Amaleq13

I think this is a much more reasonable possibility than the suggestion that the author was intentionally trying to deceive a gullible audience into taking his story literally.

Amaleq13

Please identify the specific passage where God rescinds the prohibition. That subsequent authors chose to ignore it does not constitue a repeal. Perhaps, in agreement with Philo, we shouldn't read these texts literally either.

As you already noted, it is explicitly identified as the genealogy of Jesus. The last name in the genealogy is Joseph.

Then the genealogy is not literally that of Jesus.

Where are the similar texts?

It isn't a premise, it is a conclusion.

Amaleq13

None of this bears any resemblance to the discussion. The concept of "unique" results from the notion that there is nothing similar. I know of nothing similar to the Gospels and you have yet to produce an example. The only way to eliminate the claim is by producing a similar example.

Philo exemplifies the "technique" of considering the theological significance of a given text as primary over a literal understanding.

I attempted to make it clear that I was not accusing you of bias.

You can build a ladder to escape the hole simply by providing evidence to support your assertions. Where are the texts similar to the Gospel stories? Where is the evidence for the trend in which the Gospels exist?

And:

You keep dodging this question but it seems very relevant to me: Did the author understand the genealogy he fabricated to be literally true?

Rick Sumner

I didn't dodge. I emphatically--and repeatedly--have stated that of course he didn't. He knew he was full of it. Do you not read my posts?

People made things up all the time that they expected to be taken as literally true. Whether Matthew believed it or not is irrelevant.

I've started another thread on the "uniqueness" of the gospels. I can't tell you if I know of "anything similar" when you won't tell me what points of similarity you would like me to find.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Clutch

Of course the two questions are intimately linked. You can't intend to take a long drink of water from a glass you know to be empty, and you can't intend to be taken as uttering the literal truth by people you know to have sufficient information to understand that you're cribbing someone else's story.

Amaleq13

Did he believe it was theologically true?

Why not avoid shifting the burden and present a positive argument for their similarity to other texts?

How can you so emphatically deny their unique nature if you don't already have in mind similar works?

Asha'man

I think there are easy explanations for the genealogies, assuming that the author intended them to be read literally. (Note that the author’s knowledge and his intent do not have to match.)

1. The author of the gospel as a whole (not a Jewish scholar) may have hired a real Jewish scholar to produce a genealogy. The scholar deliberately inserted Jechonias into the list, as well as references to women of ill repute, in order to keep knowledgeable Jews from falling for this new heresy. (The second genealogy was needed as an attempt to replace the first one, correcting these flaws in the process)

2. The gospels evolved over time. The editor that inserted the genealogy was probably working before the virgin birth idea had been introduced. When the virgin birth was later edited in, the genealogy was edited slightly to stop at Joseph, rather than going all the way to Jesus.

Clutch

No, they don't. But his reasonable understanding of his audience's knowledge and his intent do have to match.

Amaleq13

If we accept either or both of your explanations, we have even less reason to assume the author intended his work to be understood literally because we have even less ability to reliably identify what that work actually was. If we don't know what the author wrote or intended to have written, how can we assume he intended it to be understood literally?

jbernier

No, we do not. By definition the argument "Matthew is not meant to be a literal account" is a negative. What we need to substantiate the claim are the characteristics which define an account that is intended to be literal and then we need to see if GofMt can be said to conform to these characteristics. Those who wish to argue that position are under no obligation to present positive evidence as it is actually a negation of a positive argument rather than a positive argument itself.

What about his use of prophetic material? He seems to be using material from the Latter Prophets in a very typological fashion. He does not seem to be saying that Isaiah was literally referring to the birth of Jesus as much as he seems to be drawing upon a general Messianic motif that is explicated in Isaiah and fulfilled in Jesus (although it might have been fulfilled before and will be fulfilled again).

Ah, now I understand. The problem is that you seem to be using "literally" in a different way than most people do. Let us quote from Webster's as it might reduce the confusion that differing semantic values seems to have generated in this discussion.

"Literal:
1. Being in accordance with, conforming to, or upholding the exact or primary meaning of a word or words.
2. Word for word; verbatim: a literal translation.
3. Avoiding exaggeration, metaphor, or embellishment; factual; prosaic: a literal description; a literal mind.
4. Consisting of, using, or expressed by letters: literal notation.
5. Conforming or limited to the simplest, nonfigurative, or most obvious meaning of a word or words."

Now, about def'n 1: The possibility of uncovering the exact or primary meaning of the words used in GofMt is quite low in most cases. Truth is that working with any ancient text and language means that we must always settle for approximate meanings. This makes def'n 2 highly difficult to accomplish.

Def'n 3: Do not get me started on the examples of metaphor in GofMt. Literal writing avoids metaphor, as does literal reading. For instance, in Luke, when Jesus likens himself to a mother hen a literal reading would tend to say that he was actually a mother hen. An understanding of metaphor allows us to recognize that this is unlikely.

Def'n 4: In this sense all written texts are literal in that they are expressed in letters (from whence is derived "literal"). However, that is truistic to the point of irrelevant for our discussion.

Def'n 5: See my comments upon def'n 3.

I think that you are probably working more or less with def'n 4 whereas the rest of us are much more working with 1, 2, 3 and 5. I suspect that this is a great deal of the problem here.