Noah 'warning the people'

by KW13 23 Replies latest jw friends

  • KW13
    KW13

    Am i imagining this?

    At the Kingdom Hall we were told many times that Noah warned the others about the coming flood and was ridiculed but actually there is no evidence of this in the bible!

    There is however evidence to the contrary.

    Matthew 24:37-39


    37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

    Hebrews 11:7 seems to confirm this

    7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

  • sir82
    sir82

    and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came

    Yes, that does contradict JW doctrine.

    Fortunately, there is an easy solution: Make up your own translation to bolster your predetermined doctrine.

    Matthew 24:39, according to the Revised New World Translation:

    and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away

    (bold mine)

    So, by clever translation, you can insert the diea that Noah was indeed warning them, but they simply chose not to pay attention.

    See how easy that is?




  • KW13
    KW13

    i was wondering how all those years i'd read it and not realised. turns out i never did read that, thanks sir82!

  • waton
    waton

    Noah was supposed to be " a preacher of righteousness ". apparently proclaiming a wt-like "good news" message:

    "I am going to kill all life, babies and all, except a few samples that are kept dry --because of a few horny angels,"

    wich hardly reflects righteousness, it's more like wrongsciousness. bad fiction.

    "it is not even wrong." Pauli

  • Finkelstein
    Finkelstein

    Noah's flood was expressed by the ancient Hebrews as a means to create power and relevance to their god Yahweh and was probably also to evoke the power toward the high priests as in you better do as they say because they were channeled to their god's spirit direction.

    But who's concerned about the truth ?

    The ancients were in competition to whose god was the most powerful and almighty of the many gods worshiped by the various civilizations.

  • EverApostate
    EverApostate

    Yeah, I remember this. I have heard Public talks that Noah did field Service for 60 years and warned people.

    Wondered where the heck this is in the Bible.

    And finally the ARK door was shut with a loud bang. In fact one public talk was delivered with the speaker thumping the table - to simualte Jah closing the ark door- to symbolically frighten the Audience.

    And Similarly, this is how an elder justified about reporting FS time. Wondering if any one has read about this in any publications

    Luke 9:10 Then the apostles returned and reported to Jesus all that they had done.

    What a CULT

  • careful
    careful

    The belief that Noah preached, warning people of the coming flood, was common in the non-biblical Jewish literature at that time. If you want to read what his supposed message was, see Josephus Antiquities 1.74, and the Jewish Sibylline Oracles 1.182-90). It's just like Jannes and Jambres' names as the Egyptian priests who opposed Moses. Such traditions arose among the fertile minds of Jews at the time, trying to fill in what the Bible does not say. The author of 2 Peter 2:5 picked up on this, like the writer of 2 Tim. 3:8 did on Jannes and Jambres, but there's nothing in Genesis or Exodus of these kinds of details. Plenty of extra-canonical literature had arisen among the Jews at that time, and some NT writers included bits of it. Later rabbinic literature also includes such things.

  • Half banana
    Half banana

    Trouble is that Noah and the flood is just a folk tale. The fact that Jesus believed it just shows that he could not distinguish between stories and facts or more to the point that Jesus was a folk tale as well.

    You disagree?-- well where is your evidence for these guys? And don't say the Bible, the Bible is evidence for for folk tales not reality.

  • fulltimestudent
    fulltimestudent

    Quote" "So, by clever translation, you can insert the diea that Noah was indeed warning them, but they simply chose not to pay attention."

    Translating is bloody hard work, especially so when you'r attempting a translation of an ancient language. Just what concept did the author have in mind when he used a particular word? I have no particular interest in supporting blind Freddy's translating ability or the translation skills of any current Jw guru, but I am sort of always thinking about the truthiness of statements. (My own included).

    So whenever there is outright condemnation of a NWT choice of a contemporary English word to translate an ancient language word, I start to think, and think (and so on) and then i try to check .... !!!!!

    And a handy sort of place to check is the internet, and I often use the Blue Letter Bible site ( as I'm going to do now).

    Going to the site, I type Matthew 24:37-39 into the search box, and up comes Matthew 24. (KJV) verse by verse.At verse 39, i click on the tools box on the right, and get a list of the words in the verse. with the greek word in another column, I want to know what the word used in the KJV (know) was in Greek, I see it is ginosko, and the Strong's discussion reference is G1097. Clicking on that I get (down a bit) an "Outline of Biblical Usage" which are stated to be:

    Quote:

    1. to learn to know, come to know, get a knowledge of perceive, feel

      1. to become known

    2. to know, understand, perceive, have knowledge of

      1. to understand

      2. to know

    3. Jewish idiom for sexual intercourse between a man and a woman

    4. to become acquainted with, to know.

      ---------------------------

      And then comes a definition TO SHOW HOW THE WORD MAY HAVE BEEN USED.;

      γινώσκω ginṓskō, ghin-oce'-ko; a prolonged form of a primary verb; to "know" (absolutely) in a great variety of applications and with many implications (as follow, with others not thus clearly expressed):—allow, be aware (of), feel, (have) know(-ledge), perceived, be resolved, can speak, be sure, understand.


      Armed with that scrap of information, I am in a much better position to think about the NWT's latest refinement.

      So what do YOU now think about the NWT's choice of an English word/phrase to translate ginōskō ?????

      -------------------

      The OP did not state which translation he used in making his discovery, but It appears to be the NIV,

      On the biblehub web-site you can get a list of translation of vs 38 to compare what selections other translations have made. It's quite interesting, check this case out at:

      https://biblehub.com/matthew/24-39.htm

      I don't think most usages exclude someone telling the pre-flood population about the coming disaster.

      But since it was all a myth anyway, how could anyone know what was in the mind of the Genesis author?






  • sir82
    sir82

    I didn't mean to imply that translation is not hard work.

    By "clever", I meant something along these lines:

    If it is unclear how a particular word or expression should be translated, due to various possible renderings, a "clever" translator (maybe not the best phrasing) would select the meaning best suited to support a preconceived notion or doctrine he wishes the verse would support.

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit