Posts by kaik

28

Questions From Readers (w67, 6/15, p383) :How old was Abel when he died?

by raymond frantz in

the watchtgower has decided to drop most of it's old publications up to 1990 and it looks like the library cd will be a thing of the past soon .i have decided to save some of the old content especially the questions from readers like wordpress posts and add photos ,let me know what you think.here is one from the 1967 watchtower.

how old was abel when he died ?.

.

kaik

I was looking through various Jewish texts to find out what was the age difference between Abel and Cain, and all say that Cain was older and more experienced. Some texts say they were twins, while other say that Cain was twin with his sister, and Abel was born much later where the difference between these two is up to 120! years. Also Midrahs mentions that Adam was unable to procreate with Eve because she was cheating on him with Sammael the Serpent and was ordered by G-d to know his wife and procreate.

Enigma, I always wondered why Abel was not rised from death once Cain killed him. It was certainly in G-d's power to do so.

41

What's the story behind Adam and Eve and fig leaves.

by jam in

where they blind?

nakedness is a sin between married folks?.

that is so silly.

kaik

Maranatha.. almost all tribal societies were naked in the warm areas, they did not know concept of shame and sin. This is a Christian concept. However, for us living in the northern hemisphere with winter sometimes reaching up to -25F, the possibility to be naked is unrealistic. However, many European societies do not have a problem with nudism. You can go this time anywhere in Central and Northern Europe in public places where they allow nudity like you can see in English Garden in Munich where there are in hot summer weekends thousands of naked sunbathers. Many European pools allow and often encourage top off for women and ban trunks/shorts for men.

However, concept of sin through Adam is unknown in Judaism; therefore, your correlation and reasoning influenced by crazy puritans centuries after the Genesis was compiled does not make a sense. 19th century puritans also thought that it was sinfull for women to show forearm or ankle and they destroyed precious ancient, renaissance, and baroque art through their own personal version of extreme puritanism. So if you want to be really literal on biblical nonsense, do you wrap yourself from head to toe with sheet so you do not get tempted..

Answeringenesis is a site maintained by crazy evangelical fasicsts who should be kept in mental institution and medicated daily.

41

What's the story behind Adam and Eve and fig leaves.

by jam in

where they blind?

nakedness is a sin between married folks?.

that is so silly.

kaik

Apognophos, fanfiction is also Genesis. Nobody knows what was the original story, but what we have in OT is filtered extract from numerous archaic civilizations and cultures that vanished thousands years ago. Midrash give a bit more explanation but in general they were written several hundreds and 1000 years after the complition of Genesis. Even Jews back then knew that Genesis was not sufficient; however, Christians for 2000 years believe that story of Adam and Eve are literally true.

14

Do you ever get frustrated and feel dirty after sharing experiences on JWN?

by BucketShopBill in

it's a giant boil on my butt, thinking how long we all were tricked by a cult.

reading so many of our fellows threads, it help's reinforce we made the correct choice in mentally or physically leaving the watchtower's path to truth, they never had it and nobody can prove they did!

ray franz jr. came to that conclusion, even he had to accept "this is not the best of all relgions, in fact, it's on the bad side!

kaik

Nope. I grew up with it since I was a toddler. I left when I was in my 20's and never looked back. I wish my family was free of the cult, but it will most likely not happened. I definitelly feel cheated and had my childhood stollen, but this cannot be taken back.

19

Where would we go, is the question

by Pistoff in

what better place, what better world can be offered, is the question tossed at those who have left.. what if it is just the same place, without taking everything we hear at the kingdom hall as gospel?.

can we just take with a grain of salt the things we know deep down are without basis?.

it is the same place, with the same friends, but without the drama of feeling that you can never do enough, that you were born sinful.. a faith that does not ask you to treat your family as disposable; a place that does not kick people to the curb when they need their family the most; a faith that lets you trust your heart, not ignore it.. can we just stay in the same place, and realize that we do not have to sacrifice our childrens lives by denying them blood if desperately needed?

kaik

Gospels are nonsense. Unfullfilled prophecies, failed expectations, and not authoritative for Jewish population. Where to begin? Original sin, atonement, baptism, Jesus hiking with Devil, Parousia, 12 dudes, Lazarus... Even God of the OT did not rise Abel, nor Moses, yet Lazarus?

41

What's the story behind Adam and Eve and fig leaves.

by jam in

where they blind?

nakedness is a sin between married folks?.

that is so silly.

kaik

Jeannette, some Jewish thinkers and rabbis say that Cain was a product of Eve and Serpent, which is reason why Eve is called mother of all living, while this is not mentioned about Adam. When Eve had bear a child with Serpent she said "At his birth, the exclamation was wrung from Eve, 'I have gotten a man, through an angel of the Lord". Other texts say something similar: "And Adam knew his wife, who had desired the Angel; and she conceived, and bare Cain; and she said, I have acquired a man, the Angel of the Lord." and "And Adam was aware that Eve his wife had conceived from Sammael the angel, and she became pregnant and bare Cain, and he was like those on high, not like those below; and she said, 'I have acquired a man, the angel of the Lord [the serpent of the Lord]." The fallout of Adam and Eve was not eating forbidden fruit, but having unatural relationship with Serpent. God gave Adam an opportunity to admit the crime, but he refuses and blames Eve. Reading various materials I have not seen any specific meaning to the fig leaves except to the references where all flora refused to hide Adam and Eve, and only fig tree felt pitty and hid them from the wrath of God.

Also Talmud mentions that Eve picked the forbidden fruit and fed it to the animals as well, therefore, all living was corrupted, not only mankind. Genesis without deep explanation is incomplete that it does not make much sense.

86

For those of you that LEFT.....

by DocHouse in

...did you also toss your faith as well?.

kaik

A faith is really broad concept. I have left the belief in antiquated, irrational text written by Bronze (~Stone/Iron) Age men, who did not had any understanding of science. I do not see any rationality behind the world's religions, they are invention of human fantasy. However, I believe in the Creator of the Universe, but I do not have a specific association to religion. Nobody can verify faith, what happens after we die, nor prove that their beliefs is correct.

41

What's the story behind Adam and Eve and fig leaves.

by jam in

where they blind?

nakedness is a sin between married folks?.

that is so silly.

kaik

Genesis is incomplete recollection of what Jewish believed and been told from one generation to another. This oral history where some of them is mixed with ancient religion and mythology became the foundation for the Genesis. According to Midrash, Serpent watched beautiful Eve making out with Adam, and desired her for himself. He planed to kill Adam by entrapping him eating the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve did not find see the nakedness as something to be ashamed. However, this changed after Serpent seduced Eve, and probably Adam as well. After threeway sex both humans felt ashamed and decided to cover their nakedness. So they looked for tree that was willing to hide their shame. According Genesis Rabbah, all trees refused to hid the sinners, only fig was willing to help. So they used the leaves and hid there waiting for punisment to come.

29

WTS one step closer to "1984" - JW literature rewritten in online versions

by sir82 in

jw
friends

likely everyone here is familar with the novel "1984" - "he who controls the past, controls the future.

he who controls the present, controls the past".. take a look at wol.jw.org, insight book, topic "faithful and discreet slave".. current online wording: http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200001485.

jesus trained the apostles for the role they would have after pentecost 33 c.e.

kaik

My mom has bunch of literature from 1970's ownard. She was severally criticized by elders that she keep hoarding publications and she should get rid of them. She asked me in May what to do with all these books and print, so I recommend to donate them to library or university for research. Some good soul did it with interwar publications printed in Czechoslovakia, and donated them to National archives. These publication became digitized and available for studies which includes Harp of God, What is truth, and Angels. I wish more JWs would bother to read their own old nonsense. My sibling considers almost all old publishing as apostate literature.

35

100 Years Ago Today: World War I Began - July, 28, 1914

by Oubliette in

100 years since world war i07/28/14 07:44 am by timothy noah and johnny simon.

"one hundred years ago today, emperor franz josef of austria-hungary declared war on serbia in retaliation for the assassination one month earlier of his heir apparent, archduke franz ferdinand, by a serbian pan-slavic nationalist.

what might otherwise have remained a regional conflict between the dying hapsburg empire and one of its former holdings instead became, through a tangle of alliances and a global power imbalance, two world wars that began in 1914 and ended in 1945, with a 21-year intermission for the jazz age and the great depression.".

kaik

I agree with you Steve2. There is a huge idealism of the 19th century, the same as people in the Renaissance looked into past as a golden era of declining prices and stability of the 15th century, void of religious upheaval started by Reformation. 19th century was brutal. Its first 15 years were bled out by Napoleonic Wars which included such huge battles like Austerlitz, Waterloo, Lipzig, and Borodino. Revolutions of 1830, 1848 helped creating new capitalistic orders. Civil wars in France, Hungary, Greece, Poland, or USA caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands people. Great Depression of 1870's lingered well until 1890. There was not such thing as peaceful world before 1914.