John2 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 01, 2019 10:29 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Oct 01, 2019 10:25 am
[That does not jive for me at all. It would be like me praising the police force, in the present tense, for dutifully enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition).
It reads to me more like praising the police for doing their eternal duties rather than specifically for enforcing only the Eighteenth Amendment.
Isn't it always true in the OT (Temple or no Temple) that "Not in every place, brethren, are the continual daily sacrifices offered, or the freewill offerings, or the sin offerings and the trespass offerings, but in Jerusalem alone. And even there the offering is not made in every place, but before the sanctuary in the court of the altar, and this too through the high priest and the aforesaid ministers, after that the victim to be offered has been inspected for blemishes"?
Hi again, John. I have had an idea, one which may well be too radical for most to accept, but let me lay it out anyway.
You and I have
discussed the following passage before:
Photius, Bibliotheca 232, quoting or paraphrasing Stephen Gobar: Ὅτι τὰ ἡτοιμασμένα τοῖς δικαίοις ἀγαθὰ οὔτε ὀφθαλμὸς εἶδεν οὔτε οὖς ἤκουσεν οὔτε ἐπὶ καρδίαν ἀνθρώπου ἀνέβη. Ἡγήσιππος μέντοι, ἀρχαῖός τε ἀνὴρ καὶ ἀποστολικός, ἐν τῷ πέμπτῳ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων, οὐκ οἶδ' ὅ τι καὶ παθών, μάτην μὲν εἰρῆσθαι ταῦτα λέγει, καὶ καταψεύδεσθαι τοὺς ταῦτα φαμένους τῶν τε θειῶν γραφῶν καὶ τοῦ Κυρίου λέγοντος· «Μακάριοι οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ ὑμῶν οἱ βλέποντες καὶ τὰ ὦτα ὑμῶν τὰ ἀκούοντα» καὶ ἑξῆς. / [Thesis:] The good things prepared for the just the eye has not seen, the ears have not heard, and they are not found in the heart of man. [Antithesis:] However Hegesippus, one of the ancients, a contemporary of the apostles, in the fifth book of his Commentaries [in I do not know what context], says that these are empty words and that those who say them are liars since the Holy Scriptures say, "Blessed are your eyes because they see and happy your ears because they hear," and the rest.
I suggested that, because Hegesippus knows and seems to approve of 1 Clement, and, because 1 Clement
both knows and approves of Paul
and contains something very similar to 1 Corinthians 2.9, Hegesippus is not likely to be so conspicuously disagreeing either with Clement or with Paul. I further suggested Stephen Gobar as the weak link above, that perhaps he had pressed Hegesippus in an unfair direction.
Now, what if I was right about the first part (and thus Hegesippus was not disagreeing with Clement or with Paul) but wrong about the second part (and thus Gobar was not such a weak link after all)? What if, indeed,
Peter Kirby is correct about 1 Clement 22.1-41.2 being an interpolation into Clement and
William O. Walker is simultaneously correct about 1 Corinthians 2.6-16 being an interpolation into Paul? 1 Clement 34.8, the Clementine saying about eyes and ears, is found in the proposed interpolation into Clement, while 1 Corinthians 2.9, the Pauline saying about eyes and ears, is found in the proposed interpolation into Paul. We need now only to imagine that Hegesippus knew the
uninterpolated version of 1 Clement (and possibly of 1 Corinthians). He would, then, be disagreeing, not with Paul or with Clement, but rather with any of the many,
many promoters of this saying, some of whom we have discussed before.
ETA: Hegesippus does, after all (according to this quotation), claim to be disagreeing with "those who are
saying these things" (τοὺς ταῦτα
φαμένους); he says nothing about them being in writing (which would make the most sense if he did not find them in writing in 1 Clement).
Does anything stand against this reconstruction (besides an often understandable reluctance to accept interpolation hypotheses)?