He uses an AI programme jhine. This is absolutely clear because some of his posts are so long, in such a short period of time that it is impossible for a human to even type the text without thinking, never mind actually compose it. (13,000 words of detailed argument in a couple of hours in one of his posts is not even close to humanly possible, for example) Plus the tone, formatting, and the claims of certainty where the evidence is mixed are hallmarks of AI responses. Aqabot has not actually denied using AI, he has just brushed it off as a distraction, which is deflection. Any book anyone mentions, he’s already read it. Any language discussed, he understands it. Any argument presented, he’s already got an answer for it. These are unmissable marks of AI not human interaction. Get used to it, it’s a very weird world we now live in, not made any easier by unscrupulous people like Aqabot spewing out endless AI drivel, in my view.
Hebrews 1: 8 Corruption in the NWT
by Sea Breeze 24 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Sea Breeze
@Slimboyfat
You are just miffed that Aqwsed destroyed every single one of your objections. Who cares if he data mined some of the denser technical aspects instead of reading thousands of pages of documents with a highlighter and ink pen in hand ? Computers do it faster. Have you ever used a computer to get information faster than you could by manually searching through a book? Your hypocrisy is breathtaking.The information stands on it own, as does yours. No need to vent the frustration of your failures by shooting the messenger.
Instead of blaming the bearer of bad news, why don't you address the actual issue or message? You rarely even address the early church leaders quotes that I present. I must admit that your condescending attitude is not your usual approach. "Aquabot"? C'mon man! I'll take an AI bot over a JoBot any day.
Don't you think it is weird that you have a problem with all the verses in the bible that call Jesus God?
Then, when you find a minority or obscure source that supposedly supports the Watchtower view, you claim "the evidence is mixed" and certainty is impossible. Yea, it's mixed alright. Mixed with people who don't believe Jesus was God.
The bottom line is that many of Jesus' personal friends, early disciples, and church leaders repeatedly referred to Jesuits as God. He didn't stop them, and neither did any of the apostles or their 1st or 2nd generation disciples. You don't need to be a linguist to understand that. It is a matter of historical record and you cannot change that record no matter how vigorously you don't like it.
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slimboyfat
The problem is AI gets things wrong while looking as if it knows what it’s talking about. Not just small things, but howlers, that you might miss if you don’t read it very carefully and know the subject well. On another thread the AI didn’t realise that a woman’s maiden name indicates her husband’s ancestry and not her own, and proceeded to write thousands of words on a completely faulty basis. On the Acts 20:28 thread it claimed there are no variants in this text when anybody familiar with the issue knows this is comeplete nonsense. The most common “mistake” it makes, if it can be called a mistake, because in a deep sense AI doesn’t care about being accurate, it cares only about simulating a credible response, is to attribute wrong views to scholars. In past threads the AI has attributed the complete opposite view to scholars than the view they actually hold. And when this is pointed out it carries on as if there is nothing wrong, like an unstoppable steam roller of plausible lies and nonsense. So yes, I think there is significant harm if anyone takes this AI bot seriously, and I think you’re an opportunistic fool if you don’t realise that it damages your own cause in the long run.
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Sea Breeze
AI didn’t realize that a woman’s maiden name indicates her husband’s ancestry
And this has what to do with the mountains of evidence that Jesus is God? If you cannot accept the bible where it says that Jesus raised himself from the dead, what makes you think that any evidence would convince you that Jesus is God?
it claimed there are no variants in this text
One of the hallmarks of Aqweds' posts is how he thoroughly deals with textual variants.Textual variants are quickly dispelled by looking at how the first Christians quoted or referred to said verse in question. You would never run your own life based on this kind of credulity.
In contrast, the NWT renders the verse as: "to shepherd the congregation of God, which he purchased with the blood of his own Son." The insertion of "Son" (υἱοῦ, huiou) is not supported by any extant Greek manuscript. Textual criticism confirms that the phrase "διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου" is consistent across all known manuscripts, with no evidence for the inclusion of "Son." Variants exist for the phrase "the church of God" (τοῦ θεοῦ) versus "the church of the Lord" (τοῦ κυρίου), as noted in the Nestle-Aland critical apparatus, but these do not affect the phrase in question. Early translations, such as the Sahidic Coptic and the Peshitta, further corroborate the reading "his own blood," reinforcing the textual integrity of the traditional rendering (Stack Exchange: Acts 20:28 variants).
He deals with variants in the clauses above in the Acts 20: 28 thread. The main point is this: The insertion of "Son" (υἱοῦ, huiou) is not supported by any extant Greek manuscript.
Please falsify this statement.
Your mind is broken SlimBoyFat.
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slimboyfat
The AI first claimed there were no variants before backtracking and then dealing with the variants. That's a consistent pattern of unreliability and if you don't already know the facts then are vulnerable to accepting AI nonsense as fact. You may not care if errors are relied upon to support the truth but the God you purport to serve surely does not have such a cavalier attitude to the truth.
Even staunch Trinitarians such as Raymond Brown don't think Acts 20:28 can be relied upon. I am satisfied from my reading on the subject that at the very least there is significant doubt about what this verse really means and no doctrine should be based on it. That's a very generous assessment of the evidence. In truth I think the Trinitarian reading is extremely unlikely for the many reasons that textual and biblical scholars, including Trinitarians have outlined at length.
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
Your note accuses me of two specific faults: first, of having denied the existence of textual variation in Acts 20:28 and only later “back-tracking,” and second, of resting a doctrinal case on a passage that even Trinitarian scholars such as Raymond E. Brown regard as insecure. Both charges misrepresent the record and the state of the evidence.
I never asserted that Acts 20:28 is transmitted without variants atall; I said—precisely as the critical apparatuses state—that the only significant variant concerns whether Luke wrote ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ (“church of God”) or ἐκκλησία τοῦ κυρίου (“church of the Lord”), with a secondary expansion “of the Lord and God.” No Greek manuscript, version, or patristic citation inserts υἱοῦ (“Son”) into the phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου. That portion of the verse is textually unanimous, and my point was that the NWT’s “Son” is therefore not a translation of any extant text but an explanatory gloss motivated by theology, not by manuscript evidence. Acknowledging a variant at one point of the sentence and insisting on textual unanimity at another is not “back-tracking”; it is the ordinary practice of textual criticism.
Your second contention—that Raymond Brown thought Acts 20:28 unusable for Christological reflection—rests on a selective reading. In his 1965 article “Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?” Brown cautions that the word θεός is applied to Christ explicitly only in a handful of places and that some of those places are text-critical or semantic cruxes. Acts 20:28, he says, “perhaps” may distinguish between ὁ θεός (the Father) and ὁ ἴδιος (the Son). Brown’s “perhaps” signals uncertainty about which of two high-Christological readings is correct; it does not amount to a judgment that neither is possible. When he revisited the question in the Anchor Bible commentary on the Johannine Epistles (1982) he reiterated that Acts 20:28, depending on the vocalization of τοῦ ἰδίου, can be read as an attribution of redemptive blood either to “God” understood Christologically or to “His own [Son].” Brown never claims that the text cannot sustain a high Christology; he merely cautions that one should not build the entire dogma of Christ’s deity on a single verse. On that point every responsible theologian agrees: the doctrine rests on the cumulative witness of the NT, not on a proof-text. But cumulative arguments presuppose the individual texts retain their force, and Brown never suggests excising Acts 20:28 from that larger pattern.
The scholarly discussion since Brown has only strengthened the case that Luke wrote “church of God.” P75 (third century) is no longer extant at this verse, but the Alexandrian uncials א B C* Ψ 33 81 1739 align with the earliest Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic versions in supporting θεοῦ. “Church of the Lord” is the reading of D (Codex Bezae) and the later Byzantine tradition—precisely the witnesses that habitually replace θεός with κύριος to avoid difficult expressions (e.g., 1 Cor 10:9 and Jude 5). Externally, the weight plainly favours θεοῦ; internally, θεοῦ is the lectio difficilior. That is why every critical edition from Westcott–Hort to NA 28 prints θεοῦ, and why the UBS textual committee, after canvassing exactly the same objections you raise, rated that decision {B}—virtually certain.
Once θεοῦ is accepted, the remaining question is grammatical: does τοῦ ἰδίου qualify αἵματος or does it act as an absolute substantive? When Luke and the rest of the NT writers use ἴδιος in the absolute they place it in the first attributive position (e.g., John 1:11, 13:1; Acts 4:23). Acts 20:28 has it in the second position, the normal slot for an adjective that continues to describe the just-mentioned noun. Exactly the same construction in Hebrews 13:12 (διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος) is rendered by all translators “with his own blood”; no scholar has proposed supplying “Son” there. Luke is a stylist who likes variety, but he is not idiosyncratic: when he means “his Son” he writes υἱοῦ, when he means “his own” he uses the adjective possessively. The papyrological examples sometimes invoked (Moulton–Milligan s.v. ἴδιος) involve invitations or wills in which ὁ ἴδιος stands in apposition to a preceding explicit name; they are irrelevant to Luke’s syntax here.
Finally, the charge that “no doctrine should be based on it” ignores how the Church has in fact handled the verse. Acts 20:28 was cited unhesitatingly by Ignatius (Eph. 1:1), Tertullian (Adv. Prax. 29), Hippolytus (Noet. 18), Origen (Philoc. 24), and Athanasius (Ep. Serap. 1.14) because they found in it an early and apostolic witness that the One who shed his blood is truly God. That is not a post-Nicene invention; it is second-century exegesis. Nor did the verse stand alone: it had already been written that the rulers “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8) and that God had purchased the church “with his own blood.” The doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, given full dogmatic articulation only at Chalcedon, is implicit in Luke’s diction long before the creeds.
In sum: there is one textual variant, not none; it only concerns θεοῦ/κυρίου, not the blood clause. The manuscript evidence and the principle of lectio difficilior favour θεοῦ. The Greek syntax, by parallel and position, favors the possessive reading “his own blood.” Thus, the traditional translation is not a theological imposition but the most straightforward rendering of the text that Luke left us. To acknowledge that some modern scholars prefer a less demanding paraphrase is fair; to imply that the traditional reading is “complete nonsense” or that conscientious scholarship must treat it as “extremely unlikely” is to misrepresent both the textual evidence and the history of interpretation.
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slimboyfat
Your characterisation of Brown’s view is entirely misleading. He discusses Acts 20:28 under the heading “Passages Where the Use of the Title ‘God’ for Jesus is Dubious”. How come you missed out his characterisation “dubious”? That’s a pretty important thing to miss out if you are in any way interested in reporting the facts. But your AI is not interested in reporting the facts, it’s just presenting a plausible looking argument by hiding the pertinent facts. Or what about Brown’s conclusion that: “And so, even if we read ‘the Church of God’, we are by no means certain that this verse calls Jesus God”.
“By no means certain” is pretty uncertain, don’t you think? Why not report those words? Because your AI simply doesn’t care what Raymond Brown thought or argued, it is only interested in making a plausible looking script - a complete waste of everybody’s time and energy.
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
Raymond E. Brown’s well-known caution about Acts 20:28 is not the trump card you think it is, nor does it vindicate the New World Translation’s gloss. It is true that, in the 1965 article “Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?,” Brown devotes a section to “passages where the application of the title ‘God’ to Jesus is dubious,” and that Acts 20:28 appears there. But when one reads the next two pages instead of a single adjective, Brown’s nuance becomes evident. The doubt he registers is not about the text (“church of God” is accepted) but about how the genitive τοῦ ἰδίου should be construed. He lists three possibilities: (i) the traditional possessive, yielding “with his own blood”; (ii) the same construction understood Christologically, i.e. “with God’s own [blood],” presupposing the communicatio idiomatum; (iii) a substantival use, “with the blood of His Own [Son].” Brown goes on to say that the third rendering would “fit Paul’s theology” and that “perhaps” Luke intended it. The term “dubious,” then, reflects Brown’s reluctance to treat any single verse as a conclusive proof-text on its own for the full deity of Christ, not a judgment that the traditional rendering is false. That is why, in the Anchor Bible Epistles of John (1982) he still cites Acts 20:28 among the “small group” of texts in which “theos is or may be applied to Jesus” (§6.1), repeating that “some ambiguity remains.”
Your complaint that I did not quote Brown’s phrase “by no means certain” simply mistakes the point at issue. No responsible theologian claims that Trinitarian doctrine stands or falls with this verse; the question is whether the verse, when its grammar and textual history are weighed, naturally yields a high-Christological reading. Brown’s answer is possibly yes, possibly no; the Greek allows either, and on that ground alone it should not be made the cornerstone of dogma. My summary—that he “never dismisses the text” and that he warns only against isolating it—captures precisely that balance. Nothing he writes lends support to inserting a word (“Son”) for which not a single Greek, Latin, Coptic, or Syriac witness offers evidence.
Your larger insinuation—that any synthesis which reaches a different conclusion must be “AI nonsense hiding the facts”—would be more persuasive if you actually engaged the textual and syntactic data that Brown, Metzger, Harris, Fitzmyer, Dunn, Keener, Schnabel, Witherington, and the editors of NA 28 sift in detail. Those data remain unchanged:
- θεοῦ is the earlier and harder reading, supported by the oldest Alexandrian manuscripts and the earliest Coptic versions, whereas κυρίου appears first in the Western text and in the later Byzantine tradition.
- τοῦ ἰδίου in the second attributive position naturally qualifies αἵματος (“his own blood”); the few NT instances where ἴδιος functions substantivally stand in the first position.
- No extant document supplies υἱοῦ. Its insertion is therefore an interpretive paraphrase motivated by theology, not a rendering of the transmitted text.
Scholars who, like Brown, keep the text but hesitate over its theological force do so because they are exegetical minimalists, not because the grammar obliges them. Exegetical restraint is admirable; it does not license adding words to solve a doctrinal unease. When one resists that temptation and translates exactly what Luke wrote, the result remains: “the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.”
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slimboyfat
Your AI post is utterly bizarre if read carefully Aqabot. You start out by saying that Brown does not “vindicate” the NWT rendering. Then you go on to acknowledge that Brown says the NWT rendering “with the blood of His Own [Son]” fits Paul’s theology and “perhaps Luke intended it.” If not a full throated endorsement, that sounds like a measure of support for the plausibility of the NWT at least. It at least undermines any argument that Acts 20:28 is a reliable endorsement of 4th century Nicene Christology.
The doubt he registers is not about the text (“church of God” is accepted) but about how the genitive τοῦ ἰδίου should be construed.
Actually, he explores and expresses doubt about both. This is a false summary. Simply factually wrong.
As so often with these fabricated AI posts, the conclusions offered either don’t match the evidence presented, or else the evidence presented is a fabrication. It takes a lot of time and careful reading to work out exactly where the problem lies and that is why it is a waste of time.
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aqwsed12345
@slimboyfat
Raymond Brown’s remarks do not supply the escape route you imagine, nor do they leave the traditional wording of Acts 20:28 dangling in historical or theological limbo. The distinction Brown draws between possible and probable is pivotal, and the passage you abbreviate reverses the weight of his own argument.
In the 1965 article Brown lists Acts 20:28 among texts where “the application of theos to Jesus is dubious,” not because the reading ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ is in doubt or because he thinks an invisible huiou lurks in the line, but because the genitive τοῦ ἰδίου allows two grammatical analyses. He therefore sketches a spectrum:
- Possessive-attributive (the long-standing rendering) “with his own blood”, a phrasing that presupposes the communicatio idiomatum.
- Possessive-substantival “with the blood of His Own [Son]”, a reading he merely calls “possible” because papyrological parallels show ὁ ἴδιος can function as a term of endearment for a close relative.
Brown’s perhaps signals nothing more than methodological restraint: without an explicit noun the syntax cannot be nailed to the desk. What Brown pointedly does not do is conclude that Luke wrote an ellipsis which copyists failed to transmit. On the contrary, in his Anchor Bible volumes (1970, 1982) he continues to cite Acts 20:28 as one of “a small group of passages where theos may be applied to Jesus,” and he never once advocates inserting υἱοῦ. The “Son” in the NWT remains conjectural, unattested in any Greek, Latin, Syriac, or Coptic witness and unsupported by Brown’s own text-critical practice.
Brown merely acknowledges the presence of manuscript variants (“Lord” vs. “God”), but he clearly states that the weight of evidence favors “God.” Brown’s primary hesitation concerns how to construe the genitive τοῦ ἰδίου—whether it should be read attributively (“his own blood”) or substantivally (“the blood of his own [Son]”). That is the focus of his linguistic caution, not the authenticity of “church of God.” Thus, your statement is simply incorrect: Brown accepts “church of God” as the likely reading and discusses only the grammatical and theological possibilities of the phrase that follows. Any assertion to the contrary mischaracterizes both Brown’s published scholarship and the textual consensus reflected in modern critical editions.
The leap from Brown’s possibility to “undermining Nicene Christology” is historically anachronistic. Nicene language codifies what the apostolic writings already presuppose: a single subject—Jesus the Messiah— who may be described with predicates proper to both natures. When Luke has Paul say that God acquired the flock “through the blood of his own”, listeners steeped in the economy of Acts 2 – 3 (where God exalts the crucified Jesus to the right hand of divine majesty) hear one seamless redemptive act. Whether τοῦ ἰδίου is read attributively or as an affectionate substantive, the referent of the blood is the incarnate Lord whose death accomplishes what the Psalmist ascribes to YHWH alone—purchasing a people for himself.
Nothing in Brown’s cautious exegesis “vindicates” the NWT’s gloss; at most it reminds dogmatic polemicists on every side that a single clause should not be played as a check-mate. That reminder has never been in dispute. What can be asserted with textual and grammatical confidence is that Luke wrote τοῦ θεοῦ and that every extant line of transmission construes τοῦ ἰδίου without an accompanying noun. Rendering the verse exactly as it stands—“the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood”— neither manufactures evidence nor suppresses it; it refuses to supplement the apostle with words he demonstrably did not pen.