Amaleq13

That was my first impression but, then, I noticed that there was a second "them".

I would think that is suggested by "the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them".

ETA: Thanks for the Greek tips!!

neilgodfrey

There are so many things that "read wrong" in this chapter, Codex Bezae, other manuscript or Textus Receptus. Either something has been lost from early days (words or esoteric understanding of what we see) or we need a totally new model to explain everything. Till then I can argue several positions with equal conviction and drop any and all of them like a tart the moment I see something I like better.

I like your way of simply cutting out all the problems by saying none was original. Who knows, maybe you are right. But it is also worth noting that some very strong arguments (my opinion, but I'm not an expert in NT Greek) such as from Matson et al, that the author of Luke (even of Luke-Acts) in fact knew the Gospel of John. If that were indeed the case, then the whole idea that Luke 24:12 (Peter visiting the tomb) is a later editorial addition by a scribe hearing voices from the Gospel of John, is a complete nonsense. Luke simply lifted it from John himself.

And add to that that he was also the final evangelist (cum catholicizer) to try to bring everyone together into one "happy" family.

But whatever the outcome of any of the above questions, the chapter as we have it now is a classic sequential narrative of a well-known-in-the-fictional-literature set of graduating recognition scenes. Fiction from around the time of the gospels often ended with a series of scenes in which the main protagonists would establish their credentials to those "who needed to know" with a series of step by step phases of final recognition. As we have it now, Luke 24 in its entirety works brilliantly to this end.

First are the women who find the tomb empty and only see a couple of angels; second is the scene where two road-travellers meet the man in question but fail to recognize him till after he's gone; third is the moment when he pops into the middle of them all and proves his existence by eating dinner before flying up to heaven.

That is classic fiction. Bit-by-bit recognition. First you hear I am alive - then you think you see me alive but too late to prove it - and now (since you saw me eat and fly away) you can't deny it.

I'm happy to jettison this three-fold recognition scene however the moment I hear a better explanation for the raw data we're trying to figure out.

Till then, whether it's the 2 telling the 11 or the 11 telling the 2 that Simon saw Jesus, I suspend all judgment. Bring on an explanation that explains the whole damn lot without leaving a host of questions in its train, and then I'll begin to think we've got the reading right.

Neil Godfrey

Ben C Smith

Yes. I sometimes expand this as the author of Luke or such, but that gets cumbersome. By Luke I am not presuming the traditional view, even if I find merit in it.

I did not particularly like the phrase either after I wrote it and submitted the post. Sorry about that.

I (think I) use it to refer either to the text or to the author, depending on context, but without (necessarily) presuming that the author was really, truly named Luke.

I have already stated that I think the insertion of this summary statement is awkward; and of course this is not the only thing awkward about the gospel of Luke. But some account must be made of the really, and I think that what Doug suggested makes the most sense of any idea so far. I also noted, if you recall, that I liked your contrast of present belief with past doubt; but I do not see one option as necessarily excluding the other.

Sure I do. There are two Bezae readings in view here; so mathematically there are four options:

1. Both are original.
2. The first is original; the second is not.
3. The second is original; the first is not.
4. Neither is original.

Your analysis depends on the third option being correct. Now, you have at least given reasons (insufficient ones, IMHO) for accepting the second Bezae reading, so this limits us to options 1 and 3. But how did you eliminate option 1?

I am not at all against accepting one reading in a manuscript and rejecting another; I am a supporter of an eclectic text. But I always want to know why the variants are accepted and rejected, and AFAICT you simply assumed that verse 12 belonged to the Lucan text without argument.

And this brings me to a broader point about the argumentation in general. You are quick to point out hidden assumptions in arguments made by others; why so slow, then, to acknowledge this unargued assumption of yours that verse 12 belongs to the text?

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
Origen is exponentially better evidence here than D. What pray tell is your reason for ignoring it.



Joseph

Ben C Smith

Joe, I have asked you a number of informational questions in the not-so-distant past which you have ignored. For a while I even thought that perhaps you had placed me on ignore, and one of your comments to me sounded like you were at least thinking of doing so.

This one is a very good question, and it deserves a good answer, but I am going to ignore it just like you have been ignoring my very good questions.

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
Actually it's more like don't have the time for everyone here than just ignoring you (just ask everyone else) but hey, no problem. What's important here, as always, is that you are ignoring Origen, not that you are ignoring me.

While we're on the subject though, yes, I do have an attitude towards you. You possess the skills that your fellow Christians here lack but you've turned into another Christian scholar who's first priority is to support Christian Assertians when it should be to support Objectivity. It's disappointing.



Joseph

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

Ben C Smith

Sorry to disappoint you, of course, but (1) I have asked you before what parts of the Bible (it was the Jewish Bible in context) you thought I was warping, and that was one of the questions that went unanswered, and (2) I think perhaps you would see my arguments in a slightly different light if I were on a different board and had to answer far-right hypotheses on a regular basis instead of far-left hypotheses. Also, I think that on a couple of occasions you have simply misunderstood my position, mistaking it for a more conservative one that I actually do not hold simply because I was also disagreeing with your own.

Do you realize that I am attracted to the minimal HJ model that Robert Price seems to espouse, and that even on my best days I have trouble accepting very much more of the HJ than his baptism and death? How supporting of Christian assertions is that?

Finally, right from the start on this board you sounded as if you were trying to take me under your wing or something (some of your comments were actually pretty condescending), as a Grand Skeptical Master who would soon convert me to the position that the main purpose of the gospel of Mark is to criticize Peter (you called it the Dark Side of the Force, IIRC). I have always suspected that, once it became clear I was probably not going to embrace that position (though I certainly agree there is some critiquing of Peter going on there), you lost your grip on civility with me.

For the record, unless the positions that (A) the Bible is not inerrant, (B) the gospels are full of Jesus legends, (C) the apostle Matthew had nothing to do with the gospel of Matthew, (D) oral tradition is inherently unreliable, and (E) countless other nontraditional positions are to be labelled distinctively Christian, my first priority is hardly to support Christian assertions. I strive to support the most accurate and least problematic reconstructions available, and where I fail to do so I hope you will politely point my failure out, rather than sporting an attitude toward me.

The irony is that you, Joe, are absolutely a missionary for a certain skeptical position; your comments on the text are explicitly and openly bound up with tearing into Christianity. Example:

If anybody is selecting his arguments based on their usefulness either for or against Christianity....

Ben.

spin

Besides the fact that you'll never know who wrote the text, you confuse the shit out of me having two separate references to the one term which you flit between, so could you please use say gLuke and aLuke, if typing is a concern, to distinguish the two so I don't get into any necessary mind reading? That would be kind.

You're not getting into it far enough here, if you assume as you do that 24:34 isn't part of the Emmaus pericope, in that it doesn't refer to the Emmaus material. There is no prefiguring for the comment. You are asking that the momentous first sighting of the risen Jesus, that which you suppose is by Peter before the Emmaus event, doesn't rate a mention. That is ludicrous. It also misunderstands the importance of the Emmaus event in the narrative as the first view of the risen Jesus, with its withholding of the facts so that the identity of the stranger is only revealed late in the pericope, so that it would have its greatest impact on the listening audience. A casual by the way Peter saw Jesus first simply pulls the carpet out from under the Emmaus event.

How would you deal with the K tradition of Galatians? While Aleph has Cephas through Galatians except for 2:7-8, K has Peter everywhere except for 2:9. Would you argue that if one follows K's evidence elsewhere that one has to follow it in 2:9 as well?

I can happily do without the mention of Peter at the tomb. My argument would still be functionally the same. The purpose of the Emmaus event was to give us the risen Jesus and any claimed prior sighting would detract from that purpose.

If it was there it reinforces my point, if it wasn't, then the argument survives anyway. It's that simple. The incoherence of your attempt to deal with 24:34 only seems to strengthen the contrary case. I'm not the only one hanging on one letter.


spin

Ben C Smith

Olive branch.

I agree that I probably should not have ignored Origen here. However, the thrust of my question to spin was not actually to question his acceptance of the Bezae reading at 24.34, since he had given something of an argument (from internal evidence, not from external evidence such as Origen) for that reading, but rather to question his acceptance of the majority text at verse 12, against the shorter western reading; he made no argument in that regard.

As for Origen, I have reason to think that Origen had read Hegesippus, and this is what Hegesippus writes about (someone named) Clopas/Cleopas (a pretty uncommon name):

Και δη απο μιας γνωμης τους παντας Συμεωνα τον του Κλωπα, ου και η του ευαγγελιου μνημονευει γραφη, ...δοκιμασαι.

And they all with one opinion pronounced Symeon, the son of Clopas, of whom the gospel also makes mention.

While I personally think Hegesippus is saying that the gospel mentions Cleopas, it would not be very difficult to read him at a glance or on memory as saying that the gospel mentions Symeon-son-of-Cleopas.

So... did Origen get the name Simon (which was the Greek name that was employed to correspond to the Hebrew Symeon) from Hegesippus, or did he get it from reading something like what we find in Bezae?

Personally, I like the idea that Origen had a reading like Bezae to hand; but I also like the idea that he was connecting dots from Hegesippus. Perhaps you might help me decide which way to go.

(Also, BTW, I believe P75, roughly contemporaneous with Origen, has the majority text at 24.34; if I am correct, and I have only NA27 to go by here, that certainly bears mentioning, too.)

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Sorry about that. I will try to write less confusingly.

This is exactly what I am not doing. I think the appearance did get mentioned... in verse 34.

Yes, it certainly does! That is how important that mention was to the author of the gospel of Luke.

(You brushed it all aside without argument, but the presence in a Pauline text of the Cephas appearance and the fact that the author of Luke and Acts is an admirer of Paul renders it completely unsurprising that the author of Luke should know about this appearance; if he circulated in Pauline circles, he should be picking up Pauline traditions. If the author of Luke knew of the Cephas appearance but did not have an actual narrative of it, Luke 24.34 is one way of mentioning this appearance.)

Okay, but it sure seemed more of a fixture than that when you wrote:

Ben.

ETA: You also asked:

But I already answered this kind of question: