dog-on

Well Pete,

Spin kindly pointed out the fact that "Seed of David" does not, in fact, appear in the LXX, so I suppose that unless there was some other Greek reference, it did come from the actual Hebrew scripture itself.

avi

II Samuel 7:8
7:8 Now therefore thus shall you tell my servant David, Thus says Yahweh of Hosts, I took you from the sheep pen, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people, over Israel;

....
four verses later in the same text:
II Samuel 7: 12

7:12 When your days are fulfilled, and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who shall proceed out of your bowels, and I will establish his kingdom.

Romans 1:3 (Hort & Westcott)

peri tou uiou autou tou genomenou ek spermatoV dauid kata sarka

Codex Sinaiticus (with abbreviations for name of David)

περι του ϋϊου αυτου του γενομε νου εκ ϲπερματοϲ δαδ κατα ϲαρκα

avi

dog-on

Thanks Avi.

EarlDoherty

Never mind whether Don puts it like this. Do *I* put it like this? Do the *texts* put it like this? Have you really read my material?

Romans 1:3 does not say that Jesus was “descended from a human being.” It says he was “of the seed of David” and he also says right there that Paul got this piece of datum from the scriptures.

Also, “of the seed of David” does not have to mean, as Don claims, “physically descended from David”. After all, when Paul says in Romans 9:6-8 that the gentiles linked to Christ are the seed of Abraham, does that mean the gentiles are physically descended from Abraham? No, the concept is being applied in a mystical way, which opens the door to understanding Romans 1:3 as having a non-literal meaning, especially as the idea is derived from scripture, and nowhere from history. The same situation applies in Hebrews 7:14, in which Christ the new High Priest belonging to the tribe of Judah is also deduced through scriptural connections with Melchizedek, not historical ones (which are actually denied in 7:16), and nowhere is David mentioned.

As for Plutarch, Don in his review of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man made somewhat the same claims as Muller. I gave you the link to my response to Don’s review, designating Part 4 as the location of the discussion on Plutarch. Here is a passage from that response, which will identify what Plutarch says and where he says it:
Now, Plutarch in this work is not representing his analysis of the myth as the specific interpretation of the Osiris mystery cult (he makes no reference to the latter—something that would have been forbidden), but it is not at all unlikely that the sort of thinking he brings to the myth (solidly Platonic and solidly heavenly) was similar to that of the cultic ritual interpretation contemporary with him. Plutarch gave it all a decidedly allegorical cast, as tended to be the practice among philosophers, but that an empire-wide cult of Osiris would similarly have treated their cultic myth as simply allegory IS quite unlikely. (Would the Galli priests of Attis have violently castrated themselves in imitation of Attis’ own castration if it were simply an allegory? Would some modern Christians inflict the stigmata on themselves if they regarded the crucifixion of Christ as an allegory, never happening in any realm?)

Incidentally, to date Don has made no attempt to rebut my response to his review, or to his consistent misreadings of Plutarch, of which there were many that I addressed following on the above section.

By the way:

This statement is nonsense. But I guess it’s “as expected.” I know it really doesn't matter whether I'm read or not read. A hostile closed mind remains a hostile closed mind.

Earl Doherty

TedM

Sure, it is in the scriptures, as Paul says. But that doesn't mean the scriptures were Paul's SOURCE for information about Jesus' descent. 'According to the scriptures' only relays to us that the information about the descent of the Messiah is found in the scriptures. No big news item there.

Ted

EarlDoherty

No, but when elsewhere a writer tells us (as in Romans 16:25-26) that Christ was a mystery hidden for long ages by God and now revealed in scripture, that IS a big news item, news that the epistles are constantly proclaiming. And it enables us to understand a passage like Romans 1:3 as something derived *entirely* from scripture.

And when both are supported by many other passages which best allow, and sometimes *only* allow, for a mythicist interpretation, that's called a good case. Something that you and others determined not to allow, will refuse to see.

(The other thing you refuse to see in regard to Romans 1:3, which I am constantly calling attention to, is that those opening verses state that such things in scripture foretell/preannounce Paul's gospel, not Jesus himself. That, too, is an oddity which recurs elsewhere. What do you make of that?)

Earl Doherty

GakuseiDon

I have no problem with that. Such concepts are fun to play with, and may lead to genuine insight.

Taking "seed" literally for a moment, one could suggest that David was there in a form of a plant. Mary ate the plant and Jesus appeared. The myth of the origin of Attis has that theme: Agdistis cut off his penis and threw it on the ground, and from it grew a tree. Nana ate from the tree and so became pregnant with Attis.

So I have no issues with what you have written so far. However, on your next statement below: naughty, naughty... !

I have never ever, at any time, been focused on this. I am genuinely interested in understanding how people thought in ancient times, their zeitgeist. I have no interest in trying to box their thinking into a logical or rational framework. My interest is in working out what they thought and why. What would it mean believing that you lived in a bubble surrounded by the gods? Or that the air was filled with demons? Or that the gods were impersonal, remote, and had to be bribed to take action on your part? Or that there were no photos to describe people, no easy access to information? Or that the body consisted of humours of various colors? Or that everything on earth was made up of four elements?

Doherty does make that accusation often though. According to the Modern Day Galileo, those who reject his theories do so because they are either bound by 2000 years of Christian hegemony, or by modern rational thought processes that prevents them from understanding his interpretations. And that includes Wells, as I point out below.

Anyway, here is my suggestion about how to approach trying to understand "Seed of David", and you tell me whether you think this is reasonable or not:
1. First we see how Paul uses "sperma" in similar contexts, e.g. "seed of Abraham" (Rom 9:7)
2. Then we see how Paul uses it in other contexts, e.g. "he that ministereth seed to the sower..." (2 Cor 9:10)
3. Then we see how "seed" is used in the wider literature.

From that, we can make a determination on how likely a particular reading might be. Does that sound like the best way to go about this?

Let me start with Paul's usage in similar contexts:

2 Cor 11:22 Are they Hebrews? so [am] I. Are they Israelites? so [am] I. Are they the seed of Abraham? so [am] I.

Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

We haven't gone very far into this, and there is nothing there to disprove your idea that Paul treated "seed of David" literally as David getting up from the dead and doing his business to produce Christ. But since Paul also calls Christ "seed of Abraham" and calls himself a seed as well, what should we conclude from this? Is it possible to take a view about what is more likely in the case of Paul's use of "seed of David"?

On Wells vs Doherty on this point: For Wells, "seed of David" is one of the simple markers that indicates that Paul thought that Jesus was a real, earthly person. Doherty prefers a simpler explanation. From here:

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/rfwells.htm

Prof. Wells, as I said, appeals to passages like Romans 1:3, “(the Son) who arose from the seed of David according to the flesh (kata sarka),” and Galatians 4:4, “born of woman, (subject to) the [Jewish] law.” But the contexts of both these passages tend to belie the convenient interpretation everyone would like to give them...

[Wells] says, “Doherty interprets these passages from the Platonic premiss that things on Earth have their ‘counterparts’ in the heavens. Thus ‘within the spirit realm’ Christ could be of David’s stock, etc. But, if the ‘spiritual’ reality was believed to correspond in some way to a material equivalent on Earth, then the existence of the latter is conceded.”

Now, it is true that something like the Jerusalem Temple was regarded as having its spiritual archetype in a heavenly Temple, that things on earth were the ‘copy’ of things in heaven. (This is clearest in regard to the heavenly/earthly sanctuary parallel in Hebrews.) But this is not quite the same in the matter of counterpart ‘likeness.’ The whole mystery cult ethos was founded on the principle that earthly devotees, through rites that were very much of the same sacramental nature as Pauline baptism, could take on or share in the nature of the heavenly deity and be guaranteed a fate such as he underwent, usually in terms of the conquest of death and enjoying a happy afterlife. And certain Jewish apocalyptic sects—as in the Similitudes of Enoch—regarded the members of the sect as having a champion in heaven whose characteristics they shared (righteous, chosen, etc.). The counterpart relationship in this case was not of spiritual and material expressions of the same entity, it was a sharing of characteristics between two quite different entities in the higher and lower worlds. Thus the god in the spirit world did not have a corresponding ‘god’ in the material world, he had devotees who shared in his nature and experiences, and he in theirs. Consider Romans 6:5: “For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.”

Paul’s point in Galatians 4 (since he would hardly have had to inform his readers that a human Jesus was born of a woman) is to identify the spiritual Christ as having the required counterpart characteristics in the spiritual world. Since all expressions in the material sphere were considered to be a reflection of things inherent in the spiritual one, the condition of being “of David’s stock” or “born of woman” on earth would have been seen as having some sort of counterpart in the supernatural realm. Besides, scripture would be regarded as saying so, in its predictions of the Davidic descent of the Messiah/Christ and in Isaiah 7:14, as noted above. Even if Jewish thinkers like Paul had come up with an entirely spiritual Messiah, such passages still had to be applied to him. Indeed, all that the early Christians say in their appeals to scripture (such as in Hebrews) suggests that Christ and his features and activities were regarded as embodied in the sacred writings, which is to say they existed in the supernatural world to which scripture provided a window.

As a final observation here, if Wells argues that, “this does not mean, as Doherty supposes, that the life and death were not believed to have occurred on earth,” one has to ask why such a belief is never concretely expressed, and why its opposite (ie, my ‘supposition’) fits so well into the philosophical thinking of the time, about salvation processes between higher and lower worlds, and the relationship of humanity to divinity.

TedM

If only it were that clear. From my reading Romans 16:25-26 does not say that CHRIST was a mystery hidden. He doesn't clearly say there what the mystery was. But, he makes it clear elsewhere: Christ's resurrection enables salvation through faith for all, Jews and Gentiles alike.

THAT's the mystery. That's the revelation that Paul gleaned through scripture--the part of his gospel that came 'from no man'. That's what set him apart from most of the other Jewish apostles and often put him at odds with them, having different 'gospels'.

That interpretation, then, would apply to Romans 1:3, the 'oddity' you say recurs elsewhere.

The mystery solved, it would be a mistake then to conclude that the scriptures Paul applies to Christ were the SOURCE for his knowledge of that same Christ because no where does Paul say that his gospel differed from other gospels with respect to characteristics of Jesus.

judge

Have you stopped insulting forum members nowadays?

judge

Earl I notice you didn't reply to this. Are you continuing to deny you avoid peer review?