by TerryWalstrom 62 Replies latest watchtower bible
Wonderment , thanks for answering . If I have read you correctly the bystanders to whom you refer are people who come onto sites like this ,and there is some merit to what you say .
I personally have learned a lot from the knowledge of others . So perhaps it is a case of swings and roundabouts .
Jan
William Miller was a Baptist farmer and war hero who sat down as an unschooled, non-academic, amateur sleuth and concocted 2 years worth of "proof positive" indicating the arrival of Jesus Christ in 1843.
Well, sure he was WRONG!
But instead of William Miller's extreme failure (and false prophecy) becoming a cautionary tale for C.T.Russell--it had the opposite effect. He was like the Jim Carrey character in Dumb and Dumber who takes "1 in a Million against him as a positive indication of opportunity FOR him"--Russell went down the same amateur path of self-teaching and we all know where that led!
The Doctrine of the "Faithful and Discreet Slave" is the product of amateur inquiry by Maria Russell and Wow! It became the central doctrine of authority for all the madmen who have led the Watchtower religion into the sewer for 130 years!
I think what most people don't realize is before 325 Christ was being promoted as the new God. Yes his father was still the father God for a while but Christ was being promoted to the top spot. Just like Marduk he started out as a lesser God defeated Tiamat then was exalted to be God of gods lord of lords God of 50 names taking on and assimilating most of the other gods. Christ was no different until the question of the trinity came to a head in 325.
I read Biblical Greek. John chapter 1 reads the same in virtually all master texts, except for variants in verse 18. The questionable renderings in the New World Translation are not based on whether one is using, say, the UBS as most modern scholars do versus, say, the Westcott and Hort which the Witnesses employed, at least not here.
The reading of John 1:1, according to the Witnesses, should be "a god" at the end because, as they state, the last use of THEOS in this verse is anarthrous (occurring without the definite article). Without the definite article, the Witnesses claim, a noun becomes a predicate in relation to the verb. "In Koine Greek," goes the JW argument, "all nouns have a definite article."
This is just a lie.
The word THEOS aappears throughout John without the definite article and it never gets rendered as an indefinite noun in the NWT regardless of its position to the verbs around it.
The word THEOS is not only anarthrous at John 1:1 but also at 1:12, 1:13, and twice in verse 18. The NWT renders THEOS with an "a" in 1:1 but does not in these other places.
The reason the author did not place an article before these and other occurrences of THEOS is simple: ancient languages didn't strictly follow rules like modern ones. There is no pattern as to why the author of John employs an article for THEOS in some instances but avoids it, especially in the first chapter.
Jehovah's Witnesses are simply using people's lack of knowledge of Greek to fool others. You can even use an interlinear to check this out. There is no rule being followed by the author. They just weren't sticklers for the rules back then. It is Koine Greek 101, to be honest. You don't even have to be or rely on a scholar to see it for yourself.
One thing is clear, however, that the THEOS at the end of John 1:1 is the same as the one in 12, 13, and twice in 18. Since the others aren't rendered "a god" then neither should John 1:1 be treated any differently.
If god inspired the writing of the bible surely he would have had John make it clear in this text.
How hard would it have been to write ho theos to avoid any ambiguity?
It is an anarthrous predicate noun. Moffatt's "The word was divine" is a good effort.
I have recently learned that wescott and hort were, one was a Church of England minister the other was a priest. Both were involved with the occult and took part in séances.
As always I will suffer corrections.
IF it is that complicated to where he needs 1 hour 40 minutes and a white board all marked up and tracing history, then it is all BS.
OH, JWs are right about John 1:1.
Regardless of the greek gramatical structure in the expression of Logos or Word, we should be looking at the hebrew understanding of who Jesus is since it is a hebrew teaching us.
hebrew understanding makes the "word" of God NOT an expression of inner thought but a dynamic force. "When GOD by His WORD created the heavens and the earth..." The hebrew word always carries with it the idea of accompanying deed. An example of this hebrew understanding is in the admonistion to not to be hearers of the word only but doers also. Likewise, His pre incarnate WORD was an action of God, the WORD wasn't a separate being...ie: a god. It was only when the WORD became flesh that there was a separateness but even then scripture teaches that STILL the fulness of God resided IN that man of flesh.
xo
IF it is that complicated to where he needs 1 hour 40 minutes and a white board all marked up and tracing history, then it is all BS.
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This is an Interesting standard you raise!
I suppose Algebra, Calculus, auto mechanics, TV repair, scuba diving, and Chess are a waste of time because the instructors would probably exceed the time limit you've imposed :)
John is typically thought to have been influenced by the Stoics, and their account of the logos as the active, rational force that pervades the universe is one of the classic references. Or perhaps one could draw on Philo’s account of the logos as the divine reason, which may be in the background of John’s text. But ultimately I think it is misleading to emphasize the rational aspect of logos as John uses it, and I have lots of details from the text to support this reading. What I’m looking for at the moment is a good reference from Plato to make it clear how he understands the term. I remember that in the Thaeatetus there is a discussion of knowledge as true belief with logos, and a natural account here might count logos as something like rational justification or explanation. And perhaps Glaukon’s request in the Republic for an explanation or account (logos) of the claim that Justice is a good in itself is a clue.
https://allthingsshiningbook.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/logos-in-plato-and-john/
Sean D. Kelly
