krosero

Hi Earl.

I’m not sure you’ve grasped the argument correctly. Yes, we’ve been arguing that both terms served well enough to denote an earthly birth, but that is not an argument that the two terms meant exactly the same thing. When two terms exist, they naturally don’t have identical connotations. Jeffrey, too, has allowed that there is a difference in meaning, though he disagrees with what the difference was; I don’t know Greek but as far as I understand his argument, one meant “born” and the other emphasized the parent’s role (i.e., begetting).

I think you’ve given us one way to decide, but it doesn’t favor the mythicist case:

Both sides here seem to agree that Marcion did not have the phrase in the canon that he formed. You say yourself that if he excised it, he didn’t like it all, so we can definitely say in that case that he took the phrase to have an anti-Docetist meaning. Given that the dispute at the time was over Christ’s humanity, an anti-Docetist meaning in such a context would be a meaning that made Christ more human than Marcion wanted him. So I don’t understand what you’re arguing when you say that we just can’t be sure what a Docetist would have understood from the phrase.

And the same holds in other possible scenarios. Let’s say that the phrase was not original to Paul, but that a scribe added it later, before Marcion’s time. Marcion took it out, well, because he didn’t like it. Nearly the same scenario as above.

Let’s say that the phrase was never seen by Marcion himself, and was added after his time. Again, we all presume that if such an interpolation took place, it was to emphasize Christ’s humanity – a very anti-Docetist project.

So I don’t understand why you’re throwing smoke up around this phrase and suggesting that we can’t know what it would have meant to a Docetist. The phrase would have been threatening to a Docetist.

You briefly suggest above that a Docetist might have used the phrase as “proof-text to demonstrate docetism”. And now how would that be? How would a phrase that spoke of coming from human females be a help to a Docetist, without serious Docetist clarification and apologetics?

I submit that the whole Marcion affair is a strike against the mythicist claim concerning “born of woman”, at least because everyone seems to agree that Marcion’s canon did not contain the phrase and might have rejected it as human-sounding, and also because everyone seems to agree that a theoretical interpolater would have used the phrase to emphasize Christ’s humanity.

I was referring to your argument as I anticipated it to be, not my own argument. My suggestion was that two groups could NOT appeal to the same text for opposite meanings. Maybe you committed a typo and failed to type the word “NOT.” If this wasn’t a typo, and you meant that two different groups could NOT appeal to the same text for opposite meanings, because the phrase was not ambiguous enough for that to occur, then I fail to see where your argument differs from historicism.

Now let me address what you’ve written about the occurrences of the phrase “born of woman” in the literature. This is getting to the heart of the matter.


I have no trouble at all with the proposition that Paul meant to imply something about Christ’s birth that was different from the common understanding. A few posts back this is what I wrote:

You see, I don’t have Paul speaking about a purely human Jesus, whose birth was just like any old human birth. I called Jesus an earthly/divine creature, which is what he seems to be for Paul: not an ordinary human being by any stretch. For that reason I used the word “incarnation”. Christ’s birth was not like yours or mine, or like Paul’s own birth, or even the birth of Moses (which is one of your examples from Hebrews). It’s an incarnation. A birth into flesh. A sending of God’s own Son into flesh and into the world.

Your own words agree that this birth was not normal, and I note that you also prefer the word “incarnation”:

So it might be the case that the literature as a block does show a different word being used for Christ. I haven’t conducted my own survey and I’m not trying to confirm or disprove your picture of the word-counts. Nor can I offer any original arguments about the Greek, a language I don’t know; there are others here better qualified to say just how one word differs from another. But it wouldn’t surprise me to find Paul using words for Christ that distinguished the Savior from ordinary human beings; Paul is constantly contrasting the spirit-world that Christ came from and the flesh-world into which he came. It was his style to contrast the two.

A support for what I’m saying appears in John, another author with that dualistic thinking, whom you quoted as follows:

John, of course, believes in an earthly Jesus. But he has the most exalted view of the incarnation, and if you find him saying that the Word was “made” flesh, rather than plainly saying that Christ was born in a stable on earth, that makes perfect sense. Does John’s exalted language for the birth mean that he did not think that Christ came to earth?

And let’s recall that Paul was trying to preach to his converts the saving power of Christ. Had he used words that failed to distinguish Christ at every turn from ordinary human beings, he would have seemed to his congregations to be talking about a mere human master or teacher, a mortal, and not the redeemer of man and the finisher of salvation history.

Rick Sumner proposed a debate a while back in which he proposed that Paul’s writings were not about the activities of anyone except God, and I substantially agree with that description. Paul spoke about what God did, such as sending his Son, and saving/punishing Israel, saving the Gentiles, etc. If Paul said that God “made” Christ from woman, and he used the same word (ginomai) to say that God made Adam from the earth, then I fail to see why the word is a problem, or even how it can suggest an unearthly birth. Adam, after all, was made on earth, and lived and died on earth, yet the word (ginomai) was used of him.

Kevin Rosero

Ben C Smith

It will soon become clear that I did not get any of them wrong.

Granted, they certainly can. The question before us is whether these two related verbs take on differences, and what kind of differences those are.

One has to go case by case, but it is indisputable that these two words can share the same meaning.

Based on standard texts of the Septuagint, you are incorrect to fault me here. I found all my references on Bibleworks 5 using a search for γινομαι@*, and I have rechecked them. Those that I claimed were γινομαι are indeed γινομαι.

Here are links to various online versions of the LXX so that you can see the word εγενηθη leading off Genesis 4.18:

Swete.
Rahlfs, parsed.
Rahlfs, ordinary print.
Brooke, McLean, & Thackeray.

(If that last link gives you a popup box asking for a username and password, try any and any.)

You must be reading a different version of the LXX than the ones above; which one is it? Genesis 4.18 has εγεννηθη as a textual variant for εγενηθη, and I imagine the other verses you faulted me for do too (I have not checked all of them for variants).

Genesis 6.1; 10.1, 21, 25. No mistakes here.

What is your evidence that τικτω is more direct than γινομαι? Remember, both of these Greek words are translating the same Hebrew word. And the parallel construction indicates that they are at least somewhat synonymous:

Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?
Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?

How do you know which is the more direct?

There were no columns in my presentation. All were instances of γινομαι translating that one Hebrew word. It was only your impression that I was mistaken in about half of my cases that created two columns.

Deuteronomy 23.8 (23.9 LXX); Job 15.7. No mistakes here so far.

You are correct to note that 2 Samuel 5.14 uses γενναω; however, 2 Samuel 5.14 was not on my list.

Psalm 87.4 (86.4 LXX).

Verse 5 has εγενηθη εν αυτη; verse 6 has γεγενημενων εν αυτη. I would never deny that virtually any word can be used figuratively. In English a man can birth a thought. But you will have to actually identify the figure of speech when we get to Galatians 4.4.

No guile was intended. The words γενναω and γινομαι share the same root. I was attempting to separate the two words when I wrote of both the regular (γινομαι) and causative (γενναω) form of the verb.

Yes, of course, and I did not mean to imply otherwise.

Again, I did not write in terms of columns. The whole point of looking at how these two verbs and their derivative forms worked in the LXX was to show how synonymous they are. If you wish to divide these two words into two different columns, fine; I will have another text to look at in a bit that will parallel Paul in exact verb, construction with εκ, and century.

No, it was no typo, and I apologize if I misled anyone. Just to be crystal clear, the adjective γεννητος is derived from γενναω, which has the same root as γινομαι.

The term balance seems to be harkening back to the notion of two columns. I did not write in terms of columns because it does not really matter which word is used most often for a function; what matters is how γινομαι is used and what εκ γυναικος means in conjunction with it. Just because we use born more often in English than birthed does not mean that birthed of a woman means something different than born of a woman.

He cannot point out what is not there.

I do not wish to get cocky. Just because I am not guilty of the mistakes you alleged I committed does not mean I am incapable of making mistakes in Greek or Latin or especially Hebrew, or even English. Hopefully I will be strong and admit them when I commit them.

Okay, but I had not yet searched Josephus, century I. More on that later.

And it is at this point that I think you have totally lost sight of the expression at hand. Let me remind you of one part of the entry in Liddell & Scott (underlining mine):

...of persons, to be born, νεον γεγαως new born, Od.; γεγονεναι εκ τινος Hdt.; more rarely απο τινος....

You are forgetting the εκ and the τινος, I think. The rest of your discussion speaks only to the verb, not to the phrase, until the next to last paragraph, in which you merely point out again that the verbs are different in the phrase that Paul uses compared to what, say, the LXX of Job uses.

This is what I meant when I said that there was no magic wording. I gave the example from the Bacchae, in which it is the blood of women and the key word is εφυ, not any derivative of γινομαι or γενναω. Yet all three elements are in place in this expression:

• A word meaning born.
• The preposition εκ (sometimes optional with a simple genitive).
• The birthgiver as object of the preposition (or as a simple genitive).

Here is a new example from Josephus, Wars 4.8.3 §460:

The report is that this fountain at the beginning caused, not only the blasting of the earth and the trees, but also of the offspring of women [γυναικων γονας], and that it was entirely of a sickly and corruptive nature to all things whatsoever, but that it was made gentle, and very wholesome and fruitful, by the prophet Elisha. This prophet was familiar with Elijah, and was his successor.

This one lacks the preposition εκ, and uses the rarer word γονη (again from the same root as γινομαι!), but is the idea any different? Is it not clear that the spring was dangerous to humans? Is that not what Josephus means by the offspring of women?

It is not merely a matter of deconstructing the verb in a divide-and-conquer maneuver. It is a matter of tracing the kind of construction we are given. For example, when we find Josephus writing in Antiquities 1.6.5 §153 of the sons born of Reuma the concubine (εκ Ρουμας παλλακης... γεγονασι), we have your key word γινομαι, do we not? We have the preposition εκ. And we have the birthgiver, Reuma the concubine.

Antiquities 1.12.2 §214 mentions Ishmael, born of the concubine (γενομενος εκ της παλλακης). Again all the elements are in place, including what in your view is the correct participle (same one as in Galatians 4.4).

Or what about Antiquities 8.8.1 §212a? Here Rehoboam is mentioned, who was born of an Ammonite woman (ος εκ γυναικος Αμμανιτιδος υπηρχεν). This one uses the verb υπαρχω. Does that make a real difference as to meaning? Was Rehoboam not a real human because Josephus decided to use a different word than usual?

There is no magic phrasing. That is not how language works.

Finally, I give you Antiquities 16.11.5 §382:

Will you slay these two young men, born of a queen woman [εκ βασιλιδος γυναικος γενομενους]...?

It has your preferred participle. It has εκ. It has γυναικος. Compare Galatians 4.4:

But, when the fulness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman [γενομενον εκ γυναικος]....

The examples you gave from the Pauline corpus (such as Philippians 2.7) lack relevance. They have only the verb γινομαι and nothing more of our expression. I do not at all dispute that γινομαι by itself can mean any number of things besides birth. I stake my case on the linguistic data, now drawn up to century I with the addition of Josephus, that the phrase born of a woman, in any of its various permutations, means human being.

Your question as to why Paul chose a different word to describe the birth of Christ is a very good one, and I freely admit I have no satisfactory answer as yet. But it does not appear to me that the mythical option is even on the table. I have numerous instances of the relevant phrase from the OT and LXX, the NT, Euripides, the DSS, the fathers, and now Josephus; these instances use various verbs or participles or adjectives or nouns; some name the parent and some do not. But all of them seem to point to a literal birth from a literal woman. What example do you have of this phrase, or one of its permutations, meaning something completely different?

My search techniques are crude. I do not own the TLG. I may well have missed something.

One last item. You write toward the end:

Let us consider the consequences of this statement. The phrase is original to Paul. That means that Marcion excised it. Why, in your view, did Marcion excise it?

Ben.

dog-on

Acts 9:23After many days had gone by

The preceding passage is the reference for the "3 years" in Galations. Fourteen years, originally described in the epistle would have been a hell of a lot of days, three years was a reasonable amount of time, given buy a possible interpolator, considering what Paul says in 1:17.

What would the names of the Apostles in Jersusalem have been, Dick, George and Henry?

Your "astonishingly easy" rejection is itself rejected. You seem to be ascribing priority to Acts versus Galations. I guess this is necessary for your position, but contrary to the likelyhood that Galations preceded Acts.


The reason for all of this is simply to subjugate Paul to the proto-Othodoxy. It allows you to say that Paul is less than honest in his claim about how he received his Gospel. Of course, this is the same argument used by the ancient church against the "heretics" like the Marcionites. Their venerated Paul is great, but not equal to or above the "Pillars".

The proto-Orthodox has attempted to remove any claim to independent revelation from the Marcionites. The insertion basically removes any claim to authority that the Marcionites might have had through Paul. Something, that would seem, quite important to the early church.

dog-on

Ben, how about this little mental exercise? Take all we know about Marcion and read this history back into the little episode in Galations we have been discussing. Do you see any parallels?

EarlDoherty

Ah yes, those pesky textual variants. (Who says there are no demon spirits?) It seems that between accidental variants, deliberate amendments and insertions, outright forgeries of whole documents, we can’t count on anything in the ancient texts these days, Old or New. It makes one wonder how we can conduct any arguments at all, let alone offer demonstrations or ‘proofs’ of any point of view. What makes you think that all the readings you consulted are the correct ones, and mine are the incorrect? I was using a nice solid book in front of me (costs more than the online version, though): The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English, by “Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton” printed by the Regency Reference Library. No doubt you’ll suggest that being old, it’s less dependable, but wouldn’t it be the other way around, since it’s closer in time to the ‘original’? :-)

Anyway, Ben, a few of your points are well taken, and while we all argue from our own points of view, the discussion also helps keep everyone honest. But I’m not going to pursue this particular line any further. It’s very time consuming, and I’ve now got another job facing me in regard to getting my second book into the hands of another publisher, and I’m trying to finish that “refutation of the refuters” article for my website.

One remark in regard to your earlier question about the MSS for Galatians 4:4. What was your implication here in asking whether the variant texts were from 10th century manuscripts? First of all, I’m going on what Ehrman actually says, and he does not specify the dates of the MSS he is referring to. To repeat his pertinent paragraph here:

Surely no one is suggesting that even if most or all of these examples come from 10th century MSS that this is when the changes were actually made? Docetism was hardly an issue by the 10th century. Ehrman’s context indicates that he is implying that such MSS, whenever they are to be dated themselves, reflect corruptions that were made at early stages when the conflict between the proto-orthodox and other developing lines of Christian theology were going on. So I don’t see the relevance of bringing up the dates of the manuscripts.

All the best,
Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

I claim no special knowledge of LXX transmission. I was merely using the standard texts as I generally do. I happen to have a Brenton LXX on my shelf that I had all but forgotten about since getting Bibleworks and better access to the online versions; after I posted I checked it and realized that was probably the version you were using.



It is old. First printed in 1851, I believe. Swete, Rahlfs, and Brooke, McLean, & Thackeray all agreed against Brenton in the verses that I checked.

No, but you seem to imply that the changes were made in the very early going:

Ehrman seems to deny that the changes took place as early as Tertullian, late century II or early century III.

If the changes were not made until after the time of Tertullian, then I do not see much relevance for our own problem on this thread.

Adieu.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Of my three points, you went for the two easiest. I intend to keep all three points together. If the purpose of your Galatian interpolations was to confirm Acts, why did the interpolator apparently contradict Acts? Where is the famine visit in Galatians? Why are many days described as three years? Who counts days after a couple of years have gone by? Why do Acts 9.27 and Galatians 1.19 look so opposite?

But Barnabas took hold of [Saul] and brought him to the apostles....

But I did not see any other [beyond Cephas] of the apostles except James the brother of the Lord.

(These are commonly cited discrepancies on skeptical websites; the site Rejection of Pascal's Wager, for example, says this: When he was there he met only Peter and James. This cannot be reconciled with the picture given in Acts 9:26-28 which shows Paul eagerly going to Jerusalem to meet the apostles and actually starting to preach with them.)

Confirmation of Acts does not appear to be the motivation for these interpolations of yours.

I cannot imagine whence you derived that notion from what I wrote. It is my position that Galatians (basically in its extant entirety) was written before Acts.

You must be confusing my position with your own. It is your position, not mine, that whole sections of Galatians were written after Acts, and in order to confirm Acts.

This is standard historical inquiry. Historians tend to doubt what is written by way of assertion and to be far more open to what is written by way of concession. Paul asserts that he received his gospel from nobody but Jesus himself; it is therefore safe to show some reserve on that assertion. Paul concedes that he visited Peter and James, though it would have helped his point if he had never even heard of them.

Ben.

dog-on

Ben, let me break down your questions:

1.) The interpolator could not completely rewrite Galatians. Even though the apologies are written after the death of Marcion, his followers must still have copies/memories of the Apostolicon. The church seems very interested in consolidating its authority and while doing so, incorporating the Marcionite congregations as well. The argument against Marcion is that he redacted the epistle, basically cut out the offending material. The interpolator would likely change the epistle as little as possible, as any worthy interpolator would do. Historical contradictions, (unlike blatant theological contradictions), in the Orthodox accepted writings do not seem to be a big issue for the church, as can be evidenced by the Gospels. One commentator even made the almost snide assertion, to the effect, that if the documents agreed with each other too much, it would show that they were, more likely to be, fabrications.

2.)Better than trying to pass off "many days" in Acts as meaning 14 years. Paul says he did not immediately go to Jerusalem, but went to Arabia, etc. The interpolator cannot then immediately turn around and say that he did, relatively speaking, go immediately to Jerusalem. Three years would keep Paul from seemingly contradicting himself with his assertion in Galations and give the impression that Paul could indeed have learned from the Jerusalem church. Two birds, as they say.

3.) Paul says he went to Jerusalem due to a revelation. Acts portrays Paul as going to Jerusalem on orders from the church to basically act as a courier for the apostles' famine relief project. This is a very important point and one that seems to only strengthen arguments I make elsewhere.

Paul is the patron apostle of the Marcionite's. Paul is actually referred to as the Apostle of Marcion and the Apostle of the Heretics by Tertullian. The problem for the church is that Paul has the audacity to claim that he received his revelation and authority directly from God thereby undermining the claim to sole authority that the proto-Orthodox church wishes for itself through its favored apostles (Cephas, James and John). By basically treating Paul's pronouncements concerning his apostleship as inaccurate and implying that Paul did indeed, not only receive his Gospel from the church, but also that he was, in fact, a servant of the Orthodoxy, the church is able to refute Marcion's claim to authority through Paul, in effect, undermining Marcion with his own apostle.

4.) If the intention of the church is to subjugate the Apostle of the Heretics, why would this little issue present a problem, considering the church's evidenced position (eg. the Gospels) regarding historical contradiction?


I did not mean to imply what, it seems that, you have understood by my use of the word "priority". I meant to say that you are relying on a definite here-say account (Acts) to determine the validity of the supposed subject's own account (Galatians).

So are you saying that the author of Acts is not making an assertion, namely that Paul is nothing more that a pawn of the church, in spite of Paul's denial on the very same issue?

As far as Paul's concession regarding James, Peter and John, I wouldn't be so quick here, but this could be the topic of another discussion.
__________________________________________________ _____________
Consider the following possibility, that the Orthodox Pauline Epistles, Luke's Gospel and Acts are all an answer by the church to the Marcionites.

1. Marcion is declared a heretic, basically the Anti-Christ.

2. The Epistles are brought in line with the Orthodox position.

3. Marcion's unattributed Gospel is rewritten as the Gospel of Luke, who just happens to be an "acquaintance" of Paul's.

4. Luke's Acts are the final nail in the heretic's coffin.

End result, the church co-opts the Marcionites' Apostle, the Marcionites' claim to authority and, in the end, the Marcionite congregations as well.

That's what I call, a trifecta...

Ted Hoffman

So if I go to Evolution/Creation forum and conduct a search and find that Dembski's name appears more than Dawkin's name, I can validly conclude that, perhaps Bill Dembski is king, and Richard Dawkins is crown prince in that forum?
Many people mention George Bush in political discussions yet they hate his guts.

Anyway...

The reason why awareness of the cosmology of middle platonism comes in as a criteria is based on the idea that, when a writer is aware of that cosmology, then they know, per texts like Ascencion of Isaiah and even Tatian's writings, that there were beings who existed on other layers in the universe other than the earth (like archotons). Based on this, we have no reason to assume the earthly plane as the default location for god-like beings mentioned by that writer.
At this point, the specific expression used by the writer regarding incarnation etc is not our focal point. At this point, we are addressing the larger issues, not the narrow, and more specific linguistic arguments, which I can see, Doherty has addressed.

We know about Marcion from heresiologists like Tertullian in Adversus Marcionem that Marcion believed in a Docetic Christ: a manifestation of God and not an incarnation of God. Per Docetism, the presence of Christ on earth was an illusion and therefore, according to Marcion, the Jesus that was seen was not a flesh and blood man and was therefore not a historical man (Marcion rejected infancy narratives).
Paul believed that Jesus was a pre-existent being and therefore regarded him as a god, not a flesh and blood man.
I repeat what Burton wrote:
Ernest De Witt Burton (Eds. S.R. Driver, A. Plummer, C.A. Briggs), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 1948, p.217

Augustus is irrelevant as an example here. We can clearly discern apotheosization when we see it. Lemche and other minimalists have shown that Moses never existed. You believe that Moses was a historical person?

We must not forget about the logos. The logos was transformed by some Christians into Jesus of Nazareth (The gospel of John says that the “the word became flesh.”) In cases where we find both the logos and a historical Jesus in the same presentation, the logos (the word) is an antecedent of the historical Jesus. In Athenagoras’ A Plea for the Christians, we find the logos and “a son” but they are both treated as abstract forces coalesced together in God.
Texts like Epistle to Diognetus and those by Theophilus and Athenagoras talk of the word being revealed or shown (as opposed to having come to earth) – this means a spiritual revelation. The verbs used vary between deiknumi (to show, present, to make known or to announce) and phaneroō which means to bring to light, become visible or to make known. Or the “birth” / appearance is placed in a mythical realm.

The logos is born in the hearts or minds of believers, not on earth. That is, there is no mention of an incarnational birth on earth in the texts I mention above.

If you can place Paul's Christ somewhere on Earth, please feel free to do so.
The point is that, if there was controversy regarding the nature of the character in question, then we are not obligated to presume that that character had a nature consistent with the orthodox understanding regarding his nature.
This means that, IMO, all the examples you have cited about whose nature there is no controversy are irrelevant to the Pauline case.

jakejonesiv

How do you know the author of GMatthew didn't intend for his gospel to replace GMark?

Jake Jones IV