spin

It's interesting that none of the gospels with hindsight shows any knowledge of James, the brother of Jesus, becoming a pre-eminent member of the nascent religion. In fact we are left with the image of Jesus rejecting his family. Mark has them trying to restrain him. No knowledge is shown of this James going on to be the bigwig in Jerusalem. Acts doesn't know that the brother of Jesus was leader of the Jerusalem community.

We have to wait for Hegesippus to find the connection with Gal 1:19, reading the non-titular κυριος for Jesus (see Eus. EH 2.23.11ff). And Hegesippus helps us construct a trajectory for the "brother of Jesus called christ" interpolation in AJ 20.200, for Origen apparently used Hegesippus as his source for the fall of Jerusalem being brought about by the murder of James. First writing in his commentary on Matthew (10.17), Origen confusing Hegesippus with Josephus as others did in antiquity and talked of "James the brother of Jesus who is called christ". This is a simple union of Gal 1:19's "James the brother of the lord" and with Mt 1:16's "Jesus called christ". In C.Celsus 1.47 Origen expands this to "James the just, the brother of Jesus who is called christ", the form also found in C.C. 2.13.

The phrase in Origen should be compared with AJ 20.200, "the brother of Jesus called christ, named James. The phrase in Josephus has a significantly different word order, a fact which needs explanation. The word order, where the qualifying phrase "brother of Jesus called christ" comes before the topic of interest, suggests one of two things, either Jesus had just been mentioned (which is not the case) or Jesus was so well known (which supporters of a historical Jesus deny). The simplest explanation for the word order is that a scribe who had read Origen made the connection with the James who was murdered by Ananus and placed a note in the margin, which, understood as an omissus, later crept into the main text.

One thing is certain, Eusebius did not recognize Origen's analysis as being related to AJ 20.200, for Eusebius cites both Origen's version in C.C. 1:47, as though it were by Josephus as well as AJ 20.200 as separate sources! Josephus which was preserved by christian scribes cannot be considered on face value as an independent source on matters related to christianity, so treating it as such in the context of an analysis on Gal 1:19 is simply a pipe dream.

The notion of independent attestation is rather difficult to demonstrate in the context of analysis of christian origins. We have a situation not unlikely the literature of the Jews, which was regularly updated. But in the case of christianity even non-christian sources were updated, as ably demonstrated by the Testimonium Flavianum, which all scholars agree was at least interfered with by christian scribes.

We are left dealing with Gal 1:19 not with the hindsight of christian literature but with the context of a Jewish background in which the non-titular κυριος indicated god.

judge

delete

PhilosopherJay

Hi LegionOnomaMoie,

Powell and Baima are not arguing that the form is exactly the same as Modus Ponens or Modus Tollens, only that the logical justification is equivalent.

Here is a description of modus Tollens -


I believe Powell and Baima misapply their own rule in the case of Galatians 1:19 because they believe that Paul actually met James/Jacob the brother of the Lord (or Esau as I suggest the original read). Rather, the non-meeting with Jacob would be meant to suggest the truth of the statement that he met with any other "apostles".

For example, I might say "I went to Nashville to meet Katy Perry. If I didn't meet Elvis Presley then I didn't meet any other singer." It is true that I didn't meet Elvis and therefore true that I didn't meet any other singer. I met Katy Perry alone. Katie Perry was born in 1984 and Elvis died in 1977. Obviously, I could not have met them both. So believing that I had met both Katy Perry and Elvis would be wrong.

I could also say "If I didn't meet any other singer, I didn't meet Elvis," or to put it in the positive cases, "If I met Elvis, then I met other singers," or "If I met other singers, I met Elvis."

The point is just that the antecedent and the consequent matches instead of the consequent being an exception to the antecedent. If the antecedent is true then the consequent is true and if the antecedent is false, then the consequent is false.

In order to translate the "Εἰ μή" clause this way, one would have to have a clause that is either clearly true or clearly false, so I could infer the falsity or the truth of the other clause. For example, "If I live on the moon, then I live in Minnesota," Obviously, I do not live on the moon, so I do not live in Minnesota. Conversely, "If Obama is President, then my name is Jay." Obviously Obama is president, thus my name is Jay.

In this case in Galatians 1.19, meeting the brother of the Lord (meant as the one and only God) would be impossible, and therefore meeting any other apostle except for Peter would be impossible. Even the idea of meeting Jacob, the brother of Esau (as I suspect the original sentence said) would be impossible. Therefore either way, Paul is saying that he met no other apostles except for Peter.

Once, we interpret the passage this way, we may infer that Paul is claiming that he met Peter the Jew in Jerusalem and gave him the gospel. Peter then gave the Gospel to James, Cephas and John, or perhaps just James and John, if Peter equals Cephas. Paul is claiming that he is the first and real apostle. He converted the Jewish pillars/apostles, who were backsliders who tried to reconvert the Galatians to Judaism.


Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Solo

Except Paul has just finished saying he is not recognized as an apostle outside of his own congregation. Paul's 1 Cr 9:5 and following verses, articulate his own superiority (and perhaps those he himself designates as 'apostles' in his own churches). The semantics of this verse indicate he speaks of 'apostles' and dignitaries recognized by others.

This does not in any way address the discrepancy I pointed out. You fly off on tangents.

In 1 Cr 9:5 Paul he sets apart 'brothers of the Lord' 'apostles' and 'Cephas'. In Gal 1:19, James, the brother of the Lord, and Cephas are grouped with "the apostles".

Best,
Jiri

LegionOnomaMoi

I've underlined and bolded to distinguish between two different problems I see with your argument. The first concerns cross-linguistic speech patterns vs. logic.

1) Nobody, in any language I know of (and that includes greek; as I noted we have Wakker's entire volume of conditions and conditionals in Greek) uses a logical structure like "If I didn't meet Elvis Presley, then I didn't meet any other singer" rather than (or to mean) "I didn't meet any other singer."

2) Without the underlined section (it is true that I didn't meet Elvis), one cannot logically infer the consequent: I didn't meet any other singers (I will get to what we can infer given your argument of inference from implied impossibility, which would change things).

So on the one hand, under your reading what Paul is saying both "if I didn't meet James, then I didn't meet any of the other apostles" AND "if I met any of the other apostles, then I met James." (if X, then Y, or if ~Y, then ~X). However, he never gives any proposition so that one could use modus ponens to use the conditional to conclude anything (either "I didn't meet james" or "I met some of the other apostles").
Furthermore, given a proposition ~Y ("I didn't meet James") one can validly conclude (MP) "I didn't meet any of the other apostles." However, if this is what Paul wanted to say, then he didn't have to use the conditional at all. He could have easily and unambiguously said "I didn't see any other apostles" by taking out the conditional part altogether. It is possible, in greek, just to say this, and here it would require little more than not including the conditional at all.

If we read this line as a conditional, not only can we logically infer nothing, but we must
1) Assume Paul is using conditionals in the way no humans except logicians use conditionals (and, having spent much time around logicians, I question their status as elements of the set homo sapiens)
and
2) if Paul is using a conditional to mean "I didn't meet any of the other apostles" he is doing so in an extremely complicated way that doesn't actually allow one to logically conclude this.


You have a problem here. The only way a conditional comes out false is if the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. In the bolded example, the antecedent is false, and thus the truth status of the entire proposition is logically true. In other words, given the bolded conditional, and the fact that you don't live on the moon, we cannot conclude that you do not live in Minnesota.

This is a nice illustration of why the use of logical transformations and interpretations of conditionals fail as methods for linguistic or speech/text analysis. A similar (hypothetical) example is given in Barwise's paper "Conditionals and conditional information" in his contribution to On Conditionals (Cambridge University Press, 1986). This volume was "the first major cross-disciplinary account of conditional (if-then) constructions".

Jon Barwise gives the following "accurate" logical interpretation of a "real-life" conditional. As I have used this example elsewhere, I will quote my "rendition" rather than typing out Barwise' example in full. I will indicate using brackets additions that I have included for our purposes here:

"One of the interesting things I came across as an undergrad was research in psychology on when and why natural human reasoning abilities work against, rather than for us. However, my point here is not that but rather some examples from the research I find interesting in and of themselves. I have also included a hypothetical example from research into language which one researcher used to illustrate the defects of logic (and reasoning using "logic" rather than common sense). As I just want to share these curious and/or amusing examples, I am going off of memory [irrelevant examples removed]

The general idea of this [example] is taken (stolen) from a paper in the edited volume On Conditionals (or perhaps On Conditionals Again, I can't be certain which) [it is from On Conditionals, as I actually read the paper again before posting here]. The author uses a clever story to illustrate the problem of relying on your courses in logic when making decisions, when common sense would serve you better.

A University student was out for a stroll in the city. We'll call him James (his full name is James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, and at a young age his mother, despite James' instructions, went to a certain area of the town she oughtdn't to have and has been missing ever since) [Barwise uses the name Virgil]. Unbeknownst to James, a local protest rally has turned into a riot. Making matters worse, the local police are out arresting people left and right in order to stop the destruction which happened after the last protest rally some weeks ago.

James just happens to walk into the area in which the chaos is occuring. Although he was initially curious to find the source of all the tumult he heard, now that he realizes what's happening he decides the best course of action would be to leave quickly. As he is turning around, however, he sees a rock on the ground. But this is no ordinary rock (and James would know, as he's been collecting rocks since he was three, initially to cope with the loss of his mother). So he picks it up. Unfortunately, it is at that moment that a police officer sees him. Thinking that James is about to throw the rock into the window of a nearby building or car, the officer arrests James.

A few days later, James finds himself in front of the Judge. He has already explained that he picked up the rock because embedded in it was a rather large specimen of a type of quartz not common to the area. The police officer has likewise given his testimony. The judge doesn't feel there is any evidence, so he is inclined to rule not guilty. But he realizes (being the clever individual he is) that James never actually said he wasn't going to throw the rock. So before he pronounces James innocent, he asks "If you weren't arrested, then would you have thrown the rock through a window?"

James is a philosophy student, and having read Frege's Begriffsschrift, the Principia Mathematica, and several other books which all contain systems of propositional and predicate logic, he knows exactly how to answer. After all, the judge has asked a conditional-an "if" question. As any intro to logic student would know, thinks James, a conditional, If a then b, only comes out "false" under one condition (he briefly draws a truth table just to double check; this isn't the time to make mistakes). If the antecedent is true, the "if" part, and the consequent is false, the "then" part, the conditional is false. Otherwise, the conditional is true.

James realizes that the antecedent here is false. He was in fact arrested. Therefore, he reasons, his committment to logic allows only one answer, as the truth value of the whole conditional is clearly "true." So he says "yes." And is given a death sentence with the possibility of parole given good behavior after the execution."

In Barwise's example, the rock, arrest, and judge part are all there (I got carried away with literary additions writing the above). However, the question the judge asks is:

"If someone had attacked you, would you have defended yourself with this rock?" James' reasoning (or rather Virgil's, as we are now dealing with Barwise) remains the same. To quote Barwise, "[Virgil] quickly recalled the first-order semantics of conditionals, and reasoned as follows: 'Since no one attacked me the antecedent of [the conditional] is false, hence the whole of [the conditional] is true.'"

My point in using this lengthy aside is two-fold:

1) People do not use logical interpretations or transformations of conditionals in speech with very few exceptions (namely, when the conditional is clearly "if X, then Y" and clearly a logical conditional, as opposed to "if you're hungry, there's snacks on the table").

2) When they do, it can lead to counter-intuitive interpretations.

This does not logically follow. There is no logical rule of inference which allows us to go from

If X then Y
Not X
Therefore, not Y.



Thus, it makes much more sense to conclude that as Paul frequently refers to Jesus as Lord, Paul means "brother of Jesus." That way, we avoid both the use of Paul turning into Frege or Russell, and the impossibility you note.

LegionOnomaMoi

He hasn't. Simply stating ei allois ouk eimi apostolos does not mean he isn't an apostle to anybody outside of the congregation he's addressing. He doesn't say "to any others."

Cephas is grouped as an apostle and as something more. In Galatians, Paul implicitly singles out Peter as "special" by emphasizing the fact that not only did he meet with Peter, but he didn't see any other apostles, with one exception.

In 1 Cor 15:8, Paul goes through a list of people who "experienced" the "risen Christ." Cephas is named first, then the twelve, and right before Paul, all of the apostles. The point is not that Cephas is not one of the twelve, nor that he is not an apostle (here James is likewise singled out apart from "all the apostles"). He is placed first and apart from both because he is considered more than an apostle.

As for "brothers of the Lord" vs. "apostles" the situation is even easier. There is simply no contradiction. James is a brother of the Lord. If he is the only brother considered an apostle, than it is quite possible to refer to brothers of the lord vs. apostles.

For example, let us suppose that a few members of this forum are experts in NT studies (they have a PhD in this or a similar area, and all the requisite knowledge of ancient and modern languages, primary and secondary sources, etc.). The vast majority are not experts.

Yet it makes sense to say something like "all NT experts and the members of this board agree that X" even though these sets overlap in a few instances.

PhilosopherJay

Hi LegionOnomaMoi,


Just a quick reply on the run:

from a recent article

Matt 13:57 (Mark 6:4)
Warmly,

Jay Raskin

hjalti

I think you have pointed out something noteworthy: His first trip to Jerusalem is a toning down (or even a contradiction) of his caims of independence.

What I also find curious is that we have Paul going twive to Jerusalem, but he stresses that the later trip was because "god made me do it". Why stress his independence so much if he has just said that he already was Peter's "intern" 10 years earlier?

This is one of the points that make me think that the first trip is an interpolatin that has the same agenda as we can see in Acts of the apostles, making Paul a team-player.

LegionOnomaMoi

Notice the differences though:

1) Rivera is not saying "if that nutty guy responded in that way, then the other guy had that hoodie on" although this is the logical transformation of the conditional. In other words, although the "structure" appears equivalent to how you are transforming Paul's "conditional", if we transform this structure into the logical equivalent, we get something different than what Rivera means. He is asserting that were it not for the hoodie, the neighborhood watch guy wouldn't have responded to him in that violent way, or rather that the reason the neighborhood watch guy responded as he did was because of the hoodie. He is not asserting that on the assumption that the neighborhood watch guy did respond in that way, then we can conclude the other guy had that hoodie. Once again, the logical interpretation of a "conditional" fails to capture its use in actual speech.

2) An alternative way to say what Rivera meant would be "I'll bet money that the nutty neighborhood watch guy responded in that violent and aggressive way because of the hoodie." The structure of this sentence about as complex, but by phrasing it as a "counterfactual" Rivera emphasizes what would not have happened as well as why what did happen, happened. In your reading of Paul, what Paul wishes to say is "I didn't see any other apostles." Instead, what he says is "If I didn't see James, then I didn't see any other of the apostles." This is what I mean by "nobody does this in any language that I know of." Not that we don't find the "structure" of such a conditional, but that when we do it is a) almost never used in the "logical" sense, and b) nobody uses a complicated conditional when a simple proposition would be much clearer, simpler, shorter, etc.

"And they were offended by him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, if not in his home town, and in his household.”

And this is why I find the article you link to so bizarre. There's no shortage of literature on conditionals as they are used in speech, logics (classical, three-valued, fuzzy, etc), and human reasoning, not to mention Greek. Apart from Wakker's monograph on the subject I already mentioned:and numerous reference grammars, there are plenty of other sources. For example, both On Conditionals and On Condationals Again contain papers on the conditional in ancient Greek(Greenberg's "The realis-irrealis continuum in the Classical Greek conditional" in the former and Seiler's "Conditionality in dimensional perspective" in the latter). The first paper in In the footsteps of Raphael Kühner (Proceedings of the International Colloqium in Commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Raphael Kühner's Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, II. Theil: Syntaxe.) is on conditionals. And that's without getting into the literature on conditionals and idioms specific to NT greek.

Yet the paper you refer to relies on the use of logical transformations despite extensive literature over the past four decades on why this almost never works. People simply do not use conditionals the way logicians do. So when the authors state:

"The rationale for such transformation is seen in two basic inference rules. If you have a sentence of the form, “if A then B” there are two ways to make a valid deduction from the sentence: (1) If “A” is true then you know “B” is true (modus ponens “method of affirming” inference rule); (2) If “B” is false then you know “A” is false (modus tollens “method of denial” inference rule). The logical equivalent of a sentence “if A, then B” (modus ponens) is, therefore, “if not B, then not A” (modus tollens)."

they are making a serious error. People generally do make the first type of inference and use that type of logical structure (if A then B) in that way. However, as early as the experiments by Wason & Johnson-Laird (1972) to later experiments in evolutionary psychology (e.g., Sperber, Cara & Girotto (1995) ), studies have repeatedly demonstrated not simply that people don't use conditionals like this (such that transformations can be applied), but that they generally fail to make valid inferences one we leave the territory of

If A, B
A
Therefore B.

In other words, the second type of "inference rule" discussed by the author is one which people generally either have to concentrate on or just get wrong. Additionally, they frequently apply invalid inference rules. Thus, justifying logical transformations using "inference rules" people generally either get wrong (or at least have to think about), or don't use, or both, seems to me to be a very poor justification.

In Matt. 13:57, the sense is "A prophet is not atimos, except in his home town and household."

But you are going even beyond what the authors do. They apply the logical transformation and get "if I saw any of the other apostles, then I saw james." You transform that conditional into "If I didn't see James, then I didn't see any of the other apostles" and conclude that this is how Paul was trying to say "I didn't see any of the other apostles."

We might expect these types of conditionals from Lewis Carroll or intro to logic textbooks (or from logicians playing with language), but not in natural writing/speech.

Solo

Not if you hide the 'alla ge humin eimi' that completes the sentence.

off on a tangent again....

Interesting train of thought, the question however is, interesting to whom. Wouldn't be me. :huh:

Best,
Jiri