show_no_mercy

IIRC Greeks though of non-Greeks (i.e. ΕΘΝΗΚΟΙ) as barbarians, or otherwise lower than them. So it would have derogatory connotations to Greeks.

avi

I have no knowledge, zero, about any rules of any language, and I particularly lack any knowledge of rules of Greek Grammar or syntax.

Nevertheless, despite such ignorance, I can understand, or at least, I claim to understand, the distinction between John 10:30 and John 14:28. Do you wish to argue that it is not possible for me to claim comprehension, sans bona fide credentials issued by an accredited academic institution, and that therefore, my claim to comprehend the distinction between these two passages is invalid?

I and the father are one, n.b., NOT I and my father are one....

: for the father is greater than I, n.b. NOT for my father is greater than I.

I suspect that Earl probably has erred here and there, in writing his book. Most of us do err, in writing long treatises. As I have not yet begun to peruse it, I am not going to argue about his book on this forum, but I am going to argue that paper credentials are not persuasive to me....

Au contraire, monsieur, please give us some evidence that I err. I don't need to offer proof that I am correct, for I don't care a whit whether or not you accept or reject my hostile opposition to "gentile", "heathen", etc, and all the other pejorative terms which have been misapplied to eqnikoi. But, if it bothers YOU, Jeffrey, all you have to do, to repudiate me, is demonstrate where some nonjewish (obviously, not philo or josephus!!!!) author, writing in Greek, one century before the synoptics appeared on the scene, employed eqnikoi in the same manner as it has been translated by the jews, and Jerome--> was jerome an ethnic jew? He did know Hebrew, correct?

avi

avi

OK, we are making progress!!!
WHERE does any author indicate that eqnikoi corresponds to "barbarian", or untermensch? This is Jeffrey's line of questioning, sorry, it just slipped out.....

OK, let's try again. Maybe you are correct. Maybe, indeed, Greeks thought of eqnikoi as lowlifes. And, indeed, coming from Athens, for example, to live in a hole in the wall village in Africa somewhere, yeah, maybe the eqnikoi were viewed as slave material only.....I can accept that. What I cannot accept is that eqnikoi refers to people of inferior religious status. I don't believe, pending evidence from Jeffrey, that any Greek author claimed that those who were eqnikoi were ineligible to pray to Zeus, or Jupiter, or Apollo, etc... The jews endeavored to physically separate non jews, from "god's chosen people". The Greeks may have thought that the Chinese merchants carrying silk in caravans were merely eqnikoi, barbarians, but I doubt that they imagined for a moment that these strange looking, small people, were their intellectual inferior. That's not the case for the jews, who believe, even today, that they are superior to all other humans.

Umm, what do you mean by IIRC, i.e. remember? Do you seek to indicate that you have previously had some exposure to Greek, for example, at a school or university, but that in the interval, you have managed to forget what you once knew? Sigh. If only I still possessed a quantity of neurons sufficient to remember anything at all....

avi

show_no_mercy

The problem is that prior to Christianity, there wasn't any separating between religion and nationality. All religions were associated with their ethnicity and vice versa. If you were a Greek, then you followed Greek "religion" (or philosophy). If you were Jewish, you followed the Jewish religion. Christianity was the first religion to not be based on any sort of physical kingdom or ethnicity/race.

So thinking that ethnikoi differentiated between race and religion might be 21st century thinking projected into antiquity.

Heh, yeah that's what it means. I recall it from one of my university classes on the Greek poets/philosophers and the wider Greek culture. Though I'm not sure if this was Classical Greek or Koine Greek, so I could be wrong.

Jeffrey Gibson

But it is.

And I've never said otherwise. But the issue isn't Earl's credentials. It's the ability of those not grounded in Greek to evaluate the arguments that Earl makes on the basis of his claims about the syntax and grammar of what a Greek text says.

How is Gentile derogatory?

Not only are you using a bad tool (its is NOT a dictionary of Koine Greek!), you are confusing a participle with a verb. So the very fact that you seem not to know (a) what tools to use to get at the meaning of Koine Greek, (b) that the word I produced was a participle and not a verb, (c) what the evidence is for the participle's usage in Koine Greek, and (d) what this evidence shows Hellenistic writers used the participle to signify, cuts deeply into the validity of your claim in the instance of the meaning of ἐθνικός that you have any knowledge at all, let alone a knowledge of a superior kind.

Could you please cite actual lexical evidence from Hellenistic literature to back up your claim?


Matthew was not Jewish?? Does the language one writes in determine ethnicity? Was Philo not Jewish?

No one said it wasn't. But that does not stop Jews from using it, let alone using it to mean "Gentiles". See 3 John 7. where it not only has nothing to do with the way a person looks, but is used in contrast to Jew , and Gal. where the adverb ἐθνικῶς is used in contrast with the Jewish way of life, and Jos., Ant. 13, 196; Sib. Or. 3 where its nominative equivalent(τὰ) ἔθνη is used by Jewish writers to mean Gentiles.


Leaving aside the fact that I spoke of "non resident alien", not "transient", I never said it did. In fact it was you who claimed it meant "transient" -- when you said that "Eqnikoi was a descriptor that indicated non-resident status"

Can you please provide lexical evidence that supports this claim?


While you are at it, you might also tell me what Hebrew words underlie the use by the Septuagint translators of the root of the adjective and what meaning they have.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Not my job. Your claim. Your obligation to back it up.

You really don't know where the word occurs outside of the NT, do you.


Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, wasn't the issue whether or not ἐθνικός in Matt 6:7 meant "Gentiles" and not how ἐθνικός has been translated by "the Jews" and Jerome?

In any case, you have not demonstrated in anyway at all that in Matt 6:7 ἐθνικός meant anything other than Gentiles. It certainly bears the meaninging of "the Gentile (in contrast to the Jew) in Matt 5:47 (cf Danker and LSJ). So why does it not bear it here?

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

So -- I take it that you think it's just as wise to go to the plumber or the hair dresser when you have cancer as it is to go to the oncologist.

In any case, I have not been talking about paper credentials. I have been talking about actual and demomstrated competence in Greek syntax and grammar.

Why is it that you think that the sorts of arguments I claim that someone like Toto -- i.e., someone who does not have actual training and demonstrated competence in the grammar and syntax of Koine Greek -- can not evaluate accurately are text critical arguments is beyond me. Why you think that being able to see the difference between textual variants of a given NT text qualifies anyone to be able to evaluate grammatical and syntactical and lexicographical arguments also shows that you have no idea what competence in Greek entails, let alone a knowledge of which of the arguments that Earl makes are the ones I'm speaking of.

Perhaps it would be best if you tool a look at the book first. See what you make of his claims about what Paul's use of "born of a woman" and "according to the flesh" means.

Jeffrey

Petergdi

I will try an analogy:

Book X contains an argument that the laws of Canada do not actually require income earners to pay income tax. Reviewer Y, who is not an expert at interpreting law, decides to check for himself and sits down with the book, a law dictionary and copies of the relevant statutes. The argument in Book X looks good to him, and so he publishes a glowing review. Is reviewer Y a fool?

Peter.

avi

1. A better rejoinder, would provide a link to a superior dictionary, if the one I am using is inadequate.
2. A terrific rejoinder, would not only point out my (supposed) error, but provide a "proper" dictionary's definition of the two words, so that we could compare and contrast the two words, using the JG authentic Koine dictionary.....

I believe that the two points are linked. You seek to indict Earl for want of having proper paper credentials, but, I seek to demonstrate, to your satisfaction, that one need not possess even the simplest knowledge of Koine Greek, to understand that the English translations of MANY passages in the three synoptic Gospels are incorrect. In other words, rather than read your complaints about Earl's supposedly inadequate qualifications, I hope to persuade you to teach us what is wrong with his theory. Stating that Earl's theory is wrong because he doesn't have a diploma attesting to his capability to adequately comprehend Koine Greek doesn't impress me.

What does impress me, is when you demonstrate gross errors. In this case, I have endeavored to convince you, and thus far, I have obviously not succeeded, that for even as little as a single word, there exists ample opportunity for someone who makes the effort, to identify errors in "authorized" translations, i.e. translations prepared by folks with a whole wall full of diplomae, attesting to their mastery of Koine Greek.

And you may be entirely correct, and I may be entirely wrong. It is only my opinion, not the word of God, that ἐθνικός is a GREEK, not a jewish word, and that the meaning of "gentile" is only relevant in a jewish context. "Gentile" has absolutely no relevance at all to Greece, because in the minds of the jews, all Greeks were Gentiles, until proven to the contrary....

Matthew 6:7--->
NIV: Do not even pagans do that?
NLT: Even pagans do that.
NASV: Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
ISV: Even the gentiles do the same, don't they?
God's Word: Everyone does that!
KJV: do not even the publicans so?
ASV: do not even the Gentiles the same?
Douay-Rheims: do not also the heathens this?
Young's Literal: Don't even the tax collectors do the same?

No, Jeffrey, this passage is (mis)translated by most authorities, as poorly as the passage I quoted. What is, or at least, to my way of thinking, ought to be, clear, is that the spectrum of translation choices, generally, but with an occasional exception, employs a derogatory term. Now, maybe ἐθνικός does connote "barbarian", as SNM suggested, but, in my opinion, one ought to reflect whether or not we are accepting a jewish interpretation, perhaps, as you have implied, Jeffrey, via the Septuagint, when we propose "Gentile" as an acceptable translation of ἐθνικός. To me, it is UNACCEPTABLE to employ ANY jewish crap for any reason, in examining the three synoptic gospels, because they were authored in Greek, not Hebrew.

Perhaps the answer lies in context, in which case, I am wrong. For me, it is an absolute, not a relative issue. For me, "gentile" is derogatory, because it juxtaposes the "chosen ones", with those who are slave material, nothing more.

? Is "yankee" derogatory? How about "Brit"? "Spic"? the list goes on and on....
If you know a little PuTongHua, what about "waiguoren"? Is it derogatory? If you know a little Japanese, what about "gaijin"?

Of course "gentile" is derogatory. Look at the list of OTHER words, used by several different Greek scholars, including "heathen", "pagan", "idolator". Those are considered, by the biblical types, to represent "synonyms" of Gentile....."publican" is a British term, I have no idea what it means. Tax collector is ephemeral, I really have no idea how that relates to ἐθνικός. I can imagine that the jews were miserable living under the rule by the Roman military, with its efficient, and inexorable tax collectors. This particular translation, "tax collector", demonstrates to my satisfaction that the English versions, at least, of the Greek original, are tainted by jewish interpretations, since the Greeks had a much less confrontational relationship with the Roman occupation, than did the jews.

No.

But, since you do, please teach us, because I am sure you have some reference to its use by a nonjewish native Greek speaker, roughly a century before the appearance of Mark, Matthew and Luke.

I look forward to your refutation of my supposition, by quoting a passage or a phrase, from a native Greek speaker, not of the jewish faith, from a time frame, roughly a century before Mark, i.e. 100BCE to 10 CE. Obviously, one doesn't use the Septuagint for such an investigation!!! haha. What a joke. You are truly a comedian, Jeffrey.

avi