ascot....ISCF is a fantastic book....has a great chapter on blood and gives a good lesson on critical thinking using examples from the Society's own publications.
Leolaia
Leolaia
JoinedPosts by Leolaia
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82
Just received Crisis of Conscience!!
by acsot ini've already exited the jws in mind and heart, and have read many comments from everyone about the book, so didn't really see the need to buy it for myself.
however, after reading something here on the forum, i decided to order it (and the tao of pooh and siddhartha.
) a super-dub sits two desks away from (she and her husband knew ray and his wife, had tea with them in their room when he was on the gb, etc.
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82
Just received Crisis of Conscience!!
by acsot ini've already exited the jws in mind and heart, and have read many comments from everyone about the book, so didn't really see the need to buy it for myself.
however, after reading something here on the forum, i decided to order it (and the tao of pooh and siddhartha.
) a super-dub sits two desks away from (she and her husband knew ray and his wife, had tea with them in their room when he was on the gb, etc.
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Leolaia
Narkissos....how is Jacques Luc doing? He was translating my crucifixion paper into French but I haven't heard from him in over a year.
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After Baptism Was There Anything That You Didn't Comprehend About The Truth
by minimus ini've seen a lot of persons that got baptized and go thru 100 questions with the elders say that they did not know that such and such a thing was a disfellowshipping offense.
or that they would be counseled or looked down upon for a certain thing.
did you ever experience that type of thing?
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Leolaia
That is why the "truth" is best suited for children. Kids are impressionable. The older you get the more you need to break out of the shell. It's good for you.
It isn't good to grow up thinking God might kill you tomorrow because you couldn't finish your homework and tried to hide it.
Leolaia
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43
The Crucifixion in History
by hooberus inencyclopedia brittanica micropaedia vol.
"there were various methods of performing the execution.
usually, the condemned man, after being whipped, or "scourged," dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground.
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Leolaia
Whoa, very interesting....you got a link to that? That's quite a change from the Revelation Climax book.
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43
The Crucifixion in History
by hooberus inencyclopedia brittanica micropaedia vol.
"there were various methods of performing the execution.
usually, the condemned man, after being whipped, or "scourged," dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground.
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Leolaia
Leolaia, I have heard of the Lucian version. It would be interesting to find an online version of it. It seems that it was written after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Here's the online text: http://www.grammatika.150m.com/lucianprometheus.htm
Lucian's version of the story is his own idiosyncratic take on it and certainly departs from the traditional tale in many respects. Lucian was a pagan and tho he wrote after Christianity took root, he had somewhat of a fixation on Roman crucifixion itself (e.g. his Trial) and thus it would seem unwarranted to see in his version of Prometheus an allusion to Jesus. It is generally believed that the Dialogue of Philopatris was a later forgery (and thus the author generally designated as Pseudo-Lucian) and thus proves no acquaintance with Christianity on Lucian's part.
Leolaia
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18
Jesus, a follower of a Pagan Custom?
by Faraon inhard as i tried, i could not find any reference to baptism in the ot (old testament to christians, hebrew scriptures to jovah's witless).. i know that previous to john the baptist, many religions, mysteries and cults baptized their initiates mostly either in blood, or in water.
never the jews at that time or now.
for the remision of sins, they just sent a goat to the desert.. jesus did not obviously start the baptism thing.
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Leolaia
The best paper I've seen on the origin of baptism is the following:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/63330/1.ashx
There may have been some influence from Greek initiation rites. But these appear to have arisen relatively late and fit better with later Christian initiation baptism than Jewish proselyte baptism or that of John the Baptist. The former is less a rite of initiation than an act to wash away Gentile impurity and could thus be viewed as a variation on Jewish purity cleansing (most famously practiced by the Essenes). John's baptismal practice also was ostensibly an act to achieve a newfold purity from sin through repentence; any "initation" function into a cult of John the Baptist was clearly secondary. The cleansing of Naaman in the Jordan in 2 Kings 5:14 may be an OT antecedent for John's baptisms in the Jordan -- not as a historical source of the practice but as a idological antecedent that John was trying to establish. The eschatological impetus of John's baptismal practice may have been influenced by the prophecy in Zechariah 13:1: "On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity." John may have thus seen himself as fulfilling this prophecy -- providing innovatively a "baptism of repentence" as a means to "cleanse people from sin". There may have therefore been sufficient native Jewish antecedents to account for the development of baptism within Judaism.
And though Jesus underwent baptism, he broke ways with John over doctrinal matters and in particular did not believe in traditional Jewish ritual purity, and in fact preached against it (cf. Luke 11:39-41; 13:20-21).
Leolaia
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35
RATED R MOVIES
by sandy inthis past weekend a relative came over with these ultimate fighting dvds that he bought but he wouldn't sit down and watch city by the sea because it is rated r.
they can be so dense and hypocritical!
when i pointed out to him that his ultimate fighting dvds are un-rated but in my opinion it is far worse to watch people fighting for pure entertainment purposes than it is to see a rated r movie that teaches a great life lesson.
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Leolaia
I heard that the CO in a recent talk, ripped on "Finding Nemo" saying a talking fish was "RIDICULOUS".
An elder at my cong gave me a tongue-lashing for watching Knight Rider -- that show with the demonic talking car. Gosh, I hope he today hasn't rented those GPS-directed cars that tell you where you are going! I heard him lecture another fellow conger for watching Ripley's Believe it Or Not, as it has lots of satanic stuff on that program...(this was back in '85)....
Finding Nemo I thought was a rather boring, disappointing movie....
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My trip to the Bethel library....
by logansrun intowards the middle of my eighteen-month critical investigation of the jws and the bible i decided to pay a visit to my sister and brother-in-law at the patterson bethel complex in new york.
perhaps it was a last-ditch effort to salvage whatever faith i had in the organization, or maybe it was the realization that i would not be able to see my sister under semi-normal conditions again if i left; i don't know.
of course, the trip did not save my crumbling faith.
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Leolaia
I had heard that the books at the Bethel library were censored, portions of pages cut out with razor blades. This was even the case with books quoted in the Watchtower. I heard this either from a brother who had been to Bethel or from the "apostate" literature. Any truth to this?
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Hidden Images in the JW Publications
by Hunyadi ini am a disfellowshipped brother and have never had a problem with the organization's doctrines.
i am, however, deeply disturbed at the undeniable use of hidden or subliminal images in the illustrations of the wt publications.
there are so many that it cannot be interpreted as anything other than a deliberate pattern.
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Leolaia
Thanks for posting this. I was just talking the other day in a different thread about the following image:
http://members.cox.net/hunyadi/watchtower_016.htm
I discovered this hidden image while sitting at the Kingdom Hall during the Watchtower study. I could barely contain my shock. My friend sitting next to me then pointed out the letters "J" "A" "H" in the teeth of the skull. We both exchanged this "what the f** is going on?" look. I think 90% of the images that are claimed to be subliminal images are just people's imagination, noticing patterns that look vaguely like letters or faces. But this one was different -- I wasn't looking for it, it was relatively easy to spot, and it has much more detail than the average vague "face" that gets identified. That had to have been the spookiest experience ever when I was with the Witnesses!
Leolaia
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43
The Crucifixion in History
by hooberus inencyclopedia brittanica micropaedia vol.
"there were various methods of performing the execution.
usually, the condemned man, after being whipped, or "scourged," dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground.
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Leolaia
Hooberus, you are aware aren't you of Lucian's Prometheus on Caucasus (c. A.D. 150-160)? It uses the verb anastauroo "crucify" and indicates that the arms were outstretched from side to side, as in a two-beamed cross: "Suppose we crucify [ ανεσταυρωσθαι ] him half-way up somewhere hereabouts over the ravine, with his hands out-stretched from crag to crag." (Prometheus, 1; translated by Fowler & Fowler, and A. M. Harmon, in the Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929). No mention of a wooden patibulum (traverse beam), but the position of the body recalls that of the two-beamed cross (which Lucian otherwise described explicitly in his Trial in the Court of Vowels, written shortly before Prometheus). Lucian confirms this in a further statement, where he specifies that the hands were each nailed separately: "Do you suppose there is not room on the Caucasus to peg out a couple of us? Come, your right hand! Clamp it down, Hephaestus, and in with the nails; bring down the hammer with a will. Now the left, make sure work of that too." (Prometheus, 2)
As an aside, the WTS falsely and dishonestly claimed that Lucian's use of the word "crucify" is at odds with a two-beamed cross (NWT, 1950 edition, p. 769; NWT, 1984 edition, p. 1577). This is one example of false claims made by the Society on the matter (another is their mischaracterization of Livy's use of the word crux).
Leolaia