This came up again tonight. I was told I don't know what is written in the ancient manuscripts. Not that no one knows, just that I am too stupid to know. A new one for me!
It's late for me, so more to come later, but I'll leave you with this. A key argument for Bullinger, the magician who invented four crucified, is the word "one" does not appear in the Greek of John 19:18. This is true. It is also true that the words "on either/each side" are not in the Greek either.
"This came up again tonight. I was told I don't know what is written in the ancient manuscripts. Not that no one knows, just that I am too stupid to know. A new one for me! Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating four were crucified with Jesus."
[Any time someone invokes a document they can't present or cite precisely, but upon which their entire argument hinges, I've found it was nothing but hot air. Some overheard something from someone else. "Appeal to Authority" is a logical fallacy. It is true that experts can learn things, but it's not the same to say that an expert MUST be correct BECAUSE THEY ARE AN EXPERT. If an expert is correct, they have all sorts of resources they can access- and, more to the point, present- to strengthen their case and DOCUMENT their case. Those who try to SHUT DOWN THE DISCUSSION are all but admitting they've got nothing, and just want to distract from that. We had lots of that in twi, and the ex-twi communities still have large amounts of that, depending on the community.]
"Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating four were crucified with Jesus."
[Horse manure. The ex-twi people would lift that thing high like a banner if that was the case. The photograph in the Companion Bible was shown everywhere- and that didn't make the case, no matter what Bullinger thought. He was mistaken. He saw 5 old stone crosses sitting together, and jumped to the conclusion that it could only have been to support his claim. If that were the case, they would have been made as a set. Instead, they were mixed and matched. Someone collected stone crosses from different sources, possibly sparing them destruction out of respect, possibly for any of a number of other reasons. They were proof of nothing except that people used to make different kinds of stone crosses. There is no such variant. The burden of proof is on the claimant. It is to be accepted to be nonexistent until evidence is presented to show it actually exists. ]
"Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating circus clowns were crucified with Jesus."
"Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating Jesus died from slipping in a tub."
[See how that works? Anyone can claim anything. On the internet, there's always someone ready to claim the most RIDICULOUS NONSENSE. A claim means NOTHING.
By the way, there's a reason there's "critical" Greek texts. Centuries later, people came along and wrote fanfics, whether for entertainment, to advance their agenda, or with noble intent. If you look hard enough, there's texts out there that were written MUCH later with NONSENSE. It would not surprise me to find a "text" from the 20th century asserting 4 crucified..
None of that, BTW, means definitively 4 were NOT crucified, just that the case can't be made that way. I remain flexible on the subject due to a lack of consistent evidence.]
"A key argument for Bullinger, the magician who invented four crucified, is the word "one" does not appear in the Greek of John 19:18. This is true. It is also true that the words "on either/each side" are not in the Greek either. "
[That's old news, and I'll fill in the blanks for you for free. 1) The word "one" was added to the English by a translator who thought that it needed to be there to make the English grammar make sense. He was wrong. If the word was apt, the sentence made as much sense without it, and if the word was not, then he inserted a concept that wasn't in the text- which is a bad thing. What was there in the Greek was the phrase "enteuthen kai enteuthen" (excuse my spelling if it's off), meaning, word for word, "ON THIS SIDE AND ON THIS SIDE", or, to adjust for English grammar, "ON THIS SIDE AND ON THAT SIDE." So, two, on this side and on that side. The argument that the English word "midst" makes a difference here is dishonest because the English meanings of the words are irrelevant when studying the Greek.
2) The other point made was that, when they removed the crucified ones, and went to kill them by breaking their legs, they killed one, then another, and then got to Jesus. If one is going efficiently in a line, that makes Jesus the third in a line. There's some shuffling about the word "other" in the Greek there, as to whether it means something different if there are exactly two in a group, or if there is more. Bullinger asserted there was, but he never supported his claim. It comes out of nowhere, and just happens to support the case he felt the need to make. But we have no guarantee that they went in a straight line. Perhaps they started with the noisiest prisoners and silenced them to stop the screaming. Maybe they cared more about highway robbers than political prisoners, and made sure the most dangerous criminals were dead first. Or any of a number of things of which we could have no knowledge. We suppose we have a lot more answers than we do about their culture. Nuances can vary widely.
3) A third point made is that one account has 2 thieves (or robbers) and another 2 "evildoers". In one, both join the crowd in reviling Jesus, in the other, one does, the other does not. The most common explanation is that there were 2 guys, and both reviled Jesus but one reconsidered and changed his tune. They were up there for hours, he had lots of time to think, it's not illogical.
4) Finally, the order of things is sometimes given differently. 2 of the guys were said to have been led out with Jesus, and it sounds like the other 2 were not. But, really, aren't we squeezing the text? We're approaching texts from another part of the world, many centuries ago, with a modern thinking process. We're expecting a CNN news feed with a minute by minute breakdown, when that was never the point in the first place. How badly were the first century disciples concerned with making every minute fit precisely? It was a few centuries later that anything resembling a "harmony of the Gospels" was made. That was from Greek to Aramaic, and I'm not convinced it wasn't more to try to spare the scribes hundreds of hours of hand-translating and hand-copying Greek texts long before the printing press was around.
Frankly, the harder I look at it, the weaker is the case for "4 crucified." I'm open to the possibility, but they'd have to make a strong case that could answer all objections before I'd change positions. That's not impossible- I reversed my position in the past, and I'm willing to change again if there's a strong enough case for it. Ultimately, it matters not in the plan of salvation. It mattered to vpw, because he could present this and pretend he had access to esoteric, secret knowledge. It matters to certain ex-twi people for exactly the same reason.]
Like so many other "lessons" propounded by TWI, 4 crucified was meaningless drivel. If one hasn't learned to treat their fellow man with the respect and equity with which they, themselves, would yearn to be treated, they have leaned nothing at all.
You can learn to ride a bike, put it away for 50 years, and climb right back on after all that time, still possessing the ability to ride a bike. Not so with interpersonal relationships. There is no end point. Every day is another chance to do better than you did the day before. This concept of becoming a better human being is lost to TWI's endless pursuit of pedantic excellence.
That's old news, and I'll fill in the blanks for you for free. 1) The word "one" was added to the English by a translator who thought that it needed to be there to make the English grammar make sense. He was wrong. If the word was apt, the sentence made as much sense without it, and if the word was not, then he inserted a concept that wasn't in the text- which is a bad thing. What was there in the Greek was the phrase "enteuthen kai enteuthen" (excuse my spelling if it's off), meaning, word for word, "ON THIS SIDE AND ON THIS SIDE", or, to adjust for English grammar, "ON THIS SIDE AND ON THAT SIDE." So, two, on this side and on that side. The argument that the English word "midst" makes a difference here is dishonest because the English meanings of the words are irrelevant when studying the Greek
Previously, we discussed how translations work. We discussed how word-for-word translations can and WILL be misleading and confusing. Sometimes, words must be supplied by the translator so the idiom expressed in the source language is understandable in the target language. This is not a dishonest corruption of text, it is simply sound translation methodology.
The following is an excellent treatment of the idiomatic expression in question, ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν. I happened upon this in an academic Biblical Greek message board a few years ago. The thread was originated by a random user seeking to confirm his bias, seeking evidence AFTER asserting his conclusion. This was one of the answers from Brent Niedergall.
"Internet message boards and social networks normally serve as bustling forums where people can ask questions and expect rapid answers. Recently, however, I came across one question that had been languishing in the data dunes for years. Someone was re-asking a question from eight years before that they felt never got its day in court. It centers on John’s account of the crucifixion, specifically his use of an idiom—an expression. It’s one I’ve never considered, and one, to my knowledge, that has received little attention in the literature. Let me show you.
In John 19, Jesus is taken to Golgotha for crucifixion. In v. 18 we read:
There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.
So the idiom in question is this “ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν.” The word ἐντεῦθεν by itself has the sense of “from here.” The idiom, therefore, would have the sense of “from here and from there.” Some wonder what justification the translators had for translating this as “one on either side.” Why couldn’t we instead understand this verse to mean that there were two others on either side of Jesus—five men on five crosses with Jesus in the center? Is it possible? Well, from the outset, if we keep reading John 19, we see that the question is a non-issue. When we get to v. 32, we’re explicitly told the soldiers broke the legs of the two others crucified with Jesus. There were only three men on crosses. But let’s dig into this idiom further.
The Grammar
Ἐντεῦθεν is an adverb, a word that modifies either a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. An adverb answers questions like: “Where?”, “When?” or “In what way?” The adverb ἐντεῦθεν answers the question “Where?” This makes perfect sense because according to BDF, adverbs ending in -θεν (e.g., πόθεν, ὅθεν, ἔνθεν, etc.) answer the question ‘Whence?’
So if adverbs modify, what is ἐντεῦθεν modifying? Here it modifies the elided verb ἐσταύρωσαν (“they crucified”) describing the action of the Roman soldiers crucifying these two other men with Jesus. John chose not to repeat the verb because it’s understood from the previous clause. Therefore, these two others have been crucified on either side of Jesus. Now let’s look more at this expression.
Examples to Consider
You actually won’t find this exact construction anywhere else in the New Testament or Septuagint. A much more common idiom that uses a synonymous term is ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν, which occurs over thirty times in the Septuagint. This idiom will also be considered under Example #3 because it can be equated with ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν.
Now, here are three examples from the Septuagint.
Example #1: Exodus 17:12
In this example, the number one (εἷς) is separately assigned to both sides.
But the hands of Moses becameheavy; and taking up a stone, they placed it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur propped up his hands, one on this side and one on that side,and the hands of Moses were firmly supported until the setting of the sun.
Example #2: Joshua 8:22
In this example, the demonstrative pronoun οὗτος has been separately assigned to both sides. This is similar to what we saw in Example #1 with the number one.
And these men came out from the city to meet them, and these men were between the camp, **on this side, and these men were on the other side**, and they struck them down until none of them were left behind to survive or escape.
Example #3: Ezekiel 40:10
Out of over thirty occurrences of ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν in the Septuagint, only a few have anything to do with cardinal numbers (Ezek 40:10, 41, 48, 49; 41:2), and each of these functions the same way: it states the number with both the first and second occurrence of ἔνθεν.
And the rooms of the gate wererooms in front, **three on the one side and three on the other side** and the same measure for the three, the same measure for the [porches] on the one side and on the other side.
Again, you can see how number is given to clarify that there were three rooms on each side.
Drawing Conclusions
In the first two examples, the number is stated to show that this was how many are on each side separately. Whenever the author wants to make it clear that he is describing two separate entities that should be understood as such, he does so. In Exodus, Aaron was the one at one side of Moses, and Hur was the one on the other. In Ezekiel, there are three rooms on one side and three on the other. This is not the case in John 19:18.
There they crucified him, and with him **two others, on one side and on the other side**, and Jesus between them.
If John wanted to say there were two on each side, he would have included a second δύο to read ἄλλους δύο ἐντεῦθεν καὶ δύο ἐντεῦθεν.
Among the New Testament and LXX, there is no evidence to be found where a single number serves to indicate that this number was on one side and on the other side. At long last, there is an answer for an eight-year-old question. Even if the question didn’t necessarily need to be answered, I think that doing so helped to shed some additional light on a few words of Scripture.
Note: English translations of the New Testament are taken from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise stated. English translations of the Septuagint come from the Lexham English Septuagint (LES). *An asterisk indicates my own translation."
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WordWolf
"This came up again tonight. I was told I don't know what is written in the ancient manuscripts. Not that no one knows, just that I am too stupid to know. A new one for me! Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating four were crucified with Jesus."
[Any time someone invokes a document they can't present or cite precisely, but upon which their entire argument hinges, I've found it was nothing but hot air. Some overheard something from someone else. "Appeal to Authority" is a logical fallacy. It is true that experts can learn things, but it's not the same to say that an expert MUST be correct BECAUSE THEY ARE AN EXPERT. If an expert is correct, they have all sorts of resources they can access- and, more to the point, present- to strengthen their case and DOCUMENT their case. Those who try to SHUT DOWN THE DISCUSSION are all but admitting they've got nothing, and just want to distract from that. We had lots of that in twi, and the ex-twi communities still have large amounts of that, depending on the community.]
"Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating four were crucified with Jesus."
[Horse manure. The ex-twi people would lift that thing high like a banner if that was the case. The photograph in the Companion Bible was shown everywhere- and that didn't make the case, no matter what Bullinger thought. He was mistaken. He saw 5 old stone crosses sitting together, and jumped to the conclusion that it could only have been to support his claim. If that were the case, they would have been made as a set. Instead, they were mixed and matched. Someone collected stone crosses from different sources, possibly sparing them destruction out of respect, possibly for any of a number of other reasons. They were proof of nothing except that people used to make different kinds of stone crosses. There is no such variant. The burden of proof is on the claimant. It is to be accepted to be nonexistent until evidence is presented to show it actually exists. ]
"Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating circus clowns were crucified with Jesus."
"Apparently, though never mentioned in any critical text, a variant exists explicitly stating Jesus died from slipping in a tub."
[See how that works? Anyone can claim anything. On the internet, there's always someone ready to claim the most RIDICULOUS NONSENSE. A claim means NOTHING.
By the way, there's a reason there's "critical" Greek texts. Centuries later, people came along and wrote fanfics, whether for entertainment, to advance their agenda, or with noble intent. If you look hard enough, there's texts out there that were written MUCH later with NONSENSE. It would not surprise me to find a "text" from the 20th century asserting 4 crucified..
None of that, BTW, means definitively 4 were NOT crucified, just that the case can't be made that way. I remain flexible on the subject due to a lack of consistent evidence.]
"A key argument for Bullinger, the magician who invented four crucified, is the word "one" does not appear in the Greek of John 19:18. This is true. It is also true that the words "on either/each side" are not in the Greek either. "
[That's old news, and I'll fill in the blanks for you for free. 1) The word "one" was added to the English by a translator who thought that it needed to be there to make the English grammar make sense. He was wrong. If the word was apt, the sentence made as much sense without it, and if the word was not, then he inserted a concept that wasn't in the text- which is a bad thing. What was there in the Greek was the phrase "enteuthen kai enteuthen" (excuse my spelling if it's off), meaning, word for word, "ON THIS SIDE AND ON THIS SIDE", or, to adjust for English grammar, "ON THIS SIDE AND ON THAT SIDE." So, two, on this side and on that side. The argument that the English word "midst" makes a difference here is dishonest because the English meanings of the words are irrelevant when studying the Greek.
2) The other point made was that, when they removed the crucified ones, and went to kill them by breaking their legs, they killed one, then another, and then got to Jesus. If one is going efficiently in a line, that makes Jesus the third in a line. There's some shuffling about the word "other" in the Greek there, as to whether it means something different if there are exactly two in a group, or if there is more. Bullinger asserted there was, but he never supported his claim. It comes out of nowhere, and just happens to support the case he felt the need to make. But we have no guarantee that they went in a straight line. Perhaps they started with the noisiest prisoners and silenced them to stop the screaming. Maybe they cared more about highway robbers than political prisoners, and made sure the most dangerous criminals were dead first. Or any of a number of things of which we could have no knowledge. We suppose we have a lot more answers than we do about their culture. Nuances can vary widely.
3) A third point made is that one account has 2 thieves (or robbers) and another 2 "evildoers". In one, both join the crowd in reviling Jesus, in the other, one does, the other does not. The most common explanation is that there were 2 guys, and both reviled Jesus but one reconsidered and changed his tune. They were up there for hours, he had lots of time to think, it's not illogical.
4) Finally, the order of things is sometimes given differently. 2 of the guys were said to have been led out with Jesus, and it sounds like the other 2 were not. But, really, aren't we squeezing the text? We're approaching texts from another part of the world, many centuries ago, with a modern thinking process. We're expecting a CNN news feed with a minute by minute breakdown, when that was never the point in the first place. How badly were the first century disciples concerned with making every minute fit precisely? It was a few centuries later that anything resembling a "harmony of the Gospels" was made. That was from Greek to Aramaic, and I'm not convinced it wasn't more to try to spare the scribes hundreds of hours of hand-translating and hand-copying Greek texts long before the printing press was around.
Frankly, the harder I look at it, the weaker is the case for "4 crucified." I'm open to the possibility, but they'd have to make a strong case that could answer all objections before I'd change positions. That's not impossible- I reversed my position in the past, and I'm willing to change again if there's a strong enough case for it. Ultimately, it matters not in the plan of salvation. It mattered to vpw, because he could present this and pretend he had access to esoteric, secret knowledge. It matters to certain ex-twi people for exactly the same reason.]
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waysider
Like so many other "lessons" propounded by TWI, 4 crucified was meaningless drivel. If one hasn't learned to treat their fellow man with the respect and equity with which they, themselves, would yearn to be treated, they have leaned nothing at all.
You can learn to ride a bike, put it away for 50 years, and climb right back on after all that time, still possessing the ability to ride a bike. Not so with interpersonal relationships. There is no end point. Every day is another chance to do better than you did the day before. This concept of becoming a better human being is lost to TWI's endless pursuit of pedantic excellence.
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Nathan_Jr
Previously, we discussed how translations work. We discussed how word-for-word translations can and WILL be misleading and confusing. Sometimes, words must be supplied by the translator so the idiom expressed in the source language is understandable in the target language. This is not a dishonest corruption of text, it is simply sound translation methodology.
The following is an excellent treatment of the idiomatic expression in question, ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν. I happened upon this in an academic Biblical Greek message board a few years ago. The thread was originated by a random user seeking to confirm his bias, seeking evidence AFTER asserting his conclusion. This was one of the answers from Brent Niedergall.
https://niedergall.com/an-obscure-greek-question-no-longer-waiting-for-an-answer/
"Internet message boards and social networks normally serve as bustling forums where people can ask questions and expect rapid answers. Recently, however, I came across one question that had been languishing in the data dunes for years. Someone was re-asking a question from eight years before that they felt never got its day in court. It centers on John’s account of the crucifixion, specifically his use of an idiom—an expression. It’s one I’ve never considered, and one, to my knowledge, that has received little attention in the literature. Let me show you.
In John 19, Jesus is taken to Golgotha for crucifixion. In v. 18 we read:
So the idiom in question is this “ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν.” The word ἐντεῦθεν by itself has the sense of “from here.” The idiom, therefore, would have the sense of “from here and from there.” Some wonder what justification the translators had for translating this as “one on either side.” Why couldn’t we instead understand this verse to mean that there were two others on either side of Jesus—five men on five crosses with Jesus in the center? Is it possible? Well, from the outset, if we keep reading John 19, we see that the question is a non-issue. When we get to v. 32, we’re explicitly told the soldiers broke the legs of the two others crucified with Jesus. There were only three men on crosses. But let’s dig into this idiom further.
The Grammar
Ἐντεῦθεν is an adverb, a word that modifies either a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. An adverb answers questions like: “Where?”, “When?” or “In what way?” The adverb ἐντεῦθεν answers the question “Where?” This makes perfect sense because according to BDF, adverbs ending in -θεν (e.g., πόθεν, ὅθεν, ἔνθεν, etc.) answer the question ‘Whence?’
So if adverbs modify, what is ἐντεῦθεν modifying? Here it modifies the elided verb ἐσταύρωσαν (“they crucified”) describing the action of the Roman soldiers crucifying these two other men with Jesus. John chose not to repeat the verb because it’s understood from the previous clause. Therefore, these two others have been crucified on either side of Jesus. Now let’s look more at this expression.
Examples to Consider
You actually won’t find this exact construction anywhere else in the New Testament or Septuagint. A much more common idiom that uses a synonymous term is ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν, which occurs over thirty times in the Septuagint. This idiom will also be considered under Example #3 because it can be equated with ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν.
Now, here are three examples from the Septuagint.
Example #1: Exodus 17:12
In this example, the number one (εἷς) is separately assigned to both sides.
Example #2: Joshua 8:22
In this example, the demonstrative pronoun οὗτος has been separately assigned to both sides. This is similar to what we saw in Example #1 with the number one.
Example #3: Ezekiel 40:10
Out of over thirty occurrences of ἔνθεν καὶ ἔνθεν in the Septuagint, only a few have anything to do with cardinal numbers (Ezek 40:10, 41, 48, 49; 41:2), and each of these functions the same way: it states the number with both the first and second occurrence of ἔνθεν.
Here’s Ezek 40:10 as a third example.
Again, you can see how number is given to clarify that there were three rooms on each side.
Drawing Conclusions
In the first two examples, the number is stated to show that this was how many are on each side separately. Whenever the author wants to make it clear that he is describing two separate entities that should be understood as such, he does so. In Exodus, Aaron was the one at one side of Moses, and Hur was the one on the other. In Ezekiel, there are three rooms on one side and three on the other. This is not the case in John 19:18.
If John wanted to say there were two on each side, he would have included a second δύο to read ἄλλους δύο ἐντεῦθεν καὶ δύο ἐντεῦθεν.
Among the New Testament and LXX, there is no evidence to be found where a single number serves to indicate that this number was on one side and on the other side. At long last, there is an answer for an eight-year-old question. Even if the question didn’t necessarily need to be answered, I think that doing so helped to shed some additional light on a few words of Scripture.
Note: English translations of the New Testament are taken from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise stated. English translations of the Septuagint come from the Lexham English Septuagint (LES). *An asterisk indicates my own translation."
Edited by Nathan_JrGloves
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