The Watchtower proclaims Jehovah's Kingdom

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Watchtower proclaims Jehovah's Kingdom

description Religious magazine
language 357
publishing company Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Jehovah's Witnesses, eV, Selters (Taunus) (Germany)
First edition July 1879
Frequency of publication every four months ( issue for the public ), monthly ( study issue )
Widespread edition 93 281 789 ( public edition ) printed copies
Editor-in-chief Manfred Steffensdorfer
editor Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, NY, USA
Web link www.jw.org
Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence - July 1879

The Watchtower (full title: The Watchtower proclaimed Jehovah's Kingdom , English The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom ) is a religious magazine of the religious community of Jehovah's Witnesses and is considered the largest circulation magazine in the world .

Name and purpose of publication

The name The Watchtower alludes to Isaiah 21.8  EU , in which a guard on a watchtower is mentioned. According to the publication, the purpose of the publication is to honor Jehovah and to encourage readers by pointing out God's Kingdom, through which all evil will be eliminated and an earthly paradise will be created. The Watchtower wants to promote faith in Jesus Christ , who died for mankind and is already reigning as King in heaven . The Watchtower sees itself as apolitical and claims to be “consistently based on the Bible”.

Content, use

The monthly study edition of the Watchtower is aimed at regular visitors to Jehovah's Witness services . It mostly contains essays that are discussed in the Weekend Watchtower Studies in the Kingdom Halls. The daily texts of Jehovah's Witnesses - Bible verses with explanations or uses for each day of the year - are taken each year from the Watchtower study editions of the previous year.

The edition for the public of the watchtower , which appears three times a year, contains somewhat simpler content and is intended to bring biblical and religious topics closer to a wider public, including people who are not religious.

Edition, availability

The Watchtower, selection of languages ​​printed in Selters (Taunus)

The Watchtower is considered to be the highest-circulation magazine in the world. According to the company, the edition for the public is currently (2019/2020) printed with an average circulation of over 93 million copies. The monthly study edition has a print run of over 13 million copies.

The Watchtower appears in more than 300 languages ​​simultaneously, including more than 30 sign languages . There are also Braille output in 20 languages . The magazine is available for download in many languages ​​from jw.org, the official website of the religious community: as an e-book ( PDF , EPUB , RTF and Braille -BRL) and as an audiobook in MP3 format. On the official JW Library APP available for Windows, Android and iOS , the Watchtower editions can be accessed back to the year 2000, in the Watchtower online library (wol.jw.org) back to 1950.

history

Origin and precursor

In 1876 Charles Taze Russell received a copy of The Herald of the Morning magazine published by the Adventist Nelson H. Barbour in Rochester, New York . Russell became an Associate Editor and Funder. Barbour and Russell split up after an argument about the meaning of the ransom sacrifice . Russell founded his own magazine, which first appeared in the United States in July 1879 under the title Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence . The name Watch Tower had previously been used by Russell's friend George Storrs for one of his books ( The Watch Tower: Or, Man in Death; and the Hope for a Future Life. 1850).

Changing titles

The exact title of the magazine has changed several times over the years. The first editions were called Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence (German: Zions Wacht-Turm and Verkündiger der Zeiten Christi ), from 1909 The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence (German: Der Wacht-Turm und Verkündiger der Gegenwart Christi ), 1931 the Watch tower and Herald of Christ's presence (German: the Watchtower and heralds of Christ's presence ). From January 1939, the magazine was called The Watchtower and Herald of Christ's Kingdom (German: The Watchtower and Herald of the Kingdom of Christ ). Since March 1939 its title is The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom (German: from May 1939 The Watchtower as Herald of Jehovah's Kingdom , in 1957. The Watchtower announces Jehovah's Kingdom , since 1983. The Watchtower proclaimed Jehovah's Kingdom ).

The watchtower in Germany

Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence - April - May 1897

The Watchtower has appeared in German continuously since 1897; before that, temporarily from 1886.

During the time of National Socialism , the spread of the watchtower was forbidden. After the confiscation of the printing machines and the burning of all stored publications in Magdeburg, the magazines were illegally imported from Switzerland into the German Reich , and secretly copied and distributed. They were also smuggled into various concentration camps where numerous Bible Students, as Jehovah's Witnesses were also known at the time, were imprisoned for their beliefs.

In the GDR , too , the spread of the watchtower was banned a short time after the founding of the state and followers of the apprenticeship were sentenced to long prison terms for their illegal activities. The magazine reached the readers in the GDR by smuggling in, mostly by visitors from the West and via West Berlin .

Changes in the last few decades

Since the beginning of the 1990s, The Watchtower has not been sold, but given to interested readers free of charge.

For a long time, each edition contained both texts addressed to the general public and study articles discussed in the worship services of Jehovah's Witnesses. However, due to the public's declining knowledge of the Bible, The Watchtower has been published in two different editions since January 2008: the study edition intended primarily for Jehovah's Witnesses and the public edition .

The number of pages and the frequency of publication of the magazine have been reduced in several steps. Since 2013, some Watchtower articles have referred to additional material that is published on jw.org, the official website of the religious community.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e The Watchtower. Issue to the public. January 2020, p. 2 , accessed on December 9, 2019 (German).
  2. ↑ a b c d George D. Chryssides: The A to Z of Jehovah's Witnesses . The Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2009, pp. 137 .
  3. ↑ a b c George D. Chryssides: Jehovah's Witnesses. Continuity and Change. Ashgate, Farnham / Burlington 2016, p. 249.
  4. ^ Danny Cardoza: The JW Library App, Jehovah's Witness Technological Change, and Ethical Object Formation. in: Jacqueline H. Fewkes (ed.): Anthropological Perspectives on the Religious Uses of Mobile Apps. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2019. p. 230.
  5. ^ Philippe Barbey: Jehovah's Witnesses: Between Tradition and Modernity. in: Chris Vonck (Ed.): Acta Comparanda. Subsidia III. The Jehovah's Witnesses in scholarly perspective: What is new in the scientific study of the movement? Faculty for Comparative Study of Religions and Humanism. Wilrijk-Antwerp, 2016. p. 109.
  6. ↑ The Watchtower. Study edition (Russian). December 2018, p. 3 , accessed December 9, 2019 (Russian).
  7. ^ Zoe Knox: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World. From the 1870s to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2018, p. 8.
  8. ↑ Gerhard Besier: Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany. in: Gerhard Besier, Katarzyna Stokłosa (ed.): Jehovah's Witnesses in Europe - Past and Present. Volume 3. LIT Verlag, Berlin 2018. pp. 249–250.
  9. ^ Danny Cardoza: The JW Library App, Jehovah's Witness Technological Change, and Ethical Object Formation. in: Jacqueline H. Fewkes (ed.): Anthropological Perspectives on the Religious Uses of Mobile Apps. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 2019. pp. 228-229.
  10. ↑ George D. Chryssides: The A to Z of Jehovah's Witnesses . Scarecrow Press, 2008, p. 15.
  11. ↑ Jehovah's Witnesses in God's Purpose . Watchtower Society, Wiesbaden 1960, p. 21.
  12. ↑ Detlef Garbe : Between resistance and martyrdom. The Jehovah's Witnesses in the “Third Reich”. (= Studies on Contemporary History , Vol. 42), Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, p. 44.
  13. ^ Raik Zillmann: Between Faith and Family. Religiously different marriages among Jehovah's Witnesses. Springer, Wiesbaden 2015. p. 27.
  14. ↑ Torsten Seela: Books and Libraries in National Socialist Concentration Camps: the printed word in the anti-fascist resistance of the prisoners . KG Saur, Munich 1992.
  15. ^ Berthold Petzinna: The secret reader in the GDR . in: Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte 17 (2008), p. 377 f.
  16. ^ Raik Zillmann: Between Faith and Family. Religiously different marriages among Jehovah's Witnesses. Springer, Wiesbaden 2015. pp. 42–43
  17. Jump up ↑ George D. Chryssides: Jehovah's Witnesses. Continuity and Change. Ashgate, Farnham / Burlington 2016, p. 246.