You don't need to apologize. I just wanted to make it clear that you made interesting, probably wrong, unsubstantiated claims as fact and then expected others to do the research for you.
Have a nice day.
The End of Biblical Studies?
by slimboyfat 35 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Sulla
Ok. Looking through threads is not really my idea of research, but whatever.
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EntirelyPossible
Research is gathering data to support your claim. If you claim that poster, on threads, write a particular thing with a certain frequency, looking through those threads would be the research to support that claim.
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Band on the Run
While I was in college studying New Testament, a professor who was present during the unveiling addressed my class. He was a prof at Union Theological Seminary next door. It was exciting as he described how no one knew for certain whether opening the scrolls would destroy him. What I remember clearly after about forty years was his enormous ego.
I never came across anyone at university with more ego.
He discussed how an international team was assembled. The politics of opening and translating the Scrolls took many years to resolve. Our chairman also worked on one of the first translations. Theodore Gaster. He was also intimidating. People loved his classes but he was very scary. He never talked about the process when I was there.
I am Episcopalian now. My ears are very attentive to Bible claims. You can pretty much believe whatever you want about the Bible and still be very welcome. The priests seem to be very careful about what they say. Theirs answers always sounded scripted to me. I recall it was fine fo priests not to believe in the Trinity but not to say it openly. When I lived in a major city, you could say that you had grave doubts. Such a statement leads to uncomfortable relationships here in rural ville.
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OldGenerationDude
Being an exJW, even claiming to be atheist or having no belief in the Bible doesn't mean we are free of the Governing Body's influence.
Our former association with the Jehovah’s Witnesses can cause our ability to use logic to grow somewhat numb. If we leave that religion believing in certain objectives that the Governing Body claimed were true, even if we left believing that their religion is wrong, this can cause us to come to very incorrect conclusions.
To illustrate: if we reject God and/or the Bible because of what the Witnesses have taught us, we are only rejecting the concepts taught by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We may accidentally take it on faith that whatever the Governing Body published about other religions and their beliefs were accurate (maybe because of their quoting something from another group in a sentence or blurb) and thus we may not bother to examine such claims about other belief system to see if they hold up under test. If we don’t thoroughly test these things we could be an ill-equipped atheist or theist (it works both ways). How? What we reject (or accept) about God and what we think about the Bible may only be JW concepts—and these aren’t anything like Judeo-Christian concepts.
The belief that the Bible is a “map” to God is not really the way Christians or Jews view the Scriptures. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The Christian faith is not a 'religion of the book.' Christianity is the religion of the 'Word' of God, a word which is 'not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living.'"--CCC 108
This is a good way to test if you are still seeing things under the influence of Watchtower definitions or not. Do you fully understand what Catholics mean in that statement from their official book of doctrine? If we read it using the understanding that the Governing Body wants us to have, we might be a bit confused at first blush. The sentence may even seem contradictory to the Jehovah’s Witness: on one hand Catholics say that their faith in not based on the Bible but then they claim that theirs is “the religion of the ‘Word’ of God.”
If you understand theology and religion without Governing Body influence—and you can be an atheist and still be very well studied about these things—the sentence makes complete sense. You might even be able to paraphrase the sentence to mean: “Christianity is not a religion based on the Bible, it’s based on a Person, Jesus Christ, the Word that was ‘with God’ according to John 1:1—and not on the Word of God in the sense of the written inspired text.” That's what that sentence from the CCC means.
How well did you do when you read it?
That sentence is not a unique dogma of Roman Catholics. It is actually the creed of practically all Christians, Protestants as well. They believe their religion is true because they believe the testimony of the apostles—or as Christians say, “our faith is apostolic.” The Bible isn’t the sole or even main reason Christians believe in God. While it is considered to inspired of God, it is only part of God's revelation to humankind.
The book The End of Biblical Studies was written by an ex-Evangelical Fundamentalist. LIke them, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that everything about God hinges on the Bible, and on the Bible alone. For them the requisite for salvation is not belief in Christ the Person, but belief in Christ as written down in the words of Scripture AND as interpreted by their religion. Instead of claiming that their religion is true because it is apostolic, these claim that the Bible is without error of any type—they have to because they make no claim to being historically connected to the apostolic college.
Therefore the conclusions of The End of Biblical Studies, while great for talking to those like the JWs, offers nothing effective to destroy the faith of Christians in general. These arguments don't affect their doctrines because their belief in Christ didn't originate from a book. It came from the mouth of the Apostles and the witness of the Church Fathers that followed. The apostolic college existed before there was an official Bible, before any of the books of the New Testament were even written. The Bible, while an important element of the deposit of faith, is not the basis for that faith. The Bible didn’t have to exist for there to be a Church. As Sulla is trying to explain, without the Church there would be no Bible.
It’s similar for my people’s religion, Judaism. My forefather, Abraham, did not get his religion from reading Torah (the first five books of the Bible). My forefather got his religion from God himself. Moses didn’t get Torah from Exodus. Moses got Torah from God through the conduit of angels. The religion of my people is not a religion based on a book, like that of the Witnesses. Judaism comes from God’s self-revelation, from the theophany of my forbearers Abraham and Moses. The Scriptures were not essential to the creation of the Jewish religion, instead they are a product of it.
Therefore this “the Bible isn’t what people claim it is” argument is moot. So what? My religion isn’t based on a book. That’s a really stupid concept if you think about it for how can Judaism be based on the Bible if there wouldn't be a Bible without Judaism first? Religion based on a book and nothing else is the religion of fools!
And who wants to waste their time debating the concepts of fools?
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Band on the Run
My mere presence on this forum shows the impact of Jehovah's Witnesses on my thinking. I keep trying to nail down an "official version" of theology and scriptural interpretation. The specifics are different than when I was a Witness but the pattern is the same. I attend every Bible study that I can and read academic books. The truth is that I approach the material differently from others in the group. I think I want an argument, a rationale similar to the WT. Priests refuse to conform to my need for certainty. I ask harder and harder questions in my quest for certainty. All I am truly interested in is checking with "experts" to see that the WT has false teachings.
No matter how much I study and discuss with people, it is never enough to bring resolution.
I've noticed many here believe the WT is wrong yet engage in the same reasoning style. It is difficult to articulate. There will never be enough books, studies, whatever to calm my quest. I am argumentative (not nasty). When a priest or professor answers my questions, I immediately come up with more questions. I don't think I do this for more information. My father was very argumentative. I despised it. He loved trouncing Roman Catholics. Yet I believe I do the same thing, albeit in a progressive vein.
It scares me how much they remain in my mind. I am too intense about this material. Way too intense.