EarlDoherty

Straightforward? After whose resurrection? Adam’s? What readers would be reading spin’s Greek sentence following the general resurrection? What does this have to do with the actual verse 45 reference to the second Adam, Christ? How does spin’s fine Greek sentence prove that verse 45 in any way refers to or implies Adam’s resurrection? Adam’s fate at his own resurrection is nowhere in sight in this verse and I have regularly said that spin is reading it into things to support his desired implication about a physical to spiritual resurrection for Christ.

As for the “eis” preposition, I dealt with that in my book and it was included in an early quote from the book on this thread. As usual, spin ignores my counter-arguments and neglects to address them. The preposition, while a common usage is “into”, can also be part of “a predicate accusative phrase, like 1 Maccabees 11:62: ‘He took the sons as [or, to be] hostages’.” (See Bauer, def. 8,b: “she used the knapsack as a seat” [Heliodorus]. No “destination” is involved in such a meaning.)

In fact, this is another indicator that the "eis in reference to Christ does not mean "into" in the sense of change or destination. It cannot have such a meaning in its usage attached to Adam, since the egeneto plus eis must mean "came into being [created] as" not 'changed into', since Adam was not changed from anything (other than the constituent material of the dust of the earth). Is spin now going to declare another wide difference between the two usages of the same preposition here as he did for the verb and its understood repetition?

Earl Doherty

spin

Yup.

The resurrection... of the dead. 1 Cor 15:51-52.



Christ, Earl, you totally missed the comment. Nobody will be reading such text in Paul's system. I simply used the context so that I didn't have to change tense of the verb for 45b. The sentence is grammatical and it makes sense, so you can have no argument with it.

Grammar. You have no grammatical reason for your analysis of v.45.

It's about grammar, Earl.

It's funny how you grab onto the wrong thing and shake so hard. When I talked about a "destination" it involved a particular notion of "becoming" as it represented the verb εγενετο. It was to help understanding. Take it out of its context and you start talking about inconsequentialities. These examples of yours just don't help you with the grammatical issue (other than incidentally showing that εις is governed by a verb, but more below).

I made no comment about εις functioning in only one way. I did comment about how it is used in 45b. (As a note, it is interesting that each of your examples is a reflection of the use of εις as a marker of the "translative case"--which is easiest to see in Finno-Ugric languages--, ie when something is turned into something else: the sons become hostages, the knapsack becomes a seat. With εγενετο that's how εις functions.)

You haven't shown why there is no ellipsis of εγενετο in v.45. You haven't offered a way of connecting εις grammatically without εγενετο. You misunderstand the significance of the examples you have proffered.

Who said that εγενετο εις must mean "came into being [created] as"? This is your back to the wall last defense, arbitrary and given for want of something tangible.

You go on to say that it cannot mean 'changed into', since Adam was not changed from anything (other than the constituent material of the dust of the earth), but strangely, that's basically what it meant in Gen 2:7 from where Paul grabbed the statement.

the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Perhaps, Paul changed its meaning to suit your analysis.

There are no blatant differences in the usage of εις in v.45. That should help one see that the ellipsis of εγενετο is obvious.

In my previous post I basically asked you to "parse the Greek sentence some other way". You need to be able to otherwise you cannot make sense of the verse. But you haven't.



Your reading of v.45 is now past your ability to resuscitate or resurrect. The best you'll hope to do is analogous to the work of George Romero.

EarlDoherty

I don’t think I have ever read such confusing bafflegab as your last posting, spin. In most of it I couldn’t be sure what you were getting at, and I would be very surprised if anyone else was more successful than myself. So I am unable to make an organized response to it. The best I can do is a few isolated comments.

I certainly did miss it. Not an understanding of the sentence per se (which I have no grammatical argument with), but the reference within it. Since we were discussing verse 45 with its dual reference to Adam and Christ, I couldn’t see the relevance of making both sides of your example a reference to Adam alone. Nor did your one-liner retorts offer any illumination.

The first paragraph above is just noise to me. You make no attempt to explain how the examples I gave (or rather, Bauer gave) don’t help with the grammatical issue, whatever you perceive that to be. But that’s par for your course.

I’m sure we are all impressed by your ‘knowledge’ of Finno-Ugric. (A clue to your concealed identity, perhaps?) But I prefer to work in English (or Greek, where necessary). For this topic, English will do, since it’s a matter of logic and the understanding of common concepts. Does the knapsack cease to be a knapsack when it is used as a seat? Do the sons cease to be sons when they are held as hostages? There is no transformation involved here, simply usage of one thing as another.

Is the knapsack sown as a knapsack and raised as a seat? Are the sons sown as sons and rise as hostages? The point is, the predicate accusative is not the same as what you want to introduce into verse 45, and in no way serves to support your interpretation. It is Bauer’s way (and mine) of showing that an understanding of egeneto eis does not have to involve a transformation from one state to another. Christ hardly remained a human being when he died and was resurrected in a spiritual body. His human body wasn’t used as a spiritual body. That’s the grammatical point here, spin. That a perfectly feasible understanding of eis (a topic you introduced) does not have to involve transformation, or a destination state from an original left behind. All your noise did nothing to counter that.

That quote by me was clear and straightforward. Your response here is again incoherent. There is an ellipsis of egeneto in v.45b, it’s understood from 45a. Are you claiming that eis cannot be understood without a verb? Of course it can’t. Who said that? And egeneto is present in 45b because it’s understood. To paraphrase the 1 Maccabee verse, one could say: “Their sons became hostages,” but the “became” doesn’t change the basic meaning from “He took their sons as hostages.” The sons still don’t cease to be sons and they are not ‘transformed’ into hostages in the sense of a different state of existence. Their role simply took on an added temporary dimension.

This is actually a good illustration of my point about the “likeness” terminology used of Christ. If a knapsack is used as a seat, it takes on the “likeness” of a seat (here, more in the sense of usage than in appearance). But does that mean that it becomes a seat in actuality, indistinguishable from a chair? If it did, then it has become fully a chair and the ‘likeness’ aspect is completely unnecessary and even misleading. As I asked in JNGNM, Genesis says we are made in the likeness of God. Does that mean we become God? The pervasive “likeness” motif found throughout the epistles (and strangely missing entirely from the Gospels) tells us that Christ did not actually become a human man.

I don’t know why you can’t recognize that your contortions regularly get you into trouble. The Genesis verse “the man became a living being” hardly signifies that Adam went from being a man into being a living being. This is simply two stages of the creation process. Henry Ford made a Model T on the assembly line, then put in gas and started it up. Was this a transformation? Did it cease to be a Model T when he did so? Did Adam cease to be a man when he was animated? Even God had to do his thing in stages, according to Genesis.

My statement quoted above still stands (which your appeal to Genesis did nothing to disprove). Adam was not “changed into” anything from a different previous state. And Paul didn’t have to change the Genesis meaning. The latter described God’s process of creation of Adam. Verse 45b refers to the creation or coming into being of Christ (as an emanation of God).

As far as I can see, I’ve done exactly as you’ve asked me.

And those little symbols you pepper your postings with are neither humorous nor justified. They would give even freshmen a bad name.

Earl Doherty

Chili

Well you people can argue about it til the cows come home but there is no way that the first Adam was a man in the image of God but was created by conjecture after the first 'thou shalt not' was placed before man is if it was ''a dam" and that caused the creation of Adam who so was the ego identity of the man with no name other than man . . . fully in the image of God as created and formed but with no function in his TOK or conscious mind an thus no ego awareness.

Yes, fully God and basically good = redeemable after the fall, which is the engagement of the concsious mind wherein we chose to be 'like god' instead of being God' and so are banned from Eden in that we no longer have direct access to our soul nature wherein we are God. Hence, Adam here is the outsider perhaps in charge of the body to some extent but certainly not free in that each and every primary premiss that enters his [conscious] mind is always prior to him by nature and is originative from his intuition=soul or TOL . . . and of course Gen.3:15 makes this clear where the greater serpent (the woman) strikes at the lesser serpent's head (he called here Eve), who in her turn strikes at Adam's (the usurper, or pretender) heel.

No such thing as a "human man" in the strict definition here since Man is God and hu-man is 'fallen man.' Human male is fine but not human man. Human is actually opposite to woman since woman was not banned from Eden and so woman is the one who strikes Eve and on to [human] Adam's feet (kind of like a kitten chasing its tale = how silly humans polish their own chest).

So all that happens is that the usurper who is called Adam gets crucified and since he is an illusion to start with that is not very difficult at all and according to Golding "is as easy as eating and drinking." So therefore the second Adam is the reborn Man into the TOK and there has an infancy and so it can be said the second Adam is reborn but in John he sure was not infant at all and still second Adam.

To be sure, there is no way that the first Adam was a living soul because he precisely lived beside his own soul in that he was banned from his own TOL and so from Eden.
There is no such a thing as a "human race" since our humanity is a condition of being that pertains to the BEING called Man and races deal more with 'colors' such as red or black, like hair but not only hair, etc.

Kapyong

Gday,

Actually, if you read it plainly you'd see the woman is Jerusalem Above.


K.

Iskander

Hi Chili.

This is my understanding of the text. Would you kindly state the Catholic interpretation?


The Resurrection Body - 1 Corinthians 15:35-49
"What kind of body will those who are raised have?"

Paul's point is simple: the resurrected body is different from the physical body, but it is recognizable; the new life is not identical to the first human life.

Adam is animal life-form in spite of the divine breathed into him/her, It is this heavenly part of man what makes him the image of god and different from other animal life-form while sharing the same mortal future.

Jesus is a man with a little extra; this is emphasised by calling him another Adam and the heavenly man. Jesus will breathe a heavenly life into the fallen humans as god did with the first Adam. His resurrection means that mankind will not die but will continue to live in heavenly life-form.

GakuseiDon

What does "Jesus, born of Jerusalem above, born under the law" mean?

spin

So you have no difficulty with the grammatical structure of the sentence and its strict parallel with v.45. Good.

If you were interested in understanding the notion of a "translative case" the pointer would have been of use. Finnish has a surface grammatical translative case. Some phrases with εις map to the same deep grammatical notion, making "translative" a good handle for the notion.

That's part of your problem. English is no help for your understanding of the Greek, so you need to be able to work in the Greek.

Without the knowledge of Greek, logic and the understanding of common concepts are insufficient.

They remain hostages and seats until the situations are changed. These examples of yours backfire.

:hysterical:

This is just rhetoric. When you name something you need to show its relevance. A translative case helps one understand how the preposition εις is being used. It also makes transparent the grammatical structure of the sentence with the ellipsis. If it's not correct, one needs to show where there are examples of εγενετο εις that are not translative.

In the sentence,

1. He fed his victim through a meatgrinder and turned him into dog food.

is the italicized part functionally a predicate accusative? If not, why not?

How is εις πνευμα ζωοποιουν a predicate accusative and what does it tell you about the significance of the structure?

Sorry, you aren't making sense. You are trying to make an analogy with examples that involve a perceptual change that caused no physical change. Well, where's the perceptual change in the text parallel to the knapsack becoming a seat or the people becoming hostages?

Perhaps 1 Mac 11:62 is another red herring.



No-one has said that the all uses of εις necessitates a change, merely with εγενετο.

It's about time you clarified this. I've been trying to understand why you were playing around with translations that favored alternatives to εγενετο. That's progress. So we are working with the following two clauses:

[T2]εγενετο ο πρωτος ανθρωπος αδαμ εις ψυχην ζωσαν
εγενετο ο εσχατος εις πνευμα ζωοποιουν[/T2]

Is that correct?

I didn't make such a claim. However, prepositions are generally illusive and need contexts to pin them down.

This doesn't help you one bit. Sons remain sons, yet become hostages as long as they stay in captivity. There has been a status change. The last Adam remains the last Adam, but becomes a life-giving spirit. What sort of change is that?

Wrong. It functions as a seat. For the length of its use it is a seat.

As long as it serves the purpose, it gains the quality of being a seat, not the likeness. If it couldn't be sat on then it couldn't be a seat.

You're misleading yourself. It's not a matter of likeness, but of function regarding the seat. It's not a matter of likeness when sons are hostages.

Irrelevant, Earl. God formed man from the dust and when he breathed life into him what he had formed became a living being.

Prior state: object formed from dust. Change: the breath of life. Post state: living being.

Prior state: physical body. Change: death and resurrection. Post state: spiritual body.

You're assuming your conclusion when that is what you need to demonstrate. You have consistently failed to do so. 45b states that christ became a life-giving spirit. There is nothing strange with that statement. The grammar is plain. You accept that εγενετο underlies the sentence. εγενετο εις implies a change (or a change in status or location depending on the context).

Nowhere have you done so. We are now on the same page as to the underlying lexical structure of 45b. We have a subject "the last Adam", a verb, εγενετο, and a predicate, εις πνευμα ζωοποιουν. How do they relate? How is the relationship between the εις phrase and the verb εγενετο different from that in Lk 13:19 where the mustard seed became a great tree or Jer 41:51 where Babylon becomes a desolation or Ezek 17:6 where a seed became a vine?

There are changes in Jdg 17:5 where a son of Micah became a priest; 1 Sam 30:25 where a particular division of spoils became a law; and 2 Sam 8:2 where Moabites became servants. You'll say that they remain what they are, but there is a change of status.

I've shown with εγενετο εις that there is some sort of change indicated. There seems to be nothing in v.45 that is different. You have shown nothing that mitigates this. What's more, Paul has indicated a progression from one form to another, physical to spiritual, both before and after: one becomes spiritual upon being raised. The grammar indicates a change in v.45, as does the context. Christ having been raised became a life-giving spirit (εγενετο εις πνευμα ζωοποιουν).

EarlDoherty

The problem with semantic arguments (which this has become) is that they can take on a life of their own, and one can lose sight of the original thing being argued. I haven’t lost sight of it, and I hope onlookers haven’t either, despite what seem to be attempts on your part to mask it. The original essence of this ‘debate’ (Toto was right, it has become an abomination, though I am sure that many are being entertained—including myself, which is the only reason I have persisted with it) was centered on verse 45, in which you claimed was present the meaning or implication that Christ had transformed from a physical body into a spiritual body at the time of his death on earth and resurrection to heaven. I maintained that there was no such ‘transformation’ implied, let alone stated.

As each of your arguments was discredited, you shifted gears and attention to some other aspect of the text, hoping to finally light on one that would have legs and could not be shot down. Your latest attempt has to do with the preposition eis and the claim that this little preposition, in conjunction with the understood egeneto, has to mean that Christ transformed from one state (the physical) into another state (the spiritual). I had pointed out earlier that Adam could not be said to transform from one state to another, but rather was “created as” a living being; ergo, to maintain the parallel, Christ was being said to be created as a life-giving spirit, involving no transformation from some previous state. Your new focus on “eis” was meant to override that by claiming that the preposition had to mean “into” in the sense of a transformation. I countered by pointing out that eis in a predicate accusative phrase had the meaning of “as”, involving no transformation, as in the examples I gave:

He took the sons as hostages. (1 Macc. 11:62)
She used the knapsack as a seat. (Heliodorus)

Having been backed into a corner here, what have you come up with? The claim that there is no difference between those examples and your reading of 1 Cor. 15:45b?

She used the knapsack as a seat.
The second Adam [from a physical human body] became a life-giving spirit[ual body].

That’s your position? No difference? The transformation is the same? Let’s see how well you defended that in your latest posting.

Is that how you think to win arguments? By putting words into your opponent’s mouth? I never said it was a strict parallel with v.45. In fact, I pointed out the glaring difference, that your sentence involved Adam only, while 15:45 had a key internal parallel between Adam and Christ. I still don’t know what you thought to accomplish by your sentence.

It depends on what you mean by “translative.” And throwing out this “Finno-Ugric” example was simply grandstanding on your part, since you made no effort to explain what a translative case is or how it relates to the issue under debate. Having an interest in “understanding the notion” would hardly have done me any good, would it, since you failed to enlighten us.

That’s bullshit. I’ve been working with the Greek all along. What, you propose that we conduct this discussion in Greek? The logical aspects to our debate over eis are quite capable of being laid out in English to everyone’s understanding. More grandstanding, and you’re not fooling anybody by it. (You’re sounding more and more like Jeffrey Gibson all the time.)

In what way? You certainly haven’t explained how. And you haven’t answered my questions. Where is the transformation? We have a knapsack before, and we still have a knapsack while it is being used as a seat. The fathers still have sons while they are being held as hostages. Where is the transformation from one entity to another, leaving the first entity behind, no longer existing, as you want to claim for Christ after his resurrection. Did the human Jesus still exist after the resurrection?

Yes, they remain hostages and seats until the situations are changed. How does that refute my argument? They are capable of ceasing to be hostages and seats, since they are no longer being used as such and revert to their regular state (which they never lost while being used as hostages and seats). Is Christ the spiritual body capable of reverting to his incarnation?

What’s going on here, spin? Are you hiding behind terminology and references to an obscure language (to the rest of us) which puts us at a disadvantage? Without explaining your “translative case” and how it relates to a Greek case we are familiar with, you are being deliberately deceptive.

But your example gives us an indication of what you mean by “translative” so let’s go with that. Such a sentence clearly involves a transformation (which the term “translative” implies). The victim was changed, because his previous state of being a human being exists no longer. I ask again, when the sons are turned into hostages, do they no longer exist as sons? You’re doing it again. You hold up one meaning of a given term or phrase, and try to impose it and all its ramifications on every other usage of the term or phrase. When I point out that you can’t do that, you grandstand. I don’t have to know Finno-Ugric or its translative case to know that

He fed his victim through a meatgrinder and turned him into dog food

is not the same as

”She used the knapsack as a seat,” or if you like, “She turned the knapsack into a seat.”

I offered 1 Macc. 11:62 and Heliodorus primarily to show how your preposition eis could be used in a way which did not involve the transformation you have been claiming is inherent in 15:45b, to counter your claim that eis had to involve a transformation meaning. Now you are trying to wriggle out by claiming that because every aspect of those examples doesn’t fit every aspect of 15:45b, they cannot serve as analogies of non-transformation. What they have in common is a predicative accusative usage of eis which is non-transformational. That is sufficient to discredit your latest argument about eis.

Now, I realize that you have tried to narrow that argument down (again, when you're backed into a corner, change the terms) to a usage of eis with egeneto; this is allowing at least half of my argument, though it really amounts to the whole thing, because you have not actually demonstrated why that particular verb should render the eis phrase contrary to the way Bauer defines it, which is as a predicative accusative in which the eis is understood in the sense of “as”, not a transformational “into”.

You have especially not demonstrated it because you are faced with egeneto eis in 45a, which I have repeatedly shown cannot be taken as transformational, because Adam was not transformed from one type of entity into another. And your attempt to bludgeon God’s creation process of Adam into such a thing is about the most forced and desperate piece of interpretation I’ve ever encountered.

A status change? It is a change in usage. It is certainly not a change of ‘status’ to equal your claim of a transformation—a permanent one—from physical body to spiritual body. You are talking in circles.

It is not a seat. A knapsack is never a seat by the definition of the term seat. If I sit on my piano, it does not become a seat; it remains a piano now being used as a seat. Your claim would make language meaningless. I could literally sit on anything. Does everything become a seat? The definition of “seat” (at least in my dictionary) is: “something designed to support a person in a sitting position, as a chair or bench.” The operative word here is “designed”. Is a book designed to be a seat? If I can sit on my piano and somebody points to it and asks what it is, do I say it is a seat? I may make it serve as a seat, but I do not thereby change its nature into a seat. It remains a piano.

I used the analogy with the “likeness” motif to illustrate a point. And I pointed out that it was a ‘likeness’ in terms of usage, not physical resemblance. That does not de-legitimize it as a useful analogy. Moreover, I used the analogy in relation to the Heliodorus quote, not 1 Maccabees.

This is what I mean about semantic arguments that take on a life of their own masking the underlying issue. You could argue from a semantic point of view till your bulls come home about what constitutes a ‘seat’ but that does not alter the fact that egeneto eis can very well fit into Bauer’s presentation of a predicate accusative. You’ve presented no argument to prove otherwise, and you’ve failed to counter the example which proves my case, the use of egeneto eis in 45a which clearly does not involve a physical transformation for Adam, just like the 1 Maccabees and Heliodorus examples do not.

(Incidentally, are you aware that Bauer presents no specific translation for 1 Cor. 15:45 under "eis". The implication is that it fits under his general heading of predicate accusative (8.b), in which none of his examples constitute the meaning of transformational change in the way you want to read 15:45b.)

So in summation you simply go back to your original position, your original claim. All the arguments I’ve put forward to show that it is not valid, are simply dismissed. “The grammar is plain,” when I’ve demonstrated how it is not plain. “Egeneto eis implies a change,” meaning a transformation, when I’ve demonstrated that it does not, and need not. I’ve demonstrated up the wazoo, but it’s all water off a duck’s back.

I want to make it clear that the issue here is not whether you can alter or water down your claim about the meaning of 15:45b. Your "change in status or location depending on the context" sounds like you're trying to accommodate. Let's be clear: what you originally claimed was a change in state for Christ from being a physical (earthly) body to becoming a spiritual body. My position was that the idea behind what Paul is saying is that Christ emanated from God, came into being, as a life-giving spirit. He is not saying or implying that Christ went from one state to another, let alone from a physical body to a spiritual body. Those at ringside can decide for themselves who is right and who has gone down for the count.

You are so like Tim O’Neill, it’s uncanny, spin. With your silly little smilies and smug little RIP and other cartoons, your grandstanding, your pretense that no blood has been drawn on anything you’ve had to say, just a swaggering back in as though you’ve commanded the field all along when the truth of the matter is anything but. That fits O'Neill to a T. (Omigod! A fusion of Jeffrey Gibson and Tim O'Neill! Can the world of mythicism survive such an onslaught?)

I think the entertainment value of this debate has run its course, for me at least. Deep-sixing this farce wouldn’t get any objection from me.

Earl Doherty

Kapyong

Gday Don,

The literal Greek seems to say :
"HavingCome from a woman
"HavingCome under the law"

The word is "hypo", right? Meaning "beneath" or "under", but it seems to be commonly interpreted as "according to" the law.

Maybe the "law" represents a higher state or region (i.e. up there with "spirit"); and Jesus was born beneath the region of "law", in the region of flesh below.

So Jesus was :
* a little while lower than the angels,
* temporarily under the moon,
* born under (beneath) the law.

In short I suspect the "hypo" means he was UNDERNEATH the law - and the "law" was in the higher regions. It's just a way of re-iterating that Jesus descended.

Doesn't sound anything like a literal birth on earth at all, especially with the Jerusalem Above, our heavenly mother in view nearby (although it's maddeningly UNspecific.)


K.