Fri Jun 14 10:46:59 1996

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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 09:42:29 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Larry W. Hurtado" 
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: Theories of trans. (#2)
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On Thu, 13 Jun 1996, Alan Repurk wrote:
> 
> Also, in answer to your statement, Larry, that you don't see much
> theological significance between the two renderings I would like to
> relate that on more than one occasion I have used these passages
> to attempt to show that Jesus was correcting the person that called
> Him good to show that the title of 'good' was not to be applied to
> himself, but only to His Father. In spite of what I think is very
> clear language I could not get the other individual to agree to this
> meaning.  Part of the reason is that the language as we have received
> it is just ambiguous enough to allow for more than one interpretation.
> 
> I do not think this would be the case with the quotes that William
> supplied.

Well, I really can't say what your chances of apologetic/evangelistic 
success would be with this or that contemporary and this or that textual 
variant.  I don't really think that's relevant.  The issue I was speaking 
to was Wm. Petersen's suggestion that the "my father in heaven" variant 
was suppressed/replaced with "God" in the interests of high christology.  
My reasons for demurring are (1) with either variant one easily gets the 
impression of Jesus expressing some distinction between him being called 
"good" and calling "God/the Father" good.  That is, either way some level 
of distinction is there twixt Jesus &  . . . the Father/God, whatever.
(2) Second, and a bit more telling for me, the variant which Bill 
suggests might have been seen as problemmatic christologically is freely 
used by Fathers (e.g., Justin, Irenaeus, etc.) whose christological views 
are commonly (and, I think, correctly) seen as "high" christology, 
involving some kind of real divinity of Christ (with the corollary of 
worship of Christ).  So, if the variant would have been seen as 
problematic for high christology, why would it have been used/favored in 
these passages by these fathers?

Larry Hurtado

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