We voted for DILF "Dude I'd Like to F***" in the word of the year election last month, but it lost out to cliterati in the "Most Outrageous" category. The official word of 2003 ended up being metrosexual.
Leolaia
JoinedPosts by Leolaia
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have any of you heard this term?
by kls inmy son was at the gym last week when he saw a guy he knew from school.
i guess they started talking and asked where each other lived.
it came down to that this guy lives three houses down from my daughter.
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
Narkissos....I think regardless of whether there was a historical Peter (which Lapham probably does not question enough), it could be safely said that there was a Petrine community in Syria in the first half of the second century that looked to a Peter as the authority behind their gospel. Thus we would have the Matthean or pre-Matthean confession of Peter, the Kerygma Petrou, the Pr. Pet., the Iten. Pet., and also the comment by Serapion, bishop of Antioch (c. A.D. 185) on the local use of the Gospel of Peter. Now this issue of Peter and Rome has made me wonder....could this be evidence of a historical link between the Roman church and the Antioch church? Could there have been a population of Jewish Christians in Rome who came from Antioch and brought with them the apostolic emphasis on Peter? Consider this: the epistle of 1 Peter, which could probably be regarded as proto-catholic with ties to Rome, has also tangible links with the Petrine literature of Syria, most especially the doctrine of Christians comprising their own "race" (genos) which is also stated in Pr. Pet. and the KP. On the other hand, Peter's link to Rome could also be satisfactorily explained by the tradition of Peter in Caesarea (which appears in the Ps.-Clem. literature, Acts, and Matthew), and with Rome standing in for Caesarea (the Roman capital of Judea) in later tradition. It is, for instance, remarkable that in the Acts of Peter, Peter is martyred by Agrippa II, the prefect of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Albinus the procurator of Judea, yet the scene of the crucifixion is placed in Rome of all places -- instead of Judea (and specifically Caesarea or Jerusalem) which would normally have been expected.
PP....I was reading more in commentaries this morning in the library on the passage in question. I'm really not sure if I see much in the text that needs to be posited as "catholic" and outside the Jewish-Christian communities in Syria and Judea. The "binding and loosing" bit is clearly rabbinical, Law-observing related. The "on this rock I shall build my church" is also very Jewish-Christian, being cognate to a similar saying about Abraham in the Mishnah, and linguistically a pun in Aramaic. The reference to "keys" and "gates of Hades" has parallels in Isaiah, Revelation, and the Enochian literature, and thus has an apocalyptic flavor quite at home with what has been posited as the Jewish precursor of Revelation (with uncertain, but possible Syrian provenance). And tho it is later used to establish apostolic succession, I doubt this was the original meaning of the passage.
On edit: Any opinion on what I posted on Peter in prison?
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
PP....The Jewish-Christian compiler of (G), or a similar predecessor, may well have been the one who adapted the Iten. Pet. for the Homilies -- as it was edited together with the Ascen. Jas. and Pr. Pet. and other material to form the Ps.-Clem. Rec. and Hom. These earlier works were each mentioned as independent works by various church fathers. The "binding and loosing" theme from Matthew is attested in both the catholic Ep. Clem. appointing story and the Ebionite appointing story from Iten. Pet., and considering that both stories are closely related, the direction of influence is almost surely from Ebionite to catholic, particularly concerning "binding and loosing" as a rabbinical term related to interpretation and practice of the Law, and the setting of the confession story in Matthew is Caesarea -- the same city that Peter appoints his successor in the Ps. Clem.
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Peter in prison in Acts 12:1-17
by Leolaia inaccording to lapham, the story of peter imprisoned by herod agrippa in acts 12:1-17 bears striking similarities with the story of jesus' death and resurrection and the story of peter's martyrdom in the martyrdom of peter (later incorporated into the acts of peter).
this raises the intriguing possibility that the original story in acts was of peter's martyrdom in judea at the hands of agrippa, followed by a resurrection appearance and/or angelophany.
the "prison" in acts would refer to peter's tomb.
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Leolaia
According to Lapham, the story of Peter imprisoned by Herod Agrippa in Acts 12:1-17 bears striking similarities with the story of Jesus' death and resurrection and the story of Peter's martyrdom in the Martyrdom of Peter (later incorporated into the Acts of Peter). This raises the intriguing possibility that the original story in Acts was of Peter's martyrdom in Judea at the hands of Agrippa, followed by a resurrection appearance and/or angelophany. The "prison" in Acts would refer to Peter's tomb. Here are the conceptual parallels with Jesus' Passion:
1. Herod beheads James the brother of John, like John the Baptist (Acts 12:2; cf. Matthew 14:3-12)
2. Herod next seeks to arrest Peter, as Herod sought to kill Jesus (Acts 12:2; cf. Luke 13:31, 23:7-15)
3. Peter is taken during the Feast of the Passover (Acts 12:4; cf. Matthew 26:17, Gospel of Peter 2:5)
4. Guards are posted in and outside the prison/tomb (Acts 12:4, 6; cf. Matthew 27:66; Gospel of Peter 8:31)
5. An angel with shining light appears at the entrance of the prison/tomb (Acts 12:7; cf. Matthew 28:2, 3; Gospel of Peter 13:55)
6. The angel tells Peter to "stand up" (anasta, the same word as "resurrect") (Acts 12:7; cf. Matthew 27:53)
7. The gate opening of its own accord (Acts 12:10; cf. Luke 24:2; Gospel of Peter 13:55)
8. Peter reveals himself to an astonished Mary and brethren (Acts 12:2-12-16; cf. Matthew 28:9-10; Luke 24:36-43; John 20:14)
9. He sends a message for James and all the brethren (Acts 12:17; cf. Matthew 28:10)
10. Then he departs to another place (Acts 12:17; cf. Luke 24:50-51)And these are some parallels with the martyrdom story in Acts of Peter:
1. The name of the persecutor -- Agrippa (King Herod Agrippa in Acts, Agrippa II in Acts of Peter)
2. The four squads of "four soldiers" arresting Peter (Acts 12:4; cf. Acts Pet. 36 = Mart. Pet. 7)
3. The motif of Peter "withdrawing to safety" (Acts 12:17; cf. Acts Pet. 35 = Mart. Pet. 6)
4. Peter is accompanied by an angel (= the Lord) on a road outside the city where the angel leaves him (Acts 12:10; cf. Acts. Pet. 35 = Mart. Pet. 6)There is also a connection between Acts 12 and the prophecy of Peter's martyrdom in John 21. The angel tells Peter to "gird yourself" (zosai) and "put on" (hupodesai) his sandals and "follow" (akolouthei) him out of the prison. In John 21:18, referring to "the kind of death [Peter] would glorify God," Jesus tells Peter that he used to "gird himself" and walked where he wished but in the future "someone else will gird you (zosei)" and will bring him where he does not wish.
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
Lapham views the question of whether Peter was in Rome as intractable at the present -- the evidence is mostly against it but it also cannot be ruled out. The strongest piece of evidence would be 1 Peter 5:12-14 which, if not a later interpolation, would probably attest a tradition about Peter's presence in Rome by the end of the first century. I use the word "probably" because it is unknown whether Caesarea, as the local seat of Roman rule (a "Judean Rome," if you will), was also called "Babylon". Lapham's approach however has been to treat all the pseudepigraphal writings roughly on the same par, whether canonical or extracanonical, and 1 Peter thus has no intrinsic merit over the Jewish-Christian writings aside from its probable earlier date (Lapham considers the earliest recension of KP as dating to c. 130). Lapham does note that there is evidence that 1 Peter 4:12-5:14 is a later insertion; note the concluding doxology in 1 Peter 4:11 which parallels with 2 Peter 3:18 and Romans 16:27, and the new reference to a present "fiery" persecution in 4:12. Thus it is possible that the reference to Babylon is later than the first century, and Lapham considers the possibility of a interpretation of "Babylon" as referring to the Syrian Christian community in Edessa which fell under assult under Trajan's extended Parthian campaign of A.D. 106-117; Hippolytus also mentions the "state of confusion" among the Christians of northern Mesopotamia during Trajan's Parthian campaign (Refut. 9.11). It is also true that 1 Peter bears some striking connections with Syrian Petrine writings, especially referring to Christians as a third "race" (cf. 1 Peter 2:9; Strom. 6.5.41). On the other hand, evidence for a Roman origin for 1 Peter is also quite strong when one compares its christology with 1 Clement and Hermas. A date between 100 and 125 is also suggested by the advanced baptismal theology, the more cautious approach to apocalyptic expectations, its use by Polycarp, and its literary dependence on Ephesians. So Lapham doesn't conclude firmly either way, but regards a catholic origin as more probable overall and suspects that "Babylon", on analogy with the Jewish exile following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, has the sense of "exile" and could refer generally to any city in the Roman Empire where Christians had fled.
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Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
by Leolaia intwice (john 4:29, 39), the samaritan woman is said to have reported to her townspeople that a man had told her ?everything?
one may surmise that those whom she told knew rather well precisely what the things were that she had done, for they followed her urging to see this remarkably perceptive stranger.
precisely what did jesus tell her that so moved her and others, and how did he go about it?
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Leolaia
Whoa! Look at what I just found in the Pseudo-Clementines:
There was one John, a day-baptist (one who baptizes every day), who was also, according to the method of combination, the forerunner of our Lord Jesus; and as the Lord had twelve apostles, bearing the number of the twelve months of the sun, so also he, John, had thirty chief men, fulfilling the monthly reckoning of the moon, in which number was a certain woman called Helena, that not even this might be without a dispensational significance. For a woman, being half a man, made up the imperfect number of the triacontad; as also in the case of the moon, whose revolution does not make the complete course of the month. But of these thirty, the first and the most esteemed by John was Simon. (Ps.-Clem. Homilies, 2:13)
Now isn't that quite interesting for Simon and Helena to pop up in a tradition about John the Baptist? The reference to the thirty and the triacontad comes right out of Valentinian and Marcosian Gnosticism, and the reference to Helena as the "moon" and the lunar cycle of John's disciples recalls the tradition that Helena was also called Luna, and the later application to her of the similar-sounding name Selene who was identified in Syro-Phoenicia with Astarte. In this vein, note that Tyre was the city where Simon encountered Helena. The tradition of Justin Martyr that Simon and Helena were worshipped as gods might attest a local syncretism between Simon and Helena with the older mystery cult worship of Melqart and Selene-Astarte.
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
I have not checked yet the new reference on Petrine tradition Leolaia referred us to.
There is a full discussion of the texts in F. Lapham's Peter: The Myth, the Man and the Writings: A Study of the Early Petrine Text and Tradition (Sheffield: 2003). Basically, there was an early Ebionite Kerygma Petrou (KP), used by Clement of Alexandria, which was then expanded and revised into an even more overt Jewish-Christian Kerygmata Petrou (Pr. P.), which was then compiled by a Jewish-Christian editor into a source document (G) with other Ebionite works (e.g. the Ascents of James and the Itinerary of Peter)....then (G) was appended with the Epistola Clementis and other additions and published as the Pseudo-Clementines. The documents in (G) show a Syrian provenance (e.g. Peter as living in Antioch and evangelizing in Tyre, Sidon, Tripolis, Berytus, etc.), and provide early evidence against the view that Peter lived in Rome. Ep. Clem., which serves as a preface to the collection for orthodox Christianity, tries to harmonize this Syrian tradition with the Catholic tradition about Rome, and even connects Peter's Roman supremacy with the tradition in Matthew 16:18 (cf. Ep. Clem. 2:1-4; 6:3). It is in this document that Peter makes Clement his successor as bishop of Rome. But in the Homilies, drawing on the earlier Ebionite Itinerary of Peter, Peter instead makes Zacchaeus his successor in Caesarea, giving him the "chair of Christ" and the power "to loose what is to be loosed and to bind what is to be bound" (Hom. 3.72.4). The tradition in Matthew 16:18 has thus a specifically Eastern understanding quite apart from the later Catholic interpretation applying it to the Roman church. And Lapham argues convincingly imho that the account of Clement's succession to Peter at Rome is directly modeled on the earlier Jewish-Christian story about Zacchaeus' appointment to Peter's presidential chair in Caesarea; there are no less than nine parallels. There is thus an intriguing possibility: that Peter's authority in Caesarea, which was the seat of Roman government in Judea, was later transferred to Rome as "Caesarea" came to be identified with "Rome". In this connection, there is the Martyrdom of Peter (later compiled into the Acts of Peter) which specifically has Peter martyred by Agrippa II of Judea. Finally, to add to the mix, there is the local Syrian tradition which designated Peter as the first bishop of Antioch and claims that he installed Ignatius as his successor as the second bishop of Antioch. All of this attests Peter's local authority and prestige in the East -- so one should not automatically assume that any reference to Peter's prestige necessarily refers to Catholic Christianity or the Roman church.
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
I think Narkissos might be right....there could have been a conflation of a separate "key" motif with the rabbinical tradition of "binding and loosing," which originally did not draw on the key motif. The strong connection with Revelation suggests here an apocalyptic streak cognate with 1 Enoch (cf. "the gates of heaven" in 1 Enoch 9:1, 10), especially with regard to Hades and/or other places in the underworld as a "prison" for the damned (cf. 1 Enoch 10:14; 18:14; 21:10; 69:28). I am especially struck by the tradition throughout the Petrine pseudepigrapha on "the spirits in prison" or "Tartarus" (cf. 1 Peter 3:18; 2 Peter 2:4), particularly in the Apocalypse of Peter where Peter is given a visionary tour of hell in a manner very reminiscent of 1 Enoch. There is an interesting connection between 2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter in that both mention the worldwide conflaguration motif and the Apocalypse of Peter (like the Apocalypse of Paul) gives the name of the angel presiding over the damned as Tartarus (specifically, Tartaruchos). Even more interesting is the story of Peter's own imprisonment in Acts, which shows links with both the tradition about Peter's martyrdom and the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. There thus appears to have been an early association of Peter with things relating to death and Hades.
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
I don't necessarily see in Matthew a reference to the proto-Catholic papacy, much less a tradition about Rome. If the provenance of the pre-Matthean redaction of Q was in a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian community in Syria (i.e. Antioch), one could certainly see in Matthew the same sort of appeal to Peter's apostolic prestige that one finds in cognate Jewish-Christian works believed to have come from Syria, such as the Kerygma Petrou and the Ascents of James. It wasn't just Rome where Peter was regarded as a significant figure.
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the man with the key
by boatman incould any one tell why god gave peter some keys was it to open things or close them
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Leolaia
The story you alluded to is the one where Simon Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ, and in its current form Jesus appears to delegate authority to Peter by giving Peter "the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (16:19 ). This is because this statement follows the naming story where Jesus implies that his Church would be built on "Peter".
But this focus on authority is probably not the original meaning of the saying. By being the first to declare Jesus as the Christ, Peter is blessed as being the first to receive the keys and is blessed by being called "Peter", the "rock" on which Jesus would build his church. The meaning of the name is that Peter, as the first of the disciples to correctly determine Jesus' significance, serves as the foundation stone of the Church -- just as Abraham served as the foundation of Israel (cf. Hebrews 11:8-10). The saying in Matthew draws on a traditional saying later attested in rabbinical literature which states: "Upon Abraham as top of the rocks God said I shall build my kingdom" (Mishnah Yalk. 1.766). But with the theme of the first being last and the last first, Peter has no special status in being the first foundation stone. The exegetical focus on authority developed later on as it became more important to appeal to apostolic authority. The saying on "binding and loosing" however is separately attested in Matthew 18:18 and here it is given to all the disciples and has nothing to do with a particular individual's authority but refers to the authority of the whole body of followers to permit and forbid what they see fit. This verse suggests that the Church as a whole has the "keys" to interpret the Law as they see fit; Peter does not have any unique ability to loosen and bind between heaven and earth, if Matthew 18:18 is to be understood.
"Binding and loosing" is actually a rabbinical term that refers to the power to "forbid and permit" and conceptually derives from the belief of the Law tying up or releasing a forbidden object from divine censure. It was used by the Sanhedrin to express their authority over interpretation of the Law. Rejecting the authority of such "official" law-givers, Jesus instead declares that his followers have the authority to discipline and forgive others, regardless of the official penalties. But Jesus makes absolutely clear that this authority does not exalt any particular follower over others:
"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, and every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my midst, there am I in the midst of them....Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 'The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not move them with their finger....But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ. He who is greatest among you shall be your servant, whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." (Matthew 18:15-20; 23:1-12)
When we look at the overall context, we see again that the power to "bind and loose" is not a matter of special status or authority but something shared by all Jesus' disciples. In effect, Jesus is declaring that all his followers are rabbis, all have the same power that rabbis have in declaring things clean and unclean, in blessing and cursing, and in approaching God. But Jesus stresses that no one should take this power and think of himself or himself as a person with special status, and call himself rabbi or father or master, over others. And since Jesus says the same thing to Peter about binding and loosing, it seems quite probable that all Christians have the "keys", all are free from the rabbinical interpretation of the Law, and not just Peter alone.