Witchtower twists yet another scripture 2Cor 12: 8 -10 Nov 15 WT

by hamsterbait 33 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  reniaa

  Hi mary :) you make a very point on usage of Jehovah which certainly has had me thinking :)

  Yes but if because your name isn't used, people suddenly get rid of it completely and start calling your son prince charles your majesty instead because men have decided to be too literal on a rule wouldn't that have made queen elizabeth mad?

  Um, your illustration doesn't make any sense. No one has called Prince Charles "Your Majesty". His title is "His Royal Highness". Just because her subjects do not address her as "Elizabeth" does not mean that they're going to suddenly start address her son as "His Majesty". That simply would make no sense.

  Actually, I find that most Christians and Jews are aware that God's name is YHVH and that has absolutely nothing to do with the Witnesses. It's there in the bible. I have no problem with using the name "Yahweh" or even "Jehovah" on occassion, but as I've already demonstrated, using it on a daily basis flies directly in conflict with the Commandment "You must not use the Lord's name in vain".

  My point in my taking your elizabeth analagy further was to illustate that the superstition that clouded God's name was directly causal in trinity doctrine being adopted, there's no getting past having Lord assigned to both God and Jesus has created confusion. but should we use god's name on a daily basis hmmm well certainly in the written Old Testament it was used every other scripture 6800 times is an awful lot of usage, but then look at psalms they are songs full of jehovah's name look at psalm 23 in particular.

  Psalm 23 A Psalm of David.
  
  
  1 The LORD is my shepherd;
  I shall not want.
  2 He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
  He leads me beside the still waters.
  3 He restores my soul;
  He leads me in the paths of righteousness
  For His name’s sake.

  it's a big LORD so it is one replacing Jehovah and yet how many people think it is jesus? everyone outside of JW's, so songs they sung were full of jehovahs name, so was written word and the new testament may have issues over tetragramation but a word that is confirmed in it is hallelujah and that just basically means "praise to Jehovah" taking God's name in vain is an important issue but we have to ask ourselves if superstition and over-applying a law has lead to far in the other direction. and I personally feel Jw's have the right on this one
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  TheListener

  I have a rather simplistic question:

  Since the Jews didn't say God's name aloud due to religious beliefs, wouldn't it have caused at least some agitation among the crowd or Pharisees or Sadducees if Jesus used God's name? The Bible does record controversy over Jesus words but not his use of God's name.
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  reniaa

  hi carla and eyeslice i refer you both to the above posting, on how applying LORD wrongly goes the other way too and OT scriptures are used to refer to Jesus by just applying all LORD's in there to him too and with 6800 of them I would say they are worse than JW's in that respect.

  You say Lord carla but if you just apply that as a blanket thats how you do end up with a 3 in 1 God belief because it confuses things, Holy spirit was basically just tagged on as a bonus
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  Mary

  reniaa said: My point in my taking your elizabeth analagy further was to illustate that the superstition that clouded God's name was directly causal in trinity doctrine being adopted

  Reniaa I don't know how many times I have to say it: It was not "superstition" that caused the Jews to stop speaking God's name. It was done out of respect for the Commandment that said "do not use God's name in a worthless manner". Yes I'm sure the Jews knew what God's name was but that does not mean that had to use it on a regular basis. Having the tetragrammaton written down is not the same as using the name "Jehovah" the same was you would "Bob, Joe or Bill".

  so songs they sung were full of jehovahs name, so was written word and the new testament may have issues over tetragramation but a word that is confirmed in it is hallelujah and that just basically means "praise to Jehovah"

  Yes but as I've already pointed out, the name "Jehovah" is not actually the correct pronounciation for YHVH. It is basically viewed as a joke by the Jews it's so far off. What exactly is the point of "making God's name known" if it's the wrong pronounciation???

  taking God's name in vain is an important issue but we have to ask ourselves if superstition and over-applying a law has lead to far in the other direction. and I personally feel Jw's have the right on this one

  Maybe you should ask yourself if perhaps the WTS has also "over applied" their reasoning on this one instead of just assuming that it's "superstition" by the Jews that "led in the other direction". If you want to use the name "Jehovah", knock yourself out. This is not something privy to the Witnesses though as I've heard other ministers use the name "Jehovah" during their sermons. In fact, one of the churches that I've been to has several songs using the name "Jehovah". So despite what they tell you at the KH, JW's are not the only one's who use this name.

  This particular issue is only such a major issue because Witnesses like to make it that way.
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  Leolaia

  reniaa.....You might want to take another look at the long post I submitted to your first thread here:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/154486/2832912/post.ashx#2832912

  There I gave quite a few examples of where the NT makes allusions to OT passages containing YHWH in the Hebrew but which had kurios in the Greek, all of which apply kurios to Jesus (cf. Joel 2:32 LXX in Romans 10:9-13 where kurios refers to Jesus, Isaiah 45:23 LXX in Romans 14:8-11 where kurios refers to Jesus and is clearly original to the Greek of Romans since it spawns a verb kurieusé, Jeremiah 9:23-24 LXX in 1 Corinthians 1:28-31 where kurios is parallel to the preceding reference to Christ Jesus, Isaiah 40:13 in 1 Corinthians 2:15-16 where kurios clearly refers to Christ, 2 Samuel 12:14 LXX in Colossians 3:22-24 where kurios refers to "Lord Christ" and is clearly original since the plural kuriois occurs in the same text). The NWT's use of "Jehovah" in these passages is not only without textual authority but it is exegetically incoherent; it destroys the meaning of the OT allusions for any reader who does not assume that "Jehovah" is "Jesus".

  It was not "superstition" that caused the Jews to stop speaking God's name. It was done out of respect for the Commandment that said "do not use God's name in a worthless manner".

  Actually it is the commandment in Leviticus 24:16 LXX that explicitly forbids the "naming" of the name of God, and the substitution of kurios in the LXX is a logical consequence of this:

  MT: "He that curses (nqb) the name of Yahweh (yhwh), he shall surely be put to death".
  

  LXX: "But he that names (onomazón) the name of the Lord (kuriou), let him die the death".
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  still_in74

  this is another instance I wish we did have earlier translations of NT I found this interesting info though in wiki

  the oldest that I know I have is 1961. I got it from my aunts home after she died.....
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  reniaa

  lol i feel like i'm in a tennis court on this issue we keep batting a ball at each both having good points :)

  Reniaa I don't know how many times I have to say it: It was not "superstition" that caused the Jews to stop speaking God's name. It was done out of respect for the Commandment that said "do not use God's name in a worthless manner". Yes I'm sure the Jews knew what God's name was but that does not mean that had to use it on a regular basis. Having the tetragrammaton written down is not the same as using the name "Jehovah" the same was you would "Bob, Joe or Bill".

  THe Jews have a tradition of over-applying laws making them a burden to their people, thats how the talmud was created a set of oral laws that so over analised and minutised every aspect of a single law they got twisted to the point they conflicted with other bible laws, jesus himself commented on this.

  Matthew 12:1-12 (New International Version)

  New International Version (NIV)

  Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

  Matthew 12

  Lord of the Sabbath

  1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath."

  3 He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. 5 Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? 6 I tell you that one [a] greater than the temple is here. 7 If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' [b] you would not have condemned the innocent. 8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

  9 Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"

  11 He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

  There is danger getting too strict, and I am fully aware that JW's have fallen into this trap on a few issue including disfellowshiping among others,

  But back to the point in hand the strictness of jews using God's name tradition, clearly wasn't applied by moses who liberally used Gods name, the taking out of the vowels was done later than his writings or David who sung about Jehovah. If moses felt that he had to keep it holy he would have put Lord from the start but he did't it was a gradual change over time.

  I guess the trick is what to be strict on and what not to be...I only use Jehovah when refering to God not as a would another person like erm bob, joe or bill,

  and as i mentioned earlier jesus is equally mis-pronouced and probably would get as big a laugh as jehovah by those people you mention if thats what tickles their humour.
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  TheListener

  Leolaia,

  Great post, as usual.

  I didn't realize the MT and LXX varied so much on Leviticus 24:16.
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  Leolaia

  Before I left permanently, I found myself more and more having to correct brothers and sisters who incorrectly applied 'Lord' to Jehovah. As far as I can see, the majority of the times that Paul used the word 'Lord' he was referring to the Lord Jesus - when he referred to God he used the word God.
  
  Hence, when Col 3:23 states, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men" it referring to the Lord Jesus and certainly not the work of Jehovah (aka Jehovah's Witnesses).

  eyeslice....That is a good example and I mentioned it in the post I just linked. In Colossians 3:22-24, the word kurios occurs four times and the NWT replaces this word with "Jehovah" in all but the last of these. This replacement is done because there is an OT allusion in the text: 2 Samuel 12:14 LXX. That verse states that worshippers should "fear the Lord" (phobéthéte ton kurion) and "serve" (douleuséte) the Lord. The first instance of the singular kurios in Colossians 3:22 is "fearing the Lord" (phoboumenoi ton kurion) and so the NWT replaces kurios with "Jehovah". It also replaces the next two instances of kurios with "Jehovah" since it is clear that the reference is to the same being. The next instance of kurios alludes to the second half of 2 Samuel 12:14 LXX, "serving the Lord" (douleuséte). But does the NWT replace kurios with "Jehovah" here? No. That is because the allusion is explicitly applied to Jesus...."serving the Lord Jesus" (douleuete tó kurió Khristó). It is clear from there that the whole passage pertains to fearing and serving Christ, but the inconsistent interpolation of "Jehovah" in the NWT makes half of the allusion of 2 Samuel 12:14 pertain to Jehovah and the other half pertain to Jesus. But it is also clear that "Jehovah" doesn't belong in the passage at all because Paul's whole string of references to kurios depends on the statement in the beginning of the passage: "Slaves, obey your earthly lords (kuriois) in everything". That is why 2 Samuel 12:14 is alluded to because that text admonishes the faithful to "serve" (douleuséte) their "Lord" (kurios), an expression that is especially reminiscent to slaves' servitude. So it is clear that "Jehovah" doesn't belong in the text at all since the antecedent for all the references to kurios in the text is the initial kuriois.
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  reniaa

  Hi there laialeo your words are interesting,

  We are talking on one or two words in the NT but what about moses using JHWH, he would have put vowel markers as was done with hebrew language (which didn't use vowels as we do) and as time went on they were allowed to be lost and finally we get the LORD change, was it jews or christians that changed JHWH for LORD?

  And what do you think of how other Christian faiths happily use OT Scriptures obviously talking about Jehovah but use the LORD as if they are talking about Jesus? isn't this as incorrect as what you point out above in regards to NT,

  Surely if we are going to be strict with the NT making sure the correct Lord is applied to the Correct LORD we should do the same with OT too?

  Reniaa