baptism of the dead

by peacefulpete 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Leolaia

  I was just thinking of a paraphrase along these lines:

  "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ would not have been raised and those who died in him would also remain dead. Thus our faith would be for nothing. For you would be baptized only on account of the dead. And not just those who are truly dead. For we are at danger at every hour and I die every day. It's as if I have already fought the beasts in the arena at Ephesus. If there is no resurrection, we might as well forget our whole faith and just eat and drink and be merry".
• 

  Midget-Sasquatch

  All those points White mentions, especially his interpreting the dead as the group that participates metaphorically in Christ's death ala Romans 6:3, are persuasive. I was sorta on the right track then???? Methinks the Victorian Order of the Universe has been thrown off kilter by some foul deed.

  He even manages to show there wasn't necessarily any redaction in that verse?! Blast him for spoiling my gleeful hope of heretical infestation of holy writ!!!!

  Maybe I can still cling onto the other purported Marcionite redactions (1 Cor.7:1 Boo!!! Hiss!!!)
• 

  stillajwexelder

  The Latter Day Saints baptize the dead
• 

  Leolaia

  Well, it's just a suggested interpretation....it doesn't rule out the others as being valid; which thesis is to be preferred depends on weighing the evidence and so forth. What now remains is future criticism of White's suggestion (and/or my own take on it).

  My personal opinion is that if White's reading is wrong, the interpolation theory is the next best explanation -- at it also avoids most of the other difficulties as well.
• 

  peacefulpete

  Thanks leolaia for ellucidating. I do not however find any of it persuasive. (1) The lack of contextual mooring of the text if vicarious baptism is meant (cf. Murphy-O'Connor's analysis). This could constitute positive evidence of the passage being an interpolation or it could indicate that the vicarious interpretation is incorrect. The evidence for an interpolation would at least depend on the vicarious reading; ..............OR it is an evidence of extensive rewrite as I proposed. The context has been lost, retaining only the phrase in discussion precisly because it is being subtly placed in a negative light as a practice of the opposers. (2) If vicarious baptism is meant, the rhetorical argument is obscure. How does a group that performs a ritual for the sake of the dead (presumably for their salvation) also deny the existence of a resurrection? As I mentioned in my lost post, this problem might not have the force White believes it does, considering a 1995 JBL article by DeMaris that discusses archaeological and literary evidence for syncretistic chthonic cults in Corinth, e.g. the Demeter cult. .......Contradiction and illlogic are the hallmarks of religion. The retension of a practice while not understanding it's original intent is not hard to believe. (3) More weighty is the lack of any historical evidence for any such practice, apart from Marcion who himself was influenced by this text. Yes, so. Marcion is the assumed author OR preserver of the text. Not surprising he read it and practiced the ritual. (4) If the practice is a local syncretism, it is rhetorically strange for the author to allude to this semi-pagan practice as a proof of the existence of the resurrection, as if he himself recognized the validity of the practice. Local sycretism or are we uncovering another evidence of the origin of the Christ cult.
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  Leolaia

  But what about the argument that it does fit in its context. I think White has made a good case for this. The vicarious interpretation of the passage is the basis for the supposed ill-fit, and this interpretation itself hinges on the rendering of a mere preposition. If huper is read as "on account of" than "on behalf of," I think it makes better sense and suddenly is relevant to the preceding verses, the immediately following verses, and the earlier discussion in the epistle on baptism. If there is no resurrection, then Christ is truly dead and those who died in Christ are truly dead. And so the baptisms which were of such an issue of ch. 1 are "on account of the dead". Makes sense to me.
• 

  peacefulpete

  The "truly dead" expression(if significant) is not contrasted with the "dead" for whom they are being baptised, but rather the same dead ones. The "truly" (if significant) was the author's description ofthe dead who according to the opposers have no hope of resurrection. This better fits the greater context which is precisely whether the dead are to yet live.(that is that reworked by the Orthodox author). Hermenuetics can be slippery ground. I think that fact that the sect that was the keeper of Paul's letters was doing this practice in the second century using Paul's words as basis AND that it was deemed an embarasssment by the orthodoxy as evidencing the Christian connections to mystery and death cults. The book has too many points of connection to marcion to not either 1. be a Marcion work or 2. have been a compilation/creation of Paul that was heavily interpolated by Marcion, or 3. Paul was himself more like the Marcionites in theology than later orthodoxy.
• 

  Narkissos

  2 Maccabees 12:43f offers a very interesting parallel to the line of argument of 1 Corinthians 15:29 according to the classical (not White's) exegesis:

  He (Judas) also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead (huper nekrôn).

  While this is not exactly "vicarious", it implies certainly more than some equivalent of eis + acc.

  I think White's interpretation is loaded with almost unsuperable grammatical problems (starting with holôs modifying the substantived adjective nekros instead of the verb, which is way more natural), but I'll have to come back to this later...
• 

  Leolaia

  That's a very nice example from 2 Maccabees. Quite compelling in its parallel, especially tying an action "on behalf of the dead" to the resurrection.
  

  As for the adverb, this is what White says: "The adverb hOLWS is then understood to function attributively in its clause, modifying NEKROI rather than EGEIRONTAI, precisely in order to distinguish it from and set it against the metaphorical usage immediately preceding it; hence in translation, 'truly dead persons' " (p. 493). In the footnote he refers to the attributive usage in BDF, par. 434, and he also says: "Here we agree with both O'Neill ("1 Cor 15:29," 310) and Murphy-O'Connor ("Baptized," 540), who gives a cogent argument in favor of this rendering. The adverb hOLWS occurs sparely in both biblical and extrabiblical literature. Of the five biblical occurrences, three are found in 1 Corinthains (5:1; 6:7; 15:29; the other two are found in Matt 5:34, and a variant LXX reading of Job 34:8). In all three instances, the connotation 'actually' or 'truly' seems likely...In 1 Cor 6:7, the context suggests that Paul uses hOLWS to denote by means of contrast what he views as a true defeat (hoLWS HTTHMA), namely, the very fact that the Corinthians are suing each other in courts of law, as opposed to that which the Corinthians construe as defeat, namely, that they are being wronged and defrauded. According to our rendering in 1 Cor 15:29, then, Paul's usage of hOLWS is uniform throughout 1 Corinthians, not only semantically but also syntactically, coming immediately before the word it modifies. For an extrabiblical example of hOLWS with the unequivocal sense of 'actually' or 'truly,' see P. Oxy 1676.29-31: KALWS OUN POIESEIS EL[QOUS]A TW MESORH PROS [EMAS] hINA hOLWS IDWMEN SE."

  Not that I necessarily agree with his analysis, just to put his argument out there for due consideration....
• 

  Narkissos

  To me White's "syntactical" argument obfuscates the obvious, namely that the adverb mainly -- and holôs in all (other) cases -- modifies a verb.

  The attributive analysis actually implies another verb (e.g. hoi holôs nekroi ontes): if the author did imply it with an anarthrous substantivated adjective, in the presence of another verb, he was sure fishing for misunderstanding...