Vorkosigan

Prax, we have NT scholars, laypeople, people with passionate interests, people with specific interests, and a few people with weird interpretations of their own. But one thing we don't have at Infidels, Prax, is people who assume. Whatever makes you think that I've assumed without exploring the arguments.

The text is written by humans. Ergo, it contains errors, contradictions, misunderstandings, etc. That's the basis of good scholarship. Anything else is apologetics, to be shunned by those with fine minds and a passion for the truth.

Vorkosigan

Steven Avery

Please understand, I am not saying that you don't actually believe the liberal view, I have dialogued in depth with skeptics on such issues, once most especially on the Pastorals, and once on 2 Peter. Both were quite informative, Peter was involved a bit in one of them, at least as a contributor.

When I say ...
" assuming the conclusions of liberal scholarship as your starting point."

that means, in the context of building various constructs. It is not meant to say that you hold those views improperly (without integrity) but that you assume those views in building up the theoretical edifices.

Hope that is clearer.

And there is one substantive counterpoint view, that the Scripture text is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16) and that the Dvar Elohim is perfect and pure (Psalm 12:6).. Anything else is confusion, to be shunned by those with a heart for the Creator, a love for the Messiah, and a passion for His Word :-)

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Vorkosigan

It is. Thanks.

Saying that it is "inspired by God", even if the hapax "God-breathed" actually means that, does not mean that the text is inerrant. You can't back-read your doctrines into your translations.

Vorkosigan

Amaleq13

It is non-existent since, your faith again notwithstanding, that reference only occurs in a pseudonymous letter attributed to Paul. Let's not create more of a tangent than has already been created, ok?

My conclusion is based on the evidence of Paul's letters. There is no evidence in them that he understood "Peter" or "Cephas" to be a nickname given by Jesus to a man named "Simon". Referring to that story to understand Paul when Paul exhibits no awareness of the story makes no sense.

That they mean the same thing in two different languages seems to be the most parsimonious way to account for any dual usage.

The later Gospel story explains nothing about Paul since he exhibits no awareness of it. If this is the same man, nothing more than an awareness of how the same name would be given in two different languages is all that is needed to explain the dual usage.

No, it is an extreme example of the sort of evidence that would be required to show that Paul was aware of the Gospel story (ie a complete repetition of the story). As I indicated, that is not the only possible evidence nor what was implied by my statements.

No, I am basing my conclusion simply on the contents of Paul's letters. With regard to the relative dates of the Gospels and Paul's letters, it is absurd to suggest that dating the former later than the latter is a conclusion exclusive to "liberal" or "skeptical" scholars.

And I don't see the point of pretending that conclusions about ancient texts which are primarily, if not entirely, based on faith have any place in a rational discussion of those texts and a rational discussion of the Bible is what this forum is all about. If you are looking for discussions involving a faith-based approach to the texts, I think you are looking for a different forum entirely.

The original issue involved references to "Peter" and "Cephas" in Paul's letters and whether one usage might be a later interpolation. After you mentioned the Gospel story, I pointed out that, your faith notwithstanding, the later Gospel story is entirely irrelevant to understanding that issue since there is no evidence Paul knew the story.

Your faith may help you to understand Paul but it doesn't help anyone not sharing your faith.

Steven Avery

Prax
> It seems you are going into lots of conjectures about how
> you speculate Paul would have thought if certain, mostly
> liberal or skeptical, scholarly viewpoints about the text were fact.
Any conservativ-ish scholarship begins by taking the text at face, with first person accounts, such as that in the Pastorals, being given at least a presumption of accuracy and honesty. Ergo Paul is even quoting Luke as scripture, and the Gospel of Luke precedes his epistles. This also is makes the most conceptual sense. And I have not seen any significant counter-argument against this, the most interesting attempt was involving the chonology of events, while most arguments were extremely "soft", often bundled together into a package to try to give some cumulative weight.

The fact that you wish to deny the conservative view is understandable, and some would rather it not be expressed on this forum
"I think you are looking for a different forum entirely."

However ultimately the conservative view is the one and only true challenge to the mythicist, skeptic, infidel position, and the real seeker would welcome at least consideration of the one fundamentally distinctive view.

For the rest of the discussion, my previous posts stand.

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Vorkosigan

Yes, but that is not how scholarship works. The mainstream is doing scholarship, you're doing apologetics. Have you read something like Van Harvey's The Historian and the Believer?

That's fine for an apologetic view, but scholarship has demonstrated that view wrong. You can't keep imagining that your faith-assertions are arguments. 1 Tim is not, by any scholarly method, a letter belonging with the group considered authentic. You know it, I know it. You got powerful evidence and argument that says otherwise, by all means publish.

That's not what was meant. It seems fruitless, though, when one side says: "here's the scholarship" and the other says "scholarship doesn't matter to me."

Massively incorrect. There is no one mythicist view, for starters, and the various views of liberal and conservative scholarship would all represent challenges to the mythicist position.

....on quicksand.

Steven Avery

Nope.. In general, however, my goal is not to be "mainstream".
Then why did the non-Pauline pastoral folks offer such weak argumentation ? Perhaps their "scholarship" was, as you say.. on quicksand.

On the similar 2 Peter discussion, I remember even Daniel Wallace (whom I would consider liberal textually) wrote quite an excellent article refuting the Metzger type view of a forged (my word) authorship of 2 Peter.

Straw man to the max. I was very happy to go into each and every claim against the Pastorals and 2 Peter. I went into it with close to a scholastic tabla rosa. And I was rather surprised how weak were most all of the arguments. If the liberal scholarship arguments against those epistles were really true, I would actually be willing to grant just about every skeptic and mythicist argument as reasonable.

Ultimately, all your claims depend on the concept of fraudulent, forged epistles, while all of the true believers depend on the honestly and integrity of the first person assertions in those leters.

In a mild sense, yes to the mythicist, but not to the skeptic or infidel. And to the believer, the distance between skeptic/infidel/mythicist in very small.

> Prax.. For the rest of the discussion, my previous posts stand.
I simply didn't see anything else of real substance to which to respond. For every clear paradimically based dialog, or meaty factual or interpretative thread, there are a dozen repetitions and sidelights that add little.
"We are the scholars, you aren't .. yada yada"
My duty is to cut bait on repetitive redundant rehashes that add little.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Amaleq13

This is untrue. I consider the conservative scholarly view to hold a legitimate place in a rational discussion (eg Bede, Layman at their best) but I don't consider your position to be accurately described as "the conservative view". I think a much more accurate description is "the faith-based view" but I do not deny it as much as I recognize it is fundamentally incompatible with a rational approach to understanding ancient texts. My understanding of a conservative scholarly view is one where the scholar attempts to conserve as much of their beliefs and traditions as can be supported by their rational consideration of the evidence. IOW they do not approach the texts from a primarily faith-based position but from a position of rational thought.

A faith-based position only constitutes a threat to other faith-based positions because only a belief in magic can be threatened by a belief in magic.

DramaQ

And then

The assumptions on which you build your case are superior how? Because the text self-proclaims inspiration by God? I guess that's part of your assumption...

dq

John A. Broussard

My problem is that I'm presented with the "scriptures" of a variety of different religions. All of them claim to be "the word of god."

Do you have an acid test that I could use to determine which one of these documents is the divinely inspired word of the supreme being?