Johnny Skeptic

What should laymen conclude regarding any issue when experts in ancient Greek disagree?

avi

I am unskillful in the art of rhetoric, but isn't that rejoinder considered a non-sequitur? Well, nevertheless, allow me to answer your question with an actual story: This guy shows up at the Veteran's Hospital. The chief physician, (in your phrase, Jeffrey, the "oncologist", though he was actually a board certified pneumologist) examined the x-ray, and told the patient that he probably had an infection. I looked at the same x-ray, and suggested that the guy stop smoking, if he wanted to be eligible to undergo surgery the following week, to remove the huge cancer. We were both wrong of course. The patient refused to stop smoking, and the lesion was in any event too large to permit surgery, he was only eligible for palliative radiation. In this narrow example, Jeffrey, going to the "oncologist" would have led to the same end result as going to the hair dresser!

I understand, that's not what you meant. You wish to imply that there is an important distinction between those with great experience and inexhaustible knowledge, when compared with those of us who are wholly uneducated. In my own life's experiences, that particular observation has not proven to be the case. With regard to the issue at hand, I remain unpersuaded, awaiting your explicit refutation of my contention, by showing how eqnikoi is used by a nonjewish native Koine Greek speaker at 100 BCE.

avi

Toto

avi - the translation of ethnikoi was discussed in this thread - Gentiles, pagans, natives, or ... ?, and also in this: Who were the heathens?, although at least half of the posts in the latter are off topic and may give you a headache.

These may not answer your question, but will indicate the level of confusion surrounding this topic.

Jeffrey Gibson

First let's have the linguistic evidence that your assertion regarding your assertion that in Matt 6:7 the meaning of ἐθνικός is something other than "Gentile".

Jeffrey

Petergdi

It depends. Do you have an actual example in mind, or is this a purely hypothetical question?

Peter.

Jeffrey Gibson

I have -- several times now. But apparently you don't know what LSJ and BDAG signify. But one would have thought that a person who claims to have superior knowledge of the actual meaning of ἐθνικός in Matt. 6:7 would have consulted these already to find out how the term was actually used in Koine Greek.

Umm, I have already.


Really?! On what basis do you do come to know that a Greek word has been translated in correctly and didn't bear the meaning that one finds in translations?

What complaints?? So far as I can see, what I've been talking about is what it takes for a reader of Earl's work to be able to see whether or not Earl's Greek based arguments are correct (and why Earl's work has not been peer reviewed).

And it shouldn't. But I'd be grateful if you would point out where in this thread I have actually "stated" any such thing.

Obviously not, since that's what I've been doing here and, as you say, you have not been impressed.


I don't dispute that. But the question is whether you have done so.
What actual "opportunities" have you taken in this regard? What efforts to determine the way the word ἐθνικός was actually used in the first century CE have you really made? Have you looked in the relevant Greek lexicons? Have you checked any scholarly commentary on Matt 6:7? Have you tried to locate where it is in Greek literature contemporary with Matthew that the word ἐθνικός is found to see with what sense or senses it is actually used?


Of course the word is Greek, but that doesn't mean that Jews didn't use it, let alone use it signify "Gentile".

Is not the context of the words of Jesus Jewish? Is not Matt. 6:7 something that is presented as a word of Jesus that is spoken in a Jewish context to a Jewish audience??

It is a Roman term, actually, referring to a member of the societas publicanorum, composed principally of Romans of the Equestrian order who purchased the right to collect taxes or who were contracted by civic officials to do so. See E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (or via: amazon.co.uk). Ithaca, NY (1976)

Tell that to those who suffered under Antiochus Epiphanes or to Jews in the diapsora who suffered at the hands of Greeks. In any case, are you really suggesting that a translator translated ἐθνικός as "tax collector"?


No.

Have you not seen the references I have already given?. Did you not understand that these were referneces to instances of usage of ἐθνικός by Greek speakers?

Do you have any idea how foolish you are making yourself look?

Jeffrey

Johnny Skeptic

Hypothetical.

Petergdi

If the answer doesn't matter much to you, then accept uncertainty.

If the answer matters a lot then study and learn. Study and learn. Study, study and study again. Then you can have your own informed opinion. You might not be right, but you will have an informed opinion and it will be your own.

It is the same for all subjects.

What you don't do is to claim that a subject is bunk, or claim (without further evidence) that no one knows the correct answer.

Peter.

avi

yes, in Matthew 5:47:

http://bible.cc/matthew/6-7.htm

http://bible.cc/matthew/5-47.htm

Jeffrey Gibson

I asked about 6:7 not 5:7.

In any case, all I see here are English renderings. I do not see the Greek text that the translators who have "tax collector" as part of their translation worked from.

Do you know for a fact that ἐθνικός stands in the critical edition of the Greek text that they used as their translation base?

And where in this thread can I be found stating, as you explicitly claimed I did, "that Earl's theory is wrong because he doesn't have a diploma attesting to his capability to adequately comprehend Koine Greek"?

Jeffrey