(June 23, 2015 at 12:07 pm)Metis Wrote: The JW's didn't remove Hellenistic influences; they did take action to make their religion less Hellenistic but in practice they just pulled their religion out of Christianity entirely.
The "pagan" influences are things like celebrating Easter, they don't do it because they believe the date chosen by the west was picked to coincide with previous pagan holy days. They're absolutely correct, they were. However, it doesn't really matter what day is chosen for them according to the very oldest branches of Christianity, the Russian Orthodox for instance celebrate Christmas during mid January. All that matters is that the occasion is observed at some point during the year which the JW's of course don't do.
The other thing they did was "purge Gods words", a.k.a they made their own "translation" of the Old and New Testament that JW's are told are the only version of the Bible they can read since it has been "purified" of Hellenism. What actually happened was they rewrote pretty much the entire damn thing, and a JW bible says Book of Mormon level crazy shit you won't see in any other version. For instance Jesus apparently didn't die on the cross, and he's also the Archangel Michael not just the son of God (so reincarnation is also a thing in JW theology, which is odd since they also teach there is no afterlife for all but the 144,000). Jehova and Yahweh are also two different people go figure. I don't know what's funnier, the fact they believe it or the fact JEHOVA is actually a bastardization of Jove (Jupiter/Zeus).
So yeah, they're actually Zeus' Witnesses not Jesus'. Also the Wachtowers concept of the "invisible return" of Jesus smacks very strongly of the Classical deities descending from Olympus to walk amongst mortals as they did in Homers Odyssey and Illiad.
The fact they're claiming not to be Hellenised is nothing short of hilarious, of all the Christian denominations they're one of the worst for it! Even the Catholics and Greek Orthodox don't claim fucking Zeus is an aspect (not trinity, JW's don't believe in a trinity but they do accept a partnership of Archangel Michael, Jehovah/Zeus and Yahweh) of the one God.
Interesting points but I would like to correct you in a few areas.
1. The NWT is not just a rewriting of the whole bible and a joke. Look up the wikipedia page. There are criticisms but the overall view is that the work is "excellent."
2. Jesus being Michael is a doctrinal issue not a textual issue.
3. Jesus dying on a stake not a cross does have some compelling evidence. The word often translated into cross is styros, meaning stake or tree
4. Do you have references for Jehovah being Zues? Or even that Jehovah and Yahweh are two separate entities?
