Ted Hoffman

Jeffrey,
Thanks for citing Burton in full. Now all I have to do is copy and paste and that is what I will do unless I state otherwise.

You and I both refer to Ernest De Witt Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 1st Ed., 1968 reprint, p.217-218.
The Jesus Puzzle, p.124, refers to Edward D. Burton, International Critical Commentary, Galatians, p. 216f. Doherty will be clarifying on this shortly.

The two arguments Doherty makes in his book are that, from Burton, we get the following ideas:

1. The birth of Christ, as expressed in Galatians 4:4 has no temporal relation with the sending of Christ thus Paul's Christ was not achored temporally in history.
2. Genomenon is ambiguous and gennao is straightforward. But Paul uses ginomai, which has a broader meaning.

p.128
This means that, by using GENOMENON, Paul did not express idea that Jesus was "born" unambiguously. Paul could have used GENNHQENTA to give a straightforward meaning. This is Doherty's argument. Doherty is therefore correct.
If you want us to argue about the transliteration surrounding GENNHQENTA, we can do (I am suspecting different translations as the source of the differences between the words) that but so far, both of Doherty's points check out.

We disagree with how the word "support" or "favour" is to be used. I am okay with that. Is it silly to state that in Gal. 4:4 Paul claims that Jesus was born in a heavenly realm? You are entitled to your opinion. But we evidently dont share the same opinion.
Does Doherty misrepresent Burton? That is the matter under dispute here. Readers will have to decide for themselves.

This is not in dispute.

Addressed above. Paul used an ambiguous word GENOMENON instead of using the umambiguous word GENNHQENTA.
You believe someone must write after Doherty in order to "favour" Doherty. I disagree. In my view, ideas that are consonant, "favour" each other.

Whether Doherty misrepresents Burton or not should now be clear.

Ted Hoffman

Jeffrey,
I am assuming your parents named you. Not me. We just use the names you claim are yours, but we dont get to name you. For all I know, your names could be Bill Clinton. In truth, I dont give a rats tiddle what your real names, or preferred names are.

True.
True.
True.
It (the liar accusation) was deleted. I maintain that you made false and misleading claims.
I did state Burton truthfully. But Thoroughly? Thats debateable. Is a full-page citation thorough? Debateable again. Maybe you meant comprehensively?
The quotation was selective because I quoted what was relevant to my point. You want to argue that I misrepresented Burton? Please by all means, go ahead. There is nothing wrong with quoting someone selectively so long as the meaning is not distorted.

krosero

I have read Gibson as saying that Doherty is roping Barrett in, not for Jesus mythicism or a heavenly birth of Christ, but for an interpretation of KATA SARKA which includes the space above the earth. I can't see in Doherty's book where he claims that Barrett is a Jesus mythicist, and I doubt that Gibson is accusing him of saying so.

TedH:

Gibson's protest, and others like it, make sense if you're going to say that an HJ scholar supports Doherty's "interpretation." I suggested, following Amaleq's description, that Doherty is using Barrett's wording rather than Barrett's meaning or conclusion. I suggested it would be best to speak of Doherty borrowing a scholar's "wording," if in fact the "meaning" or "interpretation" is different.

Let's say I think that Death Valley is in Arizona. I find a historian of Death Valley who says that Death Valley is located in "California." I then say that "California" is often used loosely to point to the whole Southwest part of the U.S., and that this historian's wording, using the word "California", supports my larger theory that Death Valley is Arizona. My use of that historian would be meaningless, because that historian has a different meaning for "California".

For all we know, Barrett might have chosen to translate KATA SARKA as "in the sphere of the flesh" in order to punctuate the idea of a birth in those locations where human beings live (to punctuate the idea of a birth on the surface of the earth, to be perfectly clear). If Barrett says "sphere of flesh" and he does not mean to evoke with these words a picture of the whole sublunar realm, then a use of his words to support that idea is meaningless. It would rightly cause people to question the person making such connections; it would look like that person is overly eager for scholarly support, or an unskillful interpreter of academic writings, or dishonest.

What does Barrett think about the "sphere of flesh"? Do we have any idea whether he thinks it can include the space above the earth? If we did know, and it turned out that Barrett does include the whole sublunar realm, then Doherty has meaningful support for his theory; otherwise, no.

Reading Doherty's passages about Barrett in The Jesus Puzzle, I get the impression that Doherty is citing Barrett as support for his claim that on purely philological grounds, KATA SARKA meant the whole sublunar realm for the ancients, and that Barrett and others like him do not consider the full philological range of the words because of theological or imaginative limitations. In short, Doherty is saying that these scholars have the skills to see the linguistic meanings of the ancient Greek, but that they reject or fail to incorporate certain meanings that contradict Christian theology.

I agree with Gibson, for the reasons he gave, that this a faulty hermeneutic. I also note that Doherty has expressed something of a lack of confidence, and admitted a limited expertise, in ancient Greek, so I wonder how he knows so confidently that he can see the full linguistic meaning of words. Probably, as he has often told us, he feels he has no theological constraints; and he has no philosophical biases of his own (none that I have heard him admit); so he sees things more clearly.

That is not the sort of talk that will ever win him a place in scholarly dialogues. If he wins that place ultimately, he will have made it harder for himself with his rhetoric; and you and he both make it harder for him to do so by claiming that other scholars support his "interpretation", in those cases where you do not actually know that the specific interpretation is shared by those HJ scholars. If it isn't, those scholars are going to question and protest. If someone tries to rope me in to something I disagree with, I am not going to trust that person in dialogue and invite them to talk; I am going to distance myself.

jgibson000

But Burton says no such thing, In fact, he is explcit in denying the view that the eartly birth of Jesus is not the beginning of the sending spoken.

And the way Doherty gets this from Burton is by ignoring what Burton actually says. (To see this, simply go to Doherty's quote of Burton that Doherty uses to support his claim about what Burton says, and then note not only where Doherty's quote of Burton begins, but how much and, more importantly. what it is that Burton actually says on the matter, Doherty does not quote.


How he gets this from Burton is beyond me. Again, Burton says no such thing either with respect to the meaning that GENOMENON has in the first of its two instances in Gal. 4:4 (in fact he explicitly denies it) or with respect to GENNAW.

Really? That Doherty thinks that Burton "supports" this claim or that he, on the basis of what Burton says in his comments on GENOMENON, is correct in making it, is supremely surprising since, to say what he says above, Doherty has had to (willfully?) ignore not only (1) the fact that Burton himself says that with respect to its use with EK GUNAIKOS the participle means "born" and nothing else; (2) that he says nothing about GENNAW being better or more "straightforward" than GINOMAI is in denoting "birth" as far as the GENOMENON EK GUNAIKOS phrase in concerned, and (3) that, as LSJ, TDNT, and BDAG demonstrate -- and as you have been shown repeatedly elsewhere -- GIGNOMAI/GINOMAI when used, as it is in Gal. 4:4, of persons, always denoted "being born" and never had any other meaning.

Actually, the statement should be "Whether Ted/Jacob and Doherty misrepresent Burton sould now be clear" --- not to mention "know what they are taking about when it comes to matters Greek".

And yes, the answers to these questions should be readily apparent.

Jeffrey

Diogenes the Cynic

I think that krosero's post pretty much sums up my own thoughts on this discussion perfectly. I don't think that either Jeffrey or Ted is being dishonest, I think they're just reading Doherty from completely different angles.

jgibson000

Thanks. But the question isn't how Ted and I are reading Doherty, but whether Ted and Doherty have epresented Burton (on the meaning and import of Gal. 4:4) and Barrett (on the meaning that KATA SARKA has or might have in Rom. 1:3) correctly and that it is clear to ""all"" that I've been somehow "weaseling" my claims about this.

Jeffrey

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't think you've been weaseling.

Amaleq13

I've already stated my position with regard to Doherty's original claim but, while I certainly wouldn't call it "weaseling", I have to admit that I did not understand this:

to mean this:

I understood "meaning and import" to include Doherty's interpretation.

EarlDoherty

I have not been on the IIDB for a couple of weeks because of an irritated eye which is proving quite stubborn, and the computer screen seems to be the hardest thing for it. Ted Hoffmann alerted me to this thread in querying me about E.D.Burton. First of all, I confess I quoted his first name wrongly in The Jesus Puzzle, not having had the initial name written out in my notes and copies of the IICC, and then confusing him, in my occasional fallibility, with the Edward Burton of an earlier period. But then, I have never claimed papal status.

I will not engage in any extended debate here because of the eye problem (I’m actually resorting to an eye patch some of the time in doing this), but will simply try to clear up the confusion in regard to Burton (Ernest DeWitt) and C. K. Barrett in the matter of using some of their observations to arrive at my own conclusions, a process I will steadfastly maintain is legitimate. Also, I think there is some misunderstanding here as to the distinction between those scholars’ observations and my conclusions, which is leading to the seesaw accusations on this thread.

Burton first. I said in TJP, p.123-4, that Burton “points out that the way the verb and participle tenses are used in the Greek, the birth and subjection to the Law are presented as simple facts, with no necessary temporal relation to the main verb “sent.� (By the way, in quoting that passage, Jeffrey Gibson left out my word “necessary�. Why he did so, I will not speculate on, but it is not wise in a quoted phrase to leave out any words of an ‘opponent’ which lend nuance to the statement and which softens the meaning of what one is trying to rebut; it looks possibly deceptive.)

I made this statement on the basis of the following by Burton (ICC, Galatians, p.218-219):

Now, unless I’ve lost command of my native language, or it has changed significantly since Burton’s day, that last sentence by Burton justifies my statement in TJP. The participles have “no necessary temporal relation to the main verb ‘sent’.� In fact, Burton himself says that the temporal relation has to be “inferred� from the circumstances, BUT those circumstances (his “the nature of the facts referred to�) are the assumptions that are being brought to Paul and his knowledge of an historical Jesus. Burton goes on to say:

I love this guy. Why? Because here Burton is further allowing (though of course he is not intending it) for a mythicist interpretation. He is saying that the “born of woman, subject to law� is not intended “so much to express the accompaniments of the sending…� In other words, these characteristics of the Son don’t necessarily accompany the action of him being “sent forth�. But wouldn’t this be odd if Paul were in fact referring to a human birth, since is the Son not “born of woman� at the time of his sending (birth) into the world? Whereas, if the “sending forth� is not referring to a historical birth, but a spiritual sending—identical to the “God sent forth [exactly the same verb] the spirit of the Son� two verses later—then the “born of woman, subject to the law� could be mythical features, independent characteristics not tied to the “sending�. Burton as much as says so (again, not intentionally) when he goes on: “…as directly to characterize the Son, describing the relation to humanity and the law…� Again in other words, these are characteristics of the Son, and can be seen in Paul’s mind as certain spiritual/mythical features that define his relationship to humanity, not tied to any human birth which Paul was unaware of.

So I have drawn on Burton’s grammatical observations, and used them to make an application of my own to a mythical paradigm. You will note that I specifically said in TJP “(Burton does not advocate that conclusion himself.)� There is nothing illegitimate in this.

There is some dispute over whether I was “honest� in claiming that Burton says that “genomenon� is ambiguous. I think the following statement by Burton is unambiguous in its description of ambiguity:

When Burton says Paul could have been “unambiguous� that surely implies that he was “ambiguous�. Now, Jeffrey claims I have misread Burton here, and perhaps this is because Burton is not quite claiming that the “born� in the “born of woman� is ambiguous as meaning human birth, but only that the second “genomenon� is ambiguous. But this is because of Burton’s own disposition. Burton is assuming an unambiguous-ness on Paul’s part for the first participle because he can only conceive that Paul is referring to Jesus’ historical birth. But note that even Burton himself hedges by using the word “evidently�, and if the second “genomenon� is an ambiguous reference to being “born� under the law (and thus Burton prefers “subject to�), then it has to be ambiguous in its first use. It’s just that Burton cannot conceive of that phrase as having any other meaning, and certainly not a mythical one.

Thus I have not misrepresented Burton in any way.

The same principle applies to my use of C.K. Barrett’s translation of “kata sarka�. I quote from his Epistle to the Romans, p. 20:

Now, it is quite possible for Barrett to use the words “in the sphere of� and understand something by the phrase, and for me to take that phrase and understand something else by it. For Barrett, as we can see by his words, especially that word in brackets, he can understand it only as the human sphere, but he has characterized it as “the realm denoted by the word flesh� which I agree with. The difference is, in my interpretation of the mythical belief of Paul and his contemporaries, that “realm denoted by the word flesh� also includes the lower celestial sphere as well. So it is perfectly legitimate to take Barrett’s ball and run with it in my own direction, regardless of whether he would have been willing to follow, regardless of whether his understanding would have been the same as mine (which it would not). I am not misrepresenting him in any way, and I am not making any illegitimate use of his translation and observations.

I am not going to argue this legitimacy question any further. It seems self-evident to me, and if anyone does not agree with it in principle, then that’s their prerogative. Nor am I going to engage in any extended argument on the “kata sarka� issue at this time. I must take it easy with my eye and not risk reversing its healing progress. I may be able to make further short postings for the purpose of clarification if any is sought, but I hope that this will correct some of the misconception and tangential argumentation that has been going on because I was not detailed or clear enough in my text. (Any second edition of TJP will be sure to expand and clarify things like this.)

I gave the thread thus far only a very quick read, and I’m sure I failed to pick up on all the nuances, but my impression is that Jeffrey, if not guilty of outright misrepresentation, probably offered some unfavorable innuendo in presenting or interpreting what I have said. But I also realize that this goes with the territory. The mythicist position is highly inflammatory to mainstream scholarship (though it shouldn’t be, if they are approaching it from the position of the dispassionate historian—which, of course, they are not), and responses can often take on hostile overtones. (And let me take this opportunity to commend GakuseiDon and TedM for keeping such tone to a minimum.)

Best wishes,
Earl Doherty

Amaleq13

IMO, a statement of this nature is precisely what is missing from your book. Without it, the reader cannot be blamed coming away from the reference thinking Barrett agrees with your understanding.

While I do not agree that this constitutes lying on your part, I do think you moved on to a further explanation of your thesis before making it clear that Barrett only supports the wording you use.