The generational prophecy.

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archibald
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by archibald »

Paul the Uncertain wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:45 pm Consider your English example:
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Acts 2, Scene 2: The valiant never taste of death but once.
So, Shakespeare's meaning, in your view, is that the valiant die exactly as many times as everybody else dies?

Few examples could be clearer that to taste of death is not synonymous with to die.
But in that quote, to taste death is to actually die. In fact, it seems very odd indeed of you to read it otherwise.
Last edited by archibald on Mon Jan 22, 2018 2:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Paul the Uncertain wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:45 pm Ben
To "taste of death" is just a Hebraic idiom.
To be an idiom does not imply being well defined, or having any fixed or precise meaning.

Consider your English example:
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Acts 2, Scene 2: The valiant never taste of death but once.
So, Shakespeare's meaning, in your view, is that the valiant die exactly as many times as everybody else dies?
The entire quote is: "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."
Few examples could be clearer that to taste of death is not synonymous with to die.
What? "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death [= die] but once."
The rest of your analysis seems to rest either upon precisely this fundamental misunderstanding of the text or upon misunderstandings of a similar caliber.
Your opinion of me is not the topic.
I said nothing about you. I wrote about your analysis.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

archibald wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 2:08 pm
Paul the Uncertain wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:45 pm Consider your English example:
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Acts 2, Scene 2: The valiant never taste of death but once.
So, Shakespeare's meaning, in your view, is that the valiant die exactly as many times as everybody else dies?

Few examples could be clearer that to taste of death is not synonymous with to die.
But in that quote, to taste death is to actually die. In fact, it seems very odd indeed of you to read it otherwise.
It does indeed:

David Daniell, Julius Caesar: [Line] 33 taste of death experience death.... [Link: https://books.google.com/books?id=j8AaN ... 22&f=false.]

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Paul the Uncertain
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Ben

I read the footnote in its entirety.

There is nothing in the footnote which contests that what distinguishes Shakespeare's cowards from the valiant is that cowards die or dread death many times, the valiant die or dread death only once.

It follows that the phrase taste of death refers (here) to dying OR dreading death. That is what the valiant do once AND what cowards do many times, not succumb to biological death, which both do but once.

The issue that divides us is not whether to taste death could or sometimes does mean to die, but whether it must and always does mean only to die. There is nothing in the terse footnote that commits your author to the latter possibility.
Last edited by Paul the Uncertain on Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The generational prophecy.

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So the valiant have a choice between dying and merely dreading death?
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Paul the Uncertain wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 3:44 pm Ben

I read the footnote in its entirety.

There is nothing in the footnote which contests that what distinguishes Shakespeare's cowards from the valiant is that cowards die or dread death many times, the valiant die or dread death only once.

It follows that the phrase taste of death refers (here) to dying OR dreading death. That is what the valiant do once AND what cowards do many times, not succumb to biological death, which both do but once.

The issue that divides us is not whether to taste death could or sometimes does mean to die, but whether it must and always does mean only to die. There is nothing in the terse footnote that commits your author to the latter possibility.
You seem to be confusing two different things:
  1. To taste of death means, in all the contexts we have discussed so far, to experience death. There is no question of that, and if you think otherwise, I will leave you to it, since there is no remedy for such a drastic misreading.
  2. But to experience death (to die) can be metaphorical and mean something other than a literal death.
If you want to make the death metaphorical in any of the instances on the table, especially Mark 9.1, then you have to actually argue how that works in a cogent way. You have not done that yet. Instead, you compared "tasting death" to "smelling divorce," as if it made no sense at all, despite its well established nature as an idiom for dying. That is not the same thing as accepting that it means death and then interpreting that death in a less than literal way.

In the Shakespeare quotation, for example, it must be ironic (from your point of view) that the plain old death in the first line is actually metaphorical (cowards die metaphorically, not literally, many times before their actual death), but in the second line, where the idiom is used, it is purely literal (the valiant die exactly once, and no, it is not either/or; they just die). Just because an idiom is used does not mean that the significance of the idiom is metaphorical, and just because an idiom is avoided does not mean that the significance of the statement is literal.
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Charles Wilson
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Charles Wilson »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 3:55 pm So the valiant have a choice between dying and merely dreading death?
"Salt is good; but if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

Two Threads approach the same end.
Charles Wilson
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Charles Wilson »

See also:

Luke 9: 59 - 62 (RSV):

[59] To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."
[60] But he said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
[61] Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home."
[62] Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
Paul the Uncertain
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Re: The generational prophecy.

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

archibald
But in that quote, to taste death is to actually die. In fact, it seems very odd indeed of you to read it otherwise.
The issue is not whether the whole sentence implies that the valiant die (all agree that it does and that they do), but to what the phrase taste of death refers.

In the compound sentence, taste of death refers to what cowards do many times and the valiant do once, which is to dread death OR to die, not solely to die biologically, which cowards do not do more times when compared with the valiant.


Ben
I said nothing about you. I wrote about your analysis.
Only a person can misunderstand. You don't know me, and your uninformed and uncollegial speculation about why I disagree with you about a matter of personal opinion is off-topic.
So the valiant have a choice between dying and merely dreading death?
Presumably not. Why do you ask?

Anyway, suppose:
- To taste of death means ...to experience death...
- .. to experience death (to die) can be metaphorical and mean something other than a literal death.
It would follow by transitivity that to taste of death can be metaphorical and mean something other than a literal death.

But to taste of death cannot ever be literal. That the phrase might mean something figuratively is a long-winded way to say that it might mean something.

For example, your example, it might mean "to dread or to succumb to death."
If you want to make the death metaphorical ...
Jesus beat me to it in chapter 8, and you and I seem to agree that 9:1 and 13 aren't independent of each other. As one goes, so the other might well go (at least for purposes of dating the text based on how a "failed prophecy" would be treated). We simply disagree on how either one goes, a matter of personal opinion.
hakeem
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Re: Re:

Post by hakeem »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 12:16 pm
hakeem wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 7:31 am
hakeem wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:07 am The Epistles could not have been a source for gMark ......
neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:50 am
Funny coincidence but I have just been reading an article arguing that the author of Mark's Gospel even used 2 Thessalonians!

Bacon, B. W. (1909). The Apocalyptic Chapter of the Synoptic Gospels. Journal of Biblical Literature, 28(1), 1–25. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617101

We seem to fluctuate wildly between seeing our GMark as a redactional product of something composed some years, even decades, earlier, on the one hand, and as a composition worth studying as if it were as it is now so it was from the beginning, on the other.

It's a complex question. The danger lies in oversimplifying it.
Quite a co-incidence indeed!!! I have read that 2 Thessalonians is regarded as a forgery so may not have been written before gMark.
2 Thess was not written by Paul or the author of 1 Thess. That does not preclude the possibility of it being written before Mark, though.
Nothing that you say precludes the possibility or argument that 2 Thessalonians was written after gMark. In any event there is no historical evidence anywhere that any Epistle was actually written by Paul and no historical evidence that the character called Paul was a figure of history.

The earliest manuscripts of the so-called Pauline Epistles are dated no earlier than around the mid 2nd century and supposed 2nd century writers show no knowledge of Paul, the letters, the teachings and conversion.

Based on the existing evidence all the letters under the name of Paul are forgeries or false attribution invented no earlier then c 170 or sometime after Celsus True Discourse.
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