Isaac's Post 1779 regarding the Pharisees may or may not be true, in my honest opinion. After all, the Karaite Jews, among others continued to use the Divine Name even centuries later. I do not know yet about the Pharisees specifically, nor about the Sadducees, nor about others such as the Essenes.
Is God's name absent in the Christian Scriptures?
by Spike Tassel 163 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Spike Tassel
Isaac (post 1783), just call me Spike. Does your Bible actually have a verse in it which has the 3 words in order, i.e. "Jesus is God"? Otherwise, your resoning does not hold up, in my opinion.
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isaacaustin
Spike...Does your bible actually have in it the 4 words blood transfusions are wrong? Otherwise, your reasoning does not hold up, in my opinion.
Spike...Does your bible actually have in it the 3 words birthdays are wrong? Otherwise, your reasoning does not hold up, in my opinion.
Spike...Does your bible actually have in it the 3 words holidays are wrong? Otherwise, your reasoning does not hold up, in my opinion.
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PSacramento
I Jesus dwells the full embodiemnt of God, in Jesus, all the qualities of God are embodied, Jesus is God Manifested.
One can interpret that as Jesus being God, but nowhere did I say that Jesus is God.
I don't have any issue with an interpretation, unless it starts to be emphazied as scriptural and based for Salvation.
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Spike Tassel
PSacramento (Post 49), as I observe people pronounce words in the multitude of varieties of English, not one word is given the same pronunciation across all dialects. So, it would be very unusual if only one pronunciation is allowed by Jehovah for his own personal name. God is love, after all. And love is very understanding and patient, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness. As I review some translations (and versions therof of the Holy Scriptures) in my own English collection alone, several have "Jehovah" (including David H. Stern's Jewish New Testament), and other spellings are seen also — such as Rotherham's "YAHVAH", and the New Jerusalem Bible's "Yahweh". Even so, others attempt to translate the Divine Name instead at times, as we see with Ferrar Fenton's use of "EVER-LIVING" and James Moffatt's use of "Eternal".
This is just as I would expect from my study of languages. Munich and München both designate the same place, demonstrating a recognizable similarity based on spelling and language laws. Milles Îles and Thousand Islands also both designate the same place, only this time the meanings are the same.
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Spike Tassel
Isaac, may we not debate about the Almighty in a worthless way. That, to me is the essence of taking his name in vain.
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isaacaustin
nice try to evade Spike...I was simply showing your shallow logic. The same exact logic you use to say Jesus is not God is present on those subjects mentioned. But to answer your issue- the Bible shows Jesus to be God...by what Jesus does, his being eternal...and the fulfillment in him of things attributed to God in the OT.
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Spike Tassel
Jesus being Eternal is from his resurrection forward. Jesus' Eternality is not that of Jehovah. After all, Jesus did experience personal own death, which Jehovah did not.
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isaacaustin
Spike, Jesus body died. His soul did not.
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OnTheWayOut
Way into the article:
[9] Again, at this point we must make a strong statement affirming the inspiration of Scripture. As we have seen, there is no evidence that the original manuscripts contained the Tetragrammaton. Therefore, unless we deny the inerrancy and inspiration of the Greek Scriptures, we are left only with the alternative that God directed the apostolic writers to use the Greek word Κ?ριος rather than the Hebrew word ????. If—in our desire to protect a theological position—we still must insist that the Tetragrammaton from Hebrew versions will have precedence, then we must be willing to dismiss our claim that the Scriptures we have today are "inspired of God."
This article wastes alot of space using the same tired arguments:
Luke is drawing our attention to the presence of Jehovah's power. Luke intended to convey exactly the meaning of the New World Translation which says, "...and Jehovah's power was there for him [Jesus] to do healing."
Again, the sense of the New World Translation which says, "which was spoken by Jehovah..." was certainly Matthew's intent.
So the article tries to insist that the intent of the original authors (therefore the intent of God) was accurately portrayed in the NWT. Yet they still insist that (as footnote 9 shows) God either intended to leave out any version of the tetragrammaton or the scriptures are not His inspired word.
The logic leap conclusion of this article is this:
We are faced with the inescapable conclusion that the Greek Scripture writers, under inspiration, purposely allowed Kyrios to have a broader meaning. In certain places, they used Kyrios to refer to Jehovah. In other instances, they used the same word to refer to a title of Jesus. Sometimes the context makes its intended meaning clear. Many times it could include either. Most often the title was applied specifically to Jesus.
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Every indication is that the Christian Greek Scripture writers saw no conflict in using Kyrios to represent both the divine name and to identify Jesus. We are left with the conclusion that they did so because they understood Jesus himself to share Jehovah's eternal attributes.
It is not for WTS to decide the intent of the authors, especially when they teach that the authors were inspired by God to write the way they did.
It is fine for an article on the subject to debate such, but to insert words and translate in ways favorable to a doctrine is not right.My conclusion on this article linked is that it offers something for everyone, hoping to please the JW's with "the intent of the author" and a conclusion that "Jehovah" was not in the New Testament, but it certainly was the right word to be there, and at the same time the article hopes to please those that recognize that "Jehovah" was not/should not be in the New Testament. The article is straddling a fence to give credibility to the NWT.
Beyond all scholarly debate, I am left with my opinion. Here it is:
The writers recognized that Jews would be highly offended to call Jesus by the name of God. The people didn't use the name, so the writers didn't use it either, whether refering to Jesus or his "Father." The writers also recognized that even directly saying that Jesus was God would be received poorly. Jesus himself, said he was a son of God, but that all people are sons of God. The doctrine developed that Jesus must be a son because he said so, but the writers/religious leaders decided that he must be more than a son as all others are sons.
The ambiguous writing is done on purpose to develop such beliefs/doctrines.