Iskander

It could not be other than a joke considering the subject matter. Some tell short jokes and some others seem to need much more time to tell the same joke.

tanya

Thanks, spin, so, I guess your point here, is that it is not simply the King James version which errs, but also, a non-literal interpretation, by the Catholic Church, of the original Greek, going back to Jerome's 4th century travail.....

As I recall, maybe incorrectly, Paul also uses hagios, in modifying grafas, in other places in the same or other epistles, specifically referring to "old testament" aphorisms, which are regarded as scripture, by all three traditions, Jews, Christians, Muslims....

For me, if no one else, (Diogenes started it, by injecting his own personal interpretation of the text, so I am just following his lead) Paul's distinction between "sacred writings", i.e. the "old testament", and "writings" --grafas, without agios--, i.e. the "new testament", (not yet acknowledged, in the second century CE, as "sacred",) serves to illustrate the argument that Paul created the epistles well after the gospels, i.e. mid-late second century CE.

Sheshbazzar

Twice. In Romans 1:2 and in 2 Timothy 3:15. But it hardly does anything to prove your point.

As in Romans 16:26 Paul also uses grafas without modifying it with hagios, in a context that can only be referring to the "old testament" Prophets.

tanya

Thank you dear Shesh.

Umm, well, maybe I am completely wrong, or, perhaps there is a germ of an idea there. I would like to hope so....

Romans 1:2, which employs hagios, makes very clear, that Paul is referring to ancient documents, i.e. "old testament".

Since 1 Corinthians 15:3, is not specifically describing actions preceding the common era, I interpret (idiosyncratically, perhaps) γραφάς (writings) as Greek text written in the common era, not the "old testament", Hebrew, or its Greek version, LXX.

I agree with you, there are other places, in other epistles, where Paul writes γραφάς, alone, sans hagios, while referring, by context, to "old testament"
prophets. Is there any significance to this disparity? I don't know. Perhaps someone could use this distinction in exploring for an answer to the question of interpolation, but perhaps not.....Was "Paul" deliberately obfuscatory? Was he careless? Were these simply casual letters, with a few inconsistencies, not intended as "gospel truth"? Were the letters modified by subsequent political strife, and doctrinal disputes?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I continue to maintain, that "writings", not "scriptures" is the proper translation of grafas in 1 Cor 15:3, referring then, not to the old testament, but to the new. Is the Latin word "scripturas" the only word, in that language, for both "writings", and "scripture"?

Solo

I think Mark Steyn hit the nail on the head when he said that the "birther" controversy falls squarely on the shoulders of Obama. For a better part of two decades he cultivated the myth of his birth in the Kenya of the heroic anti-colonialist struggles, in preference to his actual birthplace of Hawaii, with its unappealing profile of a fat-cat state living off tourists.

Best,
Jiri

Diogenes the Cynic

When did Obama ever do that? Are you kidding me?

Sheshbazzar

And 'writings' could be as well used in any other verse.
It is the English that is putting the word 'scriptures' on a undeserved pedestal, implying that γραφάς is of some higher significance in one text than it is in the others.

In the eyes of the Church all of these 'writings' were to be regarded as 'holy writings'.
'Paul' believed he was producing 'holy' writ, received by an exclusive and special revelation directly from his Jebus the Christ, god of the WHOLE world, and those that accepted 'Paul's' writings, accepted them as being 'holy writings' produced by a 'holy' man raised, fashioned, and instructed by their 'Holy God' to instruct them into how to become and to live as a 'holy people'.

It would have been inconceivable to those who received and believed the content of 'Paul's' writings that they were not 'holy writings', and even to be valued above with those of The Holy Prophets of old, as being the manifestation and witness of the fulfilling of those prophetic predictions.

'Paul's' Gospel to the WORLD pretty much reduced all those former Jewish Prophets to simply being the harbingers to the world embracing Pauline Gospel.

Solo

It is worth noting that Paul's letters use both "scripture" and "scriptures" in referring to tanakh. Interestingly the form "scriptures" is used mostly in instances which may be later interpolations. (Rom 1:2, 15:4, 16:26, 1 Cr 15:3 , 4). It seems strange that Paul should have refered to the scripture inconsistently.
It is as if today, someone who is totally absorbed by the thought of himself as one appointed by God to interpret the sacred texts couldn't make up his mind whether he should call it "the Bible" or "the Bibles".

Best,
Jiri

Duvduv

Hi, Jiri. I am a bit unclear on what you mean. Are you referring specifically to the ENGLISH usage of the words scripture/scripture or its use in Greek. Is there a difference between the singular and plural usage in Greek as compared to English?
In English we can say, "As is stated in scripture...." when referring to a specific quote as opposed to "the prophecy according to THE SCRIPTURES" as a generic statement. Either way, what difference would it make in the epistles, and why would either term mean anything other than the Tanakh?

Toto

The column is here

This is crazy talk from some nut who doesn't know anything about Hawaii.

Obama never claimed to have been born in Kenya. Some publicist decades ago wrote that Obama was born in Kenya, which error was lost to history until Andrew Breitbart dug it up. Steyn spun this into a baseless fantasy. Hawaii is not a fat cat state - it is a multiracial, largely middle class society that lives off military spending and middle class tourism - the sort of middle class, all-American background that really defines Obama, rather than some right wing pipe dream about his radical anti-colonialist African roots.

Breitbart and Steyn are (or were) part of a well oiled propaganda machine, and are probably as trustworthy as, say, the author of Acts.

I'm not sure what relevance it has here other than as an example of how factoids grow and morph into political propaganda.