krosero

Nefarious motive? In the Ascension thread, I simply asked for clarification and for your opinion. In this thread, I stated explicitly that I had not suspected dishonesty, and I gave the reason: the nuance of your first comment about Knibb. Yes, I compared your two statements, somewhat in your favor.

Ted Hoffman

Not true. The LSJ clearly states that GENNAO is the "causal of GIGNOMAI" and that it is used "mostly of the father, beget" or that it can be used in the sense "of the mother" to mean "bring forth, bear". Therefore, GENNAO would mean birth in a more unambiguous fashion - it is the causal of GIGNOMAI, so you cannot say that it "is not more ambiguous, and it is not less ambiguous" than GIGNOMAI.

GIGNOMAI, as LSJ has indicated, has a broad meaning of "come into a new state of being". And one can come into being by being (1.) born or by being created (2.). GIGNOMAI is therefore vague and Burton himself states that GENNHQENTA (born/engendered) would have been less ambiguous. I think it is the same argument.

I think I have said everything I can on this. I will revisit this when I am done with my Greek lessons, thanks to Kirby. There is no point in talking past each other.

Ted Hoffman

The aer, that is, the "firmament", is the space between earth and heaven. See Plutarch (On Isis and Osiris)and AoI. This is the space that was occupied by demons, which Romans could bind through magic, and is the space that was occupied by rogue angels per Jewish mythology - in Genesis, we have the "sons of God" lusting after the daughters of men, then coming down, copulating with the women and thereby giving forth giants.

Early Christians, like Origen, believed that the beings that occupied the aer, were servants of satan - the prince of this world, while the pagans worshipped these beings as gods (Contra Celsum). Of course, we dont get the location of the specific place from which these sons of God were lusting visually after the daughters of men in Genesis. But it is obvious that the ancients believed there was a place that these beings occupied somewhere above us.
There were deities like Osiris and Jesus who acted as intermediaries and criss-crossed from God to man, but at the same time, there were these residents of the aer. Do not confuse the residents of the earth, the residents of the aer, and intermediary deities who come for missions from God.

Because of Paul's allusion to Jesus being killed by the residents of the aer, and his failure to mention anything earthly about Jesus, it is reasonable to assume that, per Paul, Jesus incarnated in the aer.
Tatian for example does not provide the specific location for the "other realm" that the demons were sent to.
Astronomically, yes. Theosophically, or ontologically no. Look at Plutarch's aer and AoI and the third heavens Paul goes to in Corinthians. Plato and Aristotle influenced the Platonic worldview, but the mythmakers added their own theosophical spin.
Yes. But Paul does not say that Christ was crucified on Calvary. Paul never mentions Pilate, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Joseph or Mary. Hence the historicists quagmire.
Indeed, Paul specifically states that archontes killed Jesus. And these archontes, as more than 13 eminent scholars attest, were spirits. And spirits lived in the aer, that is, the "firmament", the space between earth and heaven. We therefore have every reason to believe that Paul's Christ was not killed on earth.

Ted Hoffman

So, Jeffrey, when are you furnishing us with the juicy details of your vaunted credentials in Greek? After all, you insisted you wanted to know Carrier's credentials before I could refer to his views.

jgibson000

Just what do you think "the causal of" means here? Are you really saying that the expressions "X came into being" and "X caused something to come into being" are the same thing?


But as both LSJ and Burton himself state, it is not vague when used, as it is in Gal. 4:4, of persons.

Please note

(a) that Burton says this only with respect to what Paul was on about in the expression GENOMENON hUPO NOMON and NOT in GENOMENON EK GUNAIKOS and

(b) that Burton's statement about GENNHQENTA is a statement how a particular participle would be less ambiguous than another would be in very particular circumstances (with reference to a hUPO clause), and NOT a general claim that the (notably, transitive) verb GENNAW is less ambiguous than the (ntably, intransitive) verb GINOMAI with respect to conveying the meaning "be born". To take it as if it is, is both to misread and misrpresent Burton and to show ignorance of Greek .

It is not at all.

Jeffrey

jgibson000

Did I really vaunt my credentials or in any way make them the basis for my claim that what Carrier has said on KATA and KATA SARKA is questionable and seems cooked?

So far as I can see, all I've done here is:

(1) to note (a) that Carrier's claims about the meaning of KATA are not well informed (b) that he has ignored evidence to the contrary in the very source that he uses when making his claims, and (c) that his conclusion about what KATA SARKA must mean in Rom 1:3 are both highly contestable and extremely dubious; and

(2) to provide all the evidence from the source Carrier uses for his claims and from BDAG to support what I said.

So your bringing in the issue of my credentials seems to me to be a red herring. (Does any one else here also see it like this?).

And in any case, since the real issue is whether, in light of the evidence in LSJ and BDAG, Carrier's rather apodictic claims on the meaning (a) of KATA and (b) of KATA SARKA in Rom. 1:3 are sustainable, let alone whether they have any merit and/or have been arrived at through ignorance or willful neglect of evidence to the contrary, isn't the question of my credentials really irrelevant? (If it is not, then it would only be fair to ask you to provide the details ("jucy" (!) or not) of your Greek credentials first[/I], so that we may know whether there's any reason to believe that your evaluation of Carrier's competence and his argument on KATA and KATA SARKA are worth listening to).

Should't you really be focusing on the question of whether or not, or how well, Caririer's claims stack up against the evidence on the meaning of KATA that's found in LSJ and BDAG?

Assuming that it is, do you have anything on point to say?

To the Moderators: Perhaps this should be split off into a new thread on Carrier, KATA , and KATA SARKA.

Jeffrey

jgibson000

It's interesting to note, especially if Ted/Jacob is going claim, as he seems to do here, that the appeal to authority and the ad populam argument are the determinant of truth, not only

(1) that we could find just as many, if not more, "eminent" scholars who deny this and say that those whom Paul deems ARCONTES are humans, but

(2) that not a single one of the scholars who Ted/Jacob here appeals to in support of his claim either deny the existence of the historical Jesus, think that this passage warrants the conclusion that Paul did so, or, most importantly, say (or believe) that Paul envisions, let alone states, that the ARCONTES spoken of in 1 Cor 2:6-8 as beings who did their work of crucifixion wholly apart from or absent human agents or in some plane other than the earth or were beings who, when they acted, ever acted apart from human agents.

There was a question some time ago of why it was that the work and the arguments of Jesus mythers doesn't get any play in/or is not taken seriously by the NT guild. Here's a good exampley of why.

Jeffrey

EarlDoherty

And that’s your bottom line against the mythicist case, isn’t it? Because a majority have always interpreted the evidence one way, any new way is automatically to be rejected and ridiculed. Well, it’s a near-universal habit of scholarship everywhere, but we can all recognize it for what it is: the old appeal to authority. It saves having to think in new directions, much less upset established wisdom. But when you boil it down, that’s what all your arguments reduce to.

Burton makes certain grammatical observations, but because he and everyone else could only interpret them in a certain way, no one else can come along a suggest a different interpretation. A “majority of scholars� (according to Paul Ellingworth, A Translator’s Handbook for 1 Corinthians, p.46; and I myself have supplied a long list of those who do) think that “archonton� in 1 Cor. 2:8 refers to demon forces. But because seemingly none of them chose to step outside the box and consider that this is not referring to forces behind earthly rulers but directly to heavenly demons as the crucifiers of Paul’s Christ, anyone who suggests the latter is a fool and a charlatan. This principle is the death of the intellect and a concrete wall to progress. (Of course, there have been a certain number of scholars in the past, going back into the Radical schools of the 19th century, who have suggested heretical interpretations of this nature, but Jeffrey apparently dismisses those as well.)

Astronomical evidence led all the leading astronomers for millennia to interpret an earth-centered universe. Should we have stayed there, secure in our personal comfort? What is comforting and what reality may actually be are often two different things. What happened for centuries was that fresh observations were always forced into the mold of earth-centricity, though with ever more awkward and precarious results. That is what has been happening in NT scholarship for decades. No matter what we discover, no matter what the new insights, hang on to Jesus-centricity at all costs. Never mind how much we have to jockey and jerry-rig the tottering paradigm to keep it upright. And when anyone comes along to suggest a different solution, dismiss it out of hand, shout it down. (Have you heard Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question�? He says it all in music.) Evidence should always be open to reinterpretation, in any discipline, but you want to close the door on that, appealing to what has always been believed.

That’s scary, Jeffrey, and so is your practice of trying to find ways of ridiculing those who don’t agree with you, whether through misrepresentation or by overblown technicalities (which are really a smokescreen). Where’s your spirit of inquiry? Where’s your sense of adventure? It takes courage to buck received wisdom. Are you content that we live in Burton’s 1924 shadow forever? I happen to think that Burton was a fantastic Greek scholar, and along with Moffat I respect him more than just about any living mainstream scholar today. But I recognize the limitations they lived and worked under. Today, we should have no excuse. As a viable option, Jesus mythicism is an idea whose time has come, and all the non-verbal participles in the world are not going to be enough to plug the holes in the dike. The best thing scholarship could do today is to give it an honest review. Otherwise, it just might end up like Ptolemy, symbolizing a field of study that got something so wrong for so long.

Yes, the spirit of inquiry occasionally brings forth a crackpot idea, but Jesus mythicism has been around for a long time, championed by quite a few respected (not, of course, by those who disagreed with them) scholars, and that was especially true in Burton’s day. The only way ‘received wisdom’ scholarship is going to demonstrate that this idea is crackpot is to give it that honest and thorough review, which they have never come close to doing, especially in our own time. The claim that they have “repeatedly done so� is a fantasy, as I think I’ve demonstrated near the end of my rebuttal article to Mike Licona’s review of “The God Who Wasn’t There� (http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesLicona.htm)

The spirit with which one approaches an investigation is as important as the methodology. Method supplies tools, but the right spirit supplies integrity. One without the other is next to useless. Anyone can reproduce reams of lexiconal quotes and appeals to what past scholars have believed or not believed, interpreted or not interpreted. What is not so easy is to open the mind to new ideas and bring us a little bit beyond the point we’ve already reached. This question of the spirit one brings to an investigation is really the central issue in this whole debate, which makes these remarks pertinent and legitimate.


Who says atheists are not allowed to preach? (And any Moderator who finds this objectionable on an INFIDELS forum will suffer the wrath of somebody’s spirit.)

jgibson000

Um, no, this is not my bottom line and I wan't the one who was appealing to authority, it was Ted. Nor was I the one who misrepresented the authorities who were appealed to in order to make a case.

What my bottom line against the myticist case is that they more often than not argue from assertion not evidence, they "evIdence" they do offer is cookd (witness Carrier's argument on KATA), they ignore evidence to the comntrary to their claims, and they will,like creationists, not admit that anything could possibly falsify their claims.

And what I have done is simply to ask from those who assert that ARCONTES as a reference to spritual beings who act without human agency is for them to provide evidence not only that this is not against all other of its uses by Paul and any other NT author, but that any author in the ancient world ever used it with this sense -- which is the proper thing to do in this case since in the end it is a question of evidence, not of thinking within or outside of the box.

If you have any, please provide it.

That's not the issue. I concede that a number of scholars have thought that ARCONTON in 1 Cor. 2:8 refers to demonic forces. The question is: Do they also think that Paul believes that these forces acted without human agancy and not on the early plane and that the crucifixion they engaged in did not take place at Calvary? If they do not, then they cannot legitimately be appealed to -- as Ted/Jacob was doing -- aldto as if they support the non human agency view.

Well, yes, they are - if they believe or expect that these scholars -- or for that matter any one -- should accept not only a wholly unevidenced -- but an evidence contradicted - claim about how a Greek word was understood by Greeks, or that these scholars, unlike what I've seen of Mythicists, would not change their minds if good (or any) lexical evidence, rather than mere assertion (which is all your claim is), for another understanding were laid before them.

And as long as we are characterizing things, let me not only note how in what you write here (as well as frequently in other recent postings) you have provide us with another in a continuing, unscholarly, (but, as it appears, typical of Jesus Mythers) series of examples of circumstantial ad hominem http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...d-hominem.html).

Let me also point out how much the complaint you utter here against how "closed minded" and not open to new thoughts are all who do not accept your views, is, in tenor, tone, and substance, both of a piece with the self serving and gratuitous tactics that fundamentalist Christian apologists like Josh McDowell use to defend their claims ("I'm right and the only reason others don't see it is that they are defective in intelligence and/or are enemies of the truth"), and but a reincarnation of the lament often uttered by Marshall B. Gardner that the reason he never got (or expected to get) a "fair hearing" for his views was because of the "conservatism of [scholars] who do not care to
revise their theories... especially when that revision is made necessary by discoveries ... made independently of the great universities." These scholars, he wrote, notably with the same high horsed tone of moral and intelectual superiority as you do here, "have their professional freemasonry. If you are not one of them, they do not want to listen to you."

Sound familiar? It should.

Like you, Gardner was incapable of seeing himself in any light other that that of the aggrieved scholar and unappreciated pioneer of new ideas, ridiculed at the moment, but destined to eventual honor. Like you, he made the inevitable comparison beween the resistence to his claims the resistence that was shown in history to abandoning the Ptolemaic world view.

But who was Gardner? He was the author of _Journey to the Earth's Interior_ a book in which he purved the "fact" all scientists were blind to that the earth was hollow and held a sun 600 miles in diameter at its center and had openings by which one could travel into the hollow at both poles.

Jeffrey

Ted Hoffman

Impressive. Now tell us something about Alfred Wegener and his plate tectonic theory.