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Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 10:51 am
by Blood
Adam wrote:Blood wrote:So once again we have a Semitic vorlage that a Greek writer used as his "source." Why didn't they simply preserve the Semitic text? Did they not think it was holy writ?
It's more complicated than even a Proto-Luke. What does seem certain whatever way I slice it is that Aramaic and Greek sections of text developed concurrently. I have a thread on that here in BC&H titled Horizontal Synoptic Solution, with further ambling into my recent proposal that John 21 was the original lost ending of the Gospel of Mark.
The point is that writers then as now work as is convenient, adding their own preferred language to excerpts from the original language. Don't we see even here in this forum Greek, Latin, German used freely, with even some quotes from outside the Indo-European family? Eventually we had a Gospel of Luke fully in Greek, but James R. Edwards has established that the uniquely Lucan passages are highly Semitic in origin. Luke 1 and 2 go back to Hebrew most likely, but of course Luke 1:1-4 is such perfect (if overdone) Greek that it bespeaks a separate redactional flourish. The sections shared with the other Synoptics are not so Semitic in characteristics, particularly the sections almost identical with them.
I'd like just one example to support the idea that Luke 1-2 "go back to Hebrew."
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 12:07 pm
by Adam
James R. Edwards in 2009 wrote The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition. He makes his case on pages 184-186 that the Semitisms in Luke 1 and 2 are most likely Hebraisms. In any case his detailed Appendix II on pages 294 to 332 present very detailed Semitisms in Luke (none in 1:1-4!), largely in L or Special Luke. Virtually every verse in chapters 1 and 2 contains one or more Semitisms.
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 3:17 pm
by neilgodfrey
Adam wrote:NeilGodfrey's defense of poor geography by ancient writers.
? ? ? ? ?
The scholarly guild clearly recognizes occasional errors of geography among ancient historians otherwise used as valuable sources for historical events . . . . .
I have never disputed the historical value of the gospels and Acts on the grounds of geographical "errors" or "mistakes" . . . . .
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 3:56 pm
by neilgodfrey
Adam wrote:James R. Edwards in 2009 wrote The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition. He makes his case on pages 184-186 that the Semitisms in Luke 1 and 2 are most likely Hebraisms. In any case his detailed Appendix II on pages 294 to 332 present very detailed Semitisms in Luke (none in 1:1-4!), largely in L or Special Luke. Virtually every verse in chapters 1 and 2 contains one or more Semitisms.
Reviews of Edwards' book:
From J. William Johnston of the the
Dallas Theological Seminary
From Butler University's
Professor James McGrath
From Quartz Hill School of Theology
Dr Jim West
Other books by James Edwards (just to help us see more clearly where he is coming from) include:
Is Jesus the Only Savior
The Divine Intruder: When God Breaks Into Your Life
It appears that Edwards explains the absence of direct evidence for the Gospel of the Hebrews upon anti-semitism. After all, why should a church that was disinheriting the Jews (Siker's term) of their holy books and claiming them for their own as the very foundation of their faith want to preserve a gospel in the Hebrew tongue.
What other historical discipline goes about locating historical source material this way?
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:10 pm
by Adam
Yes, I suspect Edwards of Excluvism in his Evangelicalism, which I as an Inclusivist firmly reject. Nor did I particularly like some of his argumentation. He even rejects Q! I found that insufferable. However, his Appendix II is why I bought the book and well worth it for just that alone. The verse by verse parallels show clearly that the text shared with the other Synoptics does not contain nearly as many Semitisms as the Special Luke material. That leaves L as likely from a Semitic eyewitness, (namely per me) Simon the son of Cleopas, whose name pops up in Luke 7:36-50 and 24:13-35 (as the second disciple on the Road to Emmaus story).
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 4:31 pm
by neilgodfrey
Adam wrote:That leaves L as likely from a Semitic eyewitness, (namely per me) Simon the son of Cleopas, whose name pops up in Luke 7:36-50 and 24:13-35 (as the second disciple on the Road to Emmaus story).
Are L and M really the most economical arguments for material unique to Luke and Matthew?
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:24 pm
by neilgodfrey
Adam wrote:The verse by verse parallels show clearly that the text shared with the other Synoptics does not contain nearly as many Semitisms as the Special Luke material. That leaves L as likely from a Semitic eyewitness. . . .
That's a pretty wild leap. It requires lots of hypothetical stepping stones to get from the side of Semitisms in L to the other side of a Semitic eyewitness.
Does Edwards deal with the arguments that canonical Luke is the product of anti-Marcionite workings on an earlier gospel with "special Luke" material being the result of Marcionite/anti-Marcionite exchanges?
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:28 pm
by Adam
Edwards hardly mentions Marcion, and Joseph Tyson only once and only in regard to decrying anti-Judaism within NT scholarship.
Edwards does not suggest an eyewitness for L. That's my idea of about 30 years ago. That was just adding a sixth eyewitness to five I already had spotted. (The seventh and last so far is John Mark.)
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:34 pm
by neilgodfrey
Adam wrote:Edwards hardly mentions Marcion, and Joseph Tyson only once and only in regard to decrying anti-Judaism within NT scholarship.
Edwards does not suggest an eyewitness for L. That's my idea of about 30 years ago. That was just adding a sixth eyewitness to five I already had spotted. (The seventh and last so far is John Mark.)
Tyson is hardly the only scholar in question here.
So Edwards treats Tyson as an "anti-Judaist"?
Re: Acts Historical through Herod Agrippa II?
Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2014 6:34 pm
by Adam
No, Tyson was cited by Edwards for evidence decrying anti-Judaism.
Joseph Tyson rightly rejects the claim that critical NT scholarship is responsible for the Holocaust, but he nevertheless rightly insists that "the tendencies in this tradition to portray Judaism with unrelieved negativity almost certainly contributed toward the shaping of a culture that harbored sentiments against Jews and provided a justification for widespread anti-Judaic concepts." Edwards, 205.
.
Pervo and Klinghardt are not mentioned, though an article by the latter is listed in the bibliography
neilgodfrey wrote:Adam wrote:That leaves L as likely from a Semitic eyewitness, (namely per me) Simon the son of Cleopas, whose name pops up in Luke 7:36-50 and 24:13-35 (as the second disciple on the Road to Emmaus story).
Are L and M really the most economical arguments for material unique to Luke and Matthew?
Let's put it this way--it's simpler than my more elaborate version here in BC&H as my latest Horizontal Synoptic Solution. It's easier to view the process more conventionally as the growth of layer upon layer than to suggest an intermediate phase of a Urevangelium from which Luke, Mark, and Matthew were successively drawn off. Since I'm not sure what's the best presentation, I'll let the Thesis of seven written gospel eyewitnesses stand for our purposes here.