For those interested, E.W. Bullinger's argument about Luke 23:43, to which Leolaia makes reference, can be found here.
Truly I say to you, Amen I say to you, Inferences from a Gospel manner of speech
by kepler 51 Replies latest watchtower bible
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slimboyfat
Greg Stafford argues the other examples of "truly I tell you" are irrelevant because Luke 23:43 is the only place where the phrase is followed by "today", so the other examples are not parallels.
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kepler
Leolaia,
I deeply appreciate the depth of study you have given this matter. It was neither one-sided or dismissive and added a historical dimension.
In my earlier examination, I had seen some evidence of time related expressions appearing after the comma. I wish I had examined it more carefully and made more mention of them in the original post. But fortunately you provided a comprehensive discussion of the matter.
What I gather from some of your citations in behalf of "placing the comma" as it is in the NWT, many or most of those in agreement appear to be either writing the Greek into another middle easter language such as Syraic or else citing the conventions of OT Hebrew texts. Of course, I am pointing out this aware of my own advocacy (and forewarning others), but when I first encountered the change and its implications, it struck me like a political pronouncement in our present day, a public official proclaiming "today" what I am doing - and it sounded to me preposterous - and by comparison, a way to turn the direct statement into weasel words. My intuition was that this was terribly wrong when viewed in context.
But back to your discussion. Also cited are the arguments about time and place which are external: "Since Christ's next stop is the nether world of the dead, how could Christ be in one place and he and the thief be in another at the same time?" I can see how that is a stumbling block for thinkers millenia ago because they could imagine the Creator vexed because he is running late according to his sun dial. Or else events were delayed because the Creator had to get there on foot or a slowly floating cloud. But we are also talking about a translation produced in the 20th century.
I'll have to dig up my notes or do the exercise again, but there are differences in the Gospels with regard to what heaven or the kingdom Christ spoke of was. Variations were "my kingdom", "the kingdom of heaven" and a few others, preferred by one Gospel writer or another. "Paradise" was more of an exception - and the word is not of Hebrew origin, but Persian (those Persians who booted Nabonidus) and an expression for an enclosed garden. Like other words, it took off with a life of its own. It would appear that the WTS has a very traditionalist view of words, much akin to one wing of Supreme Court justices talking about founding fathers defini tion of words fixed for all eternity. So inherent in the argument as well is that paradise is a garden and it would be re-established on Earth.
Now so much for the Persian word for garden. Where did the Hebrew word come from? How could there be an appreciation of being in a garden if no one before Adam and Eve had been PLANTED in one?
I truly hope today (sic) that later you or others will look into the absence of "truly I say to you" introductions in the remaining book that quotes Jesus extensively.
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Leolaia
slimboyfat....Isn't that special pleading?
kepler....There is just one known instance of the NWT-like parsing through ancient translation. The Curetonian is also not representative of the Syriac in general; the reading in question does not appear in the other Old Syriac exemplar, the Sinaitic, nor does it appear in the Peshitta or the Diatessaron. It is also not evidence of a textual variant in the Greek. It is rather evidence of how some translators parsed the text as they read it.
I just came across another witness to the majority parsing: The Codex Bezae (D) has Jesus say: "Take courage, today you will be with me in paradise" (tharsei sèmeron met' emou esè en tò paradeisò). And here are two more Enochic references to Paradise at the extremities of the world, from the first century AD Book of Parables: "In those days whirlwinds carried me off from the earth and set me down into the ultimate ends of the heavens, there I saw other dwelling places of the holy ones and their resting places too, there my eyes saw their dwelling places with the holy angels....He placed me between two winds, between the northeast and the west, where the angels took a cord to measure for me the place for the elect and the righteous ones, and there I saw the first human ancestors and the righteous ones of old, dwelling in that place" (1 Enoch 39:3-5, 70:3-4).
"Kingdom of heaven" is a Matthean redaction; "kingdom of God" occurs in the other synoptics. It is also an ambiguous expression: does "heaven" signify a realm or dominion, or is it a circumlocution for God (as in Daniel 4:26, " The command to leave the stump of the tree with its roots means that your kingdom will be restored to you when you acknowledge that Heaven rules"). I know some such as Augustine made a clear distinction between heaven and Paradise. One might think that the terrestial view of Paradise in 1 Enoch (which resembles traditional Greek beliefs about the Elysian Fields or the Blessed Isles at the western extremity of the world, which Josephus attributed to the Essenes — a likely allusion to the cosmology of 1 Enoch) would not have been acceptable to later Christians who followed Aristotle and Ptolemy's views on the shape of the world, but it actually persisted through the Middle Ages, as it inspired the Saint Brendan legend and even induced Christopher Columbus to regard the New World as the "earthly paradise". The connection with heaven and the underworld however would be undermined by the shift in cosmology. There was also a tendency in Hellenistic Judaism to draw on Platonism, particularly the theory of Forms, which took the earthly as reflections or shadows of the divine (an example of this thinking can be found in Hebrews). On this view, the earthly garden of Eden is distinct from the true abode of God in heaven and it is this Paradise where the dead enjoy a blessed postmortem existence.
"Paradise" was more of an exception - and the word is not of Hebrew origin, but Persian (those Persians who booted Nabonidus) and an expression for an enclosed garden. Like other words, it took off with a life of its own. It would appear that the WTS has a very traditionalist view of words, much akin to one wing of Supreme Court justices talking about founding fathers definition of words fixed for all eternity. So inherent in the argument as well is that paradise is a garden and it would be re-established on Earth. Now so much for the Persian word for garden. Where did the Hebrew word come from?
The idea of Paradise is not of Persian origin. The Avestan term paridaiza referred to a regular walled garden or park, and Hebrew pardes (borrowed from the Persian word) has the same meaning in the three instances it occurs in post-exilic OT literature (Canticles 4:13, Ecclesiastes 2:5, Nehemiah 2:8). The Greek term paradeisos had a similar meaning when it was borrowed from Persian. It was in later Hellenistic times when it came to refer to the gan 'Eden, first in the LXX and then in pseudepigraphal literature (the Greek translation of 1 Enoch 20:7, 32:3, the Greek translation of Jubilees [12x], Paraleipomena Jeremiou 9:16, Testament of Levi 18:10, Greek Life of Adam and Eve [42x], Testament of Abraham [5x]), Philo of Alexandria, and then the NT. The Edenic nature of Paradise is salient throughout these later texts.
I truly hope today (sic) that later you or others will look into the absence of "truly I say to you" introductions in the remaining book that quotes Jesus extensively.
Remaining book? Do you mean the Gospel of Thomas?
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kepler
Leolaia,
"It is rather evidence of how some translators parsed the text as they read it." If I understand this correctly ( and I am not sure, since I am not sure I know when you mention another text which language it is in), then examples cited are translations from Greek into Aramaic or other languages with the translators discretion.
I don't have the McReynolds text handy here mentioned above, but on the matter of the use of "kingdom", I was able to do a quick on-line search of a NKJV concordance. Matthew indeed sticks largely with "kingdom of heaven". There is an instance or two of "my father's kingdom". Mark uses "kingdom of God" with an occasional "my kingdom". The Lord's prayer is "your kingdom". Luke adheres to "kingdom of God".
In John chapter 3, Jesus tells those that they have to be born again if they are to experience the kingdom of God. But in chapter 18, he speaks of "my kingdom".
And then we reach Revelations where this matter is referenced several times as the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.
Paradise, according to this concordance, is referenced in the NT only several times: Luke 23:43, II Corinthians 12:4, Revelations 2:7.
While I have come across discussions of Greek neo-platonism's influence on Jewish and Christian thought elsewhere, I really don't know what to make of it in the context of what Luke's narrative would have us believe when Christ speaks to the thief as he does.
Finally, I wasn't speaking of Thomas, but Revelations. Whoever wrote Luke appears to be much the same as the author of Acts, if by no other reason than certain story telling conventions. John of Patmos claims he had a vision and transcribed the words of Jesus. Jesus says, "Amen I say to you" not once.
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slimboyfat
Is it special pleading? I don't know.
I found Stafford's argument convincing at the time. That was ten years ago or so. And that's all I can remember without looking it up.
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Leolaia
kepler....It's just that one version, the Curetonian Old Syriac. All the other references I listed aren't translations; they are all written in Greek.
I'm looking more generally in the TLG and LLT for how Luke 23:43 was quoted. Here are more examples of the majority parsing in the Greek and Latin fathers:
(1) hama tè exodò en tò paradeisò emellen esesthai thou theou, kata to, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò tou theou (Origen, Commentarii in Evangelium Joannis, 32.32.395), (2) kai ho Khristos tòn duo lèstòn ton hena eis tèn basileian eisègage, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Asterius, Commentarii in Psalmos, 11.7.15), (3) legei pros auton ho Sòtèr, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Joannes Chrysostomus, De Paenitentia, 49.339.38), (4) ou legei autò, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò ouranò, alla, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Joannes Chrysostomus, In Sancta Lumina Sive in Baptismum et in Tentationem, 6.2.44), (5) amelei goun kai tò lèstè eipen, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Didymsus Caecus, In Genesim 110.13), (6) audiet dicentem dominum tamquam latroni illi a scelere ad confessionem et ad fidem a latrocinio reuertenti: hodie me cum eris in paradiso (Ambrose, De Paradiso 11.53.19), (7) clamauit latroni: hodie me cum eris in paradiso (Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii Secundum Lucam, 10.1067), (8) kai ho sòtèr phèsi, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Epiphanius, Ancoratus 54.7.5), (9) skholion οβ, parekopse to, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Epiphanius, Panarion 2.153.1), (10) tò lèstè pòs elege, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Ephraem Syrus, Sermo in Transfigurationem Domini, 27.8), (11) eipen ho kurios to lèstè, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Ephraem Syrus, Quomodo Latro Ante Resurrectionem, 10), (12) eipen to lèstè, sèmeron met 'emou esè en tò paradeisò (Amphilochius, In Zacchaeum, 8.189), (13) de latrone etiam cui dictum est: hodie me cum eris in paradiso (Augustine, Retractionum Libri Duo, 2.55.45), (14) ergo secundum uerbi personam ait, hodie me cum eris in paradiso (Augustine, Sermones 53A.634.26), (15) postquam autem ille pependit in cruce et locutus est ad latronem: hodie me cum eris in paradiso (Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem, 13.44.1132), (16) sanguis christi clauis paradisi est dicentis ad latronem: hodie me cum eris in paradiso (Jerome, Epistulae 129.2.4),
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slimboyfat
Just re-read Stafford's argument. He claims that the Vaticanus manuscript is punctuated in a way that supports the Watchtower reading. Has that been mentioned already?
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slimboyfat
It occurs to me that the author of Luke-Acts uses an awful lot of expressions derived from the Old Testament. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics of these books within the New Testament canon. If any author of the New Testament were likely to use a solemn expression such as "truly I tell you this day" with an Old Testament undertone, then he is the one you might expect to do so.
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Earnest
The Vaticanus manuscript to which sbf refers can be seen below, where there is clearly a mark between semeron and met.
I also think that the context favours the thought that Luke associates "today" with when he was saying it rather than when it would happen as Luke always refers to a delayed return and so it is unlikely that (in Luke's rendition) Christ would suddenly change his mind at the last moment.
