Romans 9:5 - Athanasius and Basil

Steven Avery

Administrator
And also in 2 Corinthians 11:31, which they translate,
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ὁ ὢν εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ("who is blessed forevermore").

2 Corinthians 11:31 (AV)
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which is blessed for evermore,
knoweth that I lie not.

This looks akin to Romans 9:5.
The blessing is for ever upon Christ.

Romans 9:5 (AV)
Whose are the fathers,
and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came,
who is over all,
God blessed for ever.
Amen.
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
The words, indeed, are perfectly plain and intelligible. "Christ is over all"--he is Lord over all created beings. This, perhaps, he might be without being strictly and properly God. But, to remove all doubt on this most essential point, he is also declared to be "God blessed for ever"...

Logic problem.

Other verses have Christ over all and are not claimed as identity verse.
Another verse 2 Cor 11:31 has a similar doxology to Christ, not claimed as an identity verse.

Combining the two in one verse makes for a beautiful verse, but does not change the basics.
 
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Brianrw

Member
Plus I needed a direct url to the page, you gave one to the huge JSTOR article, hard to navigate.
You can download the text as a PDF. On my notes, I only mark the beginning pages in surveys (a survey is a quick view of the evidence). You can assume that elsewhere also.

I constantly see you shading what folks write, and sometimes I take the time to check it out, and yep, the shading is there.
Didn't you first quote this work to me? I assumed you had actually read it and were already familiar with its contents.

Examples please, otherwise the generality is slander. As for usual the six post flurry of responses, I have noted specific examples where you have misread or misinterpreted your sources so that you have opportunity to make appropriate corrections. Quote mining isn't a good practice; you can do so as a survey, but you need to go back and make sure you understand what you are quoting and revise accordingly before actually using the information.

Here is what he wrote:
https://books.google.com/books?id=SCtVAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA361

1636434431739.png
He spends 18 pages on it, not just the snippet above. I used the JSTOR because it reproduces the Journal article. Abbot writes, p. 112, "But the construction followed in the common version is also grammatically objectionable (sic); and if we assume that the Apostle and those whom he addressed believed Christ to be God, this construction likewise suits the context." You have filled in your own assumption about what he may be saying (he does not offer the alternative you seek), but in truth the point of that thought is encapsulated after some 3 points discussion on p. 125, where he writes, "Taking all these fact into consideration, is it probable that at this early day the Jewish Christians and Gentile believers at Rome . . . Accustomed to the representation of him as being distinct from God, would they not have been startled and amazed beyond measure by finding him described as 'over all, God blessed for ever'"? And this is the manner in which he rejects the AV translation.

It is rendering 2 on p. 89, "who (or he who) is over all, God blessed for ever" The section begins under Roman numeral II on p. 111. There is not a single place where he offers any interpretation of the translation other than that it makes the passage speak of Christ as God. How he understands it is evident in how he comments on it (e.g. pp. 114, 115, 116, 117, 118; especially 122 paragraph 2 and p. 125; p. 129).

The problem was not removing "God" (a diversion), it is your attempt to move it a different spot than in the AV text.
I am not moving it to a different spot. I simply translate from the Greek what it is when it is not functioning as an appositive. I have no idea why you keep accusing me of changing or wanting to change the text. I think you just don't understand why pulling the Greek out of the passage changes how it comes into English.
The problem was not removing "God" (a diversion), it is your attempt to move it a different spot than in the AV text.
Do you not even remember what you wrote? You asked who would do the blessing if "God" was removed. I answered your question. How is that a diversion?

Yet when it comes to two verses (Romans 9:5 and Titus 2:13) you want to change the AV text to make it singular addressing. Why not just accept the pure Bible?
You really should stop accusing me of trying to "change the AV." I'm not saying the AV needs to change, but that in those particular cases you are simply reading the English wrongly. May I remind you that it was you who brought up the topic of the Greek, to which I responded that your assessment of the two passages is inaccurate, and your attacks on the Granville Sharp rule are unwarranted.
 

Brianrw

Member
continued from above
What is your objection to the simple understanding, that Christ is God blessed for ever?
I don't object to it, when it's understood correctly. But so far as I can tell you are reading it as "Christ . . . who is . . . God-blessed for ever" (which is not even good English) and telling me I'm changing the meaning of the text, whereas your reading of it would not only require an English hyphen, it would also require a substantial reconstruction of the underlying Greek text. The Greek and English have to match meaning.

If I am incorrect as to how you are reading it, you should make it clear below.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
continued from above

I don't object to it, when it's understood correctly. But so far as I can tell you are reading it as "Christ . . . who is . . . God-blessed for ever" (which is not even good English) and telling me I'm changing the meaning of the text, whereas your reading of it would not only require an English hyphen, it would also require a substantial reconstruction of the underlying Greek text. The Greek and English have to match meaning.
If I am incorrect as to how you are reading it, you should make it clear below.

Your hyphen idea is irrelevant, and not normative AV.
Why do you object to the English of the actual AV text? (Equivalent to God-blessed.)

Your problem is that you have ideas of the Greek which you believe change the AV. I take the understanding of the 50 fluent learned men

Curious: how would you change the Greek to actually produce the AV text?
Which is good, excellent English.
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
Didn't you first quote this work to me? I assumed you had actually read it and were already familiar with its contents.

Examples please, otherwise the generality is slander. As for usual the six post flurry of responses, I have noted specific examples where you have misread or misinterpreted your sources so that you have opportunity to make appropriate corrections. Quote mining isn't a good practice; you can do so as a survey, but you need to go back and make sure you understand what you are quoting and revise accordingly before actually using the information.

He spends 18 pages on it, not just the snippet above. I used the JSTOR because it reproduces the Journal article. Abbot writes, p. 112, "But the construction followed in the common version is also grammatically objectionable (sic)

Please note that I posted the Abbot picture with unobjectionable. Is there a JSTOR error? Yep. Your p. 112 is in error. See my pic from one of the Abbot articles.

It is ironic that you get tripped up right where you are accusing me.

We both correct some errors but you often make dubious or faux accusations, other than factual stuff like Athanasius/Basil..

As to other spots where you shade, examples abound. Usually the root cause is that you do not understand and accept the huge distinction between the AV dual-addressing and your desire for an identity-singularity correction for the AV. From your mistaken view, you accuse.

On Ritchie, you missed that I pointed out disagreement with his conclusion, which pre-negated your “aha”.

You spend a lot of time on Abbot above, but most of what he writes is irrelevant. I simply spent a minute to correct your overblown claim about how he sees the AV text, and that led to finding the typo in JSTOR. See my new page on the trichotomy interpretation.

Granted in what you have above Abbot makes an interesting analysis about the apostolic era, would they see Jesus distinct from God. However, look at my list of high Christology verses, and add the doxology verses, and there should be no problem at all with 'over all, God blessed for ever'. That is the Abbot error.

You could url right to the page in JSTOR, but search is a no-go. Are the download PDFs searchable? Then you lose the url to the page.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Do you not even remember what you wrote? You asked who would do the blessing if "God" was removed. I answered your question. How is that a diversion?

Please, your tone is wrong, especially since your facts are wrong.

I said that you moved God out of its correct phrase. You have it there, but you try to connect it to the previous part of the verse.

You pulled God out of its correct phrase and leave the blessed for ever up in the air, who is blessing?

btw, when I post on an iPad I may end up with a "flurry". However, I try to make sure they are logically distinct.
 

Brianrw

Member
Please note that I posted the Abbot picture with unobjectionable. Is there a JSTOR error? Yep. Your p. 112 is in error. See my pic from one of the Abbot articles.

It is ironic that you get tripped up right where you are accusing me.
I'm sorry, how did I accuse you? You know (sic) means "I know what I copied is evidently a mistake, but I am copying it as it was in my source." I bolded it to highlight the difference, so you'd know that's what I originally read when I made the original comments. The original article was printed in the Journal, if I recall correctly.

As to other spots where you shade, examples abound. Usually the root cause is that you do not understand and accept the huge distinction between the AV dual-addressing and your desire for an identity-singularity correction for the AV. From your mistaken view, you accuse.
More generalities. Point them out. You disagree with everyone who doesn't share your POV, that wasn't my point. You are using writers to be contrarian, with a goal to prove me wrong but not to support your actual position. Ritchie happened to share the same view as me in that case. That's what I take issue with. Quote mining is not a good practice.

Steven Avery said:
Granted in what you have above Abbot makes an interesting analysis about the apostolic era, would they see Jesus distinct from God.
No. Unitarians uniformly deny or excuse all references to Christ's Deity in the ante-Nicene era. The references to Christ's deity are numerous in the Biblical texts, and declarations of his Deity begin with the "Apostolic Fathers," and are found throughout the second century. It's impossible to miss.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
No. Unitarians uniformly deny or excuse all references to Christ's Deity in the ante-Nicene era. The references to Christ's deity are numerous in the Biblical texts, and declarations of his Deity begin with the "Apostolic Fathers," and are found throughout the second century. It's impossible to miss.

You are mixing up various categories. I discussed the apostolic era, which really is the New Testament and Clement of Rome and not much more .

Definitely in the late 2nd century there are Jesus is God commentaries, in fact that includes (even specializes on) what Wallace called the naive modalism texts that added yet another exception to Sharp's rule. It is an important exception because it is specifically around ontological verses, which is where Sharp wanted to fake everybody out and, like you, change the AV text.

(Are you going to read that b-greek forum and learn a bit? They discuss making the Rule work around doctrinal preferences.
Are you going to follow up on the naive modalism verses?)

There are three categories that are often mixed.

Jesus is God
deity of Christ
divinity of Christ

It is easy to use beautiful verses like 1 Timothy 3:16 or John 1:1 as supporting the deity of Christ, but they do not directly say Jesus is God. And they are not verses tampering with the AV, such as we see you doing on Romans 9:5 or Titus 2:13 or 2 Peter 1:1. Where you change the AV text to directly say Jesus is God. Since you are not happy with the text given by the 50 learned men.

It is an interesting discussion why there are dozens of dual addressing verses in the New Testament. Yet hardly anybody today speaks in that manner of the New Testament writers. And virtually nobody even discusses why that is the common NT mode.

Clearly there was a desire to maintain distinction between the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, who learned obedience by what he suffered, was tempted, etc. (Would the New Testament writers write like Richard Bauckham "God Crucified"?) And the deity of God. Which dwelt within Jesus, with God as his Father, bypassing the sin transmitting through Adam. Keeping that distinction in their hearts, there are no direct "Jesus is God" texts in the AV, without tampering with the text, as you have done throughout this discussion. (Granted, we can be allowing the claim to be made in verses like John 20:28 and Isaiah 9:6, but they are qualitatively quite different than your three tampered verses. More possibly when you equivocate on Ephesians 5:5. )
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
I'm sorry, how did I accuse you? You know (sic) means "I know what I copied is evidently a mistake, but I am copying it as it was in my source."

(sic) is often used to "spelling mistakes, non-standard spelling, or grammatical errors." Or "erroneous, archaic, or otherwise nonstandard spelling, punctuation or grammar". Which does not apply here.

Granted it can go further
"erroneous logic, or to show general disapproval or dislike of the material".
:"incorrect ... fact, logic"
(Quotes from Wikipedia.)

In the case of an opposite meaning, which is not at all obvious from context, it would be far better if you put in a comment with the true meaning. With or without the sic. (correction: unobjectionable). Either in the text or before or after.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
It is "God blessed for ever" in the AV, not "God-blessed for ever." The "learned men of the AV" translated it correctly, so that it testifies to the Deity of Christ. θεὸς εὐλογητὸς has both a noun and an adjective in the nominative case, and are preceded by the verb ὤν which is the participle of the Greek verb εἰμί, "to be." These together are part of an appositional phrase to ὁ Χριστὸς ("Christ").

God blessed or God-blessed are both descriptions of Christ. Thus they are adjectival, when seen as one unit, as in the lucid comment of Murray Harris - “the natural association of θεὸς with εὐλογητὸς”.

And yes, there is an implied noun. God blessed (Christ)... If I remember earlier, you chafed at an implied noun.

One person online is calling it a verbal adjective, presumably a verb brought into an adjectival usage. I see your problem here is trying to make blessed into a simple verb form in English and thus not matching the Greek.

The appositional claim is a problem, because it implies "one element identifies the other in a different way". That is not happening here. There is a connectedness but not an equivalent identification.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
  • Even after all of this, I spoke with someone I know very well yet who was unfamiliar with the passage in English. They are an English teacher and grammarian. They affirmed the same thing: the passage in the KJV is calling Christ "God," the comma is there because an apposition is involved.

That would work with two commas.
"over all, God, blessed forever."

This is rather simple.
 

Brianrw

Member
That would work with two commas.
"over all, God, blessed forever."

This is rather simple.
Simpler than translating a passage you say means "blessed by God" as "blessed by God"?

The punctuation you provide gives occasion to ambiguity (is Christ only essentially God? and why are you severing the connection with "blessed" by a comma?)

And no, you can pronounce the passage just fine and yield the appropriate meaning; "over all, God bles-sed forever" (adjective, correct) is not the same as "over all, God blest forever." (verb, incorrect). The latter corrupts the passage through exposition, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Don't believe me? Your rules are here. A predicate adjective describes the subject, which has the article, and is "Christ." "God" is a predicate nominative, which renames the subject (i.e., Christ). Thus as I said, Christ is over all. Christ is God. Christ is blessed forever. That is how Greek works.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Simpler than translating a passage you say means "blessed by God" as "blessed by God"?

The punctuation you provide gives occasion to ambiguity (is Christ only essentially God? and why are you severing the connection with "blessed" by a comma?)

And no, you can pronounce the passage just fine and yield the appropriate meaning; "over all, God bles-sed forever" (adjective, correct) is not the same as "over all, God blest forever." (verb, incorrect). The latter corrupts the passage through exposition, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Don't believe me? Your rules are here. A predicate adjective describes the subject, which has the article, and is "Christ." "God" is a predicate nominative, which renames the subject (i.e., Christ). Thus as I said, Christ is over all. Christ is God. Christ is blessed forever. That is how Greek works.

This conversation is on two, at least threads. Maybe you want to post the above here.
Simpler than translating a passage you say means "blessed by God" as "blessed by God"?

The punctuation you provide gives occasion to ambiguity (is Christ only essentially God? and why are you severing the connection with "blessed" by a comma?)

And no, you can pronounce the passage just fine and yield the appropriate meaning; "over all, God bles-sed forever" (adjective, correct) is not the same as "over all, God blest forever." (verb, incorrect). The latter corrupts the passage through exposition, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Don't believe me? Your rules are here. A predicate adjective describes the subject, which has the article, and is "Christ." "God" is a predicate nominative, which renames the subject (i.e., Christ). Thus as I said, Christ is over all. Christ is God. Christ is blessed forever. That is how Greek works.

You have a typo I think in the first sentence.

Romans 9:5 - God blessed - or - blessed by God
https://purebibleforum.com/index.php?threads/romans-9-5-god-blessed-or-blessed-by-god.2316/

Moving these discussions to one spot.
Feel free to bring over from this thread.
 
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