Posts by peacefulpete

543

Encouraging scriptures for the day

by Kosonen in

jw
friends

hello my friends,.

here are some encouraging scriptures for the day:.

revelation 21:2 i also saw the holy city, new jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from god and prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.. hebrews 11:10 for he (abraham) was awaiting the city having real foundations, whose designer and builder is god.. revelation 21:24 and the nations will walk by means of its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.. revelation 22:1 and he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out from the throne of god and of the lamb 2 down the middle of its main street (of the holy city).

peacefulpete

The "ha-mashhit" (destroyer/death) was an evolving concept in Judaism. In some contexts it serves as a metaphor for YHWH in a role as destroyer bringer of death. In time it became a quasi-independent character acting as an emanation of God, the malik of death doing His will.

The Question of the killing of the firstborn is a complicated one requiring some hypotheses of the religion's development. It would seem Exodus 22:28 preserves an early requirement to offer the firstborn as a sacrifice. (Ex 13 parenthesis and 34 rewriting of 22 interjects the concept of redeeming not in 22). Numbers 18:16 defines the monetary value of 5 shekels of silver.

As sacrificing the firstborn in practice would be a great hardship, early on or concurrently the firstborn became offerings to the temple priests as labor. This then evolved into the Levites being interpreted as a substitute for the firstborns.

Numb 3:12 I hereby take the Levites from among the Israelites in place of all the firstborn, the first issue of the womb among the Israelites: the Levites shall be Mine.

Alternately, the story of the exodus from Egypt depicts YHWH as killing Egyptian firstborns as a substitute for the lives of the Israelite firstborn that had not been sacrificed as required. He is said to have consecrated (made holy) them by the deaths of the Egyptians. Number 3:13

So, it appears that some mnemic tradition of firstborn human sacrifice or dedication to cultic service inspired alternate explanations for this no longer being required. One solution was a monetary one, YHWH let you redeem your son with silver. Another, the killing of Egyptian firstborn as substitutes, another solution declares this arrangement replaced by the Levites. (Numb 3:12)

Interestingly the writer of this passage of Ezekiel was not a fan of the firstborn rules.

Ezk 20:26,26

I also gave them bad laws,
Laws that were not good
and rules by which they could not live.
When they set aside the first issue of every womb
I defiled them by their very gifts—
that I might render them desolate,
that they might know that I am Yhwh.

41

God cannot lie

by psyco in

the bible does not say that god does not want to lie, but that he cannot lie or it is impossible for god to lie.

.

so, if god cannot lie, for what purpose and why did he create creatures (satan, demons, humans) who can lie?.

peacefulpete

And there is no such thing as a "creative day". The story defines the days as consisting of an 'evening and morning', not millions of 'evenings and mornings'. OTOH if a reader assumes this was a symbolic or metaphoric day, then what else ought we regard as metaphor? The man named "mankind/man" the woman named "mother"? God's tree with forbidden fruit? the wise talking snake? The nakedness?

41

God cannot lie

by psyco in

the bible does not say that god does not want to lie, but that he cannot lie or it is impossible for god to lie.

.

so, if god cannot lie, for what purpose and why did he create creatures (satan, demons, humans) who can lie?.

peacefulpete

Jhine....Your link points out the Hebrew idiom "dying you/they shall die" was often used in the OT. Never in those usages does the expression suggest "eventually" or "gradually" as the writer of the article proposes for Genesis 2. Yes, the "the day" was referring to the day they ate, but it equally refers to the time of death. Elsewise the inclusion of "the day" becomes superfluous.

It is difficult to extrapolate exactly what (J) had in mind but likely his brief narrative was meant to stand alone as a warning tale. The expansions and bridges of later redactors created the continuity issue. Possibly the redactor and later sages were not concerned by this as they had inherited a larger body of tradition that made some explanation possible even obvious. (i.e. God's mercy.)

73

Did God know adam and eve would sin?

by gavindlt in

to all those on this forum, i would love to know what your take on this vital question is..

peacefulpete

I see I made a rather glaring blunder. The Genesis Eden/tree story was J not P. Later intertestamental Zadokite (priestly) obsession with this story led to many expansions and mystical connections.

40

A Modest proposal to solve the 1914 problem

by r51785 in

throughout watchtower history dates have been a problem.

the usual solution for failed prophetic dates has been to kick the can down the road.

this needs to be done with 1914. the generation that will never pass away is now 110 years old and therefore is past its useful life span.

peacefulpete

A simple solution might just be brewing. The protraction of the 'great tribulation' to new lengths could possibly be explained as a step toward 'new light' that we have been in the GT. Why not? In fact, that is closer to the meaning of the Gospels. The 'tribulation' was a descriptor of the events as a whole.

2

Another Messiah in the News

by peacefulpete in

a news item making rounds today regards the famous chabad-lubavitch synagogue in brooklyn.

in short, the leader of the movement/sect was world famous rabbi menachem mendel schneerson.

schneerson passed away in 1994.....or did he?

peacefulpete

A news item making rounds today regards the famous Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Brooklyn. In short, the leader of the movement/sect was world famous Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Schneerson passed away in 1994.....or did he? Prior to his absence a number of the members of the community regarded him as the Messiah and believe he is alive and yet leading the movement. Schneerson himself was ambiguous about the matter.

In this developing story it appears that this group of believers are responsible for a pretty impressive, illegally constructed, tunnel system linking the synagogue with other buildings as a means of expanding the building's capacity, or preparation for something.

How many times must this pattern be repeated?

22

The Meaning of ETC

by titch in

folks: i don't mean to be a "forum grammar policeman", but there is something that i've noticed a few times.

i've noticed that a few---not all---but some, members of the forum who use the abbreviation "ect" when they want to use the abbreviation of "etc.

" for your education today, the term "etc" is the abbreviation for the latin term "et cetera.

peacefulpete

https://www.yuqo.com/what-is-grammar-pedantry-syndrome/#:~:text=There%20are%20some%20studies%20that,unrelated%20anxiety%20toward%20grammatical%20errors.

73

Did God know adam and eve would sin?

by gavindlt in

to all those on this forum, i would love to know what your take on this vital question is..

peacefulpete

If Ford made a car without confidence it was safe, and that resulted in deaths, they would rightly be liable and guilty of negligent homicide.

A god making a world without confidence it was safe makes that god equally responsible. Imaging a god that could have foreseen the suffering but chose not to is guilty of reckless willful homicide.

73

Did God know adam and eve would sin?

by gavindlt in

to all those on this forum, i would love to know what your take on this vital question is..

peacefulpete

Adam and Eve did not sin they 'became like' their creators, i.e. no longer naive. Letting the author explain his very short story leads to a very different conclusion than the countless spins theologians have overlain upon it. Unfortunately, we primarily know of this particular legend only through the voice of one such theologian (P).

Appreciating the literary stages the Genesis composition passed through prevents anyone from being dogmatic about the original purpose the small more ancient elements individually had, prior to being woven together. However in this case the original intent seems to be retained by the "become like one of us, knowing good and bad". IOW, the end of childlike naivety.

The P compiler/redactor, that borrowed this snippet, seems to have in mind the Eden ideal of 'holy place' with it's implied connections to the temple rights that he and his fellows were engaged in. The place seems to be of greater import than the message. Some of this is lost on modern readers as a result of the merging with other traditions in the later centuries BCE.

So what we have is a snippet of metaphor drawn from local cult of the goddess brilliantly commandeered to emphasize the naivety of man in contrast to the creators, preserved in a larger narrative (P) that utilizes it to contrast sacred from profane then later merged with other traditions into a collection, more concerned with preservation of legends, loosely woven into a 'history of man' (R/sages).

14

Did Jesus have a pre-existence or was he fully human, begotten at his human birth.

by gavindlt in

so when was jesus begotten.

was he truly and wholly fully human.

did he exist in two states, part human part god.

peacefulpete

The Christ figure was a pliable icon that dozens of very different sects held as central to their identity and soteriology. They imagined and described him differently. A few of these conceptions became unnaturally collected together through the Catholic process of canonization. Even among this emerging orthodoxy, this artificial collection resulted in endless controversy.

For example:

Anomoeanism - Wikipedia

Homoiousian - Wikipedia

Anomoeanism - Wikipedia

Sabellianism = One and the same substance
Homoousian = Distinct but identical substance
Homoiousian = Similar in substance
Neo-Arianism or heteroousians = Unlike in substance
Homoianism refuses to refer to substance.