[B-Greek] John 8:58 and Gen 17:1 (LXX)
Doug Hoxworth
doughoxworth at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 17 19:33:27 EST 2005
><Carl>
>Quite frankly, I think that the supposed similarities
are really superficial and wanting in significance...
>I'm sorry to be pouring cold water over this
hypothesis; others may find it appealing; I think it's
interesting but insubstantial in the face of the
critical questions. I'm pleased that you've boldly
presented your ideas to this forum and I honestly hope
that you won't be deterred from continued exploration
of instances of verbal or phraseological similarity
between Greek texts--I guess this is a matter of
what's called "intertextuality."
<doug>
thanks for your thoughts carl. i knew i could count on
you to give it a good review.
in my opinion, i don't think it's so much the words
used as it is the reference to abraham. i think that
this is what has always been often ignored. for
example, many people reference the tetragrammaton as
given in Exod 3:14 as the allusion. why? he's not
talking about moses but abraham. anwyay, here's what i
wrote to someone who contacted me offlist concerning
the tetragrammaton:
---------------------
in my mind, it's not necessarily so much the EGW EIMI
that creates the link, but this in conjunction with
the reference to Abraham seeing Jesus' day and
rejoicing. i think its more the Abrahamic context that
creates the mental link. so for me it's not so much
the NAME of God that is in focus but the
identification with the event of God's appearance to
Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant. and we now know
from texts like gal 3 and rom 4 that what the
abrahamic covenant "really" pointed to was Jesus. so i
think the focus on the tetragammaton is misdirected
and has perhaps obscured other important issues that
we should be thinking of in the interpretation of the
text. that's my opinion anyway...
...i think that seeing it as a reference to God's
appearance to Abraham in the covenant in Gen 17 makes
much more sense of the text than say a reference to
Exod 3:14....i personally think that their minds would
have automatically went to Gen 17 when Jesus spoke of
Abraham and him seeing Jesus' day. for it might be
safe to say that this (along with the mosaic covenant)
was the essence of their religion. but i think that
Jesus' point was that all the physical descendents of
Abraham are not the focus, rather, I am the focus. "in
the promise of the seed, Abraham saw My day (e.g., His
birth, life, death, burial, resurrection and His
subsequent reigning as King of the New Covenant)."...
Doug Hoxworth
Luther Rice Seminary
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