I want to rewind to the narrow form of the argument presented by GakuseiDon in the
Bible and Interpretation thread and also
upthread. I am going to try to summarize the argument there as:
- words translated as "in your form" in English appear in AoI 9:13
- that Carrier somehow missed this phrase
- that the meaning of "in your form" is something like, "as a flesh and blood human"
- because Jesus takes on forms corresponding to the level of the cosmos he is at, appearing as a flesh and blood human in 9:13 can only mean he decended all the way to earth, the place where flesh and blood humans are
Please correct this if I'm wrong, I do not wish to misrepresent the argument here.
Now — like (I assume) the rest of you, I know diddly-squat about Ethiopic. But I used to know Latin at any rate, and
in specie vestra which is the relevant phrase in 9:13 isn't exactly rocket science. While English "form" isn't a wrong translation of
species per se, something like "appearance" is just as good, and even "appearance contrary to reality" or "superficial appearance" is an option. That indicates to me that while a translation/interpretation of 9:13 "in your form" as "flesh and blood human" may still be an option,
so is a Jesus that outwardly looks human but isn't — an interpretation consistent with a Jesus who stops somewhere in the heavenly realm. Doceticism, a Jesus that outwardly looks human but isn't but which
does come all the way down could very well be on the table here, too.
At the very least, I don't see the short form of the argument presented in the links with with I led this post as being enough to overthrow Carrier's work on the AoI.
(Pedantic Latin note for those who want to check my work in a dictionary (and heaven knows I'm out of practice with this language);
specie is ablative singular of the 5th-conjugation feminine noun
species, the case governed by the preposition
in (Latin
in + ablative means something kinda close to English "in"); vestra the singular feminine ablative of the pronoun
voster meaning "your".)
