Steven Carr

DOHERTY
In the epistles, Christ's anticipated Coming at the End-time is never spoken of as a "return" or second Coming.

PAULA FREDRIKSEN
P.F.: But that's what the word "parousia" means.

DOHERTY
E.D.: This is an outright case of begging the question. Surely Dr. Fredriksen knows that the Greek word "parousia" does not imply return or second coming. It is the act of putting in an appearance, a coming, arrival, advent, often of a high-ranking person.

WRIGHT quoted in

http://www.preteristarchive.com/Stud...stminster.html

'The word 'parousia' is itself misleading, anyway, since it merely means 'presence'; Paul can use it of his being present with a church, and nobody supposes that he imagined he would make his appearance flying downward on a cloud..

CARR
So does parousia merely mean prescence as Doherty and Wright maintain? Or was Fredriksen right?

Steven Carr

Is it possible to discuss what Paula F. wrote (or said) as comments, as quoted in the URL?

Toto

I am locking this thread to split out all of the off topic material. Hold on.

Toto

The thread is now open again. Any post that does not deal with what Dr. Frederiksen wrote will be dealt with harshly.

Thank you.

rlogan

Thanks to the nifty on-line translator

here

the meaning is: attendance, presence

So Steven, this brings about the larger question, and a critical one at that - how extensive is the corruption of HJ literature by things such as these. My goodness, such a key word right here!

Wouldn't it be interesting to see a NT translation produced by a skeptic as a counterbalance to the existing ones?

Toto

I believe that Robert Price is working on a translation. It should be interesting.

Toto

Any comment on Layman's article should be posted here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=70678

Any further comment on that article in this thread that does not mention Dr. Fredriksen will be DELETED.

Thank you

Toto
mod BCH

Ted Hoffman

The article reveals how sharp and commanding Doherty is in this field. I was delightfully astonished by the following exchange:

Doherty : Spiritual beliefs are stated about this divine Christ and Son of God. Paul believes in a Son of God, not that anyone was the Son of God.

P.F.: I don't understand this sentence.

Maybe we need a mythicist glossary . NT Scholars got a lot to learn. Doherty's exegesis of the writings of the apostolic fathers (Shepherd, 1 Clement, Ignatius and Barnabas) were an excellent resource as far as the son is concerned.

Look at how Doherty handles the relic-consciousness argument: brilliant.

Vinnie

His response was not brilliant. He ignored an over-obvious implication of the late relic-ing on the part of Christians which Fredriken may have picked up on.

This was established by the end of the first century and no later than the early second (and that is being very nice!). The large number of Gospels extant by this time (extra and intracanonical ones) proves such a case. The four fold Gospel canon was established in the second century! Harmonizations of Matthew and Luke were done before the middle of the second century (a la Justin's citations) and all the Gospels by the end. All sorts of people were tracing their existence back to authority figures from Jesus' life.

If relic-ing doesn't start popping up until 100 to 200 years after an HJ was normative it cast a lot of doubt on Dohery's argument. Looks like given the silence between the periods he has a non-argument.

By his own admission, surely the lack of such a thing is inexplicable! Doherty has to demonstrate that all Christianity of the second and third century was different from Christianity of the fourth century relic-ers. Or that we have more texts in the first century and early second from potential relic-ers than we do in the late second through the third century. I would think the opposite is true but I could be wrong.

His case (which is built from silence) rests upon this and it is something he CANNOT demonstrate.

Vinnie

Ted Hoffman

Relic consciousness starts later because a HJ was constructed later. In the 1st century, what was known was christ Logos. There is nothing more to add to that.