JoeWallack

JW:
Because I know from Experience that whether I refer to you as "Jeff" or "Jeffrey"
will have no effect on your Substantive responses to me whatsoever.

This Thread especially Confirms what I already knew. You come here (II) claiming to be championing Professional Greek standards. But you have a Declination to so much as say one Critical word towards Stephen's painfully obvious Amateurish Greek effort here. Instead you would rather Ad Homily Ad Nazorean with me. Why is that?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

jgibson000

The problem with this request is not only its apparent ignorance of all that I have wriiten here but also its basic assumption that my posts are not helpful or do not directly address the issues being discussed or the claims being made, even if these only have toi do with matters of protocol..

Jeffrey Gibson

jgibson000

Whether or not that is the case, it's not the issue. The issue is whether you are being studiously perverse and a TRIMALAKA when you keep addressing me by a name that is not mine and that I -- and the moderators -- have more than once requested that you not use when addressing me.


I do? Could you point out, with quotations from what I've written, where I've actually made this particular claim?

Why I am obliged to speak critically of what Stephen has to say (let alone how this obligation follows from some alleged claim on my part to be the champion of "Professional Greek standards"), escapes me.

More importantly, you have yet to show in even the slightest way that Stephen Carlson's effort is amateurish, let alone painfully obviously so.
And since it is your claim that it is, the burden is on you, not me, to show that it is.

Could you please show me where and how I've done this? I am not obliged to offer an explanation for something I have not done.

Jeffrey Gibson

S.C.Carlson

The reason I put my argument on-line is for my argument to be critiqued. When the issue is more syntactical than lexical, I don't quite see the utility of doing a word study (especially an overly restrictive one) that ignores my argument.

Stephen

μὴ εἶναι βασιλικὴν ἀτραπὸν ἐπὶ γεωμετρίαν Ἑλληνικὴν γλῶτταν.

S.C.Carlson

Thanks for the gentle reminder that I should get my views published in a peer-review context. It is on my "to do" list, but I've had a couple of other projects (some forgeries) that have taken priority.

Stephen

JoeWallack

JW:
I Am going to start an Inventory of Problems with Stephen's Translation of "foremost" for 2:2 now, not necessarily in order of importance.

1) The offending word has a Root and Primary meaning of "First".

2) "Luke" normally uses the word to mean "first".

Now here's the Communication problem with using "foremost":

"This was the Foremost registration while Quirinius was governor of Syria."

The argument for Translating "foremost" here is "Luke" wanted to distinguish between the Census of Quirinius and the Census Joseph responded to. If this was "Luke's" motivation than using a word with a Primary meaning of "first", with a normal grammatical construction of "first", that the author normally uses to mean "first" would be a very poor choice to describe the Census that you want to Communicate Was Not First!. There are other Greek words to Communicate "most important". And of course what reason could "Luke" possibly have to try and avoid using an Equivocal word here who's primary meaning is the opposite of what "Luke" wished to communicate since it only helps establish the Date of Jesus' birth. I mean it's not like it was an important date or anything.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

S.C.Carlson

Here, I think that Luke is imitating Thucydides, Hist. 1.55.2, αἰτία δὲ αὕτη πρώτη ἐγένετο τοῦ πολέμου, which Carl Conrad renders as "And this turned out to be a primary catalyst of the war." But I already mentioned this connection on my blog...

Stephen

jgibson000

Not to mention one whose claim about the "default" meaning of the word studied is a non sequiter and is based upon a profound misunderstanding of what is signified by the manner in which the data on PRWTOS is set out in BDAG .

Jeffrey Gibson

JoeWallack

JW:
Okay, on the Inventory of reasons why "foremost" is Unlikely for 2:2:

1) Lexicon = The offending word has a Root and Primary meaning of "First".

2) Usage = "Luke" normally uses the word to mean "first".

3) Communication Logic =

"This was the Foremost registration while Quirinius was governor of Syria."

The argument for Translating "foremost" here is "Luke" wanted to distinguish between the Census of Quirinius and the Census Joseph responded to. If this was "Luke's" motivation than using a word with a Primary meaning of "first", with a normal grammatical construction of "first", that the author normally uses to mean "first" would be a very poor choice to describe the Census that you want to Communicate Was Not First!. There are other Greek words to Communicate "most important". And of course what reason could "Luke" possibly have to try and avoid using an Equivocal word here who's primary meaning is the opposite of what "Luke" wished to communicate since it only helps establish the Date of Jesus' birth. I mean it's not like it was an important date or anything.


JW:
I invite the Objective Reader to consider the Possible relationship between Stephen not having anything to say about the above and Stephen not having anything to say about the above. Also, Jeff, normally when Apologists are trying to make this type of ridiculous argument that a certain Translation is Probable when the issue is better described as whether it's even Possible, there are no non-Christian scholars who agree that it's Probable. If you would like to go on record here as supporting Stephen's translation as Probable as a Reverent Agnostic, I'b be glad to note that as evidence in its favor.

Now for the Early Witness testimony:

Justin Martyr

First Apology

1.34

"CHAPTER XXXIV -- PLACE OF CHRIST'S BIRTH FORETOLD.
And hear what part of earth He was to be born in, as another prophet, Micah, foretold. He spoke thus: "And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come forth a Governor, who shall feed My people." Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judaea."

JW:
As an Apologist Justin lacks the Positive qualities which give weight to a Historian like Josephus. For what it's worth though he gives his understanding that Jesus was born when Quirinius made a Census.

1.46

"CHAPTER XLVI -- THE WORD IN THE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST.
But lest some should, without reason, and for the perversion of what we teach, maintain that we say that Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Cyrenius"

JW:
If you work out the years this confirms Josephus' dating of the Census. Thanks Justin.


The Gospel Of Pseudo-Matthew

http://ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-08/anf0...#P5970_1750772

" Chapter 13.

And it came to pass some little time after, that an enrolment was made according to the edict of Caesar Augustus, that all the world was to be enrolled, each man in his native place. This enrolment was made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria,28"

" Chapter 16.

And when the second year was past,40 Magi came from the east to Jerusalem, bringing great gifts. And they made strict inquiry of the Jews, saying: Where is the king who has been born to you? for we have seen his star in the east, and have come to worship him. And word of this came to King Herod, and so alarmed him that he called together the scribes and the Pharisees, and the teachers of the people, asking of them where the prophets had foretold that Christ should be born."

JW:
Note that the author's solution here is to have the Census under Quirinius first and later have Herod the Great's Massacre of the Innocents story. Since most "Defenses" consist of arguing that "Luke" describes a Quirinius census in Herod the Great's time this would appear to be the best evidence for it even though I've never seen any Apologist mention it. Just like they say that Cops have the best dope similarly Counter-missionaries have the best Apologies.


Emperor Julian

Against The Galileans

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ju...ans_1_text.htm

"Even Jesus, who was proclaimed among you, was one of Caesar's subjects. And if you do not believe me I will prove it a little later, or rather let me simply assert it now. However, you admit that with his father and mother he registered his name in the governorship of Cyrenius.72 |381"

JW:
Julian comes relatively late and just repeats what he says is the Christian position but still it is some evidence that the understanding in Julian's time (4th century) was that Jesus was supposedly born while Quirinius was Governor. Keep in mind that the Christians destroyed/didn't preserve Julian's ''Against The Christians'' so "translations" have to be peaced together from carefully preserved Christian rebuttals like Frankenstein's monster.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

JoeWallack

JW:
Ignoring my point is not a good way of dealing with the Logical problem. The grammatical construction is different anyway. It also lacks a Quality that 2:2 has which "Luke's" 2 uses of "foremost" also lack. A quality that an absolute superlative of "first" should not have. This was my previous question to you and Jeff and what I wrote above should also be a clue. What is this quality?

Regarding Thucydides, should you be looking in a Koine Lexicon or Jeff's Attic?

Isn't it obvious that you're acting like an Apollo-gist here Stephen, only interested in supposed evidence you think supports you and unwilling to discuss evidence that doesn't.

Regarding Carl Conrad:

The text of Luke 2:2 and word order

"I don't see the cogency of this argument. We do know that a census was held in 6 A.D. at the death of Archelaus when the Romans decided to install a
procurator in Judea rather than appoint another son of Herod as tetrarch of
that area, the function of the census presumably to be to assist the
procurator in the collection of taxes from Judea--because that's the
procurator's chief function: to assure that such order in the area is
upheld to allow the orderly collection of taxes. In Act 5:37 Rabbi Gamaliel
mentions this census primarily because it sparked a rebellion by Judas the
Galilean that was put down by the Romans with considerable bloodshed. But I
don't see any reason why the census referred to in Acts 5:37 can't be the
same one referred to in Luke 2:2; what makes it the more probable in my
judgment is precisely that genitive absolute regularly used by Luke to
indicate adverbially WHEN an event took place. In this instance what took
place is "this census" and it "took place first"--when Quirinius was
governing Syria."

"To my mind the attempt to make hHGEMONEUONTOS THS SURIAS KURHNIOU into a comparative phrase somehow dependent upon PRWTH, so that the meaning becomes "took place before [the one which took place} when Quirinius was governing Syria," requires distortion of a construction which is really very simple. Far simpler, it seems to me, is to understand the text (with
hH sandwiched between hAUTH and APOGRAFH) as "This census was first held when Quirinius was governing Syria." I take it that "this census" means a
universal census--and that if it was first held during the governorship of
Quirinius over Syria, it was held on one or more later occasions as well.
That seems to me to be a far simpler way of understanding the Greek text as
it you and I both agree to reconstruct it. Of course, it doesn't resolve
the anachronism with Luke 1:5, but that's not our concern here; our concern
here is with this text and what it means and how it means what it means."


JW:
Conrad also contains a clue to answer my question as well as referring to several other reasons for "first" I haven't given yet. You briefly mention at your blog that Conrad is "first" at 2:2 but you didn't mention it here. So you are quoting a source for a relatively minor supposed point in your favor without qualifying that the Source disagrees with you as to the Basic question that first started the discussion. You're as bad as Jeff thinks Mr. Doherty is!

Speaking badly of Jeff, I Am still waiting for him to say as much as one word of criticism to a Christian here. Waiting, waiting...waiting.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page