spin

Eisler was working in a less demanding age, one would have thought, one that allowed him to "reconstruct" texts to suit what he thought was likely without need for textual evidence. What the duffers are doing today shows that they haven't learned much. It's the same "reductio ad absurdum" that we see with the so-called historical Jesus: while Eisler added stuff to get what he wanted, these new guys got rid of stuff hoping that what was left after the reduction was good stuff. Convincing? Not in the least.

Grog

Aren't you engaging in a circularity? You have chosen the conjunctive use that best fits your argument. You could also choose this:

3. implying causal connexion, less direct than

So the non-"so" sounds a lot like "so" if you select "implying causal connection" which is what we would expect if there was no insertion of the John material.

Interestingly, I just found this on Vridar:

JtB interpolation?


I have to look at this more carefully.

Grog

continued:

In fact, it seems that in paragraph 1 of Chapter 5, Josephus uses δὲ in just that sense, as a conjuntion that implies "then" or "implying a causal connection.

You can see it here:


[111] καὶ ὁ μὲν εἰς τὴν Ῥώμην ἔπλει ταῦτα συνθέμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἐπανεχώρει διαπραξάμενος ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ ἐφ᾽ ἅπερ ἔσταλτο, ἡ γυνὴ πύστεως αὐτῇ τῶν πρὸς τὴν Ἡρωδιάδα συνθηκῶν γενομένης πρὶν ἔκπυστος αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τὰ πάντα ἐκμαθοῦσα κελεύει πέμπειν αὐτὴν ἐπὶ Μαχαιροῦντος, μεθόριον δ᾽ ἐστὶ τῆς τε Ἀρέτα καὶ Ἡρώδου ἀρχῆς, γνώμην οὐκ ἐκφαίνουσα τὴν αὐτῆς

So Antipus, when he had made this agreement, sailed to Rome; but when he had done there the business he went about, and was returned again, his wife having discovered the agreement he had made with Herodias, and having learned it before he had notice of her knowledge of the whole design, she desired him to send her to Macherus, which is a place in the borders of the dominions of Aretas and Herod, without informing him of any of her intentions

ἡ δέ, προαπεστάλκει γὰρ ἐκ πλείονος εἰς τὸν Μαχαιροῦντα τῷ τε πατρὶ αὐτῆς ὑποτελεῖ, πάντων εἰς τὴν ὁδοιπορίαν ἡτοιμασμένων ὑπὸ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ ἅμα τε παρῆν καὶ ἀφωρμᾶτο εἰς τὴν Ἀραβίαν κομιδῇ τῶν στρατηγῶν ἐκ διαδοχῆς παρῆν τε ὡς τὸν πατέρα ᾗ τάχος καὶ αὐτῷ τὴν Ἡρώδου διάνοιαν ἔφραζεν

Accordingly Herod sent her thither, as thinking his wife had not perceived any thing; now she had sent a good while before to Macherus, which was subject to her father and so all things necessary for her journey were made ready for her by the general of Aretas's army; and by that means she soon came into Arabia, under the conduct of the several generals, who carried her from one to another successively; and she soon came to her father, and told him of Herod's intentions.

ὁ δὲ ἀρχὴν ἔχθρας ταύτην ποιησάμενος περί τε ὅρων ἐν γῇ τῇ Γαμαλικῇ, καὶ δυνάμεως ἑκατέρῳ συλλεγείσης εἰς πόλεμον καθίσταντο στρατηγοὺς ἀπεσταλκότες ἀνθ᾽ ἑαυτῶν.

So Aretas made this the first occasion of his enmity between him and Herod, who had also some quarrel with him about their limits at the country of Gamalitis

ὁ δὲ ὀργῇ φέρων τὴν Ἀρέτα ἐπιχείρησιν γράφει πρὸς Οὐιτέλλιον πόλεμον ἐξενεγκεῖν καὶ ἤτοι ζωὸν ἑλόντα ἀναγαγεῖν δεδεμένον ἢ κτεινομένου πέμπειν τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν.

So Herod wrote about these affairs to Tiberius, who being very angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius to make war upon him, and either to take him alive, and bring him to him in bonds, or to kill him, and send him his head.

This is all the lead up to where we diverge into the John material or continue to paragraph 3. In all these cases, δὲ has the connotation of "so then" or "and then" or "then." Like, for example, My mother-in-law called and said she was coming to town. So then I got ready the guest suite.

Notice that in the entire paragraph relating to John, Josephus does not once use the construct of "δὲ" in the same way in the same location as he does through out Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 3. In one instance where he could have, we see a different construct:

καὶ ὁ μὲν ὑποψίᾳ τῇ Ἡρώδου δέσμιος εἰς τὸν Μαχαιροῦντα πεμφθεὶς τὸ προειρημένον φρούριον ταύτῃ κτίννυται.

Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.

Nowhere in Paragraph 2 does the author use the "δὲ" construction tht is used repeatedly in Paragraphs 1 and 3. In paragraphs 1 and 3, the construct is used precisely to mean "so" or "so then" or, as I said above to imply a causal connection.

Another interesting point that I missed until I read the Vridar post about Zindler's arguments, in the John paragraph Herod has John taken to Macherus which is 'subject' to Aretas according to Paragraph 1, not Herod.

I think the argument is pretty decent.

spin

You don't seem to see the difference between causality and consequence (as indicated by "so"). You need to pay attention to what the dictionary says, when the meaning you desire is indicated as "implying causal connection, less direct than γαρ". Did you check out the significance of γαρ or look at the examples for your chosen meaning? No, you didn't. Did you pick up the basic meaning of δε as contrastive (eg "but")? Again no.

In the following you are eking out your "so"s apparently based on Whiston's translation of centuries ago.

You're looking at the wrong thing.

What preceded this example is "She gave no hint, however, of her real purpose." ("without informing him of any of her intentions") There is certainly no causal connection.

What exactly is "this"? Certainly not the journey that Aretas's daughter made, but the fact way back prior to the beginning of your full citation that Herod was to ditch Aretas's daughter. The best you can hope for is that Herod's thought (διάνοιαν) is the link back.

The clause indicated with {} is not in the Greek you cited, ie you omitted it. What it says is ταυτα Ηρωδης γραφει προς Τιβεριον, ie "this Herod wrote to Tiberius". Note that there is no δε here.

Rather than making any point you were led astray.

Rubbish.

You need to stop using antiquated English translations as your guide. Whiston inserts the "accordingly". The text simply says,

καὶ ὁ μὲν (and he indeed) ὑποψίᾳ τῇ Ἡρώδου (to the suspicion of Herod) δέσμιος (binding) εἰς τὸν Μαχαιροῦντα (to Machaerus) πεμφθεὶς (was sent)

I'm sorry, but you just don't know what you're talking about.

Neither Neil or Zindler is here to respond. It makes little sense that Herod should send her out of his kingdom, if he needed to keep control of her (such marriages were treaties of sorts). Machaerus as Josephus indicates was on the border with Aretas. At Machaerus there was an agent of Aretas ("him who was subject to her father"), who was informed and who prepared for her onward journey, so she went forth (from Machaerus) into Arabia (καὶ ἀφωρμᾶτο εἰς τὴν Ἀραβίαν), ie out of Herod's territory. Machaerus was not under the control of Aretas.

You're hopeful. You're attempt to turn δε into "so" is utterly unwarranted.

Grog

I think not. The case has been made. Anyone can look for themselves. There is nowhere that Josephus uses δε to refer back beyond a "parenthetical phrase" such as the JtB phrase. Even your own indication is that, at most, Josephus indicates back beyond a phrase or two that are entirely related. Your reply makes my point.

In addition, my point wasn't that Whiston uses "Accordingly," but that in a phrase implying a causal connection similar to in paragraphs 1 and 3, Josephus doesn't use δε as he does repeatedly in Paragraphs 1 and 3.

You are trying too hard to salvage a point. It is not easy for you to give up the ghost, is it?

By the way, must it be the case that every time a person disagrees with you they must be subject to your judgement regarding what their ignorance as you perceive it? This is a relatively minor point (regarnding JtB in Josephus)...in fact, I just threw it out as an almost casual observation. Your comments led me to dig deeper and, lo and behold, the more I dig, the more full of hot air you seem to be. Yet every response from you drips with condescension and your own presumed sense of your superiority. Stop it. Others can disagree with you without being subjected to your arrogance.

ficino

Hi guys, I think I can offer something here about δέ. A lot of work on Greek particles has been done since LSJ and Denniston's The Greek Particles were published. It is more helpful to look at the primary function of δέ than at definitions of it in dictionaries, as is shown already by the fact that its two most common definitions are "and" and "but." !!

A good number of publications came out in the 1990s and early 2000s. The current view among people who do pragmatic linguistics is that δέ segments discourse. It does not weld together units of discourse, as καί does, into a new and bigger complex; it marks that the new item is distinct from the previous one. It is not carry causal or inferential MEANING, although an author may explain a reason or draw an inference AND stick in δέ to mark a shift in what he's now talking about.

Here's a summary I wrote for a forthcoming article on textual problems:

A ‘discontinuous’ particle, δέ connects a new (or resumed) discourse unit to the preceding one by marking a boundary, thus segmenting the discourse. Unlike καί, a ‘continuous’ particle that welds an item to the previous one to extend the discourse unit, δέ indicates a switch from the previous piece of communication to the next (Bakker 1993, esp. 277, 288, 295-6). Some element of ‘distinctness’ defines the next piece of communication, and that distinctness “often correlates with a shift in Topic or Theme” (Rijksbaron 1997, 191 n. 11), although the contrast may sometimes lie more in the text’s segmentation than in its content (Bakker 1993, 289, 294-5).

Bakker, Egbert J. 1993. Boundaries, Topics, and the Structure of Discourse. An Investigation of the Ancient Greek Particle Dé, Studies in Language 17, 275-311
Rijksbaron, Albert. 1997. New Approaches to Greek Particles (Amsterdam)

(Topic is that which the utterance is about, usually "given" information. Theme constructions shift a Topic of later utterances forward, as in "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." By the time you get to "they," the topic is established as "lilies" by the left-dislocated Theme construction.)

So δέ may be used when an author has been talking about one person or situation and shifts to bring up again a person or situation that he had mentioned earlier. Or he may draw an inference AND use δέ to show that it is about someone or something different from the topic of the earlier sentence. δέ comes up a lot in historical texts because authors often switch from talking about one person or situation to talk about another one. In Spin's example about Antipas traveling to Rome, the δέ shifts the topic from his trip to Rome to what his wife was doing while he was traveling back. In what Spin quotes, after Josephus says that Herod sent her back, δέ in ἡ δέ switches the Topic from Herod back to his wife.

"And so" is just not a definition of δέ.

spin

Well, for some reason you seem to think so.

You haven't responded to anything in the post you are responding to and now you are making false claims and assertions. You say, "There is nowhere that Josephus uses δε to refer back beyond a "parenthetical phrase" such as the JtB phrase." I'll take by "phrase" here you mean "passage", as the JtB material is a couple of paragraphs. You didn't do any checking before you made your claim. Josephus does in fact use δε to refer back to before a digression.

1. Consider the discussion at the beginning of bk.18 about Quirinius, which digresses onto Judas and his movement, which in tern leads into a presentation of the various Jewish sects. Eventually he gets back to his narrative which picks up at 18.26, "Quirinius δε had now liquidated the estate of Archelaus...."
   
   
2. When Josephus digresses from his discussion of Agrippa being put in chains to talk about a servant Thaumastus (18.192-194) , he gets back to Agrippa, "Agrippa δε stood in chains in front of the palace...."
   
   
3. Then Tiberius at 18.205 calls Evodius to bring his childrens. We then get information about them, before returning to his narrative with Tiberius and Evodius at 18.211, "After Tiberius δε had given the command to Evodius...."

Do you need more examples of δε specifically used to return from a digression to show that the sentence with δε after the JtB passage is quite reasonable?

δε is a frequently used particle which has a number of meanings [see ficino's post above for the basic idea]. Consider the English preposition to in "he went to the doctor to see to a pain in the stomach": three uses but not one the same. You need to demonstrate the meaning you want of such a frequently used term in each situation. You didn't make a case that justified your "interpretation" of a single exemplar of δε.

Rhetoric doesn't cover up the crap.

Then you missed out on the frequent stream of unsupported claims that the JtB passage is an interpolation. You floated it. I gave you evidence to the contrary, so you escalated. I don't know about other situations, but in this case you dropped a bomb and now pretend it is someone else's stink, cough, cough.

I don't mind disagreements, but I'd like some content behind it, a new factoid, a new angle. What did you bring to it?

This JtB interpolation at all costs stuff is just so unnecessary.

I just noticed ficino's message which was posted while I was writing this.

ficino

Piggybacking on what's been said, a lot of the uses of δέ that Spin adduces above are typical instances wherein δέ marks a shift in Topic. Josephus has been talking about person A; now the topic of the discourse shifts to B, and δέ signals the shift to the reader.

Since historical writing often involves switches from discourse about Person A to discourse about Person B, and back again, Greek historians use δέ a lot to signal these shifts.

Typical inferential particles are (sorry, can only type an acute accent!) ουν, δή, and άρα.
δέ can combine with them in various ways.

Cheers, F

Grog

I think if you look more carefully at what I am saying, you will see this is not so.

Grog

I don't have time to respond to everything here. Let me give you a brief example of how exactly you are wrong.

You made the mistake of assuming my use of this phrase:

ὁ δὲ ὀργῇ φέρων τὴν Ἀρέτα ἐπιχείρησιν γράφει πρὸς Οὐιτέλλιον πόλεμον ἐξενεγκεῖν καὶ ἤτοι ζωὸν ἑλόντα ἀναγαγεῖν δεδεμένον ἢ κτεινομένου πέμπειν τὴν κεφαλὴνἐπ᾽ αὐτόν.

as an example of what I am talking about, mistakenly took the "so" in Whiston's translation to be the where ὁ δὲ is found in the text. Whiston places the "So" in front of the preceding clause:

ταῦτα Ἡρώδης γράφει πρὸς Τιβέριον. ὁ δὲ ὀργῇ φέρων τὴν Ἀρέτα ἐπιχείρησιν γράφει πρὸς Οὐιτέλλιον πόλεμον ἐξενεγκεῖν καὶ ἤτοι ζωὸν ἑλόντα ἀναγαγεῖν δεδεμένον ἢ κτεινομένου πέμπειν τὴν κεφαλὴνἐπ᾽ αὐτόν.

Whiston tranlates this as:

So Herod wrote about these affairs to Tiberius, who being very angry at the attempt made by Aretas, wrote to Vitellius to make war upon him, and either to take him alive, and bring him to him in bonds, or to kill him, and send him his head.

I do know where the ὁ δὲ is here and it relates direct back to "About these things Herod wrote to Tiberius..."

Whiston could have said:

"About these things Herod wrote to Tiberius; so he, being angry at the attempt..."

And it would have kept the flavor of the passage here. He could have said "and he" or he could have said "but he." In either of those cases, I don't think it would reflect as well as "so he."

Some of Ficiono's post doesn't go against me at all. His last state that ὁ δὲ doesn't mean "and so" is fairly meaningless.

You can quibble about Whiston's translation, but that's not getting you to where you want to go, which is that Josephus uses δὲ to refer back from Paragraph 3 to Paragraph 1, skipping over a whole paragraph of text that can easily be omitted and we would lose nothing regarding the story of Aretas, Herod and Vitellius. That δὲ doesn't directly translate to "so" is pointless. "So" works well to convery the meaning of what Josephus is saying. He uses as a transition from one event to the next chronologically related event. You could say "and so" "then" "accordingly," whatever. Whiston uses "so."

As far as the earlier example you have managed dredge up, I was talking about directly Paragraph 1, 2, 3. That he repeatedly uses δὲ in this chapter to move from one instance to another directly related instance.

I have already, completely and adequately defended Whiston's use of the word "so" in this translation, which was your point to begin with. You goal posts now move to finding scattered examples of when Josephus uses δὲ to refer to something far enough back to make a comparison. I will have to study that, but so far, I have been unimpressed, for all its smug air of superiority, with your response here so far.

By the way, I don't care if the JtB material is authentic or not. I merely made the observation that it breaks the flow of the story. I do not have a "JtB" must be inauthentic. I haven't made the case at all that this point proves that. I only made an observation.