Paul writes about meeting Peter and James the brother of Jesus in Galatians. It has been some time since that meeting, but he writes as if both of them are still alive. They were both dead before the gospels are believed to have been written. (As was Paul himself.)
What information he gives us about Jesus doesn’t match up very well with any of the gospels–for example, he says Jesus appeared to hundreds of people after the crucifixion. Not only had Paul never read the gospels, he was writing at a time before the process of condensing the numerous variant stories about Jesus that proliferated after his death into a more coherent narrative, albeit still with many conflicts. I think one reason he’s so reluctant to give a lot of specific information is that he himself is not sure which stories he should champion, since his goal is to further his own ideas, not take sides about which stories about Jesus are true. Paul isn’t really a storyteller. That wasn’t his gift.
Also, Paul makes no mention of the Jerusalem temple’s destruction, for the simple reason that it was still standing, since the uprising that led to its destruction hadn’t happened yet.
Paul is writing about 20 years after Jesus’ death, when a very large percentage of Christians were also Jews, and held most positions of authority in the church. That’s why he has to write in defense of letting gentiles become Christians without following the Jewish law. The gospels pretty clearly indicate this was a settled issue by the time they were written.
Some of the sources for the gospels may have been written (in Aramaic or Hebrew) by the time Paul was writing his letters in Greek to his gentile converts. But the gospels themselves were written down years after Paul’s death, and well after his epistles were penned.
rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.[** you do not have permission to see this link **] Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Romans 8: 14ff. NIV
I am wondering if Paul intentionally personified the spirit here. I would be hard pressed to translate this myself, so I wonder if other commentators thought about these pronouns (“him” and “himself”) in the English. Isn’t “pneuma” neuter? Is it “pneuma” in the Koine? Is language like this one of the motivations for the doctrine of Trinity?
Wondering.
Robert said
Yes, πνεῦμα (pneuma) is neuter in Greek as are the pronouns here: ‘by which’, ‘itself’. Paul’s (and others’) ideas of a pre-existing Christ, instrument of creation, and his subsequent elevation to an even higher state, was an initial step toward what eventually became trinitarian orthodoxy, but that would take a few centuries. Bart’s book How Jesus Became God is highly recommend.
The problem of course is that most translations read the later trinitarian view back into the NT when they make these kinds of changes. (Invariably ‘spirit’ is capitalized.) Someone needs to write a book entitled “How the Holy Spirit Became God”. I suspect we may not have enough material to make a satisfactory attempt. At Nicaea the HS seems to have been almost an afterthought.
Stephen said
The problem of course is that most translations read the later trinitarian view back into the NT when they make these kinds of changes. (Invariably ‘spirit’ is capitalized.) Someone needs to write a book entitled “How the Holy Spirit Became God”. I suspect we may not have enough material to make a satisfactory attempt. At Nicaea the HS seems to have been almost an afterthought.
Robert said
Yes, πνεῦμα (pneuma) is neuter in Greek as are the pronouns here: ‘by which’, ‘itself’. Paul’s (and others’) ideas of a pre-existing Christ, instrument of creation, and his subsequent elevation to an even higher state, was an initial step toward what eventually became trinitarian orthodoxy, but that would take a few centuries. Bart’s book How Jesus Became God is highly recommend.
16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: — part of Romans 8, NIV
Note “Spirit” and “spirit.” Was there a convention in Koine akin to capitalization that is being accurately translated here in the NIV?
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. NOW we have the NIV. Sorry.
So the fragment in Romans 8 could have been translated: “Spirit itself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”? “Spirit” capitalized in the English, because it is the first word in the sentence. This sounds a little like Zeno saying that salvation comes through aligning oneself with the Logos, as he often says in my dreams.
While it’s doubtful Paul would have viewed the spirit of God as impersonal the problem begins when we are invited to interpret the spirit as a person in the Nicaean sense. Does the spirit of God stand in relation to God as my spirit does to me? My “spirit” would be defined as part of me but not all of me. And what are we to make of the reference in ** you do not have permission to see this link ** to the “spirit of Jesus Christ”? Is that spirit identical to the spirit of God? Clearly this ain’t the Trinity we’re taking about here although all translations are ready to make that assumption.
Robert said
No, Greek manuscripts of the time did not differentiate between upper and lower case letters and there was not some comparable way of doing this. One can sometimes make a similar distinction with a definite article, eg, god vs the God, but there are a variety of reasons why one uses a definite article in Greek and there is rarely anything comparable to an indefinite article. Hebrew still does not differentiate between upper and lower case, by the way.
The versions of some fragments of Xenophanes that I have seen on the web capitalize the Greek equivalents of proper names like Homer and Hesiod and Hellas. This is Attic Greek, I suppose. Did this convention die out by the time Paul was writing?
Robert said
What are the dates of the manuscript fragments you’re referring to? Keep in mind that the scribal practices changed over time.
Xenophanes (X) is a pre-Socratic, 5th or 6th Century BCE, I think. So, there was undoubtedly a LOT of scribal change in the interval between him and Paul, and that is the simplest explanation for the lack of capitalization in the manuscripts of Paul.
X is sometimes cited as one of the first classical monotheists (I doubt that.), and one of his sentences is translated “God is one….” But, while X capitalizes “Homer”, he doesn’t capitalize “theos”. I am not sure my comprehension has reached a state in which I can clearly explain why these observations interest me, and I think I would only babble if I tried. Your reminder about scribal practice is much appreciated.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
That is what I copied out of my search history, and the Greek text in that blog is the basis of my wondering about the function of capitalization. I doubt if it helps as far as identifying the Greek text, however. I took it on faith that the blogger reproduced some reputable version of the fragment, but I don’t know which one.
I am trying to develop Paul as a character in a fiction piece that I am hesitant to call a novel even though it is quite long. Right now, I am considering what Paul’s theology was (if, in fact, he had any) at the point in his life when he was preaching in Cilicia and just before Barnabas recruited him to Antioch. I am going to hypothesize that he matured theologically by this date. I have concluded that if he matured at this date, then he already believed pretty much what he wrote in Romans, and my reading of Romans in English is what is raising all the questions about capitalization. I have been looking for a copy of Epictetus’ Discourses, specifically what is usually called Chapter 3, in Greek. My Googling hasn’t uncovered that yet. Epictetus would be a better clue to what Paul means for several reasons, near-contemporaneousness (is that a word?) being the most obvious.
Your observations about the dating of manuscripts hadn’t occurred to me, and my expectations about what I can learn from looking at Greek fragments on the internet have been lowered somewhat. Would still like to get hold of Epictetus, though.
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