JW Insider

20 minutes ago, AlanF said:

This is supposed to be a forum for serious discussion of issues. But you seem to think it's a forum for spewing ad hominems.

Obviously you're not capable of discussing issues, but like most JW defenders have brains demoted to parroting Mommy Watch Tower and spewing their bile.

Irony sharpens irony, again.

15 hours ago, AlanF said:

New topic started.

Thanks, AlanF, for starting the new topic. Unfortunately, when I move older posts to that thread, the software here credits the author of the new thread with whoever has the oldest post, currently TTH. I moved the most appropriate posts over but there will always be a few that are a mix between both topics, and it's easy to make a mistake. Also, a few posts about making a new thread were just deleted since they will not make much sense now. Note: @Arauna, you responded to a post above about Allen as if it were about AlanF and related it to the atheism/evolution material, so I moved it over to the "new" topic linked below.

The "new" topic now goes back to about January 5 with all the old posts added:

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/51784-monkeys-typewriters-and-evolution/

2 hours ago, Gone Fishing said:

Very interesting, but not alarming. I am sure Moses Egyptian education would have exposed him to Hammurabi's code as well as whatever system existed in Egypt (although apparently it is not so clearly preseved for us as the Mesopotamian). There would be no need to "reinvent the wheel" in setting out a form and structure for a law code to govern the affairs of a nation at that time, would there?

Good points and good questions, too. I am just working through some of this material myself. Last fall, I clicked a few pages onto my iPhone of several books to check out in full at a later time. These included Wright's (2009) "Inventing God's Law - How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi." The book is partially previewed on Google Books. Some of the other pages of material are only on my iPhone, though. I'm not planning to buy the book. It's at several libraries.

I should say that the book appears to break new ground on tying the Mosaic Law (he abbreviates CC, for Covenant Code) to the Laws of Hammurabi (he abbreviates LH). But a book that breaks new ground is also, in part, only one voice against several. So it would be good to acknowledge a few of the other major views about the relationship between CC and LH. Note, too, that LH becomes a kind of shorthand not just for the Laws of Hammurabi exclusively, but also the Laws of Eshnunna and other similar sets of laws with a relationship to LH.

One point is that we don't really know the exact dates of either the LH or exactly when the last adjustment was made to the CC either. Another point is that we should expect similarities in both oral traditions, legal needs, and legal practice with respect to the lifestyle of Semitic and Mesopotamian nations. All had similar issues with respect to slavery, marriage, divorce, murder, rape, theft, land, livestock, accidents, etc.. As Wright himself mentions:

• For example, the Covenant Code, the Laws of Hammurabi, the Laws of Eshnunna, and the Roman Twelve Tables, all have burglary laws that speak about killing a burglar (see chapter 9). These cannot all be related by literary influence.

Several of the other points made in comparison to the view of other scholars are not applicable to a faith-based view of the scriptures (textual redaction theories, etc.).

Wright makes a distinction between the "do this/do that" (apodictic) laws, and the "if this...then that"(casuistic) laws, and this distinction is useful for his thesis. But you are apparently right, @Gone Fishing, that the 10 commandments themselves stand outside these sets of laws as unique. 

2 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

Nah! that something you're used to, doing, double talk, to come out on top. Your so predictable. As for the rest. The day you show some academic intelligence, then we will continue this debate. So, far, JWinsider, Alanf, O'Maly have failed miserably by their own secular chronology.

It's not about intelligence, Allen. It's about integrity and honesty.

43 minutes ago, Gone Fishing said:

Trying to justify Hammurabi as the source for much of the Mosaic Law? Including the refuge city concept? (Believe me , this is only a guess.So I could be completely wrong!  It's not something I have researched...yet!)

That's basically it. Up until last year, I thought these particular verses represented the only true "intersection" between the two Law codes, so it was pretty easy to dismiss as just a coincidence, anomaly, gloss, etc. But then I saw that Wright took this to the next step. I hadn't realized that there were not just overlapping "coincidental" laws, but that such a large number of the topics of the Laws of Hammurabi, were still in the same order. This speaks to the overall structural similarities between the Mosaic Law and the Laws of Hammurabi, not just some places where the wording happens to match.

Here's one place where Wright shows a chart of this structural similarity:

This particular chart, however, shows just one of several relationships. But the similarity shown above should be enough to absorb and try to explain first.

3 hours ago, Nana Fofana said:

While waiting- Did you ever see this?

Yes. It's the same as an article that Brother C.Aulicino had been working on for years. He had been giving most of these points in a couple of non-outline public talks. I was hoping to find that they had been recorded somewhere, because he has about two hours on this same material. He has collected old books (commentaries, etc) on the subject for years. Excellent points.

14 minutes ago, Nana Fofana said:

Oh- but  another thing is that this study kind of tangentially shows the superiority of cities of refuge over what I've read is the universal justice system pre-law covenant [going to read the Wright thing now, JWINSiDER.  IE , haven't, yet], Hatfield and Mccoy endless cycle of revenge.

Definitely. I see some definite superiority of the Law in many ways, and this area is no exception. Best leave that conversation over there, on the other thread however. (Although I would still like to know about that COJ quote you might have been interested in following up.)

On 1/17/2018 at 1:25 AM, Anna said:

So of course I'm curious. What did he say?

Didn't mean to set this up like a "tease" to drum up interest. Especially if the actual point will turn out to be such a letdown. But I'll continue . . .

Many of us probably barely noticed that the first "kernel" of the "Cities of Refuge" laws started out in Exodus 21:12-15, especially in the highlighted portion.

• (Exodus 21:12-15) 12 “Anyone who strikes a man so that he dies must be put to death. 13 But if he does it unintentionally and the true God lets it happen, I will designate for you a place where he can flee. 14 If a man becomes very angry with his fellow man and he deliberately kills him, the man must die even if you have to take him from my altar. 15 One who strikes his father or his mother must be put to death.

But we have two versions to compare for much of Exodus 21. For example, let's start out by comparing two versions, starting in Exodus 21:28-32  in the way that Wright does:

I think a lot of people already know where this is headed, but this is a good place to start. I'll follow up in the next post.

11 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

It can become too predictable, just like the Egibi Tablets

I'm sure that some persons might be fooled into thinking that your "evidence" below must have been some kind of brilliant response that showed your previous false claims about the Egibi Tablets must be true. But anyone who looks this up will see it was a complete evasion, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Egibi tablets. If anyone else had tried the trick you just pulled here, you would accuse them of dishonesty. What made you think no one would notice?

11 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

The complete title in B-S 106' Aeth (and Rahlfs) is TCO paoiXei Napoij%o8ovoaop paaiAet BaputaSvoq.21 This looks to be a conflation of the only other attested variations of the name: TOO pacnAei NapouxoSovoaop (Arab), and TOONapo\)%o8ovooop paoaXel BapuXwvoq (rel.). Elsewhere in Jeremiah, Nebuchadrezzar is named in only three ways, whether in M or G: 'the king of Babylon'; 'Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon'; 'Nebuchadrezzar'. The title found in Arab is unique, though possible in theory, as it is used of Zedekiah (see §3.6.1). I therefore consider it possible that Arab attests the Old Greek, which has been universally harmonized, surviving in addition in the conflation of the B group. Nevertheless, I accept Ziegler's judgment here. [p.73]

First of all your OCR is completely illegible. It's as if you copied a portion of a page from Google Books into a program like OneNote and then used the option to "Copy Text from Image." (Or something similar.) Those types of programs only recognize "Roman-style fonts" and tend to try to read everything in your local language setting, which is likely English.

Another thing you have done, AGAIN, is to avoid the title of the book even though you mention page 73. I have pointed out before, as have others, that you often include the title of a book if you think it lends weight to your argument. Sometimes, in fact, you only show the title of a book, sometimes just an image of the book cover, even when the entire contents of the book demolishes your argument.

In this case, the title would have given away the fact that you were playing another diversion game here:

• "The Open Book and the Sealed Book: Jeremiah 32 in its Hebrew and Greek Rescensions" by Andrew G Shead.

There is not a shred of evidence in this book that is related to the Egibi tablets. Just for fun, let's look at what Shead was actually saying. By the way, the book is excellent and covers a long known issue, which is this: Jeremiah is about 1/7th longer in the Masoretic Text (M, or MT) than it is in the LXX (G). Jerome, around 400, already had the longer "M" style text and the shorter "LXX" in front of him, and noticed this long before the "M" was finalized between 900 and 1100. Because most Bibles, including the NWT, are based on the Masoretic Hebrew text, the Greek LXX has usually been considered defective, or perhaps it came from a separate abridged version. Of course, it's not just shorter, it's in a different order, and there are times when the meaning is different. It was thought that the Qumram Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries would help, but not enough of Jeremiah was discovered to make a definitive case for the Masoretic Hebrew that we depend upon today. In fact, portions of Jeremiah that were discovered show a decided preference for the LXX even though the DSS were in Hebrew. Shead provides an "apologetic" for the MT (M) wherever he can, but he does a very fair job, I think, in showing that the Greek is likely more original than the Hebrew in many places, showing where even the Syriac version of Jeremiah depends on the LXX.   

Here is what your portion of the book actually shows, attached below, and I'll transliterate some of the Greek to make it clearer. Note that "basilei" means "king" and "to" means "the" but does not always require translation into English, much like "los manos" in Spanish, for example, can be translated as "hands" insted of a more stilted "the hands" in some contexts:

• The complete title in B-S 106' Aeth (and Rahlfs) is [to basilei Nabouchodonosor basilei Babylonos].21 This looks to be a conflation of the only other attested variations of the name: [to basilei Nabouchodonosor] (Arab), and [to Nabouchodonosor basilei Babylonos] (rel.). Elsewhere in Jeremiah, Nebuchadrezzar is named in only three ways, whether in M or G: 'the king of Babylon'; 'Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon'; 'Nebuchadrezzar'. The title found in Arab is unique, though possible in theory, as it is used of Zedekiah (see §3.6.1). I therefore consider it possible that Arab attests the Old Greek, which has been universally harmonized, surviving in addition in the conflation of the B group. Nevertheless, I accept Ziegler's judgment here. [p.73]

------------------

So, it should be obvious that the only differences under discussion here are which manuscripts say: "king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon" or just "king Nebuchadnezzar" or "Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon" or just "Nebuchadnezzar" (without title) or just "king of Babylon" (without specifying Nebuchadnezzar). Notice that not even the "r" in Nebuchadrezzar is under discussion here. So this has nothing to do with the Egibi tablets or any Babylonian tablets at all.

10 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

Hmm! I guess, this is why people in ancient times considered some as Prophets. On how "easy it was to predict this".

The prediction was that you would see the obvious ridiculousness of your claim (that versions with errors carry more weight than versions with corrections). So I predicted that when you were questioned about this, you would do what you always do, which is to try to make it look like you were right all along through an evasion. So I said:

14 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I know you very likely won't even answer these questions, without the typical evasion you've always utilized in the past, which tells me you know the real answer.

Just a few days ago, back in this same thread, I summarized your method like this:

On 1/13/2018 at 7:40 PM, JW Insider said:

Every time you have been shown to have made a false claim. Worse than that, every time, you have never acknowledged that you made a false claim. And even worse than that, you usually go out of your way to use words that make it seem like it was others were wrong and you were right all along.

You managed to perfectly fulfill every word of that prediction by not acknowledging your error and using words that completely evaded the questions, and you used words that made it seem like others were wrong an you were right all along, when you said:

14 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

I rest my case!!! Thank You for proving my point.

I would recommend that you begin to address evidence with evidence that is actually related to the questions at hand, instead of evasions. I don't think you are incapable, but each time you do what you just did, it makes it more difficult for anyone interested to take your future posts seriously. Most people will just think you are dishonest.

11 hours ago, Nana Fofana said:

. . . haven't read anything by him except something I quoted here.  This 'something', I believe, showed deliberate-looking re-arrangement of WT quotes to make their conclusion -that he was supposedly 'correcting'-  look illogical.  You told me I was mistaken , but I didn't understand your explanation of why.

If you didn't understand my explanation then I was either wrong or I did a lousy job explaining, or something somewhere in between. I looked back through about 10 pages, and didn't find the content from COJ that you quoted. Perhaps you can tell me where it was, or how far back in this thread you think it was. I'll be happy to look at it again. As I recall, you had brought up some scriptures from Jeremiah that might have been "addressed" to me and I know I hadn't responded to all of them yet.

11 hours ago, Nana Fofana said:

And at the risk of being thought to habitually "rail and froth" over an issue, I will again simply state that I would *prefer* that "C.O.J." weren't so very often the wall to wall search result of so, so many  searches (o.i.) undertaken!

Does "o.i." mean "on the Internet"? In Google there's a trick that lets you "subtract" out searches that contain an emphasis on a certain term. For example, I just searched on "587 607 Gentile Times" and got mostly pages that mentioned Jonsson due to the key words. Then I redid the search as "587 607 Gentile Times -Jonsson" and most of those pages were no longer on the first two pages. Some were, especially those that spelled Jonsson wrong, but at least it gave me a new set. Also, if you've looked up Jonsson before, and you're logged in, Google skews the links to include pages and subjects you have looked at before. The best way to get new and interesting material however is to leave out the words that tie it back to jw.org and discussions about JWs. How about the following Google searches:

• "Neo-Babylonian chronology and artifacts" [or "artefacts"]
• "cuneiform tablets that help to date Nebuchadnezzar"
• "site:wikipedia.org Nabonidus and Cyrus"
• "Jeremiah and Babylonian hegenomy"

Not saying you didn't already try these things already, but there are just so many options and variables to choose from.

6 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

I rest my case!!! Thank You for proving my point.

I am amazed at how easy it was to predict this.

4 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

For academic research, then the originals have more weight than those editions that have been revised. I believe you are a stickler for criticizing the Watchtower for their revisions by setting examples of past information and century-old ideology from the Bible Students.

I can't really see why you think originals carry more weight than revised editions. If you, Allen, were to write a book and then you discovered you had made some mistakes that needed to be revised, which of your books would you think carried more weight? Do you really think that scholars believe their mistakes carry more weight then the corrections? Does Furuli think everyone should give more weight to the first version of Volume II of his work on chronology, before he made the revisions to Volume II? Do you think that anyone in the Writing Dept at Bethel thinks that the commentary on Revelation or Ezekiel that was written in 1917 ("The Finished Mystery") carries more weight than our current writings on these books?

I know you very likely won't even answer these questions, without the typical evasion you've always utilized in the past, which tells me you know the real answer.

Also, you have seen me praise the Watchtower for the greater number of things that I appreciate and about which they must surely be correct. I will never criticize our publications for revisions, only for errors that contradict the Bible,  contradict facts, or make false or misleading claims. If we love the Bible, we should all be doing this. It's part of our obligation as Jehovah's Witnesses and as Christians to be humble and admit our faults. To make sure of all things, and hold fast to what is fine. To be noble-minded and "carefully examine" like the Beroeans. To try to be shining examples of honesty and truth. The test the inspired expressions. To make a defense of our hope to anyone who asks. To make our reasonableness known to all men.

As you already know, I don't criticize for revisions. Revisions are a good thing.

15 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

Sorry, JWinsider. I would think you would have Raymond Franz book as well.

I accept your apology. Yes, I have 2 books by Raymond Franz. CoC and iSoCF. I assume they are the latest editions. I also purchased a copy of GTR4 a few years ago, but this was after Rolf Furuli sent me his two books. He sent me Vol II for free, after I discussed some issues with Vol I with him. When I worked in Manhattan for 25+ years it was in midtown, just a few blocks from the NYPL research library at 42nd & 5th, where I made photocopies of entire books or at least key pages from almost every reference work that the WTS has quoted from Assyrian/Babylonian/Persian tablets. (Parker & Dubberstein, Sachs & Hunger, etc., etc.) Many of these had to be ordered from different libraries around the country. They never could get me a copy of JQB except on microfilm, and I never ordered it. All of this was well-before Google Books and the availability of so many works on PDF.

15 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

A lot of what you have said indirectly in the past has the same theme. So, you know very well, Raymond Franz was *influenced* by COJ, and his faulty book. Why would you dispute the obvious?

I don't know that Raymond Franz was ever influenced by COJ, but I have never disputed that he wasn't. Did you make that up - that I had disputed this somewhere? I could not have said either of them were or were not influenced by each other, because I don't know. If either one of them claimed to be influenced by the other, that doesn't change a thing. Whenever you, Allen, read something by anyone, I assume you are 'influenced' in some way, but it doesn't mean that you necessarily believe everything you read. I wouldn't doubt at all that there are faults in their books, but you haven't shown any. And your track record has been something like ZERO so far on being able to back up what you say with facts when it comes to these books. I have never yet heard you make a true claim about the books, and yet I have heard you make false claims about them several times. So I have my doubts you'll finally come through this time, but it still wouldn't make a difference to me. I don't depend on anything in any of their books.  (But I do appreciate them for their candor and accuracy in everything I've been able to check out so far.)

4 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

I was impressed by how deeply he had gone into the matter, also by the completeness and factualness of his presentation.

So am I. So were many others, including persons who are experts in related fields. So should you be.

20 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

Well, if you got volume 2 of John Q. Browns Even-Tide, I'm sure, you can get ahold of a copy. I was basing my comment, on ideologies made about 3 years ago.

I was never that concerned about JQB, and I'm not really that interested in getting volume 2. "Scholar_JW" already proved to me that COJ was correct in his assessment when "Scholar_JW" (Neil) admitted that the best evidence against COJ's summary was in Vol 2, p.208, but wouldn't dare show it. There was already plenty of evidence on the Internet that "Scholar_JW" was not telling the truth, because he had already been thoroughly embarrassed over a decade ago when he attempted that same dishonest claim. I'm also not so concerned about COJ. I don't know what you mean by ideologies, but I absolutely know that your claim about a copy never came from me, whether three years ago or at any time, because I never had a copy, and was never that concerned about it. There are dozens of Biblical reasons to reject the 1914 ideology, I don't need secular reasons. But I know that other people should see the secular reasons, too, because they honestly believe something about the secular evidence that isn't true. I'm also willing to share what I have learned about all the evidence because of how important this idea is, and how dangerous it can be from a Christian's perspective. (see Matthew 24, etc.)

Any nitpickers for accuracy might have wondered why this article in 1990 (among others) claimed something different from the above.

*** w90 3/15 pp. 16-18 pars. 8-13 Cooperating With the Governing Body Today ***

• Looking back in this “time of the end,” we are not surprised that the members of the Governing Body were at first closely identified with the editorial staff of the Watch Tower Society. . . . For years, the visible Governing Body came to be identified with the seven-member board of directors of this corporation established to publish the Bible study aids needed and used by the Lord’s people earth wide. The Society’s seven directors were faithful Christians. But their role in a legal corporation might have suggested that they owed their positions on the Governing Body to their being elected by legal members of the Watch Tower Society. Furthermore, by law such membership and its voting privileges were originally granted only to certain ones who made contributions to the Society. This arrangement needed to be changed. This was done at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania corporation of the Watch Tower Society held on October 2, 1944. The statutes of the Society were amended so that membership would no longer be on a financial basis. Members would be chosen from among faithful servants of Jehovah, and these have come to include many serving full-time at the Society’s headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and in its branches throughout the world. Reporting on this improvement, The Watchtower of November 1, 1944, stated: “Money, as represented in financial contributions, should have no determining voice, should in fact have nothing to do with the filling of the governing body of Jehovah’s witnesses on earth. . . . The holy spirit, the active force which comes down from Jehovah God through Christ Jesus, is that which should determine and guide in the matter.” . . . Until 1971 those of the Governing Body were still identified with the seven members of the board of directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.

At the same time that the "governing body" was over 400 members --during those years from 1944 to 1972-- something termed a "central governing body" or sometimes "spiritual governing body" were terms that began to be associated with the decision makers in Brooklyn, New York.

5 hours ago, Jay Witness said:

A big thanks to @Atlantis4

I remember pointing this out previously in a discussion of whether Sirhan Sirhan's father had a relationship with the Witnesses. (He didn't.) In the letter that the Watch Tower Society sent out to provide to newspapers who requested it, the letter made it clear that (in 1968) the governing body was the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society."

So notice that the Watchtower was consistent in this claim for many years. Even back 15 years earlier, in 1953, the same idea showed up here. Note that the Governing Body had 402 members. That was the number of [voting] members of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.

5 hours ago, AllenSmith said:

I remember you mentioning, that YOU copied COJ's treatise COLLECTING dust after it was discarded as meaningless. What good will a copy of the same has, from the one you already, have?

No, you don't remember that at all, because nothing like it was ever said. Not by me, nor anyone else that I can remember.

The closest thing I said was that two members of the Writing Department (who shared an office) were discussing it with me, and said that it still remains on a shelf, collecting dust, because everyone in Writing considered it a "hot potato." No one wanted to be assigned to respond to it, because that would be a lose-lose situation. You couldn't respond honestly, and if you couldn't respond you'd be considered a potential apostate.

I never saw it at all until a few months later. Brother Schroeder had a small portion of it photocopied, and he took it with him when we traveled together on a trip to Europe in 1978. He did not allow me to read any of it and I never asked. I never had a research assignment related to it. I didn't see the manuscript at all until early 1980 when Brother Rusk and I were going over my wedding plans in his office and he needed to take about an hour to respond to a phone call (regarding a blood issue) while I sat in his office. While I waited, I grabbed a book from his library, and I also looked around and saw that he had the manuscript open in about three stacks on his desk, but again I never read more than the pages on top of the stacks.

I doubt it was ever discarded. It seems probable that what Fred Rusk had on his desk was already a photocopy.

1 minute ago, Anna said:

But apparently (according to the WT) some Jewish sources say the fugitive could bring his family with him/her.

There are many Jewish sources which are merely additional types of speculation. The speculation is perhaps a bit more likely to be of interest because Jewish sources have often been speculating on such things for a much longer period of written history than any so-called Christian sources. Many, historically, have had the advantage of speculating in the same language the Bible was written in and therefore have noticed nuances of language that most of us would miss. Often the same so-called advantages have led them astray, too. Looking through the Babylonian Talmud for early commentary on various subjects, for example, one might find answers relying on numerology and/or gematria. One also finds pure contradiction in some of the ancient Jewish traditions. For example, paraphrasing (but not by much):

• Rabbi so-and-so said this means one thing, and Rabbi thus-and-such said this means the opposite.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I always thought - dare I say it? - that Friend's voice distracted in that it was so Shakesperian. 

I was IN his congregation for 3 years. I had originally been assigned to the Bronx which I loved, but when I had extra assignments at work, I was ultimately transferred to the BH congregation where he also attended. I once interviewed him (taped) for about an hour with a list of questions that he mostly wrote himself. I liked him, but I agree that his voice was over-the-top. I mentioned Harold Jackson in my list of drama voices. He actually was rarely used due to a "country" accent. Sydlik had the kind of voice for dramas and he was often used alongside Maxwell Friend. People thought Sydlik was too much "Brooklyn" for doing the voice of God. I heard someone make fun of his drama voice once saying: "Hey youz gize down thayer!"

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

On 1/15/2018 at 12:11 PM, JW Insider said:

The book by Wright would be very controversial for most of us.

Why?

Wright and Stackert, too, saw the same thing that G.Fishing mentioned. There is very little actual information about how this was put into practice. Because of this, in large part, they considered it to be an idealized legal concept that had solely a literary source, but may not have been practiced. I don't buy this completely because the ideal city locations were designated for an obvious practical purpose, along with the reminder to keep roads clear for the practical purpose of getting there. I also think it was practical in the sense that it didn't waste tax dollars for jails. The taxes were given to the priests, and the priests were given walled cities and farmland. The six cities of refuge were also chosen from the priestly cities, 5 Levitic, and 1 Aaronic, if I remember correctly. Instead of a local judge who had a higher likelihood of being related to one of the families involved in the manslaughter dispute, a priest was also educated, knew the law, had extra room, for a "jail," and could always use extra help. To me, all this goes to practicality, and therefore I suspect, something that was at least sometimes put into practice.

Of course, this isn't proof. It's hardly evidence for that matter. Also, there is nothing wrong with a law that was included because it showed the best way to handle justice for accidental manslaughter, even if the Jewish nation themselves didn't take advantage of it.

Wright was the one who found some additional material that I can't explain within our current perspective about the Mosaic Law. I'll go on if someone asks.

31 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

By the way, JWinsider, COJ’s opinion was NOT based on the Al-Yahudu Tablets

Thanks for the information, but I never thought he did. That might help explain why I never said anything similar.

31 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

As I said, how does this NOT contradict COJ’s own assessment for the DESTRUCTION OF JUDAH AND JERUSALEM EARLIER?

This wasn't to me, but you mentioned me elsewhere, so I'll jump in, too. I'm sure AlanF can respond to the COJ / RFranz information if he wishes. I couldn't care less if COJonsson was wrong or RVFranz was wrong. I'm sure they were both wrong on lots of things, lots of times. But I am interested in whatever problem you see in it, because I will try to keep some of these issues in mind if I get a chance to finish reading the whole book this year.

31 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

A vast contradiction from his “ORIGINAL” treatise that Raymond Franz accepted as true when it was a lie!

I didn't see your source on what R.Franz accepted as true. Can you give a source? Also, I see that you are mostly comparing GTR-2004 with an original treatise. But you also didn't quote here from the original treatise for comparison. Did you quote from it elsewhere? If so, I missed it. I see that AlanF has said that his revisions added to his original work rather than contradicting it. I saw you try this same type of claim earlier and it turned out you would never provide any evidence. I'll assume this is more of the same, at least until I see your evidence. 

36 minutes ago, AllenSmith said:

having people POST copyrighted material from COJ, Alanf, since he allows, that, for the Watchtower Copyrighted material.

When a discussion is for academic or learning purposes most authors give a lot of leeway with respect to copyright law and on "fair use." for discussion.

11 minutes ago, Gone Fishing said:

typewriter

I'm going to remember this one in PERPETUITY !!!

Good to see you back. Catch anything?

33 minutes ago, Anna said:

Someone also made a point that if the accidental manslayer was a son, still living at home, who killed his brother, then the next of kin to be the blood avenger would have been the father of the two boys. However, the whole family of the "guilty" son could go with him to the city of refuge, including the father of course.

Sounds interesting, but isn't it all just speculation?

18 hours ago, Nana Fofana said:

ARC proves that JW children are 10 times Safer

. . . Bottom line - Jehovah's Witness children 10 times less likely to be sexually molested than the rest of the Australian population.

I thought I saw that article you quoted come up some months ago in a Google search about ARC. At the time there was another claim going around that was supposed to show that the ARC statistics showed the opposite. I don't believe either of them are correct. But I would never claim that the problem is much worse among JWs than all other religions. I do think that we could still do much better.

But the ARC did supply some simple statistics that fit the numbers I had heard previously about the USA. Note that these were the most common statistics that were reported by the commission:

• There are currently 817 congregations in Australia with more than 68,000 active members”
• Despite the Jehovah’s Witnesses receiving more than 1000 allegations of child abuse since the 1950s, not one perpetrator was reported to authorities, the Child Abuse Royal Commission heard.

Going back to the 1950's, 1960's and even  the 1970's, is a bit anomalous because any such reports prior to when attention was first given to the problem are obviously "statistical outliers." However the main point is that Australia had records of over 1,000 child sexual abusers, representing even more instances of abuse, since abusers who are caught, are usually found to be multiple offenders. This turns out to be:

• more than one abuser per current number of congregations, over several decades
• and about two victims per congregation, over several decades.

Extrapolating would still imply the same "order of magnitude" I heard a couple decades ago. In other words:

• 1000 abusers in 817 congregations (AU) is 122.4% and over 1500 reported victims.
• 122.4% of 120,000 congregations (worldwide) works out to 146,880 abusers, which implies about 220,000 victims. That's based on numbers over many decades, of course.

Although I can't believe it's as high as the ARC numbers for Australia alone would imply, it still shows a potentially huge problem that we should do everything we can to mitigate. Whether it's 220,000 victims as ARC implies, or 10% of that which is still 22,000 victims, or even 1% which is 2,200 victims.