Rules of Historical Reasoning

[hakeem]

hakeem wrote:

In which year did people called Ebionites believe Jesus was a plain and common man?

Which historical writings corroborate anything about Ebionites with respect to Jesus?

The belief that Jesus was a common man by those who never saw him is not evidence that Jesus was a figure of history.

The writings attributed to the same Eusebius admit Jesus was God of God--the Only begotten Son of the father.

In which year did people believe he was not a plain and ordinary man? What historical writings corroborate anything about them with respect to Jesus? In my view, both views are in the same boat and we have to reckon with the sources that we have.

Your view is flawed. You are in a "boat" without any historical evidence.

We actually have dated manuscripts with stories of Jesus where it is stated that he was born of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin, was the Logos and God Creator.

P 46 dated to mid 2nd-3rd century admits the Pauline Jesus [the Lord from heaven] was not a man but was the Son of God and a woman or was God Creator, the first born of the dead.

[neilgodfrey]

I confess I no longer know what is under discussion here. I thought you were asking for literary examples of the phrase to demonstrate that it was an idiom; even your comment above about having read a wide range of texts seems to imply as much. If that is not what you were asking for, then what?

I understood your citation of LSJ was at least in part meant to provide evidence for the said phrase to be an idiom in Greek literature -- hence your singling out Euripides, for example. I was looking for evidence that there was some such idiomatic phrase in Greek literature.

[Ben C. Smith]

I confess I no longer know what is under discussion here. I thought you were asking for literary examples of the phrase to demonstrate that it was an idiom; even your comment above about having read a wide range of texts seems to imply as much. If that is not what you were asking for, then what?

I understood your citation of LSJ was at least in part meant to provide evidence for the said phrase to be an idiom in Greek literature -- hence your singling out Euripides, for example. I was looking for evidence that there was some such idiomatic phrase in Greek literature.

Ah, I see. No, the quote from the Bacchae was meant as a parallel. I was taking for granted (at that point) that the phrase was a Hebrew idiom and was adding an interestingly similar phrase from classical Greek. I do not think the Greek construction has anything directly to do with Galatians 4.4. And I think the instance in the Bacchae may derive from a very literal sense of ancient views on childbirth, rather than from a specific idiom.

[iskander]

Born of a woman is easily understood to mean a mortal man or woman by any normal people. It is only a certain breed of people who have difficulty with it : the verbose morons who have parasitized this forum

[hakeem]

Born of a woman is easily understood to mean a mortal man or woman by any normal people. It is only a certain breed of people who have difficulty with it : the verbose morons who have parasitized this forum

Your statement is quite bizarre. You must have never heard of ancient mythology.

You seem not to know that Romulus, the son of the God Mars, the myth founder of Rome, was also claimed to be born of a woman.

Christian writings specifically state that Jesus had no human father.

"Against Heresies" was composed against those who claimed Jesus had a human father

In effect, in Christian writings, it is those who claimed Jesus had a human father who were regarded as "lying morons" [heretics]

There was never any historical document to show that Jesus had a human father.

Tertullian's On the Flesh of Christ ----Now, that we may give a simpler answer, it was not fit that the Son of God should be born of a human father's seed, lest, if He were wholly the Son of a man, He should fail to be also the Son of God....

Jesus was always a product of belief--never a product of history.

[John2]

hakeem wrote;

We actually have dated manuscripts with stories of Jesus where it is stated that he was born of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin, was the Logos and God Creator.

P 46 dated to mid 2nd-3rd century admits the Pauline Jesus [the Lord from heaven] was not a man but was the Son of God and a woman or was God Creator, the first born of the dead.

I gather that the dating of this papyrus is (educated) guesswork, and the Wikipedia page says, "its 'most probable date' [is] between 175 and 225 [CE]."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_46

Papias, however, is estimated to have died before this, ranging from the early to the mid-second century CE (with the latest guess being the early 160's CE).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papias_of_Hierapolis.

And he is the first person to mention Matthew by name, and he says it was originally written in Hebrew, and as I said above, the word for virgin in the Greek Matthew and LXX Is. 7:14 is parthenos, but in Hebrew the word that is used is almah or young woman and not virgin (which is betulah).

This is the case as well in the Hebrew Matthew we have today, as can be seen for Mt. 1:23 on pages 4 (Hebrew) and 5 (English) of Howard's Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

https://books.google.com/books?id=4tdEB ... ew&f=false

I can't copy the Hebrew but I can see it on page 4 and it says almah, and here is Howard's translation:

Behold the young woman is conceiving and will bear a son ...

And Epiphanius says the earliest followers of Jesus used a Hebrew OT and Matthew (as I cited above).

[John2]

And again, the genealogy of Matthew (in Greek or Hebrew) only makes sense if Joseph was Jesus' father and according to Epiphanius this is the way it was understood by Jewish Christians.

[iskander]

Apparently the word parthenoi denotes the status of young woman who may not be a virgin.

http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/3742

" 2.1.3. The age of the chorus-members


The majority of the evidence I have gathered concerns the second category, that of the παρθένοι or virgins. This term, used in addition to young girls and adolescent girls, should not mislead: in Greece it embodies a concept very different from the one imposed upon our culture by twenty centuries of piety concerning the Virgin Mary. It refers to that particular status of the young woman who is pubescent but not yet married: the many Greek legends about young girls who have a child is proof, among others, that the term παρθένος by no means denotes a physical state of virginity, but simply the status of a young woman who is not yet married. [32] The status of adolescent, however, shows a variety of features that separate the girl from the child and from the married woman, yet at the same time relate her to them. Based on a physiological phenomenon, that of puberty, it is characteristic of a transitional period. Sexual ambiguity is its characteristic: still children, young virgins often have masculine characteristics, and, being sexually undifferentiated, they are often associated with the ephebes; as women, they arouse the desire of men but flee their attentions. [33] The semantic polyvalence of this image of the young girl will grow richer as my study progresses "

[Kapyong]

Born of a woman is easily understood to mean a mortal man or woman by any normal people. It is only a certain breed of people who have difficulty with it : the verbose morons who have parasitized this forum

Abusive comments like that are not welcome iskander

Kapyong

[John2]

iskander wrote:

Apparently the word parthenoi denotes the status of young woman who may not be a virgin.

I don't know Greek, but if this is so, have any Christians ever seen Mt. 1:23 that way?

One definition of it here is "maiden," which I suppose could mean a "young woman who may not be a virgin," but I've never seen Mt. 1:23 understood any other way but "virgin."

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... arqe%2Fnos