Posts by peacefulpete

26

Details of Noah’s Ark

by enigma1863 in

jw magazines have claimed the flood story has so much detail that it couldn’t be just a made up story.. is it detailed?

name one person outside of noah’s family.

name one nephilim.

peacefulpete

Deut 2:10 `The Emim formerly have dwelt in it, a people great, and numerous, and tall, as the Anakim;

11 Rephaim they are reckoned, they also, as the Anakim; and the Moabites call them Emim.

20 `A land of Rephaim it is reckoned, even it; Rephaim dwelt in it formerly, and the Ammonites call them Zamzummim;

The legendary giants went by a number of names. Nephilim, Rephaim, Anakites, Emin and others.

I'll also repeat what I said on another thread, Nimrod was one of the Nephilim, "mighty ones" a child of the gods.

The Flood story (and tower story) interrupts the narrative. The table of 70 nations is itself also an earlier addition.

Of course famously Goliath of Gath is said to be Rephaim and a giant. He is killed in one legend by David in another by Elhanan. Also, Og and Dodo and another giant described only as having 24 toes and fingers.

26

Details of Noah’s Ark

by enigma1863 in

jw magazines have claimed the flood story has so much detail that it couldn’t be just a made up story.. is it detailed?

name one person outside of noah’s family.

name one nephilim.

peacefulpete

Numbers 13:33: "We saw the Nephilim there, as the Anakites come from the Nephilim. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them".

Deuteronomy 1:28 "The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are huge, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there."

16

Article & Documentary on the Divine name

by Blotty in

video documentary and academic article on the divine name:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljpgxsyiqtc&ab_channel=johnwyatthttps://www.academia.edu/14029315/the_name_of_god_y_eh_ow_ah_which_is_pronounced_as_it_is_written_i_eh_ou_ah_simplified_edition?email_work_card=title this does not prove gods name was present in the nt, however some points do lead us to that conclusion simply by process of elimination.

peacefulpete

It's very hard to understand because you and I were raised from youth to feature the Tetragramaton as a key element of utmost importance. The fact that most all Christians don't see it that way seems to JWs like a deficiency on their part. For them it seems JWs are obsessed with a nonissue. For them, they have grown to address God as "Our Father" as the Christian Bible says Jesus taught them to pray. It's only when the topic is framed as a conspiracy does it take on importance, hence the WT's obsession with the topic since the 30's.

For those who study the topic in detail, it becomes clear that YHWH is an artifact, one of the names associated with the God of the Jews for a period of time in history. The name itself, both its true etiology and meaning, were lost to the Jews long ago. Although the hypothesis that it was understood as meaning "passionate, or blow" is quite attractive: A Nearly Forgotten Hypothesis about YHWH

Perhaps Yah/Yahu was the older form as found in the oldest poetry and songs in the OT and Assyrian texts and not an abbreviation as is commonly (but strangely) assumed. If correct, then etymology and etiology discussions should start here.

Perhaps it was a toponym, a name of a place associated with a deity, Beth-yahweh for example, or like it appears in the Egyptian texts as "land of the Shashu of yahu" in Edom. (I favor this one)

Or perhaps that was once part of a liturgical formula such as Du yahwi sabaot (He who creates the heavenly armies) per F.M.Cross, later shortened to Yahweh Sabaot (found hundreds of times in OT) then just Yahweh with the original context lost and free to be reinterpreted.

37

Jw shot and killed in field service!

by nowwhat? in

another example of jehovah protects his people except when he doesn't.

https://www.wifr.com/2023/02/12/rockford-police-54-year-old-man-shot-killed-vehicle/.

peacefulpete

I agree the WT has not made any guarantee of safety, they just relish stories of divine protection. A favorite in our circuit was from an older elder who claimed he was shoved off the porch by angels just before a pot of boiling water was thrown at him.

Scores of passages in the Bible similarly speak of protection and refuge for worshippers while at the same time glorifying the death and suffering of the same. Word salad.

208

How to debunk the 1914 calculus ONLY using JW publications?

by psyco in

i remember having read somewhere, but i cannot find it anymore, that it is possible to debunk the 1914 calculus using only jw publications, like "insight on the scriptures" (chronologies) for example.. do you have any sources about that to suggest to me?.

thanks..

peacefulpete

Why does everyone seem to want to forget Gedaliah? He was a notable Jew who governed Judah and invited the people to live in security and plant crops? If there was a "starting point" for "empty land" it would have to be after his assassination........just saying.

37

Jw shot and killed in field service!

by nowwhat? in

another example of jehovah protects his people except when he doesn't.

https://www.wifr.com/2023/02/12/rockford-police-54-year-old-man-shot-killed-vehicle/.

peacefulpete

Without the perpetrator, we don`t know. Until then. we assume the most likely cause: `religious hatred`.

Not to sound contrary but I'd assume religious hatred to be about the least likely motive. Far more likely a random drive-by shooting or mistaken identity.

64

If death is the result of sin, why do animals die?

by Orgull in

my first week of posts here were very serious and all the wonderful, encouraging replies helped me very much.. so now i want to ask something semi-frivolous.

(actually it's one of the many things that don't make sense to me about "the truth").

why do animals die?.

peacefulpete

So the tree was some new superfruit?

15

Divisions deliberately caused by God?

by LostintheFog1999 in

assuming that you don't dismiss genesis outright as a collection of myths, i was musing about the actions of god as recorded in genesis 11:1-9 regarding the building of the tower of babel.. this origin story for the multiplicity of languages in the earth has god getting annoyed with humans for staying in one location instead of filling out across the whole world.. yahweh could have stopped the tower being built by collapsing it by means of an earthquake, sinking sand, or an extreme gale.

even using an angel to kick it over when everyone was tucked up in bed asleep.

but no, instead he muddles up the vocabulary and grammar and made brand new languages creating division and confusion.. what's more he didn't scatter them and send them off in mixed multicultural groups, but instead he lets them wander off in tribes and family groups.

peacefulpete

Many don't know that building the tower was an open rebellion to God.According to Josephus, Nimrod changed the nature of the government to tyranny under his brutal and evil dictatorship, just as an evil potentate would do, and even more importantly, just as an evil Nephilim potentate would do. Through the brutal and corrupt power of his government, Nimrod imposed his will and state-sponsored.............

This ever so brief pericope of the tower has inspired centuries of addition mythmaking and expansions. Josephus is reciting legends not found in the 9 verses in Genesis. Read the story in situ and you will see none of those colorful associations are in the text. No Nimrod, no rebellion, no arrows into heaven, no pagan idols. These are the embellishments of the intertestamental period and Talmud. The story stood alone as an etiological tale of the origin of languages. In that story the gods foil an effort to become godlike in much the same way they did in the Eden story. It might seem a difficult concept now but this idea is center to many ancient myths wherein the gods withhold something so as to keep humans in their place.

15

Divisions deliberately caused by God?

by LostintheFog1999 in

assuming that you don't dismiss genesis outright as a collection of myths, i was musing about the actions of god as recorded in genesis 11:1-9 regarding the building of the tower of babel.. this origin story for the multiplicity of languages in the earth has god getting annoyed with humans for staying in one location instead of filling out across the whole world.. yahweh could have stopped the tower being built by collapsing it by means of an earthquake, sinking sand, or an extreme gale.

even using an angel to kick it over when everyone was tucked up in bed asleep.

but no, instead he muddles up the vocabulary and grammar and made brand new languages creating division and confusion.. what's more he didn't scatter them and send them off in mixed multicultural groups, but instead he lets them wander off in tribes and family groups.

peacefulpete

Ray .....You have probably heard from others but no, 'Moses' did not write Genesis. It is an anonymous work that was not explicitly claimed to have been written by Moses until the Babylonian Talmud (200CE at the earliest) It is true the "Law" aspects of the Lev. and Deut. had naturally become identified with the Moses character due to his role in that story and over time even the works in general came to be called "Moses" by shorthand, but the claim that Moses wrote Genesis is a very late tradition.

Objective scholarship has suggested the book of Genesis went through stages of compilation and redaction from the 6th to the 3rd centuries BCE. If there was an historical Moses he was long, long dead.

37

Jw shot and killed in field service!

by nowwhat? in

another example of jehovah protects his people except when he doesn't.

https://www.wifr.com/2023/02/12/rockford-police-54-year-old-man-shot-killed-vehicle/.

peacefulpete

When my congo was in the South Bronx a young gal from the church was shot from a roof top while out canvassing. She was hit in the thigh and survived it. We had another guy (stranger) shot in the head right by the church on Sunday morning. I stopped going to that church at that point.

Regarding the quasi-assurance of divine protection, I once brought up the episode where a bunch of JWs starved to death in Africa in a conversation about every missionary's favorite verse, Matt 6:33. I made some angry by suggesting the verse could not mean what we thought it meant.