PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

There's no need to consult the Greek here, the correct arrangement is based on the logic of the argument.

Let us say you are reading a translation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna karenina and you come across the following passage:

He rolled his full, welltended body over on the springs of the sofa, as if wishing to fall asleep again for a long time, tightly hugged the pillow from the other side and pressed his cheek to it; but suddenly he gave a start, sat up on the sofa and opened his eyes.
"Yes, yes, how did it go?" he thought, "recalling his dream. How did it go?"

Now, you don't need to know any Russian at all to understand that the editor/translator has made a mistake. The sentence should have read,

"Yes, yes, how did it go?" he thought, recalling his dream. "How did it go?"

Now, anybody who claimed that you needed to know Russian to understand where the original quotation marks were meant to go or needed to look up the Russian in such a case would only prove that he was a fool. One might be gentle and say such a person had never taken a college course in logic and therefore did not understand the logic of the text. But, in fact, any competent reader should be able to detect a misplaced quotation mark in such a case, whether the original text is in a different language or not.

Please keep in mind that Greek is a flexed language so word order cannot be relied upon for meaning when a literal translation of the word order obstructs the logic of the text.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

jgibson000

I take you mean "inflected". If not, could you name a few other languages that are "flexed"? Presumably the one spoken by the present governor of California would be one (or is that "pumped"?).

And telling us this is relevant how? So far as I can see, no one has been making a claim about the text in question based upon its word order or its logic (which, whatever it is, we really can't see without the Greek text in front of us).

Ben has been noting that you selectively quoted the text in question and left out words that the text has.

Could you tell us whether or not you have?

Jeffrey Gibson

Ben C Smith

Jay, there is clearly a miscommunication here somewhere, though I am having trouble imagining where. The translation that is available to me is the following. Origen writes:

He says: Indeed the apostle has said: I was once alive apart from the law at some time or other. ^ That is, before I came into this body I lived in the kind of body that is not subject to the law, to wit, the body of a domestic animal or a bird.

In context, the he is Basilides, so Origen is writing that Basilides says that the apostle, in those words, has said something.

I do not understand how you are moving the he says forward to the position of the carat mark ^ in the above translation. You have:

Indeed the Apostle has said: I was once alive apart from the law at some time or other. He says, That is before I came into this body I lived in the kind of body that is not subject to the law; the body of a domestic animal or a bird.

Why are you moving the he says from before the apostle phrase to well after it? You cannot do that in English, and you cannot do that in Greek. The order of phrases matters in both languages. If Origen really wrote: [Basilides] says: Indeed the apostle has said..., then Origen is claiming that Basilides used the words the apostle to describe the author of the following quote.

Hopefully this will make clear the nature of my inquiry; if not, I am afraid I will have to give up. I am not seeing why the position of the quotation marks makes a lick of difference here. It is the order of the phrases [Basilides] says: The apostle says that matters.

Ben.

Notsri

For what it's worth at this point in the discussion, here is Thomas P. Scheck's translation in the FOTC series of the relevant passage from Origen:

Now Basilides, failing to observe that these things ought to be understood of natural laws, drags the Apostle's discourse down into senseless and godless fables and attempts to build out of this utterance of the Apostle the doctrine called μετενσωματωσις, i.e., that souls are transferred into one body after another. For he says that the Apostle says, "I was once alive apart from the law," that is: Before I came into this body, I lived in a bodily form which was not under law, namely that of a cow or a bird. But he has failed to look at what follows, namely, "But when the commandment came, sin revived." For Paul did not say that he came to the commandment, but the commandment came to him; and he did not say that sin did not exist in him, but that it was dead and revived. By these statements he is assuredly showing that he was saying both things about one and the same life of his. But let Basilides and those who share his perceptions be left to their own impiety. Let us, however, turn to the sense of the Apostle in accordance with pious reverence toward ecclesiastical doctrine.

Incidentally, in Scheck's translation the excerpt derives from Book 5, Chapter 1, Paragraph 27. In Migne it is apparently found in Book 5, Chapter 1, or Column 1015 of the appropriate volume; I do not believe the relevant paragraph has been numbered in Migne, however. (Scheck is in any case working from P. Hammond Bammel's critical edition of the commentary, and not directly from Migne, for what that may be worth to some of you.)

It is uncertain to me whether Scheck's rendition depends at this point in any way on an extant Greek fragment of the commentary or is based entirely on Rufinus' Latin translation.

Gamera

This is a good point, Vinnie. Assuming the validity of Q (and it seems indisputable given the apparent textual relationships among the synoptics), even a late dating of the gospels implies an earlier ms Q, which may have been disseminated widely enough to influence the writing of the gospels by unrelated authors (depending on how the relationship is argued).

I would note however that Paul never mentions Q, or implies any knowledge of anything like Q, and seems uninterested in the sayings of Jesus (except for a few examples). Rather he appears to have preached the gospel narrative, at least his comments in 1 Cor. 15 and elsewhere suggests as much. That doesn't mean he never read Q, but it suggests as much, which might mean Q was not widely disseminated.

Vinnie

Well, on a general level, a number of reasons for why Paul does not contain more sayings material as that found in Q can be posed. Maybe Paul was worried about factions which used Jesus' words as a vehicle for salvation, as opposed to the Cross. This may be evidenced by extraction Paul's Corinthian correspondants. Maybe at this time there were common lists of Jesus' sayings or oral memory was strong and there was no need to focus on them in a larger written sources. As time drew on and memory faded, documents like Q would be more useful, especially in a framework of an urgent eschatology where teachings and parables have limited appeal to the all important death and resurrection of Christ which ushered in God's imminent kingdom.

Some scholars have noted, literally hundreds of allusions to Jesus' words in Paul, others only a few. The exact nature will never be known as much of what Jesus said is not disconnected from the Judaism of his day. Thus, whether one is quoting or alluding to Jesus, the OT, both or some convention is not known. Does Paul ever mention any of Jesus' sayings on the kingdom of God? How about the exorcisms? An specific miracles of Jesus? It can scarcely be argued that Paul did not hear of any of these things. The traditions are too wide-spread and multiply attested withing 30 years (the gospels) to not view them as simultaneous with Paul. Some even appear historica. Rather, for some unknown reason, Paul did not include them in his moderately occasional letters. Didn't Peter Kirby show a later letter here that ommitted a lot of specific details in favor of theological discourse? Christianity became a religion of the book later on. Maybe Paul thought the world was ending soon and his theology, as opposed to "sayings gatherers" was more urgent in its eschatology... I don't know. I could keep making stuff up but only one of reasons why Q is not in Paul is "Paul did not know it" and its not necessarily the best. Q is also hypothetical so its exact order and wording is not as perfectly known as some exegetes make it out to be. Thus mabe there are some obvious allusuions to Q that we can't find.

I view Paul's single instance of mentioning the Eucharist as a sobering example against exegesis based upon what this evangelist did not say. Another consideration is that Q does not predate the Pauline corpus.

I see no indication, granted the 2DH, that Paul knew Q. That means there is no positive evidence Paul knew Q. Unless this is turned into a valid argument from silence it is not positive evidence Paul did not know Q. Had Paul not mentioned the Eucharist that one time in his 1800 known verses and 27,000 or so words, written to 8 communities, we'd be turning this into a negative argument from silence.

Of course, there is some good evidence Mark might have known Q....thus undermining the 2DH...

andrewcriddle

Brent Nogbri should be Brent Nongbri Sorry

The article is "The Use and Abuse of P52 Papyrological Pitfalls in the dating of the Fourth Gospel" in HTR 98.1 (2005) 23-48

Andrew Criddle

spin

Thanks for your earlier response, Andrew. I'd read mention of Nongbri in the Wiki entry on Rylands p52, but had forgotten about him.

I still don't see where your opinion actually comes from, but your response was helpful.


spin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Nostri,

Thank you. This is extraordinarily helpful.

In this translation the key phrase "the apostle says" belongs to Origen, not Basilides. For anybody who has been following the thread closely, this is enough to understand

1) That one can figure out logically where a quotation mark has been misplaced without needing to inquire into the original text of a language
2) The evidence for Basilides reading Paul is dependent upon a translation/mistranslation of a single phrase. Given that there is no other evidence for Basilides reading Paul, the stronger argument has to be that Origen misread Basilides and Basilides did not read Paul's letters at all or in anything like the edition that Origen read.
3) Since Basilides is the only evidence that Paul letters were read in Alexandria before the Third century. This allows a) for a somewhat slower transmission of the letters of Paul and b) strengthens the idea that the current letters of Paul may be Second century productions with layers of First century material as I have previously indicated.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

The translation of Thomas P. Scheck's as given in Nostri's post sufficiently resolves all questions about this passage. My movement of the "He says" is trivial, done only to clarify the sentence into proper English. The main point is that the phrase "Indeed the apostle has said" belongs to Origen and not to Basilides.

However, I must apologize for saying that only a fool would call for a translation in the matter of a misplaced quotation mark. I can think of many cases where a person who is not a fool would make such an offer. To go back to my example from Russian literature, it is possible that a Russian translator trying genuinely to be helpful, or to increase his self-esteem, might offer the proposition that only a look at the Russian would suffice to solve the problem.
Also, one might see the case where a person suffering from autism might offer the proposition. Note this behavior characteristic under Repetitive behaviors in wikipedia.

Here is the relevant portion of the definition form wikipedia:

Although there are excellent therapies for autism, treating it is beyond my expertise. I think the forms of inappropriate behavior and pseudo-communication should be ignored as much as possible, although this is hard to do as it does tend to create great stress in group situations.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay