Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

MrMacSon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 9:03 pm

..
.... Moses prayed the people were stronger... he made the sign of the cross ... one who bore the name of Ἰῦ was in the forefront of the battle
.

Isn't that something?

The Defeat of the Amalekites (BSB)


Now, what's the real story?


Similar enough, although the hand initially is singular.
Yet go sit down, and ask someone to hold your hand: you will become a Y instead of a T that way. Likely this was the best they could find, but no way that this supports the invention of a cross - yet it is undeniable that they go through great lengths in order to come up with a story about a cross, precisely because there wasn't one.
Nor predicted one, of course

mlinssen wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:57 am Similar enough, although the hand initially is singular.

Not to Justin:

MrMacSon wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 9:03 pm
chapter 90, in part:

Justin: "When the people waged war with Amalek, and the son of Naun by name [Ἰῦ], led the fight, Moses himself prayed to God, stretching out both hands, and Hur with Aaron supported them during the whole day, so that they might not hang down when he got wearied. For if he gave up any part of this sign, which was an imitation of the cross, the people were beaten, as is recorded in the writings of Moses; but if he remained in this form, Amawaslek was proportionally defeated, and he who prevailed prevailed by the cross. For it was not because Moses so prayed that the people were stronger, but because, while one who bore the name of [Ἰῦ] was in the forefront of the battle, he himself made the sign of the cross. For who of you knows not that the prayer of one who accompanies it with lamentation and tears, with the body prostrate, or with bended knees, propitiates God most of all? But in such a manner neither he nor any other one, while sitting on a stone, prayed. Nor even the stone symbolized Christ, as I have shown. .

. 4 Ὅτε ὁ λαός, φημί, ἐπολέμει τῷ Ἀμαλὴκ καὶ ὁ τοῦ Ναυῆ υἱός, ὁ ἐπονομασθεὶς τῷ Ἰῦ ὀνόματι, τῆς μάχης ἦρχεν, αὐτὸς Μωυσῆς ηὔχετο τῷ θεῷ τὰς χεῖρας ἑκατέρως ἐκπετάσας, Ὣρ δὲ καὶ Ἀαρὼν ὑπεβάσταζον αὐτὰς πανῆμαρ, ἵνα μὴ κοπωθέντος αὐτοῦ χαλασθῶσιν. εἰ γὰρ ἐνεδεδώκει τι τοῦ σχήματος τούτου τοῦ τὸν σταυρὸν μιμουμένου, ὡς γέγραπται ἐν ταῖς Μωυσέως γραφαῖς· ὁ λαὸς ἡττᾶτο· εἰ δὲ ἐν τῇ τάξει ἔμενε ταύτῃ, Ἀμαλὴκ ἐνικᾶτο τοσοῦτον, καὶ ἰσχύων διὰ τοῦ σταυροῦ ἴσχυεν. 5 οὐ γάρ, ὅτι οὕτως ηὔχετο Μωυσῆς, διὰ τοῦτο κρείσσων ὁ λαὸς ἐγίνετο, ἀλλ' ὅτι, ἐν ἀρχῇ τῆς μάχης τοῦ ὀνόματος τοῦ Ἰῦ ὄντος, αὐτὸς τὸ σημεῖον τοῦ σταυροῦ ἐποίει. τίς γὰρ οὐκ ἐπίσταται ὑμῶν, ὅτι μάλιστα μὲν ἡ μετὰ οἴκτου καὶ δακρύων εὐχὴ μειλίσσεται τὸν θεὸν καὶ ἡ ἐν πρηνεῖ κατακλίσει καὶ ἐν γόνασιν ὀκλάσαντός τινος; τοῦτον δὲ τὸν τρόπον ἐπὶ λίθου καθεζόμενος οὔτε αὐτὸς ηὔξατο οὔτε ἄλλος ὕστερον. ἔχει δὲ καὶ ὁ λίθος σύμβολον, ὡς ἀπέδειξα, πρὸς τὸν Χν.

..
.... Moses prayed that the people were stronger... he made the sign of the cross ... one who bore the name of Ἰῦ was in the forefront of the battle
.

Note "this sign...was an imitation of the cross"

The text of Exodus 17 that Justin is referring to and which you quote includes hands plural:

mlinssen wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 8:57 am
The Defeat of the Amalekites (BSB)

8 After this, the Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.
9 So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on the hilltop with the staff of God in my hand.”
10 Joshua did as Moses had instructed him and fought against the Amalekites, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
11 As long as Moses held up his hands, Israel prevailed; but when he lowered them, Amalek prevailed.
12 When Moses’ hands grew heavy, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Then Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on each side, so that his hands remained steady until the sun went down.
13 So Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his army with the sword.

The ✞ versus Y shape thing is unnecessary speculation

---

FWIW, the relevant verses in Exodus 14 wrt to The Lord using Moses to part the Red Sea:

MrMacSon wrote: ↑Sun Apr 09, 2023 1:16 pm The ✞ versus Y shape thing is unnecessary speculation

It all depends on the thickness of the stone really; if there is no stone at all then the arms are in a really fat Y-shape, assuming that all three people are of equal size - and that also assumes that the hands are held at the fingertips, not at the wrists

But as usual I'll give you a proper chance to finish your sentence: let me help you out here

The ✞ versus Y shape thing is unnecessary speculation, BECAUSE ...

.

Here you go
And there's more for your perusing pleasure:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Moses,+ ... ur&biw=412

Hit pictures

Wow. They didn't just hold Moses arms up so the Israelites would prevail over Amaleki and the Amalekites; they also held them up for the contemporaneous recording artists to complete the historical record artwork ...

MrMacSon wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 5:12 am Wow. They didn't just hold Moses arms up so the Israelites would prevail over Amaleki and the Amalekites; they also held them up for the contemporaneous recording artists to complete the historical record artwork ...

Bad hair day Mac?

Is today "owww very difficult day to admit that we're wrong" day?
You could at least try to argue for the staff to be in both hands, which would form your so very necessary horizontal top bar - even though you know that the FF missed that chance as well

There was only a stake.
Mark inventing the resurrection suddenly required a dignified death, hence all the ink spilled on this particular apology.
And naturally, nothing in the world could have predicted that - because regardless of what happened or didn't happen, even if Jesus did raise people from the dead and do all the other stuff, and even if he was the son of Gawd "for real": he wasn't executed on a T-shaped device, and all the fake and false stories assuming for that are precisely that: fake and false, and obviously bogus

It's alright Mac, even Ben didn't notice!

LOL

This is a very interesting thread. A friend referred me to this thread; so forgive me if this is explained elsewhere on this forum. I find the discussion of Christos vs. Chrestus spelling, and Christianou vs. Chrestianou spelling, to have considerable promise. There seem to be some things about your posts in this thread that I'd like to ask more about, or just don't add up to me. If you've explained these in other threads or other sources, perhaps you might refer me to them. Here are some questions, some observations, and some criticism of the translation.

1. Where are you are getting your Greek texts? In your first msg in this thread, you refer us to the Parisinus Graece 45 text, which I thank you for. Did you transcribe all that Greek yourself, by hand? Did you start from another Greek text, and correct it to that Greek text?
2. The links to the Dialog with Trypho at the British Library are broken. E.g. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.asp ... 2951_f103v is one. Do you have an updated URL for it, or a PDF you could post?
3. I found one of the cases where "Christians" was inserted into the English translation, which wasn't there in the Greek; and you find several - so, good find.
4. There is a place in Apology 1, ch. 4, where translations usually refer to "the master, Christ" (really, 'the teacher'). There is an online Greek edition from Archive.org: Die Apologieen Justins des Märtyrers. Your Gk. has an abbreviation there which could represent Christos or Chrestus; whereas this German edition of the Greek has it spelled out Χριστοῦ (p. 3, but p. 20 in the PDF). I downloaded the PDF for Parisinus Graece 45, and was able to confirm the original indeed has the Χυ abbreviation (p. 202 in handwriting); so in this case, it is an 1891 German edition of the Gk. that had already transcribed it to spell out χριστοῦ. Thus, the translators into English are evidently not the only ones to blame for the abbreviation being expanded.
5. It would be helpful to those following your work, to either give page numbers as indicated in the original manuscript, or have a PDF with notes indicating key locations we could download. It would be helpful to give such references, since the manuscript has page numbers, but little else to help one navigate. It's unfortunate the gallica.bnf.fr site has no way to locate a passage by chapter, or bookmarks in the PDF. It is very commendable that are studying this subtlety of spelling from the best available manuscript version. The question would be moot, if they'd have markers for the chapters
   and the sentences in the French PDF.
6. You render a sentence that strikes the eye as potentially bearing on the Christos/Chrestus topic thus:

   mlinssen wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 4:07 am For we are accused of being [Chrestians / Χρηστιανοὶ], and to hate what is [GOOD / χρηστὸν] is unjust.

   The manuscript itself (p. 202, line 4) has Χριστιανοὶ. An unwary reader might miss that your own Greek spells it Χριστιανοὶ, and conclude that the original manuscript had Χρηστιανοὶ instead; as did I originally. You should probably avoid doing something more or less opposite of what you accuse [mostly rightly] translators of doing: rendering it "Chrestians" when it is spelled Christians in the Greek. A note that the original text does have Christians there should help to decrease confusion.
   
   I admit, when I first read the passage, I too thought the sentence didn't work without assuming the underlying word was Chrestian; but on re-reading it later, I didn't feel compelled to interpret the sentence as a justification based on the first syllable of the name of the group. While it is true that Justin is in the context of the name being used against his group; although you term this construction "wordplay", it seems to me that we are not compelled to conclude it is. You can fairly claim the passage is suggestive that the original spelling was Chrestian; but should be forthcoming that it is not spelled that way in the manuscript.
   
   My Greek is not expert enough to venture a precise translation, but Reverso.com offers a reasonably neutral, if imperfect, translation: "Christian giras are accused of being wrong; we are accused of hating the just." You can find it here:
   
   https://www.reverso.net/text-translatio ... %25CE%25BD
   
   We might venture, based on this, "Since Christians are accused of being wrong, we are accused of hating the just." Justin then would be arguing against the circular logic he sees as being used to convict Christians, which he complains about elsewhere in this same context. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that with an equally viable translation, the second part of the sentence is not demonstrably commenting on the root word of the name of his group, but objecting that they are convicted of hating the just simply since Christians are assumed wrong in the first place.

You write "Justin Martyr is a Chrestian in First Apology, and there can be no doubt about the fact, no matter the countless layers of falsifications by Christians." It is, of course, difficult to make any proof that it didn't originally read Chrestians; but by what you have on Justin, it seems a fair assessment that In every case where Justin fully spells the name of his group or its leaders, in the original manuscript, it is spelled Christians/Christ every time: once spelling it Christian, and once when spelling the name of their leader (although many other times, it is injected into the English text). It might be summed up that the writer of the Parisinus Graece 45 may have written it out fully as Christians and Christ only the first time, and abbreviated it thereafter. Only in this one passage in which you interject Chrestians can one find the spelling of the group's name, and it is Christians. Searching through this thread, every occurrence of a word starting in "χρηστ" you translate as "good" or some cognate; with the only case where a Chrest- name is used as a proper noun, is χρηστότατο; where you too render it's phrase "most GOOD ... people". In Apology I, ch. 55.5, you have "Chr?st" where the text fully spells out χριστὸς.

While I am open to the idea that it originally read Chrestian, it also seems debatable and unevidenced. Interestingly, Sinaiticus sometimes has a Christ spelling in some books, but the Chrestian spelling in the Acts. It seems that text traditions with both spellings were then current, at that time. Perhaps so too in Justin's day: The Christian vs. the Chrestian spelling may have caught on in different places at different times.

I have read some of your similar posts on other Patristics, and they seem very helpful. I bought a copy of your book Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament, ..., on Kindle, where you go on similar hunts through other Patristic literature, and they do seem to be in order; for as far as I've yet read. It looks very helpful.

JFC wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 7:49 am This is a very interesting thread.

Welcome to the forum! Thank you for contributing your thoughts here. I look forward to seeing you in the discussions!