[B-Greek] Titus 1:12-13
Yancy W Smith
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Wed Dec 9 23:39:41 EST 2009
George F Somsel wrote:
> 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?
>
Quite right, but one needs to ask, in what connection were Cretans
famous for their lies?
Second, what sort of back reference is v 12 to v. 2? Why bring up at
all hO APSEUDHS QEOS, which is quite odd?
> 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 so
> me 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 c
> learly associated with Crete as a priest and prophet. Depending on w
> ho is read (Plato or Aristotle), he can be dated to the fifth or six
> th century B.C.E. The Christian-era writers Clement of Alexandria an
> d Jerome linked the saying to him. Other early Christian writers, ho
> wever, attribute the saying to Callimachus (third century B.C.E.), w
> hose 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 co
> llage of criticisms leveled against Cretan culture by some fairly au
> thoritative figures.
>
> "The saying itself divides into three parts, and allows Paul to
> address the way the opponents speak and behave. Part one, “Cretans a
> re always liars,” is found verbatim in Callimachus (Hymn to Zeus [li
> ne 8]; the earliest extant source to preserve the line), who also su
> pplies the reason for this long-standing opinion of Cretan deceitful
> ness. ‡ This reputation for deceitfulness was, as noted above, wides
> pread and quite possibly linked in a seminal way with the fundamenta
> l 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-h
> ero. Behind this Cretan perspective, and the response to it, were op
> posing “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 belief
> s 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 differe
> nces, the transcendent status of the gods was protected and the dist
> ance between the divine and the human races maintained. Thus the bas
> is 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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