| Glossary: Maintenance |
This Glossary is a living document that has been added to and revised periodically. Comments, corrections, additions, and suggestions for improvements to the Glossary are always welcome. All those submitted will be given consideration for future editions.
When version 6.1 of the Glossary was released, I predicted that it would be the last because:
To the making of many books there is no end,
and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh. (Ecc 12:12)
I've obviously proven to be more adept at writing than at prophecying. Production of the present edition was necessary because of the surprising number of outright errors in facts, content, style, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and typography that crept into version 6.1. Many of these have now been corrected, but there is still quite a bit of material in my notes files that has yet to be implemented.
In the meantime, a list of approximately eighty new headwords has accumulated. It is surprising that some of these terms were overlooked until now. Therefore, it is my intent to produce at least one more version with new entries, and perhaps after that another correction version. Beyond that it is impossible for me to predict what will happen with the Glossary.
The countless responses I have received from Witness readers around the world, including kind thanks and compliments, along with many comments and suggestions, has been gratifying, and has been the primary impetus that has moved me to continue working on the Glossary as long as I have. It seems inevitable that I will eventually reach a point where I will feel that I have covered the subject matter as thoroughly as I know how, and that further effort to improve on it is yielding diminishing returns. Then will be time to let the Glossary stand as is, for better or for worse, as a document that is, if nothing else, at least unique within our culture.
Our collective understanding of God's revealed truth and our experience in living in harmony with it will continue to grow. Along with that will come further developments in our language practice. It will not be long before this Glossary is out of date, and I suppose it is inevitable that eventually it may even be largely obsolete and useless. Meanwhile, the language I have dubbed theocratese will mature and live on forever. May each servant of Jehovah God strive to learn it and use it well.
Wherefore, now that YOU have put away falsehood,
speak truth each one of YOU with his neighbor,
because we are members belonging to one another. (Eph 4:25)
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