Disillusioned JW

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Posts by Disillusioned JW

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  16

  A look at Robert Alter’s translation: The Hebrew Bible

  by Wonderment in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  a look at robert alter’s translation: the hebrew biblethree volumes labeled as, "the five books of moses"; "the writings"; and "prophets.

  "verse numbers appear in the margins.

  my take: some view this as a plus, since this allows for continuous, undistracted reading.

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  Disillusioned JW

  A moment ago I noticed that careful four years mentioned about the JB and possibly the NJB using a raised dot. I wish I had noticed that earlier, since that I would not have bothered to make my post about that feature, and thus would have saved some time.
  
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  16

  A look at Robert Alter’s translation: The Hebrew Bible

  by Wonderment in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  a look at robert alter’s translation: the hebrew biblethree volumes labeled as, "the five books of moses"; "the writings"; and "prophets.

  "verse numbers appear in the margins.

  my take: some view this as a plus, since this allows for continuous, undistracted reading.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Wonderment, I remember a non-Christian Jew at a congregation of Humanistic Judaism telling me that biblical Hebrew is a story language (a language well suited for telling stories?). Today I searched for information about it being a picturesque language and I thus found the web page mentioned at https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/language/philosophy-of-the-hebrew-language.htm . It is quite interesting, but the ancient Hebrew way of thinking of matters is very strange to me (a Western style thinker, instead of an Eastern style thinker). I wonder though if the article has some inaccurate interpretations.
  
  Wonderment, when I read certain passages of the OT, especially when I compare Jewish translations of certain passages with Christian translations of the same passages I get the impression that the biblical Hebrew language is less precise and more ambiguous than Greek and English. I also get the idea biblical Hebrew does not have a word which means "of" and the meaning has to be inferred by the context. Are these impressions of mine correct?

  For example the phrase "Yeshua ben Yoseph" literally says "Yeshua son Yoseph" but is understood to mean "Yeshua son of Yoseph" ("Jesus son of Joseph"). Right?

  For another example, consider translations of the latter part of Isaiah 9:6 (9:5 in a number of Jewish translations and in a number of Hebrew texts). In the Jewish translation by Isaac Leeser it (at 9:5) says "... and his name is called, Wonderful, counsellor of the mighty God, of the everlasting Father, the prince of peace". In the 1917 translation of the Jewish Public Publication Society it (at 9:5) says "... And his name is called Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom". That translation has the translators' note of "That is, Wonderful in counsel is God the Mighty, the everlasting Father, the Ruler of peace." The meanings of these two translations are very different for the first one says he is named counselor of the mighty God whereas the other says his name (the meaning of his name) merely proclaims that God the Mighty is wonderful in counsel.

  The 1939 Christian translation by Goodspeed and Smith called The Complete Bible: An American Translation translates the passages in a similar way as the above mentioned Jewish translations. It translates the passages as '... And his name will be called "Wonderful counselor is God Almighty, Father forever, Prince of peace." '
  

  The 1992 Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha translates the passage (in 9:5) as "... and his title will be: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty Hero, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.".

  The Catholic 1991 New American Bible (NAB) translates the passage as "... They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace." The translators annotation/commentary of that Catholic Bible says the following.: "God-Hero: a warrior and a defender of his people, like God himself. Father-Forever: ever devoted to his people." Notice that regarding "God Hero" it says "like God himself" instead saying he "is God".

  The 1901 ASV Bible translates the passage as "... and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." The translators' note says "Or, Wonderful counsellor" (in regards to "Wonderful, Counsellor") and "Heb. Father of Eternity" (in regards to "Everlasting Father"). A number of other Christian translations of the Bible have a very similar wording of that passage.
  
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  16

  A look at Robert Alter’s translation: The Hebrew Bible

  by Wonderment in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  a look at robert alter’s translation: the hebrew biblethree volumes labeled as, "the five books of moses"; "the writings"; and "prophets.

  "verse numbers appear in the margins.

  my take: some view this as a plus, since this allows for continuous, undistracted reading.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Wonderment regarding having verse numbers in the margin or in the paragraphs of the text, the Jerusalem Bible (JB) and/or the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has the great innovation of having a raised boldfaced dot (half way between the top and the bottom of a line of text) in the paragraphs before the start of a verse. That made it easy to determine where a verse starts, despite the verse number being in the margin. I have not seen any Bible employ that innovative feature. That method thus combined the unobtrusive aspect of having the verse numbers in the margins (which I like while doing personal reading of long sections of text) with the a subtle marker in the paragraphs to clearly show where individual verses start. However for public reading of multiple verses that is not as convenient as having the verses numbers in the paragraphs of the text.
  
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  31

  Did Jesus have a Y chromosome?

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  even in jesus’s day, humans had chromosomes.

  and so did jesus —because he was human.

  so let’s say jesus took a dna test, his mitochondrial dna would go back to eve but interestingly jc also would inherit dna from sinful adam on his mother’s side because his mother mary passed on to jc dna from both adam and eve.

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  Disillusioned JW

  Sea Breeeze I notice you said "Not if sin is inherited on the Y chromosome." But if sin is only inherited on the Y chromosome, then virtually all female humans are free of inherited sin since virtually all human females have no Y chromosome. Do you believe that virtually all female humans are free of inherited sin? [Of course from a atheistic naturalist point of view, 'sin' doesn't exist since sin is defined by reference to disobedience to a god. The term 'sin', at least in the strict sense, is only a term of theology.]
  
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  31

  Did Jesus have a Y chromosome?

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  even in jesus’s day, humans had chromosomes.

  and so did jesus —because he was human.

  so let’s say jesus took a dna test, his mitochondrial dna would go back to eve but interestingly jc also would inherit dna from sinful adam on his mother’s side because his mother mary passed on to jc dna from both adam and eve.

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  Disillusioned JW

  The web page at Polar body says that some of the Polar Bodies don't always immediately die. The web page says in part the following.

  "A polar body is a small haploid cell that is formed at the same time as an egg cell during oogenesis, but generally does not have the ability to be fertilized.

  When certain diploid cells in animals undergo cytokinesis after meiosis to produce egg cells, they sometimes divide unevenly. Most of the cytoplasm is segregated into one daughter cell, which becomes the egg or ovum, while the smaller polar bodies only get a small amount of cytoplasm. They frequently die and disintegrate by apoptosis, but in some cases remain and can be important in the life cycle of the organism.[1] "

  The medical article called "Polar Bodies – more a lack of understanding than a lack of respect" says the following.

  "Polar bodies are as diverse as the organisms that produce them. Although in many animals these cells often die following meiotic maturation of the oocyte, in other organisms they are an essential and diverse part of embryonic development. Here we highlight some of this diversity and summarize the evolutionary basis for their utility.

  ... A polar body is the byproduct of an oocyte meiotic division. It is the small cell that normally apoptoses, and in textbook figures, it usually just disappears. This portrayal though does not do the cell justice.
  

  Polar bodies typically form by asymmetric cytokinesis: cytosol and organelles are shunted into the secondary oocyte during meiosis I, and then into the egg in meiosis II [Fig. 1]. This leaves the ovum’s sister and aunt (or cousins, if the first polar body also undergoes meiosis II) with relatively little cytoplasm and so in most organisms, these polar bodies simply degenerate. The polar body of human oocytes, for example, apoptoses in 17–24 hours following formation and the resulting fragments remain entrapped within the zona pellucida (Longo, 1997)."
  
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  31

  Did Jesus have a Y chromosome?

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  even in jesus’s day, humans had chromosomes.

  and so did jesus —because he was human.

  so let’s say jesus took a dna test, his mitochondrial dna would go back to eve but interestingly jc also would inherit dna from sinful adam on his mother’s side because his mother mary passed on to jc dna from both adam and eve.

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  Disillusioned JW

  In a documentary TV show which talked about the possibility of a human virgin (specifically the one the Bible calls Mary the mother of Jesus) conceiving a male child and giving birth to him by nonsupernatural means), a doctor (or a scientist) said that females of some nonhuman species conceive and give birth to female offspring without the females having been impregnated by sperm, namely by parthenogenesis (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis and https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/parthenogenesis-how-animals-have-virgin-births ). The person also said that Mary the mother of Jesus (according to the Bible) might have had a Y chromosome along with two X chromosomes, since some women today are XXY. But to some Christians it would make Mary a freak (namely partly male and thus not entirely female) and abnormal if she was XXY in regards to her sex chromosomes, and thus those people don't accept that idea regarding the mother of Jesus.

  Fisherman, some of the topics created by you give me the impression that they are intended to create doubts in Christians regarding Christianity, though you claim to be in agreement with the WT in many matters. But perhaps that impression of mine is incorrect. But, perhaps you are beginning to doubt some claims of biblical Christianity or are at least puzzled by some aspects of biblical Christianity.

  Folks, asking how a virgin human female could conceive a male child (and give birth to him) is similar to asking how the biblical Eve (a woman) could have been fashioned/made from the biblical Adam (a man whom the Bible claims was a virgin at the time).

  Regarding the article at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/parthenogenesis-how-animals-have-virgin-births I notice that it mentions that the "process of meiosis also creates a byproduct: smaller cells called polar bodies, distinct from the fertile egg." A first learned of that several years while reading a part of a chapter in a college biology textbook about human reproduction. It had illustrations of the polar bodies and it said that they all die. I was very disturbed to learn that the human process of creating a human fertilized egg (which can become a viable human baby) also always creates cells which become spontaneously aborted.
  
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  11

  slimboyfat & blondie made news on newshub.com

  by LevelThePlayingField in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i know, how do i find this stuff, right?

  the article is long, so just do a ctrl-f then type in your name... also jehovahs-witness.com mentioned in this article.

  "theocratic warfare" is a contentious theological doctrine of the jehovah's witness (jw) movement in christianity.. .

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  Disillusioned JW

  Regarding the list of 10 questions Vanderhoven7 lists in regards to Jehovah's Witnesses that is probably the case of most Jehovah's Witnesses if they were to answer the questions to someone else with the responses stated by Vanderhoven7. However, if a person silently answers the questions to himself/herself with the same response (NO to some of questions 1-5 and/or yes to some of questions 6-10) the person would likely be telling the truth to herself/himself. Such JW people would have a higher likelihood of leaving the religion (at least unofficially) than those who answer the other way. There are likely a considerable percentage of that type of JW people who are not mentally out (except to a small extent).
  

  For example, much of the time when I was a JW I thought that the WT position regarding the celebration of birthdays had very weak (if any) scriptural support. I also don't think I thought of non-JW religions as being Satanic though I knew the WT characterized them that way. That might have been partly because I saw no evidence of the existence of Satan and demons. Because I saw no evidence of their existence in my life I had thoughts of considerable doubt about their existence, when I read claims of them allegedly doing things in our day. I saw no evidence of their existence because they (if they hypothetically existed) seemed to have no effect upon humans in our day nor upon the rest of the natural world in our day, as far as I could personally see or otherwise detect. For example, even when I was an active JW, even while a ministerial servant, witchcraft (in regards to having real magical powers) very strongly seemed to me seemed to be nonexistent and thus it was very hard for me to believe the WT's claims of it existing in our day.
  

  During the period of time when I was an inactive JW (but still identifying as a JW) I came to conclude that the WT's position of blood transfusions is wrong.

  During much of the time I was a JW ministerial servant I doubted some the WT's teachings and even disagreed with some WT teachings, though I knew that the WT condemned such.For example I thought the WT was wrong in their claim of biorhythms being false and of the occult. While I a JW (both when active and later when active) I kept those thoughts to myself (in order to avoid getting expelled from the religion and shunned). While I was an active JW (even very shortly after I was baptized) I was disturbed by the WT's policy of shunning disassociated ones, especially considering that I had some doubts about the religion and some secret disagreements about the religion. While I was an inactive JW (and later an independent Christian) I still believed in God and the Bible, though I no longer had confidence in the WT leadership, but I had a number of doubts about God and the Bible.

  During time I was an active JW (except possibly during the last five years of such) I believed that Jehovah God was going to destroy all religions, other than the JW religion, including the churches of Christendom along with their clergy and supporters (except possibly for a tiny percentage of people). I thought such since to me back then I thought that the Bible taught such.
  
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  11

  slimboyfat & blondie made news on newshub.com

  by LevelThePlayingField in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i know, how do i find this stuff, right?

  the article is long, so just do a ctrl-f then type in your name... also jehovahs-witness.com mentioned in this article.

  "theocratic warfare" is a contentious theological doctrine of the jehovah's witness (jw) movement in christianity.. .

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  Disillusioned JW

  The WT is telling a half-truth when saying 'that shunning does not exist within JW families, that their relationships “remain the same” with the exception of “spiritual matters" '. It is true in the case of the disassociated/disfellowshipped ones who are living in the same household as their JW family. An example is that is with husband and wife where one is a JW and one is an ex-JW.. Ex-JW children of age 18 or higher however might be forced to leave their parent's home and if they do leave they run the risk of being shunned by the JW family members. Likewise if the ex-JW leaves the parent's home for some other reason, such as voluntarily leaving, the ex-JW runs the risk of being shunned by the JW family members.
  
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  12

  Does Religion have any place in the modern world?

  by Fisherman in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ceremoneys, costumes, spending time in church listenning the same thing again and again, forced to believe in things that cannot be proven.

  code or mindset that seperates you from others, wars, violence,....

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  Disillusioned JW

  The good which some religions do (such as promoting sensible moral values and by helping the needy) could also be dome by purely secular organizations, however without organized religion it probably would be much harder to unite people into having a common set of values in a non-totalitarian way. It would probably also be hard to create secular institutions which would have enough power to effectively resist tyranny and organized evil.

  Democracies are fragile. The January 6, 2021 attack at and on the USA Capitol, and the collapse of a number of Democratic Republics around the world show that. Hopefully a lasting secular solution will created which will enable human society to flourish without the existence of organized religion.
  
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  71

  Will Jesus EVER return?

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  for thousands of years the christian hope has been the return of jesus.

  the nt unambiguiously teaches the return of jesus.

  will jesus ever return in a manner percivable to the senses?

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  Disillusioned JW

  Did Jesus ever leave? Technically from a scientific naturalist point of view Jesus never left Earth, instead he died and remained dead (and his remains decayed). Therefore since he never left (in that naturalistic technical sense) it is technically nonsensical to answer the question by saying he will return or by saying he will not return, since it is impossible for one to return from a place which one never left. Jesus will remain dead.

  It is like asking if Santa Claus will return from the North Pole on Christmas day of this year - or of any future year - since Santa Claus never existed, accept as a purely imaginary being.