EarlDoherty

Aren't you the one who claimed that the semantic range of "appear" included "reappear"?

Thanks, but I'll do my own check on the semantic range of "eti". My Greek Concordance of the New Testament shows almost a hundred 'appearances' (some of them may even 'reappear') of "eti" which I will have to examine to see if any convey the meaning I have given it in this instance. That won't be overnight. If it turns out there are none that support me, I'll check other Lexicons in addition to Bauer, but failing all that, I'll settle for Ben's bottom line, too, which I've already suggested:

Earl Doherty

Toto

The minimal Jesus is a stripped down Jesus derived from the gospels, after all of the supernatural elements and gross improbabilities are removed.

Otherwise, what do you have - someone named Jesus who was crucified by Pontius Pilate? That describes possibly a bunch of insurrectionists, but we have no idea how or why this crucified guy started the religion, other than by supernatural means that are outside the boundaries of the historical method.

If you think that Jesus was a Galilean, preached to the masses, healed the sick, had disciples, created a Temple ruckus, provoked the Sanhedrin to arrest him and turn him over to Pilate, etc, there is no other source for such a person than the gospels.

EarlDoherty

So far I have been analyzing the Galatians 4 passage while adopting the assumption that “born of woman, born under the Law” was authentic to Paul. If we abandon that assumption, would our problems be solved? Is there evidence and argument available to make the solution of interpolation acceptable and even persuasive?

First, let’s see how the passage would read if those phrases were dropped. And in fact, a context does exist in which those phrases do not appear. Not in the form of any extant manuscript of Galatians which does not contain them, but something pointing to that very thing. The following is a reconstruction of the passage from the version of Galatians used by the ‘gnostic’ Marcion in the mid 2nd century. Although a copy of Marcion’s document is not extant, scholars have reconstructed most of it from passages in Tertullian’s Against Marcion in which Tertullian, in great detail, takes Marcion to task for adulterating the “true original” of Paul’s letter. From that work, Marcion’s version of Galatians 4:3-6 has been put together as follows. (Taken from The Center for Marcionite Research Library at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Itha...7/Library.html. The translation is by Daniel Jon Mahar, from “English Reconstruction and Translation of Marcion’s Version of to the Galatians” at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Itha...EGalatians.PDF.)

As a man I say,
When we were barely-born,
We were enslaved
Under the elements of the cosmos.
But when the fullness of time came,
God sent forth his Son,
That he might purchase those under law,
And that we may receive adoption.
God sent forth the Spirit of his Son
Into your hearts, crying,
“Abba, Father”.

In Book V, chapter 4, Tertullian is going step by step through the opening verses of Galatians 4. He quotes “ ‘But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son—’ ” then stops and makes a few comments on God’s control of ‘time,’ its ages and days. He resumes:

“But for what end did He send His Son? ‘To redeem them that were under the Law…and that we might receive the adoption of sons,’ that is, the gentiles, who once were not sons.” [Translations of Tertullian taken from Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.III]

The phrases “born of woman, born under the Law” are passed over without comment—if indeed they were in Marcion’s epistle. (If they were not, it would never have crossed Tertullian’s mind to think that the phrases in his own copy, half a century later, might have been added and that Marcion’s version represented the original.)

We know that Tertullian’s copy (in Latin) contained them because he appeals to the phrase “born of woman” in another place (De Carne Christi, 20), when he says, “Paul, too, silences these critics when he says, ‘God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.’ Does he mean through a woman, or in a woman? (referring to the conflict between heretical and orthodox interpretations). Nay more, for the sake of greater emphasis, he uses the word ‘made’ [factum] rather than ‘born’ [natum], although the use of the latter expression would have been simpler.”

The Latin “factum” corresponds to the Greek genomenon (the verb ginomai), while “natum” would correspond to the verb gennaō. This tells us that Tertullian, even though he understood factum to mean “born,” acknowledged that natum (and gennaō) would have been the more natural language. He explains Paul’s use of ginomai by saying he wanted to emphasize “the reality of the flesh which was made of a virgin,” but this would have been imparting to Paul an awareness of critical disputes in Tertullian’s time and a determination to discredit them! We do, however, know from this (and from Irenaeus a little earlier) that both Greek and Latin versions of Galatians by the late 2nd century contained ginomai/facio in that phrase. We also know (from Irenaeus, Ad.Haer. III,10,3) that they also contained “born under the law” and that this verb, too, was ginomai/facio.

Were the phrases “born of woman, born under the Law” in Marcion’s copy or not? It might seem curious either way that Tertullian did not comment on them if they were, or did not castigate Marcion for removing them if they were not. Yet the conundrum is fairly easily solved by Tertullian himself. After addressing verse 3, and before he goes on to verse 4, he says: “But indeed it is superfluous to dwell on what he has erased, when he may be more effectually confuted from that which he has retained.” So if “born of woman, born under the Law” was missing in Marcion, Tertullian’s silence on that ‘erasure’ would fit his stated intention not to dwell on such things. Whereas, if it was present, his silence would go against his stated intention to address the things Marcion retained. Thus, if we can judge Tertullian by his own words, “born of woman, born under the Law” was not present in Marcion’s version of Galatians.

But there remains the question: did Marcion in fact excise the phrases? They could be said to go against Marcion’s doctrine that Jesus was not “born” of anyone, but descended from heaven as a fully grown (docetic) man; and since Marcion had even less use for the Jewish Law (he rejected things Jewish as originally belonging to Christianity, at least in Jesus' mind) than Paul did, these two phrases would have been prime candidates for the cutting-room floor. The issue cannot be settled one way or the other. All we can say with some degree of confidence is that the Galatians used by Marcion which Tertullian was addressing did not contain “born of woman, born under the Law.”

But in addition to the observations made earlier, that the analysis of the surrounding text would make “born of woman, born under the Law” irrelevant to it and not likely to have been included by Paul, there is another consideration which works in favor of interpolation. For this, we must go to Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Ehrman’s study of the extant texts of the New Testament led him to realize that over the course of the early centuries from which we have a surviving record—beginning after the year 200—numerous amendments and insertions were made by Christian scribes to many passages. As he says in his Introduction:

“My thesis can be stated simply: scribes occasionally altered the words of their sacred texts to make them more patently orthodox and to prevent their misuse by Christians who espoused aberrant views.” [p.xi]

Ehrman “explores the ways proto-orthodox Christians used literature in their early struggles for dominance, as they produced polemical treatises, forged supporting documents under the names of earlier authorities, collected apostolic works into an authoritative canon, and insisted on certain hermeneutical principles for the interpretation of these works….It was within this milieu of controversy that scribes sometimes changed their scriptural texts to make them say what they were already known to mean. In the technical parlance of textual criticism…these scribes “corrupted” their texts for theological reasons” [p.xii].

Ehrman creates a picture of orthodox Christians tampering with all sorts of passages, scribal emendations done for the purpose of making it clear that Jesus was such-and-such in opposition to heretical doctrines like adoptionism, separationism, and especially docetism. Although these observations are based on variant manuscript readings coming from the 3rd century and later (since we have no manuscripts earlier than about the year 200), Ehrman was able, by comparison with citations from 2nd and 3rd century commentators like Irenaeus and Origen, to make certain deductions about emendations that could have been made as early as the first half of the 2nd century.

It is certainly the case that if current contentions could induce scribes to alter and insert words in the later period, there is nothing to prevent them from having been doing so in the 2nd century. “Born of woman” would be a natural insertion in Galatians (perhaps around the middle of the century, to counter the claims of docetics like Marcion and others and their appropriation of Paul) in order to make the point that Jesus was in fact a fully human man from a human mother. Why Paul, on the other hand, would have needed to make this obvious point is not so clear, especially if he wrote long before docetics came along whose views would need counteracting.

In a section entitled “Christ: Born Human” in his chapter “Anti-Docetic Corruptions of Scripture,” Ehrman has pointed out [p.239] that Galatians 4:4 was indeed a passage that was a favorite for amendment. The Greek “genomenon ek gunaikos” was occasionally changed to “gennōmenon ek gunaikos”—from the verb ginomai to gennaō, the latter being the verb that everyone (including Tertullian) has admitted is the plainer word for being born in the human way. Similarly in Latin manuscripts, says Ehrman, “factum” (made) was changed to “natum” (born). Clearly, such later scribes, faced with Gnostic doctrine that Jesus had not been born a real human but only in the semblance of one, that he had passed through Mary without taking on any of her human substance, felt that the verb ginomai was not explicit enough and substituted gennaō. (Ginomai did ultimately survive and became part of the received text.)

If later scribes were amending these important texts, earlier ones could have introduced the entire phrase in the first place during a period when Jesus was struggling to emerge from mythical to historical, or from docetism to join flesh and blood humanity. Later, some scribes in some communities felt that the initial insertion was not graphic enough, not ‘human’ enough, and so changed ginomai to gennaō, facio to nascor. This, by the way, would indicate that the two verbs were not regarded as interchangeable (despite past claims of some here) and that ginomai was not the strongest verb to convey the idea of being born in the human way.

But, one might ask, if “genomenon ek gunaikos, genomenon hupo nomon” was from the start a scribal interpolation to make the case for human birth and human nature in Christ, why did that initial interpolator choose ginomai instead of gennaō? Why not put in the more graphic verb from the start? The answer to that has to be somewhat speculative. Perhaps some scribes had a little different feeling about the relative meaning of each verb than other scribes, and the one who made the interpolation wasn’t troubled by his choice of verb whereas others, especially later, were. Nuances can change over time. When a later scribe was looking for a way to make the case for human birth stronger, it may have struck him that this would be a change for the better, whereas the initial choice of verb may have been done under less urgent circumstances. Someone (was it here on IIDB?) suggested that using ginomai would have been ‘more literary’ than using gennaō. (Perhaps the initial interpolator had a university degree—who knows? Perhaps his mother had a habit of using ginomai: “Crispus, from the moment you came into existence, I said to myself…”)

On the other hand, Tertullian himself offers a feasible explanation, as we have seen. Recall the passage in On the Flesh of Christ, 20, quoted earlier:

“…Nay more, for the sake of greater emphasis, he uses the word ‘made’ [factum] rather than ‘born’ [natum], although the use of the latter expression would have been simpler.”

Tertullian found not only that facio/genomenon sounded fine to his ears, he believed that the reason for it was to create greater emphasis. Obviously, later scribes did not agree and decided to change it.

Earl Doherty

andrewcriddle

I'm going to raise two entirely separate points.

1/ One issue with Earl's suggested interpretation of Paul is that it seems to make the mythical understanding of Paul very different from the mythical understanding of the Ascension of Isaiah. In the Ascension of Isaiah there seems no doubt that the descent of the redeemer to die and rise again is meant to occur after the time of Isaiah.

2/ If one regards Marcion as an important independent witness to the original text of Paul then one can plausibly make a substantial case that "Born of Woman Born Under the Law" is not original. However, On these premises one should probably accept as original 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, a version of which appears to have been in Marcion's text.

IE even if a good case can be made separately for either of these passages being interpolations it is doubtful whether a good case can be made for both being interpolations.

Andrew Criddle

krosero

Ben,

I'd like to have your opinion on how this passage relates to the question of whether Christ's death was recent, since I think your essay covered many, if not all, the verses pertaining to the timing of the crucifixion.

Verses 23 and 25 are pretty easy to read; they're simple bookends to a story.

Before faith came, we were confined to the law (23).
Now that faith has come, we are no longer confined (25).

But v. 24 says that the law was in effect until Christ came. So it seems that the coming of faith and the coming of Christ act together in some way. If they were both contemporary events -- if Christ died, followed immediately by the arrival of faith -- then Paul can refer to these things almost as if they were the same agent of the Law's end. He still leaves a distinction between them, since he says that the coming of Christ prepared the way for faith. But the coming of Christ and the coming of faith are, with regard to the Law, practically the same thing: when he speaks of the end of the Law's custodianship, he can say that it ends with the coming of faith, and he can say that it ends with the coming of Christ.

In the MJ model, the coming of Christ refers simply to the coming of faith. The actual death of Christ, whether in the air at a certain time or in a timeless realm, is not, per Doherty, the thing that ends the Law's hold over us. What does that is faith. Therefore, "until Christ came" means: until Christ came into our hearts. Essentially, Paul is saying:

24: So that the law was our custodian until [the coming of faith], that we might be justified by faith.
25: But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian;

Now v. 24 no longer looks like two contemporary events, in which one (the death) is followed quickly by the second (faith). Now Paul is simply referring throughout the verse to one event, the coming of faith. But he does not call it the coming the faith, as he does at the bookends. He calls it the coming of Christ -- as if to state that it was faith in Christ, and not faith in something else, that mattered. But why? The "faith" in vv. 23 and 25 is clearly faith in Christ; that would surely be understood. The object of the faith is not at issue.

In the HJ model, there's a reason for switching to the words, "until Christ came." It was a distinct event from the coming of faith. In the MJ model, it is not distinct: the coming of Christ is the actual arrival of faith in our hearts.

And if we take a slightly different MJ option, in which Christ dies in the air (somewhere in what Doherty calls the sphere of flesh), but during human history, before Paul's time and perhaps as far back as Adam's -- then the "coming of Christ" will sound to Paul's readers like it's referring to the entrance of Christ into our world, into the sphere of flesh: it will sound like the death. The "coming of faith" will sound like the event of our time: Paul's preaching and our conversions.

Likewise, God's act in Galatians 4:4, sending his Son, will sound like the cross. The sending of the spirit of the Son into our hearts in 4:6, causing us to cry out, will sound like the other event: Paul's preaching and our conversions.

But sticking to the passage above: how would we make sense of it? V. 23 would tell us that we were confined to the law until faith came, ie, until Paul's time. V. 24 would contradict this, by saying that we were confined to the Law until Christ was sent to the cross, before Paul's time (perhaps long before his time). V. 25 would then return to the assertion that we were confined to the Law until Paul's time.

In short, Paul's switching between phrases makes sense if he's referring to two events close together in time; separating them introduces problems.

I've raised a lot of issues, when I really had intended only to ask you about the strict question of whether this passage suggests that faith and the event on the cross were contemporary (regardless of whether the cross was staked on the earth or in the air).

But what do you think, of any of this?

Kevin Rosero

P.S. I do not address this to Ben in order to leave Earl out of this. He's welcome to reply; it's just I know he's already got my last post to reply to.

Ben C Smith

So far, so good.

This verse is ambiguous. The Greek phrase is simply εις Χριστον, unto Christ. It does not explicitly talk about a coming of Christ. I would translate: The law has become our instructor unto Christ. Doherty is correct that such a sentence can be taken in several ways, and, if this were the only verse on which to hang our conception of what Paul thinks of Christ, we would be doomed to ignorance.

I think Paul does in fact relate the coming of Christ to the availability of faith. Christ is the person who performed the act of redemption; faith is the state of affairs that exists since that act, in contradistinction to law or to works (of the law). Consider Romans 3.23-26, where the setting forth of Jesus as a propitiation is exactly the thing that allows the divine justice to justify the one who has faith (in Jesus). I take this setting forth of Jesus as his very death on the cross; I feel certain Doherty would take it as the apostolic preaching or such. But the point remains that the availability of the blood of Jesus equals the availability of faith (the difference being that Doherty would, I take it, insert an unspecified span of time between the actual shedding of the blood and the availability of the blood).

Well, yes, I think, but this is not very clear from Galatians 3.24. It is, however, very clear from Galatians 3.19 that the coming of Christ (the seed) spells the end of the law. We know from 3.23, 25 that the law preceded faith; faith replaces the law, in some sense. Thus, yes, the coming of Christ from 3.19 and the coming of faith from 3.23, 25 line up exactly with one another. Paul can speak of faith coming, and Paul can speak of the seed (Christ) coming, and of course there is no contradiction. (An online article talks about cool coming to Las Vegas in the sixties, and of course it means that Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack came to Las Vegas at that time; the former focuses on the change of atmosphere in Vegas, the latter on the people who effected the change.)

And Galatians 3.19 is not ambiguous like 3.24 is. It has a real coming; compare 3.16 and 3.19a:

But the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say: And to seeds, as for many, but rather as for one: And to your seed, that is, Christ.

....

Why the law then? It was added because of trespasses until the seed should come [ελθη] to whom the promise had been made.

This is unambiguous. When the seed comes, the period of the law is over.

Ben.

Gamera

I take this as an admission that you based your entire translation without bothering to look up the semantic range of eti first (something that took me about 30 minutes). Astounding.

Serious scholars actually research semantic ranges before basing critical (and unusual) translations upon them.

Defensive responses like this are very telling about Doherty's lack of scholarship and self-serving agenda. It is never a good idea to confuse one's scholarship with one's persona. But you're seeing it right here.

Gamera

Still waiting for you to provide support for this unusual translation of eti, which seems to be based on assuming that since eti is translated "still" in English, that the Greek word has the same semantic range. A remarkable assumption to say the least.

Even my cursory review of the use of eti in the NT shows that your translation of the word simply is not supported.

JoeWallack

JW:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.iv.viii.html

JW:
And so Irenaeus of Lyons (yes, "Lyons") confesses to us that in General Paul did not always write what he meant so that you can not necessarily go by the Plain meaning of the Text. Specifically here Irenaeus supposedly quotes Paul from Galatians 3:19 and the quote can not be found in any extant Manuscript! The other unadvertised Textual problem is that Christianity has also Forged the writings of its own Early Church Fathers so God knows what exactly Irenaeus originally wrote , let alone what Paul originally wrote. I mean, it's enough to make you turn Jew.

Point Doherty! Score, "John's" Jesus 45, Historical Jesus Love (one another).



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Ben C Smith

Thanks, Joe. The CCEL version is a little difficult to represent well with a simple cut and paste, since it runs the footnotes (sidenotes, really) into the text itself, a bit confusingly. So let me lay out the Greek and Latin passages here, so as to throw the significance of the variation into sharp relief, with the differences between the extant Greek of Galatians 3.19 and the quotation of that verse by Irenaeus underlined.

The Greek of Galatians 3.19 runs:

Τι ουν ο νομος; των παραβασεων χαριν προσετεθη αχρις ου ελθη το σπερμα ω επηγγελται, διαταγεις δι αγγελων εν χειρι μεσιτου.

Why then the law? It was added because of trespasses until the seed should come to whom it was promised, having been ordered through angels in the hand of a mediator.

Irenaeus wrote his heresiological opus in Greek, but the original is lost to us except for patristic quotations. This part of Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.7.2) is available only in Latin translation:

Sed et in ea quae est ad Galatas sic ait: Quid ergo lex factorum? posita est usquequo veniat semen qui promissum est, disposita per angelos in manu mediatoris.

But also in that epistle which is to the Galatians he speaks thus: Why then the law of works? It was added until the seed should come to whom it was promised, having been ordered through angels in the hand of a mediator.

The footnote at this point of the Harvey edition of Irenaeus agrees with the CCEL (ANF) footnote in indicating that the addition of of works is found in the Old Latin (Old Italic) version (this version, incidentally, is usually associated with the so-called western text, as is Irenaeus himself, and indeed we have Irenaeus here only in his Latin translation).

Ben.