Who are the schismatic Together for the Church of England ? is just as an important question. The first and most significant demand clearly stated of the Alliance is for the revisionist Archbishops and Bishops to follow the C of E’s constitution canon law B2 if Prayers of Love and Faith are made available. Anything else is unlawful and to make announcements via podcasts just adds to the distrust that the House of Bishops is gaining a reputation for and was clearly calculated to stoke up division. Hard to think of a less open and transparent way to make such… Read more »
They are those bishops, priests and deacons who are not being faithful to their vows as set out below. Bishops: Will you teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church of England has received it, will you refute error (Titus 1:9) and will you hand on entire the faith that is entrusted to you? Priests: Will you faithfully minister the doctrine and sacraments of Christ as the Church of England has received them, so that the people committed to your charge may be defended against error and flourish in the faith? Deacons: Do you believe the doctrine of the Christian… Read more »
I have said above that I disagree with Adrian Clarke that Canon B2 is needed. I also disagree with your assessment of the doctrine of Christ and the Church of England. I think this video of a talk by Brendan Robertson is helpful. Even better, there is a transcript in the description. https://youtu.be/-pGR-D0ExeA?si=0nznq4qpAkkPjKEs I recommend the whole of the video but the key section begins at 2:21. Essentially the position taken against gay couples is a fairly modern invention and, correctly read, the Bible is NOT against homosexuality. Thus far from progressive bishops being unfaithful to their views they are… Read more »
By the way, your reply seems to assume that ‘Together for the Church of England’ is made up exclusively of ordained people (‘They are those bishops, priests and deacons who are not being faithful to their vows as set out below’).
Trying to call Together for the CofE schismatic won’t wash. They’re not the ones demanding their own version of the CofE free from those who disagree with them about human sexuality.
Bob, can I suggest reframing your question? How about – ‘Bishops and clergy are charged at their ordination with upholding the doctrine of the church. I can only believe that those who support same-sex relationships and marriage are breaking their ordination vows. Can any explain how they believe they are not?’ Here would be my response. Thank you for your question. I did indeed promise to be faithful to the teachings of the church when I was ordained 45 years ago. I also support faithful same-sex relationships and marriage and do not believe I am breaking my vows in doing… Read more »
Thanks David, It’s really helpful to have that viewpoint expounded. But can I ask your doctrinal grounds for asserting that ‘The Church of England believes in the development of doctrine. That means being open and allowing doctrine to faithfully develop in response to new questions and understandings facing each generation.’ If I’ve unwittingly signed up to upholding a CofE Doctrine of the Development of Doctrine in my ordination vows, I fear I might be in breach! ‘Proclaiming the faith afresh in each generation’ as we promise, really doesn’t seem to me to be the same thing – I’ve always understood it’s about… Read more »
I’d suggest rather than thinking in terms of ‘development of doctrine’ we should put it more fundamentally in terms of the fallibility of all human statements of doctrine, and therefore all such doctrine can be subject to correction and change. I think this is a arguably a Protestant ‘doctrine about doctrine’ – for example this is expressed in Article 21 which says that even General Councils may err.
Openmind. Thank you for your response to my reply to Bob. You raise a number of questions, and I can really only respond very briefly and in part. 1. ‘Can I ask your doctrinal grounds for asserting that ‘The Church of England believes in the development of doctrine’. Have you really not heard of it – or those who historically have expounded it? But we do not have to look far. In my lifetime (and yours) the CofE has developed or changed its doctrine several times – in revising the marriage service, the decision to allow divorce and remarriage in church, and the ordination of woman.… Read more »
To ‘develop’ a doctrine of marriage as a lifelong, exclusive union between one man and one woman, into a union between either a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a woman, seems to me rather to be a destruction and contradiction of the original and true doctrine.
Only if one is twisted by hate (even if one doesn’t acknowledge that hate—a hate born of fear?—to oneself).
You can only vow what you believe to be truthful, Bob, but sometimes you must admit that you were wrong, down the line. They were grievously wrong, to me. Perhaps best not to vow at all, as the Lord required.
By presenting PLF as just a type of intercessionary prayer to be used in existing services, they are authorised under Canon B1. There is nothing in the wording of the prayers which suggests they are incompatible with Canon B1 – it’s probably why they are so anemic.
Canon B2 isn’t needed and calls for it to be invoked are purely political.
Justin Welby just made it political. The calculation on his part is breathtaking and in any other institution he would be asked to consider his position.
FearandTremolo
1 month ago
I think it’s much more parsimonious to assume that the CofE doesn’t have a decided view on sex or ethics, and probably hasn’t since we started putting Common Worship together. Bishops today are essentially politicians trying to hold together a theologically diverse Church without being able to simply slap the Prayer Book and say “whatever this says is what we think”. So it’s all a bit vague and it’s all a bit contradictory and it’s all a bit party politics because, yeah, it is. And the political parties will keep fighting each other in Synod and online, and any deeper… Read more »
Party politics is hardly new. Have you read Trollope’s Barchester novels?
Fr Dean
1 month ago
I wish Colin Coward wouldn’t be dismissive of the ‘Church of England’ when he means the bishops of the CofE; or the secretariat of the CofE or the General Synod of the CofE. With close on 30 years in Orders I know that the majority of the CofE are kind, loving and loveable people. They struggle to live up to the impossible ideal of Christ’s teachings as we all do but somehow do their best, and in the process of doing so enhance the Body of Christ. I think most of the bishops are inept and shouldn’t be given the… Read more »
I hope for the sake of their own mental health that the human beings who are trying to fulfil the impossible job of being Anglican bishops (I know a couple of them over there in England, and I’m friends with several of them here in Canada) never read the comments on TA.
Part of the problem is that they live in echo chambers. They glibly announced that we were going for 10,000 new house churches a while back. The numbers are going down. They equivocate on safeguarding. They talk about radical inclusion for LGBTQI+ people but don’t deliver. They have indoor and outdoor staff whilst the numbers using food banks rises. They amalgamate parishes but don’t reduce their own number. They attend a secret dining club called ‘Nobody’s Friends’. They concede that clergy morale is low but don’t have a clue how to change that. They say they want to increase vocations… Read more »
I wish you would spell out who the pronoun ‘they’ refers to in each case above, as (knowing some of the details about the cases you mention) it’s clear to me that it’s talking about a different group of people almost every time. I find it curious that most modern Anglicans continue to assert that bishops are essential for the being (not just the well-being) of the Church, but the vast majority of comments about bishops on Thinking Anglicans have been overwhelmingly negative for as long as I have been visiting this site (which must be more than a decade… Read more »
I promise you I do not enjoy committees and my networking is largely about recruiting support for those we have abused
Tim P
1 month ago
I found Colin’s article surprisingly moving (or I was surprised at something, perhaps how much I agreed). On one level it’s nothing new, but on another it’s refreshing to hear someone else say things like “At the moment we do not have a forum in which to explore the deepest truths and transformations that are taking place around the planet.” And that we must confront the deep theological differences and yet the church has become so good at avoiding addressing scandal after scandal. To stretch a metaphor I feel like the church has been kicking issues into the long grass,… Read more »
I just wonder what would have happened had Jeffrey John not been hounded to withdraw as Bishop of Reading designate. Had the Church of England just gently accepted same sex relationships with the minimum of fuss as it did remarriage after divorce, it would be so much calmer today.
The difference, I think, is what is sometimes called “the ick factor”. Most hetero- males have no trouble imagining requiring a divorce in order to marry a more compatible mate. But seeing themselves involved in a physical sexual relationship with another man is different–especially for those who matured before about 1970, I’d say, or who were educated in a male-dominated culture, such as boarding school.
‘Most hetero- males have no trouble imagining requiring a divorce in order to marry a more compatible mate.’ Well, maybe not if they invest authority in the words of Jesus, e.g. Mk Ch 10. And if they invest (or better, recognise) authority in the words of Jesus denouncing porneia (Mk Ch 7), this may be a more powerful influence shaping their rejection of same sex sexual activity, than simple physical repulsion.
And here we get into the discussion of exactly what Jesus meant in those moments. First of all, he certainly didn’t use the word “porneia”, because he didn’t speak a word of Greek. He spoke Aramaic. And then we get into whether those who translated the Gospels from Aramaic to Greek (and who did so, at the earliest, some 70 years after Jesus’ time) did so properly, with a total understanding of the Aramaic words he used.
Even with modern scholarship we struggle with Biblical translation so the chance is remote that the translation from Aramaic to Greek was entirely accurate. I think you have made an important point.
And it’s interesting how the sentences about the Pharisees being hypocrites because they set aside the laws of God to stick to their human traditions virtually never see the light of day….
Well, there is another perspective on the past beyond words, beyond ‘verbum’ as it were. We have photographic evidence of the horror of antisemitic genocide, the squalor of the 30s depression, the carnage of of WWI and American civil war trenches. etc., etc. Conservative Christians are amongst those groups who reconstruct the past by lifting out bible data and creating this kind of idealized version of the past. The naive protestant idealism of some forms of evangelicalism and catholic dogmatism are a prime examples. If by some ‘miracle’, if by some back to the future ‘DeLorean’ in a shopping Centre… Read more »
I believe I’m right in saying that most scholars believe there’s no evidence of an Aramaic original for any of the gospels. You appear to believe that gospels were written in Aramaic, existed in that language for a decade or two, and then were translated into Greek about 100 AD. On what evidence do you base this assertion?
I did not mean that there was ever a written Aramaic version of the Gospel stories. They were undoubtedly communicated orally for at least the first decade, and then some literate hearer began taking notes. Those notes were passed on to others and eventually translated to first century Greek (which is no more like modern Greek than the earliest forms of English are like our modern tongue).
When it is quite clear that the earliest Christian communities described in Acts were in the Greek speaking world, why would there be any oral tradition in a not very widely spoken and very localised Semitic language?
Those Greek names are, undoubtedly, the translations of their Hebrew/Aramaic names by the same people who translated the stories into Greek. (Simon was most likely “Shimon”.)
I think “Simon” is considered to be a Greek nickname applied to someone because of its similarity to the actual Hebrew or Aramaic name, Simeon. As for Andrew, that is surely a Greek name, maybe considered as equivalent to Adam, in meaning and to some extent in sound. Philip is another Greek name and we read in John 12.20–22 how some “Greeks” spoke to Philip because they wanted to see Jesus. Taking the story at face value, did they ask Philip in Greek? And Philip spoke to Andrew, who also has a Greek name. And the two of them went… Read more »
Thank you Simon for clarifying that point. This thread was beginning to leave me in the dark! On a simple layman’s level I’d long taken it that Jesus, and a fair few more of his world would have at least a limited level of bilingual skills, in a similar way to people in occupied countries who would need at least a smattering of German during 1914-18 (particularly in pre 1914 Alsace) and 39 – 45. Someone here has confirmed that the earliest spoken Gospels would be word of mouth – probably using whatever local dialect the speakers employed, and that… Read more »
“[Jesus] didn’t speak a word of Greek” — how do you know? It is not at all implausible that he at least understood some Greek, and indeed quite possibly that he was able to speak Greek. Just as many people around the world can understamd or speak some English today, especially in areas that have been under British or US influence or rule. Jesus lived in a world where Koine Greek was the lingua franca. He is recorded as speaking to Romans, such as the centurion and even the governor. It’s unlikely they would have spoken Aramaic and extremely likely… Read more »
The past is a strange land that is recreated with great difficulty. Regarding this subject of languages, there is an interesting note made in, The Making of the Bible. “In what language did early Christians read, quote from, and interpret the bible? Jesus and his immediate successors are thought to have spoken Aramaic, the vernacular of the region around Galilee in the first century. In the New Testament we find a number of Aramaic expressions, such as the divine appellation Abba ( ‘Father”), Rabbi or Rabbouni (“teacher”) as a form of address for Jesus, Pascha ( “Passover”), Amen, Barjona (“son… Read more »
First of all, [Jesus] certainly didn’t use the word “porneia”, because he didn’t speak a word of Greek. He spoke Aramaic. And then we get into whether those who translated the Gospels from Aramaic to Greek (and who did so, at the earliest, some 70 years after Jesus’ time) did so properly, with a total understanding of the Aramaic words he used. didn’t speak a word of Greek – and the evidence is? He would have spoken Aramaic, He certainly knew Hebrew, He possibly knew Greek (the common language of the eastern Roman Empire), and not impossibly knew Latin –… Read more »
Why do you imagine he didn’t speak a word of Greek? Everyone else did at that time in the eastern Mediterranean. The fact that the few occasions where he spoke Aramaic are carefully recorded, (epphatha, talitha kumi, lama sabachthani) suggest that he used Greek for most of his public ministry. It is clear from the gospels that many of the inhabitants of AlQuds did not understand Aramaic.
Totally off-the-wall observation re the Aramaic/Greek debate – sometimes a back-translation can be illuminating to see how Aramaic speakers (not, by the way, nearly as obscure a language as some have assumed) renders a Greek term. I’ve just chased it – admittedly only as far as the Peshitta – which read ‘by dint of ‘zanyutha” – conventionally rendered as ‘prostitution or fornication’ cf Heb. ‘zenuth’. Interestingly, the semitic term has a wider application than sexuality, being used as a metaphor for ‘straying’ of all varieties,.
This is interesting, thank you. There are a number of modern academics who are beginning to argue that certain words traditionally translated as “prostitute” or similar did not mean somebody who actually sold sexual favours for economic gain, but was used to describe any independent woman of some sort, not formally attached to a man as daughter, wife or mother. Such a woman would be an anomaly to patriarchal assumptions Whilst some of these women may have had to resort to sexual means to obtain an income, many others had proper jobs such as innkeeper, or had independent means. But… Read more »
One scholar who knew Aramaic well was the late Professor Maurice Casey. One of the major works of this former Christian was a magisterial biography of Jesus. (Incidentally, he put S.Mark’s Gospel at about AD 40 !)
This is a very entertaining conversation for me living in a country that is officially bilingual and multi-cultural and in a region that is bilingual to varying degrees. In that regard we have it all: people who are perfectly fluent in both French and English; Les Acadiens speakers whose local dialect is more authentically archaic colonial era French than that of a dialect a few miles away influenced by English and Anglicisms; French spoken in Quebec where even some Francophones have difficulty with the dialect from say, northern Quebec or the working class Joal spoken in Montreal; the lovely French… Read more »
My final two paras are intended to be sardonic, and a comment not on the historical situation but on the passion narratives as introduced here as part of speculation about Jesus as a possible Greek speaker. They are stories. There are ways to cover plot holes, and encourage the suspension of disbelief that all good story telling requires. I have the sense from some of the comments here that the Gospels are reliable historical accounts that can be used to determine whether or not Jesus spoke Greek, which in turn is connected to an assertion that he must have understood… Read more »
Correction: The title of the Schmid & Schroter book is, The Making of the Bible ( not gospel) as I noted correctly in my previous reply to Simon Kershaw. My bad, late night commenting, zzz. Review from Church Times linked. It is a good read and very accessible.
It would have been rather the same situation as with Urdu in Pakistan which is spoken as a first language by the urban middle class but by everyone else as a second language. It would be very difficult to find anyone anywhere in Pakistan or even eastern Afghanistan who speaks no Urdu at all, and thus it was with Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, Jesus was a member of the urban artisan class, so he may have used Greek far more than we imagine. Possibly it was his first language and he only condescended to use the local language… Read more »
And as a member of the urban artisan class Jesus might well have walked the 6km across the valley from the village of Nazareth to the large multi-cultural centre of Sepphoris to find work and leisure, perhaps for a large part of his adult life. Which suggests some fluency in Greek, the working language across the Empire, is likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepphoris Whilst one shouldn’t read too much into the use of a single word in a reported speech, the Gospel use of the word “hypocrite”, meaning two faced or masked, is interesting. This is derived from the Greek hupokritēs meaning simply… Read more »
A vicar friend once loaned me some magazines regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls which talked about Sepphoris – the one writer suggested that both Joseph and Jesus could even have been sub contract ‘chippies’ on Herod’s palace, where Jesus could have picked up a lot of his cultural knowledge. Like a lot of things back then, we’ll never know for certain – but it makes for an interesting discussion. From some of the stories in the Gospels it seems that Roman cultural practices, such as reclining at table etc, were also well practiced in Jewish middle class homes, even the… Read more »
As to Pilate: When we (the USA) send members of the diplomatic service to countries where English is not the native language, we first put them through an intensive course in the native tongue. I have a friend who was stationed in Benin, who first went through a six-month course in French (which also prepared him for his later posting in Canada).
I can imagine the Roman Empire doing something similar with its territorial governors.
Greek was common in the Roman world… Suetonius wrote a number books using it… and about it. I understood Latin was the language of the Roman. administration…until it wasn’t! Greek the lingua Franka. There’s plenty of Greek inscriptions on ancient roman tablets and monuments.
The idea that Jesus didn’t speak a word of Greek really doesn’t seem remotely likely.
I’d have thought that 1st Century life and trade meant many people spoke more than one language. Throw in some Greek philosophers and you’ve got quite a mix.
The material from the Egyptian city of Oxyrynchus (‘The city of the sharp-nosed fish’) was mainly, if not all in Greek, I seem to remember (might have been a spot of Coptic, too, but my memory is going). Linguistic polycompetence is well evidenced across the region (the Rosetta Stone might be seen as a bit more evidence in that regard). Meanwhile Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the Persian empire (as in the Elephantiné correspondence), and in its Syriac iteration was sufficiently widespread for it to have been thought worthwhile to translate vast amounts of Greek medical material into the… Read more »
Thank you David. C1st people often seem to vastly under-rated when it comes to their interactions with others. Since the Arabs traded with those in the West Country I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a fondness for cider..
A not so humble parishioner
1 month ago
Who are the “we” Colin Coward refers to? Does this include ordinary worshippers like me who have stuck around despite the church’s troubles? I hope not. I’ve had enough of being labelled as part of the problem by diocesan officials (don’t give enough, don’t volunteer enough, don’t volunteer in the right way, don’t embrace new things and throw away old ones, use social media wrong, etc). Apart from choosing where I worship, I am completely powerless in this struggle about sexuality in the church. I don’t think “we” are all implicated in the same way at all. My view is… Read more »
Valerie Aston
1 month ago
I haven’t been visiting this site for a while, so I apologise if I have missed something.
Emeritus Dean of Canterbury Dr. Robert Willis died very suddenly about a week ago.
Personally I owe him a great deal, and those who joined the Garden Congregation during the pandemic may well feel the same.
His Canterbury garden videos in lockdown were terrific. By all accounts an exceptional priest & fine man. However, one cannot avoid noting his long-term civil partnership (marriage in all but name), which presumably puts him beyond the pale for the Alliance & others who lay claim to biblical certainty about everything.
Who are the schismatic Together for the Church of England ? is just as an important question. The first and most significant demand clearly stated of the Alliance is for the revisionist Archbishops and Bishops to follow the C of E’s constitution canon law B2 if Prayers of Love and Faith are made available. Anything else is unlawful and to make announcements via podcasts just adds to the distrust that the House of Bishops is gaining a reputation for and was clearly calculated to stoke up division. Hard to think of a less open and transparent way to make such… Read more »
They are those bishops, priests and deacons who are not being faithful to their vows as set out below. Bishops: Will you teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church of England has received it, will you refute error (Titus 1:9) and will you hand on entire the faith that is entrusted to you? Priests: Will you faithfully minister the doctrine and sacraments of Christ as the Church of England has received them, so that the people committed to your charge may be defended against error and flourish in the faith? Deacons: Do you believe the doctrine of the Christian… Read more »
I have said above that I disagree with Adrian Clarke that Canon B2 is needed. I also disagree with your assessment of the doctrine of Christ and the Church of England. I think this video of a talk by Brendan Robertson is helpful. Even better, there is a transcript in the description. https://youtu.be/-pGR-D0ExeA?si=0nznq4qpAkkPjKEs I recommend the whole of the video but the key section begins at 2:21. Essentially the position taken against gay couples is a fairly modern invention and, correctly read, the Bible is NOT against homosexuality. Thus far from progressive bishops being unfaithful to their views they are… Read more »
By the way, your reply seems to assume that ‘Together for the Church of England’ is made up exclusively of ordained people (‘They are those bishops, priests and deacons who are not being faithful to their vows as set out below’).
Trying to call Together for the CofE schismatic won’t wash. They’re not the ones demanding their own version of the CofE free from those who disagree with them about human sexuality.
So what do you call those bishops, priests and deacons who are being unfaithful to the vows that they have made?
Bob, can I suggest reframing your question? How about – ‘Bishops and clergy are charged at their ordination with upholding the doctrine of the church. I can only believe that those who support same-sex relationships and marriage are breaking their ordination vows. Can any explain how they believe they are not?’ Here would be my response. Thank you for your question. I did indeed promise to be faithful to the teachings of the church when I was ordained 45 years ago. I also support faithful same-sex relationships and marriage and do not believe I am breaking my vows in doing… Read more »
Thanks David, It’s really helpful to have that viewpoint expounded. But can I ask your doctrinal grounds for asserting that ‘The Church of England believes in the development of doctrine. That means being open and allowing doctrine to faithfully develop in response to new questions and understandings facing each generation.’ If I’ve unwittingly signed up to upholding a CofE Doctrine of the Development of Doctrine in my ordination vows, I fear I might be in breach! ‘Proclaiming the faith afresh in each generation’ as we promise, really doesn’t seem to me to be the same thing – I’ve always understood it’s about… Read more »
We’ve already moved on from “permanent,” haven’t we?
I’d suggest rather than thinking in terms of ‘development of doctrine’ we should put it more fundamentally in terms of the fallibility of all human statements of doctrine, and therefore all such doctrine can be subject to correction and change. I think this is a arguably a Protestant ‘doctrine about doctrine’ – for example this is expressed in Article 21 which says that even General Councils may err.
Openmind. Thank you for your response to my reply to Bob. You raise a number of questions, and I can really only respond very briefly and in part. 1. ‘Can I ask your doctrinal grounds for asserting that ‘The Church of England believes in the development of doctrine’. Have you really not heard of it – or those who historically have expounded it? But we do not have to look far. In my lifetime (and yours) the CofE has developed or changed its doctrine several times – in revising the marriage service, the decision to allow divorce and remarriage in church, and the ordination of woman.… Read more »
Only if one is twisted by hate (even if one doesn’t acknowledge that hate—a hate born of fear?—to oneself).
You can only vow what you believe to be truthful, Bob, but sometimes you must admit that you were wrong, down the line. They were grievously wrong, to me. Perhaps best not to vow at all, as the Lord required.
Generally I call them conservative evangelicals.
I grow weary of this kind of character assassination.
Thank you.
I disagree with your assessment.
By presenting PLF as just a type of intercessionary prayer to be used in existing services, they are authorised under Canon B1. There is nothing in the wording of the prayers which suggests they are incompatible with Canon B1 – it’s probably why they are so anemic.
Canon B2 isn’t needed and calls for it to be invoked are purely political.
Justin Welby just made it political. The calculation on his part is breathtaking and in any other institution he would be asked to consider his position.
I think it’s much more parsimonious to assume that the CofE doesn’t have a decided view on sex or ethics, and probably hasn’t since we started putting Common Worship together. Bishops today are essentially politicians trying to hold together a theologically diverse Church without being able to simply slap the Prayer Book and say “whatever this says is what we think”. So it’s all a bit vague and it’s all a bit contradictory and it’s all a bit party politics because, yeah, it is. And the political parties will keep fighting each other in Synod and online, and any deeper… Read more »
Party politics is hardly new. Have you read Trollope’s Barchester novels?
I wish Colin Coward wouldn’t be dismissive of the ‘Church of England’ when he means the bishops of the CofE; or the secretariat of the CofE or the General Synod of the CofE. With close on 30 years in Orders I know that the majority of the CofE are kind, loving and loveable people. They struggle to live up to the impossible ideal of Christ’s teachings as we all do but somehow do their best, and in the process of doing so enhance the Body of Christ. I think most of the bishops are inept and shouldn’t be given the… Read more »
I hope for the sake of their own mental health that the human beings who are trying to fulfil the impossible job of being Anglican bishops (I know a couple of them over there in England, and I’m friends with several of them here in Canada) never read the comments on TA.
Part of the problem is that they live in echo chambers. They glibly announced that we were going for 10,000 new house churches a while back. The numbers are going down. They equivocate on safeguarding. They talk about radical inclusion for LGBTQI+ people but don’t deliver. They have indoor and outdoor staff whilst the numbers using food banks rises. They amalgamate parishes but don’t reduce their own number. They attend a secret dining club called ‘Nobody’s Friends’. They concede that clergy morale is low but don’t have a clue how to change that. They say they want to increase vocations… Read more »
I wish you would spell out who the pronoun ‘they’ refers to in each case above, as (knowing some of the details about the cases you mention) it’s clear to me that it’s talking about a different group of people almost every time. I find it curious that most modern Anglicans continue to assert that bishops are essential for the being (not just the well-being) of the Church, but the vast majority of comments about bishops on Thinking Anglicans have been overwhelmingly negative for as long as I have been visiting this site (which must be more than a decade… Read more »
It was not the bishops who announced the 10000 project. I suggest you check back.
I promise you I do not enjoy committees and my networking is largely about recruiting support for those we have abused
I found Colin’s article surprisingly moving (or I was surprised at something, perhaps how much I agreed). On one level it’s nothing new, but on another it’s refreshing to hear someone else say things like “At the moment we do not have a forum in which to explore the deepest truths and transformations that are taking place around the planet.” And that we must confront the deep theological differences and yet the church has become so good at avoiding addressing scandal after scandal. To stretch a metaphor I feel like the church has been kicking issues into the long grass,… Read more »
I just wonder what would have happened had Jeffrey John not been hounded to withdraw as Bishop of Reading designate. Had the Church of England just gently accepted same sex relationships with the minimum of fuss as it did remarriage after divorce, it would be so much calmer today.
The difference, I think, is what is sometimes called “the ick factor”. Most hetero- males have no trouble imagining requiring a divorce in order to marry a more compatible mate. But seeing themselves involved in a physical sexual relationship with another man is different–especially for those who matured before about 1970, I’d say, or who were educated in a male-dominated culture, such as boarding school.
‘Most hetero- males have no trouble imagining requiring a divorce in order to marry a more compatible mate.’ Well, maybe not if they invest authority in the words of Jesus, e.g. Mk Ch 10. And if they invest (or better, recognise) authority in the words of Jesus denouncing porneia (Mk Ch 7), this may be a more powerful influence shaping their rejection of same sex sexual activity, than simple physical repulsion.
And here we get into the discussion of exactly what Jesus meant in those moments. First of all, he certainly didn’t use the word “porneia”, because he didn’t speak a word of Greek. He spoke Aramaic. And then we get into whether those who translated the Gospels from Aramaic to Greek (and who did so, at the earliest, some 70 years after Jesus’ time) did so properly, with a total understanding of the Aramaic words he used.
Even with modern scholarship we struggle with Biblical translation so the chance is remote that the translation from Aramaic to Greek was entirely accurate. I think you have made an important point.
And it’s interesting how the sentences about the Pharisees being hypocrites because they set aside the laws of God to stick to their human traditions virtually never see the light of day….
Well, there is another perspective on the past beyond words, beyond ‘verbum’ as it were. We have photographic evidence of the horror of antisemitic genocide, the squalor of the 30s depression, the carnage of of WWI and American civil war trenches. etc., etc. Conservative Christians are amongst those groups who reconstruct the past by lifting out bible data and creating this kind of idealized version of the past. The naive protestant idealism of some forms of evangelicalism and catholic dogmatism are a prime examples. If by some ‘miracle’, if by some back to the future ‘DeLorean’ in a shopping Centre… Read more »
I believe I’m right in saying that most scholars believe there’s no evidence of an Aramaic original for any of the gospels. You appear to believe that gospels were written in Aramaic, existed in that language for a decade or two, and then were translated into Greek about 100 AD. On what evidence do you base this assertion?
I did not mean that there was ever a written Aramaic version of the Gospel stories. They were undoubtedly communicated orally for at least the first decade, and then some literate hearer began taking notes. Those notes were passed on to others and eventually translated to first century Greek (which is no more like modern Greek than the earliest forms of English are like our modern tongue).
When it is quite clear that the earliest Christian communities described in Acts were in the Greek speaking world, why would there be any oral tradition in a not very widely spoken and very localised Semitic language?
Because the first people to know the stories were from that area and spoke that language.
Which people were those? Two fishermen, Simon and Andrew, both with Greek names?
Those Greek names are, undoubtedly, the translations of their Hebrew/Aramaic names by the same people who translated the stories into Greek. (Simon was most likely “Shimon”.)
I think “Simon” is considered to be a Greek nickname applied to someone because of its similarity to the actual Hebrew or Aramaic name, Simeon. As for Andrew, that is surely a Greek name, maybe considered as equivalent to Adam, in meaning and to some extent in sound. Philip is another Greek name and we read in John 12.20–22 how some “Greeks” spoke to Philip because they wanted to see Jesus. Taking the story at face value, did they ask Philip in Greek? And Philip spoke to Andrew, who also has a Greek name. And the two of them went… Read more »
Thank you Simon for clarifying that point. This thread was beginning to leave me in the dark! On a simple layman’s level I’d long taken it that Jesus, and a fair few more of his world would have at least a limited level of bilingual skills, in a similar way to people in occupied countries who would need at least a smattering of German during 1914-18 (particularly in pre 1914 Alsace) and 39 – 45. Someone here has confirmed that the earliest spoken Gospels would be word of mouth – probably using whatever local dialect the speakers employed, and that… Read more »
Pat, you use the word ‘undoubtedly’ a lot. Given the paucity of actual evidence available to us, it might be wiser to be a little more tentative.
I wrote a piece on this earlier in the year, focused on what people choose to mean by ‘fornication’. It may be useful. https://shared-conversations.com/2024/02/22/questions-of-fornication/
“[Jesus] didn’t speak a word of Greek” — how do you know? It is not at all implausible that he at least understood some Greek, and indeed quite possibly that he was able to speak Greek. Just as many people around the world can understamd or speak some English today, especially in areas that have been under British or US influence or rule. Jesus lived in a world where Koine Greek was the lingua franca. He is recorded as speaking to Romans, such as the centurion and even the governor. It’s unlikely they would have spoken Aramaic and extremely likely… Read more »
The past is a strange land that is recreated with great difficulty. Regarding this subject of languages, there is an interesting note made in, The Making of the Bible. “In what language did early Christians read, quote from, and interpret the bible? Jesus and his immediate successors are thought to have spoken Aramaic, the vernacular of the region around Galilee in the first century. In the New Testament we find a number of Aramaic expressions, such as the divine appellation Abba ( ‘Father”), Rabbi or Rabbouni (“teacher”) as a form of address for Jesus, Pascha ( “Passover”), Amen, Barjona (“son… Read more »
First of all, [Jesus] certainly didn’t use the word “porneia”, because he didn’t speak a word of Greek. He spoke Aramaic. And then we get into whether those who translated the Gospels from Aramaic to Greek (and who did so, at the earliest, some 70 years after Jesus’ time) did so properly, with a total understanding of the Aramaic words he used. didn’t speak a word of Greek – and the evidence is? He would have spoken Aramaic, He certainly knew Hebrew, He possibly knew Greek (the common language of the eastern Roman Empire), and not impossibly knew Latin –… Read more »
Why do you imagine he didn’t speak a word of Greek? Everyone else did at that time in the eastern Mediterranean. The fact that the few occasions where he spoke Aramaic are carefully recorded, (epphatha, talitha kumi, lama sabachthani) suggest that he used Greek for most of his public ministry. It is clear from the gospels that many of the inhabitants of AlQuds did not understand Aramaic.
Totally off-the-wall observation re the Aramaic/Greek debate – sometimes a back-translation can be illuminating to see how Aramaic speakers (not, by the way, nearly as obscure a language as some have assumed) renders a Greek term. I’ve just chased it – admittedly only as far as the Peshitta – which read ‘by dint of ‘zanyutha” – conventionally rendered as ‘prostitution or fornication’ cf Heb. ‘zenuth’. Interestingly, the semitic term has a wider application than sexuality, being used as a metaphor for ‘straying’ of all varieties,.
Thank you for listening….
at least this approaches something like learning!
This is interesting, thank you. There are a number of modern academics who are beginning to argue that certain words traditionally translated as “prostitute” or similar did not mean somebody who actually sold sexual favours for economic gain, but was used to describe any independent woman of some sort, not formally attached to a man as daughter, wife or mother. Such a woman would be an anomaly to patriarchal assumptions Whilst some of these women may have had to resort to sexual means to obtain an income, many others had proper jobs such as innkeeper, or had independent means. But… Read more »
One scholar who knew Aramaic well was the late Professor Maurice Casey. One of the major works of this former Christian was a magisterial biography of Jesus. (Incidentally, he put S.Mark’s Gospel at about AD 40 !)
I’m of sufficient antiquity to have had him teach me Greek, though he wasn’t to blame for my shaky grasp of Aramaic and Syriac.
This is a very entertaining conversation for me living in a country that is officially bilingual and multi-cultural and in a region that is bilingual to varying degrees. In that regard we have it all: people who are perfectly fluent in both French and English; Les Acadiens speakers whose local dialect is more authentically archaic colonial era French than that of a dialect a few miles away influenced by English and Anglicisms; French spoken in Quebec where even some Francophones have difficulty with the dialect from say, northern Quebec or the working class Joal spoken in Montreal; the lovely French… Read more »
“perhaps Pilate had some Greek”
Well… His coinage had Greek inscriptions….
My final two paras are intended to be sardonic, and a comment not on the historical situation but on the passion narratives as introduced here as part of speculation about Jesus as a possible Greek speaker. They are stories. There are ways to cover plot holes, and encourage the suspension of disbelief that all good story telling requires. I have the sense from some of the comments here that the Gospels are reliable historical accounts that can be used to determine whether or not Jesus spoke Greek, which in turn is connected to an assertion that he must have understood… Read more »
Correction: The title of the Schmid & Schroter book is, The Making of the Bible ( not gospel) as I noted correctly in my previous reply to Simon Kershaw. My bad, late night commenting, zzz. Review from Church Times linked. It is a good read and very accessible.
The Making of the Bible by Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter
It would have been rather the same situation as with Urdu in Pakistan which is spoken as a first language by the urban middle class but by everyone else as a second language. It would be very difficult to find anyone anywhere in Pakistan or even eastern Afghanistan who speaks no Urdu at all, and thus it was with Greek in the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, Jesus was a member of the urban artisan class, so he may have used Greek far more than we imagine. Possibly it was his first language and he only condescended to use the local language… Read more »
And as a member of the urban artisan class Jesus might well have walked the 6km across the valley from the village of Nazareth to the large multi-cultural centre of Sepphoris to find work and leisure, perhaps for a large part of his adult life. Which suggests some fluency in Greek, the working language across the Empire, is likely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepphoris Whilst one shouldn’t read too much into the use of a single word in a reported speech, the Gospel use of the word “hypocrite”, meaning two faced or masked, is interesting. This is derived from the Greek hupokritēs meaning simply… Read more »
A vicar friend once loaned me some magazines regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls which talked about Sepphoris – the one writer suggested that both Joseph and Jesus could even have been sub contract ‘chippies’ on Herod’s palace, where Jesus could have picked up a lot of his cultural knowledge. Like a lot of things back then, we’ll never know for certain – but it makes for an interesting discussion. From some of the stories in the Gospels it seems that Roman cultural practices, such as reclining at table etc, were also well practiced in Jewish middle class homes, even the… Read more »
As to Pilate: When we (the USA) send members of the diplomatic service to countries where English is not the native language, we first put them through an intensive course in the native tongue. I have a friend who was stationed in Benin, who first went through a six-month course in French (which also prepared him for his later posting in Canada).
I can imagine the Roman Empire doing something similar with its territorial governors.
Greek was common in the Roman world… Suetonius wrote a number books using it… and about it. I understood Latin was the language of the Roman. administration…until it wasn’t! Greek the lingua Franka. There’s plenty of Greek inscriptions on ancient roman tablets and monuments.
The idea that Jesus didn’t speak a word of Greek really doesn’t seem remotely likely.
I’d have thought that 1st Century life and trade meant many people spoke more than one language. Throw in some Greek philosophers and you’ve got quite a mix.
The material from the Egyptian city of Oxyrynchus (‘The city of the sharp-nosed fish’) was mainly, if not all in Greek, I seem to remember (might have been a spot of Coptic, too, but my memory is going). Linguistic polycompetence is well evidenced across the region (the Rosetta Stone might be seen as a bit more evidence in that regard). Meanwhile Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the Persian empire (as in the Elephantiné correspondence), and in its Syriac iteration was sufficiently widespread for it to have been thought worthwhile to translate vast amounts of Greek medical material into the… Read more »
I like your posts on this. Thanks .
I do too. This thread has opened out in a most enjoyable mannner.
Thank you David. C1st people often seem to vastly under-rated when it comes to their interactions with others. Since the Arabs traded with those in the West Country I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a fondness for cider..
Who are the “we” Colin Coward refers to? Does this include ordinary worshippers like me who have stuck around despite the church’s troubles? I hope not. I’ve had enough of being labelled as part of the problem by diocesan officials (don’t give enough, don’t volunteer enough, don’t volunteer in the right way, don’t embrace new things and throw away old ones, use social media wrong, etc). Apart from choosing where I worship, I am completely powerless in this struggle about sexuality in the church. I don’t think “we” are all implicated in the same way at all. My view is… Read more »
I haven’t been visiting this site for a while, so I apologise if I have missed something.
Emeritus Dean of Canterbury Dr. Robert Willis died very suddenly about a week ago.
Personally I owe him a great deal, and those who joined the Garden Congregation during the pandemic may well feel the same.
His Canterbury garden videos in lockdown were terrific. By all accounts an exceptional priest & fine man. However, one cannot avoid noting his long-term civil partnership (marriage in all but name), which presumably puts him beyond the pale for the Alliance & others who lay claim to biblical certainty about everything.
May he rest in peace, and rise in glory!