Insight on Scriptures Question

McKafka99

Generally speaking (or "on the whole"), how accurate/reliable is the information presented in the "Insight on Scriptures"? Has anyone ever done a full analysis of all the material presented therein? Thanks.

Narkissos

Hi McKafka,

I have left JWs over 20 years ago, so I am not really familiar with the Insight book apart from the discussion of specific articles on this forum. But I was very familiar with its "ancestor," Aid to Bible Understanding.

While those two "Bible dictionaries" are probably by far the most informative pieces of WT literature, and you can trust them to an extent (e.g. meaning of common Hebrew and Greek words, as far as no historical or literary criticism, or specific JW doctrine, is involved), they are clearly affected by WT bias. The best is to compare with other recent Bible dictionaries reflecting current scholarship, such as the Anchor Bible Dictionary...

stillajwexelder

there were 5 writers of the Original Aid to Bible Understanding - 3 of them were subsequently disfellowshipped according to Ray Franz in Crisis of Conscience - the three were Ray Franz, Reinhart Lengtat, Edward Dunlap.

Franz was allegedely told by the then oracle Fred W. Franz to "Keep the Aid book Pure" i.e. as free from doctrinal influence as possible

Jeffro

A lot of the generic information that isn't pivotal to any of their flawed beliefs is okay. Anything dealing with 607 is a complete mess, employing misdirection, contradiction, denial, omission, circular reference, and confusing circumlocution. Most years prior to 539, are given 20 years prior to the actual year, though they are stated as if factual. Many of their explanations for what appear to be contradictions in the bible are weak.

Terry

The respectable community of bible scholars does not include the "celebrated Watchtower scholars" because of their methodology.

Fred Franz had a room full of other people's secular scholarship in the form of a library of concordances, dictionaries and commentaries.

Franz would take the silk purse and turn it into a sow's ear. It was largely a matter of manipulations, omissions and redactions mixed with pious frauds and watchtower-speak.

Franz used C.T.Russell's writings as the foundational starting point for many (if not most) of his embellishments in fantasyland.

Rutherford was all about public behavior whle Franz concentrated on the micro-management of prophetic explications.

If you carefully examine the way the Watchtower Society presented its "original" ideas from the very beginning it all boils down to this:

Jehovah is the one telling you this; not just us. You can count on what we say as being from Him. We are Jehovah's mouthpiece: TRUST US!

Babylon the Great has fallen-God's kingdom rules! is a book right out of MARTIN LUTHER'S WRITINGS!]

There is little that Franz wrote that does not ape Luther.

The Watchtower produces no scholarship; it produces fradulent reconstructions of actual scholarship but distorted by the lens of plagarism and hubris.

Leolaia

I read the Aid book avidly when I was a teen but I came to notice certain patterns of bias. For instance, the article on the "Hittites" would note that archaeologists have indeed found an ancient people with the same name as the biblical "Hittites". But since they do not fit perfectly with the biblical description of the Hittites, this must be some other people (and thus the indentification made by others is "mere conjecture"). Then the article on the "Amorites" would note that archaeologists have indeed found an ancient people with the same name as the biblical "Amorites". But since they do not fit perfectly with the biblical description of the Amorites, this must be some other people. Then the article on the "Hebrews" noted that archaeologists have found an ancient people named "Apiru/Habiru" which corresponds to the name of the biblical "Hebrews", but since the description of the Apiru is quite different from the "Hebrews" of the Bible, the Apiru must again be some other people who coincidentally have the same same as a biblical group of people. Similarly, since the Bible describes the "Elamites" as Semitic (Genesis 10:22, 31), and since the Elamite language was not Semitic, the people who spoke that language were not really Elamites (despite the fact that an Elamite word is clearly used in the name of Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, in Genesis 14:1). Similarly, since the Canaanites and the Phoenicians are listed as Hamites in Genesis 10, the Society must explain away the fact that the languages of these groups were Semitic. And as the coincidences and coincidences began to pile up more and more, I began to wonder how much of this was special pleading to avoid conflict between Bible and extrabiblical evidence.

garybuss

Just a note about references used by the Watch Tower Society: How many anonymously written references have you seen the Society use?
They don't rely on anonymously written material . . . but that's what they are asking us to do.
If anonymous articles are so great, why don't they use them?
Oh, and if "worldly" sources are so bad, why are virtually all their quoted sources "worldly"?