dizzy

Greetings, weary travelers. I've been thinking about something. Bear with me while I give some background.

You are all aware of the contradiction between Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9. You may also be aware of the most sophisticated response by apologists. It consists of a grammatical argument over the use of the verb akouw. In Acts 9:7, the genitive case is used for the object of the verb, but in Acts 22:9 the accusative is used. This is important because of the following understanding:

It is also written:

Robertson says this in a section titled "Fading Distinction from Accusative". This is more than a little strained. The very title of the section admits that the distinction is only a strong one in classical Greek.

Five years ago, a poster by the name of DBT wrote this:

I haven't done the numbers myself, but I find this very convincing.

And now that we're on the same page, I want to ask my real question: Is all this circular? Have Robertson and other grammarians formed their opinion of how Greek was used, based on a need to harmonise the passages in Acts? In general, how much of our understanding of Koine Greek might have come from hair-splitting apologetics like this?

Can we trust our Christian grammarians?

DCHindley

They sure do have their names for the kinds of constructions they figure must have been employed.

Granville Sharp rule comes to mind.

DCH

mountainman

To answer this question dizzy we have to ask "Can we trust our Christian historians"?
Were they also "harmonising things" like "historical events" for example.
When did Acts (or the "New Testament" or LXX for that matter) first appear in history in a Greek bookstore for example?
These sorts of questions are important ones.

As to their answers, well, I dont trust any of them upfront.
Why TF should anyone? I trust the delivery of JRR Tolkien however.

dizzy

See, I'm not so much worried about historians. I feel that the entry fee for evaluating historical arguments is pretty low. You can bring yourself up to scratch on historical subjects in short order. This is why we have mountainman defending the Eusebian theory of Christian origins. As untenable as that may be, you still take a pretty good crack at it. But Koine Greek has a steep learning curve, and few people can truly claim to be experts in it. Those experts are mostly Christians, and I don't know if it makes sense to trust Christians to evaluate the arguments of other Christians.

I brought up the example I did because it rang a bell when I read it. I was being told to understand an aspect of Greek in a particular way, and the chief example given was that Acts requires it to be understood this way. It got me thinking about potential bias. In the front of my grammar (by Hewett and friends), on the dedications page, it reads "The blessings of our Lord Jesus Be upon you all."

And yet I have to just take their word for everything. I'm a very distrusting person. It goes against my nature :frown:

Toto

Two Examples of Faulty Bible Scholarship by Richard Carrier

Not exactly the same issue, but perhaps relevant.

dizzy

Thanks Toto. It's relevant to my paranoia :melodramatic:

mountainman

This is the 21st century and how many centuries of Greek scholarship does one need in order to get a handle on the key documents of the "Early Christian Corpus of literature"? Surely each century of Greek academics have sought to refine the previous generation. There will always exist translation differences to note and argue over between one expert and another, but the number of available English translations of the basic texts should be sufficient to examine the types of things inside the corresponding Greek texts.

Or more importantly their hypotheses.

I imagine that grammarian and textual critic bias is simply handed down from authoritarian leaders to authoritarian followers. There is nothing surprising about this because it is evident in all of the other academic disciplines such as the myriad branches of science, mathematics, etc, etc. Most of the other disciplines have undergone various revolutions of thought as new evidence has been introduced to their fields.

The discovery of Coptic sources in the Nag Hammadi Codices has allowed a new series of non-Greek experts to contribute to the field of christian origins in recent times.



One is not compelled to "just take their word for it".
One should be able to independently check the facts, and ask questions.
The show is not over, they say, until the fat lady sings.

dizzy

Or sought to replace the biases of their predecessors with their own set of biases. There is a wealth of information out there, from all these centuries of scholarship. But which scholars of the 21st century really engage with the scholarship of the 19th century or earlier? My feeling is that they consider a lot of issues to be "settled" and just don't feel the need to interact with antiquated scholarship. They learned the rebuttals by rote at their seminaries and haven't looked back since. Think of 1 Clement. Harnack said it's authentic and dated it to exactly 96 CE. This absurdity still seems to be the mainstream opinion.

This is an interesting point. :constern01:

Doug Shaver

Excuse me? What makes any hypothesis worth anybody's attention at all, if not the argument by which it is supported?

DCHindley

I'm not sure why you are so disappointed in this explanation of an apparent inconsistency between the accounts of Paul's vision in Acts 9 & 22. The contradiction only exists in English, because our verb "to hear" relies entirely on context to indicate whether the hearer understood the meaning of what he heard. In Greek, it is the norm to indicate the hearer understood what was communicated by having the verb AKOUW (akouO) take a noun in the accusative case. Sure there are instances where nouns in other cases are taken when it is clear that the hearer understood what was said, but this was indicated by the context alone.

I think the idea that the grammar is conveying is that this verb, when taking a noun in the accusative, surely indicates the hearer understood what was communicated, and when it does not, then you have to rely on context to determine this.

If you could find instances where the verb AKOUW takes a noun in the accusative, but it is clear from context that the hearer did not understand, then you might have something. However, if there are such instances the grammar you are using should note them. Since I don't have access to Robertson's grammar, perhaps you can give a little more info.

DCH