The March 1, 1918, Watch Tower was a special printing of The Finished Mystery, with a number of illustrations that remind one of the later Golden Age magazine. In the pictures that follow, note the special message printed (over-printed?) on the front cover of the magazine, to get the contents into the hands of those at the front.
I guess a big question to ask here is whether this message was printed on all copies of the magazine or just this one that has survived? Then we need to ask who added it to the magazine? I will need to dig back into the Rutherford trial notes, but don’t recall the prosecution making much of this message, which I think they likely would have if it was printed on all copies at source.
ReplyDeleteThat's a valid question which I hadn't considered. Targeting the men at the front with The Finished Mystery would not have gone down too well with the authorities.
ReplyDeleteHi Jerome,
ReplyDeleteI've checked the Rutherford trial notes and although the Postmaster General is mentioned in passing, no reference is made by the prosecution to the IBSA forwarding Watch Tower issues to men at the front. During the weeks leading up to the trial Army Intelligence and the Bureau of Investigation (later known as the FBI) acquired mountains of evidence which they believed, wrongly, proved the IBSA was acting subversively. Had the IBSA been so obviously responsible for sending issues of the WT to soldiers on the front line I am sure this would have been a major subject used by the prosecution. I therefore assume the message on this WT was added by someone acting independently.
On a different point of interest please Jerome, I have checked out my copy of the March 1, 1918 WT and it is an ordinary issue and not a special printing of the Finished Mystery. Have you got the date right please? If not, when did the IBSA reprint the Finished Mystery in the WT? It was an exceptionally long book, so unless it was significantly abridged it would have been a challenge reproducing it in a single issue.
With thanks,
G
Many thanks for the comment and valid question. On digging around some more I found the story of the magazine issue of Finished Mystery (code ZG) in the WT for July 1, 1920, page 199. This was intended to be the March 1, 1918 magazine, but instead it was "printed and stored" - i.e. hidden away, and another magazine came out for March 1, 1918. After the war it was taken out of storage and there was a special campaign starting June 21, 1920, to circulate all the magazine copies. It was noted that the hardback version of the book was now the revised version, but the older magazine version should be circulated first until all stocks were gone. Whether the overprinting was a zealous individual or was printed on some copies officially back in 1918, it was a wise move in the circumstances for all the stocks to disappear until after the war. It may even have been printed in late 1917 with a view to a special campaign in early 1918 that was then cancelled.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your exhaustive research Jerome. I can now understand why a special edition issue of the WT printed and planned for publication on 1 March 1918 didn’t actually get released until mid 1920. What I don’t agree with is the thought that this edition may have been printed as early as 1917. Some wording in this special edition of the WT is said to have been altered a little from its 1917 predecessor. This suggests the special edition was printed somewhere between mid to late February 1918 after The Finished Mystery started to be investigated and the authorities criticised certain pages. The initial IBSA response, so as not to antagonise the authorities, was to cut out these pages from books already printed. The rewording of this special edition suggests another response to enable publication to continue. However, shortly after printing this special edition and prior to release it became apparent that the authorities took exception to the whole book as for a while the Bible Students were encouraged to use only the earlier Studies in the Scriptures volumes in their ministry. It is to their credit that not so long after Rutherford and his colleagues were released and their trial shown to have been a farce, they resumed distribution of the ZG.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting discussion. As to whether this magazine edition might have been printed as early as 1917, I don’t know. (It is what someone selling a copy by auction said, but that is no guarantee of accuracy). However, a magazine dated March 1 would normally reach the public before that date, and organising the typesetting and printing might have been somewhat earlier, especially since it was pulled and there was time to rush out a replacement March 1 for the friends. What IS curious is the account in Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (1959) page 90. This says that the magazine edition (ZG) was printed “before the war.” America declared war on Germany in April 1917 (which was too early) and then declared war on Austria-Hungary in December 1917. It depends what the writer meant for “before the war” unless it was just an error.
ReplyDeleteWe know that the printed book circulated in 1920 was updated from the magazine edition, hence the direction to place the magazine edition first. But whether the magazine edition was the complete first edition or had pages deleted or replaced, only a check of the magazine would answer. A copy passed through my hands over fifty years ago, but alas, I don’t have access now.It might be interesting if anyone with a copy could check, because that would help narrow down when it was printed.
Thank you for your consideration Jerome. The June 15, 1920 WT page 187 includes the legal opinion of the law firm Sparks, Fuller and Stricker who examined ‘The Finished Mystery’ in pamphlet form (i.e. the special WT edition) commenting on pages 247-253 and noted that:
ReplyDelete“The language to which the Federal authorities objected in this part of ‘The Finished Mystery’ as originally published has all been removed.”
Since these were the particular sections that were not deemed inappropriate by the authorities until February 1918 the special ZG edition of the WT cannot have been printed before then. An Important Notice appearing in WT September 15 mentions that circulation of the special ZG edition of the WT dated March 1, 1918, had been suspended, repeating “confirmation of a notice sent you last March” and instructing individuals and classes to continue to “hold the same”, in other words not to distribute these. Evidently some had reached the IBSA classes therefore.
It is true that originally The Finished Mystery was largely written prior to America’s entry into the war. But publication occurred afterward.
An interesting phenomenon for me is that in The Watchtower March 15, 1918, the term The Finished Mystery is never used anywhere. Only in the text on page 117, not as the title of the book. Remember that in the book version, every second page has this title in the header. At the end of this 'magazine' there is an advertisement for 6 volumes and the seventh lies on top of them. But very faintly the inscriptions are visible.
ReplyDeleteVolume 7 was published in Polish as a journal in 1921 (3000 copies) and 1922. It already had the inscription The Finished Mystery, which the English version of March 1, 1918 did not have. 1921 - issued in the branch (corporation) of the Polish Society in Detroit and 1922 - issued in the Polish branch in Brooklyn. In 1923 and 1925, book versions (excluding Pieśni nad Pieśniami) were already published. In 1919, however, three volumes were published: Revelation, Book of the Prophetic Ezekiel and Song of Songs.
ReplyDeleteFrom October 1917 to March 1918, Volume 7 was published in six episodes in the Polish Watchtower (Rev. 1: 1 - 6: 4). Publishing was later discontinued due to the ban. Episode publishing was no longer resumed, but a book was published in 1919.
ReplyDeleteThe Finished Mystery serialized in The Watchtower.
ReplyDelete*** w67 1/15 p. 52 ***
In its issue of December 15, 1917, page 373, The Watch Tower said: “We are pleased to announce that the translation of the Seventh Volume into Swedish and French has already been accomplished, and both are to be off the press this month, in Europe. As soon as we can fill orders in these or other languages, announcement will be made in these columns. It is being translated and published by installments in the German, Polish and Greek Watch Towers. It is being translated into four other foreign languages, and doubtless will be translated into many more soon.” Then The Watch Tower, in the following paragraph, goes on to comment on the “Penny” of Matthew 20:2-17. By the year 1924 The Finished Mystery was advertised as being published in English, Dano-Norwegian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Polish, Swedish.