spin

I have argued the following frequently on this forum, but have not looked at it in any real length, so I thought I should write it up to see what sort of comments I can solicit with it. I'm not looking to get into a fight with anyone who needs to object to the conclusions I draw. What I'd like to know are, is it clear and understandable? do you find any inconsistencies in the thought? and do you know of any examples which I need to consider? Are there any fundamental flaws? (I'm looking to leave a final version in my blog, so if it needs tidying up, it's better now than later!)

[T2]"The lord says to my lord"

There are two distinct uses of the Greek word κυριος to be found in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. One usage is the word unqualified, which is translated into English simply as "the lord", while the other is marked transparently enough in situations such as "my/our lord", "the lord of the land", "the lord Jesus", etc. The first uses "the lord" no longer as a title but as a direct reference to god, while the second remains titular. The distinction is embodied in a quote from the Septuagint: Ps.110:1, "The lord says to my lord". The first reference is to the Hebrew god and κυριος has no qualifier. The second reference is to another entity, thought to have been a king, and is easily distinguished because it is qualified by a possessive adjective "my lord" (τω κυριω μου). The distinction is similar to the British use of "the queen", referring to their sovereign rarely by her real name. No-one has any problem doings so, while in other contexts they can happily talk about Queen Beatrix, a "black queen" or a "queen of hearts" without any confusion. The non-titular usage only occurs in the third person, ie when you are talking about the subject, not to them.

In the Septuagint κυριος unqualified is always used to refer to the Hebrew god. However, in christianity the habit changed such that κυριος has become a reference to Jesus as well, as in Lk 7:13,

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep."

or Jn 6:23,

Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks.

It is obvious that "the lord" in such verses refers to Jesus. This means that something has changed in order for Jesus to be referred to as "the lord" and the important question is: when did that change take place? An interesting indicator may be seen in Mark 13:20 in which Jesus, talking about the tribulation to come, says,

"And if the lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved."

This is a reflection of the fact that Mark does not use the non-titular κυριος for Jesus, which should be a sign that the development seen in Luke and John had not taken place in Mark's time. This is generally seen as a few decades after the time of Paul.


Paul's use of κυριος

Paul has no trouble referring to the "lord Jesus christ" and this is obviously a titular use of κυριος. When citing from the Septuagint, eg Rom 4:7-8 (Ps 32:1-2) or Rom 11:34 (Isa 40:13), he uses the non-titular κυριος as found in the Septuagint. When citing a Septuagint quote in 1 Cor 14:21, Paul adds, "says the lord" to indicate that the speaker was god. (Septuagint quotes weren't indicated in any way, so that a reader wouldn't know from the text that any phrase was a quote.) Outside such references he also uses the non-titular κυριος to refer to god. Consider 1 Cor 10:20-22,

20 No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22 Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than He, are we?

There are sacrifices to either god or demons, there is the cup of the lord or the cup of demons. Here we have a clear parallelism between god and the lord, sufficient to decide that they refer to the same thing. The fact that god and the lord are the same thing here is underlined by the question in v.22, "Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?" The god of the Hebrew bible is referred to as provoked to jealousy (eg Deut 32:16, Ps 78:58). It's hard to see that god and the lord are not the same thing in 1 Cor 10:20-22. The use of "the lord" here is not as a title, ie it's non-titular.

Again, consider 1 Cor 2:16,

For who has known the mind of the lord, that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

No human has access to the mind of the lord, but believers do have the mind of christ, the lord's representative. The non-titular κυριος is used by Paul not only in references from the Septuagint, but also when talking about god in his writings, though like the Septuagint he uses both "god" and "the lord" as references to the Hebrew god. Of course, as with all things concerning biblical studies, issues are often more complex than we would prefer them.


Was Paul a precocious trinitarian?

Did Paul believe that Jesus was god in some degree? There is enough evidence to show that he did not. Paul can say, "we testified of god that he raised christ" (1 Cor 15:15), so it would seem that christ was outside the significance of god. Consider these Pauline statements:

1 Cor 8:6 yet for us there is one god, the father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one lord, Jesus christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

1 Cor 11:3 christ is the head of every man... and god is the head of christ.

1 Cor 15:28 When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that god may be all in all.

2 Cor 1:3 Blessed be the god and father of our lord jesus christ, the father of all mercies and the god of all consolation

In each case, not only is Jesus separate from god, but he is also subject to god, so it would be very surprising that Paul would ever equate the two entities he so clearly separes in the above statements. That is not to say that there are no similarities in referring to both god and Jesus, considering Jesus is presented as an envoy of god, his representative, the one who acts in this world to fullfill god's plans. That which is the will of Jesus is the will of god, but Paul says in 1 Cor 3:23: "you belong to christ and christ belongs to god."

It should be clear with the staunch separation that Paul makes between god and Jesus that he is not a trinitarian in the making, nor does he equate Jesus with god.


Two birds with one stone?

Paul is at the forefront of earliest christianity. Assuming for the moment that Paul had Jesus-believing predecessors, there was little time for language habits to change from the Jewish practices reflected in the Septuagint, where god is referred to with the non-titular κυριος. Yet in 1 Cor 6:14 we find

And god raised the lord and will also raise us by his power.

Here it is inescapable that this non-titular use of κυριος refers to Jesus. Along with this there is another example where the Pauline text refers to Jesus as "the lord", 1 Cor 11:23-27. Did Paul actually refer to two separate entities with the non-titular κυριος? There is no dispute that these two examples do refer to Jesus that way. So, either Paul wrote these things using the non-titular κυριος for Jesus or he didn't. Either these examples are original or they are not.

If they are original, it means that Paul uses the non-titular κυριος for both Jesus and god. This means that wherever Paul uses the non-titular κυριος, we should have some indication as to who is being referred to. And where there is no hint as to who it refers to, as in the case of the whole of 1 Cor 7 which mentions the non-titular κυριος several times, one cannot know what he is talking about, because the κυριος could refer to either god or Jesus. A writer doesn't set out to confuse a reading audience by blurring what he is talking about in such a way as to pass a whole chapter without the reader knowing who he is talking about.

We have been conditioned by the trinitarian doctrine to see no problem in using terms relating to god for Jesus as well, but Paul was not a trinitarian, so we should see the significance of the separation he clearly draws between god and Jesus and we should not allow it to be subsumed by the effects of the deification of Jesus which led to confusion of language between god and Jesus, then eventually trinitarianism. We have two good reasons for thinking that Paul didn't use the non-titular κυριος for Jesus. First, it is the cultural context Paul inherited to refer to god in Greek as ο κυριος and we see evidence of him using it this way. Second, it would only confuse the reading audience to use the one term for two different subject without distinguishing between the usages to know who is being referred to.

Nothing appears to recommend the notion that Paul would have used the non-titular κυριος for Jesus, being both against his cultural heritage and the cause of ambiguity and confusion unexpected from a writer trying by clarity of thought to maintain tutelage over his proselytes. This suggests that those few instances where Jesus is referred to using the non-titular κυριος were not written by Paul.

What about the coming of the lord?

Some people feel sure that Jesus is the subject in 1 Thes 4:15 which talks of "the coming of the lord",

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

While it is common to refer to the Hebrew god as either "god" or "the lord" in Greek (and Hebrew), is there any reason to think that Jesus would be called "the lord" here? There is no prior context to justify such a change in nomenclature, so if Paul refers to Jesus as "the lord" here it would have to be he who is developing this new usage of the non-titular κυριος, but there is no contextual clue here that he is referring to Jesus. Besides, the terrible day of the lord coming is a common notion in the Hebrew bible (see Mal 4:5b). When god comes, before him is a devouring fire (Ps 50:3); he comes with might (Isa 40:10). This is the day in which the lord will destroy sinners (Isa 13:9).

Outside the two examples in Pauline literature in which Jesus is referred to with the non-titular κυριος (1 Cor 6:14 and 1 Cor 11:23-27), no other example appears to point to Jesus. However, we have all the Septuagint references to god as "the lord" and other uses that point to "the lord" being used for the Hebrew god to suggest that Paul didn't use the non-titular κυριος for Jesus. We have also noted that Mark, written decades after Paul, doesn't use κυριος for Jesus. In fact Jesus uses it for god. It is only after Paul that non-titular references start appearing for Jesus, so the simplest chronology available to explain the evidence is that the change in usage of the non-titular κυριος happened after the writing of Mark, therefore well after the time of Paul.

If I could conjecture as to why Jesus began to be referred to with the non-titular κυριος, it may be because those communities started by Paul in Asia Minor and Greece were amongst communities of people who believed in the mysteries and their lords. Mithra was called "lord", while the name Adonis meant "lord". If it was common to call one's savior "lord", there would be no reason in Greek christian communities not to follow suit. This would lead to Jesus being referred to in literature with the non-titular κυριος, which allows references to god and to Jesus to become confused as both might be referred to as "the lord". This would fuel speculation about the relationship of Jesus with his father.

[hr=1]100[/hr]

(Interpolations in Paul

If Paul did not refer to Jesus with the non-titular κυριος, then someone else had to have put those passages in Paul. Although an argument for the passages in Paul containing the non-titular use of κυριος is not the scope of this discussion, I should at least point to the issues.

A reading of 1 Cor 6:12-20 shows that v.14 is not part of the logical thought about the pollution of believers bodies. It's location interrupts Paul's thought. Here is the context:

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “the two become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

Can you see where "Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power" should be inserted?

My first blog entry examines the communal meal that Paul instituted in Corinth, which the Corinthians were abusing and argues for the last supper passage 1 Cor 11:23-27 as an interpolation. This is the o.p. of this thread, so you might be interested in the ensuing discussion.)[/T2]

(Let me note that DCHindley has his own theory as to the Pauline usage of κυριος, which involves his "handy dandy definite article test": does the word κυριος have a "the" or not? If it doesn't, it refers to god.)

jakejonesiv

The Pauline relationship of “The Lord Jesus Christ” to “God the Father” is the same as that of the Lord of the individual Mystery Cults to Zeus Pater, e.g. Dionysos Dusares.

Vivisector

First of all, another great piece of serious work. Thanks for sharing it. This has always been a fascinating topic, coming up - as it has - in several contexts in this forum.

While not presuming to critique your work, I do have a couple of questions.

Given that this passage occurs in a larger context that concerns the Eucharist, could this not be considered another example of Paul's apparent use of non-titular κυριος to refer to Jesus?

I think you're obviously right that Paul was no trinitarian, and his use of κυριος can be confusing (to me, at least). Do you think it likely/possible that Paul would have had a more flexible understanding (albeit an inconsistent use) of the word? Also, is there any chance that Paul was (inconsistently) using terminology that his audiences would understand? Granted, even if the second is true, it still seems less than crystal-clear.

My knowledge of Jewish theology from this era is abysmal, so I can only ask the question: would Paul's concept of God be such that he would endow him (even if only metaphorically) with human attributes such as a voice or hands to hold a trumpet? Or does the voice and/or trumpet belong to the archangel? I suppose my tribulation theology is just as abysmal. In any event, I can just as easily read "the Lord" in v. 16 to refer to Jesus, especially since Paul speaks elsewhere of the anticipated return of Jesus from heaven (e.g., 1 Thess 1:10).

Is there an effect of not only time, but also geography? If such a case can be made, it would seem possible for it to weaken an argument along the lines of, "Non-titular use of κυριος to refer to Jesus occurred only after Mark; Paul wrote before Mark; therefore Paul did not use the non-titular κυριος to refer to Jesus" (not to say I perceive you as saying this in such absolute terms).

If outside the scope, please feel free to ignore, but the reasons for any interpolations aren't clear to me (yet). As you've noted, they muddy the waters to no apparent advantage (given the inconsistency).

Cheers,

V.

DCHindley

Only if the "the" is in the Greek. Can't go by English translations alone.

		masc.	fem.	neuter
sing.	nom.	ὁ	ἡ	τό
	gen.	τοῦ	τῆς	τοῦ
	dat.	τῷ	τῇ	τῷ
	acc.	τόν	τήν	τό
pl.	nom.	οἱ	αἱ	τά
	gen.	τῶν	τῶν	τῶν
	dat.	τοῖς	ταῖς	τοῖς
	acc.	τούς	τάς	τά

κυριος (Kurios), FWIW, is a masculine noun.

DCH

Sheshbazzar

To the best of my knowledge 'Paul' never actually wrote or employed the term κυριος
There exists no mss. evidence that any early NT writers or 'Christians' ever did so.
All surviving early NT mss. exemplars exclusively employ Nomina Sacra such as ΚΣ (over-barred) in all of these verses.
We have no way of determining of exactly how Paul or other early believers may have actually spoken, or read aloud or silently when encountering these various Nomina Sacra.
The change over to the familiar fully written Greek forms was a relatively late development in X-ianity.

It is only a hegemonous assumption that these earlier believers ever actually pronounced or used the Nomina Sacra in the forms that became commonplace in latter Christian literature.

DCHindley

Shesh,

It could also take the forms ΚΥ or ΚΡΣ. Are you suggesting that these abbreviations originally meant something other than what our modern Greek NTs have?

Or are you are rather suggesting that Paul himself used nomina sacra in his everyday writing, maybe carried over from some sort of common (although completely unattested) Jewish practice?

Using untranslated Hebrew square or paleo-Hebrew script to write the divine name in Jewish copies of the Greek translation of Jewish scriptures is not the same as using contractions for commonly used words.

DCH

Here is a link to a good article on the subject, entitled "Nomina Sacra: Scribal Practice and Piety in Early Christianity," by Kenneth R. Solomon.

Sheshbazzar

Let's just say; The early writers had elevated level of reverence, respect, or superstitious taboo's, with regards to the usage of the Divine Names and Titles.
Enough so that there was a notably obsessive avoidance of writing them out in full in any language (perhaps with the exception of Hebrew)
As we currently possess none of Paul's original monographs, there is now no telling exactly letter for letter, (or symbol) what the original Paul may have written, or what level of reverence (or conformity) he may have practiced with regards to these Names and titles, although we may well speculate, reason, and theorize.

One wonders, did a person like Paul regularly engage in what we would term as 'everyday writing'? If he did, none of it has ever turned up.

Would Paul himself have even ventured to desecrate The Holy Name through usage in any common 'everyday writings'? :huh:- Jews normally are quite reticent in this matter, and that tradition is quite older than the NT.
Did Paul violate the customs of his people in this? One may well wonder.

Personally, I do not believe that the Nomina Sacra were simply contractions for commonly used words.
Their usage and those contexts that they appear within were far to sacred to simply stuff full of abbreviations or contractions. And whether religious texts, or inscriptions, whether in Dura-Europos, Syria, or in Rome or in Egypt, that usage was as far as can be determined universally consistent irregardless of sect, cult, or native language, none are known have to employed local terms or names.

This alone argues that these Nomina Sacra held a higher significance than simply being abbreviations or contractions for common Greek words.
A lot of sacred symbolism and reverence was attached to these Nomina Sacra wherever they were employed.

tanya

On the whole, I share the sentiment expressed so clearly by Vivisector: a laudable, brilliant submission to the forum. Thank you.

I have mentioned elsewhere, my concern (in terms of identifying potential inconsistency) about using the content of Paul to date the epistles. In particular, since interpolation is both assumed, and has been exposed by spin's analysis, I find unconvincing his conclusion that Paul's epistles predate Mark.

I believe that I may have also expressed concern, previously, about concluding that the Christian trinitarian doctrine had no effect on publication of our oldest extant copies of Paul's letters. I think that the third century, or perhaps fourth century, at the latest, leaders of the church, felt an obligation to gather up all the extant papyrus, edit it, and redistribute it. I cite DSS Deuteronomy which certainly has Yahweh, in Hebrew, not adonai, as would have been found based upon KS in LXX.

I don't claim to know when Paul was written, so I cannot dispute your contention that his letters predate Mark. Based solely on pragmatic economics, I imagine that the end of the third Roman-Jewish war would have found Jerusalem deserted, large numbers of clergy massacred, the people wandering, dazed, dispirited, and hungry. That milieu seems fertile, for introduction of a new religion. I observe Paul referring explicitly to the ancient Hebrew sacred texts by inserting agios with graphas. Absence of that word, "sacred", adjacent to "writings", as in 1 Corinthians 15:3, leads me to conclude that Paul knew about Mark's gospel.

I cannot help but wonder how Paul could have escaped Jewish condemnation as a blasphemer, (stoning) had he published his letters, or spoken about Jesus, before the total destruction of Jerusalem (e.g. after the first or second conflict). I have no explanation for why Paul would travel to Saudi Arabia, during the period of warfare, from 70CE to 130 CE. It would have been too unsettled, with caravan robbers, and ordinary citizens fleeing on the road, with neither time to listen to Paul's stories, nor money to contribute to his building program.

So, spin's idea of investigating non-titular use of Kurios to refer to Jesus rather than his father, god, seems very worthwhile. However, a clever analysis should be possible, without demanding a precise date for authorship of the epistles, because we have none to convey: we can offer only conjecture.

DCHindley

That kind of stuff can be sliced and diced quite differently. You would react to vs 14 being unnecessary to the flow of the passage, introducing resurrection into a discussion about believers being part of the body of Christ.

I would say, however, that the point here is that freedom from obligation to Jewish "law" is not an excuse to pollute one's "member" when God will one day raise up that same flesh. If we are all members of the resurrection [or "together" or "one body" which the interpolator replaced with "of Christ"], we should not engage that body in acts of immorality. This is the stuff that is not in boldface. The author doesn't use the word "Lord" (κύριος) but speaks of "God" (vs 13 & 20, both of which have a definite article, so refer to THE [supreme] God).

What I identify as interpolations (in boldface) offset this little moral lesson with another lesson that is overlaid upon it. The author of this latter ditty agrees that "The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." In both cases he is using a definite article with κύριος, so we know exactly of whom he speaks (the Lord Jesus Christ). For him, union with the Lord is to be in union with his spirit, with your body serving as a temple where that spirit lives. Then he reminds the reader, they are in union with the Lord's spirit because he bought them with a price, apparently referring to Christ's death.

12 Πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα συμφέρει• πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐγὼ ἐξουσιασθήσομαι ὑπό τινος.	12 "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything.
13 τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν, ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ταύτην καὶ ταῦτα καταργήσει. τὸ δὲ σῶμα οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ, καὶ ὁ κύριος τῷ σώματι•	13 "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food" -- and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
14 ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ τὸν κύριον ἤγειρεν καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐξεγερεῖ διὰ τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ.	14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.
15 οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν μέλη Χριστοῦ ἐστιν; ἄρας οὖν τὰ μέλη τοῦ Χριστοῦ ποιήσω πόρνης μέλη; μὴ γένοιτο.	15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
16 [ἢ] οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ὁ κολλώμενος τῇ πόρνῃ ἓν σῶμά ἐστιν; ἔσονται γάρ, φησίν, οἱ δύο εἰς σάρκα μίαν.	16 Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two shall become one flesh."
17 ὁ δὲ κολλώμενος τῷ κυρίῳ ἓν πνεῦμά ἐστιν.	17 But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
18 Φεύγετε τὴν πορνείαν. πᾶν ἁμάρτημα ὃ ἐὰν ποιήσῃ ἄνθρωπος ἐκτὸς τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν• ὁ δὲ πορνεύων εἰς τὸ ἴδιον σῶμα ἁμαρτάνει.	18 Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body.
19 ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι τὸ σῶμα ὑμῶν ναὸς τοῦ ἐν ὑμῖν ἁγίου πνεύματός ἐστιν οὗ ἔχετε ἀπὸ θεοῦ, καὶ οὐκ ἐστὲ ἑαυτῶν;	19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own;
20 ἠγοράσθητε γὰρ τιμῆς• δοξάσατε δὴ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ σώματι ὑμῶν.	20 you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Two stories. Two strata. Amen.

DCH

Sheshbazzar

A belated Thank You for the link. read it all, quite peculiar and intriguing.