But I was just trying (possibly not successfully) to give a Hebrew version of my example “If Zechariah had said the King and the High Priest are coming to you riding upon a donkey and a colt the foal of a donkey”. I haven’t deleted anything.

And certainly there’s some parallelism in Zech 9:9 but doesn’t necessarily mean all of it is.

Anyway I think the point still stands – if Zechariah had written “the king and the priest are coming to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey and the colt the foal of a donkey”, no one would read the last part as parallelism or waw-explicativum.

But Zechariah didn’t write that.  

In any event, the correct translation of that passage isn’t really the issue.

There are different ways to sort out NT scholars, but to me, they basically fall into three categories.

Traditionalists: The oldest school, they simply want to find some way to believe all the NT texts are accurate to some extent (if fundamentalists, they want to believe they’re all 100% accurate, but it’s a dangerous field of study for fundies, as Bart can attest).  They can be frauds, like the guy who tried to persuade everybody he had part of a 1st century copy of Mark, or they can be first-rate scholars like Richard Bauckham, who believes John the Apostle wrote John’s gospel from personal memories just slightly distorted by the passage of time.  But their primary goal is to defend the view that the gospels are–you know–gospel.  They may give up a bit of ground here and there, and in essence are fighting a long determined rearguard action, but their goal is to give some scholarly credibility to purely religious views.  

Mythicists: They want to prove it’s all hooey.  Maybe this or that happened in some form, but basically there’s no reason to believe any of it, it’s derived from earlier myths, maybe the Romans cooked it up for reasons I am still failing to process.  Because they have no respect for the material, they don’t tend to produce any good scholars, or contribute anything to the field, being basically far-fringe conspiracy theorists, a few of whom have relevant degrees.  Their goal is to destroy Christianity, which is funny, because they’re not doing anything of the kind.  The historical Jesus isn’t their enemy, Christ is, and you can’t get at a mythical figure by saying he’s a myth.  It’s the historical Jesus who threatens traditional Christian dogma, which is why the Traditionalists traditionally ignore the Mythicists, and so does anybody who isn’t already an atheist.  Both schools preach entirely to the already-converted.  

Professionalists: The ones who just want to do the job right for the sake of doing the job right.  They know there is legitimate historical information in the NT texts, but they also know it’s mingled with a great deal of material that is not accurate, and they further know this would be true of any ancient source, religious or otherwise.  They may be believers in some fashion, or they may be agnostics/atheists (they may be any of the above at some point in their careers, as again Bart Ehrman demonstrates), but in either case, they just want to come up with a better understanding of the material at hand, because what is truly sacred to them is their profession, which is scholarship.  Their audience is people who want to better understand the past.  They are the only ones who really deserve to be called true scholars.  

But bren, I fail to see how you fall into any of these three categories, leaving aside the fact that you’re no more a scholar than my dog.  Your orientation is deeply confusing.  

1)You believe Matthew was the first gospel, and probably the first book about Jesus ever written, if I understand you correctly.   This is a view anybody in the three schools might conceivably hold, though the overwhelming consensus among the Pros is that Mark came first.  

2)You believe the author of Matthew was Matthew–the disciple, the apostle, one of The Twelve, witness to much of Jesus’ ministry and to his final days in Jerusalem.  This would definitely be the Traditionalist view.  The Mythicists would say there couldn’t have been a disciple of Jesus named Matthew since there never was a Jesus.  The Pros almost unanimously reject this POV, and point out that it’s odd for an eyewitness not to identify himself as such (and they have many many other reasons, but Occam’s Razor would be satisfied with this one).  Paul didn’t write about his experience on the road to Damascus in the third person.  If the goal is to give personal testimony, why is it not written as such, which would make it more credible?  And why does that gospel have basically just the tiniest scintilla more information about Matthew than the other two synoptics?  It seems like Matthew never actually does or says anything in any of the gospels.  Jesus says “follow me” and he does.  Why?  Only Matthew would know.  Matthew doesn’t say.  I think he’d have wanted to explain that.  But maybe he was very shy.  

3)Okay, here’s where it gets totally off the map of the known world.  You believe Matthew is the first gospel, written by Matthew the Apostle, eyewitness testimony–and you believe he made up stories out of whole cloth, regarding moments in Jesus’ life he had actually seen himself.  The Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem on the back of a donkey–never happened!  Total myth!  Jesus just walked into town, I guess?  That the gospel writers are all making up stories is the Mythicist view, but you’re not a Mythicist, you believe Jesus existed and Matthew’s gospel is written by an eyewitness.  Believing Matthew’s gospel was written by Matthew is a Traditionalist view–but you’re not a Traditionalist, because you believe it’s full of deliberate lies.  And you’re sure as hell no Pro.  None of the three schools would touch your ideas with a ten cubit pole.  

Here’s your school.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

Might as well try to argue with Ahab.  

Robert said

So you admit that you were not trying to make a point relevant to what Zechariah actually wrote? What’s the point of that?  

The question is whether zech is understood as being obviously poetic or only understood that way because it doesnt make much literal sense.

By changing 9:9 to be about a king and priest we can have the verse make literal sense but keep all the other poetic parallelisms in tact.

In this way we can see that “riding on a colt” line is not in itself obviously poetic – in the amended version everyone would read it literally – its only read poetically because in zech version it doesnt make literal sense.

But should prophecies be read literally or poetically? Was matthew wrong to read it literally?

And then the wider point that regardless of whether matthew read it correctly or not, *two* disciples being sent by jesus fit matthews version better.

brenmcg said
godspell

I dont think theres a need to categorize everone – i’m just interested in truth.

And the truth is that mark edited matthew.  

And I am Marie of Romania.  😀

I note you dispute nothing I say other than my categorization of you (nobody likes being categorized, but in an area this specific, obviously everybody has a category).  

Meaning that I have in fact understood and correctly described your position and your motivation (every crazy hobo on the street shouting at shadows says he knows The Truth–nothing special about that).  

That was the only reason I had to keep talking to you–to take your measure.  I have now done so.  

You can go ahead wasting your life now.  At the end of it, the consensus will continue to be that the first surviving gospel is Mark’s.  But if that consensus ever changes–you’ll have had nothing to do with it.

Bye.