Leolaia

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Posts by Leolaia

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  130

  What does your user name here mean?

  by LyinEyes in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i don't know what eles to call it , i guess it is the user name....lol.......so what does yours mean?.

  i think awhile back i might have asked this,,,,,,,but it was way back and so many new ones here that i am just getting to know, and ones who came in here while i was not here as much.

  there may be a thread on this in the last recent months, i am not sure,,,,if so, if there are any new ones who want to tell why they choose their user names,,,,,please do.. i will tell you why my name is lyineyes,,,,,many have asked me that here lately.

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  Leolaia

  In the Toaripi language of Papua New Guinea, my user name means "Why?"
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  12

  Tartarus in 2 Peter 2:4

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  in my recent thread on the nephilim and the rephaim (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68224/1.ashx), i indicated that the legend of the titans was broadly related to the canaanite and hebrew myths of the nephilim and rephaim, but here in 2 peter we see more recent hellenistic influence on jewish legend.

  according to hesiod and other greek writers, the titans were the wicked offspring of ouranius and gaia ("heaven" and "earth") who initially had sovereignty over the cosmos but whom zeus and the olympian gods defeated and consigned to eternal bondage in the prison called tartarus in the netherworld.

  iliad 8:13-16 describes tartarus as a bottomless pit located below hades, a distinction reminiscent of hades and the abyss of revelation.

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  Leolaia

  trumangirl....Thanks much for the reply! Yes, the works I cited are definitely older than 2 Peter (which was written in the second century A.D.). Hesiod wrote about 700 BC and 1 Enoch dates to about 200-50 BC (there are copies of it among the Dead Sea Scrolls), except for the Book of Similitudes which dates to about A.D. 50, again definitely precedes 2 Peter. Second, the reference to Tartarus is no mere figure of speech because (1) it uses vocabulary aside from "Tartarus" that derives from Hesiod or 1 Enoch, and (2) the overall conception of Tartarus as the prison of the angels that sinned is exactly the same conception of the chasm in 1 Enoch, and matches the original Tartarus from Greek mythology as the prison in the netherworld where the Titans are imprisoned.

  If you are interested in the mythological connections between the Bible and the Near East, please read these other threads of mine:

  http://www.jehovahs...68098/1.ashx The sea dragons of Leviathan and Rahab

  http://www.jehovahs...68224/1.ashx On the Nephilim, Rephaim, and the Titans

  http://www.jehovahs...67994/1.ashx On Solomon, Shalem, Shahar, Ashtar, and Astarte

  http://www.jehovahs...1007074/1.ashx The origin of the rainbow in Bible and myth

  http://www.jehovahs...958484/1.ashx The Canaanite Legend of Aqhat and the Bible (I)

  http://www.jehovahs...67904/1.ashx The Canaanite Legend of Aqhat and the Bible (II)

  http://www.jehovahs...67843/1.ashx Holy mountains in Canaanite myth and the Bible

  http://www.jehovahs...67655/1.ashx The Sumerian origin of the Enoch legend

  http://www.jehovahs...1031328/1.ashx Asherah, the Snake-goddess Eve, and Moses' bronze serpent

  http://www.jehovahs...66352/1.ashx Jannes and Jambres: Dim memories of Hyksos pharaohs?

  http://www.jehovahs...1029140/1.ashx Parting the Red Sea and the Rahab/Leviathan myth

  http://www.jehovahs...66120/2.ashx Astarte & Baal, Jesus & Mary Magdalene, Simon Magus & Helena

  http://www.jehovahs...1019851/1.ashx Cherubs in the Garden of Eden and the Babylonian Karibu

  There are lots of other threads on mythology, but these are some of the more interesting ones that came to mind. :-)

  Leolaia
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  1

  minimus loses

  by Leolaia in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sorry dude....i did my best.

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  Leolaia

  Sorry dude....I did my best.
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  21

  Are terrorist humans?

  by dustyb in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if you have not a care for human life, and would rather try to blow up thousands of people if given the chance, would you call yourself human?

  the reason i ask is, would you have any problem putting a gun to a known terrorist head and pulling the trigger?

  iono if i could do it yet, because i haven't been in that situation.

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  Leolaia

  ICKE -- A VISIONARY!!

  
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  12

  Tartarus in 2 Peter 2:4

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  in my recent thread on the nephilim and the rephaim (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68224/1.ashx), i indicated that the legend of the titans was broadly related to the canaanite and hebrew myths of the nephilim and rephaim, but here in 2 peter we see more recent hellenistic influence on jewish legend.

  according to hesiod and other greek writers, the titans were the wicked offspring of ouranius and gaia ("heaven" and "earth") who initially had sovereignty over the cosmos but whom zeus and the olympian gods defeated and consigned to eternal bondage in the prison called tartarus in the netherworld.

  iliad 8:13-16 describes tartarus as a bottomless pit located below hades, a distinction reminiscent of hades and the abyss of revelation.

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  Leolaia

  One of the most explicit incursions of Greek mythology in the NT is the reference to Tartarus in 2 Peter 2:4. Here we read that "God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to pits of darkness (sirois zophou), reserved for judgment". The allusion is to the angels that intermarried with human women, as the parallel text in Jude makes clear: "Angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day" (Jude 6). In my recent thread on the Nephilim and the Rephaim (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/68224/1.ashx), I indicated that the legend of the Titans was broadly related to the Canaanite and Hebrew myths of the Nephilim and Rephaim, but here in 2 Peter we see more recent Hellenistic influence on Jewish legend.

  According to Hesiod and other Greek writers, the Titans were the wicked offspring of Ouranius and Gaia ("Heaven" and "Earth") who initially had sovereignty over the cosmos but whom Zeus and the Olympian gods defeated and consigned to eternal bondage in the prison called Tartarus in the netherworld. Iliad 8:13-16 describes Tartarus as a bottomless pit located below Hades, a distinction reminiscent of Hades and the abyss of Revelation. The Jewish Hellenistic traditions that 2 Peter is dependent on equates the angels that sinned with the Titans and their place of bondage as Tartarus. As I showed in an earlier thread (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/64432/993359/post.ashx#993359), 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 are explicitly dependent on the first-century B.C. apocalypse 1 Enoch which elaborated considerably on the fallen angel traditions. Enochian allusions run throughout the two Christian passages in the NT.

  2 Peter 2:4: " For God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment."

  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."

  1 Enoch 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."

  1 Enoch 20:1-2: "And these are the names of the holy angels who watch [over the angels]: Uriel, one of the holy angels, for he is over the world and Tartarus."

  Jude 6: " And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day."

  1 Enoch 12:4: "Go and make known to the Watchers of heaven who have abandoned the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women."

  1 Enoch 15:3, 7: "For what reason have you abandoned the high, holy, and eternal heaven; and slept with women and defiled yourselves with the daughters of the people....I did not make wives for you for the proper dwelling place of spiritual beings of heaven is heaven."

  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."

  1 Enoch 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.

  1 Enoch is dependent, in turn, on the Greek Tartarus traditions. For instance, 1 Enoch 18:11 refers to the Watchers' prison as khasma mega "great chasm" which is exactly the description Hesiod uses for the prison of the Titans (cf. Hesiod, Theogony 729, 742, 806). There are many other close verbal parallels between the description of Tartarus in the Theogony and the chasm-prison of the angels in 1 Enoch 18:11, 21:7-11 (= Theogony 717-819). Finally, 2 Peter 2:4 decribes Tartarus as "pits of darkness" (sirois zophou), and the parallel text in Jude 6 refers to angels "under darkness" (hupo zophon). The same word occurs in 1 Enoch 17:2 referring to the netherworld as a "place of darkness" (zophode topos), and zophos "gloom, darkness" also designates Tartarus in Hesiod (Theogony, 729), who refers to the Titans "under the misty darkness" (hupo zopho eeroenti), a phrase strikingly similar to that in Jude 6. We also encounter zophos used in phrases like "gloom of the world below" and "nether darkness" in Odyssey 11.57, 155; 20.356; Illiad 15.191; 21.56; Asechylus Pers. 839. In Odyssey 20.356, Erebos is located "beneath" (hupo) the "darkness" (zophos).

  The curious Jewish addition to the Greek Titan tradition is that the angel Uriel is in charge of Tartarus. But this element is in itself dependent on Near East mythology. In 1 Enoch 18:11 and 19:1-2 (also 21:1-9), Uriel serves as the interpreting angel for the prison(s) of the angels and in Sibylline Oracle 2:228 it is Uriel who leads the Titans and the giants (offspring of the Watchers) out of Hades to judgment:

  "Bodies of humans, made solid in heavenly manner, breathing and set in motion, will be raised on a single day. Then Uriel, the great angel, will break the gigantic bolts, of unyielding and unbreakable steel, of the gates of Hades, not forged of metal; he will throw them wide open and will lead all the mournful forms to judgment, especially those of ancient phantoms, Titans and the Giants and such as the Flood destroyed" (Sibylline Oracle 2:225-232)

  The figure of Uriel is also reminiscent of the angel "having the key to the abyss and a great chain in his hand" who binds Satan and presumably releases him after the millenium (Revelation 20:1-3). The connection of an angel of light (Uriel = "Fire" or "Light of God") with judgment of those in the netherworld is probably dependent on the Near Eastern tradition of the sun-god having judgment over those in the nether regions. The Sumerian Two Elegies, for instance, speaks of the sun-god's role as an infernal judge: "Utu, the great lord of the underworld, after changing the place of darkness to light, will render your judgment". In Akkadian tradition the sun-god Shamash is also portrayed as the arbiter of decisions:

  "Illuminator of all, the whole of heaven, who makes light the darkness for mankind above and below, Shamash illuminator of all .... The careful judge who gives just verdicts, controls the government, lives like a prince" (Shamash Hymn, COS 1.117 1-3, 101-102)

  After traveling through the netherworld at night, Shamash was believed to decide fates at Duku in the eastern horizon, just prior to his rising between the peaks of Mount Mashu. One may also observe the western entrance to the netherworld in the Sumerian myth Inanna's Descent. Inanna, also known as Ishtar and Venus, surprises the gatekeeper of the "land of no return". Instead of going to the "place of sunrise" where she would rise as the morning star Venus, she has instead come to the "land of no return" in the west, where Utu enters into the underworld. Also in the Baal Cycle, Anat asks the sun-god Shapsh to lift her brother Baal's corpse in the realm of Mot. Shapsh, traveling daily west to east, has access to the netherworld and recovers Baal's body.

  There is one other connection to Akkadian myth in the legend of Tartarus and Uriel in 1 Enoch. In 1 Enoch 18:11-12 we learn that the Watcher's chasm is in proximity to a desrt place of sorts, and Azazel is represented as being cast into a chasm located in the desert in Dudael (1 Enoch 10:4). This is not an isolated tradition; according to the Targum Ps.-Jonathan, Beth-hadure (byt hdwr') is the rocky place where the goat for Azazel is led (cf. Leviticus 16:21) and Beth Hadudu (byt chdwdw) is described as a rocky wilderness in m. Yoma 6:8. Since Hebrew chdr means "sharp, pointed," the Targum form possibly reflects world play (note also the similarity between "d" and "r" in Hebrew/Aramaic). The original Greek form of the name (Dadouel) in 1 Enoch (and possibly the m. Yoma form) suggests a derivation from Aramaic dd' "breast". According to Milik, this etymology is also reflected in the Dendayn of 1 Enoch 60:8 where Behemoth is said to dwell. The Similitudes of 1 Enoch characterize Dendayn as a desert which cannot be seen but which lies east of the garden where the chosen and righteous dwell. The etymology of "breast" evokes the "two breasts" imagery of Akkadian and Sumerian cosmology relating to Mount Mashu, the mountain which twin peaks which oversees the setting and rising of the sun, located in both the east and west at the point of sunrise and sunset. Both Dendayn and Mount Mashu may also bear some connection to sdy known from the theophanic epithet El Shaddai. Shaddai has been associated with Ugaritic tdw or tdy "breast, mountain", which in turn is related to Akkadian shadu. We therefore find within the Enochian corpus a number of traditions about the holding place of the angels, connected to Greek Tartarus, which is also related to Akkadian and Near Eastern beliefs about the entrance and exit of the netherworld at the twin mountains at the extremity of the world, in a chasm located in an infernal desert presided over by the sun-god.
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  65

  Bush/Kerry Poll

  by Greenpalmtreestillmine in

  1. social
  2. current

  u.s citizens: if you intend to vote in november will you vote for bush or kerry or are you undecided?

  please with just one word give your vote for this very small poll: bush, kerry or undecided .

  those outside of the u.s.: who are you hoping will become the next u.s. president?

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  Leolaia

  KERRY!
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  23

  The Memorial: Blasphemy or Monty Python Sketch?

  by metatron in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  soon the special night will be upon us, when millions of jehovah's witnesses.

  will gather together for the sacred purpose of merely passing around the emblems.

  of christian salvation and rejecting them.. this event proves to me that anything, no matter how silly, will be treated solemnly.

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  Leolaia

  You'll never see the Watchtower Society change its opinion on this cultic travesty of Christian ritual - I guarantee it! There's no chance because:

  1) it would mean admitting that they were wrong, and

  2) it might interfere with the greedy, controlling aims of a few elderly gerontocrats

  I disagree with this. This is not as difficult a teaching to change than, say, the blood doctrine where they would have to admit being bloodguilty. #1 has not prevented the many doctrinal vacillations where they have swapped positions back and forth, and #2 is not a problem in the long run because the "gerontocrats" will eventually be "dead". It is true that memorial partakers have remained steady at around 8,000 or so (contra the myth of the dying off "remnant"), but these are increasingly made up of younger post-1935 partakers than the old-school gereontocrats. They already face a problem where the leadership and governing body has had to include members of the "great crowd," and the problem will worsen over the next two decades as the F&DS leadership will have dip more and more into the pool of non-partakers, blurring the traditional distinction. I can see a situation by 2030 or so when the majority of the WTS leadership is of the "great crowd" and desiring greater authority for themselves and with majority voting power, they define a new class for the great crowd to include those invited by the FD&S to serve God in his heavenly temple. They could easily point to the fact that the Rechabites dwelt outside Jerusalem during the First Temple but gave sacred service in the Temple, and by the Second Temple were scribes for the priests and Sanhedrin. They could even point to C. T. Russell's "secondary spiritual class". So I don't think it's impossible.
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  31

  777 vs. 666

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've heard 777 or 7777 used as a godly number in christian televangelist hotline numbers, 777music.com is a christian music online store, and the number is supposed to represent an ideally perfect number representing god and his creation.

  but it strikes me as a pallid ripoff of 666, and nothing in the bible seems to produce a higher order number above 70 (7 x 10) with 7.

  144,000 is of course based on 12 and 10. and contrary to it being such a godly number, it seems to have been the subject to a book on gematria and the kabbalah by satan incarnate himself, aleister crowley.

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  Leolaia

  Valis, I see how quickly we go from the numerically abstract to the tangibly concrete. Yes, the scales are definitely tipped to 666.

  Edit: Hey but waitaminute!! Isn't 666 a MAN's number?
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  31

  777 vs. 666

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've heard 777 or 7777 used as a godly number in christian televangelist hotline numbers, 777music.com is a christian music online store, and the number is supposed to represent an ideally perfect number representing god and his creation.

  but it strikes me as a pallid ripoff of 666, and nothing in the bible seems to produce a higher order number above 70 (7 x 10) with 7.

  144,000 is of course based on 12 and 10. and contrary to it being such a godly number, it seems to have been the subject to a book on gematria and the kabbalah by satan incarnate himself, aleister crowley.

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  Leolaia

  I'm behind on pop culture. Just tell me their last names are not "Spice".
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  31

  777 vs. 666

  by Leolaia in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i've heard 777 or 7777 used as a godly number in christian televangelist hotline numbers, 777music.com is a christian music online store, and the number is supposed to represent an ideally perfect number representing god and his creation.

  but it strikes me as a pallid ripoff of 666, and nothing in the bible seems to produce a higher order number above 70 (7 x 10) with 7.

  144,000 is of course based on 12 and 10. and contrary to it being such a godly number, it seems to have been the subject to a book on gematria and the kabbalah by satan incarnate himself, aleister crowley.

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  Leolaia

  Dawn....Good point!!! That's one point in favor of 777. But being lucky is not necessarily the same thing as holy (this goes for bebu's comment as well). Not that they ought to be, but it strikes me that holy things tend to have terrible luck (e.g. the Ten Commandments getting smashed, the Ark of the Covenant getting swiped by the Philistines and giving them *very* bad luck, two Temples getting trashed, the Bible getting corrupted, the saints and martyrs getting, well, martyred, etc.).

  Narkissos....Hmmmm, tell us the scoop about 888. The only number I recall associated with Jesus was 318. I definitely like 888 better than 777.