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What's all this "Jehovah" and "Satan" and "perfect" nonsense?
Jehovah? The Personal Name of the Israelite god of the Hebrew Bible was never "Jehovah". As Luminous Thought illustrated in passing, it was almost assuredly "Yahweh". "Jehovah" is a bastardized misunderstanding of how the consonants YHWH were marked with vowels in the Masoretic Text of the Bible.
Methinks the OP is a Jehovah's Witness. Several features of their ideology are there: the use of "Jehovah", "Satan" as the serpent, the idea that Adam was "perfect", and no matter how correct the OP is (and I do agree on this point) - the critique of the later Christian teaching of eternal hellfire, and the whole "Jesus paid the price", and "Jesus is not God" reference. But anyways.
Satan in the Garden of Eden? Well I'll be a monkey's uncle! I can't find a reference that the serpent was anything other than a serpent in the text of Genesis 2-3, and never again in the Hebrew Bible is the serpent even given as much as a second thought - let alone it being understood as the much, much later idea of "Satan". The Hebrew Bible does not know of a Satan = Serpent equation, and even the reference in the Greek New Testament to the devil as that "original serpent" is misunderstood as being literal by most people eager to find an equation they already believe, when it is merely metaphorical. For such an important diabolical figure, you would have thought that the author of Genesis would have been a little clearer. But how could he? When he was writing, the figure of "the satan" had not yet evolved into the figure of the diabolical "Satan".
Perfection of the first man? Again, I fail to see this in the text of Genesis 2-3. Others in this thread have made very good arguments against the perfection of Adam from a logical and theological viewpoint, but in the end it is not even in the text. When other figures such as Noah and Job are said to have been essentially "perfect", it is curious that the author of Genesis 2-3 would once again fail to include such vital information concerning Adam. Just kidding! It's not curious at all! It's just later theological nonsense added on to the story in an attempt to co-opt the clear and plain meaning of the author. Theological high-jacking, one could say. But this is a core teaching of the JWs and they have to believe it. No choice.
Eternal hellfire is bad? Yeh, it's bad. Real bad. I agree with the OP that this concept is not found in the Hebrew Bible or the Greek New Testament, but is a later teaching of the Church. As unjust as Yahweh is (just ask Job), I don't think he would stoop to such a thing. I suppose he could, but it's never clear from the texts we have. Neither is a Heaven for that matter.
Jesus - he got the short end of the stick. Or spear. Or torture stake!! Yeh, he died. But according to the earliest Gospel - Mark - it was for being a rebel against Rome. That happened a lot. People were hung on crosses - not torture stakes - and they died horribly. This was Rome's method of stopping ongoing and future rebellions. Was it some mystic atonement for mankind's sin? If you ask a few ancient Christians, sure, but there would be many that would disagree.
Jesus the God? Yeh, I agree - Jesus was not God. Only later did the hopes and dreams of both the Messiahship and Godhead accrue to him. He would have thought it blasphemy, no doubt. Here was a guy who just wanted to preach about the coming Kingdom of God, and he ends up getting hung up on a cross, turned into a Messiah and then later turned into God himself. What a strange turn of events.
God's Justice. The Book of Job. Of course, the OP understands it as a book about Job's Patience and nothing more. They will fail to see the problems with God's Injustice that it raises. It is not as simple as Lex Talionis.
Okay, I'm done. Carry on. This is probably pointless, as any arguments must pass through a gauntlet of Watchtower-approved answers and any personal input from the OP will be... well, unlikely. I hope the question marks after each topic were sufficiently Watchtower-like to meet your approval.
Jesus promised to keep making his God and Father' name known( John 17:6,26)---he has, through his real teachers---Jehovah-psalm 83:18---Jehovah is English--Yhwh= Hebrew.
The book of Revelation assuredly teaches satan is the original serpent.12:9--20:2) The dragon = satan.
Adam was perfect, until he excercised free will to sin.
Jesus is the Messiah--The one God sent---but not God.
Jesus was sold for a fair price? Right, thanks for correcting my inglorious idea (of calling a vicarious living-human-blood 3-day sacrifice what it is) with another just as inglorious label: selling human life.
A just God? Too bad (for criminals continuing to commit crimes in the street) that our human justice systems don't work like Yahweh's.
perfection can't stop being perfection, that would be an imperfection.
imperfection can only come from imperfection.
when perfection touches imperfection, you get only perfection.
True justice would have been: no plucking eyes, ever. The Problem of Evil is inescapable for apologists defending their ideas of loving powers that procrastinate.
Imperfection comes from the excercising of free will in opposition to Gods will.
Imperfection comes from the excercising of free will in opposition to Gods will.
So in other words, God gave humanity free will merely to have a way for humans to sin and thus be punished. It wasn't given for any other reason - because God actually -does- want little robots, just people who have chosen to be little robots. If you exercise your free will, then you're not doing what God commands and therefore become a sinner.
It is loss of innocence that results from exercising free will in opposition to cultural needs as opposed to individual wants. Part of growing up, hey?
Jesus promised to keep making his God and Father' name known( John 17:6,26)---he has, through his real teachers---Jehovah-psalm 83:18---Jehovah is English--Yhwh= Hebrew.
"Jehovah" is not the English form of "Yahweh". There is no equivalence of the letter "j" with "y" - only in certain Germanic languages. There was never a letter "j" in Hebrew. It a mistaken Anglicized misreading of YHWH. I'm sure you're very familiar with the fact that the name of God ceased to be spoken aloud by pious Jews, and that the habit of substituting the Hebrew term for "My Lord" of "The Name" became commonplace. Until the Masoretic scribes included vowel points to the originally consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, the personal name of God was found merely as YHWH. The Masoretes, to help remind readers not to pronounce the name of God aloud, inserted the vowel points for "My Lord" into the name YHWH - so readers would pronounce Adonay instead. When later translators of the Bible came across this phenomenon, they mistakenly took the vowels of Adonay and literally inserted them into YHWH. So they came up with something like Ye-ho-wah. Because of the habit of transliterating foreign "y" into "j" it became Je-ho-wah, and because of the much, much later Ashkenazic tradition of pronouncing Biblical Hebrew "w" as "v" in all places (not just at the end of a syllable), it became Je-ho-Vah.
This is a huge mistake, and has been known to be incorrect for hundreds of years. It is common knowledge. "Jehovah" is not English. It is an incorrect transliteration of YHWH using the vowel points for Adonay. Look up "Jehovah" in your Insight Into the Scriptures - it will tell you the same thing. Of use Wikipedia.
And as for making his "name" known - YHWH (or "Jehovah") never appears a single time in the Greek New Testament. Ever. Only in your Greek Interlinear does it appear, incorrectly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kjw47
The book of Revelation assuredly teaches satan is the original serpent.12:9--20:2) The dragon = satan.
That is a reference to the "dragon" - the chaos monster that Yahweh fought in various places in the Hebrew Bible. It is not a reference to the "serpent" of the Garden. You think every time a serpent is mentioned, it refers to that serpent? That's... silly.
The great dragon was thrown down,
that ancient serpent,
who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world....
(Revelation 12:9, NRSV)
The other verse makes the same reference that he is an ancient dragon. That is an example of parallelism - when two words are used to parallel each other. One line mentions a dragon, the other line mentions a serpent. It's a common feature of older poetry, and is most likely being employed here.
Regardless, it does not say explicitly (as I pointed out in my earlier post) that it refers to the serpent of the Garden - only that it is ancient. Other ancient "dragons" of chaos appear in the Hebrew Bible as representatives of the Sea, and Sea as a deity to be fought against. In fact, there is a myth that God created the world by subduing the Chaos Monster of the ancient waters. A few examples:
It was you who shattered the Sea with your strength.
who smashed the heads of Tannin,
surging from the sea. (13)
It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan,
who gave him as food
to be gathered by desert tribes. (14)
It was you who released springs and brooks,
it was you who turned primordial rivers into dry land. (15)
Yours is the day and yours the night,
it was you who caused the moon and sun to be. (16)
(Psalm 74:13-16, AB Dahood)
This is a Creation Myth! It was a common Semitic myth found in other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. It appears in the Bible in several places, but is greatly subdued in importance, but still find echoes in Genesis 1 where God must bring order out of the Chaos of the Deep. In fact, Genesis 1 may be a critique of the myth of the Chaos Monster. The author even demythologizes the sun and moon and stars and does not call them by their Hebrew names (which are the names of gods).
THIS - is the "ancient serpent/dragon" that the Apocalyptic text of Revelations is almost certainly referring to. Not some silly snake in the Garden of Eden. Besides, the author of Revelations does not have the power or ability to physically change the meaning that the author of Genesis 2-3 intended. How could he? I think I'll put my trust in the plain words of Scripture in Genesis 2-3, rather than someone reading too much into 2 single verses in Revelations without understanding the important myth of the Chaos Monster.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kjw47
Adam was perfect, until he excercised free will to sin.
You can claim something all you want, but without any evidence it is just wind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kjw47
Jesus is the Messiah--The one God sent---but not God.
I agree that he was not God, but the Messiah? He certainly did not free the Jews from bondage, and he died on a Cross. Of course, this topic has been done to death in other threads.
"Jehovah" is not the English form of "Yahweh". There is no equivalence of the letter "j" with "y" - only in certain Germanic languages. There was never a letter "j" in Hebrew. It a mistaken Anglicized misreading of YHWH. I'm sure you're very familiar with the fact that the name of God ceased to be spoken aloud by pious Jews, and that the habit of substituting the Hebrew term for "My Lord" of "The Name" became commonplace. Until the Masoretic scribes included vowel points to the originally consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, the personal name of God was found merely as YHWH. The Masoretes, to help remind readers not to pronounce the name of God aloud, inserted the vowel points for "My Lord" into the name YHWH - so readers would pronounce Adonay instead. When later translators of the Bible came across this phenomenon, they mistakenly took the vowels of Adonay and literally inserted them into YHWH. So they came up with something like Ye-ho-wah. Because of the habit of transliterating foreign "y" into "j" it became Je-ho-wah, and because of the much, much later Ashkenazic tradition of pronouncing Biblical Hebrew "w" as "v" in all places (not just at the end of a syllable), it became Je-ho-Vah.
This is a huge mistake, and has been known to be incorrect for hundreds of years. It is common knowledge. "Jehovah" is not English. It is an incorrect transliteration of YHWH using the vowel points for Adonay. Look up "Jehovah" in your Insight Into the Scriptures - it will tell you the same thing. Of use Wikipedia.
And as for making his "name" known - YHWH (or "Jehovah") never appears a single time in the Greek New Testament. Ever. Only in your Greek Interlinear does it appear, incorrectly.
That is a reference to the "dragon" - the chaos monster that Yahweh fought in various places in the Hebrew Bible. It is not a reference to the "serpent" of the Garden. You think every time a serpent is mentioned, it refers to that serpent? That's... silly.
The great dragon was thrown down,
that ancient serpent,
who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world....
(Revelation 12:9, NRSV)
The other verse makes the same reference that he is an ancient dragon. That is an example of parallelism - when two words are used to parallel each other. One line mentions a dragon, the other line mentions a serpent. It's a common feature of older poetry, and is most likely being employed here.
Regardless, it does not say explicitly (as I pointed out in my earlier post) that it refers to the serpent of the Garden - only that it is ancient. Other ancient "dragons" of chaos appear in the Hebrew Bible as representatives of the Sea, and Sea as a deity to be fought against. In fact, there is a myth that God created the world by subduing the Chaos Monster of the ancient waters. A few examples:
It was you who shattered the Sea with your strength.
who smashed the heads of Tannin,
surging from the sea. (13)
It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan,
who gave him as food
to be gathered by desert tribes. (14)
It was you who released springs and brooks,
it was you who turned primordial rivers into dry land. (15)
Yours is the day and yours the night,
it was you who caused the moon and sun to be. (16)
(Psalm 74:13-16, AB Dahood)
This is a Creation Myth! It was a common Semitic myth found in other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. It appears in the Bible in several places, but is greatly subdued in importance, but still find echoes in Genesis 1 where God must bring order out of the Chaos of the Deep. In fact, Genesis 1 may be a critique of the myth of the Chaos Monster. The author even demythologizes the sun and moon and stars and does not call them by their Hebrew names (which are the names of gods).
THIS - is the "ancient serpent/dragon" that the Apocalyptic text of Revelations is almost certainly referring to. Not some silly snake in the Garden of Eden. Besides, the author of Revelations does not have the power or ability to physically change the meaning that the author of Genesis 2-3 intended. How could he? I think I'll put my trust in the plain words of Scripture in Genesis 2-3, rather than someone reading too much into 2 single verses in Revelations without understanding the important myth of the Chaos Monster.
You can claim something all you want, but without any evidence it is just wind.
I agree that he was not God, but the Messiah? He certainly did not free the Jews from bondage, and he died on a Cross. Of course, this topic has been done to death in other threads.
Gods kingdom is the cure all for all of creation.
The Jews could have been freed--instead they turned their hearts to hatred, a lowly carpenters son telling them they wrong on certain matters, and gave them opportunity to make corrections, but instead they hated him. I am sure Jesus was taking all the limelight by his powerful works being talked about. Yet not that many listened. Upon Jesus death, the renting of the banner signified this--Matt 23:37-38---they were cut off of being Gods chosen, but God left the door open--they must accept Jesus as the Messiah. So a new religion formed( followers of Jesus)
A lot of truths, died with Jesus, (apostles and Christians( all murdered for being followers of Jesus)---but in the last days, Jesus real teachers return and fulfill this Daniel 12:4) and it has.
Can't rep you, but cracking post, Whoppers. I am most disinclined to spend time on debating mythological stories myself, but would just mention on the 'Serpent lied' thing. In fact it told the truth. Adam would not die and he didn't.
Apologetics says that he did in the end. (1) and the implication is that he was immortal and lost immortality as a punishment for disobeying. Yet, the punishment dished out doesn't say so. Nor does he warn Eve that she will also die as part of her punishment. 3 19 rather suggests that Adam will have a hard life till he returns to the ground he came from - which seems to suggest that was what was in store for him all the time.
That death was his lot from the start is suggested by all other animals dying, as they do now, and they didn't disobey. It is rather a staggering injustice if God punishes Adam by taking away immorality from him 'And all the rest of the animals and plants, too. See what you did? Are you happy now?'
The conclusion is that Adam and wife were NOT immortal from the start and thus the snake (or Lizard, since it originally has legs) told the truth - God lied when he warned that Adam would die if he ate the fruit.
(1) reminds me of a Dad's army episode where Frazer ..hang on, I'll see if it's on you tube... Ah
Can't rep you, but cracking post, Whoppers. I am most disinclined to spend time on debating mythological stories myself, but would just mention on the 'Serpent lied' thing. In fact it told the truth. Adam would not die and he didn't.
Apologetics says that he did in the end. (1) and the implication is that he was immortal and lost immortality as a punishment for disobeying. Yet, the punishment dished out doesn't say so. Nor does he warn Eve that she will also die as part of her punishment. 3 19 rather suggests that Adam will have a hard life till he returns to the ground he came from - which seems to suggest that was what was in store for him all the time.
That death was his lot from the start is suggested by all other animals dying, as they do now, and they didn't disobey. It is rather a staggering injustice if God punishes Adam by taking away immorality from him 'And all the rest of the animals and plants, too. See what you did? Are you happy now?'
The conclusion is that Adam and wife were NOT immortal from the start and thus the snake (or Lizard, since it originally has legs) told the truth - God lied when he warned that Adam would die if he ate the fruit.
(1) reminds me of a Dad's army episode where Frazer ..hang on, I'll see if it's on you tube... Ah
If Yahweh had intended the first humans to be intrinsically immortal in their very being, then there certainly would not have been any need for a Tree of Life. The fact that Yahweh formed the first man out of the dirt already points to a rather earthy role, a role that was supposed to have involved the man taking care of the earthly garden.
YHWH, God, took the human and set him in the garden of Eden,
to work it and to watch it.
(Genesis 2:15, SB Fox)
As Claus Westermann points out,
The formation of humans from mud or clay is probably the most common and most widespread creation motif. It is found in primitive as well as in high cultures. The theme of the formation of humans out of mud or clay is found on almost every page of J.G. Frazer's collection of creation stories. The same is true of the examples given by H. Baumann, The result of the first part of his work is: "The high god in heaven 'shapes' the person. He forms the individual out of clay, splinters of wood, his own blood. . . ." (p. 164). Frazer writes: "Turning now to Africa we find the legend of the creation of humankind out of clay among the Shilluks of the White Nile who ingeniously explain the different complexions of the various races by the differently colored clays out of which they were fashioned"; Tucapacha first made man and woman out of clay. . . .", (Folklore in the Old Testament, pp. 10, 13). One could continue endlessly.
(Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994 English, Orig.German 1974, p. 35)
It is this very origin from mud/clay/dirt that betrays humankinds' inherent limitations as a creaturely creation - forever destined by design to be a flawed, mortal race that so easily returns back to the very malleable substance it was created from so easily. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" as the farewell saying goes.
...and YHWH, God, formed the human, of dust from the soil,
he blew into his nostrils the breath of life
and the human became a living being.
(Genesis 2:7)
Even the creation of humankind in the image of the gods is widespread, as evidenced in one example in the Epic of Gilgamesh during the creation of Enkidu:
The goddess Aruru, she washed her hands,
took a pinch of clay, threw it down in the wild.
In the wild she created Enkidu, the hero,
offspring of silence, knit strong by Ninurta.
(Gilgamesh: Standard Babylonian Version, Tablet I, 105-108, The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian, Translated and with an introduction by Andrew George, Penguin Books, 1999, p. 4)
The point is that the creation of humanity from mud or clay would have been a familiar motif to the early Israelites, as well as the idea that humans were created as an image of a god (possibly akin to an idol of a god - usually made out of clay and which the god would indwell -, rather than just a mere visual representation; perhaps this helps understand the breath of Yahweh dwelling inside humans and causing them to live?).
Apart from their very construction (and the verbs used are definitely verbs used for building things, especially when the first woman was "built" from a piece from the first man's "side/rib" traditionally - though I agree with Ziony Zevit that the piece that Eve was built out of was a baculum. I dare you to look it up, unless you already know what it is - probably being familiar with non-primate skeletons and a certain bone us males are missing where we would expect one to be!!!), reproduction seems to have been a natural expectation of the first humans - what would make us think otherwise? If we had been immortal (the prevue of the gods alone) then the world would quickly have filled up, and there really wouldn't have been any need for reproduction at all in the first place - not to mention sexual organs. Yet, the animals were male and female, as eventually the two humans were.
I'm not going to go into this here in too much detail, but the very existence of the Tree of Life has long been noted by scholars for at least a hundred years to have almost certainly been a later addition. I will again appeal to Westermann when he mentions the work of K. Budde:
Does it [the narrative - Whoppers] deal with one tree of with two? A proper answer can be given only by looking at the narrative as a whole; it is concerned with one tree only. K. Budde has demonstrated this convincingly (we can leave aside the conclusion he draws) and nothing has been advanced yet to refute him. He has shown that there is only one tree in the body of the narrative, 3:2, 3, 5, 11, 12, and that it is qualified in two ways - the tree in the middle of the garden, 3:3, and the forbidden tree, 3:11.
.....The "tree of life" has its roots in an elaboration of a narrative which originally had one thread.
(ibid., p. 212)
The amount of literature devoted to this very subject of the problem of the Tree of Life can lead one down a very deep rabbit hole. I suggest that anyone who is interested start with those verses and try to puzzle out the problem from a critical perspective, just for sh... well, you know. Giggles and stuff. Or - check out Westermann's phenomenal commentary for a very detailed section devoted entirely to it (he spares us an entire monograph on the problem heh heh!).
So taken into consideration, the existence of the Tree of Life in the original form of the story is a big N O. Even in the Epic of Gilgamesh it is made clear that humans were never intended to live forever. The plant that the serpent steals from Gilgamesh was only a plant that would make one young, not a plant of eternal life.
I'm sure I'm missing a few more important things, as usual. I know you, Arequipa, have me covered on some of the most important aspects already!
By the way, there is a VERY, VERY - I repeat - VERY interesting book that came out that I am waiting for my copy of: Adam, Eve, and the Devil: A New Beginning (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014) from Marjo Korpel and Johannes de Moor on a pre-Yahwistic UGARITIC account of a garden, Adam, God and a trickster. Check out the proposal from the website's description at Sheffield Phoenix Press - Display Book:
A number of clay tablets from Ugarit, dating from the late thirteenth century BCE, throw new light, Korpel and de Moor argue, on the background of the first chapters of Genesis and the myth of Adam. In these tablets, El, the creator deity, and his wife Asherah lived in a vineyard or garden on the slopes of Mt Ararat, known in the Bible as the mountain where Noah’s ark came to rest. The first sinner was not a human being, but an evil god called Horon who wanted to depose El. Horon was thrown down from the mountain of the gods, and in revenge he transformed the Tree of Life in the garden into a Tree of Death and enveloped the whole world in a poisonous fog. Adam was sent down to restore life on earth, but failed because Horon in the form of a huge serpent bit him. As a result Adam and his wife lost their immortality.
I don't even have words on how agonizing it has been waiting for my copy. I think I'm going to faint now. Yup, here I goooooooooooooooooooo....... THUD.
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This is probably pointless, as any arguments must pass through a gauntlet of Watchtower-approved answers and any personal input from the OP will be... well, unlikely. I hope the question marks after each topic were sufficiently Watchtower-like to meet your approval.
