Topics Started by Jeffro
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More failed JW chronology
by Jeffro inive just been reviewing my timeline of the divided jewish monarchy and the neo-babylonian period.
i decided to check for correlations of egyptian and assyrian rulers mentioned in the bible that i had not previously considered at all (much less tried to make fit a particular year).
i was happy (though unsurprised) that no adjustments were required.. pharaoh tirhakah (taharqa) (2ki 19:8, 9; isa 37:8, 9) insight (volume 2, page 1109) claims the years assigned to him by historians must be wrong.
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Question for JW apologists...
by Jeffro inthe new new world translation translates jeremiah 29:10 as follows:.
10 for this is what jehovah says, when 70 years at babylon are ful?lled, i will turn my attention to you, and i will make good my promise by bringing you back to this place.. the official watch tower society teaching is that by the end of the 70 years, the jews were back in judea, and that their actual arrival in judea marks the end of the "70 years".
*** si p. 85 par.
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Google results
by Jeffro inevery now and then i check statistics for my 607-related articles.
recently, someone has searched for "vat 4956 watchtower", so i went to google to see where my site comes up in the page ranking.. the first entry in the search results is a reference to the watchtower online library, with a reference to their 2011 attempt at defending their doctrine.. and immediately below it is a link to my rebuttal of the same article.
some other actual google searches people have made to get to my site where my pages are in the first page of google's results:.
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Are JWs creationists?
by Jeffro inif you believe what is officially stated on the jw website, jws are not creationists.
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the fact that the exact jw belief is in fact specifically called "day-age creationism" seems to have alluded them.
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The most important day of the year. Sometimes. Sort of.
by Jeffro infor jehovah's witnesses, the "most important day of the year" is supposed to be the 'memorial'.
this 'sacred' event is to be held after sunset on nisan 14. except most of the time, it isn't.. as 'explained' in the watchtower, 1 february 1976, page 73, the "governing body" (not capitalised at the time) takes it upon itself to 'determine' the 'actual' date of nisan 14. they claimed in the article that the 'modern' date for the start of nisan in the hebrew calendar is calculated differently to the ancient calculation.
however, that's not actually the case.. the actual calendation for determining the start of nisan was (since at least the neo-babylonian period) and is based on the metonic cycle - a sequence that repeats every 19 years.. in the metonic cycle, the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years have an extra (thirteenth) month (adar ii, or veadar).
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Convention invitation
by Jeffro ini've received a jw convention invitation in my mailbox.
are they doing this to everyone, or am i being targeted as a prospective 'interested person'??.
since when did they print invitations for conventions?
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Hophra and the Watchtower Society
by Jeffro inone of the pharoahs that is mentioned in the bible is hophra (aka apries, aka ha'a'ibra wahibra).. jeremiah 44:30 says: "this is what jehovah has said: here i am giving phar aoh hoph ra, the king of egypt, into the hand of his enemies and into the hand of those seeking for his soul, just as i have given zedeki ah the king of judah into the hand of nebuchadrez zar the king of babylon, his enemy and the one seeking for his soul.").
the closest the watchtower society gets to attempting to assign any years to hophra is in a questions from readers article in the 1 october 1970, watchtower (incidentally on page 607 of the bound volume).
it states: "egypt made one last attempt to remain a power in asia.
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God's Word for Us Through Jeremiah - Review
by Jeffro ina recent thread about this week's study of the watch tower society's god's word for us through jeremiah led me to decide to review how much of the bible book of jeremiah is actually considered in that publication.. unlike other watch tower society verse-by-verse considerations of some bible books, their jeremiah book instead purports to impart lessons 'for us'.
key scriptures in jeremiah contradict jw doctrine, so a verse-by-verse approach was out of the question, probably having learned from their daniel and isaiah efforts that expose problems with jw interpretations.. one good feature of the watchtower library on cd-rom is you can search for a scripture, then find all the search occurences for where that scripture has been cited in jw publications, which made the process much easier.. in god's word for us through jeremiah, much of the bible book of jeremiah is ignored altogether.
in fact, less than half of the bible book is mentioned at all, and only 16% of jeremiah is actually quoted (including portions with the instruction to "read" the cited verses.
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More bad chronology from the Watch Tower Society
by Jeffro init seems that more often than not, when the watch tower society says something about biblical chronology, they're probably wrong.
this seems to be the case even for uncontroversial matters!
insight on the scriptures volume 1, page 584 states (bold formatting added):.
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Bad chronology - Samuel, Saul and David
by Jeffro inaccording to 1 samuel 13:1, in the oldest hebrew manuscripts, saul ruled for two years (assuming saul actually existed at all, for which there is no hard evidence).
however, various [christian] translators assume this 'must' be an error because acts 13:21 says saul reigned for forty years.
saul's age at 1 samuel 13:1 is conveniently missing from the oldest manuscripts.