spin

Earl, you certainly are going in a vicious circle here in this thread. I hope you've come armed.

TedM

Earl, it sounds to me like your response to Carrier's analysis of the grammar is good enough to ward off the claims that the grammar is not ambiguous. The grammar appears to be ambiguous, which I accepted from the outset of this challenge. Even if the author's usage elsewhere or the general rule would tip the scale one way or another, it (for me anyway) remains that the true meaning of the passage cannot be decisively determined from the grammar.

Earl I don't envy your position here lately, as the thread has been hurling one thing after another, and often the same thing over and over. I think the focus on the phrase 'smoking gun' has been taken to an extreme level, and I accept that you certainly can be appropriately applying it to your interpretation of the overall meaning without it applying to every possible aspect of the passage.

I feel as though your response to Bernard's post regarding the context of the other verses in the first part of chapter 8 did not help to further the discussion: My last post addressed the same ideas Bernard made about the context. I did not find your prior responses to be sufficient to rule out a present context, especially given what to me is a very strong focus on the present in the most critical surrounding verses. I agree with you that verse 3 is critical to understanding verse 4, but I see a present tense meaning for verse 3 as being quite possible, if not probable.

Like you, I feel no need to go through it all again though, and am willing to end the discussion. Others may keep it going but until something new is brought to light about the passage, I have no inclination to participate further. I always like to come to some kind of resolution but as is usually the case, we won't be seeing that here. I wish you would concede that there are some strong arguments against your conclusion. I do think you made some strong arguments, but the tenses shown in the surrounding verses -- for me -- are not easily dismissed. In your favor is the very strangeness of the passage--the very fact that it ISN'T unambiguous when it could easily have been...those details that the author could have shared if he knew them, but chose not to.

Thanks for your participation. Ted

Grog

Thank you, Andrew.

I think your dating is assumption laden. What I have read on the Apocalypse of Adam is that it is 1st or 2nd CE. You only mention 2nd CE. You can see two references at earlychritianwritings, McRae and Charlesworth. Parrott states that a ""first century C.E. date would not be surprising." Parrott also says, "scholarship now generally adopt[s] the view Apoc. Adam is non-Christian, although secondary Christian touches are not denied. Whether it is also pre-Christian remains undecided."

Now my question referred to whether or not we can sort out if works like this are evidence of emerging Christian beliefs. Scott Carroll wrote (while adopting a post-Christian view) that Apoc Adam, if pre-Christian would be evidence of a pre-Christian redeemer myth. Can't this all be seen as part of an evolutionary trajectory? Thus my question about pre- and proto- Christians. If Christianity did not emerge with a crucified founder figure but rather evolved out of pre-existent beliefs, one would expect to find evidence of pre-Christian beliefs that were not quite christian. Apoc Adam would be one of those, presumably. But how do we sort all of that out?

EarlDoherty

We probably don't. The tangled web which is the relationship (to the extent that there was any) between proto-gnosticism and proto-(orthodox) Christianity will probably remain forever murky, although one aspect which would relieve some of that murk and the traditional misconceptions which scholarship has held is the realization that gnostic redeemers like the Third Illuminator and Derdekeas are NOT derived even remotely from the Gospel Jesus (whether he be real or imagined). This is an aspect which Andrew does not address in his presentation above. Even being "in dialogue with Christian groups" does not necessarily involve being in dialogue with a Gospel Jesus figure. The dialogue may have taken place in the pre-earthly Jesus phase.

Earl Doherty

Clivedurdle

I was brought up on that! Now sadly very rare but was fifty in every CoE church.

Interesting to see the roots of my thinking! No wonder they got rid of it!

Bernard Muller

Emphasis mine

to Doherty:

But your context is totally all made up by you. And you expect that to be understood by the audience of the letter! I addressed Heb 7:14 (with your so-called context) here.

No, you did not answer all of my posting:
and what I initially posted on Heb 7:14 here

And still a smoking gun?

Cordially, Bernard

EarlDoherty

Bernard’s context seemed to focus on verse 1 which has a present tense “have”, but I made it clear that I accept that, and that it is a reference to Jesus as he now functions in the present, namely as an intercessor with God for humans. Fine. But, as I have repeated numerous times, it does not preclude the writer from then switching focus to Jesus' past function as offering of his blood in the heavenly sanctuary. (Bernard’s argument is ridiculously simplistic: once you have one tense in a paragraph, everything else must be the same tense and understanding!) And since verse 3 switches clearly to the subject of “gifts and sacrifices” to which is compared Jesus’ need to have something corresponding to perform, the latter must refer to the sacrifice which he did in fact offer, and that is entirely in the past, with no possible application to the present. So I do not see the justification for your “a present tense meaning for verse 3 (is) quite possible.” But of course, I have pointed this out before.

As for your plea that “I wish you would concede that there are some strong arguments against your conclusion,” sorry, but I have yet to see them. And I think I am sufficiently adept at deductive logic to be able to recognize it if I do see it. As my responses all along have shown, not just to yourself, there are great flaws in the alleged deductive logic that has been presented against my conclusions.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Yes, I’ve long since concluded that it is “no good”—not only for aa but a few others. I am reminded once again of that striking piece of music by Charles Ives, “The Unanswered Question.” Against a backdrop of quiet strings, the trumpet sounds a “question,” a question it keeps repeating (in a different key). After each sounding of the question a group of five flutes attempts (I think it's five or six times) to answer it. Clearly, those answers do not do the trick, and the trumpet keeps asking. Trouble is, the flutes become progressively more and more frustrated and shrill with each attempted answer, gradually descending into cacophony, ridicule and vitriol. After a final lonely sounding of the question, the music drifts into silence. (I’ve posted a link below to Leonard Bernstein’s flawless performance on YouTube.)

Let’s say the trumpet is Earl Doherty, in this case asking the question of what are the flaws in his reasoning over Hebrews 8:4. The group of five flutes are Bernard, AA, Jake, Roo and Maryhelena, repeatedly supplying the same inadequate and failed answers (or rather, answer, since it all seems to boil down to the same thing), only with each repetition they seem to be losing their cool in empty rhetoric. (Note that I don't include Ted in this fab five, since he is always reasonable in tone, generally at least understands what I'm saying, and makes legitimate attempts to deal with it, even if those attempts usually prove flawed. And isn't it strange that he is the only actual believer/apologist in the lot.)

Enjoy: (hope this works)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trkFgIMC-Ks

Earl Doherty

rlogan

Hebrews is not a letter "to" them so much as it is "against" them, with the tactic of using their own scriptures against them. But only in a superficial way. A scholar of the Hebrew Bible can easily dismiss this version of Jesus Christ as something heralded by or supported by Hebrew scripture.

It's a great demonstration of the piracy involved in Christianity. On the one hand you want some kind of ancient legitimacy - you didn't just invent this new religion. No way! But on the other hand, it is a new religion so you call it the New Testament, and paste the Hebrew Bible on to the front of it and call that the Old Testament.

TedM

I would agree with you if the passage only had one usage of a present tense. But both Bernard and I have pointed out that that isn't the case at all. From my post here http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....85#post7381085:



I totally disagree. Since priests offered "gifts and sacrifices" in the present, the 'something to offer' could have been a continuation of the author's discussion of the present in verses 1 and 2 which are about Jesus' present ministry. And there is no clear indication of the past in verses 4 and 5, but verse 6 IS clearly talking about the present. The only unambiguous references in the entire passage are talking about the present. That, to me, is a strong argument against a past tense in either 3 or 4.