CyrusThePersian

CyrusThePersian

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Posts by CyrusThePersian

  • CyrusThePersian
    48

    Was Paul a "tentmaker"?

    by CyrusThePersian in
    1. watchtower
    2. bible

    in acts 18:2,3 we read:.

    "there he met a jew named aquila, a native of pontus, who had recently come from italy with his wife priscilla, because claudius had ordered all jews to leave rome.

    paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.".

    1. mP
    2. mP
    3. mP
  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    "Paul actually argues with Cyphas. They could be different people. Its especially stranget that a renamed Cyphas who becomes Peter is stilled called Cyphas by Paul."

    Right you are! I was going to discuss that very point in my post. I'm writing it now.

  • *lost*
    170

    Proof of Noah's Flood - Presently watching a Documentary about Europe & the Ice Age

    by *lost* in
    1. watchtower
    2. bible

    first time i ever heard anyone say there was 'proof' of noah's flood.. very interesting,.

    showed a trawler, where the team dredges regularly in the north sea - for animal bones, massive land animal bones, mammoths.. he said, originally, the bones were sent for analysis, and the dr stated, they were proof of noah's flood.. the north sea area was a land mass of dry grazing lands.

    and it was very similar to africa.. many bones were found in london, of lions, hippos, etc ... when they were digging out the underground.. .

    1. adamah
    2. AndDontCallMeShirley
    3. Comatose
  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    Any time anyone says"proof" you should take it with a large grain of salt. "Evidence" is a much more appropriate word and in this case the evidence is very scant indeed!

    The fact that animal bones are found in weird places is more evidence of plate tectonics rather than an earthwide flood. An earthwide flood would have caused a great deal more damage and would be vastly more obvious than what we see here. Please check out the talkorigins website for more scientific information about the possibilities of a "Noah's Flood."

    CyrusThePersian

  • CyrusThePersian
    48

    Was Paul a "tentmaker"?

    by CyrusThePersian in
    1. watchtower
    2. bible

    in acts 18:2,3 we read:.

    "there he met a jew named aquila, a native of pontus, who had recently come from italy with his wife priscilla, because claudius had ordered all jews to leave rome.

    paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.".

    1. mP
    2. mP
    3. mP
  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    Thanks for all the replies! I really didn't think this thread would be all that interesting--given that it's such a minor point.

    I would like to point out that the book of Acts certainly shouldn't be looked at as historical by any stretch of the imagination. It makes me wonder why the writer of Acts posited that Paul was a skenepoios whichever it means. The writer was definitely a big fan of Paul, but he did mangle Paul's history a bit. (more on that later).

    One fact remains however. The writer of Acts seems to assume that his audience knows what he means when he writes that Paul, Priscilla and Aquila are skenepoioi (plural) since he offers no qualifiers or explanations of what he means by this Greek term.

    The next thing I think I'll talk about is Paul's argument with Peter that Paul talks about in Galations.

  • CyrusThePersian
    48

    Was Paul a "tentmaker"?

    by CyrusThePersian in
    1. watchtower
    2. bible

    in acts 18:2,3 we read:.

    "there he met a jew named aquila, a native of pontus, who had recently come from italy with his wife priscilla, because claudius had ordered all jews to leave rome.

    paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.".

    1. mP
    2. mP
    3. mP
  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    In Acts 18:2,3 we read:

    "There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them."

    OK, simple enough--in English that is. When we start looking at it in ancient Greek it gets a little more complex, but we'll get to that later. First though, I have to ask a logical question. If Paul, Priscilla and Aquila were tentmakers in the cosmopolitan city of Rome, and later in the equally cosmopolitan city of Corinth, who were their customers? First century camping enthusiasts perhaps? Maybe the military but one would think that they would employ their own tentmakers. Bedouin nomads used tents but not only were they 800+ km away from Corinth (and over 1000km away from Rome) they made their own tents. (I admit that they might have had a small market in merchants who might use tents as awnings in the marketplace.)

    Now let's take a look at the Greek. The passage reads in Greek:

    και δια το ο μοτεχνον ειναι ε μενεν παρ αντοις και η ργαζετο: η σαν γαρ σκηνοποιοι τη τεχνη.

    Let's look at σκηνοποιοi (pronounced SKAY-no-poi-oi), the word commonly translated as "tentmakers". This word is used only this one time in the Bible, in fact it's not known to have been used anywhere else in any ancient Greek literature, but this is not uncommon. In ancient Greek, compound words were often made up to define things. In this case the suffix ποιοi means "maker" or "craftsman". It has no other meaning. The prefix Σ κηνοσ (skenos) however can mean "tent" or "stage" as in a theatre stage. (Skenos is where we get the English theatrical terms "scene" and "scenery" by the way) Is it possible that Paul and Co. were theatrical scenery makers?

    In speaking of Christians as " fools" or "clowns" μωροι (pronounced MO-roi) for the sake of Christ (1 Cor. 1:27; 4:10; 2 Cor. 11:16-17) or of himself and the apostles as having "become a spectacle θεατρον (THE-a-tron) to the world" (1 Cor. 4:9), could Paul be drawing on first hand experience with the theatre?

    I know that the arguments set forth here are pretty weak, but then, so are the arguments that Paul was an actual tentmaker. Also, I could point out that the writer of Acts, writing in an urban setting for an urban audience, would take it as a given that his readers would think in terms of the theatre when seeing the word skenos rather than tents. It would only be later, when the theatre fell out of favor with Christianized Rome that the other meaning of skenos, that of tents and tentmaking would become more popular with Christian scholars and would be translated that way into other languages.

    Thanks for reading!

    CyrusThePersian

  • Gorbatchov
    11

    Just around the corner: 2014

    by Gorbatchov in
    1. jw
    2. friends

    this week i had to apply my daughter for ballet lessons, for the new season.

    on the registration document was printed with bold letters.

    "season 2013 / 2014".. when my eye caught 2014 i was thinking: what?

    1. msconcerned
    2. Joliette
    3. prologos
  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    The next time I see her, I'm going to ask my daughter (who is still in the troof) why Jesus has been ruling for 100 years already and hasn't done a darn thing. That's got to make him one of the most ineffective rulers of all time. Just think, Jesus has been given a thousand years to rule and he's already spent 10% of it twiddling his thumbs!

  • compound complex
    14

    Will we grow old and die?

    by compound complex in
    1. jw
    2. experiences

    .

    http://www.eldritchdark.com/tributes/poetry/235/the-stoick.

    a beautiful way of putting the truth .

    1. Mum
    2. redvip2000
    3. prologos
  • CyrusThePersian
    CyrusThePersian

    I think that ex-Jehovah's Witnesses (and those who are still believers) in particular have a hard time with this issue. We have been conditioned, yes even brainwashed into believing that "millions now living will never die" and to come to realize as we age that it simply isn't true is especially heartbreaking.