Sheep and Goats

Category: Authors and Books

A Review of ‘Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses:’ Part 2 (Resolving Matters the Next Time Around)

(See Part 1)

How does an eight to one Supreme Court decision go six to three the other way in just the scan of three years? Did the justices who switched sides have their Acts 9:3 road to Damascus revelation?—“Hey! Why are you guys opposing me? Knock it off!”

The book Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses, by Shawn Francis Peters, examines their later admissions. They were cowed that first time around! They were bullied! They were ‘manipulated!’ Where are the anti-cultists when you need them?

The three ‘flipflopping’ justices were bowled away by the stature of then Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter, who wrote the majority opinion in Minersville School District vs Gobitas: ‘Make those Witness students salute the flag! Kick them out of school if they do not! Oh—and don’t worry about misspelling Gobitis’s name (Court records have it has ‘Gobitas’) Who cares?’

They dared not cross him. “Felix mesmerized us . . . [he] was passionate about the flag and what it meant to him,” one of those justices recalled. Felix was the justice who would walk the corridors of the Supreme Court merrily whistling ‘Stars and Stripes Forvever. (Pg 52) The other three were newbies—scared to take him on!

Moreover, Justice Douglass laments, the powerful dissent of Harlan Stone, author of the minority opinion that later became the majority—he had not yet made that opinion known. When he did, these guys felt it was too late to switch sides. They could have been ‘manipulated’ the other way! Where are the anti-cultists when you need them?

They fretted about it. Coming down to the wire, too chicken to change their vote, Peters’ book quotes Justice Black murmuring, “What are we going to do? Stone is right. . . . But we were wiped out by Felix emotional appeal.” (P237) “We decided to redress the wrong the next time around.”

This calls to mind Parkinson’s Law, that book by C. Northcote Parkinson that undertakes to express “laws” of business and human nature in mathematical terms. Illustrating the law that the time devoted to an item varies inversely to its expense, the author presents a board meeting considering its first item on the agenda, whether to approve construction of an atomic reactor. The item passes almost instantly because few know much about atomic reactors—some don’t even know what one is—but nobody wants to confess their ignorance before their peers. They approve it. However, they do so with many a private misgiving Members inwardly feel that they haven’t pulled their weight. They resolve to make up for that deficiency with the next item.

The next item is whether to construct a bicycle shed for the employees. They discuss at great length, since they didn’t do much on the previous item. However, the ‘great length’ at which they discuss this item is nothing compared with the length of the final item on the agenda—whether to switch brands of coffee for break times.

And so the cowed Justices resolved to “redress the wrong the next time around.”

Don’t think the intent here is to villainize those three, nor even the Justice who wrote the disastrous-for-Witnesses majority opinion. Why disastrous? Because it unleashed a wave of savage persecution against them from the general populace. Estimates range of about 1500 incidences of mob-violence during this period, with beatings a staple, sometimes escalating to tar-and-and feathering, and even the occasional maiming, castration, shooting, and hanging. It was a wrong ripe for “redress the next time around.” Still, I know what it’s like to be newbie on a body. I know what it’s like to be swayed by long-time seniors. Probably everyone does, barring those who are naturally truculent. It happens.

‘Don’t let a bully carry the day’ is the tone of current training for elder bodies. ‘Discuss it thoroughly. Draw out the reticent ones. Don’t just run them down.’ It’s human nature for that to happen. Try to counteract it.

If there’s another lesson to take away, it might be, ‘Don’t be awed by great ones.’ They’re men (in the case of those who are.) They put their pants on one leg at a time (in the case of those who do). Check your reverence for them. Sort of like the Psalm says:

“Do not put your trust in princes Nor in a son of man, who cannot bring salvation. His spirit goes out, he returns to the ground; On that very day his thoughts perish.” (146:4-5)

Jehovah’s Witnesses love that scripture. They like the one about a king’s heart being flexible, too, the way it proved to be with the flipflopping three. “A king’s heart is like streams of water in Jehovah’s hand. He directs it wherever He pleases.” (Proverbs 21:1)

I’m still waiting for that to play out with Putin. I’m still waiting that he will look into the banning of the Jehovah’s Witness organization in his country and reverse it. He’s a ‘king’, but he’s also a man with a heart. Now—I’m not holding my breath. But it worked with Ahasuerus, tricked by that day’s opponents to throttle the Jews. Why not he?

To be continued…here

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September 23, 2022
Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Why the Fall?

The speaker Sunday quoted Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) on the peaceful nature of the first-century Christians:

“It was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes,” Gibbon wrote. I included that and three similar quotations in I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why in the Statecraft chapter. I chatted up the speaker after the program and he had about fifteen such quotes.

What he did not say is that Gibbon did not admire Christians for their course, as the out-of-context quote might suggest. It was not a plus for him, as it is for us. It was a minus. It is what he holds largely responsible for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, that innovative development of human rule he champions and is sorry to see go.

Here are the other three quotes presented in Don’t Know Why:

“A careful review of all the information available goes to show that, until the time of Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.], no Christian became a soldier; and no soldier, after becoming a Christian, remained in military service.” (Barnes: The Rise of Christianity),. “It will be seen presently that the evidence for the existence of a single Christian soldier between 60 and about 165 A.D. is exceedingly slight. . . . Up to the reign of Marcus Aurelius at least, no Christian would become a soldier after his baptism.” (Cadoux: The Early Church and the World). “The behavior of the Christians was very different from that of the Romans . . . Since Christ had preached peace, they refused to become soldiers.” (Platt & Drummond: Our World Through the Ages)

They’re not positives for Gibbon. They’re negatives. They sap the will of the country. Let people drop out and who’s going to fight for the Fatherland? Notice that Gibbon goes the farthest in uncovering what Christians would not do. It’s not just soldiering they abstained from. He extends their abstinence to being “magistrates” or “princes.” It ruined the Empire, he says, to have vast swaths of people turn their attention elsewhere, consumed no longer with the nature of the king but with the nature of God and Christ and of the interplay between them. They weren’t taking a stand against the government. They weren’t refusing to obey it laws—in fact, they were pretty good at obeying laws and not stirring up mischief. But they weren’t pulling for the then system-of-things, and this is what Gibbon laments. Rome would in time encounter invaders whose people were 100% behind the cause of human rule (theirs), and then it was goodby for Rome.

So Gibbon didn’t like Christianity. It torpedoed what he thought was the grander project of an innovative system of human rule. Of course, it soon morphed (apostatized) to become less of what he did not like to embrace more of what he did like. In time and by degrees, Christians veered from staying ‘no part of the world’ to decide that they were the ones to fix the world by any means possible. If political maneuvering and wars were among those means possible, so be it. Constantine converted to morphed Christianity, transformed it from persecuted minority to in-time persecuting majority. He did not get baptized until on his deathbed, after he got all that warring out of his system, so even then was the notion that Christians renounce the violence of the age. It was common at the time, says J. Rufus Fears (below), for persons to postpone baptism till the last moment and undergo it as a sort of final cleansing act—a far cry from churches in the present day who perform it on babies as a sort of introductory cleansing act.

Gibbon’s condemnation of Christianity is found to various degrees in countries of the here and now. Western ones, by and large, allow religion to be religion. They grant freedom of worship as a fundamental right. But other governments are more machiavellian. Yes, you can have your religion, they say, but religion must know its place. It must not only be subservient to ruling powers, but must advocate for them. For many human governments, and many students of human government, it is not ‘he who is not against us is for us.’ It is ‘he who is not for us is against us.’ Anti-cultists in particular build upon the notion that it is wrong to depart from the mainstream of rule by human efforts. Any serious consideration of a ‘God’s kingdom’ that calls the shots is disagreeable to them and, they would have you believe, to you. The human experiment of self-rule is what must consume people. It’s wrong to sit it out, they maintain,

(A History of Freedom, J Rufus Fears, Lecture 11: Gibbon on Rome’s Decline and Fall)

To be continued…here

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September 13, 2022
Things That Drive You Crazy About the Faith—and How to View Them: Part 1

This will be a multi-part series. For best results, start here.

Six times the Great Courses professor (Alan Charles Kors) spoke about “ideas which had stood the test of time.” It took every one of those times for the words to sink in. It wasn’t just my obtuseness. The concept is hard to get your head around. But once you do, all is a breeze, like when you learned to ride a bike.

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Francis Bacon is #90 in the book by Michael Hart, The 100, a book that ranks the 100 most influential persons in history. Plato is #40. Many times I’ve written how his famous ‘philosopher-kings’ method of good government almost exactly parallels the governing body structure of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Even allowing for how my perennial return visit Bernard Strawman (who continues to make fine progress!) calls our guys ‘janitor-plumbers,’ not ‘philosopher kings,’ the parallels are striking.

Now, with Francis Bacon—what great deed did he do to be rated 90th most important person who ever lived? He advanced what is known as “the empirical method of inquiry.” Hart explains: “To understand the world one must first observe it, first collect the facts, then draw conclusions from these facts by means of inductive reasoning.”

You’re kidding me! That’s it?! If you want to figure out something, you should look at it first?! He’s ranked #90 in the whole world for that big duh?! C’mon! Who doesn’t do that?!

For most of human history, people did not. For most of human history it was, ‘if you want to figure out something, go to what has been revealed about it.’ That was Scripture—information given from on high, information revered because it “had stood the test of time.”

To be continued: here.

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May 25, 2022
Things That Drive You Crazy About the Faith—and How to View Them: 2nd Preface

This will be a multi-part series. See Preface

On all the important questions topics Jehovah’s Witnesses are spot on. In these present days, when atheists are perfectly content with a few decades of life followed by eternal non-existence, even holding fast to God is a significant win. But besides holding to God, they get it straight on who he is. They carted off that trinity doctrine that paints him unknowable 100 years ago, about the same time they discarded the hellfire doctrine that paints him cruel, someone you would not want to know. Within his lifetime people called C.T. Russell “the man who turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.”

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Not to mention how they explain why God permits evil and suffering, and tell what he’s going to do about it. They preach the good news of the kingdom. They tell about the resurrection. They heed what God says on how to live, and to the extent they do, their “peace is just like a river.” And their “righteousness?” Tell me about it. (Isaiah 48:18) Like the circuit overseer said, we are all “one big, happy, united, somewhat dysfunctional family.” All is bliss.

And yet—and yet—there are a hundred aggravations. Basking in the big picture, you won’t notice them at first. But in time, they can be like that pebble in your shoe, driving you nuts with every step.

What is it with these aggravations? Some are because Witnesses hang out closely even with those with whom they don’t mesh. They don’t take the easy way out and put distance between themselves like Lot and Abraham. Some are because, should a respected Witnesses do dirt, it can seriously stumble a person because the congregation is the one place he/she didn’t expect to find any.

Yes! That’s the answer. Surely that accounts for it. Just smother your plate with agape love and you’re home free! And yet—and yet—there is one indefinable something . . . There is one—how can we define it? We can’t—it’s indefinable, unless, unless . . . what is it that’s so hard to put a finger on? I thunk and thunk and thunk about it and finally came up with the answer. Not me, really, but the Great Courses professors—college professors, every one of them. And I didn’t have to go to college to hear them. I found them free in the library and listen to them an hour each day walking the dog—which unfortunately died not long ago, but he lived to a ripe old dog age of 14, so I’m grateful for the time my wife and I had with him.

Six times the Great Courses professor (Alan Charles Kors) spoke about “ideas which had stood the test of time.” It took every one of those times for the words to sink in. It wasn’t just my obtuseness. The concept is hard to get your head around. But once you do, all is a breeze, like when you learned to ride a bike.

To be continued: here.

****** The bookstore

May 23, 2022
Things That Drive You Crazy About the Faith—and How to View Them: Preface

“Great scriptures and reasoning to someone who is anti witness,” she told me. “I did write up some things and then I thought….oh blow it…I’ll back him up…all the way!!!”

Make no mistake. It is a concious choice. I could easily attach a “But what about such and such…” addendum to some paragraph in nearly every Watchtower if I wanted to. Some nettlesome point will stick in my craw, but then I will ask myself, ‘should I obsess over it?’ Wouldn’t that be like the pundit who reads that North Korea has launched all its nuclear missills? People with sense will run for the hills. He runs to his keyboard to point out that the idiot can’t even spell the word right. Isn’t that called ‘losing sight of the big picture?’ Why would anyone want to do that?

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Jehovah’s Witnesses have it right in all the important things, but there’s a lot of minor aggravations. What to make of these? Is it because Witnesses all jammed together in close proximity whereas, in the greater world you just put distance between those with whom who don’t readily mesh? Partly. I’ve heard two circuit overseers describe us in the past few years as “one large, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family,” a phrase I suspect is not in any outline.

Too, I’ve heard tell from young ones who’ve flown the coop that they don’t miss the “drama.” Yes, just pulling the Abraham/Lot stunt goes a long way towards alleviating tension: “So Abram said to Lot: ‘Please, there should be no quarreling between me and you … separate from me. If you go to the left, then I will go to the right; but if you go to the right, then I will go to the left.’” (Genesis 13: 8-9) Witnesses don’t do that. They stick together and, with mixed success, try to apply Bible counsel to lessen “drama.’

But if scrunching up is hard on us, what is to be said of the world in general? That’s why I gave my nemesis Vic Vomodog the answer I did when he tried to undermine 2 Timothy 3:1-5. “Humanity is no better or worse than in past centuries,” said he. “The scenography has changed and other global changes have taken place, but the nature of man is constant.”

“It hardly matters, does it?” I told him. “You can fart all you want and as along as there is plenty of space between you and your neighbor, there are no real consequences. But when population, technology, and competition for resources brings people shoulder to shoulder, your unpleasant ways provoke strong reaction.” We’re cramped and it’s inconvenient. They’re cramped and it brings chaos to entire planet.

But if you’re just one person, you can sort of just live in your own bubble and ignore all that, at least most times you can ignore it, at least you can until you can’t.

These days I’m like Richard Kimble replying to Sam Gerard. “That’s right—I’m not trying to solve puzzles here,” Sam says. Richard replies that he is “and I just found a big piece.” Same here. I knew those Great Courses lectures would do more than prepare me to hold my own should that obnoxious know-it-all Alan F ever show his nasty persona here again. He was getting seriously up there in years and it could be he has died, but I think not because the birds in heaven have not all broken out in song. When he does die no doubt his headstone will call the cemetery caretaker an ignoramus for supposing the surrounding flowers and trees were made by God

Those Great Courses lectures produced something valuable in their own right. And totally unanticipated. No way did I see it coming. And helpful? Tell me about it. More helpful than even the brother who had the odd mannerism of ending sentences with, ‘It’s helpful to know that, don’t you think?’ I mean, he was a wonderful brother, he really was, I went to visit him when he was ill, but that mannerism wore. One time he announced the date of the upcoming circuit assembly, adding, ‘It’s helpful to know that, don’t you think?’ I had to admit that it was.

What I found through the Great Courses professors is even more helpful. It will better enable me to weather all the minor aggravations of the earthly organization, because they all boil down to the same thing. And that same thing, while it can be trying, is anything but a dealbreaker.

To be continued: here

****** The bookstore

May 21, 2022
Gain-of-Function Research. Evolutionist Assumptions to Kill us All.

Gain-of-function research is a euphemism for taking something harmless in nature and making it harmful, maybe in order to make a bio weapon, maybe to make a vaccine against one, or maybe for who-can-say what reasons. Newsweek, back in April 2020, reported on U.S—China collaboration over such research. Peter Breggin, a doctor better known as an advocate of psychiatric drug reform, traced it back still further. U.S. government agencies denied it. Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, even did so before Congress. But recently the National Institutes of Health acknowledged it. “‘I told you so,’ doesn’t even begin to cover it,” said the Senator who had first made the charge.

Dr. Breggin has recently branched out from psychiatric reform to tackle the question of just how the pandemic arose. “How do researchers determine if a virus found in nature can become a pathogen, i.e., “bind to human cells?” The laboratory scientists engineer it into a pathogen and use their success to claim it could also emerge naturally from nature—a conclusion which makes no sense,” he says in his book Covid 19 and the Global Predators

Why does it make no sense to him?

“Engineering a benign virus into a lethal one is a complex time-consuming, highly technical process, thereby making an accidental change of that sort in nature extremely unlikely.” he says.

It makes no sense to me, either. Next paragraph of his book, he repackages and runs the claim through again: “When the researchers…believe they have made coronaviruses capable of producing a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in humans…they absurdly claim that natural selection is likely to do the same thing! and use that claim to scare us into giving them further amounts of our taxes to support their dangerous Frankenstein-like activities.”

It is dumb as dumb can be. But are these researchers disingenuous in suggesting that natural evolution might do what they could do only with the most painstaking effort? Or do they really believe it? Breggin seems convinced they are disingenuous. I think they really believe it.

The reason I think they really believe it is found in a Watchtower publication, The Origin of Life—Five Questions Worth Asking. Evolutionists who think the living cell arose spontaneously through natural selection try to test their theory by building one themselves. Only ‘Five Questions’ has the common sense to observe:

“Similarly, if scientists ever did construct a cell, they would accomplish something truly amazing —but would they prove that the cell could be made by accident? If anything, they would prove the very opposite, would they not?”

Evolutionists think it here too! If they can design it, that must mean it could come through evolution! It is also, as Breggin says, “a conclusion which makes no sense.” It is the reason one must always go easy putting faith in science. In the midst of genuine research comes an assumption so blindingly dumb as to contaminate whatever follows! Moreover, in Watchtower’s brochure, the assumption just puts egg on the face of the scientists. In the current gain-of-function application, it threatens to kill us all!

To sum up: “The work entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted….[since] it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory,” per the Newsweek article. Obama banned it. Trump, after initially permitting it, also banned it—probably the only thing the two have ever agreed upon! What emboldens researchers to do end runs around the bans of two presidents and perform the risky research anyway? Their overarching belief in evolution.

Senator Paul made the point as to its dangers, he who tweeted ‘I told you so’ about the gain-of-function admission. It’s not so much that government health agencies were lying, he says. Rather: “Right now we have a virus where the whole world has been turned on its head, it has a 1% mortality. Can you imagine if they create something in a lab that has a 15% mortality or 50% mortality? Some of the viruses they have been experimenting with in Wuhan have 50% mortality.” Evolutionists threaten all humanity when they act on their assumptions.

Interestingly, the NIH letter admitting to gain-of-function research did not use the term, “though the work he described matches its commonplace definition precisely,” says the National Review writer. Of course! It is like when I was asked if nighttime employees really sleep on the job. I replied I had never seen one do that. However I had seen them engage in activity that so closely resembled sleep that it was impossible to tell the difference.

Changing definitions can get you out of many a jam. Even Xi Jinping insists that the government he heads in China is democratic. All you need to do is change your definition of democratic to see it that way. And don’t get me started on how the C-word has changed over the years to target unpopular groups. It once was the case that if you fell under the spell of a charismatic leader, withdrew from society, and began doing strange things, you just might be a member of a cult. These days, simply following Jesus in being “no part of the world” is enough to trigger the hated word.

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November 2, 2021
When Did Satan Go Bad? According to John Milton

“What is mortal man that you keep him in mind?” the psalm says. “You made him a little lower than godlike ones [angels]” Psalm 8:5

The fallen angel from John Milton’s 1667 poem, Paradise Lost, plots revenge with his fellow fallees. All of them are smarting at being cast out of heaven. He tells of a rumored secondary creation of God, foretold in prophecy, equal or only “somewhat inferior” to themselves. ‘Maybe we can sabotage them,’ he suggests at the supernatural council he has convened. It’s pure revenge. What better to get back at the God who cannot be outpowered? God says of this new human creation that it will be made in his image, so that when he looks at them he sees himself. Maybe it can be made into Satan’s mutinous image instead.

Per the poet, the Devil is already cast out from the heavens at this point and plotting his revenge. As chief of the outcasts, his and their rebellion against God and punishment is already a done deal prior to Adam’s creation!

In Paradise Lost, Satan’s scheme to ruin Jehovah’s newest creation wins wide approval with the debased horde. They have nothing much up their sleeve anyway. One of the more warlike fallen angels bearing the name of a warlike deity wants to counterattack and fight till the probable death; anything is better than the place of misery they have been banished to. One of the more timid fallen angels suggests that they should just do nothing, for if they fight further against God maybe their punishment will be even more severe. Nobody thinks they can defeat God. His almighty status his accepted by all.

Plenty of speculation in Paradise Lost. Genesis is scarce with details in many a place. That’s why the ‘“bad attitude” kid in the recent Daniel movie catches the apple from that hussy and his expression all but says, “Whoa—They don’t do that back home! I could get used to this!” while Daniel and loyal friends continue grim-faced in their resolute march. It’s filler. Make it consistent with the overall theme and you should be okay.

But can you do it to the extent Milton does? Witnesses speaks favorably of John Milton. He is one of the “good guys.” He knows God’s intention was [and is] for a paradise earth. He also sees through the Trinity doctrine. He knows that when a person dies, the soul dies as well. He gets all this because he is a diligent student of the scriptures. Massive though his juxtaposition is, it is consistent with the overall Bible theme.

His portrayal of the snake talking to Eve resounds with me. ‘Like a ventriloquist throwing his voice’ is how JW publications have put it. Well, okay, but don’t you think coming across a talking snake would really confound a person? Everything is new to Eve in those early days, so maybe she just takes it in stride, but even so . . . I like Milton’s account, as he takes poetic license.

The poet relates that, in response to Eve’s surprise, the snake attributes its speaking ability to eating from the tree of knowledge! Formerly, it was just a dumb snake. Now it can speak! And he dangles the prize before her that ‘If eating off that tree did this for me, just think of what it will do for you!’ No temptation could be more enticing.

Satan ruins the first human pair as an act of revenge. It’s not just a package of premeditation, as in that James 1:14-15 passage of “being drawn out and enticed by his own desire,” [in Satan’s case, a desire for prominence, if not worship]. “Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn sin, when it has been carried out, brings forth death.” It gets the job done. But there is not the prerequisite hatred in that explanation as there is in Milton’s poem, and the ruining of Adam and Eve is such a hateful act.

He is a liar and the father of the lie. When he speaks the lie, he speaks according to his own disposition. (John 8:44) There is a lie right within his first question, a recent speaker pointed out. It is a lie calculated to engender discontent: “Did God really say that you must not eat from every tree of the garden?” so as to implant the idea of, “Wow, he won’t let you guys do anything!” It finds its counterpart today in those who carry on about what those in the faith won’t do, stretching it to convey that they can’t do anything, as though the guard rails of the highway are in reality a strait jacket to stifle human freedom.

****** The bookstore

October 16, 2021
Tweeting the Meeting: Week of August 2, 2021

Weekend Meeting:

Yikes! In pre-meeting chit chat, the visiting speaker’s wife mentioned how as a child she had beaten up one of our cong members! “Good thing I changed,” she said, as she apologized.

The public speaker’s theme is ‘Good News in a Violent World..’ He can be forgiven if he dwells a bit longer than others would on violence, for he lives in what has been called the (per capita) murder city center of the country.

Accordingly, he begins with a recent local example of 16 shot at a house party. You’ve got to admit, that’s a lot.

Proverbs 4:14-17 “Into the path of the wicked ones do not enter….

For they do not sleep unless they do badness, and their sleep has been snatched away unless they cause someone to stumble.”

Let no one say the Bible does not to sarcasm & hyperbole.

What can we discern from all the reports of violence? the speaker says. Good news. ‘Thank you,’ my wife says, for he had been drawing the topic out. On the other hand, there is no end of material to draw on.

He speaks of the trauma of a person when their spouse unexpectedly dies and it is poignant for him because years ago his wife unexpectedly died

Watchtower Study from June 1, 2021 study issue:

Para 4: on tips for a long trip, those need-greaters home from Myanmar mentioned how easy travel to a distant city here is & how quickly the time flies. ‘Are you comfortable back there?’ their US friends ask….1/3

‘We are riding in the back seat of a BMW sedan. Of course we are comfortable. Do you have any idea where we have been?’…2/3

We don’t have a spring sticking in our back or a chicken sitting on our lap or a sack of vegetables poking us in the side or…’ the list went on and on….3/3

Para 6: In asking a viewpoint question, there is no right or wrong answer, one sis says. Another bro adds that viewpoint questions don’t need an immediate answer.

Wt Para 7: “Be careful not to compare your student with someone else by saying, ‘If he can do it, you can do it too.’” Times change. We get refined. That was the trademark expression of a certain CO from 40 years back, who even offered it in several permutations.

Para 8: “according to the glorious good news of the happy God, with which I was entrusted.” (1 Tim 1:11) I like ‘happy’ vs the more common ‘blessed’ in most translations. Of COURSE he is ‘blessed.’ He’s God. Who is going to ‘bless’ him? …1/2

That’s just pious for the sake of being pious. Happy’s better. (Footnote to self to research that root word)…2/2

Isa 47:18—“If only you would pay attention to my commandments! Then your peace would become just like a river And your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” Many verses work better for rural people attuned to nature. …1/2

It reminds me of a circuit overseer who illustrated industriousness and harmony by saying ‘kicking mules don’t work’ and ‘working mules don’t kick.’ Wildly popular in the country, but then he got to the city where nobody knew what a mule was….2/2

Mark 10:29, Jesus said: “Truly I say to you, no one has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news who will not get 100 times more now in this period of time—houses, brothers, sisters, ….1/2

mothers, children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the coming system of things, everlasting life.”

Worth noting for Christians who get a lot of kickback on the home front. It has happened that new ones have been excluded from their own family—often the storm blows over but not always….2/2

One sis commented on how opposition, when faced, often quells once people see the believer is serious about it. Maybe there is something to it, they say, and may look there themselves. It was true of my father-in-law. Fiercely resisted, he came to be a figure of much respect.

You could almost liken the personal home Bible study to the merging lane onto the expressway, the expressway being the congregation meetings. It’s not going to run forever and everyone on the expressway makes minor adjustment to ease that one’s path on.

“Would that be Sis Harley?” the conductor asked.

“No, Tom didn’t put his hand down,” my wife threw me under the bus, as I shrugged and grinned in the background.

Some discussion in after meeting chit chat on how cong members often become the go-to members in time of crisis for the extended family. Not surprising, since they are trained to be people-persons and are not unhinged at the prospect of dying….1/2

Nobody wants to die. It’s inconvenient and it makes people feel bad, but other than that, it holds no terror for JWs, whereas many people in general can hardly bring themselves even to speak of it….2/2

Midweek Meeting: Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 22-23

Animal-friendly laws in Deuteronomy : You must not plow with a bull and a donkey together.” (too rough on the weaker animal) Deut 22:10, also, vs 4 and 6, though 6 is a mixed bag. #MidweekMeeting Assigned Bible reading: Deuteronomy 22-23.

The speaker just made the point of Paul’s application. ‘Do not become unevenly yoked with an unbeliever.’ 2 Corinthians 6:14. updating Deut 22:10. A source of avoidable conflict,

“…Then you should return it to him.That is what you should do with his donkey, with his clothing, and with anything that your brother has lost and you have found. You must not ignore it.” (Deut 22:1-3) …1/3

they dropped from the back pocket of the stylish shorts my wife bought me that I no longer wear on that account. Even in Canada, when I lost my wallet (from after paying a taxi) and had to cross over to the US without it…2/3

(an endeavor that is NOT hassle-free), someone phoned later to say they had found it. But when I asked about the money inside it he said, “What money.” No matter. I was glad to get it back…..3/3

“If a man is found lying down with a woman who is the wife of another man, both of them must die together, the man who lay down with the woman as well as the woman.” Deut 22:22, This may be why, on a recent trip to the Batavia NY city museum,…1/2

we learned that its foremost citizen laid in wait to catch his wife cheating on him, surprised them both, shoved the man and he fell down the stairs and died. The prosecutors thought they had an open-and-shut case, but the jury would not convict him….2/2

“You must not hate an Egyptian, for you became a foreign resident in his country.” Deut 23:7, —even though some of that time was in slavery! Thou it was good times before that. A good verse as to what it is good to reminisce on.

“A peg should be part of your equipment. When you squat outside, you should dig a hole with it and then cover your excrement.” Deut 23:13, Wisdom ahead of its time, I think this is called. …1/2

And to think in the Middle Ages, people were flinging pots of you-know-what out the window and into the street. Wonder why there were so many plagues then?….2/2

“You should not hand over a slave to his master when he escapes from his master and comes to you. He may dwell among you in whatever place he chooses in one of your cities, wherever he likes. You must not mistreat him.” Deut 23:15….1/2 A good verse to keep in mind…1/2

for those zealots who condemn the Bible because it did not outlaw slavery, but instead regulated it. If Jehovah corrected every human injustice the moment it manifested itself, there wouldn’t be anything left, for the system is inherently unjust and is in need of replacement2/2

“If you enter your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat enough grapes to satisfy your appetite, but you should not put any in your container. “If you go into your neighbor’s field of standing grain, you may pluck the ripe ears with your hand, but you should not put a sickle to …1/2

your neighbor’s grain.” Deut 23:24. This reminds me of the hoboes of decades past who would steal you blind —“and every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around”—but only enough for their immediate needs….2/2

I remember reading some historian saying that it was the Jews of America were the ones who first introduced the idea of public assistance based upon verses like this one.

The Jade and Nita video. Nita pronounces ‘Isaiah’ the British way, with two long ‘i’s.

The reader of the old Bible reading cassettes pronounced it that way, too. As School overseer, I told everyone that we were saying it wrong. (but corrected matters the next week)

Only once did I kill an animal. Chums in school were going squirrel hunting & invited me, giving me a shotgun. High, high up in a tree I spotted one and fired. It fell dead at my feet. ‘What did I do that for?’ I thought. I never hunted again, as I had never hunted before.

Ooh ooh! When Mike came into the truth he became an unbearable fanatic and would plague Keith night and day that he should get rid of everything, even his dog! to pioneer. Finally, Keith latched onto Proverbs 12:10 in self-preservation: “The righteous one takes care of his domestic animals.”….1/2

Mike was perhaps the very reason for the saying among JWs that “new ones should be locked up for sixth months until their zeal is tempered by common sense.”…..2/2

“Now the servants of the king of Syria said to him: “Their God is a God of mountains. That is why they overpowered us. But if we fight against them on level land, we will overpower them.” 1 Kings 20:23 (quoted for the local needs part) Turns out that Jehovah was pretty good in the flatlands, too.

Did the conductor really call on his father with “Dad-man?”

I once counseled.a student against saying “a Jehovah’s Witness” for I think obvious reasons, but was afterwards corrected by the DO who said there was nothing wrong with it. I still think I was right, but its not the hill I am willing to die on. ….1/2

Langauge changes. I say it myself now…..2/2

That bro who likes to mess with me said he expected a full commentary on Deut 23:1, the verse about how “no man castrated by crushing the testicles or having his male member cut off may come into the [ancient Israelite] congregation of Jehovah.” I texted back, …1/2

“This may be TMI, but the fact that I am here ought to tell you something.”….2/2

August 10, 2021
Notes from Ancient Egypt: Weighing in on Joseph and the Exodus Account: Part 1

Sitting in on Bob Brier’s Egyptology lecture series for Great Courses, you learn that nations don’t war on their neighbors. They don’t conquer them. They “beat up on them.” If he said it once, he said it a hundred times. List the accomplishments of any pharaoh: he built the temples, he built the tombs, he beat up on the Syrians (or whoever).

“Beating up” is especially emphasized in Egypt, for with them, there was no place like home. Egyptians warred with their neighbors constantly—“peace was not a virtue in Egypt,” Bob says—but they never established garrisons in those conquered lands. Why—were you to die thousands of miles from home, how could you be properly mummified? And if you weren’t that, what would happen to your chances at the afterlife?

So they didn’t stay. They “beat up” their neighbors, left demands for yearly tribute, but after a while, people forget. You have to go and “beat them up again,” to remind them they had better pay—carting off “everything that wasn’t nailed down” while you were at it.

What is it with this guy? Is he from the Bronx? In fact, he is. And even though he’s a professor steeped in Egyptian honors at Long Island University, he still lives in the Bronx. (as of 1999, when he recorded these lectures). Of the supports used to raise a body so mummy wrappings could be wound beneath him—“it’s like jacking up a car,” he adds helpfully, possibly while gazing through his window at a muffler being attached to a jacked-up car).

(Photo by Sam LaRussa)

What would he do when he comes to Bible accounts? I wondered. He will blow them away, of course, but will he do it with respect or ridicule? He seems like a nice guy. But sometimes people with brains lose it when it comes to spiritual things.

To my surprise, he does not blow them away. He treats them with great respect and allows that they are probably true in essence. To be sure, the “external evidence” that is archeology is scant. Archaeology corroborates the Bible in many things, says Bob, but it says next to nothing about the Israelites in Egypt. However, what he calls the “internal evidence” is strong, and as an Egyptologist, he has learned how the two must be combined.

After the Old Kingdom period, during which the pyramids were built, there arose the “Hyksos,” kings who ruled from the north, the delta region. The word means “rulers of foreign lands.” Could Joseph’s family have been the Hyksos? Not much is known of the Hyksos, Brier says, they “didn’t integrate well,” Some have said they were the family of Joseph. Josephus says so. Therefore, I say so, too. I mean, someone has to correspond to Joseph and his brothers. The north is a damp and marshy region, where archeological finds are meagre, inferior, and badly damaged. It is the dry climate to the south that preserves papyri for thousands of years.

At this point Bob Brier assigns his listeners homework. They are to read Genesis 37-50. Then he narrates the story—just who was Joseph and what was his involvement with Egypt, highlighting what these “guys” are doing and what those “guys” are doing.

There is no external evidence for Joseph, but what is the internal evidence? Does the story “hang together?” It does, he thinks. He recounts the Bible story, which ends in a tearful tale of forgiveness—Joseph sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, his quick rise in Potipher’s house, his reversal and hard times, his meteoric rise to fame upon deciphering the dream that had perplexed Pharaoh, and how those same brothers approach and bow before him decades later—he, the one now in charge of alleviating famine.

In a dream that nobody can figure out for Pharaoh until someone remembers that Joseph in prison had a knack for that sort of thing, he is brought to interpret the dream. Seven lean cows are preceded by seven fat cows. The lean ones eat up the fat ones! They are years of famine following years of plenty. During the years of plenty, preparation can be made for the years of famine. “Based upon Joseph’s interpretation of dreams, the economy of Egypt is planned for the next 14 years.”

Joseph shows what a “sharp businessman” he is during the famine period, is how Bob Brier puts it (perhaps as he is buying a used car from a sharp businessman on the corner lot). People get destitute enough that they eventually sell him their land in return for food. He makes Pharaoh very wealthy, and Pharaoh rewards him.

The ring that Pharaoh gives to Joseph—that also is how they would do it in Egypt, a ring to the “right hand man.” A signet ring. A sign of authority. When the Bible says, everybody cried out Abrek after Joseph—that’s “real Egyptian.” Somebody knew what he was talking about. He deciphers the phrase as roughly meeting ‘Let God be with you.’ (Genesis 41: 42-43)

For a long time, Bob had a problem with Egyptian priests admitting defeat in interpreting Pharaoh’s dream. They never admitted defeat in anything. But later finds cleared it up for him. There is a papyrus in the British Museum which is a book for interpreting dreams.

All dreams meant something, the Egyptians believed. They were all prophetic. The trick was in interpreting them. When you had a dream, you went to the priest to see what it meant. Everything was written down in a book. The priests didn’t “just wing it.” They looked it up in a book. “If it’s not in the book, you’re stuck,” Bob says. So Joseph‘s account has the ring of truth to it, he says. When they said to Pharaoh, We don’t know, about his dream, it just meant that nothing about fat cows or lean cows was in the book—it didn’t go there. So it wasn’t the fault of the priests, who never would have admitted a fault—it wasn’t in the book. (Genesis 41)

There’s a Egyptian inscription on Sahel Island of seven years when the Nile did not rise, resulting in famine. Another inscription shows skeletal figures of people who were not slaves. Potipher is an Egyption name. Goshen is where the brothers of Joseph settled—a real Egyptian place in the delta region. Two cities are cited with names they had at the time, and not names they would be given later. Joseph (and Jacob) are embalmed by the Egyptians and mourned for the proper period. The Joseph story is written by someone who knew Egypt, Brier states. Testifying that Hebrews did indeed come to settle in Egypt is the excavation of a classic Israelite four-room house, with its unique floor plan. A full-sized model of one can be seen at Semitic Museum at Harvard University.

“Internally, we get a feeling for the Joseph story that it fits. It’s not archaeological evidence, but the story fits.” Embalming for 40 days, mourning for 70. For a long time that was not understood, but it turns out that is how Egyptian‘s did it. (Genesis 50:3)

The Hyksos did not control all of Egypt. Instead, they coexisted with the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Dynasty, which were based in Thebes, 500 miles to the south. Warfare between they and the pharaohs of the late Seventeenth Dynasty eventually ran the Hyksos out of Egypt. (and Bob approves of this, because the Hyksos are not “his guys”—they are not real Egyptian) Later leaders of them would be portrayed as oppressive and warlike.

A papyrus of the time, sent by the last Hyksos king to the Prince of Thebes, reads: “The hippopotami in your pool are keeping me awake at night. They have to be silenced.” What exactly does that mean? Dunno, but it’s not friendly. Inflammatory for sure, Bob says. The Prince sends an army in retaliation. How does it turn out? No idea. The papyrus breaks off. The first and the last portions of an ancient papyrus roll is often no good. The inside end is wrapped so tightly that it breaks. the outside end is on the outside where it gets knocked around a lot, torn and scuffed up over time.

See Part II, Evidence of the Exodus

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May 19, 2021
Live Tweets from Ancient Egypt: Part 14

Great Courses, Bob Brier, tweets composed and sent while dog-walking. AI screwups corrected in brackets

For continuity, start with Part 1:

Lecture 27: What mummies tell us

“A mummy is a mummy is a mummy” to most people, Bob Brier says, but all cars are not alike—neither are mummies. They made them over thousands of years. They differ.

Early mummies of the First Kingdom aren’t very good. Bodies are encased as with statues, but not preserved. X-rays reveal they have fallen apart, bones lying at the bottom.

Hetepheres, wife of “my man Sneferu” is an exception—with internal organs that had been removed.

Great story of high-quality artifacts suddenly appearing on the antiquities market in the 1870s, so authorities figured tomb robbers had made a massive find (steal) and, sure enough, found the culprits and (eventually) tortured the location out of them.

A huge trove of mummies, the grave robbers had found. Mummies spanning many dynasties. Shipped off to the Cairo museum, where researchers learned much about mummymaking—what innovations had been made at what time periods.

One other cache of mummies found later, the tomb of Amenhotep II. That’s where Bob Brier discovered that the king had bad teeth, maybe he needed a coregent because he was incapacitated.

All Egyptians had bad teeth, on account of the sand from the grindstones that found its way into its bread.

Lecture 28: Making a modern mummy:

Cool! Bob makes his own mummy. Only he doesn’t identify the person. This reminds me of when my wife took anatomy for nursing. These bodies are donated for research, she was told. They might be someone you know. They were to be treated respectfully.

He says he did it not to make a mummy but to learn how it was done. Lots of unanswered questions after reviewing the papyri. Only way to answer them was to do one, he said.

For example, the brain coming out the nose? Bob thought you could just pull it out with a hooked instrument, but no—it is too viscous. Can’t be done that way. Instead, they—(are you sure you want to know this?)—are swished around up there further, making it more liquid, then inverted the body so as to pour it out through the nostrils.

They made bronze tools. I guess I should have known this, but didn’t. Bronze, a hard metal, results form the mix of two soft ones—tin and copper. But the knife made was not very good.

The “sharp Ethiopian stone” (obsidian) worked well for a knife. Bob says modern surgeons have gone that way—using obsidian.

They used natron (basically salt and baking soda) to preserve. (It takes 600 pounds of the stuff) Bought the frankincense and myrrh from local sites.

Now they have a control sample—they know what they did. They know what works and what doesn’t. It will help with the analysis of ancient mummies.

Herodotus’s 35 day period they figured out (too late) is the time the body has to sit after being dried with natron. It is not completely dry by then, you can still cross the hands in royal style, but Bob & crew had waited too long. They had to wrap with arms at sides.

There’s not a lot of mummies in this neck of the woods. I don’t have any original photos. The best I can do is this one of Tauchannock Man in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Go to Part 15

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May 3, 2021