Posts by slimboyfat

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

slimboyfat

I don’t know why they didn’t include the divine name in Acts 19.10. Maybe they should have. A possible reason might be that Fred Franz didn’t find agreement in the Hebrew versions he used as guidance. The NWT said it erred on the side of caution as regards restoring the divine name in general. There are arguably a number of places where they could have included it but did not, especially in the book of Acts.

SBF et al rely on George Howard's study to say that the "original" LXX and the "original" NT may have had the Tetragrammaton... but Howard's study at bestallows for the possibility of the Tetragrammaton being in quotes of the OT...

That’s incorrect. Howard’s original article suggested that the divine name was used, not only in quotes, but also in certain established OT phrases, such as “angel of Jehovah”, and “word of Jehovah” you have been discussing here. It’s worth bearing in mind that the NWT was published before Howard’s article and has never been bound by his methodology, but in the matter of using the divine name in the phrase “word of Jehovah”, he supported the NWT’s approach.

I quote the relevant part from Howard’s article here:

If the Tetragram was used in the NT, how extensively was it used? Was it confined to OT quotations and OT paraphrastic allusions, or was it used in traditional phrases, such as "the word of God / Lord" (see the variants in Acts 6:7; 8:25; 12:24; 13:5; 13:44, 48; 14:25; 16:6, 32), "in the day of the Lord" (cf. variants in 1 Cor 5:5), "through the will of God" (cf. variants in Rom 15:32)? Was it also used in OT-like narratives such as we have in the first two chapters of Luke?

We have discussed Heb 1.10 elsewhere. This quotation is from the Greek version of the Psalm which may have been interpreted as a messianic Psalm and used kyrios for the Hebrew equivalent Adonai rather than the divine name, just as was the case with the second “Lord” in the often quoted 110th Psalm.

Btw can any Trinitarian explain why Jesus as “Lord” adoni/kyrios is distinguished from and subordinate to YHWH in Psalm 110.1? Judging by the popularity of that Psalm among early Christians they were in absolutely no doubt that Jesus was distinct and subordinate to Jehovah.

Jehovah declared to my Lord:“Sit at my right handUntil I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.”

You are completely correct that the NWT may be not be right about every instance where the divine name should be restored. That’s an easy point to concede because they have implied as much themselves and have simply claimed to do the best they could on the available evidence.

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

slimboyfat

By the way, I think that this "ΙΑΩ" does not refer to the fully pronounced Tetragrammaton ("Yahweh"), but to its short, liturgically preserved form (יָהּ‎, Yāh), which is also preserved in mainstream Christianity in the form "Halleluyah" (Alleluia).

This is incorrect. ΙΑΩ was pronounced Yaho and IA was the Greek form that was pronounced Yah. The two occur side by side in onomastic texts.

So the statement of the Watchtower that the early Christians "hated" the divine name YHWH and destroyed all manuscripts containing it with fire and iron is not true either,

I don’t recall Watchtower ever saying anything about early Christians hating the divine name or destroying manuscripts, never mind with fire or iron. That’s pretty wild stuff. Have you got a reference for that?

81

Careful what you wish for! Regarding Jehovah in the New Testament

by pizzahut2023 in

ok i'll bite.. let's say for a moment that jehovah's witnesses are right, and that the nt autographs (the originals) contained the tetragrammaton.let's say that the nt writers always wrote "jehovah" in greek (iexoba, as the witnesses spell it currently) when they quoted the hebrew scriptures, whether they quoted from the hebrew version or the septuagint, and jehovah's name appeared on the quote.

let's say that the original septuagint always had iexoba whenever they were referring to jehovah.then we have that the original septuagint said in psalms 101:26-28 the following:"at the beginning it was you, o jehovah, who founded the earth, and the heavens are works of your hands.

they will perish, but you will endure, and they will all become old like a garment.

slimboyfat

I’ve been thinking about this question posed above or in another thread: if the divine name was originally in the NT then why didn’t Origen mention it was in the NT the same way he mentioned that the most accurate copies of the LXX contained the divine name? I think the reason for that may be the fact that when Christians stopped using copies of the LXX that contained the divine name Jews nevertheless continued to use copies of the LXX and other Greek versions of the OT that contained the divine name. So the reason there were still copies of the LXX around with the divine name for Origen to find is because Jews were still using them. When it comes to the NT obviously Jews didn’t preserve copies of the NT as they did the OT in Greek, so when Christians stopped using copies of the NT with the divine name they fell into disuse altogether. Remember that Origen sourced the best manuscripts of the LXX he could find from Jews. He couldn’t do the same with the NT. Another thing to remember is that the earliest and most accurate copies of the LXX that Origen could find contained the divine name in the form of the tetragrammaton, whereas we know that the early LXX used the form the divine name transliterated into the Greek Yaho. Origen doesn’t mention finding any of those, even though we know that they existed and that copies of the LXX with Yaho are probably the closest analogy to how the early NT would have handled the divine name.

As for the early Christian use of the divine name transliterated into the form Yaho, we have the testimony of the early onomastica name lists that Christian scribes preserved for centuries into the common era. These strongly indicate that at an early stage of their transmission Christians used copies of the LXX and NT with the divine name transliterated into the Greek form Yaho. It is difficult to account the for the use of Yaho in the onomastica otherwise.

On top of which George Howard’s basic point still stands: the contemporary manuscript evidence indicates that Jews in the first century used the divine name in their texts and it is reasonable to think NT authors probably followed contemporary practice. The fact that the NT text contains so many variants around loci with the divine name corroborates this argument as Earnest has explained above.

14

Observation

by pontoon in

haven't been to a meeting in 13 years.

family that lives 1300 miles away doesn't know.

just visited them and here is what i observed.

slimboyfat

There are twice as many JWs now compared with 1993.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

slimboyfat

Words like murder, kidnap, and rape contain the idea of wrongfulness already in the definition of the term. If someone kills someone else then various terms may apply such as self defence, manslaughter, or murder. If the killing isn’t judged to be wrong in the situation then we simply don’t call it murder. So asking whether murder is always wrong is tautologous. Murder is just a word we use when we’ve already decided the killing was wrong. It’s like asking if all boring books are boring, or all long books are long, or all funny books are funny. Questions like “is murder always wrong” aren’t meaningful questions.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

slimboyfat

As stated in the original post it is fairly easy to say the right thing to do is save the child. Even so, it’s certainly possible to dream up scenarios where the answer is not so simple: if the child will grow up to be Hitler; if there’s a hostage situation with other children going on; or whatever else we can dream up. You might say that’s farfetched and the situation is simple. But life is complicated and strange scenarios can happen. And if the situation is an allegory for life in general then its capacity for complexity is infinitely multiplied. If there is anything we can say about life with certainty then it’s probably the fact that we don’t understand it. To me the brave thing to do in stepping away from a JW mindset is not to swap one set of absolutes for another, and go proselytising the new ‘faith’, but to recognise the uncertainty in our perception of reality and be ready to listen to the perspectives of others.

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

slimboyfat

It's such a relief as a former theist to no longer have to defend the indefensible

Were you defending slavery when you were a Christian? I can see that would be psychologically taxing.

Where did I mention happiness? Don't strawman me or we are finished.

You’re like a constant storm in your own personal teacup 😂

168

Moral responsibility.

by nicolaou in

no subtlety here, it's going to be obvious where i'm going with this.

please consider the following scenario.. you're seated on a railway platform bench waiting for your train.

a high speed intercity is about to hurtle through without stopping when you see a small child running to the platforms edge!

slimboyfat

Christianity is widely credited with making infanticide taboo because of its teaching about inherent human dignity. The world was a much more unpleasant place before Christian ethics replaced a classical outlook.

It’s worth checking out the book Dominion by Tom Holland, or his many interviews online on the impact Christianity. He’s a non believer himself who was surprised by his historical research into the impact of Christianity.

https://youtu.be/cDa4vpkNKeQ

11530

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

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

Oh okay. 👍

11530

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

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

slimboyfat

Making money on YouTube is probably a (relatively) transitory phenomenon. I’d be extremely surprised if businesses are still operating on YouTube as they do now in 20 years time. Many YouTubers feel this way too and see it as a way to make a lot of money quickly, and put it away for the future. It’s unlikely to be around (in any form recognisably like it is now) when most YouTubers reach retirement anyway. I’m a pessimist but I think nuclear war and/or AI oblivion are far more likely than YouTube monetisation and Patreon still being a thing in 20 years time. Either the world will be a far worse place or it will be a far better place in 20 years. The idea that it will be anything like roughly equivalent to the world we know now seems entirely unlikely. If humans are still around in significant numbers in twenty years I’d hope they would have pretty effective treatments for heart disease, cancers and HIV by then too.

Since CF never used his name I don’t think it’s fair to use his name here, unless there has been some development I’ve not noticed and he’s using his name online a lot.