Fortuna

I have had this same argument thrown at me in discussing this very same verse. I asked them to show me a place in the NT or Septuagint where "genea" is unambiguously used in the way they describe. Surely such a reference must be somewhere to be found if their alternative definition is true. All I got from then on was obfusification and the [not] sound of crickets chirping in terms of any actual reference.

Whenever someone claims an alternative definition for some word, there must be a precedent. There has to be some place or some work where the word is used in this alternative way. (Otherwise they are just making it up).


Therfore, there must be some other place in the bible (or apocryphals or someplace) where we could find this dual name usage.

Make them provide precedents for these things.

Of course the problem is that they will divert you off on all sorts of tangents, but you keep hammering, "Where is your precedent for this explanation ?". Book, chapter and verse. Accept no substitute !

Clutch

Of course. What could possibly be intellectually interesting or challenging to a Christian about a passage that puts an incandescent falsehood in the mouth of Jesus?

Are you sure your sudden convenient narcolepsy isn't just a dissonance-avoidance device?

Leelee

I have seen various interpretations of "this generation." Many say that it means "this present generation" and Preterists say that Jesus was referring to his coming in judgment on Jerusalem in 70 AD, not his second coming. Others claim that genea, the Greek word translated as generation, means race, nation, or group of people with shared characteristics. According to some scholars, such as R.T. France, if Jesus were referring to a generation in the future, he would have said THAT generation, rather than THIS generation. A Greek scholar discusses the meaning the phrase "this generation" here and has a thread here where he has started posting all of the occurences of the word genea in the Septuagint and the New Testament.

Unbeliever

Yeah, even Paul mentioned this topic in 1 Corinthians:

1Cr 14:6-9 I would think this concept would apply to "God's Word" as well.

Timetospend

Any reconciliation will be dependent on speculations not dissimilar to the one that raised the supposed contradiction in the first place. You will cry foul at my speculations, while claiming your speculations are not speculative at all.

"Incandescent falsehood"? Interesting phrase.

Since you guys feel that there is about a million of these, although maybe all of them are not incandescent (?), why would meeting the 17th-millionth such challenge be anything other sleep inducing?

Actually, if you really wanted to attempt a resolution, we would have to agree on hermeneutics. I suspect that we could agree on a set shortly after I issue reconciliations for all one million of your supposed contradictions.

Thanks,

Clutch

It is not a contradiction. It is a garden-variety falsehood.

As for the nameless "speculations" that you allege, but, golly, darn, just don't have time to explain: they seem of the same order as the "speculation" that, in your sentence above, the word "Any" means any, "reconciliation" means reconciliation, "will" means will... well, you see the problem. You are reduced to crying "Speculation!" at the suggestion that a word-in-context has the meaning it effectively always has in that context, and then fleeing behind an incoherent reference to other alleged challenges.

What I think is that the word "speculation" is not utterly vacuous. But it would have to be utterly vacuous, were we to call it speculative that "genea" (or "you", "will", "cry", etc.) has a typical default meaning-in-context. Such daft waterboarding of familiar meanings is a reliable sign of ad-hockery and unprincipled evasion.

I have made no reference to a million of anything; I am not guys; I am not legion. Just as I am not accusing Christians in general of being conveniently narcoleptic -- just you. So maybe you could refrain from justifying one silly evasion by means of a sillier one.

Ooh, hermeneutics! Big word, huh? Your suspicion again conveniently lets you off the hook by means of invoking problems that nobody has raised for you, demands made nowhere on this thread, tasks that only you have mentioned (in no detail, of course). Read carefully, now: All you'd have to do is explain why "genea" in that passage should mean something altogether different than it seems to mean in virtually every other scriptural context -- and why all the clever and well-motivated Christian translators listed in the article should have been so hermeneutically defective as to have missed your great insight. Keep your million other challenges for some other day that you need to feel a martyr.

neilgodfrey

What I just posted on LeeLee's Matthew 24/parousia thread belongs as much here.

Why would the synoptic authors narrate Jesus proclaiming what they must have known was a failed prophecy?

Or if we think Mark was the first written and that was just prior to or around the fall of Jerusalem, then why did not Matthew and Luke correct him? They were quite capable of correcting or re-writing Mark in other areas?

Worse still, the prophecy is clearly crafted at a time when the author knew that the elect were to be found throughout the known world, so it could not have been a "tradition" from something Jesus said (unless we think Jesus really was a prophet who could foresee his little band of loyal men would evangelize the whole world). So we have the problem of the invention of a prophecy known to be false.

I have some suspicions that may or may not lead to a solution, and these relate to the possible mystical-visionary origins of Christianity, also possibly hinted at in the gospel of Mark, but they are only suspicions and suspicions don't solve problems very satisfactorily.

Neil Godfrey

JoeWallack

JW:
I think a Possible but normally overlooked hypothesis for "Mark" is that it was written with a Primary purpose of explaining that the original Jesus movement was a Failure. If "Mark" was written early 2nd century (which I think it was) than the author may have deliberately had his Jesus say "this generation" to make it clear that "The Mission" was a Failure. The purpose of the prophecy than, which is the Ultimate prophecy of "Mark", is not a prediction of future success to the Author's audience, as is Assumed by Bible scholarship, but rather the Opposite, a Statement of prophetic Failure. This is consistent with the Ending which makes this hypothesis' odds somewhat better that Obama's.



Joseph

neilgodfrey

But then we are still left with the problem of Matthew and Luke knowingly repeating the failure, are we not?

Neil

JoeWallack

JW:
"Mark" is so contaminated with imminent eschatological humor that M and L are forced to carry the baggage. Of course what they would like to do is have Jesus speak to their generation. Religious Editing follows the teaching of RB (My only hesitation in writing this is that NoRobots will now claim it as evidence in the Anarchrist Rabbi Thread) Baruch Lie whose maxim was "Minimum effort, maximum force." M and L Edit in a Mission to the Gentiles which replaces "this generation" as the time qualifier. Neal, if Christians have no problem with "this Generation" 2,000 years later, what makes you think it was a problem 1,900 years ago?



Joseph