Just read a good portion of B W Schulz new book. "Separate Identity" Volume 2.

[JW Insider]

Very interesting and detailed as usual. B W Schulz and R. M. de Vienne (deceased) showed themselves again to be meticulous researches who clearly took time to read a lot of source material to avoid jumping to conclusions. This topic is an area full of ideas that were arrived at this way.

Some of the details here I have never seen anywhere else.

If anyone has learned things from any of his books so far that they would like to share, or discuss, or even disagree with, then I hope they'll join a conversation about it.

I've read the N.H.Barbour book and Volume 1 of "Separate Identity." I learned a lot from both of those.

[JW Insider]

 

Separate Identity: Organizational Identity Among Readers of Zion's Watch Tower: 1870-1887. Volume 2. Culture and Organization

by B W Schulz

 

 

A Separate Identity: Organizational Identity Among Readers of Zion's Watch Tower: 1870-1887

by B. W. Schulz

 

Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's Forgotten Prophet

by B. W. Schulz

[TrueTomHarley]

41 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Very interesting and detailed as usual. B W Schulz and R. M. de Vienne (deceased) showed themselves again to be meticulous researches who clearly took time to read a lot of source material to avoid jumping to conclusions.

He complains frequently about pin-headed people who come out of nowhere to attack and argue with him. I skimmed the first, more of less just to say I did it, and found myself wishing that I had 20X the time to do it properly

[JW Insider]

28 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

He complains frequently about pin-headed people who come out of nowhere to attack and argue with him.

It's pretty clear he is annoyed with those who don't do enough research and then just come to conclusions without evidence. But I think he is absolutely right in almost all cases. It's a bit annoying to see this pet peeve of his play out so often in the footnotes, and it even creeps into the main text a few times. The second volume has even more of this than the first volume. But it's a reflection of the world of historical discussions these days, and the ease with which someone can make a stupid theory look like it was endorsed by the Pope, the GB, or the President (or all three, for whatever that would be worth).

I can't find much to disagree with him on because he is honest with his sources. He is a bit more of a Watchtower apologist in this latest book than he was in Volume 1, but I don't mind that. He brings just a little more of the discussion into the world of JWs today, too. (He apparently has had some help from New York Bethel HQ in his research, too.) Also, he does put an awful lot of work into a kind of agenda to disentangle Russell from any Adventist roots. In doing this, he provides something very valuable for those who think "Russellism" was just a simple split from "Millerism." It's a lot more complicated than that. But he seems to forget that most groups who were smitten with Miller-style Adventism were ashamed of it, and therefore it's easy to find quotes from these same persons trying to distance themselves from it, but not as effectively as they wanted people to think.

[Thinking]

On 4/30/2020 at 5:40 AM, TrueTomHarley said:

He complains frequently about pin-headed people who come out of nowhere to attack and argue with him. I skimmed the first, more of less just to say I did it, and found myself wishing that I had 20X the time to do it properly

Can I ask what your thoughts and summary were of these books as I cannot get them in Australia...

[TrueTomHarley]

de Vienne wrote that when she submitted the final Volume I to Bethel, via mail I suppose, they received it without comment. She speculated about this and one possibility she advanced was that they ‘were incurious about their own history.’ In the main, I think this is true. They don’t look back all that much at Bethel—they look forward. 

And it is also true of me. It is not that the past history does not interest me. It is that so many things interest me more that I may never get around to it, even though I would like to. I read the book rather quickly because I told her I would write a review of it, which I did. Maybe someday I will come back to it more thoroughly. 

One other reviewer wrote of the authors’ “almost fanatical attention to detail.” That was also my general impression and it makes me suppose the book is probably the foremost authority on what it writes. They don’t appear to have any agenda at all, other than illuminating history—unlike almost everyone else who weighs in on the subject.

[Thinking]

Thanks  I have been able to get hold of them...big read ahead I suppose 

[TrueTomHarley]

Several months ago, Shultz tweeted to me the suggestion that —please don’t take offense, but I would probably benefit from a certain eighth grade English textbook. I decided not to take offense and I ordered it. Why can I not find it now? Did I give it to Rochester’s youngest reporter, a young man of tremendous gumption, but who—well, attended the city schools? I offered to, but the book never physically changed hands. Did I toss it because Mrs Harley thinks the house is too cluttered already with books? It drives me nuts. You would think I would have kept it as a reference.

I did order it on eBay as almost an impulse item, and I do remember cooling on the idea that I needed it—for the most part, where my language is sloppy, it is not because I do not know any better but because I do not bother. I know, for example, that you do not end sentences with a preposition (I remember a writer playing with the idea of how many he could string at end of sentence: “New York is a bad place to get something in your eye in,” and even “New York is a good place to get something in your eye out in) and when I take advantage of Covid time to review Dear Mr. Putin, I say of parts, “oh, my—what a mess!” and make corrections. About 80% of the book has now been gone through with a fine tooth comb. I cannot testify that there might be a comma where none is needed, but for the most part, it is okay. 

Alas, I favor long and intricate sentences. I flatter myself that I am being like Paul, and I take comfort that he is dead and is not going to call me on it. Maybe that is Shultz’s message to me—“learn to write more sparsely, will you?” Yes, I mostly know what to do, but still colons, dashes, and some commas drive me nuts in all their variant settings and I wouldn’t have the problem if I kept my settings more manageable. 

His writing is far more disciplined, and even some of his tweets are hauntingly beautiful—maybe not uniquely so—maybe I just have that impression, because he is on my radar and others aren’t (‘Confirmation bias,’ the learned Bernard Strawman calls it). There is a place for sparseness, because everything you say dilutes everything you have just said—extra writing doesn’t always magnify—it just as frequently dilutes. Shultz is given in tweets to chronicle the ordinary—his own health, for example. His niece did that, too. 

“It takes patience to sort my pills for the day. And when I've recovered from pill taking, it takes more patience to put the medicated cream on my poor legs. I'd rather have ice cream. ... email from grand niece. Such plans ... I was full of plans at that age too. I guess.“

He reminisces:

“Back in 1986 I bought a new, but previous years model deVille. Wife wanted to drive it home. When we got it home, she announced that henceforth it was her car. She complained whenever I drove it.”

And, of course, he tweets of his research:

”Mostly fruitless research day. You'd think these dead people would have realized that 150 years later I'd like to read their letters and such. Such ungrateful dead people!.”

He is altogether not a bad follow at all on Twitter. He used to pop up in my feed frequently. For some reason, Twitter now seems to be squelching him in favor of some firebrand brother who can hardly see a reference to a church without appending something about ‘false religion’—with everything there is a time and a place.