Steven Avery

The fact that a text may not have one "unambiguously construed" understanding does not mean that one can't get a sense of which exegesis is more sensible and consistent.

A perfect example of this is in a well-know verse in the Gospel of John which is understood as of primary significance..

John 8:58
Jesus said unto them,
Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, I am.

There is an unusual grammatical construction here, most everybody agrees it is deliberate and significant, and there is a diversity of views as to the precise purpose and meaning.

I would share with you that the Johannine epistle, and the three verses at issue, is a writing in the same vein, a very careful and significant usage of an unusual grammatical tense construction.

And I have shared a very basic outline of one exegesis of the verse, one that can be expanded greatly. It is one that would be more likely accepted by those who have a simpatico with the understanding that the Johannine epistles are teaching documents for the emergent church, and that they viewed the body of Messiah as the manifestation of Jesus Christ come on earth, than it would have for those applying various other scalpels to the text.

Exegesis can never be fully separated from interpretative lens. See the example of Earl Doherty above, where he even went so far as to deny any significance, or even an author's intent, of this being an unusual grammatical construction, since that did not match his interpretative environment for the Johannine epistles.

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

Julian

To roll an answer to SI, Earl and praxeus into one post:

I agree with Earl that this is yet another polemic against those who did not believe in a flesh and blood Jesus.

However, it is possible to be a docetic and not be a gnostic. The epistle can counter docetic ideas without worrying about gnosticism.

As for the tense, prax, Earl is quite correct. While it is true that 'coming' is in the present tense, it should be taken as past tense. For example:

"I stood on a hill and watched him coming up a hill."

Clearly, by means of 'stood' and 'watched' this sentence took place in the past, while coming is just a participle. Obvious, 'coming' in this context is to be understood as something which happened in the past as well, taking its cue from 'watched' and 'stood.'

The NT is filled with anit-heretical writings. This was a major concern right from the beginning. Prax, you accuse Earl of using later historical layers, yet we know that gnosticism and all manner of other heresies were present from day one, or rather as far back as we can see, so your assertion goes squarely against the grain of the understanding of early christianity.

Julian

Steven Avery

And as already pointed out, this is comparable to none of the translations.

KJB
"For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist."

Young
"many leading astray did enter into the world
who are not confessing Jesus Christ coming in flesh;"

Rotherdam -
"many deceivers have gone out into the world
they who do not confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh"

So apparently you are offering a correction to every translation. Why not start by giving us your exact right translation of the full verse and why you thing Rotherdam, Young, the KJB and many others all got it all wrong.

Definitely, as in Colossians. Those issues are basically silent in the Johannine epistles, which is why layers have to extrapolated over the text for the pretext of context.

This is simply not a logical conclusion. There are many epistles in which the primary emphasis is not the refutation of gnostic teachings.

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

Julian

Actally my translation and example mirrors Rotherdam and Young. Notice the use of past tense in the first part and the participle in the second part. Same as my example. They say 'did enter' and 'have gone' and then states what they believe. Now, it could be understood that they still believe so, but their beliefs are tied to the action in the past tense.

The KJB English is just ugly, but essentially correct, as well. I don't think that we are disagreeing here. :huh:
How can you say it is silent when the very sentence that we are discussing clearly speaks out against docetics? I mean, what do you think it means?
Not everything in the NT is against heresies, to be sure, but a large amount is. It was certainly a credible threat.

Julian

Soul Invictus

Can you post what the translation for 2 John 1:7 which utilizes the present (middle) participle and is consistent with a Rotherdam and Young translation?

Julian

I don't think I understand your question. Both Rotherdam and Young are acceptable translations, both are translating the participle correctly. Both use the past tense in the first part and the present tense in the second. It simply indicates what can be assumed that they still believe even though they went into the world in the past.

I am probably not understanding what you are asking.

Julian

Soul Invictus

My error. I see that praxeus had posted what I was looking for. My apologies for making you unnecessarily misunderstand.

ETA: Any idea why neither Rotherdam nor Young simply use "came" instead of coming, since Jesus's coming had already occured prior to the writing of the verse?

Steven Avery

Julian, your problem here is simple.

"I stood on a hill and watched him coming up a hill."

simply does not match Rotherdam and Young,
which you agree are accurate translations.

These following would be comparable phrases, far closer than yours.

"I did go up the hill and am watching him come up the hill"
"I have gone up the hill and I am watching him come up the hill".

Young
"many leading astray did enter into the world
who are not confessing Jesus Christ coming in flesh;"

Rotherdam
"many deceivers have gone out into the world
they who do not confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh"

Perhaps you are a fan of Doherty and wanted to run interference for him (meant as a conjecture, not an accusation) since he bowed out of defending his grammatical faux pax on which he based his argument, however this is pretty elementary stuff.

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

Steven Avery

Hi Julian. I have been discussing this throughout the thread. Since you folks appear to like layering, I'll approach it that way.

1) Jesus only appeared to have a body (docetism, some gnosticisms)

2) Jesus was a man, however he should be recognized as the Son of God,
God manifest in the flesh (ebionism, unitarianism, adoptionism)

3) Jesus was Son of God, God manifest in the flesh, and John is talking about the fullness of recognizing His life, His resurrection, his glory and power and His return and reign.

4) Jesus is the full high Christology, and He manifests His nature through His body, the authority of believers, the "us" throughout the Johannine epistles. And that authority through His faithful submitted believers represents Jesus come in the flesh today.

Generally in Christendom the emphasis is put on #2, and perhaps #3, however there are various problems if they are the fullness of the Johannine epistles. Including #4 as primary, and #2 and #3 as clearly inter-related units, resolves those problems and clarifies the epistle tremendously, including the theme of this thread, the tenses of the three verses. Doherty's view is to switch to #1, and pretty much put everything else on ice, and to that end Doherty and yourself were wiling to mangle the tense of the verses in question.

Sure, and the folks who leave the authority of the body of believers, the prime emphasis of John, often do so seeking their own desires.

Proverbs 18:1
Through desire a man, having separated himself,
seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.

Often that 'wisdom' will be various types of heresies.
eg. Paul referenced some who left going into errors that were eschatological.

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

EarlDoherty

Never let it be said that an apologist can’t make me change my mind…

A mentsch? Let’s not introduce yet another language into the discussion. People are confused enough at the Greek as it is.

I think part of the confusion lies in several people trying to treat 2 John 7 in isolation. (By the way, it’s not 2 John 1:7. There is only a single chapter in the second epistle.) 2 John 7 must be related to 1 John 4:2. They are both speaking of the same issue and set of circumstances. So we should first look at 1 John 4:2

pan pneuma ho homologei Iesoun Christon en sarki elnluthota [perfect active participle] ek tou theou estin…

every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ in the flesh having come is from God…

Most English translations eliminate the adjectival participial construction in the Greek and turn it into a clause with an indicative verb:

every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

In both cases the sense is perfect, “having come� or “has come�, which is a past tense. To say that a perfect tense has a continuing effect or application in the present does not mean that the event being referred to is present; it is still past. In this particular instance, if J.C. were still living at the time of the epistle, then it could mean that he is still here, in flesh. But this is clearly not the circumstance. So the “has come� refers to a past event.

Because the preposition is “en� the phrase “in the flesh� refers to Jesus himself. If it had been “eis�, then it could refer to Jesus’ destination, either flesh in the sense of the locale of flesh (that is, humanity’s earth), or into flesh, in the sense of taking up a mystical habitation in humanity’s own flesh, speaking figuratively. Look back to verse 1: “many false prophets have gone out (exelnluthasin, perfect active indicative of the same verb with an “ex� prefix added) into the world (eis ton kosmon).� Here the “eis� denotes the destination, and the verb is one of motion. Note that “erchomai� can mean both “to go� and “to come�.

So, without twisting the Greek, or the translation, into knots, the simplest translation is a reference to Jesus Christ having come in a state of flesh. Praxeus tries to get this 1 John 4:2 verse into a present sense, and points to a translation which uses an English present, namely the KJV (“every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come…�). But the KJ also puts the perfect verb of verse 1 into the present as well (“many false prophets are gone out into the world�), so this is obviously an idiosyncrasy of the KJ translators. To our modern minds, it is a little bizarre and with an outdated tone (they do it in 2 John 7, where it sounds even more unnatural). The perfect tense in English is ‘perfectly’ correct and acceptable.

Praxeus claims that the KJ preserves the meaning “faithfully� but this is special pleading. No other translation renders the 1 John 4:2 in the present. (His three quotes from the “Young� are confusing: which one applies to 4:2? The first one he lists is in the perfect.) Here are some of those other translations:

NASB: “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh…�

NIV & NEB: “every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh…�

RSV: “every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh…�

The Translator’s New Testament (The British and Foreign Bible Society): “every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus is the Christ who came as a human being…� Now here is an interesting one, since the TNT points out that the declaration could be taken quite differently. From their notes: “Literally, ‘confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh’. This can be read as ‘confesses Jesus (as) Christ come in flesh’. Many translations take ‘Jesus Christ’ as a combined name here, but the point of John’s argument is that the human Jesus who lived on this earth was really the Christ, God’s anointed one.� Now, I don’t agree with this, but the point here is that this doesn’t agree with Praxeus, either, since it has nothing to do with Jesus entering into the believer.

And I offer as a curiosity, an evangelical publication called “Good News for Modern Man�. It translates 4:2 as: “anyone who declares that Jesus Christ came as a human being has the Spirit who comes from God.�

If the King James is “faithfully� preserving the meaning here, then everyone else has missed it. This includes Raymond E. Brown (a conservative Catholic scholar), who undertakes a minute examination of the ways to translate this verse, but all of them involve the idea of “the flesh of Jesus� (The Epistles of John, p.492), and “must be understood in terms of his career in the flesh,� (p.493), and he links it with the thought “the Word became flesh.�

In any case, the King James probably means no more than “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is (in a state of having) come in the flesh…� which conforms to all the rest in understanding a perfect sense for perfect participle. Consequently, Praxeus has a very weak basis for the meaning he is championing.

When we proceed to 2 John 7, the situation is no different. As I say, the meaning in 1 John 4:2 has to govern the meaning in the second epistle, and the simple use of the present participle in the latter case does not rule against it, for a number of reasons. One is an appeal to a grammatical principle, although in this case the workings of it are not so straightforward, as we shall see. That principle is as I stated before, that the meaning of a participle is governed by the indicative verb it relates to. I’ll quote from three grammatical textbooks:

Essentials of New Testament Greek (Huddilston, 1934), p.73:
“The tense of the participle is relative to the tense of the principal verb.�

The New Testament is in Greek (Countryman, 1993), p.80:
“The meanings of Greek participles, like those of Greek participles, are determined by their tense and voice….In all these tenses, the participle does not indicate absolute time; that is the business of the principal verb of the sentence. The participle represents time in relation to the main verb.�

The Language of the New Testament (Goetchius, 1965), p.178:
“It is very important to understand that the present participle does not necessarily refer to present time. Indeed, it has no “tense� of its own at all, properly speaking, but only aspect: it usually refers to action in progress at the same time as the action of the main verb.�

Now let’s look at various translations of 2 John 7:

Hoi me homologountes Iesoun Christon erchomenon [present participle, deponent (meaning it’s in middle/passive form but with an active meaning)] en sarki

NEB, NASB, NIV: “…who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.�

RSV: “men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.� (Here is a good example of a language’s free use of a tense, in this case the future, which is not meant to be taken literally. The translator is not saying that “many deceivers have gone out into the world,� but it is only in the future (that is of the writer’s time), that they will make such a denial. That would be ridiculous. He means that they HAVE already done so, in the past.)

The Translator’s New Testament (note how this one is following its own lead from its translation of 1 John 4:2): “who do not accept the fact that Jesus Christ came as a human being.�

Good News for Modern Man: “who do not declare that Jesus Christ came as a human being.�

And what does the King James say? “who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.� This is consistent with their translation of 1 John 4:2, but it also is consistent with a literal application of the “present� participle here. But is this because they are taking a present meaning in it? I doubt it. Look at the first part of the sentence in the KJ: “For many deceivers are entered into the world…�—“are entered� for exnlthon, an aorist (past tense) verb? That’s idiosyncratic, nothing more. Is Praxeus going to say that the KJ has here “faithfully� preserve the meaning that these deceivers are at this moment going out into the world as the writer writes? Perhaps there are some who still do, but he is obviously referring to those who have done so in the past. We thus have no good reason to think that the KJ choice of a “present� translation for the succeeding participle is because it regards it as literally taking place in the present time.

And note that a literal application of the present participle is not followed by any of the other translations I have quoted of 2 John 7.

And why does the Greek choose the present participle here, if it is referring to past events? I admit that my earlier posting was a bit woolly on this point (it was done quickly). Partly it’s because of the rule on participles I quoted earlier: it is in relation to the main verb. In 2 John 7, the main verb is “went forth� (exnlthon, an aorist). That past action governs the succeeding phrase with its two linked participles, hoi me homologountes…erchomenon…, “those not confessing Jesus Christ (as) coming in the flesh.� That is why the first participle, homologountes is a present participle, even though it’s referring to a confession in the past, at the same time as the “going out.�

But there's a complication here, in that we have TWO participles in sequence following the main verb. Praxeus accused me of a “faux pas� here, but his reference about the “main verb� was itself pretty woolly. In fact, the “main verb� (which is exnlthon) is in the past tense (aorist), so his statement that it was not is wrong. But I’m going to suggest a way he could have appealed to, which I’m sure he will be anxious to agree with even if it wasn’t his meaning. If we were to apply the grammatical rule strictly, erchomenon, coming, might be said to have a present form because it takes place at the same time as the homologountes, or confessing, even if the confessing was in the past. But homolgountes is not a verb, let alone the “main verb.� It is a participle, and used as a noun. Do participles used as nouns govern each other in the same way that verbs govern participles? Or does the actual “main verb� override them and govern a participle once-removed? Well, the whole question is pretty subtle, and I wouldn’t think to pronounce upon it without some careful investigation. But the bottom line is that a present participle isn’t present simply in order to describe a present action.

So what I am going to do is draw on three arguments to conclude that even though the writer of 2 John chose a present participle here, he was referring to a past action on the part of Christ.

One, is that we cannot assume a different meaning here than the one in 1 John 4:2, and there he used a perfect (past) participle, meaning that it took place prior to the confessing. In 2 John 7, the writer could have used a perfect participle, he could have said, literally, “those not confessing Jesus Christ having come in the flesh� (in English we would always convert that to an indicative perfect, “that Jesus Christ has come…�) If he clearly meant a prior, past quality in 1 John, he cannot have meant something very different in 2 John.

Two, that’s how all the translations (excepting the KJ on the surface) take it, some clearly spelling it out “Jesus Christ came as a human being�, others implicitly. Take the RSV, for example: “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.� Even though it uses a present participle here it is referring to a past event. Again, it is en, not eis. It refers to Jesus’ flesh (as per Raymond Brown), a past state in relation to the writer’s time.

Third, we can illustrate the point by an example in English, showing that present participles can be used in a sense that is prior to everything, both a main verb and an intervening participle: “The teacher criticized the pupil for not mentioning Washington crossing the Delaware. “Crossing� hardly takes place at the same time as the pupil not “mentioning,� even though the latter is a present participle. Strictly speaking, the teacher should have criticized the pupil for not mentioning Washington having crossed the Delaware, which is the strictly accurate way of presenting the idea. But spoken and even written language does not always follow the strict rules, or conform to strict tenses. We know Washington’s crossing took place before the mentioning and even before the criticizing. And since the writer made that meaning clear in 1 John, we are entitled to understand that he meant it here, even if he took a ‘short cut.’ Thus, we have no necessary reason to see this as an “unusual� use of the present tense, implying some meaning that no one but Praxeus (and the source he is drawing on) seems to see.

I often plead for common sense, and this is another case where it is missing in Praxeus’ wishful interpretation. Look at the context. Praxeus may want to see it all as a calm and reasoned “study� of “spiritual instruction,� but to me it’s little short of foaming at the mouth. Those who don’t confess what the writer would like them to are “deceivers�, they are “Antichrist�, “THE Deceiver� (equivalent to Satan). They are “without God�. “Do not take (such a preacher) into your house, don’t welcome him.� If they do, they “participate in his evil deeds.� This is almost a rant. It reminds of Ignatius’ epithets for those who do not preach a Jesus who was son of Mary, baptized by John, and crucified by Pilate. They are “mad dogs� and “beasts in the form of men.�

But ask yourself, if Praxeus interpretation is true, is that the way any Christian is going to react? Just because some Christian apostles don’t teach—what? That Christ has entered into you in a mystical way, this is reason to call him Antichrist? Why would someone get so incensed over such an issue? Why, indeed, would a whole slew of Christian apostles choose to deny such a concept? Who would knock on Christians’ doors and declare, “hey, it isn’t true that Jesus Christ enters into your flesh,� and have some good Christian householder welcome him in and give him tea and biscuits? Sorry, that doesn’t compute. It’s a prime example of the “tunnel vision� inherent in so much of apologetic argumentation.

Obviously, 1 John 4:2f and 2 John 7 refer to an issue within the Christian community (at least in the time and area of the Johannine writings) that was of dramatic, critical importance. A ‘Christ entering into you the believer in a mystical way’ just doesn’t cut it. Since there is nothing in these epistles relating to Gnostic or docetic argumentation, we are entitled to conclude that they are talking about something which would definitely have been of dramatic and crucial import: the truth or falsity of the question of whether Jesus Christ had taken on flesh and been incarnated to earth. Whether or not “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.�

In other words, the great divide between mythicism and historicism. The Johannine epistles stand on the cusp of that dramatic evolution.

And there is one other essential ingredient to this picture. The relationship between the epistles of John and the Gospel of John. Praxeus will claim (and has) that the Gospel came first, and therefore there was already a clear understanding of an historical Jesus in the community. But that opinion has to a great extent turned in mainstream scholarship, and I am going to quote from the website article I linked to in a previous post, the section arguing that the epistles came first. I will here quote only a third of it, as this posting is already long. The rest can be read on the site (link below). The section is only a few paragraphs in from the beginning.

There’s more on this point, and a lot more on the Johannine epistles generally, in my “A Solution to the First Epistle of John� at: http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp02.htm

Earl Doherty