Now you have admitted that you could have written up a much better crtique
You have a serious problem with reading comprehension. I never said anything about the quality of my critique -- I was explaining to you that the essay was never intended to be what you construe it to be. This might come as a big shock to you, but people tend to express themselves differently to different audiences and in different situations. This is an internet message board with a broad audience, not an academic journal, and it was never my intent to write as I would in a journal. I could have simply made an argument from authority and simply cited what one scholar or another says and left it at that (which is how the Society usually makes its argument when it appeals to secondary sources), but no, I went directly to the primary sources and explained from the texts themselves why the Society's interpretation is ill-founded, specifying the evidence and logic used in my criticism (giving, as usual, all the relevant sources I used). For the purpose of my post, that accomplished my purpose. Giving a thorough survey of the literature and showing how one scholar or another has expressed similar views is what you would do in a journal article but it is unnecessary for the kind of informal, lay-oriented discussion that I intended to write.
The Society in its Study Edition has published for all mankind a thoughtful study of the Olivet Discourse.
LMAO, you are so predictable. Even without addressing the exegetical issues, the sloppy logic is all over the place -- referring to the parousia as implying an "extended period of time" comes seemingly out of nowhere, arguing that the "generation" must include the anointed somehow inexplicably morphs into a claim that generation only includes the anointed (without addressing the evidence formerly cited in favor of the 1995 view), etc. And the exegesis assumes a host of equivalences without demonstrating or even discussing why they should be assumed. Oh and aside from a few footnotes deferring a discussion of relevant points to their other publications, where are all the "references to the scholarly literature" in that article? You think a post in an internet message forum must be written at the level of an article published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the "thoughtful study" published as an article by the Society is not subject to the same standards?
I am able to provide a list of points that demand proof from you or evidence that you recognize that some of the sugjects are very contentious.
Demand proof? My goodness, don't you know that real scholars assess arguments by determining the degree to which one argument or another best accounts for the evidence (that is what my post endeavored to do, i.e. showing how the Society's interpretation is less felicitous to the evidence than other explanations)? They don't insist that the only acceptable arguments are the ones that can be proved conclusively.
And I already said that in giving my analysis of the texts, I was not presenting it as the only analysis or view in the literature. I was giving it as my take on the matter. Whether or not a matter is contentious, what counts is how well an interpretation is supported by the relevant data. If you feel that the Society is better supported on a given point, discuss that. Otherwise you are not offering anything of substance.
