Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Solo · 11-26-2006, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

...the reality may not have lived up to expectations for a messiah figure. The stories told about a person ought to fit the claims about that person, and in this case the claim (that Jesus was the messiah) put the bar pretty high. Gundry himself might not agree with a high degree of fictionalization in Mark, but I am saying that, even if most of Mark is fiction, it is fiction written for a straightforward purpose, not fiction written in code.

I gave, as an example of Markan "code", the "calling" by Jesus (via his faithful messengers) of Bartimaeus in Mk 10-46:52. You are free to disagree but the gift of "sight" to the beggar I decode as a special kind of "vision" that one receives if one has faith.

The Bartimaeus cipher is for the internal consumption of those unto whom it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom. It is relatively simple to decode. But there are instances where Mark is downright sly in his hypnotic suggestion that the gospel Jesus dwells in the readers' body and their experience tracks his ecstatic self-discovery as a family relative of the Omnipotent morphing into a horrible, mortifying ordeal on the Cross. My favourite "sly" Mark is 14:7.

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Compare the stories surrounding the life of Francis of Assisi. I suspect a good proportion of them are pure legend, but surely they arose for a very straightforward purpose, to wit, to magnify the purity and piety of Francis and the first Franciscans. I doubt we should go through these Franciscan legends looking for hidden agendas and encrypted messages.

I am not sure what you are referring to with respect to Francis. But there is a lovely "transfiguration" coding in a legend about Juan Yepes (St.John of the Cross).

His cell became filled with light seen by the bodily eye.
One night the friar who kept him went as usual to see that his
prisoner was safe, and witnessed the heavenly light with which
the cell was flooded. He..hurried to the prior, thinking that someone
in the house had the keys to open the doors of the prison. The prior, with two religious, went at once to the prison, but on his entering the room
through which the prison was approached the light vanished.
The prior,.. entered the cell, and finding it dark, opened the lantern
with which he provided himself, and asked the prisoner who had given
him light. St. John answered him, and said that no-one in the house
had done so…The prior made no reply, and went away thinking that
the gaoler made a mistake.

Quote from: R.M.Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness, Citadel Press, N.J., 1961, p.120

The tale illustrates what I call the nimbus effect and the phenomena of pseudophotesthesia which I wrote about on the Board earlier. An inner mental or physiological event is discussed by a group of initiates, in this case, the Carmelite mystics. They parabolize the "reality" of their mystical experiences as actual observable events or supernatural phenomena, which are hidden from the vulgar, profane senses. In the second stage of the mythical development, the mystic asserts the actual event to a believer as a test of his/her faith. The internal light of the saint (,in this case,) becomes visible to the the believer's eye, who confirms it as an objective physical event. It is this process of allegoric exteriorization that lies behind most of the gospel miracles, and I suspect behind some of the non-miraculous gospel events as well.

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....I think that this apology for the cross was quite important to Mark and other early Christians, and should probably be very high on the list of possible motivations for any given pericope.

Of course it was important: Mark pioneered the very method which reconciled the two strands of the movement which were irreconcilable a (half-?)generation before, the kingdom-here-and-now original Jesus tradition and the Pauline no-way-you-can-have-it-here-and-now.

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I do not think the crowds have much if anything to do with people around Mark. I think they are, whether historical or exaggerated or invented, an important part of the apology.

If they were exaggerated or invented, Ben, then their function is symbolical. If Mark was substituting symbolical events (and/or personnages) for factual ones, he was "coding". So the only question is, was he coding for general consumption, or with the intent that the passages are read differently by the initiates. You know what my view of it is.

Regards,
Jiri

ynquirer · 11-26-2006, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Again, this is the end of the discussion. There's nothing particularly strange about the vowel being omitted. There's nothing particularly strange about the YOD transliterated as an eta. And there's nothing particularly strange about names having slightly different pronunciations. It's all supportable with examples and you admit you have no evidence. All the rest is your attempt to manipulate to put aside the available evidence.

I think long-suffering readers were hoping for an argument.

I'm impressed with the shamefacedness of this approach. I'm wrong according to you despite the fact that I've shown that all the problems you've suggested can be explained through biblical examples, and it's your fault if you can't, without evidence, convince people that I'm wrong.:notworthy:

Considering that we are dealing with quite a small corpus, being all the names transliterated in the Hebrew bible that contain a YOD as a mater lectionis, naturally you are expecting a lot to have all of your quibbling met with one all-encompassing example that also meets your statistical requirements.

On the contrary, it is clearly not a tangent. That the one name can have two separate pronunciations does bear on the Caiaphas/Cephas issue.

First example that a YOD can be transliterated as a Greek eta.

GYHWN/GHN is evidence that the YOD mater lectionis is not necessary. It also shows two distinct transliterations, yes, one only once, but gosh you seem to want it all in the one basket, despite the fact that out selection is rather limited.

You've got this out of order chronologically. This (WBD and $M were provided earlier than Gihon in order to show that the YOD mater lectionis doesn't need to be present to have the eta in the Greek transliteration.

Silly misrepresentation. As I said earlier,

You are jousting at whatever you can and clutching onto whatever you can. I have no problem with David. It's just that there are more useful parallels available, ie ones that feature a long vowel in the Greek transliteration. If you really want to talk about David, please feel free to. It won't change much. It has served its purpose.

It's still true.

Good evidence for the omittable YOD mater lectionis transliterated as an eta with and without the mater lectionis.

Utter rubbish. The fact that Dishon has versions with and without mater lectionis, and that the YOD can be transliterated as an eta, though it does supply an alternative transliteration is yet more evidence to deal with all aspects of the problem.

In the end you have no evidence to support your denial and you depend on attempting to repudiate six pieces of evidence, while offering nothing to support your position.

There are examples of YOD transliterated as eta.
There are examples of a YOD mater lectionis included and omitted.
There are examples of a YOD mater lectionis supplying two diverse transliterations.

You continue to play without all the cards in the deck. All stops in the debate have been covered with the evidence. You just want the evidence in a single nice package with a ribbon on top otherwise you'll reject it out of hand. Unfortunately, linguistic evidence is not always as simple as you would like it to be in your ideal sample world.

spin

As this does not provide new evidence - despite the suggestion that there are lots of it within reach - but merely grumbles on the basis of pieces of argument I have already discussed, I have nothing to add for the time being.

TedM · 11-26-2006, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

You continue to play without all the cards in the deck. All stops in the debate have been covered with the evidence. You just want the evidence in a single nice package with a ribbon on top otherwise you'll reject it out of hand. Unfortunately, linguistic evidence is not always as simple as you would like it to be in your ideal sample world.
spin

Assuming you have provided examples that support the idea that Caiaphus could be transliterated as Cephas, I am wondering whether we can conclude anything about the fact (I assume this is a fact) that we have no evidence that Caiaphus ever actually was transliterated as Cephas. I am still unclear, but do we have examples of how Josephus's writings in Greek treated the name Caiaphus? Would that not provide us information of value? Lastly, is there much value in saying that a name 'could' be transliterated a certain way if we have no evidence that it was? (again the example comes to mind of how we might spell an equivalent sounding 'medal'--some acceptable "meddle, metal" and some never "mettle, mettal").

I'm looking for perspective on what was probable, not just possible.

ted

Ben C Smith · 11-26-2006, 08:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

I gave, as an example of Markan "code", the "calling" by Jesus (via his faithful messengers) of Bartimaeus in Mk 10-46:52. You are free to disagree....

Thank you. In this case I choose to exercise that freedom to its fullest.

Quote:

I am not sure what you are referring to with respect to Francis. But there is a lovely "transfiguration" coding in a legend about Juan Yepes (St.John of the Cross).

The example you give seems off point to me. If the illumination event was real in the modern sense (that is, if we could have captured it on film had we been there), then of course the account is literal (even if symbolically charged as well), and this discussion is moot.

If the illumination event was not real in the modern sense (no way to capture it on film), then I see three basic alternatives. First, it was a trick of the mind of the friar in question; he honestly thought he saw a light, but he did not. Second, it was an exaggeration or misunderstanding of the original event; a spiritual experience was eventually transmitted as a physical experience. Third, it was a (presumably pious) fiction written up with the full knowledge that it had no actual basis in reality.

But in all of these cases the meaning seems very surface. There is no hidden code to decipher in which the friar stands for something and John of the Cross for something else. In a broad sense the light may stand for illumination or such, but this would hardly be a code.

Your example of Bartimaeus and Jesus seems quite different. You call it coded stuff. In your interpretation the throng represents the spiritually mature, and I confess I never would have guessed that. You say that Jesus answers the one who cannot be a chooser, and I do not even know what that means. You say that the call of Jesus required the beggar to remove his shirt, and I have no idea why that should be. And then you equate restored sight with clearance to follow Jesus instincts, and again I have no context against which to understand such a statement.

In other words, after reading your explanation of the Marcan mysticism, I am quite more mystified than before, whereas the turning of a spiritual experience into a physical experience (again, whether psychologically, traditionally, or fictionally) is not mysterious at all (not as a concept to study, at any rate).

Quote:

Of course it was important: Mark pioneered the very method which reconciled the two strands of the movement which were irreconcilable a (half-?)generation before, the kingdom-here-and-now original Jesus tradition and the Pauline no-way-you-can-have-it-here-and-now.

I again find myself exercising my freedom to disagree with your assessment.

Quote:

If Mark was substituting symbolical events (and/or personnages) for factual ones, he was "coding".

That is far too broad a definition of coding for me. It is certainly not what I mean when I use the term.

Ben.

spin · 11-26-2006, 10:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ynquirer

As this does not provide new evidence - despite the suggestion that there are lots of it within reach - but merely grumbles on the basis of pieces of argument I have already discussed, I have nothing to add for the time being.

You've provided no evidence. You are not dealing with evidence. I can only put it before you so often. You haven't discussed much other than your willingness not to deal with the evidence:

There are examples of YOD transliterated as eta.
There are examples of a YOD mater lectionis included and omitted.
There are examples of a YOD mater lectionis supplying two diverse transliterations.

To quote a little Shakespeare:

"Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again."

spin

ynquirer · 11-27-2006, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ynquirer

Your latest evidence is the name Dishon/Dishan, in Chronicles 1:38, 41-42. My count yields five occurrences of the subjacent Hebrew (2 in 1:38, 2 in 1:41, and 1 in 1:42). In every one of them the YOD does appear; therefore, it doesn’t add any evidence in support of your theory of QYP)/QP). It is true that the translators into Greek three times render the subjacent Hebrew Daiswn and twice Dhswn; however great the interest to dwell in this oddity, it is tangent to the main issue. And we don’t like the tangent, do we?

On the contrary, it is clearly not a tangent. That the one name can have two separate pronunciations does bear on the Caiaphas/Cephas issue.

This brings to the foreground the fundamental question of how the name Kaiafas - attested by Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (4th century) - was risen from Khfas, according to your theory.

Short of entering such intricacies, your statement is a good instance of how loosely you make use of evidence. Daiswn/Dhswn provides a parallel for Kaifas/Khfas, but regretfully not for Kaiafas/Khfas.

spin · 11-27-2006, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ynquirer

This brings to the foreground the fundamental question of how the name Kaiafas - attested by Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (4th century) - was risen from Khfas, according to your theory.

You still misunderstand. Both Caiaphas and Cephas can be derived from the same underlying Semitic name, though point to different pronunciations of that name.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ynquirer

Short of entering such intricacies, your statement is a good instance of how loosely you make use of evidence. Daiswn/Dhswn provides a parallel for Kaifas/Khfas, but regretfully not for Kaiafas/Khfas.

It depends on how far you want to prescribe the possibilities of the speakers and transcribers of the time.

spin

ynquirer · 11-28-2006, 01:10 PM

Quote:

You still misunderstand. Both Caiaphas and Cephas can be derived from the same underlying Semitic name, though point to different pronunciations of that name.

Different pronunciation of the Semitic name, its transliteration into Greek or both?

Quote:

It depends on how far you want to prescribe the possibilities of the speakers and transcribers of the time.

Only available evidence may prescribe that, in my opinion. If you had Daiaswn/Dhswn instead of Daiswn/Dhswn, well, that would be in greater support of your theory. That is particularly relevant since Daiswn and Dhswn were not intended to name members of the same family.

JoeWallack · 11-28-2006, 02:08 PM

Hi Ben.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joses

All four supposed brothers of "Mark's" Jesus have the Same names as important supposed disciples of "Mark's" Jesus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benjamin

Except Joses. It is not Mark who makes Joseph of Arimathea a disciple of Jesus; that would be Matthew. In fact, it is also Matthew who explicitly calls the brother Joseph, again making the link you wish to find in Mark more explicit.

JW:
http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Mark_15:43

"there came Joseph of Arimathaea, a councillor of honorable estate, who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly went in unto Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus."

JW:
Okay, Joseph is not Explicitly identified as a Disciple, but:

1) He's shown as a Seeker.

2) He accepts Jesus in death. The only Follower in "Mark" to do so.

3) You know what "mathaea" means.

I suppose I could even retreat to Disciple/Follower. There seems to be a lot of symbolism here Contra Gundry. Mary, the mother of Joseph, witnesses the death from afar. Than Joseph accepts Jesus in death. So tell me Schotzkey, is there some limit to the number of coincidences you can accept?

Good one on Joses/Joseph although it's the same underlying Hebrew name, isn't it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joses

So "Mark" Explicitly having a Theme of family replacement, having the only parent of Jesus named "Mary" and a brother named "Joseph", Explicitly saying Jesus' mother and brothers thought Jesus was crazy and having a different "Mary", mother of "Joseph", Witness the supposed crucifixion could not possibly be more than a coincidence.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benjamin

It may not be a coincidence. But I do not think that yours is the best explanation even if it is not. Names can get confused in oral transmission without there having to be a grand authorial scheme to explain every name correspondence.

JW:
The duplicate names are evidence of the Intentional, not the Unintentional.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joses

Again, the Names of all four brothers are the same as the Name of Four important disciples.

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Originally Posted by Benjamin

1. The brother Simon bears the same name as Simon Peter, but he also shares his name with Simon the Cananaean (the zealot).
2. The brother James bears the same name as James of Zebedee, but he also shares his name with James of Alphaeus.

JW:
So the two most important Disciples have Double Same names. Thanks Ben!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benjamin

4. The brother Judas bears the same name as Judas Iscariot, but he also shares his name with Judas of James in the Lucan list.

JW:
"Lucan"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benjamin

What I see as more likely than some Marcan plan to exchange names is a confusion in the transmission of the tradition. (What follows is just a suggestion that dawned on me no more than a year or so ago.) The tradition knew about a group of twelve disciples, but the names of some of the less important ones got lost. The tradition also knew that there were certain Jewish Christians named James, Judas, and Simon in the early Jerusalem church; these were the brothers of Jesus, but in time their names were used, whether intentionally or accidentally, to fill out the list of twelve.

This scenario would explain why two of these lesser disciples have names that resonate with those of the dominical family. The designation Judas of James probably means Judas son of James, but what if that is just a garbled transmission of Judas brother of James, as in Jude 1.1? The designation James of Alphaeus may likewise be an alternate transmission of James of Cloephas, since Alphaeus and Cleophas may be etymologically linked (that is a long debate into which I do not wish to enter here; and the exact etymology is unnecessary for my suggestion, since it relies not on true and accurate transmission but rather on confusion or close interchangeability of names). Cleophas is related in some way to a certain Mary in John 19.25.

JW:
Logic goes the other way Ben. If only the Brother names were remembered it's likely that different names would be chosen for Disciples to Avoid confusion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joses

The only comparision you want to use is a 100% matching of Names with the % "Mark" used. An Apologetic Jewdie mind trick. Homily don't play that game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benjamin

I am not necessarily seeking 100%, but if all of this name overlap is a Marcan plan, I do expect it to look a little better planned than it looks to me right now.

JW:
The Matching of Names is relatively (pun intended) high as you've helped document and there is a pervasive theme of Family Replacement (which you refuse to acknowledge religiously). All of Jesus' Insiders were his "Brothers". My job is done, I've made you understand What the evidence is. Only you can decide what it Means.

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Originally Posted by Joses

Ben, that you want to plead ignorance that you've never heard anyone make this Name connection observation is no reflection on me, it's a reflection on Mainstream Christian bible scholarship.

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Originally Posted by Benjamin

Whom should I read to catch up with your take on the Marcan name games? Thanks in advance.

Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Ben C Smith · 11-28-2006, 03:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWallack

"there came Joseph of Arimathaea, a councillor of honorable estate, who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly went in unto Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus."

JW:
Okay, Joseph is not Explicitly identified as a Disciple, but:

1) He's shown as a Seeker.
2) He accepts Jesus in death. The only Follower in "Mark" to do so.
3) You know what "mathaea" means.

I suppose I could even retreat to Disciple/Follower. There seems to be a lot of symbolism here Contra Gundry. Mary, the mother of Joseph, witnesses the death from afar. Than Joseph accepts Jesus in death.

What about his description in Mark makes you think Joseph accepted Jesus in death? What, for example, in your judgment rules out his being a pious Jew who did not want to desecrate the land with dead bodies?* I agree that Matthew and Luke make him seem more like a disciple; but you usually remind me not to read Mark in their light.

* And please avoid the trap of claiming that Joseph asked only for the body of Jesus. Asking for the body of Jesus is not the same as asking only for the body of Jesus.

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The duplicate names are evidence of the Intentional, not the Unintentional.

That remains to be seen. I do not think, judging from your comments, that you fully understood my hypothetical scenario.

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"Lucan"?

Adjective. It means of Luke. It is also sometimes spelled Lukan, but I prefer the Latinized version.

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Logic goes the other way Ben. If only the Brother names were remembered it's likely that different names would be chosen for Disciples to Avoid confusion.

Not if those names were chosen accidentally. You cannot rule out accident in advance, and then prove intentionality.

And not if the transmitters of the tradition were short of names. We see elsewhere the tendency, for example, to fill in the names of the seventy by creating connections where none originally were and by splitting people in half (as what Clement does with Peter and Cephas, for example).

Quote:

The Matching of Names is relatively (pun intended) high as you've helped document and there is a pervasive theme of Family Replacement (which you refuse to acknowledge religiously).

Of course Mark has a theme of family replacement. It is clear as crystal in chapter 3. It is not at all clear, however, in the name of Simon of Cyrene. That is what is under discussion here. Not the presence of that theme in Mark, but rather the presence of that theme in the choice of names for some of the people in the passion narrative.

Ben.

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