[B-Greek] Titus 1:12-13
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Wed Dec 9 18:34:17 EST 2009
Who says that "Paul" didn't consider Epimenides to be a "biblical" prophet (or equivalent)? He (whoever he may have been -- certainly not Paul) simply calls him a prophet. Nor, as B. Harris notes need he be directly quoting Epimenides (though I think he was). I happen to have read Tennyson, but if I were to say
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
need I be directly referencing the "Charge of the Light Brigade" or might I simply be using it to urge someone to proceed?
george
gfsomsel
… search for truth, hear truth,
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth,
defend the truth till death.
- Jan Hus
_________
________________________________
From: Yancy Smith <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, December 9, 2009 4:19:41 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Titus 1:12-13
George said:
>Do you find any mention of Zeus in the passage? ...
Whether or not "Paul" believed Zeus was buried in Crete doesn't enter into the picture. He is concerned solely with the character of the Cretan people and agrees that one of their own properly depicted their character.
B.Harris asked:
Are you saying then, that Paul's affirmation hH MARTURIA hAUTH ESTIN ALHQHS might also be a bit of irony, because Paul is agreeing that they are lying, because Paul does not believe Zeus is buried in Crete, simply, because Paul does not believe Zeus is real? So that, in English it would be better to translate it, "This testimony is true! (using an exclamation point rather than a period)
[Yancy Smith]
I think it is important that we recognize that Paul does not need to say what he assumes his audience already knows. Our problem is that we don't come to the text with the same assumptions. Here I adapt and cite Towner. You really need to get hold of his commentary. If we assume for a moment that “the prophet” in view is Epimenides, Paul does not consider him a biblical prophet, but rather in the way that Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient writers tended to think of "prophets" — as a teachers, philosophers, and even (according to some accounts) workers of miracles. “Prophet” would then be a title of honor that attached itself to various historical (and legendary) figures known to have been great teachers and poets. Epimenides is clearly associated with Crete as a priest and prophet. Depending on who is read (Plato or Aristotle), he can be dated to the fifth or sixth century B.C.E. The Christian-era writers Clement of Alexandria and Jerome
linked the saying to him. Other early Christian writers, however, attribute the saying to Callimachus (third century B.C.E.), whose Hymn to Zeus (line 8) contains the first phrase of the saying.
As Paul cites it, the saying was recognized as from a specific Cretan prophet, whoever it was. There is a reference to Callimachus' teaching in the language of Titus 1:2; that Callimachus also cites the “Cretans are always liars” jibe, whoever Paul has in mind as the prophet, only shows that Paul has at his disposal the necessary traditions to construct, through allusion and citation, a virtual collage of criticisms leveled against Cretan culture by some fairly authoritative figures.
"The saying itself divides into three parts, and allows Paul to address the way the opponents speak and behave. Part one, “Cretans are always liars,” is found verbatim in Callimachus (Hymn to Zeus [line 8]; the earliest extant source to preserve the line), who also supplies the reason for this long-standing opinion of Cretan deceitfulness. ‡ This reputation for deceitfulness was, as noted above, widespread and quite possibly linked in a seminal way with the fundamental Cretan religious claim to have the tomb of Zeus on Crete. This in effect reduced the stature of Zeus to that of a human being-become-hero. Behind this Cretan perspective, and the response to it, were opposing “theologies”: Crete’s was a “theology from below,” which maintained that the Greek gods were first men and women. This apparently grew out of the fundamental Cretan belief in its own race as the primal Greek race that emerged from the earth. Cretan beliefs included the
view that many of the Greek gods were born on Crete; Zeus also died there. The opposing “theology from above” was the Olympian theology from mainland Greece in which, among other differences, the transcendent status of the gods was protected and the distance between the divine and the human races maintained. Thus the basis of the stereotype was a heretical religious claim."
[Yancy Smith] So, George is right that the text does not directly mention Zeus. But then we often allude to things in natural language without mentioning them.
Yancy Smith
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