by Black Man 18 Replies latest jw friends
All the points here have a certain validity. And taken as a whole, they show a real wishy-washy entity. This doesn't match the portrayal of "the same today, tomorrow, yesterday" that most would have you hold.
A self-consistency is decidedly missing. It's very much like the insane relative in the basement or attic that no one will talk about.
Overall, bottom-line: something is very fishy!!!!
Mustang
mustang, the fishyness is cleared out when one accepts what "greatcrowd" posted. The cultural influences ,if not accounted for, are the source of countless arguments. Also the mixing of sectarian dogma as Narkissos posted. That being said, it still remains to determine what scriptures cradle the deep truth of this existence. It would be good to see a thread on this point but in my opinon the Jewish messianic doctrine would have to be left out.
I believe that the God of the bible was something that evolved to meet the culture that created him. In the beginning all of the nations were warlike and it was very nice to have a God that smote all of your neighbors, required sacrifices and got pissed when you fell out of line. Once, the Romans started taking over the Jews had to become more peaceful, and there weren?t as many other nations out there that were at war. The version of God from the Old Testament had to be redefined into one of love. And that was in the birth of Jesus Christ, or at least the writings that talk about him and the new religion that they formed and were perpetuated by Paul.
BM, if you can get a copy of, 'The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever' 1984 copyright from a JW it will provide you secular information about YHWH, both Hebrew and Greek.
Guest 77
I've pointed out many times on this board that Jesus avoided using 'Yahweh' or Jehovah as in the Lord's Prayer,
"Our Father in the heavens, hallowed be thy name" - he prefered "Father". The apostle Paul avoided using 'Jehovah' or Yahweh'
as he said "there is actually to us one God, the Father". The apostle John avoided using 'Jehovah' altogether in all of his
3 letters to congregations. Anyway, there was no "J" in Hebrew, so they never spoke of "Jehovah" in any case.
Early Christians were obsessed with spreading the name of Jesus.
metatron
I definitely think that the portrayal of God had more to do with culture than anything and the Hebrew Scriptures paint a very offensive, non-endearing personality. I also wonder why such an importance on the name "Jehovah" if it avoided like the plague by even Jesus and his disciples?
From one of my favorite comic strips (Red Meat), here is one that stuck in my head when I read this thread.
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2003-11-18/index.html
***** Rub a Dub
upping this...............
up...........
