Ben C Smith

Do you mean to say that the presumed prior discussion was amongst the eleven (not between the two and the eleven) and that the eleven were now saying amongst themselves that the Lord had really risen?

(Man, was that unclear. I hope you can sort it out. )

Ben.

spin

You're inventing a lacuna then filling it as you like. That's convenient but unconvincing.

You might look at any other text, but you need to show the relevance based on the Lucan evidence, not your ability to reconstruct a plausible interpretation based on some other text whose relevance you cannot show.

My interest was originally discourse analysis. IF you don't want to talk about it, I can appreciate that. You're happy to be inventive to make the narrative discourse work.

Read the Lucan text and stop trying to change the subject. If for a moment we accept 24:12 as original, it doesn't provide any hope for Peter having seen Jesus. Without it, there is no narrative justification at all for your reading.

Sorry, you lost me. Who was talking about Cleopas?

The tomb was found empty. Hence the confirming οντως from the two.

ETA: The inclusion of 24:12 does seem to disrupt the wider narrative discourse. Remember that the women who found the tomb empty were discounted by the apostles as having made up a tale and they weren't believed. It is in this wider context that we should understand the οντως.

The discussion as I thought when I started the thread was about understanding the discourse cohesion, how the passage hangs together. You have been trying to make it work by breaking the discourse and inserting things that a reader couldn't get from Luke. You need to deal with the text as it is written, not as you want it. From there you have to resolve the problems it poses. The variant λεγοντες with a simple vowel change resolves the discourse problems as I see it.


spin

Ben C Smith

This appears to be a way of saying that source analysis is taboo. I do not share that sentiment, and therefore feel quite free to look around for potential sources of the appearance to Simon.

The relevance of a Pauline text to Luke, BTW, is hardly a leap:

1. A Pauline text has an appearance to Cephas.
2. A Lucan text has an appearance to Simon; Simon, for Luke, means Peter.
3. The equation of Peter and Cephas is natural linguistically (even if mistaken) and quite common.
4. Luke knows of and admires Paul.

That Luke might know such a Pauline tradition, therefore, should not surprise anybody.

Perhaps, but you kept calling it grammar.

No one. That was the problem, and why I brought him up. You should have talked about the naming of Cleopas in verse 18 if you were going to suggest that only Simon is named in verse 34 because he was the more prominent of the two.

(You even brought up Roman officers next to Pilate; yet none of those officers is named, right? How can that be analogous to Cleopas and Simon on your reading?)

So I ask again, why is Cleopas not prominent enough to be named alongside Simon (or at least included in a plural pronoun) in verse 34 if he is prominent enough to have been named in verse 18?

You favorably modify this in your edit, but I just want to state that this reason, on its own and by itself, does not work. The empty tomb elicits talk of womanly nonsense in verse 11, which is diametrically the opposite of the hearty confirmation implied by that adverb.

Actually, in juxtaposition to what Doug suggested, I really [οντως] like this explanation.

(Apparently under the supersecret codename grammar, which I still am striving, vainly so far, to understand.)

I agree, and I retract my proposed announcement of the two to the eleven before the dialogue in question. I think Doug has a point with the discussion that the eleven seem to be having at the time, and that you have a point with the prior disbelief of the disciples.

Doug has, I think, solved the discourse problem nicely. The participle is in the present tense, which can easily have a progressive sense and generally indicates contemporaneous time: When the two found the eleven, the eleven were saying that the Lord had really risen, so the two added their own story to the mix (verse 35).

Now there is no unmentioned but understood dialogue between the two and the eleven, and the really follows both (either?) the ongoing conversation (along the lines of: He arose; he really arose) and (or?) the fact that the disciples had previously rejected the same basic story from the women (which is little more than simply pushing the ongoing conversation back a ways).

Your take, on the other hand, creates new problems:

1. We already know whom Luke is thinking of when he writes of Simon elsewhere (5.4, 5, 10; 6.14; 22.31). Why does Luke mean somebody different here?
2. Why specify that Jesus appeared only to one of the travellers? Throughout the entire episode the two hang together.
3. Why name only Simon? It cannot be that Cleopas was not prominent enough (compared to Simon) to name, since Luke does in fact name him.

Ben.

spin

(??? You're doing source analysis? Funny, I'd never have guessed.)

And you can't see that that is such an excursion, who knows whether and where you stopped to do your fishing? You can't expect anyone to take that as showing relevance, Ben C.

Sorry, are you reading the same thread as I am? I thought the only time I spoke of "grammar" was when I talked about cleaning up grammatical loose ends.

You seem to be confusing the narrator with someone who was present. The narrator mentions Cleopas, while someone present mentioned Simon.

This doesn't seem to relate to the logic of the women's apparent tale which is confirmed by the two. You didn't believe it them, but he has indeed risen.

I think you have a fixation on grammar. You used it so much in this thread that you've projected its use onto others.

I don't see how it works. The high point in the pericope is the announcement that Jesus has risen. That is the purpose of the Emmaus story. Such an interpretation seems to trivialize the Emmaus story as a mere confirmation of what happened offstage. And it doesn't deal with the οντως.

Hopefully I've explained that your currently supported interpretation doesn't deal with the issues.

You didn't read my original post.

Already explained.

You get here through confusion between narrator and one of the figures in the narration.


spin

Ben C Smith

Correct, and thanks for noticing. I hypothesized that (something like) 1 Corinthians 15.5 was the source of Luke 24.34.

I wrote:

You replied:

The first sentence I do not understand (not even grammatically). The second appears to be a vigorous argument by denial.

If or whenever you feel like actually addressing the points I made, you know where to find me.

Correct. Those grammatical loose ends that do not exist.

Let me clear this up for you. In post #1 you wrote:

This statement is feasible only if the two are the ones talking in 24.34, and that is grammatically incorrect if one accepts the majority reading of λεγοντας in Luke 24.34. Grammatically, if one accepts the majority reading, it cannot be the two who are calling anybody Simon.

Ah, but perhaps you were thinking of the minority reading of λεγοντες in Luke 24.34 (though I should think you might have very well have mentioned that you were accepting Bezae over the other manuscripts in this case). Alas, however, I think not, for in post #9 you wrote:

This appears to be your first awareness that this reading even existed. (It was certainly my first awareness of this fact.)

Which means that, in your OP, you were using the standard text of Luke 24.34, in which it grammatically has to be the eleven, not the two, who are speaking of an appearance to Simon, no matter what your sense of the narrative and discourse logic may or may not be.

It seems quite clear (A) that you were either reading that verse only in translation or misreading the Greek grammar; (B) I caught the grammatical mistake; and (C) your dialogue with me in the rest of this thread has consisted at least partly of avoiding having to admit your simple error.

Hopefully this explains my emphasis on the grammar. Your first post was, without the Bezae reading, a grammatical mistake.

That is not surprising somehow, given the absolute crystal clarity with which Doug expressed it.

In your original post you suggested (via leading questions) that the appearance to Simon was a fragment from a different tradition. You offered no external evidence for this different tradition; it was, AFAICT, speculation.

In another post I also suggested that the appearance to Simon was a fragment from a different tradition. I offered 1 Corinthians 15.5 as evidence for a tradition that Cephas (which both means the same thing as and is often identified with Peter, AKA Simon). Your reaction was to dismiss this connection out of hand (no relevance, something about a fishing excursion, et cetera).

So, apparently, you are allowed to hypothesize a tradition for which you offer no externally confirming evidence, while I am not allowed to hypothesize a tradition for which we do have externally confirming evidence.

Ben.

spin

If I was asking a question, it is probable that there was no substance to what you were hanging your idea of my noticing on.

That's not analysis. That's guesswork! and you'll never be able to confirm it, given that it is an ad hoc analysis and not part of a systematic one that gives the hope of verification or at least falsification.

The first comma should have been an em-dash. The second "that", ie "that that", refers to your numbered trip of four stopovers. Someone along the trip there is enough room for you to have caught any sort of wrong turn -- big whopper. The result of your long contorted trip was questionable, as is the import of my second sentence.

You missed it. You were too busy trying to keep a straight face while going on the Mack Sennett scenic route.

So the fuss about grammar has been swept under the carpet and you'll plead that there is nothing wrong with the narrative flow.

You've basically got the events correct. And you have reflected the errors of my thinking aloud, but I don't mind being wrong in the process. The basic issue as I see it is still unresolved despite your various smoothing attempts.

I'll let you into a little secret: I had the Kirslopp Lake note (3 pages) on my computer when Joe mentioned it. I just wondered why he was mentioning it. Hence my comment.

Or I was thinking about other things.

Not my lack of mentioning it.

You could be right.

Just because you like it, doesn't make it right. You liked something else before that came along.

You're sort of correct, but I think irrelevant, to the thought in the OP. You might claim the logic was wrong, but you haven't acknowledged it yet.

Not from evidence within Luke, which is where you need to start.


spin

Ben C Smith

When I gave evidence from within Luke that Luke himself thinks of Simon as Simon Peter, you answered:

The only part of your original post that I find relevant is the part in which you suggest multiple authorship.

But, if that is your suggestion, why are you now asking for evidence from within Luke? What good would that do, if you can simply refer back to the notion of multiple authorship again?

Ben.

Amaleq13

Almost.

"And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,

Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.

And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread." (Lk 24:33-35, KJV)

I'm saying:

And the two travelers returned to Jerusalem and found the eleven and others talking about the appearance to Simon. One of them turns to the new arrivals and says "It is true! The Lord appeared to Simon!" And the travelers responded by telling them what had happened on the road.

Ben C Smith

:thumbs:

I think this scenario is measurably better than my original reconstruction.

Now, if you can explain it to spin, even more progress will be have been made.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Thanks. I guess I can stop trying to learn ancient Greek now.

Then again, I might be able to answer this next question on my own if I don't.

"It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass. And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs." (24:10-13, emphasis mine)

Who is "them" here? Two of the apostles or two of the women? Is Cleopas an exclusively male name?