kepler
JoinedTopics Started by kepler
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17
A Saturday Knock on the Door & the JWN Forum
by kepler inthis is, of course, a recurrent topic that's made possible whenever a kingdom hall decides to march out on your neighborhood and street.. today it happened again in my neighborhood as a drum up for the memorial observance scheduled for monday the 14th of april.. why christ's passion and death should be observed on a monday of holy week i failed to ask this morning.
perhaps someone else might like to volunteer, but it seemed just another reason to be sceptical about the whole thing, though hardly ranking with changing ancient chronologies to get jerusalem's temple destruction 2520 years before 1914.. anyway two gentlemen in white shirts and ties greeted me politely enough at my door and presented me with a flyer about an event which they described as momentous.
they asked me if i had ever intended one and i assented.
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5
Sherlock Holmes predicted WWII - I saw it in a film
by kepler init was either "hound of the baskervilles" or "adventures of sherlock holmes" where sherlock himself, played by basil rathbone, after wrapping up the case with dr. watson and friends turned to the audience in the theater and urged them to fight on against the threat that menaced europe, the empire and the blessed isles alluding to hitler and mussolini.. since sherlock holmes lived in victorian times this must have been a revelation from god.. no doubt about it.
there is no other way that this could have happened.
and sherlock holmes wrote the story himself.. we studied sherlock holmes short stories attributed to arthur conan doyle in english class.
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2
19 November 1863 - 150 Years Ago Today - A Different Point of View
by kepler infrom the standpoint of funeral orations, my school's literature department had to wait nearly 2500 years for the next great oration after that of pericles.
it's a short speech that has generated many more words of philosophical interpretation, even re-molded a country that was being torn apart.
never mind that it is about someone's particular country.
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2
Caveat Lector: Jerome's of the Vulgate's Caution on Daniel
by kepler inrecently, started reading gibbon's decline and fall of the roman empire.
i discovered that the printed versions i had access to were abridged, but the entire book is available on line in pdf or more detailed forms.
one reason it is worth reading chapter by chapter is that abridements seem to convey different messages.
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7
Roots and geometries in Revelations
by kepler inseveral days ago while driving across town in the car, it came in conversation that the new jerusalem was perfect cube.. also, according to my source, the measure of city's dimension was quite significant of itself.. since beltway traffic was heavy and i was in the midst of exiting to an even more congested side road, i let most of those assertions ride.
but i made a mental note to look up and read the specifics of revelations chapter 21. from previous readings and commentaries, i was already a sceptic about whether john of the gospel was the same author of the epistles and this final book.
if i looked at words and concepts in the gospel and revelations, i am inclined to think that john patmos was a wholly new influence on the course of the overall biblical book: someone accused of a less polished greek, pre-occupied with swords, harlots, the number seven and the the number 12, wings and mouths, codes and symbols for sure.. 21:1 - "then i saw a new heaven and a new earth...".
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3
Luke 24:44, the canon and its distortion
by kepler inelsewhere on this forum in some wide ranging discussion there was the question of who had originally written the pentateuch and job.
there are some who would say that the first five books of the bible ( and even job) were written by moses; and then over the passage of centuries, more and more arguments were cited for other origins for these books.
perhaps coincidentally i ran across book about mideast archeology ( the ancient city of ebla) which in the course of providing background gave an overview of this and similar biblical controversies.. the authors examined the arguments (pro) for moses having written the penteteuch citing versus in the the ot and nt:.
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39
Josephus in "the Jewish War" remarks on the nature of eternal life
by kepler inthere is a corresponding topic on science and the immortal soul that reminded me of something that i had encountered in the 7th chapter of josephus's history of the roman campaigns in judea, "the jewish war".
one version of this is available in penguin classics, for example.
"among the jews are three schools of thought, whose adherents are called pharisees, sadducees and essenes respectively...".
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27
Beside reading Thucydides the author of Daniel read Herodotus
by kepler inover a year ago, i engaged in a discussion on a similar topic.
it was titled, "has anyone read thucydides beside the author of daniel?".
since my annotated new jerusalem bible mentions a number of reasons why the text was probably written largely in the 2nd century bce to address events happening in that period ( the seleucid occupation and desecration of the temple), i was aware of a number of arguments for the case.
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29
Even after reading Crisis of Conscience, one thing (at least) still puzzled me
by kepler init was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.
all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.
when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.
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9
Actions against the Bible: Galileo - Citations and Anatomy of an Old Case
by kepler infrequently in discussions on this forum or off, one is faced with confronting an assertion of a biblical text.
in many recent topics, this has been a matter of a prophet or writer of the old testament asserting that an ancient city or even a nation met its demise or had been desolated for 70 or 40 years.
since such assertions appeared in holy writ, it is argued by some, "then that settles it.