Defending Papias on Matthew and Authencity of LXX

Lita Cosner a few days ago:

The Church Father Papias said that Matthew wrote a Hebrew version of his Gospel first. However, Matthew's Gospel as we have it now is not a translation from Hebrew. We know this because we know what Hebrew translated into Greek 'looks like', because we have the Septuagint (the Old Testament translated into Greek). Matthew's Gospel does not read like translated Hebrew.

Do we know what Latin translated into English looks like?

Latin Vulgate, Luke 24:1, here:

Una autem sabbati valde diluculo venerunt ad monumentum, portantes quae paraverant aromata

My word for word translation of it:

But on the one of the sabbath very in the morning twilight they came to the monument, carrying which they had prepared spices.

A little less slavish:

But on the first of the sabbath very early in the morning they came to the monument, carrying the spices which they had prepared.

The Douai Rheims version:

And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared.

So, from my two slavish versions we know what Latin translated to English looks like, therefore the Douai Rheims version is not in fact translated from Latin?

It sounds like English. It doesn't sound like "Latin translated to English". So, is it not a translation?

There are two options regarding this tradition 1) Someone recognized the 'Jewishness' of Matthew's Gospel and embellished that to say he originally wrote it in Hebrew (because tradition is not inspired, and we know of other places where the church fathers got it wrong)

• Tradition preserves the originally inspired revelation. It is protected, like the Church Christ founded is protected. It is not inerrant as inspired, but infallible as protected. As is the Church which St Paul called the "pillar and ground of truth" [1 Timothy 3:15].
  
  
• Apart from tradition we would not know the names of the Gospellers anyway. Or that the Gospels were accounts of a life which happened rather than results of a contest in fiction.
  
  
• You have no case whatsoever where all Church Fathers got it wrong.
  
  You may have a case where one or other of them got it wrong. St Augustine thought God created all things "at once" rather than the correct "together", because St Jerome had not dared to use the Classical and no longer used "iunctim". St Augustine thought there were no "antipodes" (people living at the antipodes), which while literally probably true of the exact antipodes of Milan (45° 28′ 00″ sud, 170° 50' 00" ouest seems to be no land and therefore have no inhabitants, just Ocean water) is taken in a more general way false, and he had reasoned as a civilised man and a land crab, counting neither on people going to Americas as permanent exiles from Europe or Africa, nor on difference between getting West by the Canary and North Equatorial currents and getting back East without finding the Equatorial countercurrent or the Gulf stream. And St Jerome was (according to modern scholarship, though Petrus Comestor considered those manuscripts viciated, individually wrong (against the bishops of his time) on his wanting to to exclude Judith from the canon. But you find simply no instance where all Church Fathers were wrong, that was a Lutheran lie.

Here is one of your alternatives:

Matthew wrote an early version in his native Hebrew before composing the final version in Greek.

Would you consider, apart from language choice, that "And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared." is another text than Vulgate?

Just because you "know" from my translation what Latin translated into English looks like?

I hope not!

Now, if we do accept that Gospel of St Matthew in Greek is St Matthew's idiomatic translation to Greek, and LXX a more slavish one, why would the LXX translators have preferred a slavish one?

Well, if they really were 6 Levites from [the territory of] each of the tribes* and were told to translate independently of each other the Scriptures, as tradition has it, then while the exact identity of the resulting Greek text is still a miracle, it also makes sense that they made some human effort on arriving at an identic text as well, and fearing that slight divergences of wording** might be exploited by the Egyptian Ptolemaic and somewhat capricious*** captor, they would have tried to at least minimise such things by sticking as close to the Hebrew text as possible.

On the other hand, St Matthew was under no such constraint, was probably more familiar with Greek than many of his ancestors among the LXX (yes, he was a Levite too!), since having extensively used it as a tax collector, and could therefore afford an idiomatic translation.

There is such a thing as a difference in latitude between what a Protestant would consider "liberal" and what a Catholic would consider "modernist". For a Catholic, many things are modernist, not by agreeing in detail or principle with Protestant liberals, which would very often be modernist too, but simply by agreeing even with Conservative Protestants in detail in such a way as to admit by a backdoor a Protestant principle, even those originally espoused by the Reformers. This comes through in Lita's self assessment:

Finally, I have to stress that none of this has to do with theological liberalism, though I can understand why people can become suspicious as many people use these issues as an excuse to disbelieve what is recorded in Scripture. Christians who are enthusiastically inerrantist (as I am) have even more reason to look into these issues because we believe the answers actually matter.

It may no longer be theologically liberal to the taste of a Protestant, but it is modernist to that of a Catholic to deny that St Matthew originally wrote his same self Gospel in Hebrew, rather than another one. If it does not immediately attack Scriptural inerrantism, it certainly does attack infallibility of Tradition. Less bad, but bad enough, since contradicting in effect 1 Timothy 3:15.

Here is a debate with a Catholic I assess as a Modernist on Theologyweb:

Marcan Priority a Protestant Thing, acc. to Duncan Graham Reid
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?13097-Marcan-Priority-a-Protestant-Thing-acc-to-Duncan-Graham-Reid

The "Farmer" referred to (I did not find previous occasion where we had spoken about him, and therefore had to search the link) is this text:

BISMARCK AND THE FOUR GOSPELS
1870 - 1914
by Professor William R. Farmer
http://www.churchinhistory.org/pages/booklets/farmer%28n%29.htm

I am at least happy Lita did not deny Matthean priority. This is a huge plus in today's world. See these decisions from Pontifical Bible Commission:

• 4) On the Author and the Historical Truth of the Fourth Gospel, 1907. There is sufficient evidence that John the Apostle wrote the Fourth Gospel, the Commission stated, to uphold this opinion against adverse critics. We may not say that the discourses of Our Lord that are reported therein are not really the words of Jesus but theological compositions of the authors.
  
  
• 8) On the Author, Date of Composition, and Historical Truth of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1911. Matthew, the Commission said, is in truth the author of the Gospel published under his name. The Gospel was originally written in Hebrew, sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem. We cannot accept the idea that the book was merely a collection of sayings compiled by an anonymous author. While the book was first written in Hebrew, the Greek is regarded as canonical, and is to be regarded as historically true, including the infancy narratives, and passages relating to the primacy of Peter (16:17-19) and to the Apostles' profession of faith in the divinity of Christ (14:33).
  
  
• 9) On the Author, Time of Composition, and Historical Truth of the Gospels According to St. Mark and St. Luke, 1912. The Commission upheld the authorship of these books by Mark and Luke, their historicity, and their having been written before the destruction of Jerusalem. It cannot prudently be called into question, the Commission said, that Mark wrote according to the preaching of Peter, or that Luke followed the preaching of Paul. Both of them told what they had learned from "eminently trustworthy witnesses."
  
  
• 10) On the Synoptic Question, or the Mutual Relations Between the First Three Gospels, 1912. It is lawful, the Commission said, for exegetes to discuss varying opinions about similarities and dissimilarities in the first three Gospels, and about hypotheses of oral or written tradition, or the dependence of one on another; but they are not to freely advocate unproven theories.
  
  
• 11) On the Author, Time of Composition, and Historical Character of Acts, 1913. Luke, the Commission said, is certainly to be regarded as the author of Acts, and complete historical authority may be claimed for him.

What Does The Church Really Say About The Bible?
by Edith Myers
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3752

I am citing, obviously, decisions from the time of Pope St Pius X, under whom the commission was so examplary that as he said it would be seriously sinful to contest its rulings.

When it came to later decisions, it had degraded. The 1948 decision in response to Cardinal Suhard (numbered as 18) was so misleading that Pius XII actually in Humani Generis, while horribly soft on other questions, except of procedure, was forced, at first, in 1950 to reprehend° this response.

So, since the decisions leave me free between Augustinian and Clementine theories of the Synoptics, what if St Luke was one of the sources of St Mark instead of the reverse? The Clementine theory. Here is what Lita has to say against it:

And Luke himself says other gospels were written before his.

Would this necessarily mean Matthew and Mark? Not really, since if one was certainly St Matthew, there are also two non-canonic but still orthodox Gospels, those known as Gospel to Hebrews and Gospel to Egyptians, and the probably genuine Proto-Gospel of St James, there is even a certainty he was talking about more Gospels than we know about, that several were suppressed after his and other canonical ones replaced them as better written and with more authority.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Tuesday in Pentecost Novena
30.V.2017

PS the link I gave contains a secnd part which is entirely laudable./HGL

Notes:

* Levites, while also a tribe, were not given own territory, but were divided among the territories of the other tribes : so six Levites from Judah could have come from Bethlehem, six Levites from Ephraim could have come from Samaria and six Levites of Dan could have come from Gaza and so on.

** Like between "on the first of the sabbath" and "on the first day of the week".

*** Like Lita Cosner would be if refusing to recognise the Douai Rheims as being a translation from Vulgate.

° In Humani Generis : If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. See my quote here: One group member promoted Hutchison

Does the Catholic Church Approve of the Timothy Test? Or Not? Answering a Point by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati!

1) Does the Catholic Church Approve of the Timothy Test? Or Not? Answering a Point by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati! · 2) What kind of Evangelical Was I?

What does the Catholic Church Really Teach?

Here is what CMI thinks (or thought) it teaches: someone who thinks "the Timothy test" can mislead is repeating its error that Scripture cannot be properly understood except by the Church.

First, what I am quoting three pieces from:

D. Russell Humphreys' Cosmology
and the 'Timothy Test' :
A Reply
JONATHAN D. SARFATI
CEN Tech. J.,vol. 11, no. 2, 1997
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j11_2/j11_2_195-198.pdf

• First, what is the Timothy test?
  
  

  As Russell Humphreys puts it, in what he calls the 'Timothy test':
  
  

  -'To make these points [of a plain meaning of Scripture] a little clearer, imagine a Jewish Christian of the first century who understands Greek, Hebrew and the Scriptures well.
  
  Let's call him "Timothy" since Paul's protege waslike that.
  
  But let's also imagine that this Timothy knows nothing of the advanced scientific knowledge of his day, such as Aristotle's works.
  
  All that Timothy knows is from either everyday experience or careful study of Scripture, which Paul says is sufficient for wisdom (2 Tim. 3:15). Now if Scripture really is straightforward and sufficient, then the meaning Timothy derives from the words is probably the meaning that God intended for everybody to get.

  
  
  
• Second, someone has (basically, in their view) disagreed with it:
  
  

  CAN THE 'TIMOTHY TEST' MISLEAD?
  
  Phillips' whole thrust is to answer 'yes' to this. ...

  
  
  
• Third, he compares this someone, Phillips, to the Roman Catholic Church:
  
  

  ... However, he is repeating the errors of the Roman Catholic Church. This church teaches that ordinary people cannot understand Scripture without the guidance of the 'infallible' Church of Rome led by the Pope. Phillips says that ordinary people cannot understand Scripture without the insight of modern interpretations of chronology from biased and fallible scientists.

There are a few things one could say about this Timothy test.

One would ask oneself why there is this contrast between everyday experience and Aristotelic philosophy. After all, Aristotelic philosophy takes great care to model its conclusions as long as possible on ... everyday experience.

Or Scriptures and Aristotle, since Aristotle took note of Homer ... which is also a corpus of Scripture other than his philosophising.

One could ask why one takes a hypothetic Timothy thought to have no knowledge of Aristotle rather than the historic Timothy, who was a learned Jew, which we know from St Paul's words - this NOT just an ordinary man.

One can ask whether the Timothy test (as stated) would lead to Geocentrism, I think it does. The non-heliocentrics on CMI being about as disingenious as Phillips on literal six days.

One can ask if either Timothy test (probable historic Timothy, or Timothy test of Russell Humphreys) would lead to Flat Earth. Probably a really unlearned man in any secular learning apart from everyday experience (such as Alexander identifying further shore of Ganges as Gibraltar or Eratosthenes measuring sun shadow at Assuan and Alexandria - in one case by procuration of a slave is NOT) might have taken certain ambiguous texts in the more obvious flat earth sense - though they admit both senses.

But one thing we need NOT just ask, we can TELL: the third point about Catholic Church teaching that "ordinary people cannot understand Scripture without the guidance of the 'infallible' Church of Rome led by the Pope" is in fact wrong.

Here is the passage which comes closest to it, in Trent:

Furthermore, to check unbridled spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own judgment shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Holy Scriptures in accordance with his own conceptions,[5] presume to interpret them contrary to that sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense and interpretation,[6] has held and holds, or even contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, even though such interpretations should never at any time be published.

From THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
Session IV - Celebrated on the eighth day of April, 1546 under Pope Paul III
http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/TRENT4.htm#2

Trent is NOT describing an ordinary man. Trent is describing a man with unusual confidence in his own original perception of things and - which is the point - one applying this to Scripture.

Trent is not saying Papacy with bishops is a a corps of experts and everyone below that corps is just lost about understanding the Bible. Trent is saying that Church (where a tradition transmitted bt Pope and other bishops is a doctrinal backbone), including all faithful simple Catholics loyal to the Church, is right, and that dissenters from the Church are wrong.

Not because they are too ordinary. But because they are not ordinary enough.

An ordinary man who sees a sentence he doesn't understand doesn't just ponder for himself about it, he checks and doublechecks with other literature and with the men who are supposed to know the matter. An ordinary Christian would never have imagined, as people like Luther did, that they were basically the first Christians for centuries (with few exceptions like Hussites, of whom Luther approved, or Waldensians who were kosherised by Calvinists in return for accepting their theology) who understood this or that passage correctly (like Luther with Romans' Road passage) all the while they knew that the Church had been reading this passage .... wait, the Romans Road is not even a passage.

The first verse on the Romans Road to salvation is Romans 3:23, Romans 3:10-18 gives a detailed picture of what sin looks like in our lives.

The second Scripture on the Romans Road to salvation, Romans 6:23, ...

The third verse on the Romans Road to salvation picks up where Romans 6:23 left off ... Romans 5:8 declares ...

The fourth stop on the Romans Road to salvation is Romans 10:9 ... Romans 10:13 says it again ...

The final aspect of the Romans Road to salvation is the results of salvation. Romans 5:1 has this wonderful message ... . Romans 8:1 teaches us ... Finally, we have this precious promise of God from Romans 8:38-39 ...

From: GotQuestions : What is the Romans Road to salvation?
http://www.gotquestions.org/Romans-road-salvation.html

3:23, back to 3:10-18, on to 6:23, back to 5:8, on to 10:9, skip a few verses to 10:13, back to 8:1, on to 8:38-39. NOT how an ordinary reader would read Romans! Unless told, by someone he looks up to.

Actually, the outline as such is not wrong. It is just that the isolated verses may overdo the extent to which non-regenerate are a "massa damnationis". Which they are, but that is not all that there is to them. And of course, a reader who cuts and pastes these verses together is not really the "ordinary reader". It is instead some kind of "intermediate" between God and soul. If not an ordained priest, who is ordained by a consecrated bishop (both ordination and episcopal consecration are cheirotonia in the NT, but they were distinct from start) in communion with other such and with the Pope, then a protestant pastor with no real claim of his ordination going back to the Apostles. So, the Romans Road would perhaps not pass the Timothy test.

But, if early Church continued Jewish tradition where not explicitly differing from Pharisees or adding by the last and final Revelation in Christ, it stands to reason that the Timothy test as formulated leaves out the factor of tradition. But add tradition to it, and the Trentine Council is FOR it.

On an anniversary of Galileo trial (the one in 1616, by St Robert Bellarmine, concerning only the first book, not the person), a Jesuit at Vatican observatory complained that St Robert's attitude came too close to the Timothy test!

Well, obviously St Robert knew that canon of Trent better than that Jesuit!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
St Patrick's Day
17.III.2016

PS, I suspect the Harp on the Irish coat of arms inspired Lita Cosner's reflection on Psalm 104 (meaning of course 103!). But she missed that the Psalm also clearly teaches angelic movers at about every level of creation, not just heavenly bodies.

Update next day:

I, an exemple of why Protestant Reformers were NOT plain, ordinary readers

The Trindentine proposition of faith is not unlike that required of Berengarius a half millennium before. “The holy council teaches,” declared Trent, “and openly and straightforwardly professes that in the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially contained under the perceptible species of bread and wine.” But then Trent added, with characteristic vigor, that this is the plain meaning of Christ’s words when at the Last Supper He said, “This is My body. This is the chalice of My blood.” Consequently the faithful were told “it is an infamy that contentious evil men should distort these words into fanciful, imaginary figures of speech that deny the truth about the body and blood of Christ, contrary to the universal understanding of the Church.”

The Reality of Christ in the Eucharist therefore is no figure of speech. It is no fanciful rhetoric. It is, in the clearest words that can be expressed, the Incarnation extended into space and time. It is literally the Emmanuel made flesh – the God-man who is here and now living in our midst.

From : The Guardian Angel: In the Eucharist is present the Totus Christus, and why we adore.
Posted by Donald Hartley - March 17th, 2016 - on Deeper Truth blog
http://www.deepertruthblog.com/blogsite/the-guardian-angel-in-the-eucharist-is-present-the-totus-christus-and-why-we-adore/

Warning against appreciative style of antipopes "Paul VI" and "John Paul II", alias Montini and Wojtyla.

And here is "Father" Paul Gabor "SJ" (too young for older rite of ordination), expressing his disgust for exegesis of St Robert Bellarmine and Melchior Cano (along with a false history of Quadriga Cassiani as if it had meant "allegorical sense ONLY" or sth):

I suspect that Cano and Bellarmine reflected some of their era's spirit when they desired clear-cut reading of Scripture. In fact, they would have expected God to make sure that Scripture could be read with no recourse to metaphor. As we have said before, throughout the history of the Church, the norm was to interpret Scripture using a very sophisticated art focused on intertextual references. Luther did not like it, and Cano and Bellarmine also found it unappealing and unconvincing. I believe it was an effect of the early modern esprit which was suffusing the air of the time.

From: The Catholic Astronomer : Heliocentrism Condemned: 400 Years Ago this Sunday
February 28, 2016 Fr. Paul Gabor
http://www.vofoundation.org/blog/heliocentrism-condemned-400-years-ago-this-sunday/

When I omit or forget to give reference, as yesterday due to time dearth, I try to make up for it later./HGL