Amaleq13

No, I was indicating that I found your comment funny.

I don't recall how much Doherty relies on Acts for his understanding of Paul but that isn't really relevant to what I was trying to tell Jeffrey. I'm not sure what details would be required to obtain the specificity necessary to eliminate the charge of straw man but it certainly has to be more than "every Hellene".

Amaleq13

Your follow-up to this assertion says otherwise since focusing on the details of my clearly tentative example as though it was an assertion entirely misses the point (ie that you need to make your paraphrase more specific.)

And, as I've indicated several times already, this continues to miss the point of the example which was less about the details of it than it was the specificity.

Attempting to explore the details of an example primarily offered to indicate a need for specificity rather than as something your interlocutor would certainly accept is a blind alley. Continuing to do so despite repeated attempts to clarify is perverse.

This would become relevant only if your interlocutor indicated that my example was what he had in mind. Until then, it continues to miss the point of the offered example and subsequent clarifications.

As I've already indicated, I offered it as an example of how you might make your paraphrase more specific. I had hoped that the application of a question mark would indicate the tentative nature of the details but there can be no question that my subsequent clarifications made this clear.

As a declarative, it would. I can understand missing the significance of the initial question mark but ignoring subsequent clarifications seems deliberately obtuse.

I've certainly questioned the historical reliability various claims made in Acts but I don't assume everything the author wrote was fabricated. Is there good reason to suspect that the author fabricated the location of Paul's hometown?

jgibson000

Even assuming that this sentence of yours means anything, you are entirely missing the conditional nature of my approach.

I have been saying all along nothing more than this: that IF FOR THE SAKE of ARGUMENT we exchanged "every educated citizen of Tarsus" for "every Hellene", that (1) certain things must be the case for Earl's claim about how Paul's use of PARALAMBONW is taken from, and influenced by, and grounded in the reputed meaning it had in (some) of the mysteries, to be true, and (2) that as far as I know, there is no evidence showing that any of the things I noted as having to be the case for Earl's claim to be true are the case.

Do you disagree that what I said would have to be the case is not what would have to be the case?

JG

Amaleq13

I find it difficult to believe you are genuinely incapable of comprehending what I have written but the conditional nature of your approach, of which I am well aware, continues to miss the actual point of my original comment.

That this incoherent sentence is in the same post as the above implied criticism of my comprehensibility is quite funny. Despite the poor construction and double negative, I believe I understand what you meant so:

As an example intended to convey the notion that you probably needed to be more specific in your paraphrasing, the answer continues to be "no".

As an assertion of how you should have paraphrased Doherty, yes, it would require supporting evidence and argument.

Why you have chosen to respond to it as the latter rather than the former despite my repeated attempts to disabuse you of the notion continues to be a mystery. :banghead:

ETA: I continue to be interested in an answer to my question.

The G Man

Well no. The argument actually advanced by Doherty was this...

You are welcome to advance an argument for a novel translation of παραλαμβανω in Paul but that strikes me as a much harder sell than the one Doherty attempted. If nothing else a strategy for interpreting Paul which requires us to assume that Paul isn't writing the same Greek as everyone else isn't that persuasive or useful. Language is defined by common usage.

But that is exactly what he is failing to do. Paul uses παραλαμβανω 7 times - 1 Corinthians 11:23, 1 Corinthians 15:1, 1 Corinthians 15:3, Galatians 1:9, Galatians 1:12, 1 Thessalonians 2:13. He is only trying to apply the 'revelation' interpretation to only two of these (plus the invisible second παραλαμβανω in Galatians 1:12).

Yes, there is an interesting tension between Galatians 1:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:3. Inventing new meanings for words isn't a good way to resolve it. It is probably a more fruitful approach to account for it in differences of audience and circumstance. In any case, I think you are making too much of this discrepancy - it can be easily read as a difference in emphasis rather than an outright contradiction.

Even if παραλαμβανω could be interpreted as Doherty wishes to, there are several factors that (in my humble estimation) tell against such a reading here:

• The use παραλαμβανω / παραδιδωμι idiom.
• Paul's uncontroversial use of παραλαμβανω two sentences earlier in 15:1.
• The awkwardness of reading και οτι ωφθη κηφα etc (15:5) as a revelation (or the awkwardness of separating it from the revelation).

The case is superficially more convincing for 1 Corinthians 11:23 - although I don't think it is strong. Again we have the παραλαμβανω / παραδιδωμι idiom. But 1 Thessalonians 2:13 is also quite instructive...

First off, one can receive the word directly from a man but it really is the word of God. Similarly in 1 Corinthians 11:23 something being from the Lord does not necessarily imply direct transmission. But there is a subtler point - "from us" is παρ ημων just as "from a human source" in Galatians 1:12 is παρα ανθρωπου. Paul's use of απο του κυριου rather than παρα του κυριου - a lack of agreement between the verb prefix and the preposition - is suggestive that "from the Lord" is not meant to imply direct receipt. Direct receipt would, once again, represent an inconsistency in Paul's usages.

jgibson000

You are missing the fact that Doherty doesn't say what you claim he does. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Recall that Earl's claim is that Paul is using PARALAMBANW not in the sense with which the verb was used in Judaism, but in the sense in which it was used "in the wider Graeco-Roman world" and more specifically as it was allegedly used in the mysteries.

And this is because (to quote Earl):

So --leaving aside the question of whether non insulation from Hellenistic thought and expression means an inability to resist employing Hellenistic thought and expression, as Earl assumes it does -- it is not only relevant, given Earl's claims, but imperative to ask how Aristophanes or the Septuagint and especially Plutarch (who wrote on on the mysteries and knew their ins and outs) and the pre-2nd century CE hierophants of the mysteries actually use the verb, because, as Earl says, Paul took his cue for its meaning from what they thought and indicated the meaning of that word was.

Jeffrey Gibson