CalebInFloroda
JoinedPosts by CalebInFloroda
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24
Why did God permit Scriptures to be corrupted?
by economy inif someone informs you that your shop caught fire, and firefighters are on the job, you will run to the spot.
however, if you had already sold that property on the previous day (which this messenger is ignorant of), you are likely to respond, saying: shop is not mine..
situation is same with god.
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CalebInFloroda
It's kinda near Florida but lost between an excuse and boredom. -
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Me and the bible don't see eye to eye
by bobld inmatt 7:13 in the past 2000 years billions of people took the broad and spacious road to destruction.john 5;29 however,they will be resurrected.why!
would you retrieve a rotten apple from the trash.. james 1;15 desire-paraphased leads to sin and death.a married man desires and has sex with a woman.you could say he screwed himself to death.on the other hand a man with pure thoughts would not think of such a thing.he's going to die anyways.bummer.. james 1:17 a perfect gift from above.my ass,drought in california and snow to high heaven in boston.. one more james 1;22 become doers of the word (per john 1;14 the word is j.c.) how am i suppose to do something with the word that is somewhere in space.
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CalebInFloroda
It could be that the way we are reading a text is influenced by years of Watchtower indoctrination or some other view we hold that we never put to the test. I know that for myself I decided to invest several years to critical philology and similar studies after leaving the Witnesses because I wanted to know how much of religion and the Bible I was still judging by holdovers from the Governing Body and how much was actually from the Bible itself. (Of course this may not at all have anything to do with your views and where you get them. )
While this is not an endorsement that what I am presenting is the final word on these texts, I did learn the following alternative possibilities.Matthew 7.13—Rabbis like to show us two paths.Jewish teachers commonly use the imagery of two paths or two possible ways to take their teaching and the result to us if we choose one path over another. Deuteronomy 30.15 has Moses setting paths of life and death before the nation of Israel. The first Psalm is a contrast between the way a righteous person takes compared with that of someone who ignores the teaching of Torah. The Sermon on the Mount ends with Jesus setting two ways people can respond to his teaching, either using it as a foundation for life or “building upon sand,” and the results of either decision. (Matthew 7.24-27) The text in Matthew 7.13 is using the same type of imagery, a parable or hyperbole type of speech employing a common rabbinical model: the narrow and difficult way that “few” find and the broad and wide one that gets found by “many.” Notice that “few” and “many” are the result of Jesus telling everyone who listens to (and now reads) his words to accept his invitation to do one over the other. It’s an open invitation, not a prophecy.It should be of interest that Matthew 7.13 has this “two path” imagery in common with James 1.15.James 1.15—More dual path stuff.James is written in a peculiar proverbial style, like wisdom literature of the Old Testament. The text from James might also be employing identical patterns, and verse 12-15 seem part of a section discussing what happens to those who don’t follow God’s teaching. For instance, 12-13 gives the impression that anyone can withstand temptation since God is not the source of making a person’s life sinful. Verses 14-15 show the result if the person chooses to act independent of God.This pattern is followed at first three times in chapter 1 of James, namely 5-8, then 9-11, and finally 12-13. It picks up for fourth time in 22-25. Why? James is talking about application of the “word,” as you mention, only he is speaking about the laws of God here. Note that the other verses in the first chapter are about asking God for guidance and how God will generously supply those who truly want it.Of course 17 and 22 aren’t speaking about rain or Jesus. But I am sure you know that. Also, this is just one way scholars deal with these texts and not necessarily reflective of my own convictions. I can't speak for you, but I know I often blamed Scripture or religious people in general for my views of Scripture and "worldly" people that I learned years later didn't originate with them.And I agree with Heaven, not being thrilled with the misogyny in Scripture.Of course, the misogyny is not from Jewish culture or invented necessarily in Scripture, but reflective of Hellenistic or social mores and customs.The texts is 1 Co 11.5-13 have to do with Gentile head covering issues, not those followed by the Jewish Church in Jerusalem. While it would not become a universal custom for Jewish men to wear kippah until after the Second Temple fell, it is widely held that the custom took root after the return from Babylon. The fact that priests at the Temple wore headcoverings in worship and many priests that served at the Temple became Christians shows that Paul had to be addressing something particular to the Gentile group.For instance, the prophetess Anna, daughter of Phanuel, freely spoke and prophesied in the Temple. (Luke 2.36-38) This is contrary to Paul’s words of 1 Corinthians 14.34. Did Anna break Mosaic Law or is Paul referring to another law of submission that the Corinthians were aware of because women served in the capacity of synagogue leaders in the first century as well as civil leaders (Antiquities 13.405; see also http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/03/07/women-in-first-century-synagogues/).Thus the misogyny is not from Mosaic Law but a reflection of some other law that would have been understood by non-Jews in the exhortation from Paul.Paul’s instruction in these other verses are also in epistles written to Gentiles, and even his letter to Timothy is speaking about what Paul allows and does not allow in Gentile Churches. Paul’s words did not cover his views and practices for Acts 21.15-26 state that he and members of Jewish Churches still followed Jewish practice. -
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Why did God permit Scriptures to be corrupted?
by economy inif someone informs you that your shop caught fire, and firefighters are on the job, you will run to the spot.
however, if you had already sold that property on the previous day (which this messenger is ignorant of), you are likely to respond, saying: shop is not mine..
situation is same with god.
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CalebInFloroda
Until Marcion of Sinope ( circa 85 C.E.-160 A.D.), it was not a popular notion among Jews or Christians to see the Scriptures as a basis for religious doctrine or free of contradictions. Even to this day, among Jews, Catholics, and Orthodox, Scripture is read and interpreted as a product of religious belief, not the source.
Marcion tranformed Gnostic principles into a "proof text" system in which doctrine was based on sacred writings interpreted by an elite or "enlightened" class, but his selection of Scripture was based on a rule (in Greek the word for rule is where we get the term "canon") that rejected all Jewish texts in favor or select epistles of Paul and an edited version of Luke. Material that Marcion felt contradicted his interpretation was dismissed as not fitting according to his rule ("canon").
The response of the Christian leadership to the Marcion/Gnostic threat was to counter the doctrine of an "elite/enlightened" class as the source of knowledge that leads to salvation and to teach that salvation was instead universal (in Greek, "katholicos") dependent on faith in the Church and its teachings more so than the texts read in liturgical gatherings (which is where Marcion extracted books for his canon).
But as the Jews divided their sacred writings according to certain rules (language, era, subject, etc.), the question about whether any of the texts read in liturgical settings written by Christians being equivalents to the Holy Scriptures of the Hebrews was one that Christian leaders would keep building on until the days of Eusebius in the 4th century. It has been suggested by some academics and scholars that the reason Luke is included as an official Gospel (Luke is neither an apostle or Jewish) is that Marcion claimed that Luke taught a Gnostic, non-universal salvation, and that the reason for such a Pauline library is also a response to the Marcion claim that Paul supported this view as well, especially the practice of proof texting. Their inclusion into an official Christian canon in full instead of the edited forms used by Marcion perhaps counters his claims.
In this process, Christians debated on how to choose and and canonize texts. It was accepted that the redaction or editorial process was part of the inspirational development, and since texts had to reflect apostolic teaching and not originate it, this would allow for inclusion of writers like Luke and Paul as well as doubtful works like 2 Peter and the Revelation of John. Again as the objective wasnot seen as setting doctrine as much as supporting current thought, the problematic sections in texts were less worrisome.
Jews likewise don't base their belief on Scripture as much as they accept Scripture as confirming and keeping alive the essential truths of their religion. This includes additions made to the Scriptures over the eras as explanatory material set old lessons into new settings, very important for the Jews during the Babylonian period where they were no longer allowed access to their own land. Upon return the lessons they learned further changed how they understood the basic truths of their religion, and these new lessons further shaped the Scripture texts. By the time the Second Temple was built, however, it became settled that the texts were at their final state, but the changes and the interpolations were also accepted and even left in place in many situations.
Scholars don't necessarily agree on or have full answers as how to handle the situations you mention. Often referred to as doublets and triplets, scholars suggest that repetition of stories twice, three times, and maybe more (often with different details) may reflect a desire on behalf of the Jews to save all the variations on a tradition. In such a situation the conflicting details are not important. The underlying story and its central lessons is what is meant to be kept intact. For instance in Exodus the Egyptians lose all their animals twice in the first nine plagues, and the firstborn of their animals die again a third time on the night of the first Passover. The animals are not dying and being resurrected in order for God to kill them again, but several traditions are being cut and pasted together to tell the Exodus story in full. In other places, like Psalms and the Book of Wisdom, the number and order of the plagues is different. All stories agree on the basic truth, but the details are different due to narrative genre or this redaction tradition process.
Marcionism became popular again during the Great Awkaenings of American religious history. Adventists created new proof texts systems which claimed that Scripture was not the product but the source of religious teaching. Joseph Smith took Marcionism to the extreme, introducing a new set of texts which he claimed were essential to salvation. These new American belief systems either claimed that the original "katholicos" system was being reestablished in them or that an elite person or class was now present on the earth and dispensing saving truths that would make others dependent on listening to these new teachers. These in turn demanded and invented creative ways to explain the contradictions in Scripture, some attempting to remove sections again like Marcion in order to have a central source without contradictions.
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PSALMS 83: 18 What is the name of God ?
by william draper inso many of us have been taught that the name of god is jehovah , if like me many have come to really appreciate god's name .. .
more accurately we , at least many or most love the name of jehovah , or more accurately should i say this pronunciation .
does god care what we call him , of course he does , he had his name written in the bible as yhwh ( best i can do on this computer ) , more than 6000 times .
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CalebInFloroda
I don't recall using the word or implying a "conspiracy" as that would imply things being done in secret, whereas this doctrine was publicly enforced. Nor was there a denial of the fact the JWs suffered alongside my people as well as others during the Shoah. I merely pointed out that the view you mentioned had an origin that is currently being changed yet is still unknown and unaccepted by many.
I happen to be a Chrisitan but also a Jew, of the tribe of Judah. Perhaps I am in error being here, but alas that was what I also discovered when I was surrounded by Jehovah's Witnesses.
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27
PSALMS 83: 18 What is the name of God ?
by william draper inso many of us have been taught that the name of god is jehovah , if like me many have come to really appreciate god's name .. .
more accurately we , at least many or most love the name of jehovah , or more accurately should i say this pronunciation .
does god care what we call him , of course he does , he had his name written in the bible as yhwh ( best i can do on this computer ) , more than 6000 times .
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CalebInFloroda
Hi SimonSays,
I am not sure if your question was for me based on what I wrote, but the concept of holy "separateness" pre-dates the Babylonian exile and the development of the Sadducees and Pharisees. It is custom-based from the norms and basic mores of ancient Mesopotaminan culture, carried over into Hebrew culture.
As to how this may have affected use of the Divine Name, philology estimates set circa 850 B.C.E. as the likely era in which redactions show textual application of this custom. It was at this point that the so-called "Elohist" additions and editorial acts of preservation offered the earliest known substitute for the Divine Name.
By the time the LXX was composed, texts of the Greek Scriptures (such as Wisdom, the Books of Maccabees, Ben Sira, etc.) used even substitutes for the word "God," often using the euphemism "heaven." This custom of viewing even the title "God" as holy and deserving of a substitute is even seen in the Gospels where some writers have Jesus announcing the "Kingdom of God" and others using "Kingdom of Heaven" in the same places.--Compare Matthew 4.17 with Mark 1.15.
As to the Jews being rejected by God, this view of the Jehovah's Witnesses originated with the Adventist movements based on an interpretation of Matthew 27.25 and John 19.15 that originated centuries earlier within the Roman Catholic Church.
After the tragedy of the Holocaust the Christian community, including Adventists took a serious step back and reviewed this theology. Realizing this interpretation actually played a part not only in the expulsion of Jews from many countries like Spain in 1492, the vicious pogroms that littered Europe, and that this interpretation was directly employed as kindle by the Third Reich in its "solution to the Jews," it was almost universally rejected.
Except for isolated groups like the JWs, this view that the Jews are rejected by God because of the rejection of the majority of Jesus as Messiah in the first century is no longer accepted as substantiated by Scripture or reason. Condemned as anti-Semitic, critical analysis now admits that texts like Acts 21.17-26 and Romans 9-11 have been widely misused and even ignored in order to substantiate a view that eventually led to the invention of genocide.
My decision to leave the Witnesses was largely based on their retention of this mistaken belief. Told by the very elder who studied with me that my people as a whole deserved to die in the Holocaust because they were "Christ killers" was impossible to reconcile with my sensibilities. So many of my direct relatives died in the Holocaust that my native language, Ladino, is now considered rare and endangered as Hitler wiped out all the Sephardic communities from the European map.
Harboring vestiges of JW theology such as this view does not immediately make a person an anti-Semite however. It takes time to understand how deeply entrenched certain doctrinal views have become set in us as we seek to renew ourselves and heal from our time in the Watchtower community. But living in an era when even the Catholic Church claims some guilt and responsibility for the crimes of the Shoah due to holding this archaic and destructive belief should give us pause if we choose to perpetuate it in ourselves and others.
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When did Christianity Separate from Judaism?
by fulltimestudent inthis is a subject of some importance, the view of the witnesses, likely inherited from franz's influence, seems to be that early christianity developed as a separate religion to the jews.. the view of most contemporary scholars is that the separation occurred slowly, and that influential early christians (e.g.
such as paul, peter, john and james) still saw themselves as jews.. to those of us that are no longer christians (and, most ex-witnesses here, seem to gradually move to that position) this is not an important issue.. but to an organisation that claims it has "the truth," surely it should know the truth about its origins.
yet the evidence is that the modern day religion of jehovah's witnesses, does not know the "truth" concerning the origins of early christianity.
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CalebInFloroda
The Pauline epistles must be read in light of Acts 21.17-26 which prove that both Paul and the apostles never demanded that Jews stop observance of the Mosaic Law. For centuries this section of Acts has been overlooked dislpite the fact that many of Paul's letters had been completed prior to these events.
Texts such as Mark 7.19 have likewise been misread as if kashrut laws had been dismissed by Chrsist whereas Acts 10.14 show that Peter himself had kept kosher even beyond the days of Pentecost and never cosidered any commands of Christ as negating Jewish obligation to kashrut demands.
Arguments in the Pauline epistles are written to Gentiles, and his arguments against Judaizers regard the issue of the Gentile relationship to Torah, not the Jewish obligation. Romans especially is quite clearly used to prove that Gentiles who seek to find salvation by observing Torah actually break the laws of Torah by such an attempt. Paul never teaches that Law is not for the Jews, only not for the Gentiles. In Romans especially are the arguments used by Paul taken from the Torah itself to prove this.
Jews do not have a doctrine regarding being saved by faith or saved by works. They especially do not believe that Mosaic Law observance saves in any way, and Paul was trying to teach this. This was not a fracture in the early church as all peoples had their own customs and laws that others were not subject to. The fact that many Gentiles became Christian before the Second Temple fell is evidence that Mosaic Law observance was not a fracture of any type for indeed the leaders of the Church at the time were all Jewish and, as Acts 21 tells us, zealous observers of Torah. If this was a fracture then Gentiles like Cornelius never really joined the Church nor was the letter to the Gentiles at Acts 15 necessary.
The fracture had to be much later and is questionable whether such happened completely as the Jerusalem Church existed until the 500s and Jewish Christians in my family kept kashrut till I was born, raising me in it to the extent that I never ate cheeseburgers or had milk with a meal until I became a JW...and learned I was lactose intolerant as a result. All this was due to my abandoning kosher meals as a JW, from kashrut observance handed down by Jewish Christians for some 2000 years. I am not alone in this as there are thousands of people like me in California, Texas, and Mexico learning that they are Semitic and not actually Hispanic with recent discoveries regarding Sephardic ancestry lines recently made accessible through websites like Ancestry.com and the like.
It might be that Chistians felt better about how they treated Jews in history upon telling themselves there was a fracture, when in reality it may have never really happened. It is easier to lie to oneself and say the Jews divided themselves from the Christians to excuse what would otherwise be anti-Semitism currently dressed up as theology.
The whole concept of a Messiah is a Jewish one anyway. The majority of the Bible is made up of the Hebrew Scriptures, and except for Luke and Acts the entire Chistian Bible was written by Jews who according to Acts were Torah observant. Call that a fracture and division? That's like saying Diet Coke is not part of the Coca-Cola line since it doesn't have sugar as a sweetener like the other Cokes do.
Again not saying a fracture isn't there, but also not saying that everyone is being truthful with themselves on both sides of the Jewish-Christians issue.
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PSALMS 83: 18 What is the name of God ?
by william draper inso many of us have been taught that the name of god is jehovah , if like me many have come to really appreciate god's name .. .
more accurately we , at least many or most love the name of jehovah , or more accurately should i say this pronunciation .
does god care what we call him , of course he does , he had his name written in the bible as yhwh ( best i can do on this computer ) , more than 6000 times .
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CalebInFloroda
Just another way of looking at things from the viewpoint of a Jew (who was a Jehovah’s Witness for a few years as a teenager and into his 20s due to weird decisions his parents made for a while).
Anyway, in Semitic culture the existence of something doesn’t always include the validity of its use. For Jews the more that something is used, the more common the same thing becomes; the more people who use it, the more mundane the object.
In Hebrew the word for “name” (shem) means “handle.” It refers to something by which you can grasp, hold and control another like a bit placed in a horse’s mouth. In Semitic culture the uttering of a name meant you had a handle on another. You could call the attention of the person and thus had some control over them. Naming something, like a child or object, implied ownership and control over the same. Thus naming a god or uttering its name was often reserved to prophets or priests or magicians who could wield power due to knowing the “handle” of the god upon whom they called. (“Handle” was also the popular term for pseudonyms used by persons during the C.B. radio craze that swept through the United States in the 1970s.)
The name YHWH doesn’t exactly mean what the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim it means, at least not to Jews. The name YHWH means “I am defined by myself,” thus the popular English rendition of “I Am What I Am.” When Moses asks God’s name there is a possibility it was not actually known by the children of Abraham until this time or they wanted to know it to exercise the kind of power that heathens did with their deities.
Regardless if they knew it before or not, God’s offering the name YHWH is a defiant reply to Moses. It is a “name” with a circular meaning. God’s name means Who God happens to be now, in the past, and who and whatever God chooses to be and act as in the future. It is circular reasoning at its best in that it actually is not a “shem” or handle. In explaining himself by an ineffable formula, God was in essence saying that no one could have a “handle” on him. "What's my name? My name is something I don't need to have because everything is nameless by comparison with Me."
God’s name is like the Ark of the Covenant and the inner Holy of Holies found in the Tabernacle and later the Temples of Jerusalem: rarely used and by few. The reason is that Hebrew custom followed an ancient practice regarding sacred things: that which is holy is the opposite of that which was mundane. Mundane things are commonly employed, used by anyone, always being handled. But holy things are the opposite. Holy things are not commonly employed, used by a few, almost never handled, if at all.
Holy things may always be present, but using them like they were everyday things turned them into mundane things, even profaning them. While the Holy of Holies and its contents was constantly in the center of Israel, it use and function was rare.
The same goes for the “shem” of God. It is always there in Scripture, but it is not a common name or handle. You can say my name over and over again: Caleb, Caleb, Caleb. You can name other people or things “Caleb.” You can even name a dog “Caleb” (though that would be redundant since the name “Caleb” basically means “dog”). But if you do that with God’s name, then it isn’t special anymore. It becomes mundane, even profane since it is a mishandling of a holy thing. This is why Jews don’t pronounce it. In fact we often say “HaShem” instead, meaning “The Name” instead of uttering YHWH in whatever form you prefer.
Finally a note how Jesus “handled” the Divine Name. Non-Jews often read Matthew 6.7 in a very un-Jewish way: “When you are praying, do not repeat [babble] empty phrases…” And they leave it at that, claiming that Jesus is talking about being repetitive in prayers.
Non-Jews tend to leave the part out about themselves, for it reads in its entirety: “When you are praying, do not repeat empty phrases like the Gentiles do.”
In Jesus’ day, pagans believed that gods would only answer prayers if you called them by their name. In fact, some of the heathen taught that unless one properly uttered a divine name one could not expect to even get the attention of a deity in prayer. So what did they do? They created long lists of phrases which offered various pronunciations of divine names, sometimes to ensure that they aroused the attention of their gods and sometimes to possibly attract a new god who was known by that “accidental” utterance. Some lists had just one proper name of a deity but included all the titles the deity also had, and it was believed by some Gentiles that it was required of the deity that one repeated the names and all the proper titles for the prayer to be accepted or the attention of a deity to be aroused.
Jesus contrasts this with: “Don’t be like them, for your Father knows what you need even before you ask him.” (Mt 6.8) In other words the God of Abraham did not need his name uttered as if one needed to get his attention or use a formula to get a prayer through to God. God’s attention is always upon his creation and knows the needs of people before their asking, let alone the use of a name. Names can’t control God or arouse his attention or ensure your prayers are heard or accepted. The God of Abraham isn’t a God that requires such pagan trappings. God's not defined by human spellings or utterances. God defines and names us.
So while I understand and can appreciate where those who choose to use the Name are coming from, realize that its regular use is not what was meant by its frequency of appearance by the Jews who inscribed it.
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16
When did Christianity Separate from Judaism?
by fulltimestudent inthis is a subject of some importance, the view of the witnesses, likely inherited from franz's influence, seems to be that early christianity developed as a separate religion to the jews.. the view of most contemporary scholars is that the separation occurred slowly, and that influential early christians (e.g.
such as paul, peter, john and james) still saw themselves as jews.. to those of us that are no longer christians (and, most ex-witnesses here, seem to gradually move to that position) this is not an important issue.. but to an organisation that claims it has "the truth," surely it should know the truth about its origins.
yet the evidence is that the modern day religion of jehovah's witnesses, does not know the "truth" concerning the origins of early christianity.
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CalebInFloroda
It depends on what you mean by split.
My family tree is made up of Sephardic Jews who have connections to what the Catholic Church describes as "the Jerusalem Church" which was made up of Christians who lived with Jewish customs. This group disappeared in the 6th century CE, before which the Campos and Marroquin lines which compose my lineage had already developed their start 9in what was then referred to as Seferad or the Iberian Peninsula). The fact that my ancestors were persecuted and expelled from Spain in 1492 and are still doing things like lighting candles on Friday night, speaking Ladino, and while being very Catholic shows that the formal disconnection has never really happened (the same goes for thousands of Catholics around the Americas who today are just learning about their Hebrew roots). A member of my family is part of the Hebrew Catholic movement, an approved group of Roman Catholics who are Jewish and thus allowed to keep their Jewish customs intact, something that has not actually totally disappeared apparently.
From rabbis I have spoken with and learned from there is also no agreement about any formal split. Some say there was one, while others dismiss the idea because the belief is based on an old teaching from the Catholic Church that claims that Jews were made to speak curses against any who accepted Jesus as Messiah, a claim even many Jewish scholar are adamantly opposed to perpetuating.
Still that the two groups are currently "coming together" in ecumenical discussion and reportedly "making progress" is evidence that some type of split occurred. Add to this that the governments of Spain and Portugal have recently apologized and invoked a "law of return" for descendants of those expelled in the 15th century due to the Catholic-sponsored inquisitions they used for their own political ends (which means that Catholics did not like us Jews at least by then), something happened somewhere. Kaik's date some of those between the fall of the Second Temple and the time of Ignatius suggesting Jewish Christians give up their customs (70-115) seems to be the period where cracks began.
But I do have to point out that even though it makes some of the neighbors a little confused, members of my family began outwardly living like Jews even though they are Catholics, and with full approval from their religion. This was as early as the 1990s for some of them. And since then the Church has issued several dramatic statements from the Vatican and Pontifical Biblical commission which allows for the introduction of an interpretation of the New Testament with the understanding that the Jewish Christians of the time may have been Torah observant even when the Pauline epistles were composed.
This has not stopped some Catholics and Christians from insulting some of my family members (one Catholic even told them they needed to 'go home to Israel and join a synagogue'), so it's not all sugar and pretty animated scenes from Disney, and may never be. But even some Protestant theology is beginning to lean toward a view that Jewish Christians may not necessarily be exactly free from obligation to Mosaic Law. Add to this a growing number of academic Jews are of the opinion that the New Testament loses something when one fails to read it from a Jewish point of view that the original writers likely possessed (as seen in the recent release of the NRSV Jewish Annotated New Testament).
Me, I just say 'hmmm.' I really don't know, and I'm a Jew!
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Did you know that murdered singer (1995), Selena, was raised a JW? April 16th is her birthday. Read more...
by AndersonsInfo inhttp://watchtowerdocuments.org/murdered-singer-selena-was-raised-a-jw/.
murdered singer, selena, was raised a jw?.
did you know that selena quintanilla was raised in a devout jehovahs witness family?
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CalebInFloroda
This I knew already because I grew up in Corpus Christi and was friends of the extended family.
I knew her cousins and uncles and aunts better than I knew her and her father Abraham's family. Selena was not very involved in the religion like her cousins who were doing things like pioneering while Selena was pursuing her career. I was among the crowd of young 20-something pioneers at that time,
She comes from very talented stock. One of her female cousins sings even better than her and used to perform with other JW youth for audiences of Witnesses. Her cousins played piano or were otherwise musically inclines and would put on little shows whenever they held piano recitals for students they taught (many of which were Witnesses). Selena, however, was mostly absent from these type of events. The family was not really inactive as they were sporadic, and this was mostly due to the fact that her singing kept her on the road. But this got interpreted as being "inactive” by many of us who were taught to be very judgmental of those who weren’t as involved in field service like the rest.
When the tragedy of her death struck it was very odd because none of us realized exactly how famous she really and truly was. Corpus Christi, Texas is not a very famous spot on the map but it was changed overnight with that one event almost. We knew she was famous, especially in the Latin American culture around the world, but when she died and famous people like Madonna were sending flowers to her memorial--well, then we not
Even more sad is that she was planning on starting a family and getting more involved in "the truth" before the shooting happened. She had yet to be baptized as a Witness but believed in the teachings (if not mistaken). Heck, she didn’t even graduate from high school (but did eventually earn a GED). She was famous so young and taken so soon by a person I am still not clear on why they allowed to get so close to them without checking on her background better.
I left the Witnesses in the summer of 1999.
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Scripture Challenge: Theists, atheist, anti-theists, absentheists, satan worshippers whoever can help...
by freemindfade incan anyone give me one or more scriptures in the first 5 books of the bible that would describe yhwh the tribal desert god as loving, kind, merciful, etc?...
and by loving i don't mean, "in order to release all the jews from slavery god @$$blasted the egyptians with ten plagues because he was so loving to his chosen race"..
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CalebInFloroda
I am new to this forum, an ex JW who left in 1999. Being of Jewish stock I may have an answer for you. But it will require that you understand Scripture from a Jewish perspective.
There are two things to learn from Torah, one being the central theme found in the Shema of Deuteronomy 6.4-9 and the other being the command to love one's neighbor found in Leviticus 19.18. Jews take these two things seriously. They even recite Shema daily in prayer and keep it written in a scroll nailed to our door posts as a custom.
But one of the things about Jewish teaching is that straightforward it is NOT. Just like Job who asks the universal question about suffering and gets God to answer him with only more questions, Jews were never very direct about supplying answers in the Scriptures.
For Jews, Scripture is the product of religion and not the foundation or starting point. What Jews believe and teach created Scripture in the first place, and current teaching shapes its definition and meaning for the modern Hebrew. This is unlike the JW belief that one's doctrines must be based on Scripture. For Jews what is Scriptre had to be based on and reflect the doctrine that was current at the time.
Shema for Jews has been and currently teaches us that God is all you are asking for in a single Scripture text. God demands our love in Deuteronomy (the last book of Torah) because at the beginning of Torah we learn that we were created to reflect the image of God in Genesis. In the middle of Torah, Leviticus, we learn this also includes loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. It's indirect, I know, but it is sandwiched this way on purpose. All of Torah is seen by Jews as a command to be as loving, merciful, and just as God who created us in God's image.
While I will admit that I am not a Temple-attending Jew or an official member of the synagogue, I did learn a lot after my time with the Witnesses. I learned enough to get that "bad taste" of seeing religion and the Bible as something the Witnesses have any real claim to. The above was part of learning my heritage, learning that Scripture is not the basis for Jewish belief about the God of Abraham nor a complete standard or source of truth (at least for Jews). If the God worshipped by the Jews is real, then their view that God is much more than what is limited in written pages must be true as well.