The 1914 Doctrine and The Threat of the Egibi Business Tablets

by VM44 349 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  AlmostAtheist

  If you husband insists that 1914 is insignificant, he is sadly uninformed and deluded

  That describes every JW!

  Read the Watchtowers from the 1950's and compare them to now. The old ones were very thoughtful, insightful. Maybe they were wrong, but they said SOMETHING. The new ones are fluff and stuff and feel-good crap. Nobody seems to care.

  Stop any ten JW's and ask them to tell you why 1914 is THE year. I'll bet they can't tell you, and half won't even say "607". As long as they continue to believe the F&DSlave doctrine, nothing else will matter. At least for the majority.

  1/2 to a 1/3 membership loss I think is too high. They won't drop 1914 in one article, they'll just stop talking about it over time. Then after everyone's forgotten about it (20 years?), they'll bring it up as something Fred Franz touted, but that has "since been recognized as not as significant as the core teaching, God's Kingdom that will soon be here!"

  Dave
• 

  Perry

  Won't make a hill of beans worth of difference. They already proved that in the Nov. 1995 issue of the WT. That is when my big disconnect came. It is all meaningless now. Their only message now is You're holy by being our distributor and the disobedient (to us) will be destroyed.
• 

  stillajwexelder

  celebrated WT scholars.

  EXCUSE ME - WHO? SCHOLAR
• 

  Alleymom

  First of all let us have a competent translation of these documents and see how they relate to current chronology of the Neo- Babylonian period which in any event is subjec to considerable interpretation,

  Neil,

  Which translations of the Egibi documents do you find to be incompetent? Since you know neither Akkadian nor German and have never shown any familiarity in the past with the cuneiform tablets, what are your grounds for criticizing the translations? Do you know anything at all about the various translators who have worked on the Egibi archive over the last 100+ years? Have you read even one review of Dr. Wunsch's critical edition of the Egibi archive?

  I rather doubt if you even know who Dr. Wunsch is.

  Regards,
  Marjorie
• 

  VM44

  hi scholar,

  I do not share your hysterical ramblings.

  Hysterical? Rambling? Did what I write read like that? Well, I will try to avoid the Una-writer manifesto style in the future.

  --VM44
• 

  scholar

  Alleymom

  Marjorie

  The present array of Babylonian business documents does indeed seem impressive but celebrated WT scholars have wisely cautioned that such secular material is still subject to interpretation and a methodology relevant to chronological purposes. The secular evidence is indeed falsified by the twenty year gap when compared with biblical chronology so the jury is still out respecting the value of such documents.

  scholar JW
• 

  nicolaou

  "celebrated WT scholars" ? I laughed so hard I cried (and almost peed)
• 

  Hellrider

  Soledad summed it up best. Oh, one more funny thing:

  Satan and his demons were launched out of heaven in 1914 and sent down to earth to torment humanity in its last days.

  LoL, this one is one of my favorites. JWs believe, actually, that the demons were launched out twice! First in Old Testament times, before the flood, when they initially rebelled against God, under the leadership of Lucifer. They were tempted by the women of the earth, and took on human bodies, as giants, and lived on earth, fornicating with women (women liked big guys back then, more than they do now, unfortunately for me). And for this rebellion, God threw them out. Then he threw them back out again in 1914! Apparantly, somehow they must have slipped back in (thru a backdoor?). I argued about this with my mother, lots of times. She said that she believed that they must have been "hanging around" the gates of heaven, just on the outside.

  The secular evidence is indeed falsified by the twenty year gap when compared with biblical chronology so the jury is still out respecting the value of such documents.

  scholar JW

  Scholar: You still don`t get it, do you! There IS no twenty year gap! Yes, there is a twenty year gap if you interpret the passages as saying there would be 70 years from the physical destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, but NOT if you interpret them as saying that the Babylonian reign would last for 70 years! Historians agree that the political and military power of Babylon over Judea lasted for around 70 years! So there IS no problem for all us sane people, the problem is SOLELY a problem for JWs, and their ridicolous doctrine, which again is crucial for the 1914-doctrine! So when your "celebrated WT scholars have wisely cautioned that such secular material is still subject to interpretation", this is only grasping at straws to save the 1914-doctrine! It is NOT necessary to speak against the massive academic world and its tons of proof that the temple was destroyed some 20 years later than the "celebrated WT Scholars" claim, if you have no biblical-doctrinal bias on this issue! Us normal folks can simply realise that the 70 years refer to Babylons power and influence.

  You poor thing. Those mean guys at the Watchtower will probably soon be telling you that right is left, black is blue, and the moon is made of swiss cheese. And you will be obliged to believe it.
• 

  Jeffro

  The Society derided Darwin's implication that the fossil record may eventually turn up evidence in the future that filled the missing gaps ("Life - How Did It Get Here By Evolution or by Creation?", ch 5 pp. 57-58 ¶11):

  Darwin attempted to explain these huge problems by attacking the fossil record. He said: “I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, . . . imperfect to an extreme degree.” It was assumed by him and others that as time passed the missing fossil links surely would be found.

  Yet the Society uses the same reasoning, with an almost identical 'attack' on the available information, for trying to explain away its problematic 20-year gap. ("Let Your Kingdom Come", Appendix to Chapter 14, p. 187):

  From a secular viewpoint, such lines of evidence might seem to establish the Neo-Babylonian chronology with Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year (and the destruction of Jerusalem) in 587/6 B.C.E. However, no historian can deny the possibility that the present picture of Babylonian history might be misleading or in error. It is known, for example, that ancient priests and kings sometimes altered records for their own purposes. Or, even if the discovered evidence is accurate, it might be misinterpreted by modern scholars or be incomplete so that yet undiscovered material could drastically alter the chronology of the period.

  So which is it? Apparently the only determinant in whether a point of reasoning is valid is whether it fits the Society's doctrines. And why would the entire body of modern scholars make exactly the same errors in interpreting all of the records, when all of them are better scholars than the celebrated salivating WT scholars?

  I was beginning to think that 'scholar' had disappeared completely, but lo! he's popped up here. Apparently my requests for a complete Neo-Babylonian chronology that is consistent with the Society's views on another thread were too much for him (although he told another poster he would provide same after someone else provided a complete chronology for the entire Divided Monarch consistent with the bible - which I did). So scholar, where is it...
• 

  confusedjw

  Thank you ScholarJW for proving VM44's point - your automatic response to his solid presentation was classic. In effect: "You must believe 607 and 1914 because it's bible based"

  The Egibi Business Tablets are indeed proof enough of the points VM44 was making.