Posts by peacefulpete

349

Who really is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?

by Godlyman in

if anyone were to come up to you claiming that they are the faithful and discreet slave, how would you go about proving them to be false, based upon scripture?.

estephan.

peacefulpete

It is very interesting that after Jerusalem was destroyed as mentioned in the verses above, the land was not desolate because some Jews remained under a governor named Gedaliah who was ironically assassinated by a man named Ismael. It was after this event that the king of Babylon sent the remaining Jews to Babylon and the land began to be actually desolate.

The empty land myth has been debunked here decades ago. Even the post exile additions of Jeremiah 52 and the contradictory addition in 2 Kings 24:14,16 imagine 4-10,000 exiles. The Jewish Encyclopedia many years ago said:

Furthermore, if it be assumed that the total population of the kingdom of Judah was about 120,000 (the figures should probably be somewhat higher, as the country was at that time more densely populated than it is to-day), about one-fourth of the population (according to II Kings xxiv. 16) or, perhaps more correctly, one-eighth (according to Jer. lii. 28-30) was led captive into Babylonia.

Archaeology confirms that the land was continuously inhabited.

349

Who really is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?

by Godlyman in

if anyone were to come up to you claiming that they are the faithful and discreet slave, how would you go about proving them to be false, based upon scripture?.

estephan.

peacefulpete

Isaiah 23

15 At that time Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, the span of a king’s life. But at the end of these seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the prostitute:

16 “Take up a harp, walk through the city,
you forgotten prostitute;
play the harp well, sing many a song,
so that you will be remembered.”

17 At the end of seventy years, the Lord will deal with Tyre. She will return to her lucrative prostitution and will ply her trade with all the kingdoms on the face of the earth.

Here again the motif of "70" years is understood to mean a lifespan. Take that as you will.

8

Temple Talk

by peacefulpete in

recall the famous charge made against jesus in his trial in the gospel mark: .

“we heard him say, ‘i will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days i will build another, not made with hands.’”.

matt has a shorter version which likely reflects what he saw in his copy of mark *:.

peacefulpete

Fish.... I understand you to be saying the Temple was a metaphor for Jesus' body which was a metaphor for the new Jerusalem which is a metaphor for the church.

8

Temple Talk

by peacefulpete in

recall the famous charge made against jesus in his trial in the gospel mark: .

“we heard him say, ‘i will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days i will build another, not made with hands.’”.

matt has a shorter version which likely reflects what he saw in his copy of mark *:.

peacefulpete

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Gospels-Mark-Performance-Text/dp/0578505312

Phizzy, splitting hairs just to clarify the suggestion by Danila Oder. She follows the suggestion of a number of scholars before in recognizing many elements about G.Mark having relationship to theater. Her proposal is that the play form of what we now call Mark was subsequently summarized into a narrative that retained the 5 act format. This narrative then took on a life of its own so that by 20-30 years later it had been expanded eventually including birth story and incorporated more 'sayings' that were in either oral form or part of the hypothetical Q document.

It is my opinion that Q can be dispensed and follow Goodacre/Farrer reconstruction of (Mark-Matt+Mark-Luke).

349

Who really is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?

by Godlyman in

if anyone were to come up to you claiming that they are the faithful and discreet slave, how would you go about proving them to be false, based upon scripture?.

estephan.

peacefulpete

An advocate does not consider evidence or proof and change his position. He wants to win. You need to convince the Court.

After the hundreds of posts in this thread a reader will make their determination as to who are those guilty of not considering evidence and who are, in contrast, letting the first/second century context and clues provided in text itself interpret the passages.

349

Who really is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?

by Godlyman in

if anyone were to come up to you claiming that they are the faithful and discreet slave, how would you go about proving them to be false, based upon scripture?.

estephan.

peacefulpete

seventy schmeventy.

"Seventy years, the reckoning of it's destruction which He had inscribed, the merciful God Marduke, as soon as his heart had calmed down, reversed the order (of the sign) and ordered it's resettlement after eleven years." Babylonian Inscription of Esarhaddon

In the old thread above I argue that the number 70 was meant and understood by ancient Semitic people as symbolic of a generation and not a literal number. How much bandwidth has been wasted on this pointless argument.

7

Do you Attend University scholarly Lectures

by peacefulpete in

we've been privileged to attend a number of outstanding lectures on a wide range of scientific topics, some by now quite famous researchers.

for example, we attended a caltech discussion/lecture by svante paabo not long after his initial work on neanderthal dna was released and met him after the lecture.

he wasn't a dynamic speaker but a humble man who obviously felt more comfortable in the lab than on the podium.

peacefulpete

We've been privileged to attend a number of outstanding lectures on a wide range of scientific topics, some by now quite famous researchers. For example, we attended a Caltech discussion/lecture by Svante Paabo not long after his initial work on Neanderthal DNA was released and met him after the lecture. He wasn't a dynamic speaker but a humble man who obviously felt more comfortable in the lab than on the podium. He just received the Nobel Prize for that and subsequent work in the field of genetics.

Does anyone have an experience they would like to share?

42

WT Ruining Members' Futures

by HiddlesWife in

what i mean by the title of this thread is what has happened to a relative of mine, one who is really upset about this factor:.

this relative is a distant cousin on my mother's side of the family.

she studied as a child and got baptized at 14 1/2 years old.

peacefulpete

Somehow, despite spending our absolute all, we never felt like we had the respect of the congregations we were part of. Certainly never felt like celebrities. Bethelites were generally unwanted in their congregations, as missionaries we were perceived as outsiders and meddlers, pioneering just meant we didn't want to hold a real job. It was in some measure the suspicions of us that began the process of disenchantment.

We had absolute nothing when returning to America. Lived with her parents for a while, then with mine. Got a $50 junk car and changed the transmission in the driveway. When we finally both left the church we took advantage of Pell grants and nontraditional student aid and never looked back. We invested every penny and lived below our means. We can now 20 years later talk about retirement without panic. Funny thing is we knew of very few others who actually "sought first the Kingdom". Most of the even most JWish seemed to have a long term plan of retirement or career. It was evident we were outliers. Not sure if that represented a change in the church or if we were just unusually credulous.

349

Who really is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?

by Godlyman in

if anyone were to come up to you claiming that they are the faithful and discreet slave, how would you go about proving them to be false, based upon scripture?.

estephan.

peacefulpete

It's maybe odd but I actually enjoy digging in the writings of the Bible far more now. When I was "in" there actually was a self imposed resistance to "disproof. I couldn't enjoy reading anything but literature from the WT, however carefully reading that soon became unsatisfying. Jewish and Christian history is a fascinating study filled with puzzles and complexity once you aren't desperately needing to preserve a statis quo.

41

GB pushed the vax

by Diedsuddenly in

i remember during the pandemic the gb updates got progressively stronger pushing the vaccines .

they even had experiences of some who were reluctant to get them and then due to the gb keep saying fully vaccinated these poor jws went out and got all the catch ups shots and even all the boosters.

i remember someone making a compilation video showing all the gb update clips of the gb pushing the clot shots, even tony morris saying the words ‘go get vaccinated’.

peacefulpete

I'm sure you know, the vaccine like most vaccines doesn't prevent infection. It primes the immune system to respond when infection occurs, but as with everything as complex as a mutating virus and unique biological hosts, it cannot prevent all bad disease responses. It's all a matter of probabilities. Your coworker may have been infected with a new variant before the vaccines were adjusted. It's also possible she was just one of those unfortunate folks whose immune response to the vaccine wasn't robust. Too many unknowns.

Cases like your coworkers ought to to reinforce the need to stay current with boosters and practice good judgment when in crowds, even when vaccinated.