New report questions Israel's claim of "divine right"

reply to post by pthena

Hi Pthena

You wrote:

QUOTE “Before I go out and spend a bunch of money on books that may be strongly partisan, I wonder: would you perhaps recommend a book or three dealing in an unsanitized way, with the origins of Christianity?

I'm mainly looking for between 16 CE and 136 CE . Neo-Ebionite views seem all to easily found. I'm looking for a different point of view. “

UNQUOTE

Depends on what kind of ‘different point of view’ you’re after – these (listed below) try hard to stick to archaeological facts and things that can be supported by the latest 'hard' data around this subject.

The latest translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls in recent years (as they impact a re-evaluation of earliest Christianities) are showing that most of the very earliest Christianities (Daviddic, Nazorean, Galilean, Aramaic speaking) were all fairly influenced by Daviddic Ebionite theologies (Evionim: ‘the poor ones’) in terms of theological Weltanschauung and content – and this info is finally filtering down to the masses – but there’s no escaping the Evionim since Nazorean Christianity began with them (e.g. Yakkov/James the 'brother' of Iesous) before Rome wiped them out during the 1st Failed Jewish War against Rome (c. 66-72 CE)

Check out a couple of books by Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar Dr Geza Vermes (pronounced GAY-tzah FAIR-mesh)

e.g. Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea (2012)
www.amazon.com...=pd_sim_b_13


The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (2003)
www.amazon.com...=sr_tc_2_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369094824&sr=1-2-ent


The Resurrection : History & Myth
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369094824&sr=1-7&keywords=Geza+Vermes


Also a few books by James D.G. Dunn

Jesus Remembered (Vol 1)
www.amazon.com...


Beginning from Jerusalem (Vol. 2) www.amazon.com...=pd_sim_b_1

Jesus, Paul & the Gospels
www.amazon.com...=pd_sim_b_5

These few should get you started – try if you can to purchase used from Amazon, say, one a month - to stay on budget

Good luck – you’ll certainly learn a great deal if you read these starter books verycarefully at least couple of times - but you might have to 'mark them up' with your own notes in the margins … ask me how I know !

reply to post by Sigismundus

Thank You Sigismundus,

Depends on what kind of ‘different point of view’ you’re after – these (listed below) try hard to stick to archaeological facts and things that can be supported by the latest 'hard' data around this subject.

I'm hoping that somewhere there may be evidence of a proto-Marcionism.
And before spinning out wild theories of my own, I'd like at least some trail of good solid breadcrumbs to follow.

but you might have to 'mark them up' with your own notes in the margins … ask me how I know !

I think my guess on that would probably be accurate.

Thank you again.

reply to post by Sigismundus

I’m not sure where your confusion is in Acts 1:9-11 [ἐλεύσεται = ‘he shall arrive’ see Luke 20:16-18 for the use of the same word: ελευσεται )

Also see the Middle Greek Participle πορευόμενον = ‘departing’, ‘travelling’, ‘going away’, ‘leaving’, ‘dying’ etc.

You call it confusion. I think that there is definitely an opportunity here for confusion in Acts 1:11 about all this "going", or is it "coming".
In your offering of a literal translation, it gives it as "will return in the same way you have seen him departing" for the word ἐλεύσεται.
What I want to point out is that "will return" is an interpretation of that word and not a literal translation.
I will give another example of the use of that same word, and in the same morphology, from the 2011 edition of the NIV,

Now about our brother Apollos: I strongly urged him to go to you with the brothers. He was quite unwilling to go now, but he will go when he has the opportunity.

The literal translation is what you see underlined above in 1 Corinthians 16:12. You can interpret that particular word to mean different things depending on the context, such as "go away" or "come to me".
What I am suggesting is that the context is the disciples looking up and wondering where Jesus just went to.
They saw him go up into the sky and then vanish, maybe from just being too far away to have any resolution of him.
The men in white are saying,

Your beloved Jesus who having been taken up, away from you, into the sky, thusly (riding on a cloud) will go which way (mode of transportation) as you have already just witnessed him travelling along, into heaven.

The above is my "literal" translation. My interpretation would be,

"So, dudes, what are doing there? Looking at something up there, like a cloud or something?"
"Our teacher, who we happen to be the disciples of, is up there!"
"Oh, no kidding!? and how did he get there?"
"Wow, it was so weird, all of a sudden like a cloud formed around him and then it just lifted off the top of this hill and floated away, with our guy apparently still in it!"
"That is very odd, I agree. What do you think that could have been? I would suggest that it was miraculous."
"You can say that again! You know, something sort of like this happened before, where Jesus was on a mountain top and a cloud enveloped him and then there was this voice of God talking. So, right, like you say, it probably was miraculous. Do you think that this cloud business is really the way that God goes to mountain tops and then back to heaven?"
"Interesting that you ask, since actually that is exactly why we are here (or this is a literary device used by Luke), to tell you that in fact you are right in guessing that. If you recall all that stuff about the Son of Man that your teacher was always bringing up, then you should have made the connection of that with the book of Daniel, where it says that he will move just like God, meaning that he will use the same means of convenience as what God uses. OK, that was it, so what this means is that after that cloud took Jesus, then it will continue to take him, for as long as it takes to get him all the way up to Heaven, where God lives."

reply to post by jmdewey60

Hi Dewey

You wrote:

In your offering of a literal translation, it gives it as "will return in the same way you have seen him departing" for the word ἐλεύσεται.

What I want to point out is that "will return" is an interpretation of that word and not a literal translation....

You can interpret that particular word to mean different things depending on the context, such as "go away" or "come to me".

What I am suggesting is that the context is the disciples looking up and wondering where Jesus just went to.
They saw him go up into the sky and then vanish…the men in white are saying,

“…Jesus who having been taken up.. from you, into the sky, thusly will go which way (mode of transportation) as you have already just witnessed him travelling along, into heaven "

The above is my "literal" translation.”

UNQUOTE

Your translation of ἐλεύσεται as “he will continue to go away” is wholly untenable in its present context grammatically speaking - the issue here has to do more with adding non-supportive words in English that have no formal equivalence in the Greek text (i.e. ‘doing violence to the text' as it stands in the majority reading in the Greek) than anything else.

It is clear from the very earliest writings in the NT that there was an early Kerygmatic belief in the sudden return of Christian failed Messiah, and that this notion of a Parousia that was 'expected soon' faded over time, and is reflected by an acceptance of a 'delayed Parousia' in later writings from a generation or two after the death of ho Iesous

Here the context of ἐλεύσεται is clearly ‘coming’ as in ‘advent’ or ‘arrival’ (and not ‘continually going away’ –)

In other words a plain reading of the text would be something like

‘he who departed into the heavens will come back to you in the same way’ = at any rate the Greek text is fairly straightforward contextually as it stands in the majority of MSS and virtually every modern scholarly translation follows this train of thought in translations into English.

If the Greek future indicative 3rd person singular masculine (of erxomai, to come, to approach, to arrive i.e. ελευσεται ) was in fact somehow supposed to mean ‘he will continually be going away’ by the author (‘Luke’ whoever he was) he would have added words such as ‘continually’ (aionios) or ‘always’ (panta) or an equivalent determinative to be proximate to the word in its context: but no such word exists in any version of the Greek texts of Acts 1:9-11 that I am aware of.

See for example the substantive use of erchomai in Matthew 11:3 ‘ho erxomenos’( lit. ‘he who is to Come’ from the same verb – and does not mean ‘he who is to leave continually’).

See also the Greek of Mark 12:9

τί οuν ποιήσει ὁ κύριος το ἀμπελ8νος; ἐλεύσεται καὶ ἀπολέσει τοὺς γεωργούς, καὶ δώσει τὸν ἀμπελ8να ἄλλοις.

Lit. ‘what therefore will the owner of the vineyard do then? HE WILL COME (back) and kill those tenants and hand the vineyard to others

(i.e. it does not mean: ‘he will continually go away and kill those tenants and hand the vineyard over to others.’

Here’s a couple of examples of how GO (i.e. leave) and COME (i.e. arrive) is used as a pair of opposites in the same phrase: see: Matthew 8:9 ref: the Centurion’s servants

καὶ λέγω τούτῳ πορεύθητι, καὶ πορεύεται, καὶ ἄλλῳ• ἔρχου καὶ ἔρχεται = lit. and I say to this one, GO! and he goes, and to another one, COME! and he comes’

The term ‘going’ and ‘coming’ set as opposites to each other sometimes occur in the same phrase in Apocalyptic Christian writings based on Daniel 12:4

וְאַתָּה דָנִיֵּאל, סְתֹם הַדְּבָרִים וַחֲתֹם הַסֵּפֶר--עַד-עֵת קֵץ; יְשֹׁטְטוּ רַבִּים, וְתִרְבֶּה הַדָּעַת.

" But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; for many will come and go, and knowledge will increase." - Daniel 12:4

For an echo of this ‘end of days prophecy’ in the Gospel tradition, see Mark 6:31 (‘since there were so many COMING and GOING’) γὰρ οἱ ἐρχόμενοι καὶ οἱ ὑπάγοντες πολλοί,

Perhaps this pairing of opposites was in the back of the writer of Acts 1:9-11, using (subconsciously ?) apocalyptic language.

But I think we have veered far enough from the main point of this thread, don't you, which is more about a certain mis-guided group’s ‘divine’ claim to a piece of land based on ancient tribal beliefs written down in a self-serving book !

reply to post by Sigismundus

the issue here has to do more with adding non-supportive words in English that have no formal equivalence in the Greek text

You are talking about what I was calling 'my interpretation' which was telling the story in an expanded version so that the reader can make sense out of what I was calling my 'literal translation'.
I don't understand how your "non-supportive" comment is even relevant.

It is clear from the very earliest writings in the NT that there was an early Kerygmatic belief in the sudden return of Christian failed Messiah . . .

I don't know how "it is clear" what the people in 36 AD, or whatever, thought.

Here the context of ἐλεύσεται is clearly ‘coming’ as in ‘advent’ or ‘arrival’ (and not ‘continually going away’ –)

The "continually" is in my hypothetical story, and not in my actual translation, so I don't see your point in criticizing that.
What you are calling "the context" is your previous assumption going in, and not something in the passage itself.

In other words a plain reading of the text would be something like

‘he who departed into the heavens will come back to you in the same way’ = at any rate the Greek text is fairly straightforward contextually as it stands in the majority of MSS and virtually every modern scholarly translation follows this train of thought in translations into English.

Obviously I am not very impressed by there being a sort of consensus in Bible versions. This is 'traditional' which doesn't carry so much weight with me. So who are you going back to, Saint Jerome?

. . . was in fact somehow supposed to mean ‘he will continually be going away’ by the author . . .

That's not relevant. I don't say that in my literal translation. Here (below, in red) is my translation of Acts 1:11, that I put in my earlier post, with some notes added in parentheses to clarify the meanings of certain words,

Your beloved Jesus who having been taken up, away from you, into the sky, thusly (riding on a cloud) will go which way (mode of transportation) as you have already just witnessed him travelling along, into heaven.

But I think we have veered far enough from the main point of this thread, don't you, which is more about a certain mis-guided group’s ‘divine’ claim to a piece of land based on ancient tribal beliefs written down in a self-serving book !

No, I don't think it is veering off.
The thread is about some normal Christians who made a statement that they don't think there is a biblical justification of the Zionist occupation of the Country of Palestine.
Why would they have to make a statement like that?
Because there are supposed Christians out there who do think that there is biblical support for the Zionist occupation of the Country of Palestine.
What I am describing is the tie between certain cultish versions of eschatology which links Jesus' "second coming" with there being a viable "Israel" in Palestine.
The point I am making here is that even this version of a "second coming" is not biblically supported.
Jesus said in the lifetime of his hearers, his "return" would happen, in relation to the abomination of desolation. That happened, in 70 AD and satisfied the prophecy. That was the Parousia, in the form of a "visitation" of judgment on the system that murdered Christ. That was the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

reply to post by jmdewey60

Hi Dewey

I’m back in town to-day after the holiday –

So…with respect to COMING and GOING, here is the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 16:12 using ‘ἐλεύσεται’ (which you translated incorrectly as ‘he will go’ in Luke-Acts 1:9-11 when the verb (3rd person singular active indicative future of erxomai is clearly best translated as ‘he will come’ in 1 Cor 16:12 (just as it is best translated as ‘he will come’ in Luke Acts 1:9-11 as well)

1 Corinthians 16:12
περὶ δὲ ἀπολλῶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, πολλὰ παρεκάλεσα αὐτὸν ἵνα ἔλθῃ πρὸς ὑμᾶς μετὰ τῶν ἀδελφῶν· καὶ πάντως οὐκ ἦν θέλημα ἵνα νῦν ἔλθῃ, ἐλεύσεται δὲ ὅταν εὐκαιρήσῃ.

Here are the most common English language translations of this passage – some translators loosened it up to read ‘he will visit’ or ‘he will see you’ but the sense is the same i.e. he will show up in person (i.e. return to you) and not ‘keep going away forever’)

New Living Translation (2007)
Now about our brother Apollos--I urged him to visit you with the other believers, but he was not willing to go right now. HE WILL SEE YOU later when he has the opportunity.

English Standard Version (2001)
Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. HE WILL COME when he has opportunity.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
But concerning Apollos our brother, I encouraged him greatly to come to you with the brethren; and it was not at all his desire to come now, but HE WILL COME when he has opportunity.

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren: but his will was not at all to come at this time; but HE WILL COME when he shall have convenient time.

Holman Christian Standard Bible (2009)
About our brother Apollos: I strongly urged him to come to you with the brothers, but he was not at all willing to come now. However, HE WILL COME when he has an opportunity.

International Standard Version (2012)
Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but he was not inclined to do so just now. However, HE WILL VISIT you when the time is right.

NET Bible (2006)
With regard to our brother Apollos: I strongly encouraged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was simply not his intention to come now. HE WILL COME when he has the opportunity.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English (2010)
And I have wanted Apollo to come to you very much, my brethren, with the brethren, but doubtless he did not wish to come to you, but when he has time HE WILL COME to you.

GOD'S WORD® Translation (1995)
Concerning Apollos, our brother in the Christian faith: I tried hard to get him to visit you with the other Christians. He didn't want to at this time. However, HE WILL VISIT YOU you when he has an opportunity.

King James 2000 Bible (2003)
Concerning our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren: but his will was not at all to come at this time; but HE WILL COME when he shall have opportunity.

American King James Version
As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come to you with the brothers: but his will was not at all to come at this time; but HE WILL COME when he shall have convenient time.

American Standard Version
But as touching Apollos the brother, I besought him much to come unto you with the brethren: and it was not all his will to come now; but HE WILL COME when he shall have opportunity.

Douay-Rheims Bible
And touching our brother Apollo, I give you to understand, that I much entreated him to come unto you with the breatheren: and indeed it was not his will at all to come at this time. But HE WILL COME when he shall have leisure.

Darby Bible Translation
Now concerning the brother Apollos, I begged him much that he would go to you with the brethren; but it was not at all his will to go now; but HE WILL COME when he shall have good opportunity.

English Revised Version
But as touching Apollos the brother, I besought him much to come unto you with the brethren: and it was not at all his will to come now; but HE WILL COME when he shall have opportunity.

Webster's Bible Translation
As concerning our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come to you with the brethren: but his will was not at all to come at this time; but HE WILL COME when he shall have convenient time.

Weymouth New Testament
As for our brother Apollos, I have repeatedly urged him to accompany the brethren who are coming to you: but he is quite resolved not to do so at present. HE WILL COME, however, when he has a good opportunity.

World English Bible
Now concerning Apollos, the brother, I strongly urged him to come to you with the brothers; and it was not at all his desire to come now; but HE WILL COME when he has an opportunity.

&tc. &tc.

Is any of this sinking in yet?

reply to post by Sigismundus

So…with respect to COMING and GOING, here is the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 16:12 using ‘ἐλεύσεται’ (which you translated incorrectly as ‘he will go’

That was not my translation.
That was the 2011 edition of the NIV.
All I did was underline the part with the Greek verb under discussion, which is also in Acts 1:11.

I think that the argument that you were making earlier was that since the writer of Luke used that particular verb in one way, then when the same verb is found in Acts, it must mean the same thing, since the theory goes that the same person wrote both books.
Even if that was the case, it does not mean that the writer is somehow locked into using the word in only one way.