GakuseiDon

IMHO we should note that Wright writes "1 John 3", not "1 John 3:2", and "Col 3", not "Col 3:4":

Looking at the full quote from Wright's article: Wright is contrasting Jesus "coming back to earth and then taking us home to heaven" (and wouldn't this "coming back" be a "re-appearance" in itself for Wright, anyway? Wright is obviously bringing up a point beyond Jesus just returning) with Jesus coming back and staying. Wright's whole article is about our final destination and how it was viewed by early Christians. I don't know why Steve continually takes these things out of context. He has raised a reasonable point about whether say Col 3 supports "re-appearance" as a viable translation (I think it certainly does, in context -- if any mythicists want to go the usual 10 rounds, we can look for evidence that it supports a "sublunar" fleshly death instead of a death on earth), but the thread title and lack of analysis in the OP can only be to deceive.

Not new age at all. The cosmos was divided into the permanent/incorruptible and the temporary/corruptible. Jesus's returning (or coming, if you will) will result in the destruction of the temporary. Heaven, earth and hell will be reshaped and "fixed" into a new creation. Jesus won't be taking us back to heaven, he will remain with us, in a New Creation, where our bodies will be incorruptible and matter itself will be transformed into spiritual perfection.

Can you show me where Wright refers to "phanerow" at all, Earl? As I said, Steve is quite right to raise the question of whether "re-appearing" is supportable. But Wright isn't saying anywhere that he is getting it from "phaneroo". I'm afraid you've been "suckered" in by Steve's disengenious OP, Earl. Questions about Wright's ability to use Greek words are premature IMHO.

Doug Shaver

Where in Colossians is the clear sense that Christ has already been here?

Steven Carr

Deceptive?

Doherty has stated that the epistles never speak of a reappearance.

I linked to an article by a leading New Testament scholar and renowned translator of Greek who stated that 2 epistles ‘put it’ as reappear.

Many people might have thought that the Greek word for ‘re-appear’ actually occurred in the text when a renowned Greek scholar claimed that the texts ‘put it’ as ‘reappear’. They would have been deceived.

I could have put it differently perhaps. But if the Greek texts really had put it as ‘reappear’, as Wright claimed they did, how else could I have put it except as a refutation of Doherty?

Of course, Doherty simply trounced Wright’s claims – a task made even easier by Wright’s lack of justification for his announcements of what the texts say.

GakuseiDon

Why does it have to be clearly expressed in Colossians? Where does it clearly say that he came earlier in a sublunar realm? I'm not trying to be flippant. Whenever historicists try to use other texts to justify a passage, they are accused of "reading things into the text". Yet mythicists seem to feel that they can interpret passages by referring to AoI or others without "reading things into the text". There is a double-standard here.

Wright's article is about early Christian beliefs regarding their ultimate destination. He is highlighting the difference between Christ re-appearing and taking people to heaven, and Christ re-appearing and staying. Of course, Wright is assuming that Christ has already been on earth. In a debate about whether Christ was ever on earth at all, that wouldn't fly, and for good reason. But Wright's article isn't about that. He gets "re-appearing" from the context of that whole passage, and even then he means "re-appearing and **staying**". He isn't interpreting a particular word. While it is reasonable for Steve to point out the problem with the word "re-appear", at a certain point ignoring Wright's intent in his article starts to become a strawman.

gstafleu

Exactly, and that is the whole issue. From a Christian point of view this is no problem, from a scholarly POV it is. So what has been shown here is that Wright's publications should be read as expressing Christian ideas, not scholarly ones. (Which, BTW, automatically means that his publications can never refute Doherty's theses, at least not without a thorough going-through to establish that what he says also works in the world of scholarship).

Gerard Stafleu

Steven Carr

Where does Colossians 'put it' that Jesus will REappear?


There is a Greek word for appear and , presumably, a Greek word for reappear.

Is it a double standard to say that when somebody claims that a text puts it as 're-appear' , the Greek word actually means 'appear'?

How does claiming that Colossians and 1 John 3 'put it' as 're-appear' *justifying* a passage? It is Wright's claims which need to be justified, not the Biblical text.

Ben C Smith

No, that is the main issue. But a subsidiary issue, one which several have been skirting on this thread, is the question of to whom or for whom Wright was writing.

I do not think anybody who has posted on this thread would disagree. This is, again, the main point, but not the only point.

His publications? In general? That may be so, but can you really extrapolate it from one mini-publication written for a popularizing column called On Faith?

If anybody missed that Wright was explicitly writing from a Christian perspective for Christians (or those interested in Christianity as such), that person was not reading very carefully. Would you agree?

If his publications, or at least this one, cannot (by definition) refute Doherty, what is the point of the OP?

Let me lay out one issue just as clearly as I can here. Wright, writing as a bishop about a debate internal to Christianity (about the final destination of man, whether it is heaven or earth), assumes that Jesus has appeared once already and will appear again, and it seems crystal clear that those for whom Wright is writing (the inscribed readership) would share that assumption. Carr comes along and criticizes Wright for assuming that the appearance in question is the second appearance, since the Greek word does not imply that. Two points here. First, Carr is correct to make the point that Wright has made this assumption and that it has colored his translation or paraphrase of a Greek word; fair enough. Second, however, Carr writes as if he does not even realize for whom Wright is writing in this piece, as if there is some debate between Wright and Doherty that Wright showed poorly in. That shows, IMHO, a lack of critical reading skills.

This is the same Carr who once crowed that an article by Bauckham did nothing to refute mythicism, when in that selfsame article Bauckham explicitly wrote that his dialogue partners in the debate were form critics. Bultmann (chief of form critics) assumed that Jesus existed; Bauckham assumed that Jesus existed. Yet Carr wrote as if he did not realize whom Bauckham was debating, as if there were some debate between Bauckham and mythicists that Bauckham showed poorly in. That shows, IMHO, a lack of critical reading skills.

Carr makes a lot of good points. I recall being very favorably impressed a number of years ago with his online essay about how the NT miracle stories have borrowed, indeed even been based on, the LXX. But it is his peculiar failing, again IMHO, that he does not seem to recognize implied (or inscribed) readerships. It looks to me like he simply assumes that every text was penned with him or his own set of pet issues squarely in mind, and he writes according to that assumption.

Just to make it clear what I am trying to say, this is one way of rephrasing the OP so as to explicitly account for the implied readership:

Earl Doherty maintains that the epistles in the Bible only speak of Jesus appearing, and never speak of him reappearing.

N. T. Wright, the bishop of Durham, however, in his article at http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/o...destinati.html, seems to be saying that the epistles do speak of a reappearance:

This means (by the way) that the 'second coming' is NOT Jesus 'coming back to take us home', but Jesus coming -- or 'reappearing', as 1 John 3 and Colossians 3 put it....

I realize that Wright is writing for people who would agree that Jesus has appeared a first time already, but I submit that he has let his prejudices, shared by his readers, color his translation of the Greek text at this point.

I think that Doherty, and not Wright, is correct on the matter of whether the epistles ever speak of a reappearance, and Wright should have been more careful in his translation or paraphrase.

Ben.

Gamera

In the following passages, at the very least:

Col 1: We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel 6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing. [the gospel is the story of Jesus life and death and resurrection, hence Paul is talking to people have already heard the story of Jesus as having tooled around a bit]

Col 1: For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 21 [So Jesus already died, it follows he lived]

Col 2: 12 and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 [Again, Jesus was raised from the dead, which requires that he died, which requires that he lived]

Col 3: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 [again, he's talking to people aware of Christ's resurrection, which implies death, which implies a life]

Gamera

I'm afraid this is very bad linguistics. Language isn't logical but is subject to historical changes that spread the semantic fields in all kinds of odd ways. We have all kinds of words that overlap that "shouldn't."

Thus, "flammable" and "inflammable." According to your logic. Inflammable can't mean flammable because we already have a word for flammable. It just doesn't work that way. The rule you propose -- you can't have two words whose semantic field unexpectedly overlap -- is so profoundly misguided as a linguistic proposition, that it hardly needs rebuttal.


But this is all moot. We do in fact use "appear" in English to mean reappear all the time. When Secretary of State Condi Rice appears before a Congressional hearing, they will begin the proceeding by saying "Thank you for appearing," despite the fact that she has appeared numerous times and is in fact "reappearing." So usage is usage and there is no doubt that in English the semantic field of "appear" includes to "reappear." Just review some Congressional transcripts or court transcripts. You'll find literally tens of thousands of examples. You cannot fight language usage with "logic."

But that's not the real issue. The real issue is the Greek verb, and its semantic field, which I'll turn to shortly.

EarlDoherty

Sorry, Ben, but I think it's is your 'critical skills' that are wanting here. Carr took a quote from a piece by Wright. It doesn't matter what the context was. If that quote contains a mistake, especially a blatant mistake, it doesn't matter what the context was or who he was writing for. 2+2=5 is wrong, no matter what.

Wright's statement was (and I checked it against the original, and Carr reproduced it correctly):

That last phrase is incorrect, by any standard. 1 John 3 and Colossians 3 do NOT put it that Jesus is "REappearing", regardless of what his assumptions are. Carr doesn't have to take into account the readership. Neither Wright's own assumptions nor those of his readers make his statement any less incorrect, and it can be criticized on those grounds. And it is valid for Carr or anyone else to take this statement (out of context) and suggest that it implies a refutation (even if not deliberate on Wright's part) of my stated claim.

If a speaker before the flat-earth society states that Greenland lies at the NW corner of the earth and Australia at the SE corner, is that statement somehow not to be criticized, or to be considered less mistaken because of the audience's or the speaker's own beliefs based on things that are not geographically supportable?

Wright is referring to the English meaning of a verb which in the text he quotes is the Greek phanerow. Ergo, he is tacitly referring to that verb. (Maybe that's Wright's problem; he's using his own Greek text, one which none of us have ever seen, which has different verbs!) I haven't been 'suckered' into anything. Wright's ability to translate Greek words are very much on the line. And while Wright didn't specify which verse, there are 4 or 5 different "appears" in chapter 3, all of them using phanerow, and none of them mean to "re-appear".

I rather think, Don, that it's you who have been 'suckered' in to defend Wright at any cost. Maybe it's a side-effect of having that "sublunar" fixation on the brain and is interfering with your other thought processes. I think we need to find you a good lobotomist who can remove it for you.

Earl Doherty