Ben C Smith

I cannot speak for the others (whoever they may be), but, speaking for myself, this statement is not quite true. It has been my contention that you do not have a leg to stand on in Galatians 4.4; other (kinds of) mythicists may have little or no problem with it.

That is a respectable option. It is indeed possible that born of a woman, born under the law is an interpolation. That the two phrases either stand or fall together is, IMVHO, most likely, and they seem to fall together in the Marcionite version as outlined by Tertullian in Against Marcion 5.4.2b-4, from which we see that the text of Marcion as Tertullian had it must have jumped from misit deus filium suum (God sent his son) to ut eos qui sub lege erant redimeret (to redeem those who were under the law), cleanly skipping the phrases about the son being made of a woman or made under the law (factum ex muliere, factum sub lege).

Cheers.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

It certainly isn’t. Because that’s exactly what I am saying. Jesus’ sacrifice was the primary act which enabled the purchase of freedom, but it was God who actually performed the purchase in Paul’s time. Jesus’ sacrifice deposited the money in the bank, God later withdrew it and gave it to the believers whom Paul converted and bought them their freedom.

It isn’t the verbs themselves which are inconsistent with your sequence, it is the structure of the thought in the passage as a whole.

Ted, if you can’t grasp (or allow yourself to see) what is being said in Titus 1:3, when it is stated so clearly, how can you properly debate anything? It isn’t just “something significant happened at a point in time” which could be the arrival of Jesus. The writer spells out what that significant happening IS. And it isn’t the arrival of Jesus. It is “eternal life that God promised long ages ago, and now at the proper time…” Between that promise and the “proclamation entrusted to (Paul) by ordinance of God,” there just is no room for any Jesus.

I didn’t say they were. But I did say they were two elements of a single process. The revelation of Christ (to Paul) came first, followed by the infusion of the spirit of Christ into the believer who accepted Paul’s preaching and received Christ into himself through baptism and faith. All of it happened in Paul’s time.

In this passage he does not clearly write that Christ purchased freedom. He clearly writes that GOD purchased freedom. For this passage, that makes all the difference. As I said, he elsewhere also says that Christ purchased freedom, on the cross, as in 3:13. Christ’s act was the primary act which enabled freedom from the Law, but that potential was only applied when God acted to reveal Christ and his mythical acts to Paul. That is when the actual purchase took place. Christ on the cross gave the purchase price to God, God kept it “for long ages” and then decided in the time of Paul to use it to actually purchase that freedom for his new sons, adopted through faith.

I know what the orthodox view is. But as far as Gal. 4:4 is concerned, the second sentence of your capsule summary is wrong. I have shown that it is God who purchases freedom in that verse, not Jesus.

The last sentence is such a tired old ‘explanation.’ I guess Jesus didn’t teach anything, because Paul never offers his own preaching as building on anything Jesus taught. And can we assume that early Christian gentiles, and even Paul himself, would not have come up with the idea that Jesus had taught such a thing? Once the Gospels came along, they came up with all sorts of things which Jesus ‘must’ have taught and which they placed in his mouth. And you are too much a disciple of Rick Sumner, who tries to reduce the entirety of the “mystery” to “Gentile salvation.” That idea appears in only a couple of passages, while several others have nothing to do with it but with the broader mystery of “Christ himself”. Where is the thought of gentile salvation in Romans 16:25-26, or Colossians 2:2, or parts of Romans? Gentile salvation is only one aspect of the overall "mystery" and Paul's message, which is the revelation of the Son through scripture, what he had done in the supernatural world, what God has done in the present with those acts, "Christ in you," and so on. But I went all over that with Rick, and I won’t do it again.

No it does not point back to verse 6. The “God’s own act” refers to the act of God sending/revealing Christ in verse 4, which (in verse 5) purchases freedom for the subjects of the Law. That is what makes them his “sons”. They are already sons by the time we get to verse 6, which says that the “Spirit of the Son” was sent into the hearts of the believers. Verse 7 speaks of a concomitant result of being sons, which is being an heir (to the Abrahamic promise). Thus, being an heir is not a result of verse 6, it is a result of verses 4-5, namely God’s act.

“God promised eternal life long ages ago.” Does this sound as though it is restricted to the idea of Gentile salvation? Does Paul and his movement only believe eternal life belongs to gentiles? This is another example of Rick’s theory not holding water. This is typical apologetic splitting of hairs. Do you really think that by the early 2nd century no way would yet have been found by Pauline theologians to allot Jesus some little role in granting eternal life (no matter to whom), somewhere between God’s promises long ages ago and the work of Paul? Would any dichotomy be set up between an age-old act of God and the work of Paul, with Jesus being one vast void in the middle?

Paul has already covered that. Gal. 3:13 has Jesus becoming a “curse” through being on the cross. He never says anywhere outside of “born under the Law” that he also took on a curse of being a Jew under the Law. And you have raised the very point which I am going to focus on as an additional reason for rejecting “born of…” That kind of homologic relationship is never dealt with by Paul in his letters, the idea that Jesus was a Jew living under the Law and how that affected his relationship to fellow humans and the complications and questions that would arise from that fact; just as Jesus occupying human flesh (as I outlined in the Kata Sarka thread) is also never dealt with in how that affected his relationship with fellow humans on earth and the complications and questions that would arise out of it, especially in regard to Paul’s attitude toward flesh and living kata sarka.

But thanks for addressing my post in detail, Ted.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Thanks for acknowledging that "born of woman, born under the law" is now respectable as an interpolation. And I have already incorporated that Tertullian text into my argument, with one further observation about why we can trust that omission. I will probably post the next installment of it later today.

Incidentally, what's the infinitive form of "natum"? Is it "nascor"? I can't come up with a first-person singular form such as 'facio' is for "factum" (probably because it's irregular).

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

Yes, it is. Nascor, nasci, natus. Not irregular so much as deponent.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Not sure what the intended force of the now is supposed to be, but can we expect sometime a similar treatment of Romans 1.3? You have argued that born of a woman, born under the law is an irrelevant phrase in Galatians 4.4, given the context; surely Davidic lineage is equally tangential in Romans 1.3, right? You yourself have noted that Paul never really returns to the idea.

Ben.

ETA: Neil Godfrey might get you started.

gstafleu

So the whole crucifixion business happened at some indeterminate point in the past, and only now becomes "active" through the revelation to Paul. Interesting thought. A few questions.

1) Can anything be said about when the crucifixion did happen? The reason for the crucifixion was presumably the reconciliation between God and man, necessitated by the fall. Now the God in question is transcendent and omnimax. Such a god does not screw up, which means he must have foreseen the necessity of Christ's sacrifice--and the later revelation of it--at the time of the fall, if not before that. That might mean that the sacrifice effectively took place at the beginning of time. IOW, the second Adam did his stuff at about the same time as the first Adam. A bit mystical, but then this is Paul.

2) This is quite a complex idea to get out of scripture. Does the OT say anything that can be interpreted as such, or are there other grapha involved kata which Paul got his idea? World saviours are certainly a normal thing in mythology, but ones whose actions only become active at a later date are, I think, not.

3) Re "born of a woman, born under the law," rather than being an interpolation, could it be the victim of excision? To be exact, the excision of a pronoun that would have made the passage read "But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son to one born of a woman, born under the law"? I.e. he sent (the revelation of) his son to Paul?

4) Finally, it is hard to see how this concept could be successful with the great unwashed, for any length of time. If things indeed started out this way, no wonder that a Markan HJ ended up carrying the day.

Gerard Stafleu

Clouseau

What was significant about Paul being born of a woman? About Paul being born under law?

Ben C Smith

It would be a tad more than an excision. It is actually not all that often that an author supplies the person, place, or thing to which the subject of the verb εξαποστελλω is sent, the main thrust of the verb being from what place or situation [εξαπ-] the subject is being sent; but when such a word is supplied (as in Genesis 32.13 LXX; Acts 13.26; other places) it is in the dative. In Galatians 4.4 the participles that would modify the hypothetially excised to one are in the accusative.

For your suggestion to work, (A) the original dative would have to have dropped out, leaving two dangling dative participles that were (B) then changed to the accusative to match his son.

(Not that such a thing is impossible, of course, but I would not want the reader of this thread to get the idea that what works in English would work identically in Greek.)

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Under the reconstruction that Gerard proposed, there would be nothing more significant about Paul being born of a woman than there is about the hypothetical person in Job 14.1 being born of a woman. That phrase would no longer be an assertion as it is right now in the text of Galatians 4.4. It would merely be a description, a good Semitism at that, contrasting mere mortal humans with the God who is neither mortal nor human.

Ben.

Chris Weimer

Just some mental logorrhoea in honor of Doherty and Raskin:

As you noted, Ben, the recipient in Greek is in the dative (that's the original purpose of dative), but motion into is put into the accusative. Therefore if one is excised, we can actually have God sending Jesus into Paul, who (Paul still) was born of a woman. Paul then thinks that he is an apostle because he received into himself Jesus Christ the spirit, in contrast to Paul's own flesh, thus the apparent dichotomy of flesh v. spirit. But that is resolved if Jesus Christ never had a flesh.

:wave:

(Edit: Sorry for the display - just finished laughing away some outrageous explanations for Vergilian idiosyncracies.)