The myths of the Jews, hmmm.
So because I’m Jewish, I’ve been “dumb-downed”? So that would mean that Jews are “a population of ignorants.”
That’s anti-Semitism. That’s more than just being offensive.
I believe this is my cue to leave, ladies and gentlemen. That has crossed the line.
An ideology that tells an individual to go out of their way to tell others that something about them offends you...hmmm...that's sounds like bigotry to me.
A "bigot" is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one who exhibits intolerance or animosity toward members of a group.
It's the general lack of intolerance that endears me to many of my atheist friends. Thus I find it offensive to my reasoning that a bigot would hide his prejudice under the label "atheist" or whatever such a person who is intolerant of another's convictions calls themself. Being non-religious doesn't automatically include going about, person-to-person, in an attempt to tells others how much you dislike their personal convictions.
I find prejudice, bigotry, and intolerance very disturbing. If we were an ex-JW, and we are still this way (yes, bigotry is a predominant earmark of the Jehovah's Witness), then we've only abandoned the doctrine and not the judgmental attitude of the JW and the members of the Governing Body. And with bigotry in place, what is there to differentiate you from the JW? Don't they change their doctrine all the time but keep the attitude as well?
I've said it before and I will say it again: Neither religion or atheism bring evil on the world. Humans bring evil on the world, and due to our cowardice we blame our philosophy or ideology (or the other person's--never our own, banish the thought!) instead of taking responsibility for being the real culprit who is ruining everything.
i was reading the incredibly fascinating posts on the "something i heard from our lord" topic, and noticed something that piqued my curiousity.
the jws always say that eve wasn't really guilty of wrongdoing, but rather adam.
after eating from the tree, adam became like god, knowing good and evil.
Another possible way to look at the Genesis story is the way non-JW and non-Fundamentalists interpret it.
First, according to this school of thought, the story is not explaining how sin came about. It is not about the historical origin of humanity. The story is a theological lesson explaining the human tendency to throw God out of the picture and what ends up happening as a result.
To mainstream scholars (including ancient early Church fathers and some schools of Jewish thought) the narrative is telling us that Jews believed that humans have exchanged God's knowledge on matters for deciding for ourselves what is good and what is bad. In other words, the story paints humans with a significant trait: we claim to have the ability to decide for ourselves what is objectively good and what is objectively bad as if we were God himself.
According to this theology, Adam and Eve-or all of humanity-can know what is truly good and what isn't if they accept guidance from the Creator. The narrative isn't saying that Adam didn't know the difference between the two, because the story relies on both humans knowing God's ordinance regarding the tree in question and its fruit. Eve even quotes the law of God for the serpent when asked, demonstrating that she knows the difference between what should be done and what shouldn't (what is good and what is evil). So obviously the idea that the story is saying that Adam didn't know good from bad is an incorrect conclusion since it doesn't explain why the serpent would question the humans about what was right and wrong. (Why would the Devil ask Adam and Eve a question about what was right regarding the trees and their fruit if they didn't know?)
Also the story has Adam and Eve claiming to be "naked." This is a decision made by the humans, not by God. God does not claim they are naked. In fact, God asks Adam where he got the idea that he was naked. "Who told you that you were naked?" The question is not: "Who shared this secret about being naked that I was keeping from you." The question is: "Where on earth would you get the idea that you were naked?"
This, mainstream theologians teach, is a theological reference to shame. Recall that the story of creation has God making man and woman in God's image, but later Adam is ashamed of this image, calling its complete presentation ‘nudity,' meaning that he is ashamed of himself, believing his form is lacking something or that he should be ashamed of one part or another or all of it. There was nothing incomplete about humanity in that we are created in the image of God and thus have no reason to be ashamed. The shame comes from the fact that Adam and Eve came to realize they didn't measure up. That their "eyes came to be opened" is not meaning they are coming to the realization of the truth. As the Israelites made Moses cover his face when it began to reflect God's glory, Adam and Eve cannot look up this "reflection" either because of their shame for doing what they knew was wrong. In fact God kindly makes clothes of skins for them in the same way as Moses obliged the Isrealites who feared the glorfy that came from his face. (Note, this "skin" or flesh clothing due to sin is allegory and gets removed in spiritual circumcision by the Spirit as referred to in Romans 2:22-29.)
According to this interpretation there is no knowledge in any fruit on a tree or lack of knowledge about evil on the part of Adam or Eve. It is a religious tale explaining what humans are, not how we literally got this way.
As for the word "know" in Hebrew. It has various meanings. It can mean sexual intercourse or it can mean to learn about a person. It doesn't have one meaning all across the board. Context decides whether a sexual act is meant or mere communication and interchange is being discussed.
If the mainstream exegesis is correct, this would mean that Adam did understand the differences between what is right and wrong. "Knowing good and evil" is Hebrew idiom for "communicating or teaching what is right and wrong." According to non-JW Judeo-Christian theology, only God can truly teach what is right and wrong because only God owns this knowledge, as humans don't seem to do this very well when left to their own devices, as history shows (and which is the point of the theological narrative in question).
recently, baltar447 posted a copy of this awake article: g9110/8pp.4-6thesecretwoundsofchildabuse in this thread:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/child-abuse/228286/1/help-needed-to-locate-two-old-awake-articles.
third subheading down it says:.
The text of Proverbs 22:6, as rendered in English by Jewish scholars:
Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it.
Now the text does not say that whatever a child learns will keep them from turning aside from their training as an adult. We might get that from this verse if we don’t understand Hebrew idiom.
The text says that a child should be ‘trained…according to his way.’ In Hebrew the text reads more like: ‘Initiate a consecration program for a child with regard to the child’s disposition. When the child becomes an adult, things will be second nature for him.’
Hebrew is extremely terse, and word-for-word translations like the one above or the NWT don’t capture terse Hebrew expression well. Word-for-word is a bad rendition practice at times because one word in Hebrew is usually compacted with meaning.
The text is also to be read in the context of the rest of the book of Proverbs, and therefore raising a child in the “fear of G_d” or according to a consecrated life dedicated to HaShem is what is meant. If a parent does this training “according to his [meaning the child’s] way,” it will be second nature to the adult on how to handle matters in the fear of HaShem.
This is not an axiom, however. The text is not saying it is impossible for the child to fail or fall away as an adult. The text is a warning that not all ways of education will ensure a child’s success as an adult. The text is about being sure to train “according to [the child’s] way,” with consideration for their unique disposition. If one fails to take this into consideration, it will be difficult for the child to stay faithful as an adult when trail befalls them.
if i may ask, for those on this site, who still believe in a god in their own way... why do you still believe in a god?.
since every thing in the bible can be shot down with reason, why would you still believe in a god?.
While the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that belief in God is based on the Bible, that is not true of Jews or other Christians.
There was no “Bible” when the Jewish religion was founded. The sacred texts of my people weren’t in their present form until about the 3 rd century BCE. By this time Judaism had been on the earthly scene for millennia, believing in a God who was not based on a Bible that had yet to exist.
Christianity had no New Testament nor any gospel texts when it began. It wouldn’t be until circa 70 CE that the Gospel of Mark would be written. By the time the Christians verified the 27 books chosen by Eusebius and Athanasius, the Church existed for 1500 years without a canonized Bible to teach them anything about God.
Where did the Jews get their information about God before the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh was written?
Where did the Christians get their beliefs about God without a New Testament and from where did the apostolic college get its views on God before Mark put pen to paper in 70 CE?
Let’s say you’re a parent, and you have a child who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. There is no cure for your child's illness and medical science is nowhere close to finding one. Do you just throw your hands up in the air and watch your child die?
Now let’s say you’ve lost your job as a worker in an automobile plant. The town you live in is in the heart of the United States of America. The town’s entire existence was built on the car industry. Suddenly the company that all the states in the surrounding area depended on for jobs has gone under due to the world’s failing economy. What are the mathematical odds of you getting a job since each person for hundreds and hundreds of miles is now in the same boat you are? Why even try to find employment since the odds are against you?
If you were lost in a desert and didn’t know exactly where you were, wouldn’t you try to survive? If someone sneaked into your home at night and you woke up to them smothering you with a pillow while another person held a gun to your head telling you to accept your fate and not fight, would you really not try and fight?
The answer to these questions is that we would not accept our fate in such circumstances. Despite having no evidence that our child would be cured or that we could find a job, that we could realistically expect to get out of the desert or win a battle for our life where the odds were definitely against us, we fly in the face of reason to preserve life, to live, to persevere, to succeed, to win.
And we do such things despite the odds, despite the fact and truth that things look hopeless, and we proceed even though there is no evidence that we can make it, right? And this happens to us whether we are atheist or theist, true?
So is it wrong or incorrect to believe and hope in that for which we have no evidence or goes beyond reason?
We all believe in things and act when there is no real evidence to do so. We do it because we hope in something better. Our actions may go beyond reason, our hope may have no empirical evidence that can be examined or touched or seen, but we don’t let that stop us. And we benefit from making that choice, don't we?
Each of have been in similar circumstances or will soon be—and such circumstances will come up more than once in your life, I am sure of it. And each and every one of us will hope and act and believe beyond reason and without empirical evidence in certain circumstances, in fact we may owe our greatest victories in life due to the fact that we didn’t give up when it was beyond all hope.
It’s a falsehood that it’s foolish to believe in what you cannot see or touch or examine, to hope in that which has no empirical evidence to prove a reason for our faith. We all do it. We’ve all done it, and we’re all to do it again.
People who debate that this is a reason that God cannot be believed in might as well drink the Kool-Aid that the Watchtower offers. God doesn’t exist because we believe in God. God doesn’t exist because of what’s written in a book. God is greater than what's written about Him in the Scriptures. But that's just an argument people use because they don't want to admit they don't want to believe in God. They claim they have no choice because there is no emprical evidence or that it goes beyond reason to do so. They blame it on the the "result of intelligence," when in reality they don't like God and don't want to.
And again, no matter what anyone says, you would indeed fight for your child’s life and your own, even if the odds were against you and there was no evidence for hope. Everyone believes in something that can't be proven by science, reason, or evidence. Prove that it's wrong to do so.
a while ago i read a book called the end of biblical studies by evangelical turned sceptical academic hector avalos.
i thought it was really interesting perhaps because it mirrors some of the stages i went through as regards how i viewed the bible as i was leaving the witnesses.
at first i still believed the bible was inspired by god but learned to use different methods to interpret it than witness eisegesis.
Being an exJW, even claiming to be atheist or having no belief in the Bible doesn't mean we are free of the Governing Body's influence.
Our former association with the Jehovah’s Witnesses can cause our ability to use logic to grow somewhat numb. If we leave that religion believing in certain objectives that the Governing Body claimed were true, even if we left believing that their religion is wrong, this can cause us to come to very incorrect conclusions.
To illustrate: if we reject God and/or the Bible because of what the Witnesses have taught us, we are only rejecting the concepts taught by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. We may accidentally take it on faith that whatever the Governing Body published about other religions and their beliefs were accurate (maybe because of their quoting something from another group in a sentence or blurb) and thus we may not bother to examine such claims about other belief system to see if they hold up under test. If we don’t thoroughly test these things we could be an ill-equipped atheist or theist (it works both ways). How? What we reject (or accept) about God and what we think about the Bible may only be JW concepts—and these aren’t anything like Judeo-Christian concepts.
The belief that the Bible is a “map” to God is not really the way Christians or Jews view the Scriptures. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The Christian faith is not a 'religion of the book.' Christianity is the religion of the 'Word' of God, a word which is 'not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living.'"--CCC 108
This is a good way to test if you are still seeing things under the influence of Watchtower definitions or not. Do you fully understand what Catholics mean in that statement from their official book of doctrine? If we read it using the understanding that the Governing Body wants us to have, we might be a bit confused at first blush. The sentence may even seem contradictory to the Jehovah’s Witness: on one hand Catholics say that their faith in not based on the Bible but then they claim that theirs is “the religion of the ‘Word’ of God.”
If you understand theology and religion without Governing Body influence—and you can be an atheist and still be very well studied about these things—the sentence makes complete sense. You might even be able to paraphrase the sentence to mean: “Christianity is not a religion based on the Bible, it’s based on a Person, Jesus Christ, the Word that was ‘with God’ according to John 1:1—and not on the Word of God in the sense of the written inspired text.” That's what that sentence from the CCC means.
How well did you do when you read it?
That sentence is not a unique dogma of Roman Catholics. It is actually the creed of practically all Christians, Protestants as well. They believe their religion is true because they believe the testimony of the apostles—or as Christians say, “our faith is apostolic.” The Bible isn’t the sole or even main reason Christians believe in God. While it is considered to inspired of God, it is only part of God's revelation to humankind.
The book The End of Biblical Studies was written by an ex-Evangelical Fundamentalist. LIke them, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that everything about God hinges on the Bible, and on the Bible alone. For them the requisite for salvation is not belief in Christ the Person, but belief in Christ as written down in the words of Scripture AND as interpreted by their religion. Instead of claiming that their religion is true because it is apostolic, these claim that the Bible is without error of any type—they have to because they make no claim to being historically connected to the apostolic college.
Therefore the conclusions of The End of Biblical Studies, while great for talking to those like the JWs, offers nothing effective to destroy the faith of Christians in general. These arguments don't affect their doctrines because their belief in Christ didn't originate from a book. It came from the mouth of the Apostles and the witness of the Church Fathers that followed. The apostolic college existed before there was an official Bible, before any of the books of the New Testament were even written. The Bible, while an important element of the deposit of faith, is not the basis for that faith. The Bible didn’t have to exist for there to be a Church. As Sulla is trying to explain, without the Church there would be no Bible.
It’s similar for my people’s religion, Judaism. My forefather, Abraham, did not get his religion from reading Torah (the first five books of the Bible). My forefather got his religion from God himself. Moses didn’t get Torah from Exodus. Moses got Torah from God through the conduit of angels. The religion of my people is not a religion based on a book, like that of the Witnesses. Judaism comes from God’s self-revelation, from the theophany of my forbearers Abraham and Moses. The Scriptures were not essential to the creation of the Jewish religion, instead they are a product of it.
Therefore this “the Bible isn’t what people claim it is” argument is moot. So what? My religion isn’t based on a book. That’s a really stupid concept if you think about it for how can Judaism be based on the Bible if there wouldn't be a Bible without Judaism first? Religion based on a book and nothing else is the religion of fools!
And who wants to waste their time debating the concepts of fools?
It is not “Christian language” we are speaking of. The cross used by Romans was not pagan. That is a mistake made by the uneducated. And it matters whether or not the story about Jesus of Nazareth is true or not.
As I've mentioned many times before (and have grown tired of saying--I'm sure some are tired of reading this too, but it really works into what I'm saying here) I’m a Jew. I'm not trying to advocate the worship of any object or shape by what I'm writing here. Many of my people (people in my actually family line) suffered not only at the hands of Catholic inquisitors during the infamous Spanish Inquisition (my family lived in Portugal and Spain during this period), we also suffered during the Roman rule of our Land.
Our own Jewish history testifies to the use of the cross to kill many of my people. It was not a language invention of Christians but a real torture device devised by and used of the Roman government.
If the New Testament never existed, you would still have Jewish records along with the physical evidence from Roman history and archaeology proving that the Romans crucified on crosses, not upright stakes. Stating that objects that looked like crosses were worshiped by heathens doesn’t change the fact that Romans used crosses not upright stakes to torture criminals as a means of capital punishment.
The Jewish Encyclopedia, as a matter of fact, shows that crucifixion, not impalement, was used by the Romans.(http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4782-crucifixion) Are you claiming that our language, Hebrew, was changed by “Christian language” just so we Jews could get Christians to worship a cross? Why would Jews promote the worship of idols? Wouldn’t that be sinning against God?
And what of the physical evidence for literal crosses that exists? How did “Christian language” produce these ancient artifacts and twist human remains over 2,000 years old to look as if they were put on a cross in order to keep up this “hoax” caused by “Christian language”?
For the sake of argument, let’s say that the “Jesus being crucified” thing never happened. Romans still used the cross. My people were still crucified on crosses, not stakes, and etymology is still correct when it explains—as redvip2000 points out—that the common Greek of the first century meant two-beamed cross whenever “stauros” was used.
I’m not denying that people worship crosses or that some heathens used similar objects. What I am saying is that this has more to do than just with the instrument described by the Christians in their accounts about Jesus of Nazareth—regardless if one considers it true or false. What is being said is that the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses are twisting reality and offering this as “Kingdom Truth!”
This is the damage the Watchtower does to people. It causes people to be blind to evidence, so blind that they will not believe their eyes, not educate themselves regarding history or etymology, not step into a museum in order to preserve their view. When the educated mind speaks logic, they jump into their “it’s paganism” dance routine. I for one will not let their attempt at evading the empirical evidence on hand (by trying to draw our attention away to their pathetic-excuse at entertainment) from discussing the fact that they are academically incorrect and in the objective sense wrong about what they teach. It does matter—not because I’m trying to advocate Christianity, but because I’m trying to show they are screwing with language, history, and the archaeological record itself by their silly reasoning.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the human mind under the influence of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses: capable of denying empirical evidence! Behold how they offer a dance regarding paganism when they should be offering proof (because they cannot argue against empirical evidence). Truly I say to you, there is nothing like it anywhere in the entire universe!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrtvycqmsey&feature=colike.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrtvycqmsey&feature=colike.
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"So, does Jehovah have a prophet to help them, to warn them of dangers and to declare things to come? These questions can be answered in the affirmative. Who is this prophet?...This 'prophet' was not one man, but was a body of men and women. It was the small group of footstep followers of Jesus Christ, known at that time as International Bible Students. Today they are known as Jehovah's Christian witnesses.... Of course, it is easy to say that this group acts as a 'prophet' of God. It is another thing to prove it. The only way that this can be done is to review the record. What does it show? "--" They Shall Know that a Prophet Was Among Them," The Watchtower , April 1, 1972, p. 197.
Any Jehovah's Witness who says that they never claimed to be a prophet is not only incorrect, they are also acting as apostates by denying the above testimony of the Governing Body.
Actually, mynameislame, it matters a whole lot.
The whole Jesus of Nazareth thing aside, what the Jehovah's Witnesses are doing is claiming that crucifixion never--ever existed. They are not merely saying that the translation of "starous" is wrong by Christians (and the rest of the world for that matter). The JWs claim that Roman did not kill people via crosses (the 1984 NWT Reference Edition, in the appendix regarding this subject claims that the crucifixion of Sparticus and his army did not occur, that only upright stakes were used, that the term "crucifxion" even in this historical reference has been changed by Satan the Devil via the Roman Catholic Church). They claim that crucifixion was not a part of history.
Their doctrine is that the Roman Catholic Church invented the whole thing and that an entire part of history--including all the artifacts, secular reports, testimony from Rome itself and etymology--is wrong. They claim that people are reading Latin wrong, and that the true definition of "crux" means "upright pole." It's like those Fundamentalists who claim that fossils were placed in the ground by the Devil---that's totally insane.
It doesn't prove that Jesus is the Messiah or that God exists to know the facts about the cross. You can actually see pieces of crosses and remains of bodies that still have the various nails stuck in trough the bones of those who went through this form of torture (bodies and remains and nails that only fit crucifixion, not single beam impalement). This isn't a subject that is up for opinion or debate or interpretation.
They've got millions of people not only believing what they say but keeping themselves from investigating it for themselves and seeing with their own eyes the evidence that the two-beamed "starous" was the type of device created by Roman. Why, they even got exJWs saying it really doesn't matter much if they control people into thinking this part of history can't be fully proven. It isn't a controversy. It is an objective truth.
An organization that gets millions of people to deny something that can be seen and touched and that there is no question of a doubt is real--that doesn't matter? If you believe it's an opinion that the instrument used by Rome was a cross or just a possibility, then you're either under the spell of the Watchtower or too lazy to go see these artifacts themselves.
Getting millions to deny what is fact in history--what is well known by all--which still lingers to this days thousands of years later, that is very important for people to see. This is one of the greatest and easiest ways to show that this is no ordinary religion or group--there is something very, very wrong with what the Governing Body is doing and the type of control they are exercising over people.
The confusion that lead to members of the Governing Body to making the "stake" dogma in the Jehovah's Witness religion is really a very elementary one.
The original Greek words used in Scripture are indeed "stake" and "tree." They mean nothing else--nothing else in Greek, that is.
Remember, the world that both Jesus and the apostles lived in was controlled not by the Greeks but the Roman Empire. The Romans had conquered the Greeks and taken over their language in addition to territory. While the gospels are written in Greek, the Jews spoke a mishmash form of Hebrew mixed with Aramaic. The Romans spoke Latin. Greek was the language for writing--the "universal" language of text.
The Greeks used to impale victims on an upright stake. Of course the Romans were a bit more advanced (and were not to be outdone by anyone as even the way they tortured people was a matter of state pride). The Romans discovered that by adding two pieces of wood to a stake, namely a cross bar to extend the arms upon and a small shelf on which to slightly support the feet, the agony of being "impaled" could be increased. How so?
On an upright stake, as the Greeks used, people died rather quickly. Greeks had a respect for life not shared by the Romans. They wanted their use of impalement to last long enough to spread fear into others and to lengthen the time one spent alive nailed on the torture device. They also wanted to expose the victim to shame in the process because by lengthening the time spent impaled the victim would have to spend their last days (yes it could last days with the added wood) totally nude before every passerby, forced to urinate and empty their bowels in public this way until they died.
One last thing the added cross-beam and shelf did was create great pressure on the lungs. The Romans actually tested several designs out and found out that by having the arms stretched out to the sides with the legs slightly bent, excruciating weight could be pressed upon the middle of the body, so much so that should the bottom shelf for the feet be removed or the legs broken (which became the Roman's favorite way to do this), this would increase the demand the shift in weight would put on the lungs, causing them to collapse and the victim to expire by drowning in his own bodily fluids (the lungs would fill up with water and blood).
While the Latin term for this was "crux," they never changed the Greek form. In fact, Greek soon lost out to Latin as the language for both speech and the written word.
Not being too keen on history and etymology, the Jehovah's Witnesses gathered they were being "intelligent" by claiming that the word only meant "stake" since that is what the Greek words mean when you look them up in a Greek dictionary.
"That's right, my little pretties, but that ain't what it came to mean once the Romans took over!"
There are also historical accounts, archeological finds which include remains, bodies, and parts of crosses, and the very first illustration of the Jesus on a his "stake" which was drawn by a member of the Roman army--who drew the item as a cross, by the way--all which disprove the superstitions that the Witnesses have thus surrounded the "cross" with (such as its wrong conclusions from Puritan-based witch stories regarding Tau and other gods and worship of the letter T).
It's not a mystery or a controversy. You can see crosses in museums and in books and read about them in secular history from those who were there to witness them and see ancient inscription in stone left by the Romans. If you're not convinced that it was a cross, it's just a temporary left over from the Watchtower that is easily remedied by getting up out of one's chair, away from the Internet, and into a museum or your closest university and asking someone associated with the department of history and the department of archeology.
Leave it to the Witnesses to make perhaps the one spot where there's literal evidence to support something written in the gospel texts--crosses--and to screw that up by denying everything about them.
