Posts by slimboyfat

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

slimboyfat

That’s reasonable. There is no certainty either way.

I would point out a couple of things though. Scholars have offered other explanations than Christology and nascent Trinitarianism for the disappearance of the divine name. Kahle pointed to the wish to differentiate Christianity from Judaism. Trobisch points out the desire for an agreed upon edition of both the OT and the NT in the second century. Shaw pointed out that the cosmopolitan appeal of Christianity coincided with moving away from the distinctive Jewish name of God. Howard, Gaston and Trobisch do indicate that the higher Christology in the second century, compared with the first, was a motivation for no longer using the divine name.

It is not a matter of Christians removing the divine name more completely from the LXX than from the NT. The point is that there are fragments of the LXX from the first and second centuries so we know that it used the divine name in that period. There are no fragments of the NT that are certain to date from earlier than 200 CE. So there is no direct evidence for how the divine name was presented in that period as there is with the LXX. It’s not a matter of anyone “removing” the name from the text as such, in the sense of going around with a sponge and wiping it out. What it involved is new copies of the LXX and NT being made that replaced the divine name with “Lord” and older copies of the LXX and NT that used the divine name falling into disuse. A few fragments of the LXX survive from before the second century when the change occurred and no copies of the NT survive from that period.

We do know that the early Christians made many doctrinal alterations to the NT because some of these have been identified and corrected. Famous ones include 1 Tim 3:16, 1 John 5:7-8 and many other arguable cases. There can be no certainty that all the alterations were caught because some could have been made at too early a stage to be represented in the extant manuscripts. In fact given how early many of these alterations occurred it seems likely that there are cases where the true reading has not survived. See The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart Ehrman and No Longer Written by Ryan Wettlaufer.

Plus there are perhaps traces of the divine name in the early NT text that survive in the manuscript tradition. For example the Diatessaron was possibly compiled at such an early stage that the NT still contained the divine name. This could explain why manuscripts of the NT Syriac appear to treat loci of the divine name differently than ordinary occurrences of Lord and God. Shedinger has suggested that if the divine name was not present in the texts used for the Diatessaron then we would need to find some other explanation for the way the divine name is treated in the Syriac. Plus some argue that Hebrew versions of Matthew reflect the text at an early period when the divine name was still used and that is why they use the designation “the name” in places where the divine name was used.

One of the reasons the presence of the divine name matters for Christology is the fact that the most frequently quoted OT text in the NT makes such a clear distinction between Jesus and Jehovah, when it quotes the Psalms: “Jehovah said to my Lord, sit at my right hand”. This distinction is obscured when the divine name is replaced and it appears as if Lord is speaking to Lord instead. Another great example is 1 Cor 2:16 where the earliest NT text said that we don’t know the mind of Jehovah but, because he was a human, we can understand the mind of Christ. The later text obscured and confused this distinction by appearing to apply both statements to Jesus. There are many such examples of NT texts that make much better sense when the distinction between Jesus and Jehovah is preserved by restoration of the divine name. But frankly the status of Jesus as God’s first creation and designation ruler of God’s kingdom is clear in the NT text with or without the restoration of the divine name. There is no room for a fourth century Christology in the NT.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

Yes that’s true, he is continuing to get money despite his obnoxious behaviour and despite his reduced output. The thing that might still be his undoing is that, although the is still receiving significant amounts of money, he knows better than anyone else how much lower his income is now because of the truth coming out. He feels strongly that he is entitled to the money he got last year and bitterly resents the fact that he has to adjust. He feels cheated and wronged. (The irony) He just can’t help expressing his arrogance and sense of entitlement which will drive yet more people away and probably worsen his mood and behaviour in a downward spiral.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

slimboyfat

From a religious standpoint of someone that would consider the writings to be sacred and "inspired", the implications are greater.

A theological argument can be made for the JW perspective in the following way. When the church turned apostate in the second century it began to misrepresent Jehovah in various ways, including the demotion of his name, misrepresentation of Jesus as ‘God the Son’, the emerging Trinity doctrine, and so on. This infiltration of false teachings prevailed until the truth was revived by modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses. Although false Christians altered the text of the Bible in various ways, Jehovah ensured there was enough evidence for sincere seekers of the truth to derive truth from the Bible about God, Jesus and God’s name. Further to that, the discovery of the LXX fragments with divine name, from the 1940s onwards, prompted JWs to restore the divine name to the New Testament. The discovery of the Fouad Exodus fragments in particular arrived just in time when the New World Translation was being prepared. Subsequent decades brought more and more evidence for the continued use of the divine name, and a number of scholars came to the same conclusion as JWs about the divine name in the New Testament. Those who opposed the implications of the new evidence about the divine name were predictably Trinitarian scholars who resist the idea that Jesus is distinct and subordinate to Jehovah and that Jehovah’s name continues to be important for Christinas.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

slimboyfat

Hurtado’s view on the matter evolved and he came to accept that the early LXX used the divine name. In his most recent post on the subject (in agreement with the leading specialists on the topic Emanuel Tov and Anthony Meyer) Hurtado correctly stated that the practice of replacing the divine name with kyrios took place in the second century CE.

https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/yhwh-texts-and-jesus-a-follow-up/#comments

It’s also worth noting the first century fragment of Leviticus with the divine name transliterated as Yaho (4Q120) was described at publication as an excellent representative of the early LXX tradition. This form of the divine name is the same as that which survived in early Christian name lists called onomastica showing that it was in use by the early Christians.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

slimboyfat

You are right there is a contradiction between claims that the text has been transmitted accurately and the claim that the divine name stood in the original. So what? We’re not here to defend the JW position on every point. Let the evidence fall where it may. For my money the evidence is strong that the divine name was in the original text and was replaced in the second century. If that means the text has not been faithfully preserved, then so be it. A number of scholars have come to the conclusion that the divine name was in the original New Testament and give compelling and, in fact, very interesting reasons supporting that view. The lack of curiosity to explore this discovery, as Lloyd Gaston says, is striking in its neglect.

Can we quit talking about shadowy conspiracies? That is empty rhetoric. The fact is that the divine name was in the Septuagint in the first century but Christians replaced it with “Lord” when they transmitted the text from the second century onwards. Those who argue for the divine name in the original New Testament simply point out that the exact same thing happened in the New Testament that we know happened with Septuagint. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about it. If we know that something happened on Monday then it rings hollow to say it’s a wild conspiracy theory that anyone should suggest the same thing happened on Tuesday.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

I think LE sees that the channel is in decline and he doesn’t have the motivation to carry on producing content with no mates to help him fill the hours of content necessary. So what does he do? He’s lost interest in JWs but he still has over 400 people sending him money every month. He’s not going to turn down free money, ever. So he perfunctorily keeps the channel going with the minimum amount of effort to keep it ticking over. He has half a notion that expanding the channel to include other topics will broaden his appeal but he probably suspects that will be a failure too. So he’ll just ride the ship all the way down until he finally runs out of patrons, or until there are so few patrons that it’s not even worth the effort to keep up the pretence any longer. The suckers are the patrons who jump ship last.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

His interviews are unwatchable. He gets interesting people on the channel then proceeds to talk most of the time himself. Jim Penton was a case in point. Wasted opportunity and waste of viewers’ time.

Well, used to get interesting people on his channel. Not so much any more, for obvious reasons.

42

ANTI-DEPRESSANT medication for the last 60 years now proved to be based on poorly supported false theory

by Terry in

jw
friends

"the chemical imbalance theory of depression is still put forward by professionals, and the serotonin theory, in particular, has formed the basis of a considerable research effort over the last few decades.

the general public widely believes that depression has been convincingly demonstrated to be the result of serotonin or other chemical abnormalities, and this belief shapes how people understand their moods, leading to a pessimistic outlook on the outcome of depression and negative expectancies about the possibility of self-regulation of mood""read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m92v7hb0njm2mnvnu6nv0kpnkzloe-_k4crh_wphpti/edit?usp=sharing.

slimboyfat

We live in a capitalist society. Drug companies exist to make a profit not to make people well. Unfortunately the two objectives are rarely the same. If there is a choice between a treatment that will cure a condition and a treatment that will maintain a condition for years or even decades then the current profit driven model will choose the maintenance therapy every single time. This is not a malfunction of the system, this is the system operating exactly as designed. In fact if a company chose to prioritise anything other than profit then they would be criminally responsible to their shareholders. Just think what a complete disaster it would have been for pharmaceutical companies, after spending billions of pounds on vaccines, to discover that the condition could be treated effectively with cheap drugs. We don’t know what the truth is because we are not scientists and I don’t pretend to know the answers. But the drug companies own the media that cover the health stories and they fund the politicians who make the decisions about funding involving billions of dollars. We are at a disadvantage because we are not scientists and we don’t have all the information they have at their disposal. But we can recognise the situation we are in and the powerful interests involved in securing certain outcomes and making sure certain perspectives prevail.

Personally I think the way forward for individuals is to look to community collaboration using sites such as “stuff that works” which aggregates the health experiences of thousands and millions of people to try to work out from the grass roots which treatments are effective and which are not effective. I believe the drug companies and governments could do the same thing more effectively, in particular harnessing the powers of the latest artificial intelligence, but it is not in their financial interest to do so.

7

Anti-Russell material

by vienne in

i'm still trying to locate material for uncle b's research project.

i need scans of any anti-russell booklets, books, articles published between 1886 and 1904. can you help me?.