2012-06-12

Last or Least: Was Paul the Last Witness or an Aborted Fetus?

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

Lost in translation

Apostle Paul (Ubisi icon)
A bald Paul holds a red book. (Image via Wikipedia)

One of the nice things about learning Greek (and I count myself as a beginner, a perpetual student of the language) is discovering controversial translations that you’d never know about otherwise. One example you probably already know about is whether Paul meant “betrayed” or “delivered over” in 1 Corinthians 11:23. Only by reading the later gospels into Paul’s words would we be convinced that the loaded term “betrayed” is a better translation of παρεδίδετο (paredideto, “he was delivered up or handed over”). There’s even a hint at Paul’s meaning by his word choice earlier in the verse. Paul writes:

I indeed received (παρέλαβον/parelabon) from the Lord that which I also delivered (παρέδωκα/paredoka) to you that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered over (παρεδίδετο/paredideto) took bread . . . (my translation)

So something was delivered to him by the Lord, which he in turn delivered to them about Jesus when he was delivered over (to the Romans or the Archons). In other words, we have three pairs of delivery-reception events. Yet nearly every English translation says that Jesus was “betrayed” on that night. Why? Well, they don’t publish these books for people like you and me; they publish them for people who already know what the Bible is supposed to say.

Untimely born?

On the basis of sheer weirdness 1 Cor. 11:23 can’t hold a candle to 1 Cor. 15:8 in which Paul caps off a confession of post-resurrection appearances with his own eye-witness testimony.

And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. (KJV)

This translation masks an unusual word — ἐκτρώματι/ektromati — which refers to a miscarried fetus (ektroma). The untimeliness of the birth does not refer to lateness, but to being born too soon, and presumably means that Paul was calling himself some sort of monster. However, his meaning is far from clear and has long been the subject of debate.

Continue reading “Last or Least: Was Paul the Last Witness or an Aborted Fetus?”


Concluding Response of Blogger Neil Godfrey to Blogger Maurice Casey of TJP®©™

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Anyone who has read the works of Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price and others (even my own posts) knows that our blogger Maurice Casey’s attempts to critique them are unbearably lightweight — except for the unbearably depressing personal vitriol. My guess is that for most part he is reading selections fed to him by a certain hotheaded research assistant who has her own personal axe to grind.

We recently commented on his hallucinatory observation that I don’t read books and even make light of earthquake victims. The latter innuendo indicates that if he ever found out that the New Zealand librarians who published the original article and photograph linked in my post were also atheistic mythicists then he would surely accuse them also of cold-hearted inhumanity. The former charge (that I don’t read books) is loaded with the double irony that he included information that he presumably read in my blog profile, yet in that same profile I explain quite clearly what is meant by my not touching books in my job as a librarian.

With that sort of introduction how can anyone take seriously anything this new internet blogger says. I certainly can’t.

But for the sake of completeness I’ll make the effort to finalize my response to his TJP(C) blogpost.

Did not give proper references

I will never forget Dr James McGrath surmising that my use of quotation marks around the title of a book was a suspicious indicator that I had not read the book. Well, our next circus act is Dr Maurice Casey censuring me because I “did not give proper references” in a blogpost. Ouch! (I hyperlinked direct to the full text of the source itself instead of setting out a full scholarly bibliographic citation. Regrettable! Appalling! Frightful!) Continue reading “Concluding Response of Blogger Neil Godfrey to Blogger Maurice Casey of TJP®©™”