What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

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Bernard Muller
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Bernard Muller »

to Secret Alias,
ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας
I still don't see what I put in bold can be translated "in (or as) anecdotes". The bolded words mean "As for debt".
That probably means Peter was indebted (owing gratitude for a service or favor) to his audience which likely offered him lodging, food and money.
In exchange for all that, Peter was offering his own teaching/instructions (and telling about sayings of Jesus, which allegedly Mark recorded).

Needless to say I think that the modern translations are more biased interpretations than just translations.

Cordially, Bernard
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Secret Alias »

But what is the underlying bias? Look at the list. Craig Evan's is there. Bauckham. I don't see an underlying bias that connects all the authorities. And Mark is made up of anecdotes. The context seems to be right. The gospel is recording something like history and ancient historiography is typically reliant on anecdotes
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Secret Alias »

πρὸς can mean 'with' too.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Bernard Muller
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Bernard Muller »

to Secret Alias,
But what is the underlying bias? Look at the list. Craig Evan's is there. Bauckham. I don't see an underlying bias that connects all the authorities. And Mark is made up of anecdotes. The context seems to be right. The gospel is recording something like history and ancient historiography is typically reliant on anecdotes
Both Evans & Bauckham are Christian scholars.
And Mark is made up of anecdotes
Yes, but that does make "as for debt" means "in/as anecdotes". "Anecdote" is not a valid translation for chreias.
πρὸς can mean 'with' too

"with debt" is awkward but still acceptable.

"ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας" is translated as such "Teaching was done for debt" by google translate.

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Bernard Muller wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 7:46 pm"Anecdote" is not a valid translation for chreias.
What?
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

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Teaching was done for debt" by google translate.
Well that's good if I strike up a conversation with my cab driver in Athens
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Bernard Muller »

to Ben,
It certainly looks chreias meant anecdotes in the time period of Papias and Eusebius.
Remain to be seen if Papias &/or Eusebius these anecdotes meant they were Peter's own making for his personal teaching to his audience or anecdotes about Jesus.
I also suspect that Eusebius added up "with anecdotes" to his quote of Papias.

Can you provide your own translation for "ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας, ἀλλ' οὐχ ὥσπερ σύνταξιν τῶν κυριακῶν ποιούμενος λογίων" in the most literal form?

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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Bernard Muller wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:47 amIt certainly looks chreias meant anecdotes in the time period of Papias and Eusebius.
Remain to be seen if Papias &/or Eusebius these anecdotes meant they were Peter's own making for his personal teaching to his audience or anecdotes about Jesus.
I also suspect that Eusebius added up "with anecdotes" to his quote of Papias.

Can you provide your own translation for "ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας, ἀλλ' οὐχ ὥσπερ σύνταξιν τῶν κυριακῶν ποιούμενος λογίων" in the most literal form?
If χρεία means anecdote, a hyperliteral translation might be: "Who made the teachings by means of anecdotes, but not as if making an ordering together of the lordly oracles...."

"By means of" is one of many, many secondary (nondirectional) translations for πρός.
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

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This discussion of Diogenes seems to have relevance to the development of the gospel (and what Papias says about Peter):
The Survival of Diogenes Traditions in Late Antiquity
The preservation of traditions about Diogenes in the school curriculum in Late Antiquity provides a suitable starting point for surveying comments about Diogenes and Cynicism in the writings of fourth-century Christians. Only then can we begin to understand what the figure of Diogenes meant to the architects of an emerging Christian intellectual culture. By the time of the early empire, Diogenes had become a cultural type, a πρόσωπον, a recognizable stock character. As such, he appears in works by a number of authors from the first and second centuries, including Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Plutarch, as well as in a collection of pseudepigraphical letters.[4] Each of these writers had access to a loosely organized body of traditions about Diogenes which circulated both in oral and in written forms.[5]

Familiarity with the figure of Diogenes did not fade away with the coming of Christianity. Sayings attributed to Diogenes and anecdotes about him were preserved (and even generated), particularly in the schools of grammar and rhetoric located in cities throughout the Mediterranean world.[6] Diogenes, as a cultural type, became an element in Christian culture, an example from the past to be referred to in discussion of a range of topics, a bit of cultural property whose meaning and significance were widely debated. Christians’ exploitation of Diogenes’ meaning was part of their synthesis of the cultural legacy of the pagan past.

Traditions about Diogenes were preserved in the rhetorical exercises, particular in chreia (χρεία), the sayings and anecdotes which formed the building blocks of rhetorical education and hence had direct bearing on the very art of speech making.[7] Drawing on literally thousands of sayings and anecdotes attributed or attributable to various ancient personages, teachers developed their students’ oratorical skills. Many chreiai were attributed to Socrates, Isocrates, and Menander. Perhaps the greatest number were attributed to Diogenes. One scholar estimated that, in all their variations and permutations, the chreiai attributed to Diogenes number more than a thousand.[8]

Chreiai attributed to Diogenes also appeared in other literary contexts. In the Lives of the Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius gathers a number of earlier collections of chreiai specifically concerned with Diogenes of Sinope in compiling his anecdotal “life” of the Cynic.[9] In this and other collections, there was little concern that the attributions should be accurate, only that they should be apt.[10] The requirement of apt attribution presupposes that the conception of a given character (πρόσωπον) was well developed and well understood. In order to attribute a saying to Diogenes, for instance, one first had to consider whether it was appropriate to his character. This character was based in large part on what had been attributed to Diogenes in other chreiai, the materials which formed a Diogenes tradition. Chreiai attributed to Diogenes shared a “family resemblance,” in that they portrayed Diogenes as a certain sort of character determined by a set of loosely related “biographical” details which were commonly “known” to have happened in Diogenes’ life, such as his exile from Sinope, his arrival in Athens, the fact that he carried a wallet and a staff and wore a white robe. Chief among the details were witty sayings, an ascetic way of life, and shameless acts.[11]

The wide dissemination of Diogenes traditions is exemplified in the work of the fifth-century pagan author John of Stobi, who compiled an anthology of poetry and prose from over 450 Greek authors.[12] As Photius relates, John presented “opinions, sayings, and maxims” as “precepts to discipline and improve his son.”[13] John’s anthology was copied frequently in the Byzantine world and has long served scholars because it preserves fragments of many texts now lost. Diogenes figures prominently in this collection; there are over sixty of his sayings, making him one of the most cited sources in the anthology.[14] Reading through the Diogenes chreiai in the anthology can give us a sense of what constituted the character of Diogenes in the fifth century. Here are some typical examples:

When someone asked how can one become master of himself, Diogenes said, “When those things which he reproves in others he reproves even more in himself.” (3.1.55)

Diogenes mocked those who lock up their storehouses with bolts, keys, and seals, but who open up all the doors and windows of their bodies, through their mouth, their genitals, their ears, and their eyes. (3.6.17.)

Diogenes said that virtue can reside neither in a wealthy city nor a wealthy house. (4.31.c.88)

As in Diogenes chreiai elsewhere, John of Stobi’s Diogenes challenges hypocrisy and praises the virtue of poverty. He embodies the problem of living a moral life for the urban elite.
Throughout the Byzantine era, Diogenes remained an important figure in rhetorical handbooks. Twelve Diogenes chreiai appear in John of Damascus’s anthology known as the Sacra Parallela, consisting mostly of sayings attributed to Christian authors compiled early in the eighth century.[15] Rhetors continued to employ the chreiai in their speeches, and their audiences continued to be familiar with Diogenes and the meaning that his character came to embody.[16]

School exercises, of course, were not the only factor in the preservation of traditions about Diogenes in Late Antiquity. The writings of the church fathers, as well as the Emperor Julian and the Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius, give evidence for the existence of practicing Cynics in Late Antiquity.[17] Some of the Cynics are known to us by name. Julian attacked a Cynic named Heraclius for misrepresenting the gods.[18] Patriarch Gregory of Nazianzus preached in praise of Maximus, a Christian priest from Alexandria who also identified himself as a Cynic and who arrived in Constantinople in 380.[19] Damascius’s Life of Isidorus gives a spare account of a Cynic and Neoplatonic philosopher named Sallustius who was born around 430 and seems to have survived into the early decades of the sixth century.[20] Moreover, sources from the period either address or refer to groups of nameless practitioners of Cynicism. Julian composed a speech scolding the Cynics of his day for failing to understand Diogenes and achieve his objectives.[21] Augustine was also aware of the continued existence of Cynics.[22] The Cynic way of life continued to have a powerful appeal into the fifth century. https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebo ... nd=ucpress
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: What Are the Implications that Peter Taught in 'Anecdotes'?

Post by Secret Alias »

You can begin to see why so many contemporary writers see parallels between Christianity and the Cynics. Even Marcion is frequently compared to Diogenes. The presentation of Jesus in the gospel - itself a patchwork of chreiai - has parallels with loose accounts of Diogenes circulating in the Empire.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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