2002 about earthquakes and admitted that there has been no increase in them since 1914. however, the reasoning book and other publications have not been updated with this information.

so when a jw gives a talk from the platform they still give out old light ?

Leolaia

That reminds me of what happened in the late '80s when i went out in field service. An elder and his wife took me to a Bible study of theirs, and the main book at the time was the Live Forever book. During the course of the study, they went over the part about it being easier on the Galilee cities than Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgement Day. At issue was whether the people of Sodom and Gomorrah would be resurrected. In the car after the bible study, I had to tell the elder that he was giving our "old light" to the poor study. He was totally unaware of this and felt very distressed that he wasn't aware of the change and that he was giving out wrong information.

Leolaia

39

The problem of Noah's flood and the origins of the Indo-European languagues

by badboy in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses say noah's flood happened c.2000bc.. interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the indo-european languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?

)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,hittite being near the root of the ie family followed by tocharian ,greek and armenian.. there4 the ie languagues spread with agriculture in2 europe arriving in scotland 5500 years ago.. question?.

how will they explain this?

Leolaia

A good example is Shakespearean english and expressions compared to modern english. It's amazing just how much it's changed. Half the time when someone makes a study of Shakespeare they need reference works in order to understand it properly!

I can recite the prologue to the Canterbury Tales from memory with Middle English pronunciation. It is vaguely understandable but quite obtuse. The language is still changing of course. Much of what you might think of "sloppy" or "poor" pronunciation or "bad English" is in many cases "change in progress".....changes which 100 years from now would not seem in any way unusual. It's always been the case. Lovely, elegent Shakespearian or King James Bible English was thought of as truly dreadful English just 50 years earlier. Many of the quaint endings (i.e. hast, comest, livest, etc.) were still somewhat new in the 1500s and were altering what had earlier been regarded as lovely, elegent English. The future auxiliary will as in He will go home originally meant "will" as in "intend" (that is, He wills to go home). But over the centuries, the meaning subtly shifted and what was a full verb became weaker and weaker until it is just an auxiliary without verbal meaning. That is happening right now with certain other words. In 18th and 19th century English, you would say They have to go home, They want to go home, and so forth. The verbs have and want are real verbs, though slightly weakened, and they introduce infinitive clauses. In formal English, they are still used in this way. But in informal English, in fact, in probably most spoken English, we now say They hafta go home, They wanna go home, etc. What we're now seeing is the emergence of a new auxiliary hafta, which means something close to "must". And wanna means something close to the medieval will (as in, He wills to go home), but it is already becoming an auxiliary -- and if things continue changing in the usual way, in 200 years or so, I wanna go home will mean "I will go home," so it would be totally natural in 2200 AD to say things like "I wanna go home, but only because you're forcing me." After all, saying "I will go home, but only because you're forcing me" would seem totally bizarre to Chaucer's ear.

Leolaia

39

The problem of Noah's flood and the origins of the Indo-European languagues

by badboy in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses say noah's flood happened c.2000bc.. interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the indo-european languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?

)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,hittite being near the root of the ie family followed by tocharian ,greek and armenian.. there4 the ie languagues spread with agriculture in2 europe arriving in scotland 5500 years ago.. question?.

how will they explain this?

Leolaia

Thanks, rem, this is the point I was trying to illustrate. I just love speciation, don't you?

You might be very interested in this book called The Ecology of Language Evolution by S. S. Mufwene which provides an evolutionary model of how languages change. The basic understanding that a language is not analoguous to an organism. Rather, we need to think of language as a species. Like a species, a language really comprises thousands or millions of slightly different idiolects that vary from person to person. The range of variation in language from person to person is analoguous to genetic variation in the gene pool. The development of languages such as French or Spanish from a proto-language like Latin (or really, Proto-Romance, also known as Vulgar Latin) are thus speciation events and instances of natural adaptations to changing ecological conditions. Isolation via migration and population movement, colonization, contact with speakers of other languages, the development of new situations or institutions of language use (such as writing, legal system, religious uses), etc. are examples of external language ecology. Language attitudes constitute one of the most important ecological factors. A language may be devalued for use in certain situations, or certain words may be deprecated and change in meaning. When two speakers of what used to be a single language can no longer understand each other (lack of mutual intelligibility), one could say that a speciation event has occurred and there are now two separate languages. However it is a gradual change and not an all or nothing thing. One of the basic axioms of linguistics is that what constitutes change over time is realized at any given moment as variation in the language.

Leolaia

39

The problem of Noah's flood and the origins of the Indo-European languagues

by badboy in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses say noah's flood happened c.2000bc.. interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the indo-european languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?

)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,hittite being near the root of the ie family followed by tocharian ,greek and armenian.. there4 the ie languagues spread with agriculture in2 europe arriving in scotland 5500 years ago.. question?.

how will they explain this?

Leolaia

Valis....the biblical Flood story is literarily dependent on Babylonian traditions in the Gilgamesh Epic, Atrahasis Epic, etc. These stories were known in the Levant, I recall a copy of the Gilgamesh story discovered in a Bronze Age site in Palestine. So the story was known, but not necessarily native to the area, and it likely co-existed with other native primeval traditions that assume no Flood. There is no Flood narrative in the Ras Shamra body of literature. The biblical account draws on quite a number of different traditional sources. --Leolaia

39

The problem of Noah's flood and the origins of the Indo-European languagues

by badboy in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses say noah's flood happened c.2000bc.. interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the indo-european languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?

)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,hittite being near the root of the ie family followed by tocharian ,greek and armenian.. there4 the ie languagues spread with agriculture in2 europe arriving in scotland 5500 years ago.. question?.

how will they explain this?

Leolaia

If the flood were a local event, then can we say there were still people on earth that Jehover didn't want whacked? blah blah blah..

Valis....that reminds me, the flood story is most likely a later accretion to the Noah story. Noah was originally an agricultural hero, famous for discovering wine. It is this story that explains his name as meaning "rest". There is an obvious foreshadowing of this story in Gen. 3:17, the curse on Adam, referring to the "suffering" in agricultural work and the "sweat on your brow" it brings. Then in Gen. 5:29 Lamech, the father of Noah, says: "Here is the one who will give us, in the midst of our toil and the laboring of our hands, a consolation derived from the ground that Yahweh cursed." But the forward reference cannot be to the Flood (which certainly brought no such comfort), but to Noah's discovery of vine-culture, which brought comfort derived from the ground (Gen 9:20ff). The intervening Flood story that breaks up the connection thus probably conflates an agricultural hero with the survivor of the Flood. Gen. 9:20ff introduces Noah in an entirely new character, as not only the discoverer of the vine but the first victim of its effects. The Noah of vs. 20-27 comes from a different cycle of tradition from the righteous and blameless patriarch who was the hero of the Flood. Note that v. 20 calls him "Noah the husbandman" which implies the existence of traditions about his work in agriculture. In fact, there is a problem in the position of the story after the Flood story. In the Flood narrative, Noah's sons are married men who take their wives into the ark. Here, on the contrary, they are represented as minors living in the "tent" with their father; and the conduct of the youngest is conceived almost as an exhibition of juvenile immaturity. The most likely explanation, then, is that vs. 20-27 belong to a stratum of the Yahwist writer who knew nothing of the Flood. Note that in v. 24 the offender is the youngest son of Noah, and in v. 25 he is named Canaan, while Shem and Japheth are referred to as his brothers. It is true that in v. 22 the misdeed is attributed to "Ham the father of Canaan" but the words appear to harmonize the account with vs. 18-19 (of the Flood account), and the words leave unresolved the problem between v. 24 and v.25. Not only is there a problem with the position of this story after the Flood account, but it interrupts the connection between v. 19, which describe Ham, Shem, and Japheth as the fathers of humankind and Gen. 10 and 11 which lay out how this happened. By all appearances, this story seems to be independent of the Flood narrative.

Moreover, several antediluvian conditions described in Gen. 4-6 are otherwise indicated as still existing, with no knowledge of a Flood that wiped them from existence. Cain (Gen. 4:17-26) was the eponymous ancestor of the Kenites (a population related to the Midianites famous for metal-working), and Tubal-Cain in v. 21 was the "ancestor of all metal-workers," refering also to the famous Tabal metal-workers of the North (cf. Gen. 10:2, where another eponymous ancestor is given). Gen. 6:4 discusses the Nephilim as "being on earth in those days and later as well," and we find in Num. and other Pentateuchal writings how they were still living in the time of the Israelites, same thing with the Rephaim giants who were still living in the time of Abraham (Gen. 14).

So it is not so much a matter of people that the Flood missed, but a stratum of primeval traditions that knew nothing of a Flood.

Leolaia

49

Evolution Question(s)

by Cassiline in

if we have evolved my assumption is we still are evolving correct?

or am i wrong in this assumption as well?

with all that was wrought on jws this is one teaching i can not get past that of evolution v. creation.

Leolaia

Thank you! I'm actually have been posting for over a year, but I tend to take very looooooong breaks.

Leolaia

39

The problem of Noah's flood and the origins of the Indo-European languagues

by badboy in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses say noah's flood happened c.2000bc.. interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the indo-european languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?

)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,hittite being near the root of the ie family followed by tocharian ,greek and armenian.. there4 the ie languagues spread with agriculture in2 europe arriving in scotland 5500 years ago.. question?.

how will they explain this?

Leolaia

The Tower of Babel story, btw, is a mishmash of material of Sumerian/Babylonian legend -- and in fact is likely two separate stories that have been combined together. In one story, the project was building a city to keep everyone together in one place; in the other the project was building a tower in order to ascend to heaven and bring fame to themselves.

There really were such "towers," or ziggurats that were artificial mountains serving as temples to various gods -- the ziggurat at Babylon was dedicated to Marduk, the one at Ur dedicated to the moon-god Sin, etc. The Tower of Babel story probably dates to the Neo-Babylonian era when Nebuchadnezzer II restored the ancient ziggurat of Etemenanki and enlarged it into the most massive building of its kind ever built (tho smaller than the Great Pyramid of Khufu). His father Nabopolassar, in an inscription, relates how he was commanded by Marduk to "lay its foundations firm in the breast of the underworld, and make its top equal to heaven" (KIB, iii. 2.5) Compare this phrasing with Gen. 11:4 where the builders declared their intent to build "a tower with its summit touching the heavens". The story of real-life ziggurat of Babylon very likely has something to do with this narrative in Gen. 11. The name Etemenanki in Sumerian means "house of the foundations of heaven and earth," expressing again the idea of the tower as a bridge between earth and heaven. It formed part of the complex of Esagila (lit., "the house that rises its head") that was dedicated to Marduk. The legend of the Esagila's founding is told in the Babylonian primeval history epic, the Enuma Elish. Again we find wording very close to that in Gen. 11:

Enuma Elish VI 60-62:
"Let its brickwork be fashioned...The Annunaki applied the implement; for one whole year they moulded bricks. When the second year arrived, they raised high the head of Esagila toward the heavens [Apsu]."
Genesis 11:3-4
"Let us make bricks and bake them in a fire....Let us build ourselves ... a tower with its top reaching heaven."

But there is nothing in the Enuma Elish about a confusion of languages. This motif instead comes from the Epic of Enmerkar (c. 2000 BC), which describes an idyllic time in ages past when "there was no snake and when there was no scorpion, there was no fear, no terror....In those days the land of Martu, resting in security, the whole universe, the people in unison spoke in unison to Enlil in one tongue. Enki, the Lord of wisdom, ... changed the speech in their mouths, [brought] contention into it. Into the speech of man that [until then] had been one." Compare with Gen. 11:1, 9: "Now the whole world had one language and one speech .... Yahweh confused the language of the whole world." Again, we find very similar wording in the more ancient Akkadian/Babylonian parallel. But this story about confusing the speech of man has nothing to do with the building of a tower.

Bible scholars working in source criticism had also independently detected two separate stories that had been combined together in Gen. 11, largely because of the large number of doublets in the rather short passage. When the two stories are untangled, we can see that the motif of the confusion of language does not come from the 'Tower' story but instead from the 'City' story:

The City Recension (Gen. 11:1, 4a, b, 6a, b, 7, 8, 9)
And it happened the whole world had one language and one vocabulary. And they said, ?Come, let us build a city, lest we be scattered over the face of the earth.? And Yahweh said, ?See, they are one people and they have all one language. Come, we will go down and confuse their language there, so that no one understands the language of his neighbor!? And so Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they left off building the city. For this reason its name is called Babel, because there Yahweh confused (Heb. balal "confuse") the language of the whole world, and from there Yahweh scattered them over the whole earth.
The Tower Recension (Gen. 11:2, 4c, b, 3a, b, 5, 6a, c)
And as they journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other: ?Come, let us make a name for ourselves and build a tower with its summit touching the heavens. Let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly!? And so they used brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then Yahweh came down to look at the tower that the sons of men had built. And Yahweh said: ?This is only the beginning of what they will do. Henceforth nothing will be impossible for them in what they propose to do.? (recon.) And so Yahweh sent a wind against the tower and threw it to the ground. That is why the land is called Shinar because it was there the tower was overthrown (Heb. na'ar).

It is the Tower Story that shares features with the Inscription of Nabopolassar and the Enuma Elish. In this story the human motivation was pride and a desire to reach heaven and the divine response was overthrowing the tower, a response that is a play on the name Shinar (Heb. na'ar "overthrow"). This is a direct parallel with the City Story, where the human motivation was the desire to maintain unity and the divine response was confusing their language, a response that is a play on the name Babel (Heb. balal "confuse"). It is the City Story that shares parallels with the very different Babylonian legend about confusing the language of men to destroy their unity. Because the most famous tower was in fact located in Babel and because of the formal similarity of the stories, the compiler of Genesis combined them together into a single narrative, omitting the original ending to the Tower story in the process. We are fortunate, however, that the original ending was been preserved in other ancient Jewish writings. It was attested close to what would have been its original form in the Book of Jubilees 10:26: "And the Lord sent a wind against the tower and overthrew it to the ground. It is now between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar. He named it the Collapse." The same story is told in Sibylline Oracles 3:101-107: "But immediately the Immortal One imposed a great compulsion on the winds. Then the winds cast down the great tower from on high, and stirred up strife for mortals among themselves." Sibylline Oracles 11:10-13 also reads: "The tongues were loosed, but on them came the wrath of the Most High God, hurled down, and the wondrous tower fell." Also in Jewish rabbinical literature, in Midrash Tanhuma, Noah 18, we read: "Said R. Hiyya bar Abba: Of the tower that they made, one third was burned, one third was swallowed up, and one third is still standing."

The simplest explantation seems to be that the compiler of Genesis drew on two distinct but related stories drawn from different Babylonian traditions and combined them into a great story on human folly and pride.

Leolaia

39

The problem of Noah's flood and the origins of the Indo-European languagues

by badboy in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses say noah's flood happened c.2000bc.. interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the indo-european languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?

)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,hittite being near the root of the ie family followed by tocharian ,greek and armenian.. there4 the ie languagues spread with agriculture in2 europe arriving in scotland 5500 years ago.. question?.

how will they explain this?

Leolaia

Pig latin would be an example.

Pig Latin ain't a language. It's a rather a simple rule of metathesis for disguising the forms of words. That's it.

Leolaia