Posts by slimboyfat

20

Curtailing zoom

by road to nowhere in

co visit, so right from the horse's mouth ( or somewhere).

too many are staying on zoom, missing face to face encouragement.

look for the elders to implement changes.. also people at the door are so receptive and glad to see us.

slimboyfat

I think just over a third are still on Zoom here, roughly 22 on Zoom to 42 in the KH.

I thought the GB wouldn’t dare take away Zoom, but who knows, maybe they are crazy and controlling enough to do it, regardless it it loses them 10 to 20% of members.

On the other hand, there were always people ‘on the phone link’, even before the pandemic, so presumably there will still be some provision for people at home. Most people can make some sort of case why they can’t get in to the KH. So presumably there will always be Zoom, or something like it. Some elders might be strict or obnoxious about it, but in my experience anyone who said they needed the ‘phone link’ got it.

I know a congregation nearby that as recently as a couple of months ago reverted to Zoom meetings for a couple of weeks because too many people caught covid all at once. This decision was apparently taken by the local elders. I don’t know if they were given permission or took the decision unilaterally. But as far as I know it’s a bit of an outlier.

They may resort to Zoom in future in cases of heavy snowfall or similar adverse weather, I would suspect.

In short, who knows what they’ll do with Zoom in future, it’s unpredictable.

50

To All Those Keen To Tell Us About Their Beliefs

by Simon in

we seem to have had an influx of religiots - the people who want to tell us all about how we / the wts / whoever are wrong, wrong, wrong about everything and how right they are.

they obviously have special insight, or voices (probably voices, right?

) telling them the real truth.. as proof, there is inevitably a wall of random scripture references and quotes.. sorry, but we're not here for that.

slimboyfat

I've yet to find anyone start a religious group and claim to have insight that A, B or C is going to happen, which is super important because it will be the precursor to The End™ happening, but that it will occur at any other time but the one in which the author is living.

Isaac Newton, who was extremely into his Bible prophecy, apparently predicted the end for 2060, or, to put it more precisely, that 2060 was the latest date it could possibly be. If I recall correctly, this date was arrived at by adding 1260 day/years from Revelation to the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 AD.

Charlemagne also figured in the Nazi political eschatology as the so-called first Reich was allegedly dated from Charlemagne in 800 to 1800, the second Reich under Bismarck in 1871 to 1917, and the Third Reich from 1933, which was intended to last 1000 years, but was defeated after just 12 years, in 1945.

773

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III no longer serving on the Governing Body

by WingCommander in

jw
friends

this has been announced on the jw's official website, in the "jw news" section.

this is not a joke.

anthony moron da turd is out as a gluttonous body member!

slimboyfat

“Don’t ask what happened”

They are such control freaks. I’ve never known any other group of people to act as controlling as this. Not only must you not know what happened, you’re not even allowed to ask what happened. Next you’ll not be allowed to think about what happened. If these guys ever get hold of the Chinese technology that reads kids’ brains to see if they are paying attention in school, you can bet Watchtower would get JWs to wear them in the KH. Who am I kidding, they’d get JWs to wear them 24/7.

If I was in the Bahamas receiving the instruction, “don’t ask Tony’s son what happened”, I’d be tempted to say to Tony’s son, if there was a discreet opportunity: “hey Tony’s son, did you know they are instructing everyone not to ask about your father?” And just wait and see what his reaction is. You’re not breaking their rule if you just tell Tony’s son about the rule, are you?

I wonder if even the people who made the “don’t ask” rule know what happened themselves. Or are they passing on a “no ask” policy from above without being informed what the situation is about. They are such control freaks.

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

That’s interesting that Philo had “acquired”. Philo didn’t read Hebrew, so I wonder where he got the reading from, as it was before Jerome and the other non-LXX Greek versions were produced. The quote also says “God” rather than “Lord”, I wonder if that’s significant.

As it is, “acquired” is arguably closer in meaning to “created” than Jerome’s “possessed”, in the crucial sense that an acquisition is a point in time, whereas possession is a state of affairs. The accompanying “first of his works” and “founded me” also point toward God creating wisdom before anything else.

JWs agree that the creation of Jesus was different than the rest of creation because Jehovah created Jesus directly whereas he created everything else through his Son.

The point of the quote from Origen was to show that he held a similar view about God first creating his Son, as personified Wisdom, then created everything else through his Son. You seem to be saying that because you consider Origen to be a Trinitarian it is therefore not legitimate to quote him when he agrees with JW understanding on a particular issue. That doesn’t follow, and the weight of the evidence is that Origen differed significantly from fourth century Nicene Trinitarianism in any case.

73

"Jehovah" In The New Testament.

by LostintheFog1999 in

i see they have updated their list of translations or versions where some form of yhwh or jhvh appears in the new testament.. https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/appendix-c/divine-name-new-testament-2/.

slimboyfat

If you read Howard’s article he clearly argues that Jesus and God are distinct in the New Testament. It’s a key part of his argument.

You have only counted the direct quotations, you have not counted the OT “stock phrases” as George Howard put it, of which there are many, especially in the book of Acts and the first two chapters of Luke.

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

Can you remind me, what did Philo say about the translation “created” in Prov 8.22? I missed that. I think I recall, Philo talks about the Logos being created, and describes it as an archangel, if I remember correctly. I don’t remember a comment by Philo about wisdom in Prov 8.22 specifically contradicting the translation “created”.

As it is, the LXX, the Peshitta, Targum, and the vast majority of modern translators, Jewish and Christian, favour “created” in Prov 8.22. That’s a lot of weight to put on Jerome, and early Jewish translations that were produced in reaction, and in opposition to the LXX, as used by Christians, to overturn the prevailing consensus that favours “created”.

In addition to being “created”, the passage also says wisdom was the first of God’s acts, was “set up”, and “brought forth”. Only if you read into the text much later Trinitarian concepts can you escape the clear implication that God brought “Wisdom” into being at the start of creation.

As Origen described it:

For I consider that as a house or a ship is built and fashioned in accordance with the sketches of the builder or designer, the house or the ship having their beginning (arche) in the sketches and reckonings in his mind, so all things came into being in accordance with the designs of what was to be, clearly laid down by God in wisdom. And we should add that having created, so to speak, ensouled wisdom, He left her to hand over, from the types which were in her, to things existing and to matter, the actual emergence of them, their moulding and their forms. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John i.22

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101501.htm

73

"Jehovah" In The New Testament.

by LostintheFog1999 in

i see they have updated their list of translations or versions where some form of yhwh or jhvh appears in the new testament.. https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/appendix-c/divine-name-new-testament-2/.

slimboyfat

George Howard, who claimed little familiarity with the NWT, seems to have been misled by the apparently myriad evangelicals and former JWs who pestered him in his later years. He says that his article supports the use of the divine name in direct questions from the OT, and in OT “stock phrases”, such as “angel of Jehovah” and “word of Jehovah”, but not the “many” times where NWT has used the divine name. In fact the majority of the 237 times the NWT uses the divine name are accounted for by quotations and OT “stock phrases”.

The letter to Mr Butt looks odd compared with George Howard’s statements elsewhere. His article itself pointed out that the first Christians did not view Jesus as God and that the identification of the two was a conclusion that later Christians arrived at by confusing the Lord God with the Lord Jesus. In another of the letters above, George Howard says he “does not believe that Jesus Christ is Jehovah” and he disagrees with JWs if this is what they teach. First of all, this shows he clearly knows nothing about JWs, or the NWT. Secondly, it contradicts the letter to “Mr Butt” where George Howard, a Jew by background as far a I know, so it is claimed, was concerned that JWs are using his work to deny the “deity of Christ”. This is an odd statement whichever way you look at it, and hard to reconcile with the rest of George Howard’s comments.

Other scholars who have supported the divine name in the original NT include David Trobisch, Lloyd Gaston, Luise Schottroff and John McRay. I think opponents of the NWT need to stop claiming that no other scholars have supported the idea and deal with the actual arguments they make.

There is no NT manuscript that is confidently dated to anywhere near the first century as one of the letters to George Howard claimed, and he pointed this out at the time. This has been emphasised by the later dating of most manuscripts in recent scholarship.

The point about God’s word not being suppressed can be viewed either way, because JWs obviously view the discovery of the LXX fragments in twentieth century as more than coincidental, and the mounting evidence for the divine name coinciding with gathering of ‘a people for his name’ as part of God’s purpose. If your argument is that God would not allow his name to be suppressed then their answer is that indeed he hasn’t.

73

"Jehovah" In The New Testament.

by LostintheFog1999 in

i see they have updated their list of translations or versions where some form of yhwh or jhvh appears in the new testament.. https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/appendix-c/divine-name-new-testament-2/.

slimboyfat

You can read the argument in favour of the divine name in the original New Testament here:

http://www.areopage.net/howard.pdf

Notice that George Howard linked the removal of the divine name from the New Testament with the post-biblical conflation of Jesus with God, ultimately leading to the Trinity doctrine.

Modern scholars that argue for the divine name in the original New Testament are:

Gaston, L. (2006). Paul and the Torah. Wipf and Stock Publishers

Howard, G. (1977). The Tetragram and the New Testament. Journal of biblical literature, 96(1), 63-83.

McRay, J. (2008). Archaeology and the New Testament. Baker Academic.

Mussies, G. (2001). YHWH at Patmos: Rev 1: 4 in its Hellenistic and Early Jewish Setting (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.107).

Schottroff, L., & Janssen, C. (2021). 1 Corinthians. Kohlhammer Verlag

Shaw, F. (2014). The Earliest Non-Mystical Jewish Use of Iao. Contributions to biblical exegesis and theology, 70.

Trobisch, D. (2000). The First Edition of the New Testament. Oxford University Press

Vasileiadis, P. D. (2019). Jesus, the New Testament, and the Sacred Tetragrammaton. Synthesis, 8(1), 27-87.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

slimboyfat

Well I’ve not found much in the way of disproving the threat of AI so far. It’s not cranks or doom mongers who are raising the alarm, but experts who work on it and understand AI best. Geoffrey Hinton says he disbelieved AI disaster scenarios during nearly 50 years of research, and only changed his mind within the past year when he realised the new models were advancing far quicker than he anticipated. Steven Pinker presented a shallow and ill informed overview of the AI topic in his book Rationality.

https://youtu.be/yQE9KAbFhNY

136

Colossian 1:16 - "all OTHER things"

by aqwsed12345 in

due to their apparent theological bias, the watchtower shamelessly inserts the word "other" in order to "make room" for their own idea that jesus is also a created being.

it is clear that jehovah's witnesses try to avoid having to admit that christ created everything because "the one who constructed all things is god" (hebrews 3:4).

instead, the society teaches that "christ was the only one created by god," and that then he "created everything else with jehovah.

slimboyfat

The messages are too long aqwsed12345.

I think Raymond Franz was overly critical of his uncle. After all, Fred Franz did produce his own translation of the entire Bible, stimulated debate about the place of the divine name in the NT text, and perhaps prompted some to reconsider how they translate John 1.1. Those are no mean feats. I think he deserves some credit, as even some of his scholarly critics begrudgingly admitted.

JWs believe that Jehovah created the world through Jesus because that’s what the NT says repeatedly. God is the only creator and Jesus is his agent. Origen expressed it similarly:

And the Apostle Paul says in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “At the end of the days He spoke to us in His Son, whom He made the heir of all things, 'through whom' also He made the ages”, showing us that God made the ages through His Son, the “through whom” belonging, when the ages were being made, to the Only-begotten. Thus, if all things were made, as in this passage also, through the Logos, then they were not made by the Logos, but by a stronger and greater than He. And who else could this be but the Father? Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, ii.6
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101502.htm