by slimboyfat 332 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. - John 17
If as you assert the name was in common usage in the 1st century why did Jesus have to make it known to his disciples?
The answer of course is that, being a people for god's name, bearing witness to god's name etc etc has nothing to do with the moniker but with the character of god.
Please stop adding cheap insults to your posts after the conversation has moved on.
jwfawcts much has been made of the fact George Howard presented his idea as a "theory". It's true he wasn't dogmatic, he didn't need to be. He wasn't a JW and his faith didn't depend on it. But did he believe he was correct about the divine name in the NT? Well obviously he did or else why make the argument and assemble all the evidence to make his case? Plus his later work continued the theme as he attempted to demonstrate that an early form of the book of Matthew in Hebrew used the divine name.
Additinally David Trobisch and Lloyd Gaston are more definite about the NT containing the divine name than George Howard was. Plus the work of Frank Shaw is suggestive as regards the divine name in early Christianity.
There is a lot of evidence for the divine name in the NT, including scribal practice in the period, statements about the divine name in the NT, continued Jewish use of IAW and other forms, the nomina sacra in early Christian manuscripts, the high number of variants involving Kyrios, Jewish statements about the divine name in gospels, removal of the divine name from the later LXX and so on.
You should acknowledge that there is a lot of evidence for the divine name in the NT, even if you personally don't find the evidence compelling. The unthinking mantra "there is no evidence" is false and empty evangelical apologetic rhetoric.
Geeza brek fur goads sake...the jws are a falsehood of deluded hypocritical charlatans. ... it disnae maiter whit name is accredited to 'god' jehovah, yahweh or whitever.... it originates with man... sbf i thought you were a semi jw apologist... this sounds like full blown apologetics... jeeeeezus geez strength !!! Get a grip !!
SBF - Still want to know what you mean by "this crucial time".
What would happen if it was proven "Jehovah" did appear in the NT? Very little. Most Jehovah's Witnesses are so poorly informed, they already believe it is proven that it did appear in the NT, they are completely unaware of the dishonest way the subject has been presented by Watchtower.
People don't belong to religion because they care about whether the God's name is Jehovah, Allah or Geoffrey Jackson. They worship for the reward of an afterlife. Jehovah's Witnesses want the New System, and they would hang around for that carrot, whether YHWH is in the New Testament or not. They will hang around for paradise if the name is changed to Yahweh; even if Jehovah becomes Triune.
The bigger issues for Watchtower is the never ending delays in their doomsday predictions. The members are aging because young ones see little motivation in prophecies that refer to the 1900's, and are far more aware that the Bible itself is not inspired.
Cofty there is no meaningful distinction between "moniker" and reputation or name. The two are bound together in the NT and Jewish writings of the period. When anyone talked about the name of God they naturally thought of the distinctive Jewish name for the almighty. Even the Jews who avoided using the name did so precisely out of reverence, not because it had been forgotten or superseded, or lost in a general haze of reputational "naminess", as Reachout style pseudoscholarship would have us believe.
When Jesus is said to have made God's name known it indicated both that Jesus magnified God and his reputation, and pointed to the distinct Jewish name for God. The two are inseparable and complementary.
Otherwise what's the alternative? That Jesus, a first century Jew, intended to make God's name known precisely by neglecting the distinctive Jewish name for God? It doesn't even make sense outside Reachout and evangelical type rhetoric.
And the imagery of Revelation 14:1 clearly demonstrates that when NT authors talk about God's name they have the Tetragrammaton in mind,
jwfawcts much has been made of the fact George Howard presented his idea as a "theory". It's true he wasn't dogmatic, he didn't need to be. He wasn't a JW and his faith didn't depend on it. But did he believe he was correct about the divine name in the NT? Well obviously he did or else why make the argument and assemble all the evidence to make his case? Plus his later work continued the theme as he attempted to demonstrate that an early form book of Matthew in Hebrew used the divine name.
jwfawcts - Is that a lisp, or a Boston accent?
Using the word "obviously" to support an assumption makes that sound like a Watchtower paragraph. Howard was not that dogmatic, he presents this as just a hypothesis, as per his following quote.
"The above examples are, of course, only exploratory in nature and are set forth here programatically. Nevertheless, the evidence is sufficiently strong to suggest that the thesis of this paper is quite possible. We have refrained from drawing too many conclusions due to the revolutionary nature of the thesis. Rather than state conclusions now in a positive manner it seems better only to raise some questions that suggest a need for further explanation."
Well I'm convinced! Get me back to the Kingdom Hall to learn more about how those old bastards in New York have championed the divine name "at this crucial time".
Get a grip!
jwfacts George Howard stood by his argument presented in 1977 as is demonstrated by his article on the divine name in Anchor Bible dictionary in 1992. Plus you've not mentioned Trobisch who argues for the divine name in the NT in more definite terms, or Gaston who agrees with Howard, or Shaw who argues for the persistence of the divine name.
It should be "obvious" that a scholar who argues for a position agrees with the position he is arguing for. The only weird thing is that it even seems necessary to point it out.
