Sheshbazzar

I was thinking about this thread and what I had wrote here;
Then I recalled Paul's personal testimony;
So we might well ask ourselves; 'What were the customs of (the) Fathers with regards to The Divine Name? and the titles?'
First we need to establish whom Paul would have been accounting as the 'Fathers'. I'll skip presenting here all of the supporting quotations, and simply state that to Paul these 'Fathers' were the Hebrews and writers of those texts known to Judaism as the Ta-Na-Ka (Tanaka)

What was their 'customs' with regards to The Name? Was it not to treat it with the utmost reverence?
Sometimes even to point of inscribing it in either paleo-Hebrew characters, or in Hebrew letters of gold, even within Greek texts, as DCHindly has previously noted.
And normally for as long as has been known, the Hebrew scribes do no even pen this Name into their texts without first undergoing ritual cleansings and then reciting prayers before each and every instance of penning the "Ha'Shem ha'meh'porash" ('The Name which is in particular'- "YHWH")

If Paul could rightfully claim to 'have committed nothing.. against the customs of the Fathers'
That would argue that his personal writing habits were meticulously in accord with those customs laid down and practiced by his Hebrew Fathers in the writing of the Tanaka.

Which brings us to the Greek of the LXX, of which it is reported that in the original and initial editions, The Divine Name was carefully maintained in Hebrew.
Various DSS mss. exemplars also attest to the continuation of this practice among the particularly devout.

Paul was a Pharisee of the strictest sect (Acts 26:5)
"....after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee."
The Hebrew title Pharisee is derived from the Hebrew word פָּרָשׁ 'pārāš' meaning 'set apart' or 'be particular'.
Thus Paul is telling us in his confession that;
"....after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Particularist."

Pharisee's were those who were extremely strict and -particular- about maintaining the customs and practices of their Hebrew religion.

If Paul was raised in that sect and tradition, and truly 'did nothing against the custom of the Fathers' and was particular about his reverence for the Ha'Shem ha'meh'porash (THE Name which is in particular) and really 'committed nothing against the customs of the Fathers'
He would have to have personally maintained the custom of the Fathers in reverently and particularly inscribing The Divine Name (in particular) employing only the Hebrew letters. Yod Hey Wah Hey.

Latter Greek copyists without the same religious scruples as the Particularist Paul, would have been responsible for replacing the Hebrew letters actually written by Paul with letters drawn from common Greek terms that they regarded as being the equivalents, Not sharing that ancient Hebrew tradition of utmost reverence and respect for the sacred Hebrew Tetragrammation.

Actually I have personally experienced this phenomenon on several occasions, where I have written religious articles, being most careful in supplying the proper Hebrew terms, only to have them show up latter, or be returned 'corrected', with all of the Hebrew carefully edited out and replaced with English, or with those more popular terms borrowed from Greek theology.

They generally accepted, and often even embraced the ideas which I had presented, but could not accommodate themselves to maintain respect for Hebrew names and terms. (Didn't fit their goyim religious ideas)

It happens, and there really isn't much that can be done about it.
Its just the way of 'the world'ly.
May take time, but I trust that it will be figured out, or be 'revealed' to all bye and bye.

Sheshbazzar the Hebrew.



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spin

There is more to it than that, but I think the distinction of usage of the non-titular κυριος is productive in doing analysis.

Perhaps some wire got crossed, but working on your question, "Have you created a GNT concordance for all the forms of Kurios with and without a definite article, to subject to analysis?" you were asking about definite articles and no definite articles.

I looked through all instances of κυριος in the gospels & Paul long ago. That's why I can say both Mt & Mk don't feature the non-titular κυριος and only 1 Cor in the Pauline corpus does.

spin

What do you think about the chance a Jew with sloppy use of "haShem"? I'm sure under some condition it might be possible for a Jew to widen the usage of "haShem", but it does seem like a very unlikely occurrence, doesn't it?

I guess I keep falling over my own thoughts on the subject, which involve the extremely limited view of christology available to Paul and that available to the writers of Mark.

(Incidentally, as I understand it, the gospel of Mark was probably written in Rome for a Greek speaking Roman audience. The writer using Greek seems to presuppose Roman cultural knowledge that equates a Roman coin to Greek coins, the Greek word for hall/palace being equated with a praetorium, Roman idioms literally translated into Greek and various other issues including Mark's problematic geography of the Levant. If Mark is indeed from Rome that would suggest that eastern Jewish ideas had to first reach and establish themselves there on a large scale before we get a gospel of Mark.)

When do you think that christian writings such as the gospels got given such prestige that they became fixed in content? I can imagine at the moment the gospel of Mark being formed by some early collecting of christian traditions, then it was adapted for the Matthean community and rewritten and redacted there, later becoming stable and eventually fossilized into the unchanging word of god. We have a long development between the first collecting of traditions and their petrification. I would guess that much interpolation was based on some notion of clarity or exactness and was a normal process in tradition development.

tanya

With apologies for endlessly repeating myself......

I don't accept spin's view of "Paul's heritage". I think Paul was, as Sheshbazzaar has illustrated, a learned Jew, with a vast knowledge of both Hebrew and the Hebrew scriptures, and someone who certainly would have known the distinction between YHWH, and an ordinary mortal-->κυριος . I also deny, based on DSS, the traditional Jewish explanation, that the most ancient texts employ "adonai", (i.e. κυριος), rather than YHWH, "out of respect for the name of god". What poppycock.

I also believe, maybe in error, that Paul was absolutely fluent in Greek, maybe even as his first language.

No, I would say, that Paul knew that YHWH was represented, correctly, in Greek, as Theos, not κυριος .

So, why did Paul write κυριος, since he knew very well that YHWH was not a mere "adonai", and since he knew that theos, rather than κυριος represented the proper translation of YHWH ?

Two obvious possibilities exist:

a. He didn't. This is yet another illustration of interpolation; Paul's orginal text surely contained theos. We simply haven't yet run across an example of his original contribution.

b. He did, deliberately misrepresenting YHWH, to ensure conformance with an LXX, that had also been altered by the second century, when I claim, Paul wrote his epistles, after the gospel of Mark;

Can this mess be straightened out by answering this question instead:

When, in history, did Jesus become equated with God, thereby necessitating convergence of Jesus, aka κυριος , with his father, theos? But, then, once the siamese twins were conjoined, why were they both regarded as κυριος , why not both as theos, upon having been officially intertwined?

Corollary: Why did the Christians (and when?) feel obliged to avoid the Greek word theos, when referring to God? Who pressured them to ignore this particular descriptor, and why? Did someone imagine that Christianity could differentiate itself from Judaism, Mandeasm, Manichaeism, and the plethora of Jewish sectarian offshoots, which emerged after the third Roman-Jewish conflict, by avoiding the word theos?

I do not accept the popular explanation that Jews, 2000 years ago, deliberately avoided writing YHWH, out of respect for God's name. I think they were instructed to avoid writing YHWH, or face death, by many generations of Christians, not Jews.

I do accept the possibility that Christians avoided use of theos out of fear of association with pagan rites, rituals and deities.

Solo

David,
this just does not look to me like what Paul wanted to convey. The 15:54 verb is allassō whose etymology suggests changing into something else, namely exchanging a fleshy body into a spiritual one. And, yes, I feel quite confident that the OBE experience that Paul describes in 2 Cr 9 informs his eschatological plan. His insistence on sinless purity demands discardng flesh (or the bondage to decay as he calls it in Rom 8:21).


That's fine, David. Everyone on this board believes him/her-self wise and able to handle the scripture either by interpreting it or by denouncing it. You and I are no exception in this respect.

By authentic, I mean text which is well supported from within the corpus. Paul's core ideas are: his special commission from God to preach his risen son, freedom from earthly desires, absolute contrast between the physical and spiritual, (i.e. death and life contrast), imitation of the risen one, universal access to Christ (unimpeded by social standing, nationality, sex, rhetorical ability, etc.).

That is not what I asked, David. You believe that in the reference to 'members' in 1 Cr 6:15, the word Christ is a later interpolation. I directed you to a remarkably similar idea in 1 Cr 12:27. Do you believe that verse was manipulated also ?

The problem is that the long sermon that you have regaled me with does not in any way explain why 2 Cor 3:18 clearly defines anarthrous Lord as the Spirit that visits Paul and like-minded ecstatics - in defiance of your "rule" of Paul's supposed use of the term. :huh: Sorry, Dave, it just doesn't work for me. By Paul's mystical semantics, that which communicates with Paul is Christ, not God directly. No dancing around it, please ! Does κυριος in the απο κυριου πνευματος refer to God (the Father) or Christ ?

Best,
Jiri

Vivisector

"Unlikely" certainly gets my vote, in the case of a Hebrew-speaking Jew who has that concept in mind - totally agreed. And I didn't mean to accuse Paul of being "sloppy:" I only suggested/wondered whether the his personal definition of the Greek word was sufficiently flexible to permit its application to Jesus (he does seem to have been somewhat original in some ways). It's only my observation, but eliminating this possibility would only strengthen the argument that the words weren't Paul's.


I was relying more on the notion that Mark originated near Syria (Antioch?) per, IIRC, Koester et al. I think Roman provenance would certainly make the time-only explanation cleaner.

In the context of Paul's letters, I'd suggest P46 could serve as a more-or-less effective "no-later-than date." I wouldn't want to be in the position of arguing against interpolation prior to that, for sure. I only think that, to strengthen the case that the words weren't Paul's, it could only help for us to be able to explain substititions that are selective almost to the point of being random and without readily apparent (to me, at least) Christian advantage. (I should say, the advantage would be more apparent if the word were applied more consistently to Jesus.)

Cheers,

V.

spin

That "No" really means you don't know.

Go here and choose "Psalms" to see the little κυ, κς, etc.

Do you accept the possibility that YHWH elohim was routinely translated--with the contracted, inflected forms of κυριος and θεος--as κυριος ο θεος as in Gen 2, or that YHWH was translated as either ο θεος, κυριος, κυριος ο θεος as in Gen 4 or as κυριος in 2 Sam or Psalms (just the few places I looked)? The overburdening evidence from the LXX is that κυριος was used to represent YHWH. That should reflect the practices of the Greek speaking world in which Paul lived and developed his understanding of Judaism.

Sheshbazzar

I believe the key here is 'routinely'. Particularists would display a higher level of discrimination than what was routine.
That is why we can find Greek texts containing the Tetragrammation in Hebrew script.

tanya

Yes, agree. That's what our extant versions of LXX reveal.

This is the disagreement between us.

You assume, apparently, that LXX accurately reflects "Paul's" thinking, whereas I assume, perhaps grossly in error, that our oldest extant copy of LXX, Codex Sinaticus if I am not wrong, has been altered to reflect trinitarianism. You are the expert on DSS among us, so you should know, far better than I ever will, whether or not there is any evidence in support of my belief that the original Hebrew text did not confound adonai with YHWH.

Maybe, (many have so argued) the 70 scholars in Alexandria, had already accepted adonai as a synonym for YHWH, but I doubt that opinion, and believe it is derived from a trinitarian believing, dominant political power that compelled Jews to change or die. According to my thinking, the original LXX used YHWH, not adonai.

My opinion, is faith based, not evidence derived.

jakejonesiv

Spin,

The prefered exalted designation of Jesus in the Pauline epistles is "Lord" as opposed to the gospels which seldom use Lord, but instead speak of the "Son of Man." The Son of Man is unknown in the Pauline epistles, indicating a different origin.

Any proposed solution needs to account for this difference.

While one may appeal to Ps.110:1 "two Lords," Gentiles would immedaitely notice the religous similarity of Theos Pater (1 Cor. 8:6) and Zeus Pater.

W.Bousset concluded that "Jesus is Lord" found its origin in the mystery cults of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria.

Jesus, the new God, was Lord under God the Father in the same way that that the newer mystery gods such Dea Syria, Atargatis, and Dionysos Dusares were Lords under Zeus Pater. Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos (or via: amazon.co.uk). Boussett indicated that the few instances of Kyrios in the Gospels (aside from expression of direct address meaning merely "Master") are explained as anachronistic reflections of later usage.

Jake