Ted Hoffman

Burton:
Jeffrey:
Upon review, I now agree with Jeffrey's explanation of what Burton means.

Ben C Smith

The language sounds less certain (another possible explanation), but this explanation, too, is ad hoc. The first part (A) presumes that the phrase in question, as a way of saying that Jesus was human, was not normal enough for Paul to have meant that. The second part (B) presumes that the phrase in question was so normal that a later scribe could use it to combat the notion that Jesus was not human. Between these two options lies another, undiscussed, in which the phrase is both original to Galatians and a normal way of calling Jesus human.

Part A above, expanded out into a chapter in Doherty, would argue that the passage is original; part B above would argue that the meaning is normal. Thus, Doherty would no longer be arguing for the mythicist position. He would be waffling between one kind of mythicist position on the one side, another kind on the other side, and an historicist position in the middle. Just because you did not mention the middle position does not mean that it is not there.

The only way to resolve this trilemma would be to argue from the specifics of the phrase itself. That would keep the author from picking and choosing which particular combination of values he needs for his theory. He would have to commit to one side or the other, or else risk leaving his reader in the middle position.

Ben.

krosero

Hi Ted. I may have more to say about your response, but for now, a quick comment on the point that I'm most focused on.

You've offered this argument:Let me snip it to highlight the contradiction I see:

Does this make it clear why it seems that Earl is trying to have it both ways? He's trying to keep his "unearthly" reading of Paul's phrase while at the same time invoking it as a phrase that the ancients regarded as confronting "unearthly" or un-fleshlike readings.

It's bizzare to me. "Born of woman" supposedly said to Paul's audience that Christ partook of the fleshly realm by entering it, and by appearing in some way like ordinary, fleshly human beings. At the same time, when docetists say that Christ only appeared in some way like ordinary, fleshly human beings, "born of woman" tells them that Christ really was given birth by an ordinary human mother right here on earth.

Perhaps enough imagination can make this work. The explanation I expect is that the phrase was ambiguous enough to communicate contradictory things. That is all that Earl has formerly said about it, as a way to establish that Paul was saying something ambiguous that leaves room for a celestial being. But it makes no sense as something that an interpolater would use. The supposed interpolater wanted to emphasize birth. Why choose a phrase that supposedly is ambiguous about birth and that sounds, as Earl has said, like "becoming," or "coming into being"??? Those latter connotations are nothing if not docetist and supernatural.

EarlDoherty

A future scene from Law & Order:

Jack McCoy: “Your Honor, we have already presented a considerable amount of evidence against the defendant in this case, and today we will be demonstrating “opportunity” for him to have been guilty of this crime. We have two pieces of evidence in this regard. First of all, we have a witness who places a car identical to the defendant’s late-model grey Chevy sedan parked across the street from the victim’s house near the time of the murder—”

Defense Counsel #1 (getting up and pounding on his table): “Geez Louise, McCoy, do you know how many cars look like Chevy’s these days? There’s Buicks and Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles and Dodges and a lot more you’ve never heard of; and colors! Do you know how many colors look like grey late in the evening? There’s blue and green and brown and chartreuse…Yes, Your Honor, but I do know my cars and my colors you have to admit, and if you’ll let me get out my Bower’s Automotive Manual here, I can show you six pages of body styles that resemble—”

McCoy: “Our witness, Your Honor, is very sure he identified the model and color of the car correctly.”

Defense Counsel #1 (jumping up again and upsetting his coffee cup): “And how do we know this, McCoy? Can you just take his word for it? How much do you know about cars? Have you studied automotive design like I have? Why, I spent 6 years at both Harbord and Quayle Transport companies, and I know my stuff. And besides, grey Chevy’s in later models are not “sedans”, they’re “coaches.” You obviously don’t know anything, and you ought to be taken off this case.”

McCoy: “Actually, Your Honor, our witness is very familiar with cars and in fact has written a book on changes in automotive design over the years. I think his testimony will convince the jury that the proper make and model has been identified. Now, we don’t have a license number, I admit, but at least the presence of a car identical to the defendant’s—”

Defense Counsel #1 (knocking over his chair): “Your Honor, I know this author and I’ve read his books, and I can tell you that when he gave his deposition about this automobile to the prosecution, he meant something very different from the way Mr. McCoy is taking it.”

McCoy: “Perhaps the good Counselor could eludicate for the court just what our witness did mean by his testimony…well, I can see that he is too busy righting his chair and mopping up his coffee spill to give us an answer, or it could be he is putting together another list for us, perhaps hubcap designs—”

Defense Counsel #2 (quietly, but with intensity): “Ad hominem, Your Honor! Ad hominem!”

McCoy: “—so perhaps we should move on. Your Honor, we will also be presenting evidence that three days prior to the murder, the defendant was seen in the company of an individual who is known to police as a mob hit-man. We have a witness who saw an envelope being passed from the defendant to this individual, which clearly suggests an act of hiring him to kill the victim.”

Defense Counsel #2 (struggling to maintain his composure): “Your Honor! Mr. McCoy can’t have it both ways. Either the defendant was present at the scene and committed the murder himself, or he hired someone else to do it. This is blatant ad hokum. Mr. McCoy has demonstrated he will take advantage of whatever positive and favorable evidence comes his way to prove our client guilty. That is reprehensible, and shows a deep lack of integrity. He can’t fit the two together, so he’s just trying to persuade the jury that one or the other of them could be correct, and given two incriminating choices, he hopes they’ll find it more compelling to bring in a guilty verdict.”

Defense Counsel #1 (hastily): “In fact, if Mr. McCoy tries to apply these two pieces of evidence simultaneously, they cancel each other out. I demand that both be stricken from the record!”

McCoy: “I think the jury is intelligent enough to realize that these two pieces of evidence are not Siamese twins, but are being offered as alternative possibilities. Taken together with all the other evidence, the jury can sort out the reasoning involved in looking at two different indicators of the defendant’s guilt—even if defense counsel is unable to do so.”

Defense Counsel #2: “Ad hominem! Ad hominem! Your Honor, I demand a mistrial!”

….And so it went. To date, the jury is still out, and Jack McCoy is busy on his other cases, sleeping very well at night.


All the best,
TV Scriptwriter Earl Doherty, who also moonlights on a bit of biblical research

No Robots

Would it were so. That was great!

JoeWallack

JW:
Oh I think I made my Point (and I did it in just one Post). Continuous questioning about the Greek ability of those who Confess they are not fluent in Greek is boring to the Unfaithful here. Why not Educate them/us with Specific arguments. Unless of course your only Objective here is to Criticize and not Educate.

Along those lines, since you are Agnostic towards Richard Carrier's Greek why not evaluate here his Greek analysis of:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...nius.html#Word

"Did Luke Mean "Before" Quirinius?

Some have tried to argue that the Greek of Luke actually might mean a census "before" the reign of Quirinius rather than the "first" census in his reign. As to this, even Sherwin-White remarks that he has "no space to bother with the more fantastic theories...such as that of W. Heichelheim's (and others') suggestion (Roman Syria, 161) that prôtê in Luke iii.2 means proteron, [which] could only be accepted if supported by a parallel in Luke himself."[10.1] He would no doubt have elaborated if he thought it worthwhile to refute such a "fantastic" conjecture. For in fact this argument is completely disallowed by the rules of Greek grammar. First of all, the basic meaning is clear and unambiguous, so there is no reason even to look for another meaning. The passage says autê apographê prôtê egeneto hêgemoneuontos tês Syrias Kyrêniou, or with interlinear translation, autê(this) apographê(census) prôtê[the] (first) egeneto(happened to be) hêgemoneuontos[while] (governing) tês Syrias(Syria) Kyrêniou[was] (Quirinius). The correct word order, in English, is "this happened to be the first census while Quirinius was governing Syria." This is very straightforward, and all translations render it in such a manner.

It does not matter if Luke meant that he knew of a second census under Quirinius, since we have already shown that if there were one it would have occurred some time after 6 A.D. Nevertheless, the passage almost certainly does not mean this. We have no reason to believe Quirinius served as governor again, or long enough to conduct another census, and the Greek does not require such a reading. The use of the genitive absolute (see below) means one can legitimately put a comma between the main clause and the Quirinius clause (since an absolute construction is by definition grammatically independent): thus, this was the first census ever, which just happened to occur when Quirinius was governor. The fact that Luke refers to the census from the start as the outcome of a decree of Augustus clearly supports this reading: this was the first Augustan census in Judaea since the decree. Another observation is made by Klaus Rosen, who compares Luke's passage with an actual census return from Roman Arabia in 127 A.D. and finds that he gets the order of key features of such a document correct: first the name of the Caesar (Augustus), then the year since the province's creation (first), and then the name of the provincial governor (Quirinius). Luke even uses the same word as the census return does for "governed" (hêgemoneuein), and the real census return also states this in the genitive absolute exactly as Luke does.[10.2] This would seem an unlikely coincidence, making it reasonable that Luke is dating the census the way he knows censuses are dated. The only fault with Rosen's thesis (apart from the fact that Luke's passage lacks a lot of other typical features of a census return, e.g. the year of the emperor) is that he assumes the prôtê refers to a year since every province begins with a census. Instead of adopting such an assumption, it is simply more reasonable to take the language at its plain meaning: the first Augustan census, which happened under Quirinius.

But even if one wanted to render it differently, the basic rules of Greek ensure that there is absolutely no way this can mean "before" Quirinius in this construction. What is usually argued is that prôtê can sometimes mean "before," even though it is actually the superlative of "before" (proteros), just as "most" is the superlative of "more." Of course, if "before" were really meant, Luke would have used the correct adjective (in this case, proterê), as Sherwin-White implies, since we have no precedent in Luke for such a diversion of style. But there is a deeper issue involved. The word prôtê can only be rendered as "before" in English when "first" would have the same meaning--in other words, the context must require such a meaning. For in reality the word never really means "before" in Greek. It always means "first," but sometimes in English (just as in Greek) the words "first" and "before" are interchangeable, when "before" means the same thing as "first." For example, "in the first books" can mean the same thing as "in the earlier books" (Aristotle, Physics 263.a.11). Likewise, "the earth came first in relation to the sea" can mean the same thing as "the earth came before the sea" (Heraclitus 31).[10.3]

Nevertheless, what is usually offered in support of a "reinterpretation" of the word is the fact that when prôtos can be rendered "before" it is followed by a noun in the genitive (the genitive of comparison), and in this passage the entire clause hêgemoneuontos tês Syrias Kyrêniou is in the genitive. But this does not work grammatically. The word hêgemoneuontos is not a noun, but a present participle (e.g. "jogging," "saying," "filing," hence "ruling") in the genitive case with a subject (Kyrêniou) also in the genitive. Whenever we see that we know that it is something called a "genitive absolute" construction, and thus it does not make sense to regard it as a genitive connected to the "census" clause. In fact, that is ruled out immediately by the fact that the verb (egeneto) stands between the census clause and the ruling clause--in order for the ruling clause to be in comparison with the census clause, it would have to immediately follow the adjective "first," but since it doesn't, but the entire clause is distinct from the rest of the sentence, it can only be an absolute construction. A genitive absolute does have many possible renderings, e.g. it can mean "while" or "although" or "after" or "because" or "since," but none allow the desired reinterpretation here.[10.4]

John 1:15 (and 1:30) is a case in point: the verb emprosthen is already used (the first "before" found in English translations of the verse) in order to establish the context, and then comes hoti prôton mou ên, "because he was first [in relation] to me." So here we have an example of when prôtos means "before," yet all the grammatical requirements are met for such a meaning, which are not met in Luke 2.2: the genitive here is not a participle with subject, but a lone pronoun (thus in the genitive of comparison); the genitive follows immediately after the adjective; and the previous use of emprosthen establishes the required context. Thus, this is clearly not the same construction as appears in Luke 2.2. Another example is the use of this construction in Acts 16:12, where again the sentence can be rendered "first in relation to" and only then can it be simplified in English to "before." No such license is allowable in Luke 2.2. As a genitive absolute the Quirinius clause cannot have any grammatical connection with prôtê, and "first in relation to the reign of Quirinius" would not produce the meaning "before" anyway."


JW:
If you want to embarass him here's your chance. Sounds like he knows what he's talking about but what do I know. Plus his last update was 2001 so maybe Greek has changed since than (again, I wouldn't know).

If you Pass than even though I don't know Greek I'll have to assume that you assumed there are no significant errors in the above.



Joseph

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

krosero

Earl, are you no more certain about the meaning of the key Pauline phrases than McCoy is about the two alternatives he presents?

A reply that is specific in any way to our objections in this thread would be preferable.

jgibson000

KATALABEI O GADAROS POU MA'I'NTANO";

[sniped]

Assume away., even though I'm your you know what they say about those who do so. Butwhile you wait to see whether or not I'll "Pass" -- and leaving aside the question of how, if I took the time to say anything at all about Carrier's Greek here (even that it was good), you'd know whether or not I was correct -- you might wish to bone up on the fallacy known as bifurcation.

Jeffrey Gibson

Llyricist

Oh I missed the sour grapes on top of the burden shifting, seems the historicists are upset that more than one possible explanation is compatible with mythicism, while they're stuck with just one.

And one doesn't have to know a specific language to know that insisting that an author could only have meant something literally and not in some way figuratively, is talking through your hat... that's true regardless of the language.

krosero

You think it's news to historicists that mythicists present more than one explanation? Historicists have been the first to point out the proliferation of often-contradictory explanations coming from the mythicist case(s).

Maybe we should also include Acharya's explanations of the key verses. Those are also compatible with mythicism. A lot of explanations are. That's not news, and it is not the same as forming a single strong argument that will best explain the evidence.