Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

No Spin, I ignored nuttin.
No, it seems more logically to refer to the effort to

"explain who the Jews originally were"

-- which ultimately was Antiquities.
And it would be necessary for Antiquities to have ..

"a (separate) beginning of its own, and its own conclusion"

This is the simple and clean understanding, he could not shoe-horn
Antiquities into wars.

Cause it was too big a job to do while he was working on "Wars".
Wars was a big enough enterprise.
In fact Josephus didn't finish Aniquities for almost two decades.

====

Since he could read the Hebrew of Tanach directly, and was writing
a more general paraphrased history in Greek, using other sources as
well, why would Josephus spend yeoman efforts to translate from
one language he knew well to another language with which he
struggled. He didn't need a Greek translation anyway.

Honestly, I think we are simply at an impasse. Your view makes no
sense to me, and seems to be only a mistaken grammar-vocabulary
parsing that you are using to support some position or another.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Hi Notsri,

While Philo, being in Alexandria, and Hellenist, would be expected
to be oriented to a Greek OT there is a lot of uncertainty involved.

Some simple things ..

Philo was Penteteuch oriented (over 90%).
How to interpret that can vary, in terms of source texts.

It is very difficult to line up quotes of Philo with specific Greek
OT texts against the Hebrew Bible. Not only the ancient fragments
and scrolls but even the 4th and 5th century Greek OT manuscripts.

It would be helpful (and rather easy) to see how Philo lines up on Genesis chronology number issues. Last I looked at that was years ago and remembrance is slim. This is the type of simple data that may be too clear and simple and straightforward to make it into the scholarly papers.

Also there is a case for Philo simply being Hebrew-fluent.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl..._17379714/pg_8
Philo and midrash - Judaism, Spring, 1995 by Naomi G. Cohen

Probably the most recent and extensive brief for Philo's use of Hebrew sources for his etymologies, is Hava Schur's recent doctorate entitled Hebrew Names in Philo's Allegorical Exegeses, (Heb.) (Tel-Aviv: 1991). Schur not only recognizes the existence of a midrashic tradition in Philo's day with which he was familiar, but goes so far as to consider Philo's Hebrew etymologies to be proof of his knowledge of Hebrew.

Then you can try to go to the actual analysis of Philo texts.
However they are done in a way that makes it hard to simply
compare the places where he is using one text against another.
Clearly he seems to frequently align with the MT, looking at
one analysis we have available -

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/courses/999/RYLE1.htm
PHILO AND HOLY SCRIPTURE OR THE QUOTATIONS OF PHILO FROM THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
"the Philonic text of the Greek bible agrees with the following MSS of the LXX thus -- with A, 24 times; E 18, D 14, F 2, G 1; a 10, b 1, c 20, m 17, r 10, t 18, y 3, z 32;
Other variations of reading to be found in Philo's writings may be explained from the Hebrew text [about 75 instances listed].
Traces of a different Hebrew text [22 examples]

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

spin

Yup, that's why I asked for outside opinion.

Steven Avery

Brought over from the "Does Matthew Say Its a Virgin Birth" thread

However, you showed absolutely no other person than yourself who claimed that the Prologue showed that Josephus took time to translate the history Tanach books. So who are these "other people" e.g. Thackeray says no such thing.

Not even your forum skeptic backers came out to back you up on this one.

And where do they agree with your strange parsing of "it" as referring to "Wars" rather than "Antiquities". To any simple reading you just buried yourself in a very difficult and confused interpretation.

"but because this work would take up a great compass,
I separated it into a set treatise by itself"

You actually claim that "this work" is Antiquities, and "it" is Jewish Wars. Amazing. Worse, you pile a whole theory of translation upon this. So who else agrees with this ? Names ? Quotes ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

spin

As you insist on this kermess...

I cannot help that you are pronoun handicapped.

You are as confused as always. "this work" is his initial conception of a mega-war book, ie the war with full-background. He states his focus when he says,

I did formerly intend, when I wrote of the war, to explain who the Jews originally were... till they were unwillingly engaged in this last [umm, war] with the Romans

His intention when he wrote of the war

Yup. A-m-a-z-i-n-g. He talks about writing the war, refers to it as "this work" and uses a pronoun "it". :banghead:

Umm, Praxeus, what I said was that the only way you (or perhaps me for that matter) are going to come to (y)our senses on the issue is through other people giving their opinions, because both of us think we are right. That's why I asked for other people's comments. Do you understand this yet or do you want to keep dancing?

Why not take a camomile tea and get someone you trust to read it independently?


spin

Steven Avery

Josephus - Antiquities Prologue
"but because this work would take up a great compass,
I separated it into a set treatise by itself"

Oh, meanwhile I looked at Thackeray and he gives zilch support to your idea that the reason for the Antiquities delay had anything to do with translating the Tanach history books. (The background issue.)

As for the pronoun, as I said, we are at an impasse, agreed.
And I already had some orange and bergamot chilled green tea this morning.

Anybody here who wants to read the Prologue and comment on
the section with the quote above is welcome to do so.

However, we noticed on the recent 'LXX-Carrier'" thread the reluctance of one skeptic to acknowledge problems with the thinking of another skeptic who is acting as an inhouse-scholar on an issue (when the problem was brought out by a believer).

Hmmm.. I do notice that you have softened the tone a bit.

"(or perhaps me for that matter)"
"(y)our"

That is appreciated and I will take as an indication that you ponder the
potential priority of pronoun proximity placement probabalistically.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

jgibson000

What's with these labels of "skeptic" and "believer"? What purpose do they serve? What are the "skeptics" skeptical about? And what does one have to believe in in order to qualify as a "believer"? What is your criteria for saying who is who?

In addition, whot are the particular people you are naming as "skeptic 1" and "skeptic 2" and "believer"?

JG

Steven Avery

"the reluctance of one skeptic to acknowledge problems with the thinking of another skeptic who is acting as an inhouse-scholar"

We had about three skeptic posters who were offering up a variety of potential covers, some sort of explanation for the Carrier mishegas on his original article. Diogenes, Wallach and Toto were posting in that way. Jake and Dave Hindley at least posted real scholarship attempts without saying that they would moderate the problem in Richard's article. Even though it was clear that Richard was outside the bounds of scholarship understandings with his three first-century versions available to Matthew. (Ironically, this is in an article supposedly meant to correct unsound methodology.)

So "one skeptic" is a class and in that case "another skeptic" was Richard Carrier.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

jgibson000

I note you didn't answer my question on who the "believer" you mentioned was and why being a "believer" as opposed to a "skeptic" was significant in the matter under discussion.

More importantly, I'm still trying to get a handle on what you mean by "skeptic" and how you determine who is and who is not one.

Presumably, by "skeptic" you mean "non believer", since you set "skeptic" in contradistinction with "believer". And by believer you presumably mean "one who accepts your brand of Christian belief" which entails professing the doctrines of inerrancy, trinitarianism, the virgin birth, penal substitutionary atonement, and the KJV only position.

Am I correct?

Jeffrey Gibson

spin

One cannot divine any content in this sentence except for the fact that you read Thackeray's translation and perhaps had the same reading difficulty you've already evinced. Perhaps it would be worthwhile expressing what you might have wanted to say more clearly, ie put some evidence in sight.

Thanks for your contribution.

It's nice to see you try to pacify your wounded ego this way. Keep it up.

You simply didn't get the drift of my original appeal for other opinions:

I would ask any reader, not just Praxeus, who disagrees with my understanding of Josephus, immediately above, to please explain where you consider I've gone wrong. Thanks.

I think you have made a facile reading of the text ignoring all the cues available and therefore are clueless of the significance of the text, but I could be wrong. Hence I ask for other views in that off chance.


spin