The Heõs Hou polemic is over: Radio Debate Matatics VS White & Svendsen on Perpetual Virginity Mary

Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead: The Radio Debate of Gerry Matatics Against James White and Eric Svendsen on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

On November 18, 2003, Gerry Matatics debated James White and Eric Svendsen on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, hosted by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

Let me say first of all that besides his excellent arguments, Gerry Matatics conducted himself as a true Christian gentleman. James White and Eric Svendsen, on the other hand, spent much of the time screaming at Matatics, and accusing him of all kinds of motives and statements that simply were not true.

Be that as it may, if you didn’t notice, the debate was over at about 7:55 pm, Eastern Standard Time. The rest of the 35 minutes was all conversation. Perhaps many missed it, because James White did his best to make it go unnoticed.

At about 7:55 pm, Mr. Matatics gave an example of the Greek phrase “heos hou” used in the time period of 100 B.C. to 100 A.D. which showed conclusively that “heos hou” continued the action of the main clause, not terminate it. Essentially, that was the only thing Matatics needed to do in the debate, and he did it well.

Before I proceed, again, let me explain why this is important. Eric Svendsen claims that the use of “heos hou” in Matthew 1:25 (which is translated by the English word “until” in the sentence “...he knew her not until she bore a son”), is a special Greek phrase that terminates the action of the main clause “knew her not.” In other words, Svendsen claims that Joseph’s state of “not knowing Mary” terminated at the point when Mary bore Jesus, which means that Mary, according to Svendsen, had sexual relations with Joseph after Jesus was born. Svendsen makes this claim because, as he has continually boasted over the last few years, EVERY reference to “heos hou” in the time period under discussion (100 B. C. to 100 A.D.) shows that “heos hou” terminates that action of the main clause, never continues it. If “heos hou” continued the action of the main clause, then it would mean Joseph’s “not knowing Mary” would continue beyond the birth of Jesus, which would mean that Joseph and Mary never had sexual relations.

As a side note, Svendsen admits that the Greek word “heos” (“until”), used by itself, can either terminate or continue the action of the main clause. But it is his contention that when “heos” is coupled with “hou” in the phrase “heos hou” in the period under discussion, it NEVER continues the action of the main clause. He admits that prior to and after the period of 100 B.C to 100 A.D. “heos hou” was sometimes used to continue the action of the main clause, but that for some reason (which he never really explains) the meaning of “heos hou” which allowed a continuation of the main clause suddenly dropped out of existence. It just so happens that Matthew’s gospel was written in this particular time period.

Now, let me continue with the November 18th debate. As I stated above, Mr. Matatics provided a reference, between the years of 100 B.C. and 100 A.D, in which “heos hou” continued the action of the main verb. Here is the reference he gave:

First, the reference for this comes from the work of C. Burchard, in the story titled “Joseph and Aseneth,” which is found in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 2, Expansions of the Old Testament and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, ed. James H.Charlesworth, p. 215. New York: Doubleday, 1985.

Second, the word “UNTIL” in the clause “weep UNTIL the sun set” is the Greek phrase “heos hou.” You will notice if you read the sentence in context that Aseneth cried until the sun went down, but she continued to cry way into the night when everyone else was asleep. Here we have a classic case of “heos hou” continuing the action of the main clause, for the context itself tells us there is no other possibility. There are only two available choices: either “heos hou” terminates the action of the main clause, or continues it. It certainly does not terminate it in this incident, otherwise, Aseneth would have stopped crying and not continued when the sun set.

Thus, Mr. Matatics, in one fell swoop, has discredited the whole thesis of Eric Svendsen (which is the essence of the whole debate on November 18, if you were listening carefully). Svendsen had boasted that there were no such references to “heos hou” continuing the action of the main verb. He knew that if his opponents found just ONE reference that contradicted his boast, Svendsen’s entire argument would fall like a house of cards. Opponents didn’t need a dozen references. They only needed one, and that one reference would be the magic bullet. It is the magic bullet that totally discredits Svendsen’s entire doctoral dissertation, for the whole dissertation essentially boils down to the meaning of “heos hou” in the time period under discussion. If you were listening closely to the debate, it was at this point that Svendsen grew conspicuously quiet in the debate, and didn’t raise his voice again until near the end by trying to capitalize on a point that James White was challenging of Matatics.

Sensing that Matatics shot that magic bullet into the heart of Svendsen at 7:55 pm, James White went into his famous misdirection tactic. As soon as White realized that Matatics provided the needed reference to discredit the whole “heos hou” thesis of Svendsen, and noticed that Svendsen did not have an answer for Matatics, White then asked Gerry: “Does the New Testament have any such examples?”

Now, let me tell you what White’s question really means. It means that White either doesn’t know the essence of Svendsen’s thesis, or, he indeed does know it, but tried to cover for Svendsen. Svendsen’s thesis, as I stated above, is that in NON New Testament writings, between the dates of 100 B.C and 100 A.D, there is no usage of “heos hou” which continues the main clause of a Greek sentence. Since White couldn’t argue against the evidence Matatics provided of a Non New Testament source using “heos hou” to continue the action, White quickly jumped to the New Testament and asserted to Matatics that if he couldn’t find such a usage in the New Testament then Matatics’s argument was invalid.

Eric Svendsen should be ashamed, and James White should apologize to Svendsen, for Svendsen’s whole thesis is that the Non New Testament literature contains no such references of “heos hou” continuing the action of the main clause. The very challenge that Svendsen has been boasting about for years, Matatics indeed answered, and White knew it, and thus White tried to misdirect the audience to think that Matatics failed unless he also showed that “heos hou” in the New Testament continued the action of the main clause. But he didn’t fail. He actually succeeded in discrediting Svendsen’s whole thesis. Any evidence Gerry would have given from the New Testament would simply have been icing on the cake.

This tactic of White’s is extremely dishonest and hypocritical, especially since he, about five minutes later, began ranting and raving at Matatics on another topic of contention, saying “Gerry, that is absolutely grossly inaccurate!” Yet White, five minutes prior, had given the audience one of the grossest ploys and coverups I have ever seen anyone attempt in an open debate.

All I can say is, THANK YOU, Gerry Matatics, my good friend and colleague. If you don’t mind me using an oft used cliche, you showed yourself to be a true “gentlemen and a scholar” tonight. God bless you and keep you.

And that's Bob Sungenis. He can listen to Matatics self-destruct on the level of not even being able to read a lexical entry properly and that doesn't even create a blip on his radar screen. Why? "Cuz Rome rules! WE ARE #1!" Just as the Cardinals will only get to the Super Bowl by purchasing tickets to it in 2008 (here in Phoenix), Rome will only get you the consolation prize of deception now, and destruction at the final judgment.

An old thread I came across, but to which I would add that since this time [2003] geocentrist Sungenis apparently has much become a SSPX type traditionalist, and in conflict with some other Catholic apologists on the net.

Meanwhile, as regards the linguistic argument at issue, here is an extensive examination of the basic argument by one who has quite a resume of scholarship, Robert Dean Luginbill, Ph.D. Greek here:http://ichthys.com/mail-Mary-full-of-grace.htm

The phrase "hapax legomenon" is applied to the unique occurrence of a word in a corpus. It is not applied to the every specific form a word may take. In Greek, any given verb can potentially have hundreds of different forms (depending upon how one counts these). Therefore in any highly inflected language – like Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and virtually all of the ancient languages – trying to carry this concept which rightly belongs to core words over to individual forms is ludicrous. The word charitoo is not a true "hapax" in the Bible because it occurs more than 'once' (which is what hapax means), and because of the wide variety of forms any verb or substantive in Greek can manifest it makes no sense to apply this term to an individual form of a word and call it a "hapax" (or, alternatively, one can say such a thing, it's just that saying such a thing is meaningless). The point behind identifying a word as a hapax legomenon" (i.e., "mentioned/said only once [in the corpus]") is generally that one has very little information about what the word might mean precisely because it only occurs "once".

If a word is a "hapax" only in a particular author or specialized corpus but appears elsewhere in the language, then the value of this "uniqueness" is greatly reduced. When one has multiple contexts to judge from, one is not in the same position as in the case of a true "hapax" where there is indeed only one single context on which to base one's decision about what a word might mean. As the matter at hand actually stands, moreover, in the case of charitoo, we have an abundance of riches: 1) it occurs elsewhere in the NT; 2) it occurs widely in the literature elsewhere; 3) it is a simple verbal formation on a very well attested noun – so much so as to make its essential meaning so crystal clear that even if this verb only occurred here in all of Greek literature there would still not be any serious doubt as to its meaning.

Your correspondent does not really quibble with the essential meaning of the verb as reflected in every dictionary and every version, namely, "to bestow grace/favor upon". Where you correspondent falls down – and where he over-reaches the Greek scholars he is consulting – is in his attempt to take a simple verb form and make it bear a meaning it cannot bear. You mention that this fellow "really didn't mean that the Greek perfect form here meant that Mary was "perfect", but that is the essence of his argument. His translation is "Having been Graced with all Possible Grace both past present and future." Further he says that the "past" part means that "Mary was saved before ever falling in to sin". Clearly, this person's argument is entirely dependent upon making the perfect tense "magical" in the sense of infusing 'perfection,' even if he is trying to couch this lunacy in grammatical-sounding expressions:

Hi Dr. Luginbill--Once again, I have a question for you about "full of grace". You pointed out that Eph. 1:6 uses the same verb and it doesn't mean "full of grace" there, and therefore, "sinless". A Catholic correspondent has found this by some scholar or other; what do you think of his argument?

This argument is silly. Tense stems in Greek (and there are really only three which matter in such things: aorist, perfect, present) reflect 'aspect', which is something we have in English too (i.e., 'I go' = simple point action akin to the Greek aorist stem, vs. 'I am going' = repetitive action akin to the Greek present stem). These are not "magic", and investing them with layers of meaning invisible to the human eye and untranslatable into English is always a huge mistake (or a deliberate attempt to deceive). The Greek perfect has a meaning very similar to the English perfect, while the Greek aorist is very similar in meaning to the English past. By very similar I mean "essentially indistinguishable in the indicative mood". The only reason this issue of aspect even comes up is because Greek uses the different tense stems in places where we are no longer able to do so in English (i.e., while English users are generally unaware they even use a subjunctive, in Greek we can choose between present and aorist subjunctives in all contingent subordinate clause situations). This person's argument seems to rest entirely upon his quotation of Smyth. However, he misquotes Smyth by leaving out a critical part of the statement.

..If the perfect tense could do all the author claims, then every time it says anything about "knowing" in scripture (for oida is perfective in all of its forms), it would mean "knowing with a perfect knowledge that was conceived in eternity past": such a convention of translation would lead only to utter nonsense (cf. Acts 16:3).

More here , by God's grace.

Then you have RC apologist Akin on whether kecharitomene literally and uniquely mens "full of grace:"

A reader writes:

I was watching EWTN earlier and it was mentioned that only two people in the New Testament are referred to as “full of grace” – Jesus (John 1:14) and Mary (Luke 1:28). Of course I thought this would be a really neat thing to mention to my Protestant friends (especially if we’re talking about Jesus and Mary being the New Adam and New Eve).

BUT I wanted to go beyond the English and examine the original Greek – but I don’t know a lot about Greek! So I have two twofold questions:

(1) does John 1:14 use kecharitomene as fully (pardon the pun) as Luke’s usage in 1:28 or does John 1:14 follow more closely to Acts 6:8 when Stephen is referred to as “full of grace and power”?

John 1:14 says that Jesus was plErEs charitos, which literally means "full of grace." (Those capital Es arepresent etas, so pronounce them like the e in "they"; the word is thus pronounced PLAY-RACE).

Luke 1:28 uses kecharitomene, which literally means "one who has been graced" or "woman who has been graced" (since the gender is female). It doesn't literally mean "full of grace," though that is defensible as a free translation.

Acts 6:8 refers to Stephen as plErEs charitos, so again it's literally "full of grace" and just the same as the description used of Jesus in John 1:14.

If it is the latter, (2) does that mean there really isn’t a literal “full of grace” parallel between Luke 1:28 and John 1:14 or can I find that literal parallel somewhere else in the New Testament?

Not that I'm aware of, and I'd almost certainly be aware of it if there were. http://www.jimmyakin.org/2005/10/kecharitomene_q.html

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