Solo

Paul refers to the tanakh both as η γραφη and αι γραφαι. I was commenting on the improbability of Paul freely switching between the two, when vetting his revelations by the texts. I am not sufficiently equipped to say which of the two forms was the one more common when referring to the OT as a whole among the 1st century Greek speaking Jews. I imagine that the plural would have been used when referring specifically to ketuvim but it is not clear whether singular or plural was more commom when describing the Torah/Prophets/Writings as a whole. The plural "scriptures" in describing OT was known to both Josephus (AJ 1.17) and to Philo (De V.C. 10.75). I have not done any analysis of their consistency of use.

Best,
Jiri

Duvduv

I wonder whether the use of "grapha" itself as referring to the tanakh would be automatically understood by the expected gentile reader of the epistles or gospels. Apparently the authors assumed the readers knew what was meant by grapha....and does it mean anything that the term did not include the word "holy" or "sacred" in Greek??

hjalti

I would love to hear Ehrman explain why the reasons have to be very, very, very compelling. Has he done that?

And surely, the part that I bolded in the quotations is supposed to be "I think the evidence is not very, very, very compelling." Since there might be some very, very compelling arguments for some specific interpolations, but that's of course not enough to convince Ehrman.

tanya

Thanks Duvduv, this is perhaps a superior way of posing the question.

How do we know, reading "grafas", whether Paul is referring to tanakh, or gospel of Mark et al?

My claim, probably incorrect, is that, in general, but not always, as Shesh has clarified, Paul writes grafas, without hagios, to refer to modern trends, i.e. Jesus, and John the Baptist era events, and with hagios, to refer to ancient events, with Moses, David, and so on....

I don't imagine that the ancient gentile reader would a priori know anything about the tanakh. Why should they? Would they know all about Hindu gods? Egyptian gods? For the ancient Greeks, all of those "false" religions, denying Zeus, and the other Olympians, were utterly contemptible.

Zoroastrianism, written in Persian, another Indo European language, may have been regarded as somewhat less inferior, compared with the Semitic/African/Indian practices. The Greeks were a very proud, ancient people, with great engineering prowess, their military had reigned supreme, they had explored the whole Mediterranean basin, and their influence extended all the way to Japan. Now comes along some Christians, of Jewish ethnicity, and the Greeks are supposed to drop everything, and study the Tanakh?

Not likely.

Paul, writing to those folks, living in modern day Greece, Turkey, Italy and Syria, should have clarified, to which documents he had been referring. All that the Greeks knew, as they listened to the epistles being read in church, was that these were not Greek documents, originally, if accompanied by hagios, and if unaccompanied by hagios, Paul's reference to grafas could have meant contemporary writings, i.e. the gospels, or may indeed have referred to texts from the old testament, translated into Greek, LXX.

Context would have clarified to many of those listening to the letters. Are we obliged, at a conference on user interface to usb 3.0, to specify how the Renesas NEC firmware update should be implemented, for those continuing to rely exclusively on usb 2.0 devices?

andrewcriddle

In Ancient World legal systems false accusers/perjured witnesses in capital cases are guilty of murder. See for example Testimonium Falsum Calumnia_(Roman_law) You_shall_not_bear_false_witness_against_your_neig hbor Deuteronomy 19 17-19

If Paul regarded the Jewish authorities as bringing a malicious capital prosecution against Jesus using false witnesses, then he would have regarded them as having killed Jesus.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Please, when did Paul write to folks??? There is no evidence whatsoever to support any Pauline claims.

People here seem not to understand the serious and devastating implications that Pauline letters to Churches are most likely forgeries. Once it was deduced letters were NEVER written before c 70 CE but sometime after then we cannot naively accept the Pauline letters are historically accurate.

The Pauline writings REPRESENT fraud and Fiction.

It was NOT the Church and Apologetic sources that admitted the Pauline writings were manipulated.

Apologetic souces and agents of the Church claimed Paul was EXECUTED under NERO and that he was ALSO aware of gLuke. See "Against Celsus" and "Church History".

Such claims MUST be false.

When the history of Paul is scrtunised it is found to be completely fraudulent. There is NO credible sources to support Paul and Pauline letters in or out of the Canon.

Duvduv

AND, AA, an analysis of text and context of epistles also strongly suggests the creation of COMPOSITES combining monotheistic tracts with insertions about the Christ by an emerging Christ sect.
I used to strongly accept the arguments for the epistles as MJ texts, but I cannot ignore what appear to me as composites, especially with the use of prepositional phrases and prepositions.

Solo

It is a "baseless fantasy" only if you want to claim that Obama did not know that his basic biography had this "error" in it from 1991 to 2007.

Breibart noted that the Kenya-born myth was being propagated (Dyster & Goderich website) until April 2007, i.e. two months after Obama announced his running for the presidency.

Best,
Jiri

Diogenes the Cynic

He didn't know. Some staffer wrote a bio for his Congressional web page and made a mistake.

This occurred well AFTER Obama wrote a book all about being from Hawaii. Obama never, ever made a claim that he was born in Kenya. That is ridiculously reaching.

Solo

It would have been given by the context. γραφη means simply "writing".

The interesting question however is at which point the Christian gospels and epistles started to be considered as "scripture(s)" alongside the Jewish texts. Over the years, I have become convinced over time that Mark considered Paul's letters as "scriptures" and even, recursively, the text of his own gospel. In Mk 9:13 Jesus says: "But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him" (καθὼς γέγραπται ἐπ’ αὐτόν). The problem that this veiled reference which was made explicit by Matthew (17:13), was to John the Baptist (cf. Mk 1:6) of whom obviously nothing was written in the OT. The first available writing that we have of the Baptist other than Mark would be Josephus. But I don't think Mark is referring to him as Jesus makes an even more outageous suggestion that the "son of man" was written up in the preceding verse.

Best,
Jiri