spin

The example of David wasn't actually part of the argument, as it didn't transliterate into an eta. It merely showed the stated and unstated vowel forms of the same name, just as we see with Shiloh and Dishon, but they feature the YOD to eta transliteration.

I'd never guess though that you consider your view to be more critical of that agenda.

I.e. if the evidence stacks up against you, you have to blame someone.

(As you know, you're not safe from assuming your conclusions.)

This all seems to be tangential to the philological topic, as it in no way considers the YOD. It also seems to assume uniformity of translation policy, ie all the translation was theologically controlled to produce certain desired literary results, when almost certainly the LXX was translated in dribs and drabs over a few centuries.

What we are dealing with $YLW for is that it sometimes evinces a YOD in the first syllable but in other cases, no. That is after all what we were looking at with QYP) and QP). Dishon is also analogous, but it provides another interesting aspect: when it is transliterated into Greek in 1 Chr 1:41 the two occurrences feature different vocalizations of the YOD.

While YODs do get transliterated into Greek differently and the Greek eta can represent various underlying Hebrew vocalizations, it is not strange to find a vocalic YOD transliterated as an eta. It is also not strange that a YOD as mater lectionis is not necessarily manifested. Now while there is evidence that this last feature can explain the manifestation of QYP) and QP), no evidence has been proffered in favour of any other explanation.

I don't really understand what you have against the transliteration Khfas for QYP), as the YOD can supply the eta, while it can supply different Greek manifestations and it can even be omitted. We've seen different forms can co-exist both in Hebrew with $YLW/$LW and DY$WN/D$N and in Greek daeswn/dhswn. What more could you want?


spin

ynquirer

It apparently ceased to be part of your argument at the time it ceased to support your theory, but you may not dismiss it precisely on account that it didn’t transliterate the YOD into an eta. If you say that QYP)/QP) transliterates the YOD into an eta, and I find that DYDW/DWD does not transliterate the YOD into an eta, well, it is clear that your supposition does not rely on a general rule and is accordingly suspect of being merely ad hoc.

If you are kind enough to address this fundamental issue, I’ll be most pleased to address your subsequent comments.

spin

It supports the fact that the YOD may make the vowel explicit or it can be omitted. That's not an issue. You merely attempt to waylay the term. Nothing more. You agree that we are dealing with a mater lectionis when it appears. Do you now claim that the pronunciation of of the name written DWD didn't have an /i/ in the second syllable??

You are jousting at whatever you can and clutching onto whatever you can. I have no problem with David. It's just that there are more useful parallels available, ie ones that feature a long vowel in the Greek transliteration. If you really want to talk about David, please feel free to. It won't change much. It has served its purpose.

I was trying to get you to focus on the main issues, rather than clutch at straws.

This is ridiculous time wasting. You didn't need to find that the YOD in DWYD didn't transliterate into an eta. I could have told you. But you like the tangent.

The fundamental issue I have outlined a number of times, for example in the last three paragraphs of my previous post.

You stand without evidence for your conjectured analysis of QYP)/QP). What more need be said?


spin

Solo

Lovely debate, guys.

My own strong hunch is that nothing that "Mark" said was meant to be negotiated at face value. It's all coded stuff. Eg, in Mk 10. Bartimaeus is a fictitious name of a non-existent beggar who is not blind in the conventional sense, and who is imagined seated near Jericho as Jesus is mobbed by imaginary throng of the SM (spiritually mature). Jesus answers the one who cannot be a chooser through the SMs and "calls him" which needs to be interpreted, among other things, as requiring the man to take off his shirt - metaphorically speaking, of course. Whereupon the poor beggar receives his "sight", meaning "clearance to follow his Jesus instincts".

To a bright SM manic like "Mark" of course, the disciples and family were clueless as to Jesus' interior, his purpose and its fulfilment on the Cross. They were outsiders to the mystery and as such they were interchangeable. Perhaps the duplication of names was to hint at that.

Jiri

Ben C Smith

My own strong hunch is that your strong hunch is completely mistaken. Vive la différence.

I do not always agree with Robert Gundry in his assessment of individual pericopes, but I am attracted to his overall approach to Mark:

The Gospel of Mark contains no ciphers, no hidden meanings, no sleight of hand:

No messianic secret designed to mask a theologically embarrassing absence of messianism from the ministry of the historical Jesus. No messianic secret designed to mask a politically dangerous presence of messianism in his ministry. No freezing of Jesuanic tradition in writing so as to halt oral pronouncements of prophets speaking in Jesus' name. No Christology of irony that means the reverse of what it says. No back-handed slap at Davidic messianism. No covert attack on divine man Christology. No pitting of the Son of man against the Christ, the Son of David, or the Son of God.

No ecclesiastical enemies lurking between the lines or behind the twelve apostles, the inner three, and Jesus' natural family. No mirror-images of theological disputes over the demands and rewards of Christian discipleship. No symbolism of discipular enlightenment in the miracles. No "way"-symbolism for cross-bearing. No bread-symbolism for the Eucharist. No boat-symbolism for the Church. No voyage-symbolism for Christian mission. No other-side-of-Galilee symbolism for a mission to the Gentiles. No Galilee-symbolism for salvation or for the Second Coming. No Jerusalem-symbolism for Judaism or Judaistic Christianity.

No apocalyptic code announcing the end. No de-apocalyptic code cooling down an expectation of the end. No open end celebrating faith over verifiability. No overarching concentric structure providing a key to meaning at midpoint. No riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

None of those. Mark's meaning lies on the surface. He writes a straightforward apology for the Cross, for the shameful way in which the object of Christian faith and subject of Christian proclamation died, and hence for Jesus as the Crucified One.

[Note: I might at least partly disagree with his assessment of bread symbolism.]

I think that Mark is, as Gundry says, an apology for the cross. And I think that this is the case even if the majority of the gospel is fiction of some kind. Because there is at least one event in Mark that is certainly not Marcan fiction and could certainly not be ignored, and that is the crucifixion. If Mark (or his predecessors or sources) invented healings, miracles, controversies, and parables, he (or they) did so in order to soften the impact of the crucifixion, to make it more palatable, to make it appear that it was part of the plan all along, that Jesus, as divine, could have prevented it but chose not to do so.

That is my story, anyway, and I am sticking to it... at least for now. It makes so much more sense to me at present than reading the Bartimaeus story as a clearance to follow our Jesus instincts.

But, I admit, I am a simple man, and I may have missed something.

Ben.

Solo

Not just "mistaken", but "completely" so. Hmmm...

That is great rhetoric, Ben, unfortunately it does not do it for me.

4:11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all [these] things are done in parables:


Noted.

But you see, Ben, if Mark was a straightforward apology, as Gundry says (btw, he is a great resource) why would he need to fictionalize some or (likely) most of it ? He did not know, right ? He only copied the traditions, right ? But he did need to bolster Jesus' earthly stature by introducing the throngs of believers which Jesus never had and who suggests themselves as Mark's own milieu.

Why ? Any ideas ? - Or am I completely mistaken about that too ?

I emphatically agree with that. I quoted here a line from a movie classic (The Big Red One) which opens up with a mist-obscured crucifix over a WW1 battlefield carnage with the words: "This a story of a fictional life which ended in an authentic death". spin scoffed at my sense of history when I said that as long as there is no compelling demonstration of the fictional origins of Jesus execution, Jesus is historical on that score alone. No human being who lives and dies may be denied his or her place in history. For this much Judeo-Christian sense of human decency you can enlist me any time !

I have no disagreement with that but it side-steps the real issue here: whether Mark used his gospel to suggest to its readers a special kind of knowledge of the Messiah, one that Jesus' family and disciples (while he was on earth) did not have.

I have a hugely strong hunch, Ben, that you are not as simple as you would like me to believe

Jiri

Ben C Smith

When I exaggerate, I like to do it whole-hog, as they say.

Agreed. One of the best commentary introductions ever written, I daresay.

He does, of course, in the very next paragraph admit that his propositions require substantiation; he intends the rest of the (long) commentary itself as substantiation.

Color me shocked and surprised, of course.

Because the reality may not have lived up to expectations for a messiah figure. The stories told about a person ought to fit the claims about that person, and in this case the claim (that Jesus was the messiah) put the bar pretty high. Gundry himself might not agree with a high degree of fictionalization in Mark, but I am saying that, even if most of Mark is fiction, it is fiction written for a straightforward purpose, not fiction written in code.

Compare the stories surrounding the life of Francis of Assisi. I suspect a good proportion of them are pure legend, but surely they arose for a very straightforward purpose, to wit, to magnify the purity and piety of Francis and the first Franciscans. I doubt we should go through these Franciscan legends looking for hidden agendas and encrypted messages.

If Jesus did go around performing feats that were interpreted as miracles or healings, then all Mark had to do was to put those feats in writing, probably exaggerating or retouching as he did so (here the fictionalization option is more minimal). If Jesus did not do those things, then Mark (or his predecessors) had to have invented them (here the fictionalization option is more maximal). In either case, the telling of those stories would play to the very straightforward purpose of justifying the crucifixion to a world that was understandably reluctant to worship a crucified messiah.

That is another question, really. If he only copied the traditions, then I would say that the traditions were in themselves an apology for the cross. If he did more than that, then I would say that he added more apologetic material for the cross.

I do not actually wish to reduce everything in Mark or in the tradition to this kind of apologetic; some things may have been transmitted just for their own sake, as interesting stories or memories or as liturgical aids. But I think that this apology for the cross was quite important to Mark and other early Christians, and should probably be very high on the list of possible motivations for any given pericope.

I do not think the crowds have much if anything to do with people around Mark. I think they are, whether historical or exaggerated or invented, an important part of the apology.

That is a good line.

I agree that the execution is highly likely as fact and strained as fiction.

He may have. But I doubt he expressed this special knowledge in codes and ciphers.

Have it your way.

Ben.

ynquirer

In the last paragraph you shift the load of the proof. The statement is misleading. I may stand without evidence for my conjectured analysis of QYP)/QP) and all remains the same. It is you that peddle a novelty, since no-one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever proposed such a theory that Kaiphas of the gospels and Josephus is the same Aramiac name as Khfas of the Pauline corpus - at least, no-one with a modicum of success so far. It is you that must provide some evidence for the rest of us to take the theory any seriously. And as you have proposed it in the open, I’ve just taken the floor to scrutinize the theory as rigorously as I can. If I don’t do convincingly enough, well, the readers will have reason to doubt of my abilities, but my eventual failure will not add the slightest evidence in support of your theory. Truth is not the outcome of a contest of adrenaline.

As it seems that your evidence is philological, we have dwelt for a while in philological notions. To state it briefly, the evidence you need is parallels in the Tanakh for the pair QYP)/QP), that is, names displayed in both spellings - with and without YOD - and in which the corresponding vowel be transliterated in the Septuagint into Greek eta (h); in addition, both forms must appear in verses presumed to be contemporary of each other, as QYP) and QP) are presumed to be since they are carved in the same tomb. Not so difficult, is it?

Your latest evidence is the name Dishon/Dishan, in Chronicles 1:38, 41-42. My count yields five occurrences of the subjacent Hebrew (2 in 1:38, 2 in 1:41, and 1 in 1:42). In every one of them the YOD does appear; therefore, it doesn’t add any evidence in support of your theory of QYP)/QP). It is true that the translators into Greek three times render the subjacent Hebrew Daiswn and twice Dhswn; however great the interest to dwell in this oddity, it is tangent to the main issue. And we don’t like the tangent, do we?

Correct me if I miss something, yet so far you have proposed the following evidence.

1) Y$(YH, which is rendered Hsaias in the Septuagint. No evidence, possibly, since omission of the matre lectionis, which in this particular case is the same as the consonant, would imply omission of the consonant and have the name unrecognizable.

2) GYHWN/GHWN in Genesis and 1 Kings. The GYHWN spelling appears in Ge 2:13; GHWN appears in 1 Ki 1:33, 38, 45. The Septuagint transliterates GYHWN in Ge 2:13 into Ghwn and GHWN in 1 Kings into Giwn. According to the theory, both must be rendered Ghwn, the evidence therefore being adverse.

3) (WBD and $M. We lack either (WBYD or SYM; therefore, this cannot be evidence in support of the theory. To this, it may be added that both names have, in the Masoretic text, clear indication that the vowel after BETH is a long /e:/, so rendering the matre lectionis unnecessary (the so-called defective scriptae, which does not seem to be the case of QYP)/QP), since the matre lectionis, according to you, is there).

4) DWD/DWYD: evidence withdrawn as being tangent to the main issue.

5) $YLW/$LW in Jeremiah 7:12, 14, transliterated into Shlw by the Septuagint. This evidence seems prima facie supportive of the theory.

6) DYSWN in 1 Chronicles 1:38, 41-42 transliterated into Daiswn/Dhswn by the Septuagint. There is no DSWN in the proposed text; therefore, no evidence supports the theory.

All in all, Jeremiah 7:12, 14 is your sole evidence so far. And even this I would reject on account of the theological agenda of the Septuagint. Yet I agree that this takes us away from the philological issue.

spin

Again, this is the end of the discussion. There's nothing particularly strange about the vowel being omitted. There's nothing particularly strange about the YOD transliterated as an eta. And there's nothing particularly strange about names having slightly different pronunciations. It's all supportable with examples and you admit you have no evidence. All the rest is your attempt to manipulate to put aside the available evidence.

I think long-suffering readers were hoping for an argument.

I'm impressed with the shamefacedness of this approach. I'm wrong according to you despite the fact that I've shown that all the problems you've suggested can be explained through biblical examples, and it's your fault if you can't, without evidence, convince people that I'm wrong.:notworthy:

Considering that we are dealing with quite a small corpus, being all the names transliterated in the Hebrew bible that contain a YOD as a mater lectionis, naturally you are expecting a lot to have all of your quibbling met with one all-encompassing example that also meets your statistical requirements.

On the contrary, it is clearly not a tangent. That the one name can have two separate pronunciations does bear on the Caiaphas/Cephas issue.

First example that a YOD can be transliterated as a Greek eta.

GYHWN/GHN is evidence that the YOD mater lectionis is not necessary. It also shows two distinct transliterations, yes, one only once, but gosh you seem to want it all in the one basket, despite the fact that out selection is rather limited.

You've got this out of order chronologically. This (WBD and $M were provided earlier than Gihon in order to show that the YOD mater lectionis doesn't need to be present to have the eta in the Greek transliteration.

Silly misrepresentation. As I said earlier,

You are jousting at whatever you can and clutching onto whatever you can. I have no problem with David. It's just that there are more useful parallels available, ie ones that feature a long vowel in the Greek transliteration. If you really want to talk about David, please feel free to. It won't change much. It has served its purpose.

It's still true.

Good evidence for the omittable YOD mater lectionis transliterated as an eta with and without the mater lectionis.

Utter rubbish. The fact that Dishon has versions with and without mater lectionis, and that the YOD can be transliterated as an eta, though it does supply an alternative transliteration is yet more evidence to deal with all aspects of the problem.

In the end you have no evidence to support your denial and you depend on attempting to repudiate six pieces of evidence, while offering nothing to support your position.

1. There are examples of YOD transliterated as eta.
2. There are examples of a YOD mater lectionis included and omitted.
3. There are examples of a YOD mater lectionis supplying two diverse transliterations.

You continue to play without all the cards in the deck. All stops in the debate have been covered with the evidence. You just want the evidence in a single nice package with a ribbon on top otherwise you'll reject it out of hand. Unfortunately, linguistic evidence is not always as simple as you would like it to be in your ideal sample world.


spin

spin

I see my name taken in vain...
Solo seems to think a source whose foreground narrative has supplied no evidence whatsoever as to its historical validity requires "demonstration of the fictional origins". He is right that I think his sense of history is lacking.

I have complained about the facile use of "fiction" in discussions here.

I also find that "No human being who lives and dies may be denied his or her place in history" in the context it appears is assuming its conclusion, so again Solo's idea of history does need working on to have any meaning. One cannot reasonably assume the existence of a person without any tangible knowledge of that person's reality.

In attempting to do history, we need to maximize our efforts to make the history we have uncovered is not just possible or reasonable, but is correct. Sloppy acceptance of what is plausible will only lead to a narrative about the past whose validity cannot be tested and therefore ultimately worthless.


spin