Re: A great evil : the men of Sodom & Gomorrah?

Eric Potts wrote:

I've not come across NET before ans am grateful for its mention. Its
note on the literary reason for preferring the traditional translation
seems to me to be the best argument in that translation's favour; but
it is not in itself determinative. In passing I note that NET leaves
the choice of Greek text to individual translators and has not yet
published that text. That would make me a little wary of it, given
its obvious conservative provenance.

I wouldn't be much inclined to trust the NET to get any given thing
right. But the fact that it gives so much information about why they
chose the translations they did makes it a very valuable resource.

The GNB, often liked by conservatives among others, also gives the
alternative in a footnote. So too does the Roman Catholic "Jerusalem
Bible", which again is generally very good but could not be described
as liberal.

I currently can't find my GNB. I've been vaguely half-intending
to get a JB for about the last 20 years. Maybe some day I'll
find one for 50p in a second-hand bookshop :-).

(Curiously, every second-hand bookshop in the known
universe has a copy of the library edition of the NEB.)

[Eric:]
I did not say that Jesus didn't quote Daniel. I said that he
didn't define Daniel as Scripture. Jude quoted Enoch. Does that
make Enoch Scripture?

[Phil:]
I said I would go with what "Jesus and Paul quoted as
scripture". So scripture is what they quoted for the sake of this
discussion. Did either Jesus or Paul write Enoch?

[me:]
Quoting something doesn't necessarily mean regarding it as
scripture. I agree that Jesus almost certainly did regard
Daniel as scripture, but not just because he happened to
quote a few snatches of it and call Daniel a prophet.

[Eric:]
I note Phil's misrepresentation; I did not suggest or imply that Jesus
or Paul wrote Enoch.

I think that was just a slip of the fingers and Phil intended
to write "Did either Jesus or Paul quote Enoch as scripture?".
(Or perhaps "Did either Jesus or Paul cite Enoch?", which has
the advantage of making the slip to "write" easier to understand
but doesn't seem like Phil's style.)

Jesus, when speaking explicitly of the Scriptures, refers to "the Law
and the Prophets." On one occasion he adds "the Psalms." In addition
to these there was a wide range of texts which were used by some or
all Jews some of which eventually were judged to be canonical while
others were not. Among these not-yet-classified books were Daniel,
Maccabees, Sirach, Enoch, to name just four of the better known. Thus
it is perfectly understandable that Jesus should quote Daniel and Jude
quote Enoch without it necessarily meaning that these books were
"Scripture."

Although Jesus does refer to "the prophet Daniel", not merely to
"Daniel". Of course, being a prophet isn't the same thing as
having the book named after you be a part of the Bible.

2. when conservative commentators deal with this issue of other
writing, they often skip over the other Jewish texts and say that Paul
would not view Greek writings as inspired. Perhaps they are right, but
this again is by no means certain. Consider:
- according to Acts Paul was quite happy to quote a Greek philosopher
in the course of his evangelism (Acts 17.28, quoting from Aratus and
Cleanthes; the latter's writing is a Hymn to Jupiter!)
- in 1 Cor 15.32 Paul quotes from Menander;
- in Titus 1.12 the author quotes from Epimenides;
- allusions have, I am told, been found in Paul's writings also to
Pindar and Aristophanes;

I don't think these are useful evidence. Paul doesn't treat any
of these people as inspired, so far as I can see. Whether he was
willing to quote Greek authors seems to me an entirely different
question from whether he thought that any text could be considered
inspired if it didn't form part of the Hebrew-language writings
commonly reckoned as scripture among the Jews.

- outside of the Bible, we have Philo, a diaspora Jew, faithful to the
Torah, who was also a follower of Plato; Paul, of course, himself came
from the Diaspora, and the Pastorals are addressed to people far from
Palestine;

All I know of Philo is what I read in Bertrand Russell's (excellent
but unreliable) History of Western Philosophy, and I've forgotten
most of that. Does he treat Plato as inspired?

Again, let me clear; none of this *establishes* that the alternative
translation is correct. What it does do is show that the arguments
against that translation are far less cogent than they may at first
appear. It is a perfectly possible reading and since that is so it is
useless to claim that it is a text which supports claims that the
Bible is the inerrant Word of God.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to claim that it *supports* them.
What it doesn't do is to prove (even for someone who is for some
reason already committed to treating *it* as inerrant) that whatever
it's saying is about what we now call "the Bible" (or even what we
now call "the OT").

So, I am still waiting for any conservative to come up with even a
half tolerable argument in favour of biblical inerrancy. I think I
shall be waiting for a long time yet.

On this point we are in agreement :-).

(For what it's worth, I think the best argument is that Jesus
seems to have treated what-he-regarded-as-scripture as authoritative
a lot of the time; therefore, any Christian who considers that
Jesus couldn't be wrong on important theological matters should
agree with him. I don't think that's terribly compelling, because
(1) it's not really so clear how authoritative Jesus regarded
scripture as and (2) it's also not clear that Christians should
believe that he couldn't be wrong on important theological matters.
But this is an entirely separate argument, which I don't really
want to get into right now. Suffice it to say that yes, oddly
enough, I can think of counter-counter-arguments to #1 and #2,
and also of counter-counter-counter-arguments to those :-).)

--
Gareth McCaughan
sig under construc


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