greetings, friends:.
a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.
the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.
JosephMalik
The problem with Jude's authenticity is not so much that he used "common thoughts and expressions" but that he thought that 1st Enoch was the real deal, an inspired work. In v.14 of Jude, he uses the word "prophesied." This shows that Jude believed 1st Enoch to be a God-breathed work. 1st Enoch obviously isn't, It's a forgery. The fact that Jude didn't know this severely discredits his epistle.
CyrusThePersian
http://ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php.
we found this quiz after reading the book parenting beyond belief and sweetpea and i decided to take the challenge - afterall how difficult can 50 bible questions be for us born and brought up as jw's?.
our results were enlightening to say the least - we both scored 28/50 - not exactly brilliant although apparently above average.. take the quiz and post your results and comments..
Hey look Ma! I done good! I guess all that Theocraptic Misery School attendance paid off!
CyrusThePersian
Thank you for taking the quiz.
See below to get a free copy of Freethought Today.
Congratulations! You scored 44 correct out of 50!
40 - 50: Wow! You know more than a minister, priest, or rabbi!
30 - 39: Congratulations! Better informed than most Americans
20 - 29: Passing Grade
10 - 19: Did you get your bible knowledge from Sunday School?
0 - 9: Don't feel bad. You may be better off not knowing much about the bible.
Average score: 15
The letter for the correct answers appears after each question, and the correct answers are shown in boldface blue type. Your wrong answers are shown in red type followed by "<--Wrong answer." Unanswered questions were counted wrong but not indicated.
All biblical quotations are from the King James Version (KJV), unless indicated.
greetings, friends:.
a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.
the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.
Thanks for all the info, Leolaia!
I was looking over your list showing the literary dependence that Jude has with 1st Enoch. It's amazing! It's almost as though Jude had a copy of 1st Enoch beside him and was using it as a kind of thesaurus to compose his epistle.
Thanks for the link, too! lots of really good info there.Your work is very much appreciated!
CyrusThePersian
greetings, friends:.
a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.
the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.
*** w01 9/15 p. 30 Enoch Walked With God in an Ungodly World ***
Does the Bible Quote From the Book of Enoch?
Hey inkling!
Thanks for posting this, I've been looking for this for a while. I misplaced my WT CD-ROM and I couldn't find this article.
This article is a prime example of the Watchtower's corkscrew reasoning.
He may simply have quoted a common source, a reliable tradition handed down from remote antiquity. Paul evidently did something similar when he named Jannes and Jambres as the otherwise anonymous magicians of Pharaoh’s court who opposed Moses.
And what, pray tell, might this "common source" be? Is there any evidence that such a common source existed, either for Paul's reference to Jannes and Jambres or for Jude's quotation of Enoch? Instead of using Occam's Razor (The notion that the simplist explanation is one that's most likely to be right.) and stating the obvious, that Jude quoted from the pseudepigraphfal book of 1st Enoch and "Paul" referenced the apocryphal Book of Jannes and Jambres, the WT has to come up with a hypothetical source that both the "inspired" Bible writer used and the uninspired hack pseudepigraphal writer used as well! (and with no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim.)
Incidently, there is not one but three lines of evidence that Jude is quoting 1st Enoch and not another source. First, Jude SAYS he's quoting Enoch. Second, the same, word for wrd prophesy found in 1st Enoch 1:9 is NOT phrased as a quotation from another source, as it is in Jude. Third, both Jude and 1st Enoch make the same error in stating that Enoch is seventh in line from Adam, when in fact, Genesis chapter 5 shows that Enoch is SIXTH in line from Adam.
CyrusThePersian
greetings, friends:.
a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.
the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.
15 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
hi hmike,
Actually, this scripture is one that shows that 2nd Peter is probably pseudepigrapha. The early church fathers didn't consider ANY of what we call the New Testament to be scripture until well into the second century. If Peter had actually written this, why didn't the church fathers such as Clement or Polycarp, who came after Peter, consider Paul's writings to be scripture? This fact, as well as the reference in 2nd Peter 3:2, which seems to indicate that the apostles are dead by referring to them in the past tense, provides evidence that the book of Second Peter postdates the life of Peter by many years.
CyrusThePersian
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http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewdb/filesdb-download.php?command=download&id=1186.
Hooberous
It might interest you to know that Judge Jones is a staunch Republican and was a George Bush appointee. He and his family are also Christians. Nevertheless, he was able to see, by the preponderance of the evidence, that "Intelligent Design" is just religion in disguise and has no place in the science classroom.
CyrusThePersian
greetings, friends:.
a friend - a former jw - gave me thomas paine's the age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology.
the mind boggles as i begin, haltingly, to fathom what many of you have already learned and shared here on jwd: the authenticity of the bible is seriously in question.
First of all, let me say that The Age of Reason is an awesome book. Thomas Paine was a true Renaissance Man. To think that this book still opens eyes after 200 years is a major accomplshment!
As for "Paul" (The Apostle Paul probably didn't actually write this epistle), when he said "All scripture..." he was referring to what we (mostly) call the Old Testament today. The New Testament writings that existed in his time were in no way considered "scripture" that is, inspired, until much later. As to what the writer DID believe to be scripture, consider what he wrote in v.8 of the same third chapter:
"Now in the way that Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so these also go on resisting the truth, men completely corrupted in mind, disapproved as regards the faith."
Now who the hell are Jannes and Jambres?? They are mentioned nowhere in what we today call the Bible. But they ARE mentioned in the apocrypha. So exactly what did the writer of the Pastoral Epistles believe was "scripture"?
Who really knows...
CyrusThePersian
ok, this is my 500th post, which for me is a major accomplishment!!
i've lurked here since the beginning, posting here and there since 2001, and am very close to coming full circle on a fade that began to be engineered back around 1998. i just want to thank all of you for your comments, insights, and overall support.
each of you in your own way have aided me and given me something to make it to the next day.
...And thank YOU too, Black Man, for your insightful posts. One of my all time favorite threads is this one
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/54731/1.ashx
which you started a while back. There was some really good stuff there.
Thanks! and congratulations!
CyrusThePersian
i'd like you all to tell me 2 or 3 things:.
1- were you raised a witness or not?.
2-if you were, was your family very "theocratic" or not so much?.
1. Yes. I was raised in the Troof
2. Yes. My family had its ups and downs, but mostly we were enthusiastic about the org.
3. Militant atheist.
i'm more than halfway though my first ever reading of carl sagan's skeptical classic: .
"the demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark".
i am deeply enjoying it, and i might post a review when i finish, but until then .
Excellent, excellent book. Pay particular attention to his chapters on "The Dragon in my Garage" and "The Baloney Detection Kit".
These two chapters alone make the book worthwhile.
CyrusThePersian
