aa5874

Please, you are not credible. You very well knew in advance of posting that what you state about me is wholly erroneous.

I have not demanded any compliance from you and hardly respond to your post.

Please identify where I have "relentlessly" demanded your compliance on this forum?

I do not really need flawed opinion but use the evidence from antiquity, the written statements from Apologetic and Non-Apologetic sources.

spin

Jeffrey himself quickly clarified that which caused me confusion, Earl. (See his post #14.)

Earl, can you indicate one example of the phrase

αποκαλυψις (του) (κυριου ημον) ιησου χριστου

in which the revelation is definitely from Jesus?

The fact that none of these go that way--1 Cor 1:7, Gal 1:12, 2 Thes 1:7, 1 Peter 1:7 and 1 Peter 1:13--seems significant.

[hr=1]100[/hr]

Could I, purely a member of the forum and in no capacity other than as such, ask you and Jeffrey to switch to a strictly formal mode with no weapons on the table? If you feel you want to call a foul, do it through the report button rather than drag it out and vent in the thread. Wait for a response from moderation before proceeding. It will make communications here less dysfunctional.

Jeffrey Gibson

If you are saying that my friend Hanz Dieter Betz is old, yes, he's getting up there (he's 82). If you are saying that he is among a previous generation of scholars, then you don't know what you are talking about. Dieter is still quite active at the UofC in teaching and research and publishing, he is involved in a host of projects, and he is still a noted and notable and active figure at SBL, the International SBL. and SSNT and other local, national, and international NT societies.

See his brief bio here:

http://divinity.uchicago.edu/faculty/betz.shtml

And are you really saying that old = outmoded? If so, it's strange then that you cite Burton yourself and, more importantly, use him to make the case you try to make on pp. 204-207 in JNGNM.your case.

Accuse? Please. Such loaded language! And such a misrepresentation of what I did!

As you can see from the quote of my words above, all I did was to note that on p 31 of JNGNM you don't give any hint anywhere, let alone immediately before or after the point where you proof text your claim that "Paul thinks to hear the voice of Jesus directly" with your modified quote of the NIV rendering of Gal. 1:12, that the NIV translation might not be accurate or say anything about how the Greek underlying the translation lends itself to other understandings of what Paul is saying in it.

And that's true, isn't it?

There's no referencing there to the fact that the NRSV, Youngs LT, and other notable translations of the text (including those given in critical commentaries and hand books on the translation of Galatians) give a different translation. There's no footnote attached to the quote --or anywhere else on p. 31 -- that points to the fact that the Greek contains an ambiguity, let alone to the fact that in other places in JNGNM you give (not to mention only note parenthetically --and do not discuss the reasons for why Gal. 1:12 may be translated in one of two ways there are) some different renderings of it, is there?


Because I was dealing solely with what appears on p. 31.

The real question is why you were silent on p. 31 about how you give further attention to the meaning of Gal. 1:12 on p. 44 of JNGNM, let alone in your notice on p. 45 (which is no more than a parenthetical remark and is not in any way evidenced scholarly discussion) that there is another way besides that of the NIV to render the text -- a way which, if accurate, would show that what you say Gal. 1:12 does (i.e., shows that Paul thinks to hear the voice of Jesus directly) untrue.

But not on p. 31.


If you are referring to my list of quotations of translations of Gal. 1:12 that are different from that of the NIV, the case I was making was only that the NIV rendereing of Gal. 1:12 is not the only one that the text has been rendered ---nothing more and nothing less.


I don't know, especially since I made no insinuations of any kind, let alone unsupported ones (are there such things as supported insinuations?) and since, unless you are calling me a liar regarding what I quoted as the NRSV, Burton, Young's etc. translations of Gal 1:12, I was unaware that these quotations needed clarification.

Jeffrey

spin

Oops... :redface:

Jeffrey Gibson

Earl spoke of lose ends. Here's one.

Hmm. Let's leave aside the insinuation in this "hat" remark" that I am a liar, and instead note exactly what I said when I spoke of (and quoted) Bultmann as denying that 1 Cor: 11:23 was a word of the Lord that Paul received directly from the heavenly Jesus.
Now I would very much like to know what part of [in his discussion of 1 Cor. 11:23 found in] NTT 1 145-152, and (150-151) is NOT "a reference for such a statement", let alone a non specific one.

True, it might not be a completely spelled out reference -- I could have given the full name of Bultmann' book (Theology of the New Testament); I could have cited the place of publication (Waco, TX) and the publisher (Baylor University Press) and the edition (2nd edition) and the date of publication (February 28, 2007) and the translator (Kendrick Grobel) and the person who wrote the new forward (one of my teachers, Robert Morgan) and the fact that it is a 2 volume work published in one volume.

But anyone who says that I did not give a specific citation (albeit in a modified acronym) of where the quote comes need his or her eyes examined.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Don't let Earl see this. He'll never let you forget you made a mistake -- and use it as proof positive that you don't really have any competence in Greek.

And Earl says I have no sense of humour!

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

I wrote

Actually Bultmann does discuss -- briefly -- 1 Thess. 4:16-17, as Earl has noted, in HST. But one should note that in his discussion of the origin of this saying, Bultmann does not state or give us any reason to think that he believes that Paul thought, or was declaring to the Thessalonians, that this "word of the Lord" he quotes was something that he [Paul] received privately from the heavenly Jesus, or is in fact to be regarded as such.

To say that Bultmann does is to engage in petitio principii, and indeed ignores what Bultmann says on p. 128 of HST (note -- a specific citation!) about the origin of this text -- it is something that is taken from the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. (in this he is followed by G. Luedemann [Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology (Philadephia: Fortress, 1984] 231 and L. Hartman [Prophecy Interpreted: The Formation of Some Jewish Apocalyptic Texts and of the Eschatological Discourse Mark 13 par (CWK Gleerup" 1966]182).

Now whether Bultmann (and Luedemann and Hartmann) is/are right or wrong on this particular matter (see the listing and assessment of the proposed views of the "word's" origin in C.A. Wannamaker's The Epistles to the Thessalonians : A commentary on the Greek text (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1990) 170 and in Abraham J. Malherbe's The Letters to the Thessalonians (New York: Doubleday, 2000) 267-269), the fact remains that Bultmann does not admit here the slightest possibility that this text is "Pauline", let alone that it is one that Paul received from the Lord. (Indeed, why would he? Where in τοῦτο γὰρ ὑμῖν λέγομεν ἐν λόγῳ κυρίου is their a mention of reception? where is the word spoken of here described as "from the Lord"?). He denies that it is.

Jeffrey

spin

Now you've done your dash. It'll be paint guns at 20 paces out behind the Sailor's Arms at midnight, Gibson. I'll get satisfaction.
:angry:

Jeffrey Gibson

Just call me Mick Jagger.

Jeffrey

EarlDoherty

Boy, talk about teasing out a meaning from a text that one wants to see in it (Arichea and Nida)!

If you can take this seriously to try to understand what Paul was saying, why don't you take other passages right in the texts just as seriously to arrive at that understanding?

How about 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 and its uses of the phrase "kata tas graphas" which, as I have been saying for 15 years, can entail the meaning of "as we learn from the scriptures" (as in "According to the newspapers, the President has gone to Chicago"). And why take that meaning rather than "in fulfillment of the scriptures"? Because nowhere in any epistle does Paul even hint that any action by Christ was an earthly one which fulfilled the scriptures. In fact, he more than once says he got that gospel from the scriptures:

Romans 1:2-4: The prophets "preannounced" [NEB] the gospel of God about his Son (not, by the way, Jesus himself), two items of which are enumerated in verses 3 and 4.

Romans 16:25-26: My gospel about Jesus Christ long-hidden but now revealed through prophetic writings...[probably a pseudo-Pauline addition]

And taking Galatians 1:12 in its most direct form, eschewing subtle contortions to get it to say something else, Paul declares that he got his gospel through revelation (of or from doesn't matter), which conforms to the interpretation of 1 Cor.'s "kata tas graphas" I've suggested.

1 Corinthians 11:23: Even an item as allegedly self-evidently historical and derived from tradition Paul declares he received "from the Lord." (Still got no comment on that phrase, Jeffrey? Or perhaps Arichea and Nida have managed to tease out a different meaning for that as well?) As I said, the "para" vs. "apo" explanation doesn't work and is in any case laughable: if this is claimed to be a reference to "the remote antecedent", then Paul is creating an awkward redundancy in this passage. He is about to tell his readers that Jesus spoke certain words. Is he likely to preface it with a statement which tells us that it was Jesus who spoke these words? Rather, he knows these words of Jesus because he believes he received a report of them directly from the Lord himself. Furthermore, if they were known and circulating in oral tradition, what kind of an ass would Paul look like if he was claiming that he knew them from personal revelation? ("Hey, screw your oral transmission, you guys! I got them from the Lord himself!") The latter makes sense only if this 'new covenant' interpretation of the thanksgiving meal is a mythical idea Paul has come up with himself, styling his spiritual Christ as the originator in the same sense that Mithras was the originator of the Mithraic sacred meal, and is imparting this to his readers. Religious mythology in formation right in front of our eyes!

As for persecuting the church in Judea, of course Paul learned and absorbed something from what they believed. How could he not if he was "converted" to it? But scholarship has long held that Paul brought new ideas and new sophistication to the faith he joined. He is constantly stressing his own contribution and its value, even superiority, over what other "apostles of the Christ" were proclaiming. To try to suggest that Paul preached only as a mouthpiece to what his predecessors (whether in Jerusalem or elsewhere) had already taught, is ridiculous. Galatians 1:11-12 is an adamant denial of that. Actually, that's the picture the Acts of the Apostles was written (in the 2nd century) to create. Put the same words and ideas in Paul's mouth as in Peter's mouth!

Earl Doherty