[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
>
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>



More information about the B-Greek mailing list