Posts by peacefulpete

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

peacefulpete

One, YOM, means a literal day, such as when the sun goes up and then the sun sets. But BEYOM refers to a period of the time...

I was debating whether to discuss that angle, decided not, but glad you did. The point that the authors had individual traditions and emphasis, along with your pointing out that the words YOM and BEYOM are not equal, should end this conversation.

When a Christian writer utilized a story, like the Adam and Eve or Noah stories, he almost certainly did so in the same spirit as the original author, a theological/moral tale.

While not an exact parallel, the Grimms Fairy tales preserved an ancient German moral code of sorts. Characters dramatizing values and traditions. Do some children mistake the stories as real? Sure, but as adults we can appreciate them for what they are.

As an aside, it's my view that the Gospel stories are a continuation of the Jewish/Greek affinity for moral tales and can be appreciated as such.

299

Who told the first lie?

by nicolaou in

this is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?

god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.

in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.

peacefulpete

did you skip the first two chapters of genesis?
notice how the word "day" is used...

If you really take notice, you might see what other readers have since antiquity.

2:4b Starts a second version (J) of the creation story. This one does not use the Sabbath (7 day) week motif but rather simply says God created/ordered the earth and heavens in a day.

The differences do not end there. In the second story, the first living thing God makes is man, then the garden of Eden and plants (no such garden in first version(P)) and then animals which are offered to the man as a partner, but none are found suitable, so then God makes a woman. This is obviously very different from the P version. The P stands for 'Priestly', as this author, unlike J, has a focus on worship (including Sabbath) and Temple functions throughout the Torah.

My point is that the authors had very different schema. One says 7 days one says 1.

Their stories having been collected and laid side by side emphasizes that the compiler recognized their distinctiveness. Do you?

25

Do we have "original" indipendent documents proving that Rutherford was an alcoholic?

by psyco in

i was wondering if you could prove with "original" independent documents that rutherford was an alcoholic.... .

i read penton, but since he is a former jw he could not be considered an independent source.... .

peacefulpete

He abused people, whether he abused his own body is of less concern.

However, relatives and associates described him as fond of women and booze. The Canada branch director, Salter, wrote an open letter to Rutherford in which he detailed having sourced cases of liquor during prohibition. Moyles' open letter of resignation from Bethel asserted Rutherford was responsible for the 'glorification of alcohol" there. Penton interviewed former Bethelites who reported having to assist Rutherford after overdrinking.

Short of police records or a transcription of medical records, not much can be expected as proof of alcoholism.

35

Hey, Regarding the "Resurrection" thing and the WT denial of the Mt 27:51-53 incident...

by FragrantAddendum in

so according to bible.

elisha's bones were there when jehovah resurrected some other dude.

jesus could heal from a distance by power of god.

peacefulpete

The passage did not say the saints were resurrected after Jesus was. Some translators have made it appear so. Some going so far as to use the name. The passage simply said the saints left the graveyard after they were resurrected (raised up).

Theological questions remain: Did all Christians object to the idea of resurrections prior to Jesus? Obviously not, as Jesus himself is credited with a few (unless they were understood as metaphor). Famously the Lukan addition at (7:11-17) story of the son of a widow is clear intertextual 'doublet' of 1 Kings 17 (LXX).

Perhaps the author wanted to make explicit a message of 'new life', possibly in a way similar the 2nd Temple scribes responsible for the Elijah/Elisha raisings. Life after death, perhaps played on the theme of national hope/restoration for the 2nd Temple Jew and baptism/rebirth for the Christian. Again, we have metaphor and word plays cleverly woven into a narrative.

In my mind a theological distinction seems evident between individual raisings from the dead and a mass resurrection as reward for saints as implied by Matt 27. Luke's reuse of 1 Kings but omission of Matt 27:51b-53 suggests he did also.

Regarding John 3:13. This old thread still addresses the question of what the writer may have been intending.

Interestingly, there has not been a consistent view of the Elijah/Elisha cycle stories. As you probably know some Rabbis understood the stories to be 'near death' healings rather than resurrections. Did some early Christians also??

So exactly how the author of the Paulinist Colossians 1 would have interpreted the Elijah story is uncertain. Regardless, "firstborn from dead" clearly had an honorific and/or cultic meaning other than simply being the first to have come back to life.

35

Hey, Regarding the "Resurrection" thing and the WT denial of the Mt 27:51-53 incident...

by FragrantAddendum in

so according to bible.

elisha's bones were there when jehovah resurrected some other dude.

jesus could heal from a distance by power of god.

peacefulpete

Kaleb,....Briefly said, I'd say the phrase, "after his being raised up" is obviously a theologically derived mistranslation. The sentence can equally and much more coherently be translated "after their being raised up".

846 [e]
autou

52 and the graves (meaning the individual graves) were opened, and many bodies of the saints who have fallen asleep, arose,

53 and having come forth out of the graveyard (see: matt 8:28 meaning graveyard) after their resurrection, they went into the holy city, and appeared to many.

But I will say that it was perhaps the often discussed Lukan redactor's affinity with Paulinism that persuade him to skip over the Matthean addition. Who knows.

35

Hey, Regarding the "Resurrection" thing and the WT denial of the Mt 27:51-53 incident...

by FragrantAddendum in

so according to bible.

elisha's bones were there when jehovah resurrected some other dude.

jesus could heal from a distance by power of god.

peacefulpete

ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-18.htm

35

Hey, Regarding the "Resurrection" thing and the WT denial of the Mt 27:51-53 incident...

by FragrantAddendum in

so according to bible.

elisha's bones were there when jehovah resurrected some other dude.

jesus could heal from a distance by power of god.

peacefulpete

The redactor that changed Mark in this passage,(into what is called Matt) is probably expressing his conviction that the return of Jesus was imminent. Like Kaleb said there were expectations that the 'saints' would be resurrected at the end of the age. The earthquake might well have been similarly figured in this way. The later redactor resposible for what is now called Luke, didn't included it, perhaps too many years had passed and he had different expectations. These were word plays, not historical documents. The freeness the redactors felt to make such changes ought to impress that on us.

I feel we need to consider the wide diversity of Jewish views of death and immortality. Volumes have been written on it but for now consider Josephus' review of dominant opinions.:

3. Now, for the Pharisees, .....They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; ....
4. But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies;............
5. The doctrine of the Essens is this: .... They teach the immortality of souls..........

Paul, at least what we have to go on, seems to have vacillated between a future resurrection to a spirit 'body' or an immediate one. Perhaps the immediate concept was rooted in the idea that the judgment was near. It seems a hybrid of ideas, his arguments are confusing to say the least, and may have been the result of a Greek dismissal of the idea of physical resurrection.

13

There is no 1900 year old faithful and discreet slave

by Longlivetherenegades in

now that the long-expected kingdom had become an established reality in heaven, surely its growing interests in the earth after 1919 would not be left in the hands of a novice organization of spiritual babes.

and that proved to be true.

it was the 1900-year-old “faithful and discreet slave,” the old christian congregation, that was entrusted with this precious kingdom service.

peacefulpete

LongLive...I completely agree. My comment was just in response to the implication that religion that changes offers nothing to believe in. As I see it, beliefs should change with increasing understanding of the world and human nature.

In my mind, the ideal religion focuses upon basic human needs, a healthy society, a healthy world. It's probably a mute point in this WT case as the 'beliefs' are all just trivial twists on people-hating sectarian apocalypticism. That's what I meant by the one really meaningful change would be its extent and method of controlling people's lives. Part of that would be ending the isolation producing contempt for society.

13

There is no 1900 year old faithful and discreet slave

by Longlivetherenegades in

now that the long-expected kingdom had become an established reality in heaven, surely its growing interests in the earth after 1919 would not be left in the hands of a novice organization of spiritual babes.

and that proved to be true.

it was the 1900-year-old “faithful and discreet slave,” the old christian congregation, that was entrusted with this precious kingdom service.

peacefulpete

I'm going to take the position that change is healthy for religions, they stay meaningful and practical. Religions that become artifacts of the past produce strange, out of touch followers. They risk becoming parodies of what they meant to people centuries before. They become obstacles rather than facilitators of progress. A fixture rather than a fixer.

The changes in WT doctrine are not the problem, the fact that some of us think it is, suggests the changes have been too slow in coming and people were in love with a fixture, not a vibrant support community.

The real problem with the WT is the extent and methods of control. The one meaningful change toward a healthy religion they could have made was not changed.

Religion should inspire not dictate.

171

Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine

by slimboyfat in

in an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.

this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.

the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.

peacefulpete

Kaleb has made some enlightened comments. For us who grew up to believe that Christianity was originally about correct interpretation of proof texts, it probably sounds gibberish. However, the influence and attraction of Christianity was it's elevated sense of piety, community and comfort. Someone and something to believe in a world of disappointment and despair. The eventual, perhaps inevitable, orthodoxy set boundaries and limits for acceptance into this community as humans tend to do. Written texts carried with them a permanence that for some reduced the dynamic faith into a catechism.

Modern literacy and literalism have spawned divisions anew as the texts themselves were the product of an earlier, less rigorous stage and lend themselves to selective perception.