aa5874

Ok. You have described a MYTH.

You have written PRECISELY what I wanted you to write.

The Pauline Jesus was a character that was BELIEVED to have existed as God Incarnate.

LegionOnomaMoi

I have to rely on a greek copy. But I don't have to rely on a translation.


There you go with logic again, but alas again it leads you to an invalid conclusion.

PREMISE: All translations are interpretations
CONCLUSION: Learning a language only allows you to make PERSONAL interpretations of a given text.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. What does follow is that having learned a language, you are unable to translate it for another in a way which does not to some extent involve an interpretation. Translations are inexact. How does one translate the french c'est... vs. "il est..."? Or, if one translates es gibt as "there is" what does one do with "Wenn sich deine/Ihre Eltern nicht kennen gelernt hätten, dann gäbe es dich/Sie nicht" ?

I can read and understand the German sentence above. I don't need to interpret it. However, if I render it into English, then I have to think what English expression best approximates the German meaning.

Translations necessarily involve interpretations not because understanding the language involves personal interpretations, but because the choice of which words to use from the target language does.


Because I can do more than just translate. A translation is fixed. The translator has to decide X is the best way to render Y. I don't have to do that, as I'm not writing a translation. I can describe the general meaning of a word, give several ways it could be translated, and can explain why your understanding of a translation is not actually what that translation means.

For example, if you were to look at most translations of John 1:1, you would see "and the word was god." You might then say "aha! god is just a word according to John!" The translator had to render logos somehow, and having chosen "word" is stuck with it. If you had access to the tranlator, and not just the translation, then you could ask "what do you mean by word?"

And your criterion/critera for "neutral sources" is/are what exactly?





http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....11#post7102511







That's because ancient historians used them.

Maybe you should read Suetonius' Life of Augustus, as he writes:
"For, as it is recorded in the proceedings of the senate, Gaius Laetorius, a young man of a patrician family, in pleading before the senators for a lighter sentence, upon his being convicted of adultery, alleged, besides his youth and quality, that he was the possessor, and as it were the guardian, of the ground which the Divine Augustus first touched upon his coming into the world; and entreated that he might find favour, for the sake of that deity, who was in a peculiar manner his; an act of the senate was passed, for the consecration of that part of his house in which Augustus was born."

So apparantly Suetonius thought Augustus was a god. After all, Suetonius tells us he had "magical powers." Not only did he know the outcome of battles before they happened, and as a baby he magically disappeared and reappeared (like a ghost!), and "After the death of Caesar, upon his return from Apollonia, as he was entering the city, on a sudden, in a clear and bright sky, a circle resembling the rainbow surrounded the body of the sun; and, immediately afterwards, the tomb of Julia, Caesar's daughter, was struck by lightning."

Clearly, Augustus is a myth.

But Josephus, in this text, also presents Moses and Abraham as historical individuals. How can I trust it when he's reporting myths?



Again you are trying to use logic. According to your translations, Paul was not an apostle of/from/by men or man, but "by Jesus Christ and God."

Now, pay close attention here because this is where logic comes into play.

PREMISE: Paul is an apostle
PREMISE: God & Jesus made Paul an apostle
PREMISE: God is not human
PREMISE: Jesus is human
1) God made Jesus an apostle (through logical elimination and the second premise)

CONCLUSION: Paul is an apostle not by man

You see, because Paul claims that both God and Jesus made him an apostle, and that he was not made an apostle by man, the statement "Jesus is human" is only necessarily (or logically) false iff (if and only if) God is human.

If Jesus is human and god is not, and both made paul and apostle, then the statement "Paul was not made an apostle by man or men" is true, as god was at least partly responsible for making him an apostle, and god is not human.

Alternatively, we can negate the conclusion and show what happens.

Paul was made an apostle by man. How can we show this to be false? If 2 people/things/entities/whatever made Paul and apostle, than the statement is false if EITHER of the two things was not human.

In other words, given what Paul says (Jesus & God made him an apostle, and he was not made an apostle by men), it does not logically follow that Jesus is not a man. It could be true, but it is not necessarily true given the premises.


That's true, but I just used your translations and you're still wrong.

Canon? Compilation? We're talking about Galatians. You made claims about the author of Galatians given the text itself.



I'm asking which logical system YOU are using. Because according to classical logic (actually, under every logical system I know of) your conclusions are illogical.

Paul has the property A because of X and Y
Y does not have the property H
X does have the property H

If A is apostle and H is human, then one can conclude "Paul has the property A, and has this property because of some entity without the property H."


You are the one using "logics" rather than "logic." The only reason to do this is because you are implying there is more than one. There are indeed multiple logical systems, yet you seem to be making you own up.



Not according to your translations. He said Jesus and god. Logically, if god isn't human, and jesus is, it is still true that Paul was not made an apostle by humans, as at least one non-human thing caused him to have this property.
And you're switching back to Pauline. So are you admitting Paul wrote Galatians?

aa5874

So what!!!! I don't have to rely on your translation.


You have confirmed that if translations are interpretations then they may vary from person to person based on the translator's personal knowledge of the language and culture.


I already told you that if translations are interpretations then they may vary from person to person.

A translator has to PERSONALLY decided whether IT IS BEST to use A, B, C.........X, Y or Z.

Yes,it is already known that the translator can give his personal opinion of the correct meaning or translation.

I do not accept personal ONE MAN translations from persons who are arguing against my position.


It was NOT RUMORS that made Augustus a figure of history. Ancient historians simply wrote what people BELIEVED or Rumored in antiquity. The very ancient historians also show that there is MORE to Augustus that RUMORS.

But, we have ALL the NT CANON about God Incarnate, the Son of a Ghost, God the Creator, that walked on Water.

In Galatians, the Pauline Jesus was NOT a man but a resurrected being.

[ Do you see the word "ALLEGED"??? Did you see the passage where Suetonius wrote the father of Augustus was Gaius Octavius???

You seem not to have any idea that Galatians Jesus had NO human father. You seem NOT to have any idea that the Church claimed Jesus had NO human Father.


[ Well, based on your argument, if Augustus is myth when his father and mother were figures of history and there are artifacts and archaeological evidence of him then Galatians Jesus MUST be in a FAR WORSE position than Augustus.

Jesus was ARGUED to be the Child of a Ghost by those who supposedly followed him and apologetic sources.

But, PAUL in Romans, 2 Corinthians and GALATIANS Presents ABRAHAM as an historical individual.

But Paul in Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians Presents MOSES as an historical individual.

Why DO YOU TRUST PAUL when he is REPORTING MYTHS???

You have IMPLODED. You are employing DOUBLE STANDARDS.

Your METHODOLOGY is worthless.

Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
See that from Carrier's blog:
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.ca/20...polations.html

Duvduv

Thank you Bernard. However, it doesn't explain WHY such a particularly selective interpolation should be inserted at the expense of interpolating something more tangibly in line with the gospel stories.

Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
Yes, the seven deemed authentic Pauline epistles talk about that. Here are some excerpts from my website:
http://historical-jesus.info/
http://historical-jesus.info/djp2.html

Tell me about what you think is missing and I'll supply it.
Paul did not know about the future gospels and the added fiction & embellishment.

Bernard Muller

to Duvduv,
Maybe for not making it look as coming from a gospel story!
That interpolation comes from somebody who was very anti-semitic (unlike Paul) and after 70, could not resist to express his hate against Jews and to rejoice about their "punishment".

Duvduv

Having read and thought alot about the ideas of Doherty, Wells, Feke and Gandy, and Detering although I don't agree with all their arguments, the main gist of it is rather pursuasive, i.e. that these ideas are not necessarily representative of an earthly Jesus at all, a Jesus who would have a birth, parent(s), travels, aphorism/logia, interactions, stories, encounter with the Baptist, etc., which the Jesus of the epistles does not have.

i am not pursuaded at all that the Jesus of the epistles ever walked the Earth EVEN if you would argue that Paul did not know the gospel stories. He would certainly have had to have known SOME THINGS about an earthly Jesus that would have found its way into the letters even if it wasn't from the gospel stories.

Duvduv

The interpolater apparently didn't care that his Paul never cited anything about the earthly adventures of their Jesus, and within other epistles could have most certainly taken stronger and more direct swipes at the Jews or eliminate pro-Jewish passages such as those in Romans and 1 Corinthians.

LegionOnomaMoi

If two translators both agree on the meaning of a phrase in X language, they may still translate it differently into Y language. That has nothing to do with knowledge of the language or culture. Translations are inevitably imperfect because there is no one-to-one mapping between any two languages. Two people can grow up speaking German and English as native languages, read sentence in German, agree what it means, and translate it differently into English. The more two langauges differ, the more imperfect translations become. This has nothing to do with a knowledge of the language or culture. It is inevitable because there is no perfect way to render any given sentence in a language like Latin or Greek into English.



That's because the translator knows that neither A, B, C.....X, Y, Z is perfect. All of them are approximations. Again, this isn't a matter of personal opinion as to the meaning of what is being translated, but a recognition that there is no such thing as a perfect translation.

For example, Greek word order differs quite a bit from English. Also, often enough a single word in Greek has no English parallel. English doesn't use cases. And so on. A so-called "literal" translation attempts to render word for word the Greek into English. The problem with this is that 1) there are many words which have no English equivalent and 2) the more "literal" you get, the more the translation doesn't even appear to be English:

Quickly bring a robe the foremost and put-it-upon him, and give a ring onto the hand of him and shoes onto feet, and carry the calf the wellfed, sacrifice,.....

and so forth.

You missed the point. The problem with a translation is that the translator has to settle on one rendering. However, explaining the meaning isn't better because it involves giving "personal opinion." Take the above translation from the prodigal son. A translator needs to settle on a way to render dote daktulion eis ten cheira autou. dote prototypically means "give." But in context that doesn't work here. And literally the line says "hand of him." Most translators would probably say "his hand" instead, or even "his finger" which fits better with the "ring." The point, however, is that nobody reading the Greek has a problem understanding what it means. They know it means "put a ring on his finger." But neither "finger" nor "his" nor even "put" is actually in the text.

Any translator could tell you easily enough what that line means. And there wouldn't be any disagreement. However, translations may still differ because saying "finger" is straying too far from what the text says, or the translator may say "place" or "give him" instead of "put."

The point is that while these translations may differ, any translator could explain not her or his "opinion" about the line but what it means (like I did). They can explain that the word for "put" means "give" most of the time but because the object of the verb is not the son but but "ring," and "give ring onto the hand of him" isn't English, here something like "put/place" works better.



Any translation is imperfect. But I can go beyond translating, and give the meaning and explain. That's not a translation. So if you know somebody else who reads greek, by all means ask them.



No wonder you're having such problems. You can't read English! The "alleged" refers to whether or not Gaius Laetorius actually owned the ground in question. It is Suetonius who calls Augustus "divine Augustus" and refers to him as a deity. It is Suetonius who states Augustus could magically tell the future, disappear and reappear, etc.

As you would say "EVIDENCE of myth."

So there goes all of Suetonius. Anything else to offer? Something which doesn't contain EVIDENCE of myth (or was it EVIDENCE of MYTH? I forget whether both required caps or not-you use them so frequently).


I'm not arguing that Augustus is a myth. I'm pointing out the problems with your methodology. You seem to be under the very wrong assumption that ancient historical accounts weren't filled with myth, legends, rumors, magic, etc. So, we can either reject any text which contains "EVIDENCE of myth" or we can understand that these authors wrote narrative accounts of what happened using quite different standards, and while this makes it difficult, and at times impossible to judge what most likely happened, it is possible to use such texts.

In other words, I don't reject Suetonius outright because he clearly is biased and attributes impossible, supernatural qualities to Augustus. I don't discount Caesar because he's biased and talks about Unicorns in Germania. And I don't discount the NT because the authors were biased and attribute supernatural qualities to their subject. Each source is problematic, in different ways and to different degreees, but that's why we have historiography. If determining the past were just a matter of reading ancient accounts, all we'd need were translators, not historians.

Not by Josephus. And again, so far your relying on a source for Augustus which calls him a god capable of magical feats. So apparently you don't have a problem in general with historical texts which ARGUE that their subject is magical or supernatural. Only if it's the NT.

You really don't get it do you? Interesting. I don't trust any of the sources completely, nor do I reject any of them completely. That's what you do. You accept Suetonius despite the fact that his Augustus is "NOT HUMAN" and other historical sources with similar problems, but when it comes to the NT all of a sudden it's an all or nothing game.

I'm not the one employing a double standard. I accept that our sources for ancient history, from Herodotus to Acts, are problematic, but not worthless. For you, if a source includes mythic elements it's just myth. Yet somehow this only holds true for the NT.