DCHindley

Abe,

Welcome to nouns and articles that have prepositional meaning built into them. TOU = "of/from the," TW = "in/to/by the," two other forms signify the noun or article is the subject or object of a sentence, - plus another complete set of forms to signify these meanings in the plural. Its a lot like Latin, Spanish, French and Italian. Don't even get me started on Greek verbs (over 100 possible forms for most verbs - usually tacked to the ends of verb stems)!

DCH

ApostateAbe

Thank you, that clears it up. It is great you know a few things about Greek. I have a lot to learn about Greek. I use a lot of online translating, but I get mixed up with all the various forms of words.

Toto

The interchange between Rick and spin on what Rick calls "anti-realism" has been split off here

spin

While it's not specifically slavery (merely subservience, class, power), the basic concept is correct.

Thus far, we're fine. It's "The lord said to my lord". But given the reverence for ha-Shem at the time, you veer into my-brain-hurts time with the following.

That last observation should be a warning to you not to take seriously the idea of Paul straying in the manner you imply.

Though Phil 2 is impressive with its striking christology, it's not a provocation to the "border on blasphemy". That blashemy is more likely from marginal comments from non-Jewish commentators later included in the text.


spin

aa5874

Your claims are fallacies.

The Ebionites rejected ALL the Epistles with the name Paul according to a Church writer using the name Eusebius.

This is Church History 3.27.4 And Paul did NOT consider that Jesus was an ordinary man,unlike the Ebionites, but the Son of God, and preached that faith was necessary for salvation and that the Law was a curse to them who abide by them and is of very little use, but the Ebionites still obeyed the Laws of Moses and discarded all the Pauline writings and considered him just an ordinary man.

Church History 3.27.2

The Ebionites' Christology was based on a common man as the product of intercourse of Mary with a man and the Laws of Moses.

Paul's Christology was based on FAITH and the HOLY GHOST of god, called the son of God, who resurrected and ascended through the clouds.

Paul was a reject and an apostate to the Ebionites.

yalla

I've come in late but this caught my eye.
I'm assuming we are partly in the midst of a discussion on historians [whatever they are, whatever they do], historical methods, scholars, christian and/or otherwise, and the interpretation of history with respect to christian texts and origins.

Years ago I read a book in which the author described himself as follows on page 76:
"I am an academic, a professional scholar and historian by education and inclination ...I do not start with a picture of what our subject looked like".

That's nice I thought, but why then did that author introduce his book on page 1 thus:
"On a spring morning in about the year 30ce 3 men were executed by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem"

The author?
E.P Sanders "The Historical Figure of Jesus" Penguin 1993 London.

neilgodfrey

No, because "probability estimates" are not evidence substitutes. Probability estimates can be drawn from evidence in answers to questions we put to evidence, but cannot be used in place of evidence itself.

Where would one start to establish "probability estimates" for the authorship of any of the gospels?

You refer to "legitimacy" of texts. I am not questioning "legitimacy" in itself, but the purpose and nature of texts -- that is what we need to establish before we even know what they are evidence of, and how to use them in any enquiry. We don't know all the questions we can ask of them unless we know "what they are" and why they were written and when and for whom.

I don't mean they are of no historical value. We can treat them as products of a Mediterranean world and some sort of Christian matrix between 40 and 140 c.e. and compare their literary features with those of other texts we have a surer knowledge of, and that can inform us about the texts quite a bit. It can also enrich our understanding of ideas of the authors of the texts.

So the texts can in these ways be valuable data to explore and understand in any enquiry into the origins of Christianity. But the story of origins that emerges through this sort of enquiry (the sort that would be taken for granted in many nonbiblical histories) would very likely be quite different from the picture that is portrayed in the narratives of the texts themselves.

But that's how (nonbiblical) history works. You have to start with the evidence that you can understand and know -- in the sense of knowing where it comes from, its purpose and intent, its audience and author, etc. And then you have to sift the primary (if it exists) from the secondary evidence and make assessments about each. Sometimes the secondary may turn out to be more reliable than the primary -- but we will only know if we have some understanding of the provenance of both. Unsourced and unprovenanced evidence can be used, but only within the constraints described above.

But the funny thing about the studies of Christian origins is that we may not ever know when or if we are looking at primary evidence, if it even exists. But that's another (if related) story.

show_no_mercy

Erhman's book barely touches on Paul's letters; it's all about misquoting Jesus. As we all know, Paul never quotes Jesus so he's never going to misquote him . IIRC in that book Erhman only mentions 1 Timothy being pseudo-Pauline and one other possible interpolation in 1 Corinthians.

ApostateAbe

Thank you for the explanation, neilgodfrey. I appreciate it, because I think we really do need more information on the provenance of New Testament texts. The probability estimates for who originally wrote the text (which I think is all we really need to know to make educated guesses about the historical characters) is based on the contents of the text, on who is expected or not expected to say things. That is what Misquoting Jesus is about. Uncertain it may be. You said that some people of the time were good at faking authorship, and, if they were so good that they could fool modern critical scholars, then that would really throw a wrench into the system.

ApostateAbe

Yeah, I think you are right about that. I think the book is a pretty good explanation of the principles, and an everyman reader can apply those same principles to make a judgment about Galatians 1:19.