aa5874

Well, he must have known he was setting up his own roadblock because he knew all along that he had no corroborative evidence for a never on earth Jesus that was crucified in sub-lunar.

Not really, maryhelena.

It was NOT a fictitious character that started the Jesus cult.

It was an ACTUAL EVENT--the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE.

There was NO Jewish Messianic ruler named Jesus.

The Jesus of the NT is the Son of God--a Myth.

The Jews killed or delivered up the Son of God to be killed and that is why the Temple of their own God was destroyed.

Sinaiticus gMark 15.

Aristides' Apology Jesus MUST be the Son of God to explain the reason for the Fall of the Temple. The Jews killed the Son of their own God.

Hippolytus' Treatise Against the JewsThe Pauline writings and Hebrews have NOTHING whatsoever to do with the start of the Jesus cult.

Hebrews was unknown up to the mid 2nd century and the Epistle itself is wholly contradictory--the High Priest is ALSO the Sacrificial Lamb.

Effectively, the High Priest committed suicide--what utter nonsense.

Hebrews is theological Mumbo-jumbo.

Only the short gMark Jesus story in the Canon make theological sense--- The Jews Killed the Son of their own God.

maryhelena

And how on earth could Doherty issue his challenge about this ambiguous verse?? He set himself up for a fall. Issuing challenges is not the way to go. Nobody is infallible here. Doherty played this game by his own rules - expecting others to play that way. He simply overlooked the fact that others can also make 'rules' by which to interpret Hebrews 8.4. Doherty has done what he says the JC historicists do. i.e. they read the gospels into Paul. Doherty has allowed his interpretation of Paul to influence his interpretation of Hebrews 8.4.

andrewcriddle

Hi Grog

I'm not sure exactly what you are asking but I'll try and answer.

The Apocryphon of John in its present form is a post-resurrection revelation by Christ to the apostle John hence it is Christian influenced. It is possible that this framework is a later addition and that the original form of this work had no Christian elements. However as a work of Sethian gnosticism it is unlikely to be before 70 CE and hence it is post-Christian even if possibly independent of Christianity.

The Paraphrase of Shem is probably in dialogue with Christian groups which it attacks for their practice of water baptism. In any case it is almost certainly after 150 CE, its parallels are with Numenius the Chaldaean oracles and Bardesanes. Basically its background is very late Middle Platonism.

The Apocalypse of Adam may or may not have Christian elements I'm not sure. It is a work of Sethian gnosticism and, given its apparent reference to Mithras' birth from the rock, 2nd century CE in its present form.

Andrew Criddle

Roo Bookaroo

Maryhelena:


You are absolutely right to use the word “interpret”.

Now, it is certainly helpful to get the help of the best professional brains in the NT business.

But do note that Paul Ellingworth is not the only expert, nor the final word, in scholarship on Hebrews.


"Top 5 Commentaries on the Book of Hebrews" by Keith Mathison
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/top-5-c...ok-of-hebrews/
gives this listing of the top five: Lane, Hughes, France, Ellingworth, Bruce

“My Top Picks For Hebrews Commentaries”
http://www.amazon.com/My-Top-Picks-H...R3GFZ1C2PCQV1B
lists 8 titles, keeping Bruce, Hughes, Ellingworth, Lane among the top names.

Then, "the Best commentaries on Hebrews"
http://bestcommentaries.com/hebrews/
lists 73 titles, with all the previous top 5 or top 8 included in the top 20 of this new list.

So Paul Ellingworth, a professional translator, is not the only one, by far.
And in all fairness it would have been worthwhile to check what the other 20 top scholars have to say about Hebrews 8:4.

However Paul Ellingworth’s goal seems perfectly sensible: emphasizing the need “to hear Hebrews speaking in its own terms, as far as in us lies.” Which is not an obvious result, but a kind of challenge because of the special difficulties of the text.

Ellingworth underlines where the difficulty is: It is in the different mental structure of the author’s ancient Greek mind compared with our modern ones.
The mental connotations that sustend for each of us our individual way of thinking — linking one idea to many others in a web of connotations, constructing a “logic” that is sui generis to each brain, reflecting a lifetime in building its own network of connections based on its own experience and education — is simply not the same as the mental connotations active in the brain of the writer of Hebrews, Ellingworth emphasized:


And this problem is not solvable once and for all. We are trying to replace the original Greek words with a series of words in Latin (Jerome) or English that does not always correspond to the “fused” ideas of the Hebrews writer.
The problem is even more exacerbated when you tackle Egyptian hieroglyphs.

So, that was why I felt it valuable to check how, historically, readers from Antiquity until the recent onslaught of academics, used to [COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]“hear Hebrews speaking in its own terms.”[/COLOR]

The critical passage in Hebrews 8:4 is only ten Greek words long. And this phrase has been “heard” , that is translated, in simple and straighforward fashion by most readers (see Jerome’s unsophisticated translation in Latin: "si ergo esset super terram nec esset sacerdos".

Note that Ellingworth uses no artificial analogies to explain the text: No mention of a trip to Paris in 1888, no mention of Ronald Reagan's presidency, no reference to the story of "Bob and Jim".

Ellingworth is not a "raconteur", he does not think with analogies, but prefers to dig deep into the text, and when he needs comparisons, it is with other parts of the text itself, or with the various interpretations of his 30 colleagues in the business. He is not offering a solitary invention, but a reasoned version based on the cumulative scholarship of the professional community.

Now, if our goal is to “hear Hebrews speaking in its own terms”, is it really indispensable to resort to a 9-page “analysis” of those ten Greek words which “clearly —yes, clearly — shows” what this author is saying?
Do we need a complex 4,700-word dissertation to [COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]“hear Hebrews speaking in its own terms”?[/COLOR]

And it you include the 6 notes coming with the dissertation, that is another 1,100 words, for a total of 5,800 words to help us [COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]“hear Hebrews speaking in its own terms”[/COLOR], to connect with those 10 Greek words.

Note that the total text of the Epistle to the Hebrews is only 7,200 - 7, 300 words (depending on translation).

Is this method really reaching what the author “clearly — yes, clearly — shows”? Or are we not dealing with an immensely abstruse and complex interpretation of a simple 10-word Greek phrase?

And why is there a need to resort to tales to make even more “clear” what the dissertation alone does not seem to definitely establish?

Why is there a need for arbitrary “analogies” of a trip to Paris in 1888? Of considering Ronald Reagan’s presidency? Or even the bizarre tale of “Bob and Jim”?

This method of using analogies in lieu of thinking is a valuable way to awake high-school chidren’s minds to the complexities of mental connotations. But at the level of high scholarship, do we need a “raconteur” of children’s tales?

I would tend to guess that Ellingworth, in his 800-page commentary of Hebrews, probably has no need to resort to childish analogies.

When we go that route, Maryhelena, you’re more than right.
We’re NOT [COLOR="rgb(46, 139, 87)"]“hearing Hebrews speaking in its own terms”[/COLOR], but we’re getting an immensely complex and artifiical “interpretation” that is superimposed on the natural text of 10 words. Nothing “clear — no, not clear at all" in this method.

maryhelena

Thanks for those quotes, Roo

1) ".....to hear Hebrews speaking in its own terms..."
2) ".....several leading ideas are juxtaposed or fused.”

Love the last quote! So - contradictions or opposites within the same phrase or sentence.....Past and Present fused....Hebrews on it's own terms....:thumbs:

maryhelena

footnote to the above:

If Past and Present are "juxtaposed or fused" i.e. these terms are ambiguous within Hebrews 8.4 - then one way to accommodate this ambiguity is to propose two different contexts that exist side by side. One is the heavenly context - the high priest, Jesus, who would never have been on earth. The other context is the earthly context - in which Jesus, in the days of his flesh, was on earth but would not have been a priest under the Law.

Thus, two Jesus figures - the heavenly man and the earthly man.

Yes, gJohn has the Word made flesh - i.e. a combination of flesh and spirit. But the Word is only begotten from the Father i.e. an 'offspring' of that heavenly man - not the heavenly spirit itself. Differentiation between matter and spirit is upheld - although interaction, connection, is upheld and maintained.

(gospel Jesus = figurative or mythological literary creation)

Roo Bookaroo

Maryhelena:

What must be emphasized is that the "Best Commentaries of Hebrews" site not only already lists 73 editions of Hebrews Commentaries now published and on the market, but it also lists "Forthcoming Commentaries" up to 2015 of about 19-20 additional publications to come, which will bring the total number to about one hundred Commentaries of Hebrews.

And all those are written by professional NT scholars and do get published. So the market for readership must be pretty large.

Of course those commentaries are not all of the same level. There are about ten that seem to be the top-ranking. And Ellingworth does seem to be on everybody's top five, even No. 2 in one list.

But this state of affairs in the professional scholarship is an indication that it's not only our puny 10-word line of Hebrews 8:4 that can be subject to evaluation and interpretation, but the whole book itself.

Ellingworth did warn:

Ellingworth has put his finger on the problem: there is an inherent difficulty that makes it impossible for our modern brains to ever get to a final rendition.

The difficulty is the transformation of brain structuring from that of the original author to our own brain synapse structure: The connotation links in the network of our brains' synapses are not the same as those of the author's.

We approach this hermetic text with the habit of division of concepts and mental presuppostions built over the 2,000 years since that enigmatic book was written. Our mental habits are foreign to the writer of Hebrews. And his are foreign to us.
[And this gap of communication is nothing compared with the task of "understanding" ancient Egyptians' mental structures).

The publisher calls Hebrews ,
and describes Ellingworth as being This intrinsic, irreducible obscurity is intractable and explains the existence of one hundred professional commentaries none considered obsolete, but all current. The nut cannot be cracked, because it is not a nut.

Any dedicated scholar can carve a niche for himself in offering a new Hebrews commentary.

So the “ambiguity” or, rather, the “obscurity” affects not just our 10-word sentence of Hebrews 8:4, but the WHOLE BOOK of 7,300 words.

And in this case it is a given that Hermann Detering and Jake were absolutely correct in their own debate on JesusMysteries: NO reading, no interpretation of Hebrews can ever be an absolute. There’s ambiguity all over the place, and no commentator has ever been able to offer a definitive translation in modern English.

No smoking gun, no “ironclad case”, no slam-dunk, no bomb exploding in your face. All this is pure supposition and conceit.

The ambiguity cannot be raised, and the obscurity completely lifted. And so the commentaries are sure to keep on being written and published.

maryhelena

Roo

Wait for the commentaries to reach a consensus re Hebrews if that is what works for you ......

That's not my game plan....:wave:

Roo Bookaroo

Maryhelena:

You misunderstand me.

There's no game plan,and there's no consensus.

I repeated Hermann Detering's profound observation on the impossibility of ever reaching a final decision on anything concerning the early Christian documents, because ambiguity is inherent to the field and to the documents.

It's all a matter of expertise, acumen, knowledge, and persuasion ability.

The idea of a consensus is simply ridiculous, and very simplistic.

It has never existed, neither in the early Christian documents, not in the Gospels, not in the fantastic growth of sects, the multiplication of dissenting scholars, the growth of heresies and sects, the divisions of all the Churches, the 2,000 current denominations in Christianity, and the tens of thousands of contemporary scholars, etc..This diversity does exist as a reality and cannot be wished away with words.

The fact that there are going to be within two years one hundred different commentaries of Hebrews by professional scholars is another sign of this exuberant multiplication of interpretations.
The special characteristic of Hebrews is that is dense obscurity makes it an excellent material for all kinds of interpretations.

When it comes to major historical issues of the origins of Christianity, the murkiness of the original documents makes this idea of a consensus a chimera, which is why it's such a fantastic detective game where everyone with a brain not half asleep can play. And practically everybody can invent his/her favorite scenario.

This is true of professional scholars, and it is true of rank amateurs. Just look at the abundance of scenarios on JesusMysteries and even on this site.
This is why about 10,000 new books are published each year in English on aspects of Christianity.

Including latecomers like Doherty who imagine they've found the philosophical stone, or rank amateurs like you, dreaming of marching forward, and me, curious enough to watch the debate from the sidelines.

And this diversity exists not only among the establishment "historicity" supporters, but also among the Jesus denialists.
When Arthur Drews published his "Denial of the Historicity of Jesus", in 1926, it already included about 35 top Jesus deniers who were all different with their own stories and fundamental ideas.

Kenneth Humphreys has expanded this list to about 100 names, and again they're all different and not fungible. Not two of them share the same set of assumptions and conclusions.

In fact, both in scholarship and among popularizers, you make a name for yourself only if you can bring something different to the table and give something to chew on to all the other specialists in the field.
Every scholar, and every popularizer, has an incentive to present a different interpretation.

That is an irreducible fact. All the trumpeting in the world is never going to affect this internal tendency to differentiation and disruption of any real consensus.
That is the hallmark of having a live brain not subject to the tyranny of a dogmatic power. No pope, no Mao, let one thousand flowers bloom (or at least a few).

maryhelena

Roo - my point still stands - either get your hands dirty in 2000 years of NT history - or keep warm and clean on the sidelines. Each to his own...