ApostateAbe

Proving that an interpretation is possible is the easy part. The hard part is to show that it is the most probable interpretation, and it seems to be an uphill battle in this case, given how often Paul seems to refer to Jesus. Yeah... maybe he is talking about some other Jesus, that is possible, too. I take it to be one of the differences between being skeptical for the sake of opposition to Christianity and being skeptical for the sake of reason. Those who are skeptical for the sake of any conclusion besides the most reasonable truth (whatever it may be) will tend to treat mere possibilities as serious considerations. Even the most preposterous conclusions can be possible. For example, it is possible that Presidents Clinton and Bush were behind a massive elaborate conspiracy to bring down the World Trade Center towers and frame Osama bin Laden. Not that the comparison is closely fitting--it is limited to the point that you should not necessarily treat possibilities very seriously. In Biblical interpretation, almost anything can be possible.

Toto

WTF? First it was a baseless analogy to creationism and now you want to bring 911 truthers into the discussion?

No one is positing a grand conspiracy or a totally outlandlish interpretation of events. There are two Greek words at issue. Please confine your discussion to those two words.

dog-on

I think you may have missed the actual point. The word actually used is LORD. We know for a fact that LORD is the LXX translation for the Hebrew god YAHWEH.

Paul does use this term to refer to to God (Yahweh), throughout his epistles.

So, it would seem that one would have to have an a priori expectation that Paul specifically meant Jesus in this instance in order to make the claim that Jesus is indeed the intended meaning and not God (Yahweh).

As this seems to be the case here, I would, as a side note, make the same argument regarding the Lord's brother, or any other use of the term Lord in the Paulines.

Unless you can show that Paul always specifically means Jesus when he uses the term Lord and not simply when he uses the term Christ or a combination of Lord and Christ.

ApostateAbe

OK, it is great that you are making the attempt to show probability, and so I would like to point out that Paul uses the name, "Jesus," many times, and, almost every time, he uses it with the title, "Christ," as in, "Christ Jesus," or, "Jesus Christ." The way the Septuagint uses the title is not nearly as important as the way Paul uses the title.

spin

Let me ask this here as well: where outside a few cases in 1 Cor is the non-titular κυριος used in the Pauline corpus to refer to Jesus?


spin

dog-on

Ok, I am now confused.

I looked up the specific reference and the word used is not kurios, which I believe is usually translated as Lord but the word is actually Christos.

Is this correct?

dog-on

As I said, to the best of my understanding, when the word Lord is used by itself it usually refers to Yahweh. When Jesus is meant, it is usually in the form of Lord Jesus Christ.

Is this correct?

spin

ops:

Shoot me, you're right.

Now, is Paul using χριστος in any sense differently from the traditional sense or is he simply using it to refer to a specific person who he believes is the messiah? -- as Akiba would have referred to Simeon bar Kochba as the messiah.


spin

dog-on

I suppose that the most parsimonius answer would be that this actually refers to assemblies of Jesus believers.

And so I guess Abe's point stands.

spin

What has been my interest is when Jesus has been referred to with the non-titular κυριος, as in the case of the manuscript attested interpolation in 1 Cor 11:29. Also the preceding section citing the last supper in detail, which I consider an interpolation. The non-titular use for Jesus in 1 Cor 11:29 indicates a scribe trying to make sense of "body" after the sense has been obscured by the insertion of the last supper material.


spin