I wish the remaining (declining band of) Patreon supporters would read KitKat’s post and offer any kind of explanation why they haven’t removed their funding yet.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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11530
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
How do you know what God wants? “He would want it like this. He wouldn’t want that.” Where does that come from? Maybe he is happy with his name being used in somewhat different forms in hundreds of languages as JWs do. For all we know. Why not? Other than your say so.
Another issue is the meaning of the name. JWs have leaned in pretty heavily on the meaning of the name coming from the root verb “to be”, and that it signifies that Jehovah becomes whatever he needs to become in order accomplish his purpose. That’s a pretty interesting and distinctive theological position, in my view, and presents a more compelling understanding of God’s interaction with humans than an austere Calvinist, predestinarian view.
If JWs are 1) right that God still wants people to use him name 2) they’ve got the meaning of the name right, and 3) the implications it has for his character and interactions with humans in accomplishing his purpose: that’s a pretty interesting and distinctive set of things for a religious group to have correct. On top of that you can’t actually say for sure that Jehovah, or more likely the German Jehova, is not fortuitously close to ancient pronunciation, because even scholars who promote Yahweh will most often admit that it isn’t certain either. As I indicated earlier, the idea of a correct original pronunciation is problematic anyway, because it seems highly likely that it changed over time, and Isaiah, Nehemiah, Jesus and others would all have said it differently from each other anyway.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
Even over the time period when the Bible was written the divine name was pronounced differently. The first century Jews said Yaho, the Samaritans said Yahweh, and who knows exactly how the prophet Isaiah would have pronounced the name 800 years earlier. In modern English we say Jehovah, in German it’s spelled similar but pronounced more like Yehofah, which some argue is very close to ancient pronunciation. Names change over time and in different languages. The different forms of the divine name are all pretty similar really: more similar than Pierre and Peter, or Johannes and John. Not to mention the fact that, of course, the early Christians would not have even understood the name “Jesus” as we currently say it in English. How come the people who insist the pronunciation of the divine name is a deal breaker don’t say the same about Jesus, whose pronunciation in the first century clearly does not match?
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
Yes, Adela Yarbro Collins tends to support the JW translation of John 1:1. She writes in King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human and Angelic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature
“John 1:1 may be translated either ‘the word was God’ or ‘the word was a god’. Justin Martyr apparently understood the passage in the latter way. According to Henry Chadwick, ‘Justin had boldly spoken of the divine logos as “another God” beside the Father, qualified by the gloss, “other, I mean, in number, not in will.”’ Casey describes John 1:14 as involving ‘incarnation in the strong sense in which I use the term, that is, of the process by means of which a fully divine being is born as a person.’ It is not precisely clear what Casey means by ‘fully divine being’ here. If he means something like a second person of a trinity, it is doubtful that John 1 supports the interpretation.” (Pages 175 and 176)
The recent translation by scholar David Bentley Hart translates John 1
The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart (2017)
1 In the origin there was the Logos, and the Logos was present with GOD, and the Logos was god; 2 This one was present with GOD in the origin. 3 All things came to be through him, and without him came to be not a single thing that has come to be.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
A good book on the topic of Jesus as Son of God among the early Christians is King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human and Angelic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature by Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins. The authors are among the most senior Bible scholars alive, having served as past presidents of the Society of New Testament Studies and the Society of Biblical Literature.
https://www.amazon.com/King-Messiah-Son-God-Literature/dp/0802807720/
Bringing together the evidence from the Gospel of John and Revelation in particular, it concludes:
“Both authors associate Jesus with the wisdom tradition. The Gospel identifies personified wisdom with the word of God as the philosophical logos. Revelation does not go in that direction. It depicts Jesus as “the beginning of the creation of God” in 3:14, which recalls the Greek version of Prov 8:22, “The LORD created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.” Although they do not allude specifically to texts about wisdom, certain ambiguous sayings of the risen Jesus in Revelation are best understood in relation to personified wisdom. He affirms that he is the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, and the beginning and the end (1:17; 22:13). In light of the evidence that the author of Revelation portrays Jesus as the heavenly messiah who is also the principal angel of God, these sayings are best interpreted as associating Jesus with personified wisdom as God’s first creature. Although some elements of these sayings are also attributed to God, it is unlikely that the author intends to identify Christ with God. Rather, the common affirmations signify that Christ participated in creation and will participate in the full manifestation of the rule of God as God’s agent. The Gospel and Revelation both present Jesus as preexistent and as divine in some sense. In the Gospel he is either and emanation of God, or God’s first creature, namely, the only-begotten god. In Revelation, the evidence suggests that he is God’s first creature, namely, the principal angel.” (Page 203)
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
Exactly whose name was to be "publicly declared" by Christians?
He whose name is understood to mean “Jehovah is salvation”, Yehoshua, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:10, 11)
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11530
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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slimboyfat
Yes, all that rings true, that’s exactly what he’s been up to. I think some of us have been reluctant to believe the worst because it’s difficult to imagine somebody can be so callous and manipulative, and yet vociferously self righteous at the same time. What a truly horrendous person. It must be a living hell to be anyway involved with him.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
The reason that you feel compelled to cite verses like this is because a template has been installed in your head by your WT trainers. Like a trained seal you and every other JW continually …
You lost the argument right there.
Allow me to explain to you the biblical and Christian view …
Yeah, no thanks. Your attitude leaves a lot to be desired.
I’m interested in what the New Testament says for its own sake. Having considered it a lot, I have come to the view that Jesus himself would have been astounded that others equated him with God. His earliest followers viewed him as a messenger from God in terms that clearly differentiated him from God himself. This is so plain in the texts themselves that no scholars without a theological commitment to the idea conclude there is anything like a Trinitarian dogma to be found in the New Testament,
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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slimboyfat
Hardly hidden, Jews were obviously aware that when saying the name Yehoshua, they were saying the divine name too, and the praise was to God through his Son. (See Matt 1:21)
Revelation 3:12 is proof that the early Christians knew the name of Jesus’ God.
The idea that you can count up each name as some sort of competition between them misses the point that all attention and praise for Jesus is “the to the glory of God the Father”. (Phil 2:11) So if you’re keeping count then the tally for Jehovah is all the direct references to Jehovah God plus the references to Jesus.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init 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).
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-
slimboyfat
In his own time, the name Jesus was pronounced Yahoshua, and the divine name was pronounced Yaho. So every time the first Christians said the name Jesus (Yaho-shua) it reminded them that Jesus demonstrated by his words and his life that salvation is from Yaho. (See Acts 4:9-12)