Paul's Letters: Part of "All Scripture ..." ?

by compound complex 88 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • AllTimeJeff
    AllTimeJeff

    AGuest, your sincerity and kindness bleed through in your messages. Not having followed your posts, I did not know until now that you do not use the bible as your main source of "revelation".

    As anyone can say anything they want regarding such "personal" revelations or communications with "god", "Christ", etc there is no point arguing with you. The fact that you believe it is obviously enough for you. I certainly can in no way take your word for it.

    I wonder if you have ever considered why your "god" does not reveal himself in a similar way to others? Or why he chooses you at the exclusion of others? It would certainly be nice of him to reveal himself to all and end the confusion, don't you think?

    If the answer to the above is a matter of how Christ divides and judges, I will have no choice but to lump you with others of your ilk, who believe that "god" will destroy a good chunk of the population for petty reasons. Logic begs an answer to the exclusionary and divisive way that "gods" followers insist on following him. If your answer isn't one of judgement, but that you don't know, I will again have to reject your sincere post as silly and illogical. If it is a matter of accepting your beliefs on "faith", I would call you out on your credulity.

    Thats a lot of "ifs" and I dont' assume any to be your answer. But those are the general answers I have heard.

    I praise Coco and anyone who is honestly willing to examine the source of their beliefs as to their veracity, whether that source is the bible or other mysterious voices or influences.

  • myelaine
    myelaine

    "Yes. I am completely convinced that the Bible is simply the oldest (or one of the oldest) cult handbooks. It teaches obedience through fear in the guise of love."...

    I'm convinced that God the Father used a stern hand in leading His children in the (holy) way in which they should go. I think that many need a stern hand. I think that showing the "end" for the "enemies of God" is an honest way for God to highlight His love for His children. To be frank, it didn't take me long to realize that I would rather be on His side.

    love michelle

    p.s. Paul had a stern hand too.

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips
    Because SO many put their faith IN THE BIBLE... rather than IN THE ONE about whom the Bible bears witness ... they are easily misled due to all of the interpretations, misinterpretations, translations, mistransliterations, tampering, omissions, errors, inclusion, additions, commentaries, contradictions, and versions. I am not judging: I was among these.

    This is simply a stellar post AGuest. Thank you.

    Burn

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl8b4_0ZAoo

    And he evidently disappeared after death - the tomb was empty!

    That video raises an important question:

    Why must documentaries of this type always be narrated by disheveled, pasty, constipated looking old British males?

    Burn

  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    *** w01 9/15 p. 30 Enoch Walked With God in an Ungodly World ***

    Does the Bible Quote From the Book of Enoch?

    Hey inkling!

    Thanks for posting this, I've been looking for this for a while. I misplaced my WT CD-ROM and I couldn't find this article.

    This article is a prime example of the Watchtower's corkscrew reasoning.

    He may simply have quoted a common source, a reliable tradition handed down from remote antiquity. Paul evidently did something similar when he named Jannes and Jambres as the otherwise anonymous magicians of Pharaoh’s court who opposed Moses.

    And what, pray tell, might this "common source" be? Is there any evidence that such a common source existed, either for Paul's reference to Jannes and Jambres or for Jude's quotation of Enoch? Instead of using Occam's Razor (The notion that the simplist explanation is one that's most likely to be right.) and stating the obvious, that Jude quoted from the pseudepigraphfal book of 1st Enoch and "Paul" referenced the apocryphal Book of Jannes and Jambres, the WT has to come up with a hypothetical source that both the "inspired" Bible writer used and the uninspired hack pseudepigraphal writer used as well! (and with no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim.)

    Incidently, there is not one but three lines of evidence that Jude is quoting 1st Enoch and not another source. First, Jude SAYS he's quoting Enoch. Second, the same, word for wrd prophesy found in 1st Enoch 1:9 is NOT phrased as a quotation from another source, as it is in Jude. Third, both Jude and 1st Enoch make the same error in stating that Enoch is seventh in line from Adam, when in fact, Genesis chapter 5 shows that Enoch is SIXTH in line from Adam.

    CyrusThePersian

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia
    Instead of using Occam's Razor (The notion that the simplist explanation is one that's most likely to be right.) and stating the obvious, that Jude quoted from the pseudepigraphfal book of 1st Enoch and "Paul" referenced the apocryphal Book of Jannes and Jambres, the WT has to come up with a hypothetical source that both the "inspired" Bible writer used and the uninspired hack pseudepigraphal writer used as well! (and with no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim.)

    I have a thread where I show that this possibility is unlikely, as ch. 1 of 1 Enoch was constructed out of traditional material in the OT (which, of course, would derive from a much later date than the putative antediluvian patriarch "Enoch"), and v. 9 shows the same pattern of literary dependence as the rest of the chapter, and the chapter as a whole shows no sign of utilizing an Enochic tradition independent of the OT:

    http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/85223/1.ashx

    Of course, the alternative possibility that the author of Jude utilized 1 Enoch is unsatisfactory to the Society, as he specifically referred to the latter as divinely inspired (as what Enoch "prophesied," and prophecy is only given by inspiration), and that would raise the problem of the inspiration of noncanonical books. The other possibility, that 1 Enoch was dependent on Jude, is already ruled out by the existence of the passage in a pre-Christian copy of 1 Enoch in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

    Incidently, there is not one but three lines of evidence that Jude is quoting 1st Enoch and not another source. First, Jude SAYS he's quoting Enoch. Second, the same, word for wrd prophesy found in 1st Enoch 1:9 is NOT phrased as a quotation from another source, as it is in Jude. Third, both Jude and 1st Enoch make the same error in stating that Enoch is seventh in line from Adam, when in fact, Genesis chapter 5 shows that Enoch is SIXTH in line from Adam.

    The literary dependence is also striking in the case of v. 6 and v. 12-13:

    Jude 6: "And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned (apolipontas) their proper abode (oikétérion), he has kept (tetéréken) in eternal bonds (desmois aidiois) under darkness (hupo zophon) for the judgment of the great day (eis krisin megalés hémeras)."

    1 Enoch 12:4: "Go and make known to the Watchers of heaven who have abandoned (apolipontes) the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women."

    1 Enoch 15:3, 7: "For what reason have you abandoned (apelipete) the high, holy, and eternal heaven; and slept with women and defiled yourselves with the daughters of the people....I did not make wives for you, for the abode (katoikésis) of spiritual beings of heaven is heaven."

    1 Enoch 10:4-6: "Go, Raphael, and bind (déson) Asael hand and foot and throw him into the darkness (skotos)....Cover up his face in order that he may not see light, in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment (en téi hémerai tés megalés tés kriseós)."

    1 Enoch 10:11-12: "Go, Michael, and bind (déson corr.) Shemihazah and the others with him, who have fornicated with the daughters of men, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them (déson autois) for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment (hémeras kriseós autón) and consummation, until the eternal judgment (krima tou aiónos tón aiónon) is concluded".

    1 Enoch 14:5: "It has been decreed to bind you (désai humas) in chains (desmois) in the earth for all the days of eternity (eis pasas tas geneas tou aiónos)"

    Jude 12-13: "They are clouds blown along by the wind without giving rain, autumnal trees bearing no fruit, dead twice over and uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their abominations, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever".

    1 Enoch 18:14-16: "This place is the ultimate end of heaven and earth: it is the prison house for the stars and the powers of heaven. And the stars which roll over upon the fire, they are the ones which have transgressed the commandments of God from the beginning of their rising because they did not arrive punctually. And he was wroth with them and bound them until the time of the completion of their sin."

    1 Enoch 21:6: "These are among the stars of heaven which have transgressed the commandments of God and are bound in this place until the completion of ten million years, according to the number of their sins."

    1 Enoch 80:2-6: "In the days of the sinners the years will grow shorter ... everything on the earth will change and will not appear at their times, the rain will be withheld, and the sky will retain it. At those times, the fruit of the earth will be late and will not grow at its normal time, and the fruit of the trees will be withheld at its proper time. The moon will change its order and will not appear at its proper time ... Many heads of stars will wander from their command and will change their ways and actions and will not appear at the times prescribed for them".

    1 Enoch 88:1-3: "He seized that first star that had fallen from heaven, and he bound it by its hands and feet and threw it into an abyss, and that abyss was narrow and deep and desolate and dark...One of those four who had come forth hurled stones from heaven and gathered and took all the great stars, whose organs were like the organs of horses, and bound all of them by their hands and their feet, and threw them into an abyss of the earth".

    1 Enoch 101:2-6: "If he closes the windows of heaven, and withholds the dew and the rain from descending because of you, what will you do? Why do you speak with your mouth proud and hard things against his majesty? You will have no peace. Look at the captains who sail the sea! Their ships are shaken by wave and storm ... are not all the sea and all its waters and all its movement the work of the Most High?"

    There are several other echoes of 1 Enoch in other parts of the short epistle of Jude.

  • onacruse
    onacruse

    So Leo, is your last post an example of what you like to do on New Year?

    LOLOL

    Excellent post, along with several others on this thread.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    I just came back from an internet-less week in Death Valley. Spent 9 hours going 500 miles (with speeds at 110 mph at one stretch ;)), while I was working the whole time on my laptop on a project that is still not finished (no I was not the driver!). So yes, indeed, chilling with the internet is a grrreat way to relax after a long day, even if it is New Years! :))

  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    Thanks for all the info, Leolaia!

    I was looking over your list showing the literary dependence that Jude has with 1st Enoch. It's amazing! It's almost as though Jude had a copy of 1st Enoch beside him and was using it as a kind of thesaurus to compose his epistle.

    Thanks for the link, too! lots of really good info there.Your work is very much appreciated!

    CyrusThePersian

  • funkyderek
    funkyderek

    I once spent a considerable amount of time arguing with a coupkle of JWs who'd foolishly called to my door about the absurdity of claiming that when Paul wrote "all scripture" what he meant was some of the Hebrew writings then available to him, excluding one he had just quoted but including the very letter he was writing as well as several books not yet written, in fact exactly those books that would be accepted by Martin Luther a millennium and a half later. They seemed completely unaware of the existence of the Apocrypha and their best argument was that God would obviously preserve the books that he had inspired so the Bible must be inspired - see, it says so right here!

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