spin

Argument based on another assumption. Most people want to make Paul confused because he uses "lord" in two distinct ways. I have argued that the few cases where the term kurios, as an absolute form rather than as an epithet, is clearly used for Jesus are in disturbed texts. (To explain, when the term kurios is used with a qualification ["my lord" or lord of something] or as a part of a reference to an entity ["peter potter the lord"], it is not an absolute form of the term.)

Paul's LXX had kurios for YHWH, so it would follow that if he used the term, it should refer to YHWH. But people have been caught in the trinitarian trap for so long, they turn a blind eye to the overuse of kurios in the Pauline letters.

There are actually very few exemplars where kurios means Jesus:

1. 1 Cor 2:8b. (Yet look at 1 Cor 2:16 which contrasts Jesus with kurios.)
2. 1 Cor 6:14, and the large interpolation
3. 1 Cor 11:23-27

Oooh, look, all in 1 Corinthians.

Wrong!

Ummm, a James is given as a brother. Another brother is Joseph, so perhaps he's the writer, Josephus. Oh, please, let's have some evidence and not flittering.

But Paul has already referred to the brethren, 500 of which he says Jesus appeared to. It is Paul's custom to refer to believers as "brethren". Besides, Jesus in Mark, when confronted with his family says to, and referring to, his disciples, "behold my mother and my brethren".

Not specifically. Brethren, yes, I guess so, but "brother(s) of the lord" is used a few times and needs further investigation.

This is false. I have pointed people to the Hebrew name Ahijah, which means my brother is Yah, yet we know that that is certainly not transparent. Our term "brother of the lord" is a translation and so cannot be seen as transparent either.

Based on a false premise. A brother of god may simply be a means of referring to a member of a community of brethren who believe in god in some shared way.

This is merely an argument from silence. You know that there were many gospels in circulation at the time of Paul. What were they and promulgated them??

As I pointed out I don't necessarily see that "brothers of the lord" is as generic as you are trying to make for your strawman version.

(Sorry, but try "Galatians", as in Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, etc.)

You are one of an elite group of mindreaders, TedM. The rest of us don't know what Paul knew or why he necessarily said what he did except from what he says.

Which other Jameses does Paul mention?

Perhaps Cephas didn't belong to the same group as our James, about whom you know little other than what Paul tells you.

Another false premise, right?

Naaa, you've just given centuries of unanalysed apologetic.


spin

Ben C Smith

Dare I ask about 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17, keeping 3.13 firmly in mind?

Ben.

spin

I take it that the coming of the lord is the Hebrew bible day of the lord (cf. 2 Peter 3:12). Jesus, as the lord's messiah, will consequently be coming on that day as well.

Note the later scribal attempt in 2 Thes 2:8 to inject Jesus into a similar context to clarify the newer theology, despite the Hebrew bible background and imagery, eg regarding slaying with the mouth, Isa 11:4.

What do you think of the notion of a writer using a term which has, say, two references and he never allows you to know which is being referred to? Paul undisputedly uses kurios for YHWH in many of his unmarked references from the Hebrew bible. I think this is a linguistic conundrum which one needs to resolve before one proposes that Paul uses o kurios to refer to Jesus.


spin

Ben C Smith

1 Thessalonians 3.13:

...so that he may establish your hearts without blame in holiness before our God and father at the advent of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

1 Thessalonians 4.15-16:

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the advent of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

I know there is nothing I can say about these passages that you do not know already; I just think they speak for themselves.

Par for the course.

I think when he is quoting from or alluding to the LXX the term almost always applies to Yahweh.

I think when he is writing freely the term usually applies to Jesus, sometimes to Yahweh.

Same thing happens in the Didache. Sometimes the title Lord is clearly referring to the father, sometimes clearly to the son; the rest of the time it is pretty ambiguous.

Ben.

spin

The linguistics is not rocket science. You use a term that will communicate to your readership, otherwise no-one will understand you.

You need to go a step further here. He doesn't indicate that he is citing biblical passages. The ancient reader would not pick up the difference that you in hindsight can. I don't think you are dealing with the problem caused by the supposed bivalent reference at all.

Given that you don't seem to want to contemplate the significance of using terms that have two different meanings without being able to show the specific meaning at any given instance, I can understand why you say this.

It would be better to deal with Pauline texts from the context of the Pauline corpus rather than relate it to texts that you cannot show has any relevance to the issue.


spin

Malachi151

Spin, did you get my e-mail? I feel that debating the meaning of a piece of text that is definitely problematic and not unlikely to be interpolated is a bit of a misguided effort. I see no reason to defend this reading or to make any arguments about it because its so suspect in the first place.

Ben C Smith

Although I have no intention of going into it right now, I think it can be shown that the Didache is quite pertinent to the Pauline epistles; there is a connection of some kind between the two.

But it goes beyond the Didache. Early Christians called Jesus the Lord. That is all there is to it. Luke did it very frequently. Matthew and Mark did it once or twice. The Didache did it. Paul did it.

Ben.

spin

On Kilpatrick, why do all exemplars of the Galatians material feature Peter in 2:7-8? Alef, B, C, and 33 each have Cephas in all the other Galatians references.

If you examine gospel material which used Mark as a source and added what is usually called Q material, you'll often find unique material inserted (or interpolated) into the Q material, so that you have insertions in insertions. (Just compare Matt's and Luke's usage of the material they share against Mark.)

Kilpatrick explains his insertion as material which Paul incorporated into his letter, well, fine. He may be right, though I'm not convinced about his methodology. I'd like to know if someone can pick a bunch of any phrases and show that they are rare, which would lead to a so-what for Kilpatrick's general approach, though he may be right.

It wouldn't change the analysis which says that 2:7-8 is an interpolation. The fact that Alef, B, C, and 33 all have Cephas except for those verses, suggests that it was an across the board interpolation after the divergence of the text families, pointing to a different time from that of the insertion advocated by Kilpatrick.

Now the reference to James the brother of the lord may in fact be secondary, but then so may be almost anything one lands upon. Remember that the usually small changes seen in the manuscript tradition are the tip of an iceberg whose real size is only vaguely hinted at by the changes wrought at the hands of those who transmogrified Mark to form Matthew and Luke. But we can only work with what we have and what we can make from it. Most things we do in this field are provisional.


spin

spin

OK, Ben, so you can't make any meaningful connection between the two. I can accept that. Slurring won't help.


spin

Malachi151

But his argument was about Galatians 1:13 - 2:14 as a whole, which just happens to include all three James references, which he didn't make any particular note of, but the section that he highlighted as problematic, including many words that don't occur in any other 1st century writing, contains the only three references to James in the letters of Paul outside of the 1 Cor 15 resurrection appearances tradition.

This seems like a pretty big issue to me.