Clivedurdle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinomianism


Tying people who are more concerned about justice and the spirit of the law in comparison to those who think in terms of rules to psychological states is interesting but dangerous.

This is the conflict between the pharisees and zealots, moderates and taliban, liberals and fundies.

If someone risks a lot for their ideals is a further matter - leaving the trenches and risking being machine gunned down.

I understand people who are tied to the law as being the psychologically iffy ones - Maslow ideas - not properly self actualising.

Law is a tool to discover justice, it is a mistake to see law as for its own sake.

Why people make that mistake may be due to psychological issues, like the need for structure, but that is an example of them having forgotten how the universe works, easily resolved by watching waves lapping against a beach, or the motion of the heavens.

avi

Peter, you and Jeffrey may both be absolutely correct, and I may be committing an egregious and unforgivable error, nevertheless, I persist in writing that I believe it is possible for someone who is functionally illiterate, i.e. reading characters/symbols laboriously, one at a time, with the aid of many dictionaries, to attempt a reconstruction of the original text in L2 (i.e. some other language.) In the case of DaoDeJing, the characters themselves have changed over the past 2500 years, but more importantly, the concepts portrayed by the ideograms have changed as well, so that a native speaker, living in China today, studying DaoDeJing, requires two dictionaries, (just to understand the original manuscript,) both of which are strictly elaborated in HanZi (characters), i.e. without any non-Chinese translation, and without any Roman letters (PinYin) to convert to PuTongHua = "Mandarin Chinese".

So, yes, the problem with expressing ideas in another language are formidable, and if Earl's thesis depends upon interpretation of the phonetic Greek alphabet, symbols which have today a meaning different from the one they had 2000 years ago, then, I can envision a lot of controversy surrounding his interpretation. My only point then, is that it is too facile to claim that a particular translation/interpretation is either valid or invalid, based upon the academic credentials of the translator/interpreter.

The merits or qualities of a particular oeuvre must be discernible on their own, without need to invoke the lofty status of the person engaged in the arduous task.

Let us consider a very simple example, one we can agree upon: eqnikoi, as found in Matthew 6:7, for example. The English translation in 9/10 English language Bibles, today, is either Pagan, Heathen, Gentiles, Idolators, or Ungodly. The concept then, is clear: These are not "good" people. But, is that what the Greeks meant by "eqnikoi"?

I doubt it. Pagan, etc are all pejorative descriptors, aren't they? These vocabulary terms are employed, in my opinion, to justify the slaughter of people who looked, or acted, or smelled different from "us good (white) folks", i.e. Aryans. Back then, the Greeks did not look like the Turks, as they do today. Back then, they looked, (and probably acted like) Germans, Scandinavians, Latvians, and other Baltic countries' inhabitants. They were tall, fair skinned Caucasians, not short, swarthy, semitic peoples. Eqnikoi simply meant, in my opinion, non-Greek in appearance, language, costume and customs. It had nothing to do, back then, in my uneducated opinion, with religion.

Eqnikoi was a descriptor that indicated non-resident status. One can envision the silk route, terminus Istanbul, in those days, a Greek port. The ancient Greeks met a lot of folks from India, Africa, and China, all of whom, would have been eqnikoi. Had they met a Tamil speaking Indian, with dark skin, who believed in Jupiter and Zeus, and prayed with the Greeks in a temple to e.g. Diana or Apollo, he/she would have remained "eqnikoi", because the term, I believe, referred not to their religious ideology, but to their genetic makeup.

So, here is one word, not a whole book, just one word, eqnikoi, and if you prefer, you can claim that my prejudices in interpretation of this word, represent a consequence of my ignorance of ancient Greek. You may well be correct, Peter and Jeffrey, and I may be wrong, however, until someone comes along, to explain to me, why my understanding of eqnikoi is misguided, I who am ignorant and uneducated, will continue to believe that I have nevertheless properly understood eqnikoi's meaning from two millenia ago, while the persons who have (mis)translated the Bible, during the past century, are, at least 90% of them, wrong, despite their possessing incomparably superior knowledge of written and spoken Greek, compared with mine.

avi

Johnny Skeptic

Are you saying that only people who are experts in ancient Greek should become Christians? If not, what difference does it make whether or not people understand ancient Greek?

Solo

What is your basis for saying this, avi ? How do you know that the appearance of Greeks has changed ? And what makes you sure that Matthew would be thinking of the 'ethnikoi' in the manner of a 19th century racial theorist ?

What makes you say that Mat 6:7 uses the term to justify slaughter ? You are right in that the term had, if not pejorative, then certainly condescending undertones. But, why would it not be enough to assign the term to a common human propensity to treat all outsiders to ones' in-groups (ethnically, racially, class-wise, faith-wise, gender-wise, sex-orientation-wise, golf club-wise) as pathetic untermenschen, if not charitably as God's neglected ?

You are wrong, avi. If you converted to Judaism, you were a Jew. It did not matter, if your ethnicity was Greek, Tamil, Khazar, or Ethiopian. It was quickly established as a rule among the emerging Christians to follow that precedent (cf Acts 2:5, Gal 3:28).

Jiri

Jeffrey Gibson

The issue is not about reconstructing the original text. It's about whether arguments based on the language and grammar and syntax of the original text can be evaluated adequately without a sound knowledge of the semantic range of words in question and a good grasp of the rules of Greek grammar and syntax.

It is not a dictionary exercise.

All this shows -- even should your claim about how ἐθνικός is translated in 9/10 English Bibles be true (is this really the case? is "Gentiles" wrong?) -- is that one should never try to do exegesis of a Greek text on the basis of any English translation of it.

It also shows that you lack a real grasp of what exegesis involves It is not simply trying to find the right translation of single Greek words. Besides that, many of Earl's arguments are not based on what a single word means.

It was?? Please show me actual instances from the nearly 200 instances in both Biblical and non Biblical literature from the 8th cent BCE-1st century CE (as well as from the scholia and the commentaria) where ἐθνικός (let alone the feminine forms of the adjective) is ever, let alone primarily, used with this meaning.

Which you have not only mis translated this word, but confused it with παρεπίδημος

Moreover, you have produced a red herring in claiming that the issue here is only either the meaning of "one word" or that of "a whole book.


But in this case my preferences have nothing to do with things, since it is a matter of your demonstrable lack of knowledge of Greek, not to mention your failure to consult actual Greek lexicons to see if your understanding was correct, which shows your clam to be both unfounded and wrong.

Is "resident alien" the meaning that ἐθνικός bears in, say Polyb. 30, 13, 6; BGU 1764, 13 Philo, Mos. 1, 69; Jos., Ant. 12, 36; Epigr. Gr. 430, 6; POxy.126.13; Apollonius Dyscolus Synt.190.20?

Do you even know?

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

You are joking, right? You cannot possibly be as thick as the question you ask indicates you are.

Jeffrey

Johnny Skeptic

Sorry, I had temporarily forgotten that this thread is about Earl Doherty's mythical Jesus arguments. I wrongly assumed that Petergdi was trying to defend Christianity.

Anyway, in your opinion, how much does Earl Doherty know about ancient Greek?

Do you know what Elaine Pagel's and Bark Ehrman's positions are regarding the mythical Jesus?

Jeffrey Gibson

From what I've seen when he has argued here about matters Greek, as well as the way he goes about defending his claims about Greek when I have raised questions about how valid and informed they are (i.e., through bluster, ad hominem, and, curiously, through an appeal to English grammar as the arbiter for the way he claims Greek functioned grammatically and syntactically-- see the archives for instances of this, using jgibson000 as one of your search terms) and his apparent lack of access to, familiarity with, and regular use of such standard grammatical and lexical tools as Smythe, BDF, MM, TDNT, LSJ, BDAG, the PHI disks, and most importantly, the TLG, I think it is at least questionable that he knows all that much.

And -- FWIW -- his academic credentials do not indicate that he's had any advanced formal training in Greek or any other ancient language. To my knowledge, the highest degree he has earned (and I'll be glad to be corrected on this point) is a BA in history.


As to Pagels, one can only assume from her writings that she does not support it.

You could always ask her, though.

But having spoken with Bart (not Bark) about the topic of Jesus being nothing but a "myth", I can say that he thinks it's unsupportable. What he thinks about Earl's arguments for his particular vision of an MJ, however, is another matter. As far as I know, Bart has never heard of Earl. Indeed, since Earl seems not to have made an effort actually to insure that he would be known to people like Ehrman, why would Bart have heard of him?

Jeffrey

avi

Commenting on my translation of eqnikoi,
Hi Jeffrey, thanks for your quick rejoinder. I hope that no one on this forum misunderstands, I am certainly not trying to present myself as in any way competent in Greek (or anything else, for that matter!!!). However, despite my appalling ignorance, I nevertheless wish to argue this point a tad longer, and hope this is not deemed too far astray from the OP regarding Earl Doherty's book. The connection, admittedly tenuous, is this: There has been a claim that perhaps Earl's credentials, in terms of genuine proficiency with, and mastery of ancient Greek, are suspect. I am arguing, on the contrary, that regardless of Earl's supposed lack of bona fide credentials, or even if he has achieved a perfect score on some objective measure of knowledge of ancient Greek, one must evaluate his book on the basis of its contents, not on the basis of Earl's credentials, or absence thereof.

To that end, I have argued that, ignorant though I clearly am, I nevertheless have a superior understanding of the meaning of a single word, eqnikoi, than a whole host of biblical scholars, the vast majority of whom, erroneously mistranslate the word, eqnikoi, to mean something derogatory, whereas, in my opinion, (and completely contrary to what Jeffrey has written above, I certainly have NOT confounded eqnikoi with παρεπίδημος, which means, according to Nathanail's "NTC New College Greek and English Dictionary", 1993, Chicago, Illinois, "to sojurn, to stay temporarily", obviously not what I indicated was) the proper interpretation, 2000 years ago, of eqnikoi, i.e. "people of a different race, or skin color, or custom, or costume, or habits"--> and certainly NOT "gentile"-->a pejorative jewish bit of nonsense, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Greeks, and certainly not "pagan, heathen, ungodly", and all the rest of the derisive, derogatory, insulting terms employed by the true believers for the past 1500 years, since Jerome's Latin translation of the Greek original.

The synoptics were written by GREEKS, not jews. Maybe, or maybe not, some or one or more of them, could have believed in the jewish religion, before adopting christianity, but, who knows? no one. For all we know, the authors of the synoptics may have been atheists. We don't know anything about them, except that they WROTE IN GREEK, not Hebrew, not Aramaic, not Coptic, not Latin, not Farsi, etc.....

It doesn't matter a whit, how the jews want to interpret the idea of non-jew. The synoptics were written by GREEKS. For them, eqnikoi is not a jewish term. It is a GREEK word.

The English speaking world is so accustomed to believing the crap in the KJV, that even the atheists call non-jews pagans or heathen or gentiles or godless.... Ridiculous. Let the jews belittle the rest of the world. I don't have to go along with their nonsense, and I won't. Eqnikoi, contrary to what Jeffrey has indicated, does NOT refer to someone who is a transient. It refers to someone who does not look like a Greek. To the Greeks living in a colony whether in Roman controlled Palestina, or Syria, or Turkey, or Persia, or anywhere else, when discussing the citizens living around them, they would not call them παρεπίδημος, but rather, eqnikoi. How could they refer to them as παρεπίδημος, since those eqnikoi are the permanent residents of the region, while the Greek traders, or physicians, or merchants, or advisors, or teachers, would in fact represent, in this instance, the παρεπίδημος.

yes, Gentiles is WRONG. Absolutely wrong.

Why? A gentile is a non-jew, in other words, (in the minds of the jews and their fellow travelers, the muslims and christians, jews = "God's chosen people", i.e. the superior race of humans, and gentiles and all others are therefore, inferior.) Utterly false, nonsensical, racist crap. eqnikoi has nothing to do with jews. nothing. zero. Zilch. It refers to people who are not GREEK, not those who are not jews.

avi

Johnny Skeptic

Thanks.

My misspelling of Bart Ehrman's first name was unintentional.

I am a fan of Pagels and Ehrman. If they do not accept the mythical Jesus theory, that is good enough for me since I do not intend to try to become a Bible scholar.