penworks

Shellon, Bramble, Jeffsio, I admire you for sharing your painful experiences - thank you. Thank you for reminding us that we can retain our humanity in the face of destructive accusations and assertions propounded by what masquerades as godly religion.

These stories raise all sorts of ethical and moral issues, not to mention how they serve to show where compassion is NOT found.

My heart goes out to you...my sufferings post-twi were minor compared with your grievous losses. Your bravery inspires.

Thank you,

Pen

Thanks for that LINK, Penworks! I read all the posts in it (from 2008). Many good points are made pertinent to this TOPIC you started, and it contains many "first hand accounts" by those who did "research" while at TWI.

SPEC

I re-read one of my comments from that post called Research and Premises and wanted to make a clarification about the Syriac text used in TWI research. It is a version of the N.T. and it is

spelled P-e-s-h-i-t-t-a. I put hyphens in it because if you don't do that on this site, it comes out spelled Pedangta, perhaps because this site's software "thinks" the word is saying something about s-h-i-t, which it is not, of course.

Anyway, the following in bold is what I wrote and then in italics I've put in the correction. I feel certain that Roberterasmus can explain more about this Syriac text than I can since he studied Syriac at the Univ. of Chicago, so correct me if I'm wrong, Bob, okay?

"Various Greek texts, as well as the Syriac version, which most scholars believe is a translation of the Greek (vpw referred to it as "Estrangelo Aramaic") were consulted. ..."

Correction: Some scholars find that portions of the P-e-s-h-i-t-t-a are translated from an earlier Greek text. Which Greek text that was I do not know. But not all scholars think so. But I do know that there are debates about the integrity of the P-e-s-h-i-t-t-a and its history, but it is the only stable N.T. in Syriac that is around and so was used in the TWI research effort.

Bob, would you like to add more info about this text and also perhaps any thing you can tell us about older Aramaic text fragments that were used in TWI research?

Thanks,

Pen

For those interested, here's a link to another topic that you might find relevant to this discussion.

Research and premesis

Cheers!

"...interpreting texts with mathematical intelligence apart from social, emotional, and ethical intelligence is unintelligent, antisocial, and unethical."

Help me out here...I don't know what "interpreting the texts with mathematical intelligence" is much less how to do it. Language doesn't seem to work like mathematics does, but maybe I just don't know enough to get it. Or maybe that phrase refers to reasoning and thinking and propositions that underlie what words try to convey...fill me in more, though, because I am interested. I remember VP used to use that phrase mathematical exactness and scientific precison but when writing English or translating other languages, things are not always so clear cut...are they?

I know he said he studied homiletics, but did he defend a doctoral dissertation on it?

It seems rather broad in scope, don't you think?

Q. What was your thesis on?

A. Monkeys.

Q. Oh, well that narrows it down.

If my memory serves me correctly, it was about Peter's preaching style or something like that, something to do with Peter anyway...

Penworks - Just to clarify... I was saying that the signature characteristic of twi in general was that of idolizing more than the study of the bible and went on to idolizing the students and teachers of the bible themselves. I was in no way singling out those in the research dept.

Thanks, I appreciate that...

I was looking at the photos on the wall of shame, the guys vpw supposedly "learned from". I asked where Walter Cummins was. She said he left. I was like, didn't he do a lot of research? shouldn't he be up here? she was like, the research has been done, although we do re-search.

it was pathetic.

guess the other guys on the wall died before they were aware of any loyalty to vpw/twi.

Just for the record, W*lter C*mmins left around the time LCM demanded that loyalty oath thing, I believe. I do not know the exact year or exact circumstances, since he left years after I left. W*lter was 16 when he got into TWI, so although VPW probably learned some things from him later in life after W*lter learned some Greek, mostly it was the other way around.

Although W*lter had been VP's assistant researcher since the early 1970s, and led the research department from then on, VP put W*lter in charge of research 100% when VP retired in 1982; at the same time LCM was made President.

Well, just one last comment about what Bob said: "Though probably better in another thread, I could show the value of the Syriac Interlinear and certainly some of the other things that we worked on. It is a more complicated story about TWI than VP governed every jot and tittle that went out of there. "

The VPW-driven research, such as the collaterals and larger works like Jesus Christ our Passover, etc. carried his interpretation of scriptures and in my view came under the umbrella of trying to make scriptures "fit like a hand in a glove" (inerrancy) and was in a different category than the academic study textbooks, such as the Aramaic concordance and interlinear, which are used, I understand, even by people outside TWI who are interested in studying the Syriac N.T. That is the text that VPW was usually referring to when he said Aramaic. Sometimes, as Bob may well explain in another thread, older text fragments in Aramaic might have been quoted as more "accurate" readings of some verses, here and there, but for the most part when we prepared Corps night notes, we referred to the Syriac and those guys on the team who were trained in Greek referred to the Stephens text and other texts which notate some other alternate readings as well.

As for bibliolatry, yes some people I think became so obsessed with the authority of the written words that they forgot their spiritual life and qualified the Bible as their only source for knowing God. That would have been the reasonable outcome based on the rhetoric in PFAL.

But if I might chide my fellow greasespotters a little bit, let's try and avoid using broad strokes when painting a picture of what all of us in research were like. An important part of any Bible research, seems to me, is to identify what the words in the Bible are, thus the need to "nit pick" each verse, I guess. After all, isn't the Bible where Christians and Jews get their ideas about God and Jesus from in the first place? Even the early church fathers did, too, right?

Looks like Charlene was writing at the same moment I was in response to Spec! See, electronics and the internet are such exciting venues.

But let's not bury the hatchet so deep in the back of TWI that we forget (at least those of us who still consider the Scriptures...Scriptures...) that there was important work being done there. Though probably better in another thread, I could show the value of the Syriac Interlinear and certainly some of the other things that we worked on. It is a more complicated story about TWI than VP governed every jot and tittle that went out of there. As Charlene mentions above, there were people that left in disagreement, there were those who stayed and actually helped in a lot of areas.

As I mentioned above, it's not enough to just rant about "how bad it was" (I was there...it was bad), but rather to distinguish where the badness was allowed into your life and resolve to fix it; resolve to not make the mistake again and move on (in my case) with God. If not the God as portrayed by TWI (I hope not...) then certainly the God portrayed in the Scriptures. If you still have a hunger for the stuff there is a lot out there.

RE

What you say is very true, Bob, about the value of some (and only a little bit IMO) of research work that was being done back then, in particular the Aramaic Concordance and Interlinear (my story An Affinity for Windows posted on the front page here tries to tell that story in part). Those are good academic works; I worked on them, albeit in a small way. There is at least one thread at this site started by others that I've posted in here about research, so I'll try and find them for you, or I believe if you use the Search feature here they'll pop up.

Did you know that currently there is a lawsuit going on in which TWI is suing an organization in Texas for copyright infringement regarding the translation found in the Interlinear? The unfortunate thing about the Interlinear translation done by your colleague and mine, Jo* W*se, was changed after he was "fired" so that it would comply with TWI teachings, i.e. the Eli Eli issue around "forsake." The person TWI brought in to do that was, you might remember, B*uce M*hone who now runs a TWI offshoot now called Capital Area Fellowship or something like that.

Regarding the Eli Eli issue, when I asked W*lter whether Lamsa could've just misled VP, he said, "Charlene, Dr. Wierwille was more spiritual than we are." So when you're up against that sort of thinking, which valued VPW's interpretations and opinions over what the text actually said, what do you do?

Anyway, in my opinion, some efforts at Greek work done by others on the team while I was there were done competently in good faith by well meaning people, some of whom were trained, as you were, at the Univ. of Chicago. The problem, as I see it, was that there was no avenue for correcting VP's errors in Greek translating or Syriac that he had already taught and were considered by many TWI followers to be the "accuracy of the Word." Nor was there a way to retrieve or address some teachings he changed over the years, i.e. the issue of when soul life begins, as cited in my story. While I was on the team, VP was the invisible "Big Brother" always watching us and this pressure on W*lter made things uncomfortable, at best.

But the larger issues for me became, and I only speak for myself, the unspoken but implied message that for me to "walk with God" I would need to know

1) the accuracy of the Bible

2) to know God's will

3) which leads to the understanding that if I did not want to take anyone else's word for what the Bible said, then I would need to

4) learn the manuscript languages for myself, i.e. Greek and Syriac, Coptic, Latin, etc. to do research in order to

5) know the Bible in order to

6) know what "God" was really saying (and I came to realize that might not be what I was dealing with when reading the Bible)

7) in order to do the will of God, etc. etc.. which is what I thought I should do in life.

Mmmm....when I finally started thinking about all that, it seemed an unattainable goal for me and I suspect it is for most people and it didn't make much practical sense or financial sense, not to mention spiritual sense.

I figured if it was that hard and convoluted - and expensive in more ways than one - to know God and live a spiritual life, well... I'd try and find another way to do it.

Please know that while I respect the academic endeavors and training of people like yourself, and of course my old friend J*e W*se who is still my friend (in fact I have extremely high regard for academia and am even married to an academic now ) when it comes to things religious, I am one of those people who feels that spirituality is personal and does not require the treadmill of Bible study or other written material to attain, although those seem to augment it for some people.

As an aside, I am beginning to think it would be a very interesting project to get translated into English other ancient writings from other cultures that have been left out in the cold of academic pursuit because of how much money, time, and effort is still focused in the West, at least, on Bible materials. If I had different training and a different life, I might try that just for fun.

Withe respect and best regards,

Charlene

http://brownbible.com/about-us/

The link doesn't work well, but if you click on anything on the site. . . . it comes up

We are dedicated to the research and teaching of God's wonderful Word. What makes us different? Read a few articles and find out. You won't find any unfounded tradition here, just straight Bible.

I trust that the fundamental principles laid out in our "How to Research the Bible" section will be helpful.

We have been so blessed and helped in our lives because we have learned how the Bible interprets itself. We know that the Scripture interprets itself in the verse, or in the context, or where it has been used before and lots more.

This is K*n Br*own, a grad of the 3rd Corps who worked as W*alter C*um*ins assistant in the 1980s to about 1988 or so and he was also in charge of the Library at HQ but was not "officially" on the Research Team. I know him because I was in the 2nd Corps when he was in the 3rd Corps and when I was on the Research team 1984-1986 my desk was right across from his in the research room for two years. As it says on this web site, he taught math at one time and he was ordained by VPW. He was a loyal wayfer and it looks as if he still holds to VPW dogmas.

I was not really suprised to discover that among the first things to go were The Way College of Emporia Kansas and its "sister location", The Way College of Biblical Research - Indiana Campus.

Isn't it interesting how they truly value their "research arm", as you had put it?

And (IMHO) I think it is utterly ludicrous for a "Biblical Research and Teaching" ministry to have No Research Department!

To me, that is like a cafeteria which has NO FOOD!

SPEC

Just for the record, there was no research department with people dedicated to doing any "research" at the Indiana Campus. The name of that property just propped up the idea of research being taught in classes to the Corps, classes like O.T. history, Figures of Speech, Intro Greek, Aramaic, etc. just at they were taught in Emporia to the Corps there.

At the Emporia campus in the 1980s, there was one staff person, a Corps grad , who conducted some Aramaic manuscript research. Before that, in 1978 at Emporia, three in-resident corps people were assigned a 4-hour/day job doing some research stuff but they discovered major problems with VP's work and left/were kicked out, whatever...

During the 1970s and 1980s, there were individuals scattered around the country (some at Univ. of Chicago, some at other colleges, some trained in-house at TWI like me in Aramaic) who were "on the field" and affiliated with the "official" reasearch department at HQ in New Knoxville where the "official" research was done for publication. That department grew from two people in 1970 (W*lter C*mmins and B*er*ita J*ss to about 10 people in 1984 when I worked there. Over the years people were hired and fired or left on their own, as has been discussed on other threads here.

There are some old posts here by Catcup who did research for LCM after I left, etc.

So the fact that these properties were sold off does not, IMO, impact any notion of a loss in the research area. Just a loss of places to indoctrinate Corps.

...and now for something completely different...

The problem with this statement is that it assumes Christianity to be the only vehicle of communion with God.

Can you learn the secrets of the firefly by holding it captive in a jar?

Yes, and that's another part of why I've let go of the Christian myth ...

Atheists in general aren't "starkly opposed to God", but don't believe that he exists. Big difference.

Yes, there's a big difference.

And there is also a big difference between rejecting the inherited Hebrew interpretation of God that I think the Christians use, which includes the metaphors and the attributes, and viewing "God" in an entirely different way, as I've come to do, which is sort of like Einstein's creative force, or the life force, as ancient sages refer to it. It's what I sense as the creative process, since I'm a writer and that's the way I account for the inexplicable whatever it is...and besides that, I like meditation while sitting next to the lake and watching the turtles in the sun...that's all part of it, too...

I think many of us get caught in the metaphors and mistake them for the realities they only point to...just some food for thought...

So in traditional terms, I suppose I would be labeled an agnostic, as far the Hebrew or Christian God is concerned. What interests me more is the experience of life. But now I digress...

Post #134 (penworks) "I left the Christianity room awhile ago." I'm not so much shocked as I am saddened. The baby with the bathwater, eh?

RE

I appreciate and thank you for your feelings - I'll just say it's been a long personal journey. Although some people may assume from my article and story posted here it's because I had issues with inerrancy or the history of the text or something like that...they would be wrong. Nope, that's not the case. Nor is it because of anything TWI did or didn't do or research "correctly." That experience just set me on a path of discovery for myself.

It has to do with what I see as the starting point or basic assumption of Christianity - that man comes into the world fallen or separate from his "maker" and is inadequate. However, on the bright side, I see religions often valuable in ways of creating community and providing social support when they're not dogmatic, but I shy away from adapting any one of them for myself.

Over the years, writers like Joseph Campbell have been helpful to me and I've found loads of enlightenment from literature of various sorts...but that's just me.

Cheers!

The teachers are under a very heavy hand, and what research they do is actually cross checking their topic with what has previously been taught.

I can tell you this, that they are following a looonnnggg tradition of doing this in TWI. When we (the research team) worked on the Literal Translations according to Usage with W*lter C*ummins in 1984-86 in preparation for his Corps teachings, we had to cross check our findings with former VPW teachings on the verses we were "working" so that we didn't come up with anything different (or too different) than what VP had already taught on the matter, specifically I and II Thessalonians during those two years. I know they had to do that in previous years, too.

A particularly sad story for me now is hearing how TWI rejected Scheinheit's research paper saying adultery was wrong around the time of POP.

Twisted TWIt leadership....

Do you know that's why he got fired from the research team?

Hi there, Bob. It's great to have you here, and I for one appreciate your willingness to post on this ever-meandering topic. Thanks for your perspective and insights...we've sure come a long way from those old TWI "research" days, huh?

I hope you'll post more on these pertinent topics that affected so many ex-TWI folks. As you said, it's valuable to understand how the research got the way it was...as you look around GSC, you'll find many other voices that add to the history of it all, too...

Cheers!

Charlene

Thanks for the current info, O.S. As you mentioned, there are lots of threads here about TWI so-called biblical research. Here's an oldie but goodie:

Research ministry?

Nicely put, Taz.

Now a word from our sponsor...

Argument clinic

Well, to me it's a matter of holding a certain viewpoint as to whether or not we get a story with so much continuity etc. as Geisha stated, "how we got a story full of continuity and congruence over 3 continents, 3 languages, 1500 years, 66 books, and 40 authors from all walks of life telling one story about one particular man to come . . . having arrived. . . did what He did and left. .. promising to return."

This is wide open for interpretation and debate and in my view most likely belongs in the doctrinal forum.

Geisha,

Just so you know, you give me plenty to think over and I do appreciate the time you take in your posts. Your many descriptions of the different documents in the Bible and what they say of themselves were lovely. And they were just that: different documents. My question was along a different line, though. To me, since each description or claim or statement you gave is from or about a particular book in the Bible (a stand-alone piece of writing) none of them is referring to the Bible as a whole. We both know this and most readers here do, too, that since the Bible was assembled years later than the time when those passages were written, how in the world could any of those passages refer to the final product called the Bible? It didn’t exist when they were written. That was what I was questioning.

My question was about trying to understand how, as many people do, using one description in one gospel or epistle or Old Testament book could be a statement about the whole Bible? It seems impossible to me. For instance, VP and others interpret such statements as John 17:17 as referring to the Bible, but that verse in fact is from a prayer Jesus was saying out loud to God, and included the phrase: “Thy word is truth.” Jesus did not say (and I know this is silly but bear with me) these books in the Bible are “truth” because obviously there was no Bible yet and (we both know this, too) the men who decided which documents to put in it were not in agreement for a long time. This info is readily available, even on Wikipedia (for anyone reading this who wants more info).

Anyhow, to avoid pounding this into the ground (or repeating myself as was mentioned I do) I’ll just sign off by saying my interest is in understanding each document in the Bible separately, on its own terms, and how the men who wrote them came to do it. Geisha, I think that’s where our mix up in communication often stems from...maybe not. No hard feelings...

Cheers!

Hey there. C'mon in and rest awhile. There's plenty to chew on here and lots of similar journeys to read and learn from. Take your time and know we're happy to help however we can!

Cheers!

Gosh, I just wondered where in the Bible the claim was that referred to the whole Bible, since the Bible wasn't put together until LONG after any of those documents were written. Anyway, no big deal. Too many canons can be called the Bible anyway, which complicates the matter further.

Guess as an unbeliever in the statement that the Bible is God's Word, I'll step out of this thread. I ain't no scholar or theologian...I just ask too many silly questions.

One question for Geisha regarding her statement: "This specific collection makes claims about itself."

My question: Where is the statement?

In the past, a person could get fired for "being too academic."