More of What the Watchtower Didn't Teach You

CalebInFloroda

What kind of Bible education did the Governing Body really give us? How much important information about it did the Watchtower really teach us? How much are we missing out on if we are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Take this test about Bible basics without looking up anything via the Internet or any other outside reference or help except for your own memory of what you’ve learned from the Organization and see how well you do. The answers will be provided after 24 hours have past from this original posting.

Ready? Begin.

The Bible was written in four languages. Name all four and the two books which were both written using two.
Explain how Mary Jones changed history regarding the Bible.
Place these New Testament canticles in order of their use during their day by Christians, and state which book, chapter, and verse in which they appear: The Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis, the Benedictus.
Which book of the New Testament did Martin Luther want removed from the New Testament canon?
What is the Christian equivalent of parashot?
The Jewish canonization at the Council of Jamnia is historical or hypothetical? Explain.
Historically speaking, which books were more popular among early Christians? The Protoevangelium of James and the Shepherd of Hermas or 2 Peter and the Revelation to John?
The Apocrypha came to be widely removed from Christian Bibles, when? Shortly after the Reformation began or shortly before the incorporation of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society?
Hebrews 1.10-12 quotes Psalm 102.26-28 according to the proto-Masoretic text. What name appears in verse 26 in the proto-Masoretic Hebrew script?
The earliest copies of the Septuagint did not have the Tetragrammaton in them. What appeared instead?

freemindfade

This is awesome stuff. I need to check this out when I get a chance.

Village Idiot

The Bible was written in four languages. Name all four and the two books which were both written using two.

Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek. Don't know about a fourth one.

As for the books portions of Daniel were written in Aramaic while the rest in, I assume, Hebrew. Matthew was also written in Aramaic.

Which book of the New Testament did Martin Luther want removed from the New Testament canon?

Revelation.

The earliest copies of the Septuagint did not have the Tetragrammaton in them. What appeared instead?

Kurios which means Lord.

millie210

I can only answer #1 and only partially...I dont know what the 4th language was

(guess all those years on the "theocratic school" didnt help much, huh?)

nonjwspouse

Martin Luther also didn't like James, wanted it removed but stopped short of requesting it I believe.

kaik

8. Apocrypha were removed after Reformation, but this was not universal among Christendom. For example Eastern Churches use apocrypha. Some Catholic and Protestant denominations bordering with Eastern Churches (Kingdom of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary), had Apocrypha included in their bibles. However, in generally Western Protestants did not believed that these books were inspired and were one source of ideological clash during Reformation in the 16th century. Catholic church publishes Bibles either with them or without them.

Doug Mason

MYTH OF THE COUNCIL AT JAMNIA

Following the loss of the Jewish temple and its cultus, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai requested permission from the Romans to establish a religious academy at Jamnia. … For more than a century, many scholars have taught that the Jews officially closed the third part of their biblical canon at the Council of Jamnia. … It is unlikely, however, that the Jewish religious leaders who gathered together (there was no council as such) at Jamnia around 90 c.e. made a final or binding decision about their biblical canon. … The Jewish religious teachers met at Jamnia after the destruction of Jerusalem to clarify how a religious faith that was once based on a temple and sacrificial cult could survive without these institutions. …

A Jamnia council decision is attractive, since no other prior time can be identified when a significant decision was made about the scope of the Hebrew biblical canon by the rabbinic teachers. No evidence, however, supports any formal action taken at Jamnia, and this view is largely abandoned today. The scope of the Hebrew biblical canon within Judaism was more likely settled in the second century c.e., and possibly even later than that. …

That the so-called Council of Jamnia did not stabilize the canon of the hb/ot is also seen in the widespread debate throughout the rabbinic period (i.e., second to sixth centuries C.E.) whether certain writings "deified the hands," a rabbinic designation for a canonical text.[1]

Neither Josephus nor ancient Christian literature knows anything of a Council of Jamnia or of a closing of the canon of scripture at its sessions.[2]

Books were discussed at Jamnia, but they were also discussed at least once a generation before and several times long after the Jamnia period. [Newman] saw the Jamnia rabbis testing a status quo which had existed beyond memory. "But no text of any specific decision has come down to us (nor, apparently, even to Akiba and his students)." [3]

Frank M. Cross designates the Council of Jamnia "a common and somewhat misleading designation of a particular session of the rabbinic academy (or court) at Yabneh. … Recent sifting of the rabbinic evidence makes clear that in the proceedings at the academy of Yabneh the Rabbis did not fix the canon, but at most discussed marginal books, notably Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) and the Song of Songs. . . . Moreover, it must be insisted that the proceedings at Yabneh were not a 'council,' certainly not in the late ecclesiastical sense.[4]

[1] The Biblical Canon, pages 173, 174, 175. McDonald

[2] The Canon Debate, page 153. McDonald and Sanders

[3] Canon Debate, page 153

[4] Canon Debate, pages 161-162

Doug Mason

From Daniel 2:4b to 7:28, the Hebrew Bible records in Aramaic … From 8:1 to the end the book returns to Hebrew. This use of languages cuts across the ready division of the book into stories and visions. This Aramaic bridge must be considered in discussions of the date, composition, and unity of the book. ...

Questions arise. … Why would God give a revelation concerning “what will happen at the end of days” (2:28) to these gentile (thus pagan) rulers rather than to the covenant people? Is it not more reasonable to assume that such revelations were directed to the Jews (Israelites) through this literary means? If the effect of the various events was so great on the kings, why have we found no evidence outside the Bible? In the case of “Darius the Mede,” whose laws could not be altered, why was not his decree (6:26f. [MT 27f.]) carried out by succeeding kings? What kind of history are these stories and the visions they record?

(Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament, Lasor, Hubbard, and Bush, pages 570, 572)

smiddy

A very interesting thread , I look forward to more enlightened comments from those that know .

smiddy

jhine

The Magnificat is from Luke , it is Mary's song after she visits Elizabeth , Nunc Dimittis is from also in Luke ,CH 2 , it is what Simeon says in the Temple when seeing the baby Jesus .

Anglicans recite both these in Evening Prayer .

I think Mary Jones may have been the Welsh girl who walked many miles to get a copy of the Bible in English , though I am hazy about that .

No 10 is Kurios .

Jan

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