hjalti

Well, I've found some interesting verses, some in Romans seem to be talking about god after a prima facie look.

But here's one that seems to be talking about Jesus, 1Th 4:15-17

Other verses in 1th seem to make it clear that it's Jesus that will come, not god:

hjalti

I think I understand what you mean. It would be very confusing if both Jesus and god were refered to as "the Lord".

But what I mean is that when we're looking at verses that deal with "the Lord" you might think that it refers to god and not Jesus if you think that Yahweh isn't the same as Jesus. E.g. if we had this text in a pauline epistle:

"Like we read in the KJV 1611: The Lord slew Gash-Bil-Betheul-Bazda, he who brought the butter dish to Balshazar and the tent peg to the house of Rashomon."

It clearly refers to the god of Israel in the OT, but if Paul thought that Jesus was the god of the OT, Yahweh, then this would not be a case of Paul refering to god with the non-titular lord.

Am I making any sense? :Cheeky:

spin

Consider 1 Cor 2:16, "For who has known the mind of the Lord to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ." Paul contrasts the mind of the Lord with the mind of Christ. We don't know the mind of the Lord, but we do know the mind of Christ, who, it is implied, knows the mind of the Lord.

Or 1 Cor 8:6, "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." One god and one lord, two separate entities. (And "lord" here is obviously the position, hence titular.)

Or 1Cor 11:3, "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ."


Paul, as I said earlier, was no trinitarian (or binitarian).

Doug Shaver

OK, but that was sort of my point. You can't say, "From Gal. 1:19, we infer that Jesus Christ was James's brother, therefore Christianity was founded by a man known as Jesus Christ, therefore the canonical gospels, which are about a man known as Jesus Christ, must contain at least some factual content about the founder of Christianity."

sschlichter

I think he is looking for something like this.

Mark 2:28 For this reason the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath. Lord is not a title but refers to some capability.

sschlichter

From Galatians, we can say that Paul referred to Jesus as the Lord and that James was his adelphos. Mark concurs that Jesus had an adelphos named James. That is all I am positing.

~Steve

hjalti

I agree, "the Lord" here refers to god. But it has been argued that this is a part of a non-pauline interpolation


I think everybody agrees that the titular use of lord in the pauline epistles refers to Jesus, although I think I saw "lord god" in a pastoral epistle.

What am I supposed to see here?

Sure. But I think that it's possible that he thought of Jesus as Jahweh and god was his father.

show_no_mercy

There's also 1 Cor 10.9 We should not test the Lord, as some of them did--and were killed by snakes

Oh wait, this means that Paul thought Jesus was present at the Exodus

avi

show_no_mercy and I debated a similar issue. The essence of that discussion bears weight here, as spin and others discuss various questions arising from interpretation of "Paul's" epistles, relating to the dual meaning of kurios : lord, and god.

As I had endeavored to explain, probably without success, the original Septuagint, in my opinion, did not translate yahweh (or "el") as kurios. The seventy bilingual Jewish scholars, working in Alexandria, would have, in my opinion, translated yahweh as theos, not kurios. In my opinion, the controversy we struggle with today, is derived from struggles to enforce trinitarian doctrine, so that all extant copies of septuagint were translated, as we see with Codex Sinaiticus, ks/ko, replacing theos/kurios. Paul's letters, in my view, were interpolated well after the controversy had been settled, i.e. post Nicea: JC was kurios, and he was also theos, therefore, kurios means both god and lord, at least in our oldest extant copies of Septuagint, which also contain Paul's letters (Codex Sinaiticus).

But, look at the original Hebrew, not post-Nicean Greek, and one finds a clear delineation. Yahweh/El is NOT synonymous with adonai, in the original Hebrew text of Psalm 110:1. I think it is fair to say, that show_no_mercy disputes my contention, and imagines that even in ancient times, Jews considered adonai to represent an honorific title, suitable for "god". I disagree, with him on this point. I think he projects contemporary attitudes onto an ancient civilization....

But, even if I am proven wrong, here, on this issue of whether or not "adonai" would have been regarded, 2200 years ago, as an honorary title suitable for both man and divine, supreme deity, in essence equating humans with god, two additional problems remain, in my opinion, in seeking clarification on this issue of single versus dual meaning for the word kurios. It goes without saying that "brother of god" is completely different from "brother of a lord"....

1. look carefully at the Greek text, introduced in this quote above, from show_no_mercy:

1 Corinthians 10:9
a. Alexandrian

mhde ekpeirazwmen ton criston kaqwV tineV autwn epeirasan kai upo twn ofewn apwllunto

b. Hort&Westcott

mhde ekpeirazwmen ton kurion kaqwV tineV autwn epeirasan kai upo twn ofewn apwllunto

Corruption of the text is so common, that almost every passage has multiple versions. Which is it? Christ or Lord? Why does it matter? Are these two words ALSO synonymous?

tiV gar egnw noun kuriou oV sumbibasei auton hmeiV de noun cristou ecomen

b. Indeed. Paul, or one of his interpolators, is helping to equate "kurios" with theos, by juxtaposing kurios with Christos-->in essence, using "kurios" as a synonym for "theos". So, then, we can rephrase the OP this way:
Is "brother of the lord" equivalent to "brother of Christos"? Is James described in any of "Paul's" correspondence as the brother of Christ?

avi

spin

Hell, you're having difficulty here. Of course, "lord" is titular here. (If it's about "capability" then you get to the title, don't you?!)

Just think a little about "the lord says to my lord". The first one is not based on any semantic content of the non-titular κυριος: it is a direct reference to god. It's a straight translation from YHWH into Greek.