Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

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Secret Alias
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by Secret Alias »

Giuseppe for you if something can't be perfectly explained that means your interpretation wins. Not really ...
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
perseusomega9
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by perseusomega9 »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Sep 08, 2019 8:15 am
"The son is the Holy Spirit" in 5.5.2 is actually missing from most manuscripts. Scholars tend to accept it (from a single manuscript) as the lectio difficilior, and they are probably right to do so. But the entire section is so difficult that the following may also be true:
Could it be the phrase was added in some manuscripts to match the later statement, or perhaps it was removed to combat notions of modalism?
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by Ben C. Smith »

perseusomega9 wrote: Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:34 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Sep 08, 2019 8:15 am
"The son is the Holy Spirit" in 5.5.2 is actually missing from most manuscripts. Scholars tend to accept it (from a single manuscript) as the lectio difficilior, and they are probably right to do so. But the entire section is so difficult that the following may also be true:
Could it be the phrase was added in some manuscripts to match the later statement, or perhaps it was removed to combat notions of modalism?
Either seems possible to me. I am honestly not sure which is the best hypothesis. Overall, too, I find the Shepherd to be frustrating; it is either poorly written from the start or has been fiddled with to the extent that it comes off that way, and it is full of fluff.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by perseusomega9 »

Is the text more stable (at least among these version) in the codices where it was published with the rest of the NT versus those that survived outside of the NT publishing scheme?
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

Who disagrees with me on this precise point is by definition an idiot.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by Ben C. Smith »

perseusomega9 wrote: Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:46 am Is the text more stable (at least among these version) in the codices where it was published with the rest of the NT versus those that survived outside of the NT publishing scheme?
I am not sure any copies survive alongside the NT apart from Sinaiticus.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by DCHindley »

MrMacSon wrote: Fri Sep 06, 2019 9:48 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 06, 2019 4:22 pmE. P. Sanders tested several such proposed criteria (degree of detail, overall length, degree of Semitism, and so on) in The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition, and most of them did not hold up very well.
In what context did E. P. Sanders test several such proposed criteria (degree of detail, overall length, degree of Semitism, and so on) [in The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition]?
Not sure what you mean by "context?"

Sanders examined all the cases he could identify where sayings of Jesus, or accounts of same, were represented in various gospels, some shorter and some longer, or used different language, because various scholars had long been making assertions about the relative "originality" of the various versions based on these criteria.

He concluded that most appeals of this kind do not stand scrutiny (i.e., were hogwash).
CHAPTER VI - CONCLUSIONS - SUMMARY OF RESULTS
...
There are no hard and fast laws of the development of the Synoptic tradition. On all counts the tradition developed in opposite directions. It became both longer and shorter, both more and less detailed, and both more and less Semitic. Even the tendency to use direct discourse for indirect, which was uniform in the post-canonical material which we studied, was not uniform in the Synoptics themselves. For this reason, dogmatic statements that a certain characteristic proves a certain passage to be earlier than another are never justified. pg 272
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by MrMacSon »

DCHindley wrote: Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:23 pm Not sure what you mean by "context?"
Hi DCH. I was wondering if EP Sanders' testing of several criteria (degree of detail, overall length, degree of Semitism, and so on) was in relation to Shepherd of Hermas or it's components. Seems not.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by MrMacSon »

The wikipedia page for Shepherd of Hermas has some interesting statements, such as pointing out

"In the 2nd century, adoptionism (the view that Jesus Christ was at least initially, only a mortal man) was one of two competing doctrines about Jesus' true nature, the other being that he pre-existed as the Word (Logos) or only-begotten Son of God and is to be identified as such from his conception"

and

"Bogdan G. Bucur says the document was widely accepted among "orthodox" Christians, yet was not criticized for apparently exhibiting an adoptionistic Christology. He says that the passage in question should be understood as Jesus making his dwelling within those who submit to his spirit, so that the adoption that takes place is not of Jesus, but of his followers."


See Bucur's essay, The Son of God and the Angelomorphic Holy Spirit: A Rereading of the Shepherd’s Christology, ZNW 98, 2007, pp. 120-43, which starts -

.
1. Introduction

The Shepherd of Hermas is “one of the most enigmatic writings to have come down to us from Christian antiquity”; it “bristles with problems, both literary and theological.” From a doctrinal point of view, it is puzzling that this text never scandalized its contemporaries or later Orthodoxy. Indeed, if the Christology of this writing “is what most interpreters say it is … it is strange that this immensely popular document of the early church was never condemned for Christological heresy.”

New insights into the theology of the Shepherd may be gained by taking a new look at this text’s use of the term πνεῦμα ['pneuma': spirit, soul, or of course breath]. I am here indebted to John R. Levison, whose seminal study on “The Angelic Spirit in Early Judaism” documented the widespread use of “spirit” to designate an angelic presence in post exilic Judaism. In the conclusion of his article, Levison challenged the scholarly community to revisit the Fourth Gospel, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Ascension of Isaiah, and apply his findings to these and similar texts of the early common era. The following pages attempt to take up the challenge. I argue that, within a theological framework of pronounced binitarian character, the Shepherd of Hermas illustrates a complex interaction between the phenomenon discussed by Levison (“spirit” designating angelic/demonic beings), Spirit Christology, and an “angelomorphic” representation of the Holy Spirit.

In the pages to follow I will first discuss the Shepherd’s use of πνεῦμα for angelic entities, then the use of πνεῦμα for the Son of God, and finally propose a rereading of the Fifth Similitude [= the Fifth Parable], the ultimate test-case for any theory on the Shepherd’s views on angels and spirits. https://www.marquette.edu/maqom/bogdan2.pdf


The conclusions include, -

Since the terms “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” are used in the explanations to Sim. 5, it appears that the Shepherd is aware of Trinitarian formulae. Nevertheless, most of this writing’s theology displays a marked binitarian orientation in the sense that it is concerned mostly with God and the supreme “holy spirit” – the Son of God.

and

... a comparison with Revelation and certain traditions echoed by Clement of Alexandria, suggests the possibility that the Shepherd’s πρώτοι κτισθέντες represent a variant of the archaic Christian tradition that reworked the seven supreme angels into an angelomorphic representation of the Holy Spirit. In historical perspective, angelomorphic Pneumatology was a significant phase in Christian reflection on the Holy Spirit. Still an option in the fourth century, it was bound to be discarded in the wake of the Arian and Pneumatomachian controversies.


Wikipedia noted

... the author's apparent familiarity with the Book of Revelation and other Johannine texts ...

Last edited by MrMacSon on Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:07 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by MrMacSon »

Bogdan G Bucur (2007) Observations on the Ascetic Doctrine of the Shepherd of Hermas, Scrinium, Journal of Patrology and Critical Hagiography; 3(1), 1-29.
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Re: Mark knew the Sheperd of Hermas therefore...

Post by DCHindley »

MrMacSon wrote: Sat Sep 14, 2019 1:49 am
DCHindley wrote: Mon Sep 09, 2019 6:23 pm Not sure what you mean by "context?"
Hi DCH. I was wondering if EP Sanders' testing of several criteria (degree of detail, overall length, degree of Semitism, and so on) was in relation to Shepherd of Hermas or it's components. Seems not.
I thought you might have meant that. Sanders looked at the three synoptic Gospels, but *also* early Christian fathers and apocryphal gospels. I am not sure that SoH was among any of these, but possibly (I am not sure if I have a copy laying about to see if it was cited specifically).

The question he was trying to solve was whether early christian literature in general allow the inference of *general linguistic rules* a critic can apply to judge which of two (or more) parallel passages was earlier, or derivative. He concluded that there really were no literary "covering laws" that make a critic's judgement about originality or derivation a slam dunk conclusion, as many scholars had been doing before Sanders (some continue to do so even now).

He did conclude that there were three or four characteristics that might suggest such things, but he would also find many exceptions that told him that these tendencies cannot be absolute rules.
Since it may appear that the principal force of this section of the study is negative, I should emphasize its positive aspects. In arguing that the criteria which have claimed our attention cannot be simply applied to any one passage to test its antiquity, I have attempted to counteract certain abuses of these criteria. T h e y have often been used as i f they were all of equal weight and all universally applicable, as if the tradition uniformly moved in one direction or other. I t has become evident that some of the criteria which have been used ought not to be used at all. To this extent, the study is negative. But other criteria have been shown to be useful. Here I have tried to determine how strong each criterion is in order to establish relative degrees of confidence with which the criteria should be used. This is intended as a contribution on the positive side. As long as scholars had only a large number of possible criteria with no way of determining their relative reliability, and, indeed, with different scholars taking totally opposite positions on some of the criteria, these criteria were really useless, even though they were employed. Perhaps a step has been taken here toward improving this situation. In saying that certain criteria do not always hold true, but hold true more frequently than not, I have tried to show how they must be used and what degree of confidence should be attached to each of them. The degree of confidence which each criterion deserves cannot be stated statistically (e.g. this criterion holds true three times out of five), but rather in general terms of strength or weakness. Such assessments have been made throughout this study.

In some categories of the present study, we saw that the tradition followed no more or less regular tendency. No criteria can be derived from such categories. In other cases, however, a tendency to change in one way or other was more or less pronounced, and from these categories useful criteria may be derived. The strength of each criterion depends upon the degree of uniformity shown by the post-Synoptic tradition on each point. The relative strength of each of the useful criteria may now be indicated by way of summary. Numbers in parentheses refer to the chapters in which each item is discussed.

Not Very Strong: new speeches (II); new scenes (II); addition of adjectives (III); addition of nouns to proper names (III).

Fairly Strong: new dialogues (II); addition of subjects (III); genitive pronouns (III); addition of proper names to nouns (III); nouns substituted for pronouns (III); nouns added to pronouns (III); addition of circumstances (III).

Strong: addition of proper names (III) ; substitution of proper names for nouns and pronouns (III) ; addition of miscellaneous small details (III) ; addition of genitive nouns (III) .

Very Strong: direct discourse and first person (V).
To give an idea of how many characteristics he looked at, and to show that he did consider non-synoptic literature, I give the TOC below:
I THE PROBLEM 1

The Need for Criteria 1

The Present Situation and the Task 8
Analysis of the form-critical method of establishing the tendencies of tradition, 13;
Evaluation of the form-critical method of establishing the tendencies of the tradition, 21;
The relation of this study to Memory and Manuscript, 26

The Material 29
The textual tradition, 29;
The early Fathers, 35;
The Apocryphal Gospels, 40

The Categories 45

II INCREASING LENGTH AS A POSSIBLE TENDENCY OF THE TRADITION 46

Introduction 46

Method of Citation 51

The Evidence from the Post-Canonical Tradition 53
Addition of all or part of an Old Testament quotation, 53;
Omission of all or part of an Old Testament quotation, 54.;
Additions to speeches, 54;
Omissions from speeches, 56;
Addition of speeches, 57;
Omission of speeches, 58;
Addition of dialogue, 59;
Omission or curtailment of dialogue, 60;
The creation of new scenes and events, 60;
Addendum: Creation of new material, 61;
Addition of actions, 61;
Omission of actions, 62;
Addenda: Other instances of expansion, 63;
Other instances of abbreviation, 64;
Instances in which the shorter of two possible readings is chosen, 66

The Evidence from the Synoptic Gospels 69
Old Testament quotations in one Gospel but not in another, 69;
Speeches longer in one Gospel than in another, 71;
Speeches present in one Gospel but not in another, 74;
Dialogues in one Gospel but not in another, 76;
Scenes and events in one Gospel but not in another,
78; Actions in one Gospel but not in another, 80;
Miscellaneous differences of length, 82

III INCREASING DETAIL AS A POSSIBLE TENDENCY OF THE TRADITION page 88

Introduction 88

The Evidence from the Post-Canonical Tradition 96
The addition of the subject, 96;
The omission of the subject, 101;
The addition of the direct object, 104;
The omission of the direct object, 105;
The addition of indirect objects and equivalent pros phrases, 107;
The omission of indirect objects and equivalent pros phrases, 110;
The addition of non-adjectival prepositional phrases, 112;
The omission of non-adjectival prepositional phrases, 114;
The addition of adjectives and adjectival phrases, 116;
The omission of adjectives and adjectival phrases, 118;
The addition of a noun in the genitive, 119;
The omission of a noun in the genitive, 121;
The addition of a personal pronoun in the genitive, 122;
The omission of a personal pronoun in the genitive, 126;
The addition of a noun to a proper name, 128;
The omission of a noun from a proper name, 129;
The addition of a proper name to a noun or its equivalent or to another proper name, 129;
The omission of a proper name from a noun or its equivalent or from another proper name,130;
Other additions of proper names, 131;
Omissions of proper names, 132;
The substitution of a proper name for a noun or pronoun, 133;
The substitution of a noun or pronoun for a proper name, 134;
The substitution of a noun for a pronoun, substantive adjective, or participle, 135;
The substitution of a pronoun for a noun, 136;
The addition of a noun to a pronoun, substantive adjective, or substantive participle, 137;
The omission of a noun from a pronoun, adjective, or participle, 138;
The addition of circumstances, 139;
The omission of circumstances, 140;
The addition of explanations, 140;
The omission of explanations, 141;
The addition of conclusion and result, 141;
The omission of conclusion and result, 142;
The addition of emotion, 143;
The omission of emotion, 143;
The addition of miscellaneous details, 143;
The omission of miscellaneous details, 144

The Evidence from the Synoptic Gospels 146
Subjects in one Gospel but not in another, 152;
Direct objects in one Gospel but not in another, 155;
Indirect objects and equivalent pros phrases in one Gospel but not in another, 157; Prepositional phrases in one Gospel but not in another, 160;
Adjectives and adjectival clauses in one Gospel but not in another, 163;
Genitive nouns in one Gospel but not in another, 165;
Genitive pronouns in one Gospel but not in another, 167;
The use of a noun with a proper name in one Gospel but not in another, 168;
The use of a proper name with a noun or with another proper name in one Gospel but not in another, 169;
Other instances of proper names in one Gospel but not in another, 170;
The appearance of a proper name in one Gospel where a noun or pronoun appears in another, 171;
The appearance of a noun in one Gospel where a pronoun appears in another, 173;
The use of a noun with a pronoun in one Gospel where only a pronoun appears in another, 174;
The use of a phrase indicating circumstance in one Gospel but not in another, 176;
Explanations in one Gospel but not in another, 179;
Conclusions and results mentioned in one Gospel but not in another, 180;
Emotions mentioned in one Gospel but not in another, 181;
The presence of miscellaneous details in one Gospel but not in another, 182

IV DIMINISHING SEMITISM AS A POSSIBLE TENDENCY OF THE TRADITION page 190

Introduction 190

The Evidence from the Post-Canonical Tradition 209
The change of other conjunctions to kai, 209;
The change of kai to other conjunctions, 211;
The creation of parataxis by changing a participle to a finite verb and adding kai, 212;
The avoidance of parataxis by changing a finite verb with kai into a participle, 213;
Addendum: Other instances of parataxis, 213;
The omission of the conjunction: creation of asyndeton, 214;
The addition of a conjunction: avoidance of asyndeton, 217;
Addendum: Other instances of asyndeton, 220;
Verbs changed to the historic present, 221;
Verbs changed from the historic present, 222;
Addendum: Other instances of the historic present,
223; The use of heis for tis; the addition of heis, to mean tis, 224;
The change of heis to tis; the omission of heis with the meaning of tis, 224;
Wording made more Semitic, 225;
Wording made less Semitic, 226;
Addendum: Semitisms in material not strictly paralleled in the Synoptics, 227

The Evidence from the Synoptic Gospels 232
The use of kai in one Gospel but not in another, 233;
The use of a finite verb with kai in one Gospel where another Gospel has a participle, 237;
The use of asyndeton in one Gospel where another Gospel has a conjunction, 240;
The use of the historic present in one Gospel but not in another, 242;
The use of heis in one Gospel where another has tis, 246;
More Semitic wording in one Gospel than in another, 246

V DIRECT DISCOURSE AND CONFLATION 256

The Use of Direct Discourse 256
Introduction, 256;
The Evidence from the Post-Canonical Tradition, 258;
The Evidence from the Synoptic Gospels, 259

Conflation 262
Introduction, 262;
The Evidence from the Post-Canonical Tradition, 265;
The Evidence from the Synoptic Gospels, 268

VI CONCLUSIONS page 272

Summary of Results 272

The Synoptic Problem 276

The Pre-Canonical Tradition 279

APPENDIXES 286

Translation Variants 286

Suggested Exceptions to the Priority of Mark 290

The Christian Method of Transmission of Tradition 294

Semitisms and the Provenance of Documents 297

Selected Passages 301
Have fun with that! :banghead:

DCH

Sanders, E. P. (1969). The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (published Ph.D. dissertation). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-07318-9.
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