jgibson000

One more thing on Detering's notes on Van Manen.

In response to Van Manen's claim that the present form of Gal 4:4 "is explicable only if one assumes it to be a later insertion."

Detering states:

One should note, however, that quite contrary to Detering's claim (what are his sources for this BTW?), there is "today" no acceptance of an "early" dating, general or otherwise, of Gnosis among experts on Gnosticism.

For the lastest review of the history of scholarship on Gnosis as well as an authoritative outline of "today's" thinking on the question of the nature and origins of Gnosticism, see Carl B. Smith's No Longer Jews: The Search for Gnostic Origins (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Hendrickson 2004).

Jeffrey Gibson

Ted Hoffman

What claim of mine do you believe I was claiming Burton supports?

You clearly did not understand why I was quoting Burton. To be clear, I was citing Burton to support the claim that Jesus was a pre-existent being.
Hence the Burtonian statement: "in view of the apostles' belief in the pre-existence of Jesus, as set forth in 1 Cor.8:6, Col. 16,16, and of the parallelism of v.6 be interpreted as having reference to the sending of the son from the pre-existent state (En morphe theou, Phil. 2:6) into the world. This is also confirmed by the two expressions that follow, both of which (see below) are evidently added to indicate humiliation (cf. Phil. 2:7,8)"

Now, what does En morphe theou have to do with EXAPESTEILEN?

Save us the self-contradictory hokum and bunkum about "mythicist not being worth much or not being worth paying attention to".
<overly dramatic language removed>

Solo

I do not think I would agree to this concession. I feel pretty sure the same rules of logic apply to both schools. There may be (wild guess) different historicists who disagree about the origin of the phrase in Gal 4:4, its meaning and function in the text. As long as their analysis is internally consistent they are fine. They are not obligated to toe some imaginary "historicist party" line.

This is an unsound argument; as a matter of fact, not an argument but cheap lampooning of an opinion with which one disagrees. Why trivialize the "born of a woman" problem that the MJ'ers have with one of "Church at Corinth" they don't have ?
Evidently, with respect to Gal 4:4 some MJ'ers want to have it both ways: they want to argue that an interpolation was made in the text to defeat a certain view and that the forged insert actually supports that view. Well, what can one say ? But that does not mean that some other ones are not, or potentially may not be, internally consistent. As G.A. Wells once aptly put it, a defective case may be made even for the correct position.

...and that is a solid statement that I venture will prove difficult to argue with. All that really needed to be said, IMHO.

JS

Ted Hoffman

Ben,
Sorry regarding Moses. I confused you with jjramsey on a previous post.
You sure do have a strange way of choosing who to label "crown prince".

Ben C Smith

I think you and I are speaking of different things. An historicist is not required to take every passage ever pressed for historicism as his or her own personal historicist passage, granted. But any passage that an historicist surrenders in such a way (and there are quite a few that I surrender) is no longer an historicist passage for that particular historicist.

What I meant was that an historicist who uses Galatians 4.4 in an historicist manner pretty much has to suppose that born means born and woman means woman. There may be differences of emphasis and so forth, but I do not know what an historicist argument on Galatians 4.4 would look like without those two elements above.

I beg to differ here. I was trying to make an analogy by using a hopefully noncontroversial verse. If the purpose of interpretation is to understand what the author meant, then there will be only a handful of correct interpretations, often only one, for each passage. But there can always be many, many incorrect interpretations.

Ben.

dog-on

Does anyone here know of an attestation the Galatians prior to 150AD?

Thanks

Robert

Clivedurdle

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics...sdetails.shtml

Classics degrees.

I really do not understand why the mythicist case is being lampooned so strongly, when, as I see it, it is placing xianity in its historical context of myth, ritual, drama and comedy - classical studies. This is why the anthropology of religion is crucial. Agreed there are popularisers around, but that does not weaken the cerntral point that xianity is a child of its time, and if looked at in that context a historic jesus founder is not needed and is in fact a wrong explanation!

The linking to Judaism, for example in the discussion of Logos, is fascinating. There seems to be an underlying assumption that judaic concepts and classical concepts did not mix. This is just wrong!

Where did the idea of logos come from? Did the Jews invent it themselves?

What language is the New Testament written in again?

We have a theme of a god man, yes strengthened with Judaic and Zoroastrian influences of one god and the demotion of gods to spirits and angels, but in reality a pretty ordinary religion of the culture.

Why xians keep on asserting their beliefs are somehow special and extraordinary and deserving of persecution I do not know!

Clivedurdle

No longer Jews editorial review

Interesting that the review does not mention Zarathustra! I wonder how people decide "this started here" and then ignore the clear antecedents?

This feels like it is proving its assertion - gnosticism has Jewish roots it started in Alexandria. But what are these fixed things Judaism and gnosticism? I see ideas merging and melding, co - evolving. Our labels are just that, labels to try and get a fix. What if following the Jewish wars some Jews picked on pre existing zarathustran concepts to create a new road map for themselves?

Another lot went messianist! The groups had members in common and did not see themselves as separate until much later. Their ideas changed in debate with each other, iteration occurs, arms races of ideas occurs.

Gestalt - foreground and background - is required - this book looks like a study of the detail, but without context it might be misleading!

jgibson000

Speaking of arguing by assertion and assuming one's conclusion as true (not to mention arguing an irrelvant thesis), why you should fault a reviewer of a book for not mentioning Zoroaster is beyond me. Indeed, why you might find fault in anybody who discusses Gnosticism (and not just someone whose mandate is to state briefly what he/she thinks of a book) but does not mention Zoroaster is also strange, since it is by no means clear that Gnosticism originates in any way (let alone directly) in Zoroastrianism.

But be that as it may be, if you'd actually take the trouble to read a -- er, sorry - the book reviewed rather than (apparently solely) relying on the internet and web pages for your understanding of things, you'd know that the alleged Persian bacground of Gnosticsm is reviewed and discussed in Smith's book.

Jeffrey Gibson

jgibson000

Yes, I now see what you were up to. My apologies for the misunderstanding. I guess it was the fact that you originally quoted more of Burton than what is now above to support your claim that threw me. But isn't the sentence from Burton that I noted you left out actually a qualification on Burton's part of his claim about the language of Gal. 4:4a implying an assertion on Paul's part about the pre-esistence of the Son? And if so, isn't it true that you have engaged in selective quotation when you've adduced Burton as one who, if I read you correctly, unreservedly supports the idea that Paul believed in the pre-existence of the Son and speaks of it at Gal. 4:4?

In any case, assuming that Burton does unreservedly support this idea, let's note that Burton may not be correct in claiming that this idea stands behind/is carried within Paul's statement in Gal. 4:4a that "God sent his son" and, therefore, that your claim, based on Burton, about what Paul believed (lert alone what is stated in Gal. 4:4a), may not be sound.

For not all Pauline scholars/commentators on Galatians agree with Burton on this point. In fact, many have argued against it. Note, for instance, that one of the foremost modern interpreters of Paul (and a commentator on Galatians), J.D.G. Dunn, has not only provided, in his Christology in the Making, strong and cogent arguments against the idea that Paul believed in the pre existence of Jesus, but with respect to Gal. 4:4 has specifically stated

(1) that in the light of the usage in Biblical Greek of EXAPOSTELLW with God as subject, the expression "God sent his Son" in Gal 4:4a

"does not tell us anything about the origin or the point of departure of the one sent; it underlines the heavenly origin of his commissioning [emphasis Dunn's] but not of the one commssioned .. and therefore all we can say is that Paul's readers would [when reading/hearing Gal 4:4a] most probably think simply of the one sent by divine commission" (so too H.D. Betz, Galatians, pp. 206-8; and K. Rengstorff, TDNT 1 p. 406 among others),

and (2) that

"we cannot safely assume that Paul intended here [i.e., in Gal. 4:4a] an allusion to Christ as pre-existent Son or Wisdom of God. Paul and his readers in writing and reading these words may well have thought only of the man Jesus whose ministry in Palestine was of divine commissioning and whose uniquely intimate relation with God was proved by his resurrection ... "(Christology, pp. 39-40. See, too, his Galatians, p. 215;

Note, too, that Dunn's views are echoed or have been arrived at/argued independently of him by Betz, Bonnard, Galates, p. 83-85; J.Blank, Paul und Jesus, p. 267, J.A.T. Robinson, Human Face of God, pp. 161-62; S. Kim, The Origins of Paul's Gospel, pp. 117-119; R. Longenecker, Galatians, 167-169; J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, pp. 406-407)

So I'm not as certain, as you seem to be, that an appeal to Burton clinches your argument.

Jeffrey Gibson