Jehovah's Witnesses worship a pagan god derived from the ancient Canaanite civilization

by Finkelstein 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Vidiot

  Finkelstein - "Jehovah's Witnesses worship a pagan god derived from the ancient Canaanite civilization..."

  Pshh.

  Go back far enough, pretty much everything has "pagan" origins.
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  blisterfeet

  I havnt watched the video yet. But it did spark a thought, the 2 accounts I can recall that discuss an organization of worship resulted in displeasure to god. The Tower of Babel and the golden calf.

  Maybe we are just supposed to focus on life and loving one another and it’s not about wearing a “badge” (literally at conventions, figuratively the name Jehovah’s Witness, or spiritually the distinction Christian) but love god and the byproduct of that is the opposite of chaos, peace...
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  blisterfeet

  Okay. So I went a TOTALLY different direction with that!

  but the video was very interesting! Thanks!
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  Beth Sarim

  There was a great thread a few weeks ago about YHWH. And how it's derived and pronounced at what not.

  There was a video put out a few years back on the screwed generation youtube channel. He described it wonderfully as they ''invented'' the name Jehovah by inserting the vowels from Elohim and Adonah and inserted them into the tetragamatron YHWH. Notably done by a Catholic monk Raymondus Martini in the late 1200's.(approx.)

  Interesting of notoriety, I did not know this until the other day. But the letter "J" was not derived until sometime I believe in the 1500's roughly.

  Anyway, check it out sometime. It's the screwed Generation youtube channel. Also, where he refers to the book ''Aid to Bible Understanding'', if you still have that big blue book pages 884 and 885.
  
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  Beth Sarim

  Oops, same thread LOL
  
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  Finkelstein

  Go back far enough, pretty much everything has "pagan" origins.

  Here is some more information regarding the term as it was used in ancient time specifically the Christians.

  Definition

  It is perhaps misleading even to say that there was such a religion as paganism at the beginning of [the Common Era] ... It might be less confusing to say that the pagans, before their competition with Christianity, had no religion at all in the sense in which that word is normally used today. They had no tradition of discourse about ritual or religious matters (apart from philosophical debate or antiquarian treatise), no organized system of beliefs to which they were asked to commit themselves, no authority-structure peculiar to the religious area, above all no commitment to a particular group of people or set of ideas other than their family and political context. If this is the right view of pagan life, it follows that we should look on paganism quite simply as a religion invented in the course of the second to third centuries AD, in competition and interaction with Christians, Jews and others.

  — North 1992, 187—88, [34]

  Defining paganism is problematic. Understanding the context of its associated terminology is important.[35] Early Christians referred to the diverse array of cults around them as a single group for reasons of convenience and rhetoric.[36] While paganism generally implies polytheism, the primary distinction between classical pagans and Christians was not one of monotheism versus polytheism. Not all pagans were strictly polytheist. Throughout history, many of them believed in a supreme deity. (However, most such pagans believed in a class of subordinate gods/daimons—see henotheism—or divine emanations.)[13] To Christians, the most important distinction was whether or not someone worshipped the one true God. Those who did not (polytheist, monotheist, or atheist) were outsiders to the Church and thus pagan.[37] Similarly, classical pagans would have found it peculiar to distinguish groups by the number of deities followers venerate. They would have considered the priestly colleges (such as the College of Pontiffs or Epulones) and cult practices more meaningful distinctions.[38]

  Referring to paganism as pre-Christian indigenous religions is equally untenable. Not all historical pagan traditions were pre-Christian or indigenous to their places of worship.[35]

  Owing to the history of its nomenclature, paganism traditionally encompasses the collective pre- and non-Christian cultures in and around the classical world; including those of the Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic tribes.[39] However, modern parlance of folklorists and contemporary pagans in particular has extended the original four millennia scope used by early Christians to include similar religious traditions stretching far into prehistory.[40]