One Silly Little Comma = WT Idiocy

by Farkel 25 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Farkel

  One would think that the God of Gods, the Creator of everything who wanted to give we puny little humans a handbook for salvation(tm), would make sure that handbook remained authentic.

  One who thinks that way would be wrong.

  Since punctuation is critical to convey exact meanings, I find it strange that the God of Gods would pick a written language for His handbook that has No punctuation! Oh, wait! He also picked another language for that book that had no written vowels! Thus, we have this ancient problem about even trying to figure out God's name. Is it Yahweh, Yahwah, Yehwoh, Jehovah, or Sacajawea? Beats me.

  Back to the language with no punctuation, namely Biblical Greek. At least that language had vowels when written, but it did not have periods, commas, quote marks, exclamation marks, or even smiley faces. Stupid language that.

  "Truly I say to you today you will be with me in paradise(tm)"

  That is what that verse looks like when not punctuated. (The "tm" was added later by scribes interested in royalties. The Watchtower Corporation picked it up centuries later and re-trademarked it and made a bloody FORTUNE from it!)

  Now, a placement of a silly little comma can drastically change what that sentence means. Alert Bible readers know that Jesus said those words while dying on a cross (it wasn't really a cross, but a huge popsicle stick.) Jesus told this to a particularly nasty criminal who repented on his very own popsicle stick next to the popsicle stick Jesus was on. (Keep deathbed repentence in mind if you become a particularly nasty criminal and are about to be executed. It is a good escape hatch when all else fails.)

  Traditional religions believe that all deserving people gain salvation upon death. Therefore, they punctuate the sentence in question like this:

  "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

  This must have been great comfort for that particularly nasty criminal since it told him that although he would croak, upon croaking he would be playing a harp and singing hymns forever and ever and ever.

  However, the WTS punctuation police had a very different use for that comma. They decided to render that sentence this way:

  "Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise."

  Religious interpretations aside, that rendering is idiotic! It's like saying "Truly I'm telling you today, mind you I am not now telling you tomorrow and I am not now telling you next week and I am not now telling you yesterday, you will be with me in paradise." If Jesus was telling that guy something, at what other time than "today" would he be telling him that something?

  This comma placement is used by the WTS to teach that Jesus was telling the particularly nasty criminal that sometime down the road he would be with Jesus in paradise.

  As an aside, I'm not sure what the Watchtower Printing Corporation teaches about what that particularly nasty criminals'reward would actually be. Would he be of the Lion-Petting CLASS, or would he be of the Kings and Priest CLASS ruling with Jesus and the other wackos and nutjobs and particularly nasty criminals? The latter seems to be the logical choice because that particularly nasty criminal would be in like company with other particularly nasty criminals like Chuck Russell, Grudge Rutherford, Nathan Knorr, Freddie Franz, and all the wackos and nutjob "anointeds" we knew in our own Kingdom Halls and the worst wacko and nutjob on this planet, my own mother.

  If the latter option is true, at what time did that particularly nasty criminal become "anointed" between his conversation with Jesus and death? It had to be a "quicky annointing" methinks.

  In their placement of punctuation markes from Koine Greek into another language which uses punctuation, normal translators with any sense of decency attempt to punctuate sentences in accordance with the content and context of those sentences. In WatchtowerWorld(tm), the lone translator carefully chose punctuation to fit pre-conceived WatchtowerLand doctrine.

  In his conversation with Jesus, Pontius Piglet aked "what is Truth?" If the same question is asked of WTS leaders, the answer would have to be, "whatever we say it is today, but we reserve the right to change our mind and our Bible translating as-the-need arises."

  Farkel
• 

  steve2

  Alert Bible readers know that Jesus said those words while dying on a cross (it wasn't really a cross, but a huge popsicle stick.)

  So Jesus died on a huge popsicle stick? And all along I thought he died on a Friday!

  But seriously, Farkel, I agree with your well-phrased comments. It is ludicrous to inveigle a non-standard doctrine into a verse by dint of punctuation. And yet, how the small- and literal-minded believers cling to such stunning superficialites of reasoning.
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  Leolaia

  To be fair, it should be pointed out that the NWT's punctuation is not novel and has ancient precedent both in the Greek and the Syriac. It was definitely a minority position but it is technically permitted by the text and has had followers.

  The subject was recently discussed in this thread:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/235015/1/e2809cTruly-I-say-to-you-e280a6e2809d-e2809cAmen-I-say-to-you-e2809de280a6-Inferences-from-a-Gospel-manner-of-speech

  The inclusion of "today" in the introductory formula has some claimed basis in Deuteronomistic formulae like "I declare to you this day" (ha`îdotî bakem hayyôm), "I command you this day" (m e tsauka hayyôm), "I am speaking to your ears this day" (dober be'azenêkem hayyom), etc. I do not however see the similarity. The form amèn (sometimes doubled) + legein + "you" is never found in the Deuteronomistic formulae (neither in the use of amèn nor, I believe, the choice of verb), and likewise "today" is not otherwise a part of this amèn + legein formula in the 70+ other instances of it. There is thus little overlap between the two expressions, outside of the rather ambiguous text under consideration.

  I have always felt that "today" makes much better contextual sense when it is parsed with the dependent clause. It is the counterpoint to the indefiniteness in the repentent thief's question: "Remember (mnèsthèti) me whenever (hotan) you may come (elthès) into your kingdom". Here (1) the verb "remember" implies the passage of some time (cf. Luke 22:61, 24:6), (2) hotan "whenever" in particular has in view an indefinite time in the future, and (3) the aorist subjunctive of elthès "you may/might come" also implies an indefinite future when used with hotan. The reply gives a sharp contrast to all this indefiniteness; it won't be some vague, indefinite time in the distant future but "today".
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  metatron

  .......and then we have evidence from Revelation that God speaks bad Greek. Lots of sentence fragments strung together with "and". Once you notice this, the book becomes difficult to read.

  What Paradise was Jesus discussing? There is the very real possibility that a Jewish belief of that time put Paradise in Hades.

  metatron
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  Leolaia

  I talk about that in the other thread too. Not necessarily "in" Hades but definitely "near" Hades; the distinction between heaven and the underworld is blurred at the edges of the known world.

  The saying in Luke 23:43 represents a Lukan redaction and the Parable of Rich Man and Lazarus is also uniquely Lukan material. In that story, the rich man went to a place of torment in Hades in his postmortem state while Lazarus was taken to the "bosom of Abraham", but both were in the same realm where despite being separated by a great chasm Abraham and the rich man were able to talk with each other (Luke 16:19-31). The closest parallel to this is in the Book of Watchers (third century BC) in 1 Enoch 22, where the souls of the dead are gathered into a place at the far extremities of the earth, and the "souls of the righteous are separated by a spring of water with light upon it" from the sinners who are punished in agony "until the great day of judgment" (v. 9-12). It should be recalled that the Garden of Eden was located in the east and 1 Enoch (likely under influence from the Epic of Gilgamesh and Greek conceptions of Hades) locates Eden and the entrance to the underworld at the extremities of the world (where the sun sets and rises and where it must pass through the underworld in order to rise the next day in the east). A slightly later notion (by the first century AD) was that Paradise was located in heaven, specifically "third heaven" (cf. the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, 2 Enoch 8:1-3, and 2 Corinthians 12:2). It was indeed at the same extremities of the earth where the gates to heaven are located. "And beyond these mountains is a place, the edge of the great earth, where the heavens come to an end, and I saw a great chasm among pillars of heavenly fire .... beyond this chasm I saw a place where there was neither firmament of heaven above, nor firmly founded earth beneath it" (1 Enoch 18:10-12), "From there I proceeded to the west, at the ends of the earth, and I saw there three gates of heaven open, as I saw in the east, the same number of gates and the same number of outlets" (35:1). It was at this place at the extremities where the underworld and heaven are mutually accessible, and it was the garden of Eden "wherein the elect and the righteous ones dwell" (60:8). The proximity between Paradise and Hades is apparent in a number of texts. In the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, when Adam dies, his soul washes up at the Acheron (a river in Hades) and Michael the archangel then takes him "back to Paradise which is in third heaven" (48:40), where "the flowers of Paradise with their sweet fragrance" are still to be found (v. 2). Similarly, in the Testament of Abraham, Michael the archangel takes Abraham "toward the east, to the first gate of heaven" (11:1), and there are two portals there, one leading the righteous into Paradise and the other leading the sinners to eternal punishment (v. 10-11). The same book also states that in Paradise "there are the tents of my righteous ones and where the mansions of my holy ones, Isaac and Jacob are in his [Abraham's] bosom" (20:14), this language very closely parallels what is found in the Parable of Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke. The proximity of Hades and Paradise is also apparent from 2 Enoch, where both are located in third heaven. First, Enoch was set down in Paradise (8:1-8), and then he was taken "to the northern region and they showed me there a very frightful place, and all kinds of torture and torments are in that place, cruel darkness and lightless gloom" (10:1-2), and this is where the wicked dead are tortured. Both places are lower than fourth heaven, which is where the sun and moon rise and set on chariots placed on celestial tracks (ch. 11). So when we examine how the cosmology of world was conceptualized in early Judaism, which had both heaven and the underworld meeting together at the ends of the earth, the problem discussed above is more apparent than real.
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  Theocratic Sedition

  I gotta kick outta, Grudge Rutherford. So is the WT's abuse of exclamation points with precedent due to Bible's lack of appropriate punctuation?
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  Leolaia

  I think the overuse of exclamation points is reminiscent of a pedagogical style typical to first grade readers.
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  Theocratic Sedition

  I think you're right, but man do I hate it. You can see the lack of originality and creativity in the writing department because that style has been present for the past handful of decades. I'm sure whomever initiated that style died or went senile years ago, and yet, they still abuse exclamation points ask self examination questions on behalf of the reader as if he's not capable of making an informed decision.
• 

  WTWizard

  I believe they insert punctuation marks wherever they will fit their doctrine. They start with an idea in mind about what this means, and adjust the lettering and punctuation marks to make it fit that idea instead of trying to figure out where the punctuation marks should have been and adjusting the idea to fit.

  Or, better, they could have simply stuck with Enochian. At least that way, there would be no argument about what those squiggly marks actually meant. And Enochian actually carries a spiritual meaning, unlike the Hebrew language and the other languages that came about because the Judeo-xian leaders wanted to serve their parasitic Jehovah and its Jesus. Notably, they also forced people to take the LIE-ble literally, stripping it of its true spiritual meaning and allowing for such abuses by cults that would come along later and tamper with it some more.

  Now, if people had a language that actually had spiritual meaning in widespread use, no one would buy this rubbish. If a word was not translated properly, it wouldn't vibrate just right and someone would be on to fixing it quickly. If the whole thing vibrated harmony, you had a good translation. If not, you had a bad one. No putting commas out of place on purpose to fit your own ideas. No abusing exclamation points (which, to me, is about like abusing swear words--they lose their meaning when you see too many of them). No inserting "a" to fit your doctrine. And no way for the cat lick church and its progeny to force everyone to take their rubbish literally with a view of creating Dark Ages.
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  kepler

  Like several others I was involved in another topic regarding Luke 23:43 - and have been concerned about it for several years since I first noticed it. As a matter of fact, for noticing I got the full benefits of shunning without ever having joined the org. But when I did encounter it, I have to admit that it looked to me like something so patently designed in editing for support of a pre-supposed doctrine. Nothing was going to happen upstairs until Christ returned - and Christ was going to return when the organization said he was returning - based on a host of other passages with even slimmer historical basis for prophecy or even direct declaration.

  When someone observed that there were about 70-80 similar constructions in the NT, I went and looked for them with a Greek text and Strong Numbers. A table of the results was provided. But as the discussion continued, the search for evidence of the pro or con comma adherents expanded into other examination of other passages.

  Save for sojourns periodically in Greece during service decades back, my Greek is self taught and drawing from lessons in other languages where I spent more time and gained more intuition. Nonetheless, I think I found several other passages that beside the "70", gave me further support in my argument.

  "Today" and "this day" in Biblical Greek are conveyed by two words that appear in the passages of Luke and Acts, which we presume were written by the same author: simeron & 'imera. It was Slimboyfat (RVIP?) who submitted this example from a speech by Paul making an attestation, i.e., what he was swearing that day.

  Acts 20:26 “Therefore I declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you.” Dioti martiromai imin en ti simeron imera oti katharos eimi apo tou aimatos. Notice that “simeron” and “imera” appear side by side, strong numbers 4594 and 2250 respectively. They are “today” and “day”.

  Elsewhere, another clue is in other "truly I say to you phrases": Luke 22:34: I say to you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, before you deny me three times. Luke 22:61 Before the cock crows today, These are complex expressions to transliterate, but it is clear that the redundant “imera” is absent. The same is true for Christ's discussion on the cross with the so-called Good Thief. While the Gospel of Luke is considered one of the three synoptic Gospels ( Matthew, Mark, Luke) - and certainly does not diverge near as much as John's, the inclusion of such incidents as the one in question indicate that Luke had a distinct agenda for writing his version of events. Instead of Christ's lament of "why hast thou forsaken me?", we have "into thy hands I commend myself." Mark only records the other two thieves on the hill as berating Christ, not seeking any forgiveness. As someone in the previous topic noted, at the very least there was a message that it was never too late for redemption. And for me, where it was where I grew up, it was pointed out that the good thief was the only sinner we knew for sure who was forgiven and there in the paradise with Jesus. But the people who claim that they are the only ones with official authorization to bear glad tidings have circumscribed this message considerably. Perhaps someone can tell me - if this moment ever comes up in Sunday meetings - has the promise been delivered on yet, or does the good thief still have to walk down a ramp to a newly established paradise earth at some "times indefinite" after Christ's invisible return to earth?