:sigh:
What you are saying, including the grammarian’s comment, flies in the face of the apostle John’s language (if you are right, there is no purpose in writing “This (one) was in the beginning with God” in the first place); and you are also ignoring the clear point Tolstoy made. When a preposition is used to show relationship X between entity A and entity B, it means entity A and entity B are not one and the same. It should be obvious by this that in Greek as well as in English the word for “god” has more than one meaning.
You would do well to look at the verse–in Hebrew as well as English–Psalm 82:1.
And for the record, the Interlinear version I used, uses the Westcott and Hort text too.
As a friendly adversary, I want to thank the raindog for his presence here & his willingness to contend for his faith. And I want to thank my fellow Dopers for not turning this into a lions den.
A bit OT, here, but I have to say that for this I am grateful. I’m a long-time member of an email list whose members come from a variety of backgrounds and beliefs. Generally religion does not come up, but there is one member who used to be somewhat persistent in discussing her views and justifying them with her “Christian” religion. She also seemed to have little intellectual curiosity, little education, and little knowledge about anything. But she could selectively quote the Bible.
Most of the rest of us really tired of her religion posts, but no one could really argue with her because she’d simply retreat into random scripture. The exception the JW on the list, who could argue with her on her terms. She knew the Bible well, and share information about how various translations shift understanding and meaning. She could argue circles around the annoying one, and we loved her for it.
1.) the quote was not from “a” grammarian, it was quoting what several “eminent” grammarians of the language… it was stating a rule for the translation of the language, without regaurd to theological implications. (I before E if you will)… the quoted greek and translations showed how the rule applied here.
2.) Earlier in the linked article, there is are other quotes from other articles talking about how the WT “mistated” or “misquoted” those scholars in support of this translation. This particular piece nicely illustrates points I have made earlier wrt the WTs intelectual dishonesty, and serves as a basis to start questioning all of thier teachings.
3.) You’re quote, from Tolstoy, appears to already be concerned with the theological implications… so he is already inserting his bias. (I am willing to be corrected on this point…as actually I am willing to be corrected on all points.)
4.) Tolstoy, like the JW, ignore the “preponderance of the evidence” with all other translations, rules, etc to the contrary on this particular subject.
5.) I would counter also with “if he didn’t mean “God”, he would’ve found a different word to use”… I’m sure there was something else available to him.
So, in essence, I’m saying “you clearly don’t get the importance of the quote that I posted”… sort of a “neener neener” to your statement to me.
But therin lies the rub, it cannot be proven conclusivley what the author of this statement intended… it could’ve all been a big joke … it was written 1900 odd years ago, the only copy we have is in pieces and that dates from several hundred years later, and was chosen by the early church fathers to back up how they believed. (and again, was chosen hundreds of years AFTER the events occured by folks that were niether eye-witnesses or even alive during the events.
That, and the author isn’t exactly around to answer questions.
So, any attempt to say that “clearly he did/did not mean this” are at best “guesses”…some educated, some not, but in the end they are still guesses.
As for the translation itself, I will stick with the one that is backed by the preponderance of evidence as to the rules of transalation… let the theoligical implications fall where they may.
And therein lies the proof to my second point wrt the JW… that thier NWT was translated with a bias torward thier theology… they went into the effort knowing what it was they believed… and they found ways to massage the text such that it fit. The translators had no special knowledge of the languages, had no access to any earlier/more complete docs, and have been shown to quote “support” for thier efforts that is disengenous at best.
Not saying they don’t fully believe what they teach, not even saying wether they are right or wrong, simply saying that the evidence is enough to give one reason to question everthing they teach…
**
Cranky**, you have just given me a new perspective. I truly like my JW co-worker, but his confidence in his mastery of the Bible borders on arrogance. We have long conversations about ethics and human relations, but when actual scripture is discussed he practically swaggers. That kind of cockiness is a little offputting, and has none of that Christian humility that I am used to from the more open-minded Christians. He insists that the Bible has absolutely no contradictory information and is applicable to every waking thought and action. Is there a stronger word than absolute? That is his position on scripture.
It appears that your experience has been more enlightening. From now on, when my co-worker takes on that (aggravating) omniscient tone, I will listen more carefully. It is true that witnesses spend hours each week studying the Word- he may have a much better grasp than the average person. My next project will be to try to learn from him instead of looking for contradicitons. Thanks!
I knew a JW couple a bit like that, though I only found out about the abuse after she got rid of him. I thought his insistence on physically abusing his wife in such a way as not to leave marks was just his way of protecting himself.
However, it does seem that the “us against the world”/“don’t fully trust outsiders” attitude can on occasion be twisted into protection for some scary behavior. (Not that it usually is, but it can be.) If no one outside the group has real moral authority, & in fact the major cultural traditions of religion are deemed suspect, then moral authority in general may be questionable; & if the group (locally) is small enough, then the elders may be either manipulable or perverted by their own desires.
Also, in contrast to what someone else has said, I’ve always understood JW’s to believe in the annihilation of the dead. The resurrected are not so much “saved” in the sense of preserved, as they are recreated. (This right here led me to feel no dismay in not following their religion, as I have no need of a future clone of myself.)
As for John 1:1, my personal opinion is that it’s supposed to read that way, because it’s mysticism. And the desire of mysticism to defy logic trumps the desire of the logical to make sense of religious claims. But I gotta say, it was while talking with JW acquaintances that I came to see the whole verse as absurd (& probable nonsense) & that led me to really doubt some of the weird contradictions in the sort of Christianity I was raised with. Namely, is Jesus God or the Son of God? The JW’s, at least, have a clear answer. It’s not necessarily the answer of greatest antiquity, but it’s clarified in their minds. More traditional Xtians don’t have that retreat; doubt & vagueness exist in orthodoxy & tradition (& probably should, though the exact divine place of Jesus is not a good place for it).
JW’s can be awfully pleased with themselves for not falling into the fallacies of “Trinitarians” & the like, but I find the whole thing a bit sad (& a bit funny). Here you have a group that understandably rejects the typical Xtian idea of hell, & desires logic instead of the mystical wackiness of John the Evangelist. But they can’t see to extricate themselves from Xtianity in toto. They reject centuries of Christian tradition, & in fact the Christian church, but they still want to be Christians. It’s an attempt to find a more perfect truth, but directed in large part by preconception & received definitions.
The OP mentioned evolution in passing. I did a survey of creationist literature as part of a grad school project. Surprisingly, the JW literature was the least anti-science and most reasonable of any that I surveyed. I found no outright fabrications, like "Darwin said your grandfather was a monkey"or “There are no transitional fossils.” Instead, their literature seemed to approach scientific findings with respect, and even pointed out that the Bible was not meant as a science text..
They weren’t correct in their conclusions, but I found even the *attempt *to be even handed refreshing, which is more than I could say about the other 98% of the creationist literature I read. It was for this reason that my opinion for JW went up just a notch. The impression that I got was that, at least in this arena, they tried to persuade their flock by means of rationality, rather than fear or falsehood.
I have recently read up on the theological views of JW’s (on the internet, so I may be somewhat misinformed) not only because my best friend and her husband are JW’s but I was curious. What struck me about “the religion” as they called it is that it was dreamed up by a person, and everyone followed that person, and read what the person wrote, and listened to what the *person * said, and bought the bible that the person translated. I was taught to believe that God’s word was writted by God, and he is the Supreme Authority, not a person. I, personally, won’t trust my salvation to a person.
My best friend, whom I have known for 8 years, have fought head to head on many issues, before deciding that we just shouldn’t discuss points about our religions. As a Christian, I know that Romans 10:9 says if I believe in JC I will be saved. Nothing else is required. So I know Renee and I are going to be saved, whether we will be on her earth or in my paradise.
As for the blood issue, I sympathise with the Jehovah’s witnesses, to a degree. They believe that the blood is sacred, the life force or whatever. They cannot donate or receive blood. Kind of like the secular virginity is sacred, although losing your virginity is not a matter of life or death. Maybe that’s not a good comparison, but I empathise with the Mother and Dad of the little babies who believed that their baby was being defiled.
As to Governamt, Renee says that the supreme Law is God’s law, which is a reasonable argument. They follow the “law of the Land” when it coincides with the word of God. They also say thay God (or watchtower) has commanded then to keep a low profile and follow the local laws to a point. They don’t sing the national anthem, or pledge allegiance to anything other than Jehovah.
In my experience, and I am only 27 years old next week, I have found JW to be very pleasant, and nice people,]. I have ventured into their Kingdom Hall, and talked to some of Renee’s friends. I have never been visited by them at my door. I was angry with them for a long time, however, when they found Renee was living with her (now husband) before they married. The religion "disfellowshipped her, and she paid for over 300 EMPTY SEATS at her wedding. They refused to even acknowledge her until she had not only confessed her sin to Jehovah, but proved herself to the fellowship. Now, if I’m correct, God’s word says when He forgives, he forgets, no? But again, these are people that believe that the 144,000 are to be “co-rulers in heaven”, so I guess they can make up their own rules.
I could go on and on about this, but at least Renee’s happy, but has less cake to eat
I’ve even seen a Kingdom Hall that used to be another kind of church building. It had the windows bricked up from the inside.
Someone I know called a Kingdom Hall and asked them why. They said, “Really? NONE of them have windows? I didn’t know that!” Then they said, “We do it for insurance purposes; that may be why other Halls do it, but I don’t know.”
Color me skeptical. I’d love to have my ignorance fought on this point.
This post amuses me enormously. Yes, Virginia, even the Christian scriptures were written by men. Divinely inspired, maybe, but still. And the process of a person selling his book to his followers as THE TRUTH is … really old. Even in the Hindu world, it’s really old, & it kind of defines what *made *the splits between Western religions.
I kind of see EdenDweller’s point. Part of the modern appeal of the Bible is the cryptic nature of its code. Two billion people subscribe to the Christian faith and hold the Bible as the ultimate authority on origins, behavior, and the afterlife- but each will claim to have a slightly different intrepretation based on the elderly translations they have been taught. Most Christians are also instructed to self study- so each individual is encouraged to apply his own personal framework to his concept of the faith.
Compare it to looking at clouds. Gather a crowd of people in the park in 1000 AD and ask them what they see in the clouds. One might say “a pony”, another might say “a castle” and yet another might say “Yeah, I can kinda see that pony.” Every year for another thousand years people continue to observe the clouds in the sky and say “I think it is a pony, or maybe a castle.” (Of course, an atheist will tell you that a cloud is a visible collection of particles of water or ice suspended in the air; but that is neither here nor there.)
And then some random guy named Russell comes to the park in 1870 and says “No, no, no, no, you have it all wrong. The clouds aren’t ponies or castles. The clouds are quite clearly an exact representation of the events leading to the Peloponnesian War, the battles, and the subsequent triumph of Lysander. Everyone else here is wrong and has been seeing clouds in an incorrect manner for 2000 years, so you need to start over. Here is your manual. Thump
After years and years of Jesus inspired humility- that kind of certainty and arrogance is hard to swallow.
When I said meanings of “god,” I referred to the meanings differentiated in English by the capital letter. Imagine the difficulty in German, in which all nouns take the capital! And I won’t even go into the usage in other languages, Greek included. (at the tuime the apostle John write, of course, no miniscule letters were used. Hebrew, of course, has never used them.)
The construction (in the literal rewndering from the Greek “and the Word was toward the god and god was the word” is critical here. In the second phrase the word “god” lacks the definite article (and remember, Greek does not use the indefinite article) and the predicate nonminative comes before the subject of the phrase). I also daresay that Tolstay knew more about the use of prepositions that you do–and so do I.
As for “pieces,” I’ve heard that shtick before, lots of times. We have complete or neardly-complete manuscripts of the New Testament; the oldest manuscript containing the complete Gospel of John is the Vatican Manusctript No. 1209, an uncial Greek manuscript of the 4th Century, considered earlier than the *Codex Sinaiticus * (which apparently lacks parts of the New Testament). It has been catalogued as in the Vatican Libtrary since the late 15th Century; in the nineteenth centrurey the Vatican, which had refused to allow non-Catholic scholars even to look at it, published facsimile copies of it after *Codex Sinaiticus * became prominent.
Furthermore: At one point in Exodus (33:20) God tells Moses “No man may see me and live.” People saw Jesus. John mentioned this too (John 1:18). Draw your own conclusion.
You’re using the same argument that the JW do (the lack of preposition) that has been thouroly debunked by the overwhelming majority of biblical/greek translation scholars… So, the wieght of evidence is against that argument.
I’m also not going to pretend to be superior (" - and so do I", really, c’mon) when there are plenty of scholarly resources out there that make this point over and over again.
I’ll post, yet another, quote that makes the same point as my earlier one:
Other than Tolstoy (and the JW) what other scholarly journals back up that translation of John 1:1? (the “a god” bit, not alternate wording).
You also entirely missed the poiint that I was making… in fact, you backed up one of my points quite nicely. (reguarding the age and dating of the manuscripts in question). That point being, again, that all of the manuscripts we have are 1.) not original and 2.) date from years after they were written.
Lastly, the entire point I was making wrt John 1:1 (in this discussiion) has nothing to do with the theological aspect, and entirely to do with the simple fact that NWT was translated to “fit” the JW theology, by a group of JW “elect” (Members of the Governing Body to be precise, including then President Franz) who had no formal training in translation**, had no special access to anything more “authoritative” (elder documents or manuscripts) and have been dishonest when quoting scholarly support for thier translation of John 1:1. (cited previously).
Dishonest, eh? Golly, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if they sue you for libel! I hope for your sake you have a good lawyer!
As for grammarians, I note that the grammarian Dr. A. T. Robertson, in A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, comments, “The absence of the article here is on purpose and essential to the true idea…‘God’ and ‘love’ are not controvertible terms any more than ‘God’ and Logos’…” p. 768)
As for the claim that the Witnesses deliberately translated John 1:1 in a manner biased toward their own doctrine, there was a translation which rendered the phrase in question “and the Word was a god,” with no connection to the Witnesses. The translation was published in London in 1808.
Similar construction appears in [An American Translation (1901) and Dr. James Moffatt’s translation, in 1935. I doubt that the translator(s) in either case had any connection with the Witnesses or, for that matter, wth Leo Tolstoy.
And I suggest you go back to grammar school and learn what the purpose of prepositions is since from your argument you don’t seem to have grasped it yet. And I don’t believe you when you say there are grammarians who do!
Your discussion of Dr. Robertson confuses me: Are you saying he declares Jesus Christ to be equal to God Almighty, or that they are not equal? Make up your mind.
As someone who, as a very young woman, was baptized a JW but who is no longer in the slightest degree involved with the group, I have no real dog in this fight but there are a couple of questions/points I can take a swing at.
First off, the JW’s don’t “shun.” The correct term is “disfellowshipping.” This might be perceived as hairsplitting, but in fact it isn’t. “Fellowship” is a term specifically denoting a spiritual, religious form of association. When someone is disfellowshipped, it is forbidden to share spiritual activities with them–since about 90% of ALL activities are spiritually oriented in the minds of most JW’s, it then follows that most will not have any contact whatsoever with a disfellowshipped person, even to the point of meeting their eyes or speaking to them in the most tangential way. However, if the disfellowshipped person is a family member, it’s left to the individual consciences of the rest of the family as to how little or much contact they will have. Obviously, it’s impossible for a JW wife to refuse to acknowledge the very existence of her disfellowshipped husband, but she will probably not discuss spiritual matters with him unless he is showing signs of coming around–when these signs are seen and the DF’d one is expressing penitence it’s then allowable for other JW’s (usually elders or other “spiritually strong” types) to begin bible studies with them in order to get their thinking corrected and begin clearing the way for reinstatement.
Some families are very supportive of their DF’d members, some are more than happy to use the DFing as an excuse to emotionally batter–it’s an individual thing. Also, the reason for the DF is important as well, since something lifestyle oriented such as tobacco or marijuana use is fairly easy to establish and the reinstatement is predicated on no longer using the substances in question, whereas other forms of rebellion are harder to prove initially, such as inappropriate sexual behavior (like catching “teh gay”) or apostasy and it’s equally difficult to discern in these cases whether repentance has taken place.
As to the lack of windows in Kingdom Halls, it was widely acknowledged back in the '70s that the reason was that the halls were meant to be refuges from crazy packs of worldly people during Armageddon. I know because I asked the elders and that’s what they said–lots of elders from lots of different congregations, all with the same reason. I asked them how they figured the stick built, wood siding structures would hold up to five gallons of gas and a match in the hands of a determined person out to kill himself some JW’s and was told that god would protect them–so then I asked if god can protect from burning, why can’t he protect from bricks thrown through a window and was curtly advised not to be such a smart ass. Still seemed like a specious reason to me, but there it is. Having been raised a Lutheran and having spent many a beautiful Sunday morning trapped in church gazing longingly out the windows, I suspect it’s more a means of ensuring attention on the meeting.
As for discouraging JW’s from knocking on the door, as much as the colorful methods can feel satisfying they actually feed the incessant need of the group to feel persecuted. Persecution, you see, is a sign that they are indeed different from the worldly and thus superior due to their godliness. Simply saying “I do not wish to be contacted, and I would like you to have this marked on the back of the territory card” is usually sufficient–and might get you pegged as probably DF’d and therefore best not one to be messed about with–it might be catching, don’tcha know.
I must say that my time as a JW did give me a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of the bible which comes in handy to this day in arguments over theology and it never ceases to amaze people that the atheist can quote chapter and verse if necessary in order to point out logical inconsistencies in religious beliefs. Well, the devil can quote scripture, as the good book says…
