i understand these verses were removed in the nwt as well as some other bibles because they were added later & considered uninspired.
jesus protected an adultress so why remove it?
it fits in nicely with his teachings, does it not?
In other words, the WTBTS is just like those false religious organization from which they claim to be so different!
I think you just helped prove my point. Thanks.
You're welcome. In my humblest of opinions, all religions are full of baloney, but I've become a diehard atheist so what do I know?
CyrusThePersian
http://gawker.com/new-york-magazine-begins-to-give-up-on-print-1474820408.
little by little....... print media is dying.
i understand the head of buzzfeed asserted that 'there are no new newspaper subscribers being born', statistically speaking.. metatron.
Like Simon said, it's hard to compete with a gizmo that can hold a whole library in the palm of your hand. But when I look at my "stack of shelves with dust covered books" I can't help but feel a little nostalgic.
CyrusThePersian
i understand these verses were removed in the nwt as well as some other bibles because they were added later & considered uninspired.
jesus protected an adultress so why remove it?
it fits in nicely with his teachings, does it not?
The Codex Sinaiticus also contains the Epistle of Barnabas and The Shepherd of Hermas.
The point being that the Watchtower isn't alone in cherry picking what should and should not be "canon". The Catholics and Protestants have been doing that for centuries.
The issue is not really whether the pericope is inspired or not but rather whether or not it belongs in the book of John, which available evidence indicates that it does not.
As to whether the apocryphal books like Tobit and Maccabees are canonical, the Catholic church eventually relagated these works to a secondary status and the Protestants rejected them altogether. The Watchtower Society, being founded by Protestants, use a Protestant Bible canon and ignore the apocrypha.
tell us a little about yourself and your family.. my wife and i are born ins.
we have 2 beautiful children.
whenever i run into jws i knew, they usually give me a hug and tell me they miss me.. how long have you now been out?.
You have a beautiful family. It makes me kind of sad for what my family missed out on.
Great story! Keep looking up!
i understand these verses were removed in the nwt as well as some other bibles because they were added later & considered uninspired.
jesus protected an adultress so why remove it?
it fits in nicely with his teachings, does it not?
Hi Perry!
Most of the references you gave are quite late and have little impact in proving the authenticity of the pericope adulterae. The one reference that is significant is Papias (as quoted by Eusebius, a 4th century exegete).
If we can trust Eusebius, he states that Papias, who lived in the late first century into the early second century, wrote of the existence of a story of a woman accused of many sins that was found in what Papias called "The Gospel of the Hebrews".
There is some evidence that the pericope is very old, and may even date back to nearly the time of the apostles, if we can believe Eusebius. However, whether it belongs in the book of John remains in doubt.
CyrusThePersian
tell us a little about yourself and your family.. my wife and i are fortunate to live in a lovely little country cottage northumberland in northern england.
we have two children who have both grown up and left home.
our son is a physical training instructor in the royal air force and our daughter works in the historic city of york.. were you a born in or a convert?.
Hi Cofty!
I notice we have at least one thing in common and that is that 1995 Watchtower about the generation change being the catalyst for our exit. I think that was a big wake-up call for a lot of people. It may be our generation's 1975!
Thanks for posting your interview. It sounds like you've had quite a ride so far!
CyrusThePersian
i'm divorced and live quite a distance away from my grown children, who are still in the "truth.".
were you a born in or a convert?.
born in.
Enjoyed learning more about you. How old are your children?
My daughter is 31 and a regular pioneer. My son is 22 and an aspiring ministerial servant.
some years ago, we had this difficult bible study with a guy who was unofficially a witness for about 40 years, yet he would never make the step of becoming an unbaptized publisher.
we pushed him at some point to tell us the reason, and the reason was this: he didn't agree with the field reports practice.
he said he did a lot of preaching by himself but didn't see any reason to report it to the congregation.. of course, we told him that the reason we hand in field reports is so that we have statistics, and know how much work is done worldwide and bla-bla-blah.
In complete opposition to Matthew chapter 6, field service reports are used to gauge a person's "spiritual health." They are also used to determine whether a man is "spiritually qualified" to hold a position of responsibility in the congregation, again in opposition to the scripture, this time 1st Timothy chapter 3 which doesn't even list evangelizing as a requirement for the office of overseer!
CyrusThePersian
i read with great interest cofty's thread on complexity found here:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/267869/1/boeing-747s-and-other-misunderstandings-about-evolution#.upuj0cdnbiu.
i wanted to talk about another aspect of complexity and whether complexity is truly what we should see in design.
I read with great interest Cofty's thread on complexity found here:
I wanted to talk about another aspect of complexity and whether complexity is truly what we should see in design. The argument that creationists make about how complex living things are is a good one. In fact, it's the best argument that creationists have come up with so far.
The argument that complexity in nature equals design was first proposed by Rev. William Paley in his book Natural Theology. In it he proposed that if you were out walking one day and found a pocket watch on the ground you would be able to tell by the intricate mechanism, the painted dial, and the sophisticated metallurgy used to craft the watch that the watch had a designer.
So too, Paley reasoned, if you see the intricate mechanisms of life, shouldn't you reason that life too, had a designer?
It's a good argument.
It's the best argument that creationists have.
Now let me poke a hole in it.
Complexity is NOT necessarily a hallmark of design. Let me illustrate by using Paley's analogy. Only now instead of finding a pocket watch on your outing you find an arrowhead. An arrowhead is very simple. It's just a chipped bit of stone, yet when you see it it practically shreiks, "I am designed!" Why? What makes this simple arrowhead instantly recognizable as a designed artifact and something intricate, like a snowflake for instance, not?
The answer lies in purpose. Things that are designed are designed for a reason. Reason and reasoning ability are products of a mind. Of what reason or purpose is a frog? Or for that matter, a human being? or blades of grass or anything else? The only purpose they have is to survive long enough to make new frogs, human beings or grass.
What I'm saying is that nature has no overarching goal, no purpose other than to self replicate, which isn't a purpose at all. It's merely a survival mechanism. So without a purpose, wherein lies the design?
This survival that we see is one of the reasons we perceive so much complexity in nature. In a designed world we should actually see simple things-a designer would want to be efficient in his design. He would know that simple designs are more efficient and less prone to trouble and breakdown. This is not what we see in nature. Instead we see redundant systems in organisms. We see inefficient immune systems that try to fight off disease microorganisms that are themselves part of nature. In fact we see stuff that we would expect to see if things were not designed, but rather came about through the trial and error path of Natural Selection.
CyrusThePersian
i understand these verses were removed in the nwt as well as some other bibles because they were added later & considered uninspired.
jesus protected an adultress so why remove it?
it fits in nicely with his teachings, does it not?
But isn't saying "it doesn't belong there" simply 'begging the question', since it has BEEN there for over a millenia now, so why did God and Jesus allow it to appear in the Bible all this time (and it still appears in many other translations)?
I'm not a believer in the Bible as an inspired work of God. I'm merely a student of the Bible as a work of ancient literature, so I will not comment on whether the inclusion of the pericope in many modern Bible translations is from the hand of God. I will say though, from a more practical standpoint, that since the pericope was included in the Latin Vulgate, the translation that was the basis for many subsequent translations, that the pericope was able to find its way into these translations is by no means a miracle.
You do however, bring up some excellent points as to why the Watchtower would choose to delete this story from their new Bible. In the guise of being intellectually accurate they may be stealthily removing a passage that for them is uncomfortable and borders on disarming their doctrine-good catch!
CyrusThePersian
