The Librarian

Audio / Video:
http://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/info/webcastview-webdiffusionvue-eng.aspx?cas=37273&id=2017%2F2017-11-02--37273&date=2017-11-02

Yes. It is now ok to use again.
There was once even a book entitled "Vindication"
 

I really like tacos 

Audio / Video:
http://www.scc-csc.ca/case-dossier/info/webcastview-webdiffusionvue-eng.aspx?cas=37273&id=2017%2F2017-11-02--37273&date=2017-11-02

Nach einem 26 Jahre andauernden Rechtsstreit erlangten Jehovas Zeugen in Deutschland denselben rechtlichen Status wie die großen Religionen im Land.
Quelle

Nope, you are not going to derail US into an off topic discussion!! Not falling for that!

Nach einem 26 Jahre andauernden Rechtsstreit erlangten Jehovas Zeugen in Deutschland denselben rechtlichen Status wie die großen Religionen im Land.
Quelle

Nous ne sommes pas les seul a faire le témoignage public?

( I  like  that  picture  of  JESUS...  he  is  smiling  by  his  hard  work   looking  very  healthy  and  forceful ! )
When  Did  Joseph  Die ?....
 We know that Joseph was alive when Jesus was 12 years old,...
At that age many Jewish youths began to learn their fatherÂ’s trade and became apprentices at 15,...
Joseph evidently lived long enough to teach Jesus to be a carpenter,...
Was Joseph still living when Jesus began his ministry at about 30 years of age ?...
It seems very doubtful,...
JesusÂ’ mother, brothers, and sisters are all mentioned as living at that time but not Joseph,...
Jesus was once even called “ the son of Mary,” not the son of Joseph. Mark 6:3
Mary is spoken of as acting and taking initiatives on her own, without consulting a husband,... John 2:1-5
That would have been unusual in Bible times unless she was a widow,...
Finally, as he was dying, Jesus entrusted the care of his mother to the apostle John.
There would have been no need to do so if Joseph were still living,...
Evidently, then, Joseph died when Jesus was still a relatively young man,...
As the eldest son,  Jesus undoubtedly took over the carpentry business and cared for the family until his baptism.

Me too. Really like that book. Easy to read and appreciate the early history of the organization. 

World News

Hello, I recently was involved in a discussion with a jw mom with kids who are involved with school sports. While I was growing up in a jw home, participation in school sports was a big no-no. Has that changed?

Video for this week's meeting
Edgardo Franco: use your talent for Jehovah
 

 

and in his native tongue Spanish:
 

It is to be noted that both Rolf Furuli and Gerard Gertroux are both Jehovah's Witnesses.
 

Most (perhaps all?) of the known people associated with the sponsor of the video (Reibling Foundation) are Witnesses, too. If they are trying to hide this fact they have not done a good job. Obviously, the language and expressions in the video also indicates that it is from Witnesses.
There are some huge logical gaffes in the video.
Furuli says that "as far back as we have evidence we can find the four letters of the divine name" immediately after showing that the 14th C BCE example is only a trigrammaton (YHW) and it is the "Moabite stone "Mesha stele" (from the 9th C BCE) that is the oldest known use of the tetragrammaton example we have in writing. (The Moabite stone, the first tetragrammaton, is nearly 500 years younger than the older trigrammaton.)The narrator tries to drive the point home by saying that this evidence AGAINST his premise indisputably proves the premise.
On "Yah" (Jah), the narrator says that "Yah is indeed God's name...the short version", after which Furuli argues that Yah is "absolutely not an alternative name for Jehovah." (And Gertoux argues that it is not a shortened form based on the pronunciation of the first syllable, but at 21:40 says that Yah/Yahu is God's name when it attached to the end of a personal name.). This is argued from its supposed rarity as a standalone name. But Furuli says it's found 20 times in hallelujah, and 19 times as a standalone name, which totals 49 times (20+19=49). His math is never corrected (either here or in his chronology books), probably because he speaks so authoritatively that no one notices. Of course, the name "Yah" is also embedded in many proper names of individuals in the same way that this video had already shown that others like Nebuchadnezzar, Ramses, etc, included the name of their god(s) in their names. This gets discussed starting at minute 21 of the video.
Then they show Furuli and Gertoux disagreeing about the importance of the final H, where Gertoux says it means the pronunciation was like the a in "ah" but Furuli correctly points out that it was only "very often" and could also stand for either "A" or an "AE." He indicates through his pronunciation that "AE" means either a short "eh" sound or the vowel sometimes represented by the term "schwa").  Then the narrator ignores this contradiction, pretends it's not one at all, and strangely uses it to leap to the conclusion that Jehovah is therefore correct and Yahweh is isn't. See also http://creationcalendar.com/NameYHWH/6-ah-eh.pdf for a different point on the vowel to be included with the ending "H".
On the point that the vowels for ADONAI (Lord) were attached to the Tetragrammaton the video goes through a confused "proof" that this can't be true because the slight difference in the actual vowels of Adonai are different from the Masoretic INITIAL vowel pointing of YHWH. (YaHoWaH vs. YeHoWaH). But instead of showing the evidence, an interview with Nehemia Gordon shifts the subject to the middle vowel "O" as if this was not already known in the Masoretic text and he appears to pretend that he has discovered this "missing" vowel himself. He didn't "discover" anything except for himself; it was already known. This is the place in the video where Gertoux tries to apply the age-old conspiracy theory that scholars know something but don't want to upset their fellow colleagues. This happens under centralized power structures all the time, but this of course is in direct contradiction to the parallel claim that scholars are always in competition for something new and will sacrifice their own mother for gaining a bit of attention in the academic world. In truth, the reason it's difficult to get a hearing on some new theory is that you have to show good evidence that disproves the earlier theory which should mean that you deal with all the evidence already put forth for the previous theory. These types of videos are rarely ever based on ALL the prior evidence, but usually just some small piece of the evidence that can be made to appear weak. And the audience is often limited to those who are hoping for something, anything, that they can hang onto in support of their own pet theories.
6 of the 60 Masoretic manuscripts are known to have the full vowels corresponding to Yehowah. (Note minute 46 of this interview with Nehemia Gordon, the same person interviewed in the Reibling video in your original post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLMPZrFom3Q  )
 
"Even the scholar Rolf Furuli speaks out against the form Yahweh" is so disingenuous as to be cringeworthy. (18:52)
What they have left out here which is very important is that the vowels roughly corresponding to Adonai were NOT the only vowels that the Masoretic texts applied to YHWH.
In the portion of the video about embedding the divine name as part of an individual's name assumptions are made about the vowel pronunciation that completely forget the prior admission that we don't know the pronunciation of the vowels as they were pronounced in ancient Hebrew. (Gordon sells books based on the premise that Hebrew was a resurrected language, not spoken for 2000 years, which allows him some extra freedom for "discovery.") There are also known differences in initial vowels that were long and become short based on the pronunciation of the second vowel in a word. Contractions based on syllable emphasis are common and are even seen in the various verb forms. An initial vowel that we might think would be unpronounced in some words could also develop into a well-pronounced longer vowel if the middle consonant/vowel combination was contracted. The ah and oh vowels were sometimes interchangeable in words so that even the Masoretic pointing for the "ah" is still pronounced "oh" in some words. The long O and U are also commonly interchanged so that even when WAW/VAV is used as a vowel, it can swap between the O "oh" sound and the U "oooh" sound. (Also in Arabic as in the difference between Osama and Usama, Koran/Quran.) In the Bible itself we see alternative names that give evidence of contractions where Yahu or Yeho at the beginning of a word becomes Yo, (Jonathan from Yehonathan, Joshuah/Jesus from Yehoshuah) but the ending Yah could include "YahU" as is admitted in the video by Gertoux at location 21:34. In the mention of Jehoshaphat, Joel is quoted.  It's not mentioned that Joel himself is a name that means Jehovah (Yo) is God (El) but without a Yehoel form known. Similarly, Elijah means God (El) is Jehovah (Yah). It's odd that the video says there are no exceptions when Jonathan himself is a name mentioned with one of the exceptions.
(Ezra 10:15) 15 However, Jonʹa·than the son of Asʹa·hel and Jah·zeiʹah the son of Tikʹvah objected to this, and the Levites Me·shulʹlam and Shabʹbe·thai supported them. This only covers some problems from the first half of the video, which appears intended to convince people who have not done a full study. I'm sure we shouldn't discount the possibility that "Jehovah" (from "Yehowah") is one of the possible alternatives. If however, the entire point of the Masoretic text was to produce vowel-pointed pronunciations that helped readers avoid the true pronunciation, then they did a terrible job by supposedly giving away the true vowels in some places but not others. I believe I wrote a note to the Librarian here once that had some evidence about this in the Masoretic texts. I'll see if it's still here and post it.
 

-----Found it (from a private conversation)...
No. It's a common vowel pointing. It showed up this way sometimes in the Masoretic texts about 1,000 years ago. I know you already know that there were no vowel points in the older Hebrew texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Usually it did not include the "o" (holam) point after the first "H".
Here's an example at https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/departinghoreb/masoretic-hebrew-vs-septuagint-part-1/
It doesn't say, but it's the Aleppo Codex of Joshua 1:1 . . . . It includes the "e" and the "a[h]" but not the "o".
Here's an example at http://danielbenyaacovysrael.blogspot.com/2013/02/parsha-tetzaveh-youshall-command-shmot.html
It doesn't say, but it's also from the Aleppo Codex of Ezekiel 28:2 and it includes the "o". I included the picture, because it highlights the tetragrammaton.
So, yes, it's one of the possible vowel pointings, which may have been used to remind readers to pronounce with the word ADONAI, ELOHIM, or HA-SHEM, etc. 
Notice the evidence that this Adonai vowel pointing was NOT supposed to be the actual pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, but a replacement pronunciation of the entire word "ADONAI" (Lord). What would happen (sometimes) if the term used in the original Heberw was already ADONAI YHWH? The reader would end up saying ADONAI ADONAI. This happens in Judges 6:22 for example.
Judges 6:22 in the same Aleppo Codex, uses different vowel points shown in the smaller picture, attached. These are the vowel points for ELOHIM. It's evidently because it follows the word ADONAI. (Notice that the "o" is left off Adonai here, too.) It's not consistent, as the Ezekel 28:2 passage showed, but the fact that the name has inconsistent vowel pointing is evidence that whatever vowel points are used were NOT intended for pronunciation. That fact alone is evidence that these two vowel pointings become evidence of two ways in which the name must NOT have been pronounced. (Although someone could argue that an exceptional vowel pointing could have been an accidental slip that revealed the actual way it was pronounced at the time of the Masorete scribes.)
 
 

Just had to comment on the point at 23:55 in the video: "In a well-known Bible translation we can read, 'I shall prove to be what I shall prove to be.' " The video won't say, of course, what translation this is, but we already know it's the old NWT:
(Exodus 3:14) At this God said to Moses: “I SHALL PROVE TO BE WHAT I SHALL PROVE TO BE.” And he added: “This is what you are to say to the sons of Israel, ‘I SHALL PROVE TO BE has sent me to YOU.’” Of course, this was changed in the 2013 revision:
(Exodus 3:14) 14 So God said to Moses: “I Will Become (AHYH) What I Choose to Become (AHYH).” And he added: “This is what you are to say to the Israelites, ‘I Will Become (AHYH)has sent me to you.’” Oddly, the new 2013 translation got rid of the verb form "prove to be [this or that]" in about 300 places, leaving only a few exceptions which seem now as if they are just accidental, vestigial remnants of the old translation. But it's also odd that in the new translation Jehovah CHANGES his name in the middle of this verse, leaving out the idea of "CHOOSING" even though it was never in the Hebrew to begin with. In the Hebrew there is a different "tetragrammaton" here "AHYH" and it never changes between the first two uses and the third use. (Using "A" for the consonant "ayin") It's actually just a form of the word "to be." It's the same word found here:
(Genesis 3:1) 3 Now the serpent was the most cautious of all the wild animals. . . (NWT) (Judges 20:12) 12 Then the tribes of Israel sent men to all the tribesmen of Benjamin, saying: “What is this terrible thing that has happened among you?  (NWT)
 
Hebrew, like some other Semitic languages, does not always need the verb "to be" (or "am") especially in the present tense, because it is easily understood in most contexts without spelling it out. It's used more often when it's useful in producing a non-standard "tense" of a verb. It's definitely given special significance in Exodus 3:14, but not so much that it requires various ideas to be added to the translation.
 

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted the Republic of Georgia’s admission that they violated the rights of ten of JehovahÂ’s Witnesses.
Source

Adorable as they are, little children clearly lack the maturity, experience, and wisdom generally associated with age. 
Yet, Jesus told his disciples: “Unless you become as young children, you will by no means enter into the kingdom.” 
What did Jesus mean? What qualities do young children possess that adults do well to imitate? Well, think how timid and trusting a child is! How free of rivalry and malice! How submissive and unassuming! 
Yes, a little child can beautifully epitomize the godly quality of Humility. JesusÂ’ point is clear. All of us must cultivate childlike humility if we are to inherit GodÂ’s Kingdom. - Matthew 18:3.
jw.org

I suppose it DOES work better for midgets and dwarfs.

via TheWorldNewsOrgWorld News

From the picture above, it appears Jesus shaved his arm pits.

Sorry! Truly. It's just that I think we get a little bored, and this is merely a frivolous light hearted interlude while waiting on others to gather something groundbreaking and worthwhile discussing

It will work for about ten minutes. But I will not be the first transgressor.