Toto

Generally they don't. If they don't retreat to the "unexplained mystery god can do anything" defense, they claim that these are metaphorical stories that just emphasize that there was something astonishing about Jesus' birth, or maybe that there was something astonishing about Jesus which was projected back to his presumed birth, since there are stories about a number of political and military leaders that claim a semi-divine birth, e.g. Alexander, not to mention the Hebrew Scriptures which attribute births to god's intervention, etc., etc.

Did you mean historical? What about the translations do you regard as false?

avi

peri tou uiou autou tou genomenou ek spermatoV dauid kata sarka

(n.b. for me, and perhaps me alone on the planet earth, kata sarka refers to physical flesh i.e. the actual body of David, not a spiritual entity, and not some kind of descendant from David. It means, to me, DAVID HIMSELF, else, I believe there is a much simpler way to write, in Koine Greek (though I do not know how to write it!) "descendant of David".) I translate "kata sarka" as "real McCoy", i.e. authentic, guaranteed genuine. To me, in short, any translation which fails to acknowledge David as the one who furnished the paternal DNA component of Jesus' genome, is false, because that is what the original Greek manuscript has written.

Jesus is not a descendant of David, in a remote sense, because Joseph has not yet engaged in sexual relations with his teenage wife, Mary. Mary cannot be the source of the relationship to David, because of strict patrilineal descent requirements, in Jewish custom. kata sarka means, to me, --> HEY, you, yes, YOU, I am talking to you. I am telling you, that this guy Jesus was quite the guy. His paternal line of DNA came directly from DAVID himself, not through some intermediary, not through some descendant, but the actual guy, David himself, who was brought back to life by God, and permitted to sleep with Jesus' mother, before returning to the grave again....Thus, David is Jesus' biological father. Joseph is his stepfather. That's what kata sarka implies to me.....
avi

Toto

Well, this is a unique interpretation.

Chili

. . . and for what it is worth, the purity of Mary is contingent upon the fervent reproach of Elizabeth among men that is casually expressed with Joseph being an upright sinner (oops carpenter) ever since he was bethroted to Mary = young virgin. And no, they were not married nor were they to be married except in the convergence of these true minds after the veil was fully rent, and is what enables the two seater of dapper Joseph's ride into the New Jerusalem.

Iskander

Romans 1:3

Ver. 3. Who was made to him of the seed of David, according to the flesh.

The sense is, that God promised, that he who was his true and only Son from eternity, should also become his son, as man; that the same son should be man, as well as God, when the word was made flesh, or when that divine person should be united to our human nature. Thus the same person, who was his only begotten Son from eternity, being made man, and of the seed of David, by his incarnation, was still his Son, both as God, and also as man. (Witham) --- The Greek text has not the particle ei, (to him) but only tou genomenou ek spermatos David. But St. Irenæus, (lib. iii. chap. 18.) St. Ambrose, St. Jerome read, Qui factus est ei. And also St. Augustine in his unfinished exposition of the epistle to the Romans; though before in his book against Faustus, (lib. xi. chap. 14.) he reads it otherwise. (Calmet)

Merry Christmas

Chili

Yes and I say that here:

If you are wondering about the "only" Son of Man from eternity I will add that we can only be born again once from this woman who was never banned from Eden and is thus wherein we are eternal and have our thousand year reign. It so is that we are redeemable from our human condition but to achieve this we must take up residence in our right brain (or upper room) where the Alpha is retained and there recall our 'shepherds' from the left brain so that heaven and earth can be the Alpha and Omega while we are alive still on this earth.

Then I would add that a sperm is only a sperm because it contains independant life that is originative from his right brain instead of his balls, which subsequently means that there is no marriage in heaven after the convergeance of the twain.

Merry Christmas

avi

Thank you very much, Iskander, for this interesting historical summary.

Apologies for being so dense, but I cannot quite grasp the significance of your point....
May I ask you please, to elaborate. I am of course very interested to learn of Irenaeus, Ambrose, and Jerome's interpretations, the significance of "Qui factus est ei", and the reason for the difference in translation of the Vulgate, i.e. Qui factus est ... without "ei".

I am also keen to learn of your interpretation of "kata sarka", and how you would write "...house of David" in koine Greek, i.e. to differentiate between a distant descendant of David, versus the literal son of David. Another way of writing this, is to inquire whether one could communicate the same concept, (a distant descendant of David, not David's sperm per se) without employing "Kata Sarka"? If Kata Sarka refers not to David's literal sperm, but rather, to a long since dead ancestor from many, many generations ago, then how should Kata Sarka be translated in contemporary English? I think of it as something like "actual living flesh and blood". I certainly don't associate it with "long since dead and buried, hundreds of years ago".

Thanks again for your insight.
avi

GakuseiDon

Hi avi, Ben C Smith compiled a list of "kata sarka" passages from a variety of sources here: http://www.textexcavation.com/accordingtotheflesh.html

Solo

They didn't ? No idea what the spermatic fluid carried. God slayed Onan only on a suspicion that there maybe a connection to procreation, right ?

Jiri

avi

Thank you Don, for the link. Wonderful summary.
well, that looks to me like "flesh" is the proper translation of kata sarka.

I cannot understand why anyone wants to suggest that addition of Kata Sarka to that sentence changes the meaning from: "David's sperm", to "descendant of a long since dead ancestor named David".

Is it possible that Aristotle's investigations on many, many dead animals, led people to imagine that the phrase Kata Sarka could only refer to long since dead objects? Perhaps the phrase became synonymous, through Aristotle's numerous anatomical studies, with something like "VERY DEAD", as opposed to, for example, "recently deceased". Strange, because I think of it as referring, contrarily, to "very much alive, thank-you".

avi