Jeffrey Gibson

There is no Greek word chrysm. Do you mean chrisima, -atos (which, BTW, means "unguent" which might be oil, but not necessarily[see LSJ, BDAG])?

More importantly, the Greek phrase (not word) used for the unguent in the "anointing" scene at John 12:3 is MUROU NARDOU PISTIKHS (cf v. 5. MURON), not chrisma (let alone chrysm). There is no use of chrisma in John 12:1-9 or, for that matter anywhere else in this Gospel. or anywhere in the "embalming" of Jesus body scene (cf. Mk. 14:8) in Mark 14.

And MORON (let alone MUROU NARDOU PISTIKHS) was a perfume, not an oil.

Cf BDAG --

Quote:

μύρον, ου, τό (since Archilochus [VII bc] in Athen. 15 p. 688c; Hdt.; Dit., Or. 629, 35; 45; 149; POxy. 234 II, 9; 736, 13; LXX; Jos., Bell. 4, 561, Ant. 14, 54.—Semit. loanw.: HLewy, Die semit. Fremdwörter im Griech. 1895, 42; 44) ointment, perfume (Pla., Polit 398a μύρον κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς [a proverb, according to the schol.]; Ps 132:2 μ. ἐπὶ κεφαλῆς; Jos., Ant. 19, 239τὴν κεφ.) Mt 26:12; Lk 7:38, 46; J 11:2; IEph 17:1; precious Mk 14:4f; J 12:3a, 5; strongly aromatic (Philo, Sacr. Abel. 21, end) vs. 3b; kept in alabaster flasks (cf. Dit., Or. 736, 35[?]) Mt 26:7; Mk 14:3; Lk 7:37 (JDMDerrett, Law in the NT, ’70, 266-85). W. other articles of trade Rv 18:13, Dssm., ThBl 1, ’22, 13; D 10:3 v.l., Funk-B. p. XIX l. 5. Pl. (w. ἀρώματα as Plut., Alex. 20, 13; SSol 1:3) Lk 23:56 (for embalming a body; cf. POxy. 736, 13; Artem. 1, 5). M-M.*

So is perfume.

No it was not. And this is clear -- to any clear headed person -- not only from MURON, but from what Mark desrcibes the MURON as being contained in an ALALBASTRON.

And as R.T. France notes, " ἡ ἀλάβαστρος (often neuter: see BDF 49[1] for the variations in form and gender) denotes a perfume vase."

What sources are you using to say that the Greek word in John and in Mark is "chrysm" and that the unguent described in Jn 12:3 and Mk 14:3 was oil?

Jeffrey

Magdlyn

Thanks for the feedback. Perhaps you can tell us if chrisim is used in any of the snyoptic annointing scenes.

If MUROU was Greek for "perfume," why is is translated ointment? Per fume (for smoke) means incense. I suggest the Greek word you are translating as perfume actually means oil mixed with fragrant substance.

Unguent is a synonym for ointment. Herbs and other aromatics were suspended in oil (what we would call an essential oil) and/or combining oil with beeswax to make salves or ointments.

If you were pouring a "perfume" over someone's head in the 1st cent CE, you were pouring an oil that had been mixed with a herbal substance.

History of perfume

Magdlyn

Mar 6:13 And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them.
Mar 14:8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burying.
Luk 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
Luk 7:38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
Luk 7:46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.
Jhn 9:6 As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man's eyes with the clay,
Jhn 9:11 He answered, "The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Silo'am and wash'; so I went and washed and received my sight."
Jhn 11:2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Laz'arus was ill.
Jhn 12:3 Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.


What is the Greek here, for example?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Note this review by James E.G. Zetzel of Wiseman. Zetzel is a Professor of Classics at Columbia University.

James E. G. Zetzel Reviewed Work(s): Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal by T. P. Wiseman Classical Philology > Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 80-84.

Zetzel says that Wiseman is almost certainly right that Laureolus was written by the poet Catullus. So we now have at least two scholars in the field of classics who support the idea that the Catullus who wrote poem circa 50 B.C.E. is the Catullus who wrote the mime play Laureolus. Why is this important? It means that we have a mime play about a crucified bandit leader in circulation not from (at the latest) 41 C.E., (when the play was performed in Rome on the day of the assassination of Gaius) but from circa 50 B.C.E.. This makes it much more likely to have circulated in Judea in the first half of the First century C.E..

How could it have circulated?


Lawrence Wellborn gives us more suggestions of how mime could have found its way into Jewish consciousness:

Quote:

The apostle Paul would have had many opportunities for contact with the mime and its fools. Apuleius attests in Met. 10.29 what scholars should otherwise have surmised: that the mime was performed in the theater of Corinth, presumably in the orchestra, while the stage was being set for a new play.(FN91) It would not, however, have been necessary for Paul to visit the theater to encounter the mime. Mimes were frequently presented as entertainment at banquets in private houses.(FN92) Xenophon describes the performance of a mime representing the love of Dionysos and Ariadne, given at a private banquet by a boy and girl, the property of a Syracusan dancing master.(FN93) As wealth accumulated in the late Republic and the early Empire, it became the custom for well-to-do Romans to include mime actors on their household staffs.(FN94) Augustus himself employed mime actors as entertainment at his private banquets.(FN95) The "Room of the Masks" in the house of Augustus on the Palatine hill depicts a brightly colored wooden structure thought to be a temporary comic stage.(FN96) The tastes of the emperor were widely imitated. The parvenu Trimalchio in Petronius's Satyricon confesses over dinner that although he employs a troupe of comic actors, he in fact prefers them to perform Atellan farces.(FN97) Pliny the Younger acknowledges that although he prefers to amuse himself and his guests with the more refined art of poets, musicians, and comedians, many others favor at dinner the antics and coarse humor of clowns and buffoons from the mime.(FN98) It is even more likely that Paul observed the mime in the streets and marketplaces of the city, where plays were regularly enacted on a hastily erected stage.(FN99) Small companies of players traveled from town to town giving their shows wherever an audience could gather.(FN100) Cicero refers to extempore performances by mime troupes of improbable themes like "The Beggar Turns Millionaire."(FN101) The staging requirements of such troupes were minimal. A rough platform served to raise the actors above the heads of the crowd. For scenery, a portable curtain (siparium) hung from columns or posts was sufficient.(FN102) The actors were concealed behind the curtain until their turn came; then, parting the curtain in the middle, they stepped into view.(FN103) While the mimes performed, a colleague might be collecting coins from the spectators, as one sees in a Roman wall painting.(FN104) It is impossible that Paul would not have encountered the mimes in the marketplaces of Roman cities, where they performed during the day, and where they slept at night upon mats and pallets in booths that they shared with conjurers, dancers, and the like.(FN105) Indeed, it is possible that Paul had already become familiar with the mime in the East, even before the beginning of his mission in Greece. The mime song written on a temple door in Marissa (between Jerusalem and Gaza) in the second century BCE(FN106) tends to confirm the statement of Athenaios that all Phoenicia was full of such songs.(FN107) It is also likely that Paul encountered the mime in literary form during the course of his education. The mimes of Sophron, for example, were widely read and greatly admired.(FN108) The surviving titles and fragments indicate an interest in character and realistic situations.(FN109) Books of his mimes were introduced to Athens by none other than Plato,(FN110) who read them avidly and alludes to them.(FN111) According to Diogenes Laertius, it was evidently from Sophron that Plato learned the art of character drawing employed in his dialogues. A copy of Sophron's mimes was reportedly found under Plato's pillow on his deathbed.(FN112) Theocritus adapted one of Sophron's mimes in his second idyll, "The Spell."(FN113) An influential commentary on the mimes of Sophron was composed by Apollodoros of Athens in the second century BCE.(FN114) According to Statius,(FN115) the mimes of Sophron were still being read in the schools in the first century CE. One of Sophron's fools, a {Begin Greek}Bonl{End Greek}´{Begin Greek}ia$ rhtore{End Greek}´{Begin Greek}nqu ({End Greek}Boulias the orator), is mentioned as an example by Demetrius.(FN116) The case of Sophron illustrates what made the mimes so attractive to the ancient audience: they portrayed the rich variety of everyday life--its situations, characters, and manners--with such realism and frankness that spectators of all classes recognized themselves and their contemporaries.(FN117) Thus Augustus, on his deathbed, is reported to have asked his friends whether he had played his part well in "the mime of life."(FN118) The mime significantly influenced the style and content of other literary genres: comedy and satire, naturally, but also elegy, philosophical dialogues, and the novel.(FN119) From these sources, as well, Paul may have derived his image of the fool. The comedies of Plautus and his successors contain much jesting and buffoonery of a kind that can scarcely have been found in the literary originals of Greek New Comedy, but that was characteristic of Atellan farces and of the mime.(FN120) Plautus's "braggart warrior" (miles gloriosus) can be traced back to a character in Greek mime of the earliest period.(FN121) Lucilius composed verse satires that blended elements of comedy, diatribe, and the mime; the first book of his satires contains an attack upon Lentulus Lupus, princeps senatus in 131 BCE, whom he portrays as a monstrous fool.(FN122) In his splenetic Apocolocyntosis, Seneca's satire of the dead emperor Claudius as a fool, is likewise influenced by the mime.

Laurence L. Welborn, The Runaway Paul, Harvard Theological Review 92 no2 115-63 Ap '99

While my hypothesis for a mimic origin for the gospels does not depend on the fact that the poet Catullus wrote Laureolus, I think it is a significant probability to keep in mind as the probable background for the gospels' production.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

The opening on Broadway of Mel Brook's farcical play Young Frankenstein gives us something to consider that I think is relevant to the hypothesis that the gospels began as a narrative from a mime play.

When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1817, she was writing an entertaining, but serious novel. When one reads the novel, one finds that there are no jokes and few scenes of horror in it; instead, one finds a deeply depressing meditation on criminality and social labeling. The monster becomes a monster because it has been labeled a monster by its creator. Was this Mary expressing her feelings towards her own father and society? Very possibly. In any case, it was meant as a most serious and even philosophical work. Now 190 years later, the narrative, having undergone numerous changes, arrives on Broadway as a play, but not a serious play, rather a musical farce -- the modern equivalent to the mime play. (It is interesting that Brooks once made a movie called "Silent Movie" which has virtually no dialogue, almost a pantomime).

If the narrative of a serious work of literature could transform into a play of low comedy, could not a play of low comedy have transformed into a work of serious literature?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Jeffrey Gibson

Are we reading the same text. Zetzel says no such thing as you claim he does! In fact, as I've already noted (and you apparently [conveniently] missed] Zeztel expressly says that "... the larger argument that W. sets out concerning Catullus the mimographer is neither convincing nor consistent in itself" and "In the interest of turning Catullus into a man of the theater, however, W. pushes his evidence further than it can go.

What Zeztel here says that Weisman is correct about is his claim about mime being a serious literary form in the late republic.

[But check this out with Zeztel himself. He's contactable at zetzel at columbia.edu]

<edit>

Where on earth does Zetzel say that he thinks the Laureolus was written circa 50 B.C.E? For that matter, where does Weisman?

No, nor have I ever said it does. But it does depend on the validity of the claim that crucifixions (and "resurrections") were a stock theme in mimes written in the first half of the first century BCE and before. And on this, you have not produced one bit of evidence.

Jeffrey

mountainman

I dont know, and I dont have your extensive
reading Jeffrey, but I could make one plain
and simple observation on this specific issue.

We are looking at what we hope are 1st/2nd century
authors, writing about 1st/2nd century issues. We
have no evidence the christianity really effected
anything at all in the first few centuries. There
was a far more profound and ancient hegemon.

Perhaps everyone is looking at things though
"christian-tainted glasses". The word
"resurrections" may not have been a stock
theme, however whatever the greek equivalent
was to the word "transmigrations" would have,
since we know the Pythagorean school preserved
this notion from antiquity.

Many stories (and presumably therefore) mimes
concerned themselves with the "after-life", and
many ancient traditions revered and recorded the
notion of "transmigration" and/or "reincarnation".

I may be wrong, but it appears to me that these
terms "transmigration" and/or "reincarnation" are
entirely conflatable with more recently forged term
"resurrection", whether in a specific (ie: JC) or in
any general (ie: anyone) sense.

Are you able to answer this question Jeffrey: in
the greek language, does there exist any differentiation
between the three concepts "transmigration" ,
"reincarnation" and "resurrection", and was
the (Greek) term associated with "transmigration"
in any predominant use?



Best wishes


Pete Brown

Jeffrey Gibson

The question isn't whether it could, it's whether in the ancient world it did -- and not within a timespan of almost two centuries, and in very different "worlds" (Georgian England/Post Regan America), but within the same "world" within a time span of approx. 20 years. And this can only be shown by appeal to actual evidence of such transformations. Otherwise, it's just a supposition, grounded in an cultural anachronisms. And a supposition, especially one of this sort, is a poor base upon which to erect a historical reconstruction, let alone to claim that that reconstruction is "likely".

You claim the be well familiar with ancient literature and literary forms (note the implicit claim about this in your assertions about what the passion stories are most like vis a vis form and genre), so I trust you know the answer to this already. Perhaps you could show us -- by providing us with actual evidence from ancient literature -- that there were such transformations?

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Sorry, no. And sadly again you seem to be using sources that are unreliable both "definitionally" and etymologically, and which indulge themselves the etymological fallacy, saying that what a word means in a given context is always what it "originally" meant.

Here's the OED entry for the English word "perfume" (without the historical citations):

Perfume, n. < Middle French, French parfum, {dag}perfum natural or artificial pleasant odour (1528-5), (emanating) odour in general (1546-5) < parfumer PERFUME v. Cf. Old Occitan, Occitan perfum (1397-5), Catalan perfum (1399-5 or earlier), Spanish perfume (1471-5 or earlier; earlier as {dag}perfum (1380-5 or earlier), {dag}perfumo (1396-83 or earlier)), Portuguese perfume (1552-83), Italian perfumo (a1468-83, now regional (northern); also as profumo (1461-83); both earliest in sense 2; not paralleled in senses 1b and 1c until 19th cent.). Cf. PERFUME v.

1. {dag}a. The (esp. pleasant-smelling) vapour or fumes given off by the burning of a substance; such fumes inhaled as a medical treatment or used to fumigate a house, room, etc. Obs.
b. The fragrance or odour emitted by any (usually pleasant-smelling) substance or thing; a fragrance.
c. fig. An odour, savour, air, or suggestion (of something).
2. Originally: a substance which emits a pleasant smell when burned; incense. Later usually: a fragrant liquid, usually consisting of aromatic ingredients (natural or synthetic) in a base of alcohol, used to impart a pleasant smell to the body, clothes, etc.

And as to its etymology, the "per" in "perfume" is not "for". It is derived from the Latin prposition "per" which meant (in Clasical Latin) "through, by, by means of", and was used in post-classical Latin also in a distributive sense, ‘for every..., for each...’ See the OED entry on PER.

And "fume" here (derived OF. fum masc., which itself seems to have been derived from Pr. fum, Sp. humo (earlier fumo), Pg., It. fumo) means "pleasant odor".

Suggest away. But MUROS is a particular type of an aromatic, derived from an aromatic gum, which was used in medicine, ritual, perfumery, and tanning as early as the 19th cent. B.C.E.) and when it is used as it is in Jn. 12:3 and Mk. 14:3, i.e., with a limiting phrase like NARDOU PISTIKHS (which is not Spikenard ands the KJV translators thought -- see A. N. Jannaris "ΝΑΡΔΟΣ �*ΙΣΤΙΚΗ or 'SPIKENARD'", The Classical Review, Vol. 16, No. 9. (Dec., 1902), pp. 459-460; Wilfred H. Schoff, "Nard," Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 43. (1923), pp. 216-228; or any modern critical commentary on John or Mark, as well as Pliny, Natural History) it does not have the meaning you thing it does.

Nice equivocation and unjustified transfer of meanings!

Is this true of NARDOS?

And this wonderful internet source is ... wait for it!.. that hotbed of scholarship and knowledge of the ancient world ... an online discount perfume site! I just LOVE its citation of sources!

Moreover, aren't you assuming that the "Greeks" mentioned here are those of the Roman period?

In any case, I find this in the Encyclopedia Britannica (which I think you'll agree is a teensy bit more authoritative than Perfumes.com):

Raw materials used in perfumery include natural products, of plant or animal origin, and synthetic materials. Essential oils (q.v.) are most often obtained from plant materials by steam distillation. Certain delicate oils may be obtained by solvent extraction, a process also employed to extract waxes and perfume oil, yielding—by removal of the solvent—a solid substance called a concrete. Treatment of the concrete with a second substance, usually alcohol, leaves the waxes undissolved and provides the concentrated flower oil called an absolute. In the extraction method called enfleurage, petals are placed between layers of purified animal fat, which become saturated with flower oil, and alcohol is then used to obtain the absolute. The expression method, used to recover citrus oils from fruit peels, ranges from a traditional procedure of pressing with sponges to mechanical maceration. Individual compounds used in perfumery may be isolated from the essential oils, usually by distillation, and may sometimes be reprocessed to obtain still other perfumery chemicals.

And as to the truth of your/your "source's" claim about perfume production in antiquity, you would do well to consult Jean-Pierre Brun, "The Production of Perfumes in Antiquity: The Cases of Delos and Paestum," American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 104, No. 2. (Apr., 2000), pp. 277-308.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

A dangerous thing to do after such an admission!

How many is many? And could you name them please?

You are wrong.

Most assuredly so. Have a look at the evidence set out in any commentary on Acts 17:161-20 where we find a presentation (accurate culturally and philosophically, if not historically) of those who believe in, or know about the idea of reincarnation and transmigration either having no idea of what "resurrection" is or finding the concept exceptionally repugnant and irrational.

Look at the data gathered on Greek views of the afterlife vs Jewish views in Tom Wright's Resurrection of the Son of God (with an abundance of citations of primary sources and secondary discussions of them), Neil Gillman's The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought, G.W. Nicklesburg's Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism, Alan Segal's Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion, Jan Bremmer's The Early Greek Concept of the Soul and his "Soul: Greek and Hellenistic Concepts," vol. 13 in The Encyclopedia of Religion, among dozens of other sources.

Jeffrey