On the Missing Corpse of Jesus

[JoeyKnothead]

Some'll say Jesus hopped up and left that cave there, after he was dead.

Others'll say the missing corpse of Jesus can be better explained by the actions of the living.

For debate:
Which explanation is best? Why?

[Jester]

Moderator Warning

Have you actually sunk to referencing other threads where you merely stated but did not establish anything and then repeat that non-achievement here as if were fact? Geez, that's pretty low.

While it was both discourteous and against the rules for Starboard Tack to make that comment, this doesn't give you a free pass to make these kinds of personal comments in response. Lack of courtesy is still against the rules, and still makes you appear less objective, regardless of provocation.


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[Slopeshoulder]

Moderator Warning

Have you actually sunk to referencing other threads where you merely stated but did not establish anything and then repeat that non-achievement here as if were fact? Geez, that's pretty low.

While it was both discourteous and against the rules for Starboard Tack to make that comment, this doesn't give you a free pass to make these kinds of personal comments in response. Lack of courtesy is still against the rules, and still makes you appear less objective, regardless of provocation.


Please review our Rules.
______________

Moderator warnings count as a strike against users. Additional violations in the future may warrant a final warning. Any challenges or replies to moderator postings should be made via Private Message to avoid derailing topics.

I agree. Thanks. Next time I'll report it instead (I didn't this time). Smackdowns are the mods job, not mine. Sorry.

[Starboard Tack]

No, I would ask the question today in the hopes that I would hear some reason for a disbelief in the resurrection...

People don't necessarily need a reason to disbelieve, but they certainly do need reasons to believe and the onus is on you to provide those reasons if that is what you want to do, convince others to believe. If you want to believe the story why would I want to provide reasons for disbelief when it's your prerogative?

I'm not sure I've expressed an interest in understanding for belief system. It seems pretty much like most atheists. God can't exist, therefore God doesn't exist. A circular argument that is fallacious, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

But I'm curious about something. You have said that by my stating that there appears to be sufficient evidence for a belief in God and of Christ's resurrection I am evangelizing. You have said that nothing that Christ said is worth noting and that anyone who believes otherwise is a child. Are you evangelizing then about your religious beliefs? Curious minds want to know.

[Starboard Tack]

Also there is a further complication. Both Papias and Polycarp, as well as Eusebius and Origen somewhat later, attest to the apostle Matthew writing his Gospel in HEBREW "the language of the Jews," which is to say, Aramaic. But all four NT Gospels are written in pure Greek, and in fact as I pointed out, Gospel Matthew is largely Gospel Mark. Written in pure Greek, and NOT a translation from any other language.

Since we do not have the original 'off the desk' copies of what any of the authors wrote, why should you be surprised that they exist in Greek? And what is "pure Greek" anyway? Greek with a certification that it has not been sourced in a Hebrew text?

We don’t need the ‘original’ documents to recognize that the canonical gospels were all originally written in Koinē Greek. The syntax of the gospels does not conform to what we would expect of a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic, such as the Septuagint. Compared to the clumsy and stilted Greek of the Septuagint, the gospels can clearly be seen to be written in colloquial idiomatic Koinē. Consequently they cannot be misconstrued as translations from an Aramaic/Hebrew prototype.

Furthermore, the use of formulaic phrases such as ὅ �στιν μεθε�μηνευόμενον “which is being interpreted (translated)�, by all the evangelists, to introduce ‘genuine’ Aramaic/Hebrew words or phrases, shows that they (the evangelists) had relatively few of these Aramaic/Hebrew phrases at their disposal, and those that they had they wished to emphasise. It also shows that their intended audiences were not located in Palestine or any other region where Aramaic was common.

Given the paucity of Aramaic/Hebrew form and content, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the source materials, for all the Gospels, whatever their ultimate origins, were essentially Greek.

This situation regarding the evangelists’ source materials suggests a number of possibilities. Perhaps the gospel stories were several generations removed from an Aramaic oral tradition. Repetition, in the context of public and formal occasions, might gradually result in pericopes stripped of all but the barest remnant of Aramaic (as well as removing trivial eye-witness detail). Alternatively, the stories might be of Greek origin and that the Aramaic content was subsequently added to lend an air of authenticity to the account. This certainly would account for the errors in the geography and customs of Palestine as found in the gospels.

Maybe we see the results of a combination of the two processes.

Irrespective of the methodology, by necessity, unless Jesus, the disciples etc., all spoke in Greek, the gospels cannot correspond to verbatim, first hand, eye witness accounts.

This seems absurd. On this basis, the bi lingual reporter from Isvestia interviewing a witness to 911 is not providing eye witness accounts to their readers in Moscow? On this basis, my copy of the English Standard Version which is syntactically correct for modern English means that the original texts were written in English. It is clearly established that scribes were used, by Paul, by John, and I presume by others. After all, in the case of the apostles, they were not all particularly well educated and may not have been literate. By this basis, those scribes would have to be ignorant of Greek for the texts to have relevance. Even if true, the conclusions you seem to be drawing are ridiculous.

As always, I remain agog at the stretching that must be done by critics of the NT to hammer it into a form that supports their worldview.

[Student]

This seems absurd.

As I said in my previous post, the gospels are all written in colloquial, idiomatic Koinē. There is not the slightest hint that they could be translations from an Aramaic/Hebrew prototype. You may think that this is absurd, but you will be hard pressed to find a recognized authority on Koinē Greek who would disagree with me.

If the gospels were written in Aramaic, why, when it is possible to discriminate between sources, are the quotations of Old Testament invariably taken from the Septuagint? In other words, why when the Septuagint disagrees with the Hebrew text, does the New Testament follow the version found in the Septuagint. This would not be possible if the gospels were translated from an Aramaic/Hebrew prototype faithful to the Hebrew text of the OT.

How can you account for the numerous Greek idioms that cannot be a translation from Aramaic/Hebrew. For example, the clear assonance of the common Greek idiom α�τῷ Κακοὺς κακῶς ἀπολέσει α�τούς “aut� kakous kak�s apolesei autous� (Matthew 21:41 "He will put the wretches to a wretched death")?
How could this Greek idiom possibly have been derived from an Aramaic original?

Just to show it is no coincidence the author of Matthew uses the device again at the end of the verse α�τῷ τοὺς κα�ποὺς �ν τοῖς και�οῖς α�τῶν, “aut� tous karpous en tois kairois aut�n� (“to him the fruits in their season�)

What was the original Aramaic phrase that was translated as σὺ εἶπας, “su eipas� (“you say�, Matthew 26:64) How can it be possibly derived from Aramaic when it is only in Greek that the idiomatic meaning of the affirmative, “yes�, becomes apparent?

On this basis, the bi lingual reporter from Isvestia interviewing a witness to 911 is not providing eye witness accounts to their readers in Moscow?

A truer analogy would be of our Russian reporter writing his copy in bar in St.Petersburg, after interviewing another Russian who was related to someone who had seen a collage of events on television some months previously.

On this basis, my copy of the English Standard Version which is syntactically correct for modern English means that the original texts were written in English.

I don’t know where you learnt English grammar but the ESV shows considerable variance from idiomatically correct English. Take for example the ESV’s take on Matthew 5:36 “And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black�.

Could any native English speaker mistake this for something originally spoken in English?

[Starboard Tack]

This seems absurd.

As I said in my previous post, the gospels are all written in colloquial, idiomatic Koinē. There is not the slightest hint that they could be translations from an Aramaic/Hebrew prototype. You may think that this is absurd, but you will be hard pressed to find a recognized authority on Koinē Greek who would disagree with me.

If the gospels were written in Aramaic, why, when it is possible to discriminate between sources, are the quotations of Old Testament invariably taken from the Septuagint? In other words, why when the Septuagint disagrees with the Hebrew text, does the New Testament follow the version found in the Septuagint. This would not be possible if the gospels were translated from an Aramaic/Hebrew prototype faithful to the Hebrew text of the OT.

How can you account for the numerous Greek idioms that cannot be a translation from Aramaic/Hebrew. For example, the clear assonance of the common Greek idiom α�τῷ Κακοὺς κακῶς ἀπολέσει α�τούς “aut� kakous kak�s apolesei autous� (Matthew 21:41 "He will put the wretches to a wretched death")?
How could this Greek idiom possibly have been derived from an Aramaic original?

Just to show it is no coincidence the author of Matthew uses the device again at the end of the verse α�τῷ τοὺς κα�ποὺς �ν τοῖς και�οῖς α�τῶν, “aut� tous karpous en tois kairois aut�n� (“to him the fruits in their season�)

What was the original Aramaic phrase that was translated as σὺ εἶπας, “su eipas� (“you say�, Matthew 26:64) How can it be possibly derived from Aramaic when it is only in Greek that the idiomatic meaning of the affirmative, “yes�, becomes apparent?

On this basis, the bi lingual reporter from Isvestia interviewing a witness to 911 is not providing eye witness accounts to their readers in Moscow?

A truer analogy would be of our Russian reporter writing his copy in bar in St.Petersburg, after interviewing another Russian who was related to someone who had seen a collage of events on television some months previously.

On this basis, my copy of the English Standard Version which is syntactically correct for modern English means that the original texts were written in English.

I don’t know where you learnt English grammar but the ESV shows considerable variance from idiomatically correct English. Take for example the ESV’s take on Matthew 5:36 “And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black�.

Could any native English speaker mistake this for something originally spoken in English?

Still completely unconvincing. "Fourscore and seven years ago...." Could any native English speaker mistake this for something originally spoken in English? Oh, right....

I've not seen this challenge before, perhaps because it is as lame as it appears to be, notwithstanding the Peanut Gallery's "attaboy", it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The Maccabean revolt was against the Hellenization of Israel, so I'm not sure why it should come as a surprise to you that the official written language of the time was Greek. In looking into this briefly, I came across this as an explanation for why the Gospels are in Greek and not Aramaic, and I'll leave it as a sufficient response:

"Greek was the international language of the Roman Empire, and was spoken publicly in the majority of Roman provinces. Aramaic was the native language of most Jews living in Judea, Galilee and Babylon. But Aramaic was typically restricted to communication among family members behind closed doors. In public they spoke Greek. The same was true of Latin - it was spoken within the homes of native Romans, but they spoke Greek in public discourse, even on the streets of Rome.

Additionally, Galilee was not the small-town rural backwater that Victorian scholars imagined. Galilee was heavily Hellenized. They were surrounded by several major Greek-speaking cities, and nearly all of their commerce depended on the Greek-speaking communities and Greek-speaking merchants in the region.

In the case of Jesus, any public speaker at the time would have delivered his discourses in Greek, not Aramaic. Several members of Jesus' inner circle went by their Greek names, and Jesus himself (according to the Gospel of John) spent as much as two years traveling in the Greek Decapolis bordering Galilee.

The internal evidence in the Gospels also suggests that many of the statements attributed to Jesus were originally composed in Greek, and the Gospels go out of their way to point out the few times that Jesus actually spoke Aramaic in public. When Jesus quoted the Jewish Scriptures he quoted the Greek translation word-for-word (except when he quoted the book of Job, which was arguably an inferior translation).

Among the Jews, the majority of the population was scattered all over the Roman world, and Greek was their first language. Aramaic was only the first language of Jews in Judea, Galilee and Babylon. Everywhere else they spoke Greek in public and private conversations, and even used a Greek translation of the Scriptures.

So it is not surprising that the Gospels were written in Greek. There was a rumor for a while that Matthew may have been composed in Aramaic, but there is not a shred of evidence to substantiate that view, and it has been abandoned by modern academic consensus. The only reason anyone believed it in the first place is that a single fragment of a 2nd century Christian writing mentioned that Matthew wrote an account of the life of Christ in Hebrew."

For an additional Jewish Christian perspective, see: http://www.levitt.com/essays/language.html

[d.thomas]

No, I would ask the question today in the hopes that I would hear some reason for a disbelief in the resurrection...

People don't necessarily need a reason to disbelieve, but they certainly do need reasons to believe and the onus is on you to provide those reasons if that is what you want to do, convince others to believe. If you want to believe the story why would I want to provide reasons for disbelief when it's your prerogative?

I'm not sure I've expressed an interest in understanding for belief system. It seems pretty much like most atheists. God can't exist, therefore God doesn't exist. A circular argument that is fallacious, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

You must be really confused, I didn't say God can't exist, maybe you did. You don't seem to get it, I have no interest in providing reasons for disbelief, it's your prerogative if you want to believe, knock yourself out.

But I'm curious about something. You have said that by my stating that there appears to be sufficient evidence for a belief in God and of Christ's resurrection I am evangelizing. You have said that nothing that Christ said is worth noting and that anyone who believes otherwise is a child. Are you evangelizing then about your religious beliefs? Curious minds want to know.

Maybe you should quote me and quote what I was responding to rather than taking what I may or may not have said out of context.

[Flail]

Starboard Tack wrote:

It seems pretty much like most atheists. God can't exist, therefore God doesn't exist. A circular argument that is fallacious, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

This seems like something most theists would say: "God can exist and therefore God does exist"; a circular argument that is fallacious, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

Starboard Tack wrote:

But I'm curious about something. You have said that by my stating that there appears to be sufficient evidence for a belief in God and of Christ's resurrection I am evangelizing. You have said that nothing that Christ said is worth noting and that anyone who believes otherwise is a child. Are you evangelizing then about your religious beliefs? Curious minds want to know.

You both seem to be engaged in un-evidenced propaganda. Many things that Jesus said are worth noting; but such attributed teachings don't prove him a 'God' of any sort.

[Starboard Tack]

Starboard Tack wrote:

It seems pretty much like most atheists. God can't exist, therefore God doesn't exist. A circular argument that is fallacious, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

This seems like something most theists would say: "God can exist and therefore God does exist"; a circular argument that is fallacious, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

Some might, but there seems sufficient evidence for God's existence that my approach is not that one.

Starboard Tack wrote:

But I'm curious about something. You have said that by my stating that there appears to be sufficient evidence for a belief in God and of Christ's resurrection I am evangelizing. You have said that nothing that Christ said is worth noting and that anyone who believes otherwise is a child. Are you evangelizing then about your religious beliefs? Curious minds want to know.

You both seem to be engaged in un-evidenced propaganda. Many things that Jesus said are worth noting; but such attributed teachings don't prove him a 'God' of any sort.

Absolutely agree. Nothing Jesus said provides proof that he was the son of God, as he said. It was his resurrection that proved that.

[bjs]

As I said in my previous post, the gospels are all written in colloquial, idiomatic Koinē.

I disagree strongly with much of posts 135 and 127.

Mark and Luke were written in Greek for a Greek audience. Mark is clumsy Greek – the worst in the NT with the possible exception of Revelations. The Greek of Mark is far worse than the Septuagint. Luke, along with Acts and Hebrews, is the best Greek in the NT and was clearly written by someone with a good education and who spoke Greek most of his life.

However, Matthew was written for a Jewish audience. Matthew cites the OT more often than any other NT book except Hebrews. He makes no effort to explain Jewish customs or traditions. He makes references that only someone with thorough knowledge of Israelite history and culture would understand. For instance, the genealogy in the first chapter follows the Jewish practice of a symbolic (as opposed to literal) genealogy in which the author only includes generations he want to include to make a point.

The author of Matthew then uses that symbolic genealogy to make “14� generations between Adam and David, “14� generation from David to the exile, and “14� generations from the exile to Christ. In Hebrew, (where numbers are also letters) the number 14 can spell the name “David.� The entire thing would be meaningless in Greek and lost on a Greek audience. The letter must have been written for an audience that thought in Hebrew.

Matthew is written in excellent Greek – in the NT only Luke, Acts, and Hebrews are written in better Greek. Matthew must have been written for Jews whose primary language was Greek, or (I find this second choice more probable) Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek either by the original author or (more likely) by someone else who was skilled in the Greek language.

I also want to note that the examples from Matthew given in post 135 are not Greek idioms. For instance, Matthew 26:24 actually says, "legae atoe" which means “You have said it.� The phrase means the same in Greek, Hebrew and English.

John was written in Greek and probably for a Greek audience, but seems to be written by someone who still thought in Hebrew. The Greek is choppy and repetitive, as we might expect from someone for whom Greek is a second language.

One the clearest example of this is John 2:4. At the wedding feast, after they run out of wine, Mary approaches Jesus. Jesus responds “Te emoie kai soi� which means “what to me and you?� The phrase makes as much sense in Greek as it does in English. However, it is a Hebrew idiom meaning, “What do we have in common (on this topic)?�

I would not go so far as to say that John was originally written in Hebrew, but he was clearly recording events that took place in Hebrew and throughout the Gospel maintains a Hebrew mindset.




Edit: how did you get the Greek font to work? It keeps switching over to garbled English letters on me.