by Mebaqqer2 11 Replies latest watchtower bible
I am in need of an article found in the September 8, 1955 Awake! (p. 21-3) as it seems to be the only place Jehovah's Witnesses have directly discussed the Hebrew word "min" (kind). I have been doing a thorough examination of the concept of "kinds" as part of a larger examination of the Jehovah's Witnesses' creation model and would very much like to see what they had to say about the Hebrew word itself. Can anyone help me?
Mebaqqer
I don't have this article and would like to see it too. They don't directly discuss the Hebrew word itself in the 12/22/1951 Awake!, but there they pontificate as well on the Bible "kind"....do you have this article in your corpus?
I do not have any access to Awake! articles before 1970 so I would be interested in what they had to say in the issue you mentioned.
Mebaqqer
The title of the article is: "Plants Produce Evidence Against Evolution"
The part of this article relevant to your question is a single paragraph on page 21.
It reads:
"The word translated "kinds" or "kind" is translated from the Hebrew word min. The margin of the modern New World Translation on this word is revealing: "Or, genus; species.' The Greek Septuagint, gen'os; Vulgate, ge'nus. We use the term here in its older meaning or definition, and not as present day evolutionists use it. We mean here a created kind or family kind." The Authorized Version translates the Hebrew word mish-pa-hhah' at Genesis 8:19 as "kinds" in a similar context, and as "family" elsewhere. The original use of the words "genus" and "species" was a much wider one than that of today, and so it is not necessary to assume that every species is a separate creation, but merely every family kind, or group of organisms more or less interfertile among themselves, but not fertile with others outside their family."
(Please excuse any typos; I was laughing pretty hard near the end...)
PM me if you need more
The title of the article is: "Plants Produce Evidence Against Evolution"
Sorry for being slightly off-topic, but I'm intrigued as to what this evidence consisted of?
The whole article was a tirade against the practice of using Linnaean taxonomy as a tool in illustrating evolutionary relationships. It was claimed that these relationships do not exist
The evidence for this claim consisted of differences in how botanists over a period of 75 years (!) had disagreed and revised their theories over how simple algae had given rise to more complex flora.
"One wonders where the evolutionists' fanciful speculation on supposed similarities is going to end!"
I've found the edition for sale here :
Thank you for positing that bit of information. It seems, however, that most of what they said there can be found in their New World Translation with references. Their statement about the Greek word genos has some merit, but not in the way they think.
The beginning of categorizing organisms probably began with Aristotle. What is interesting in Aristotle's usage is that genos was a broad category while eidos was used as a more limited category within a genos. It is interesting to note that this usage of genos and eidos is reflected in the writings of the first century Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria as well when he turns to interpret Genesis 1 and 2. For him, Genesis 1 shows the creation of animals according to genos, but Genesis 2 shows their creation according to eidos. Thus, he writes, "what had been previously created were genos is plain from what he says, "Let the earth bring forth living souls," not according to eidos but according to genos. And this is found to be the course taken by God in all cases; for before making the eidos he completes the genos, as he did in the case of man: for having first modelled the generic man, in whom they say that the male and female sexes are contained, he afterwards created the specific man Adam." (Legum allegoriarum 2.13) Thus, the Greek word genos most naturally refers to "genus," while eidos most naturally refers to "species."
What this means is that those Jews who translated the Septuagint in the 3rd century BCE did not see the Hebrew word min as constituting a very narrow category and so used the broader category genos. However, the term "kind" as used by Jehovah's Witnesses is highly restrictive and groups together only those organisms who are interfertile. Had Jews reading min thought this word referred to such narrow classification, they would have used eidos not genos. Incidently, genos is not the only translation offered for min in the Septuagint. Genesis 1:12 actually contains a double translation and so reads "according to genos and according to likeness (omoioteta)." Similarly, throughout the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy min is translated as "its like" (ta omoia auto). What all this combined shows is that for those who translated the Septuagint, min constituted a broad category whose members were included on the basis of appearence.
There is more on this I could go into, but that will have to wait until another day.
Mebaqqer
Sorry SF... didn't see your link before I blundered into this thread
