with a printout in his hand, and says:Are you a creationist who is either:
When suddenly, out of nowhere, this big, honking fat guy with body odor that could slay a horse pops out from behind the nearby mailbox, with a printout in his hand, and says:
"Hey you stupid creationist fundy wacko! I'm going to Pull the Rug Out from under your Bible prop. Check out this super duper list of Bible absurdities and contradictions, huh! You couldn't touch these with a 1000 foot pole. Now you'll have to stop talking about evolution and face up to THESE problems instead. So what do you think of THAT, button head?"
Well, Eric Hildeman may want to try to evade hard discussion and defeat by changing the subject, but thanks to this list, when that fat guy hands you his list from Hildeman's book, all you have to do now is hand this list right back to him. Then continue with what you were doing while the fat guy goes off to take his bath.
The scholarship of the Skeptical part of this list was provided by the Bada Bing Social Club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Do Your Math, Eric
Nice try. What you're missing is that the listing of Terah's sons is not in order of birth (it's Gen. 11:26, by the way, not 11:16 - "And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran."), nor does it imply that they were all born when Terah was 70 as they would then have been triplets. Sons are not always listed in order of birth but rather in order of importance, such as Noah's sons in Genesis 5:32. Abraham was the youngest, being born when Terah was 130. Haran did die first making it then likely that he was the eldest and Isaac married Rebecca, the grand-daughter of Nahor by the youngest son of 8 (Gen. 22:22).
Ever hear of "textual criticism"? Many critics (I guess you're one?) are completely indifferent to the principles of textual criticism. For example, the works of Tacitus contain a known numerical error which has been faulted to a copyist mistake. Two geographic locations are described as being 25 miles apart. But we know that the locations are actually 125 miles apart, not 25. Hence Tacitean and classical scholars deduce that a copyist error changed the original CXXV to XXV. That's what happened here - in this case, someone probably miscopied for 1 Chronicles, since 700 charioteers is not an unreasonable number for a small country like Aram would have been. By the way, numbers are considered by textual critics to be among the most vulnerable parts of a text to corruption.
And no, I am not a Bob Jones fundamentalist who thinks God preserved the text from transmissional error. And don't tell me He ought to have, either, or I'll pop you with a medieval relic.
What are you, the Count from Sesame Street? Since you like math, try this out for size:
Re-read 1 Chr 27. Notice here that there are 12 divisions of 24,000 men each, giving a total of 288,000 men. The Chronicler counts these men whereas the author of 2 Sam does not. Notice that the 800,000 men in 2 Sam were included in a census, as David wanted to know how many men there were for fighting. Yet, as the numbers of divisions were apparently fixed at 24,000 per division, one would presumably not need to take a census of groups whose sizes are intrinsically defined by a priori fixed numbers. It is not requiring too much to state that the author of 2 Sam did not include these 288,000 while the (different) author of 1 Chr did. With two different authors writing apart from each other at non-identical times, it is not at all specious to assert a reasonable plausibility to a different mode of reckoning in reporting the census. If we add the 288,000 men to the 800,000 in 2 Sam, we arrive at 1,088,000 men, which is quite close to the round number of 1,100,000 which the Chronicler presents. A responsible historian, recognizing that 1,100,000 is a number that is a rounded number, will be satisfied with the proximity of this number to 1,088,000. Those who still wish to press the argument for an error need to prove that the text intended in both 2 Sam and 1 Chr to convey an exact figure. The relative difference between the numbers 1,100,000 and 1,088,000 is but a scant (1,100,000-1,088,000)/(1,088,000)=.01, that is, there is only a 1% difference in the two figures, and it is clear that one of the figures (1,100,000) is rounded.
Now we examine the difference between the tallies of Judah found in 2 Sam (500,000) and 1 Chr (470,000). 500,000 is also a rounded figure -- it is most unlikely that a count of men in Judah should yield an exact figure of 500,000. In fact, the relative difference between 470,000 and 500,000 is (500-470)/470=.06, a mere six percent difference, quite small for those who don't force an exacting idiom of numerical reporting on the text, which itself makes no such claim to total and absolute precision. A reasonable person should recognize this solution as a probable and satisfying one, for it is not unreasonable to believe that the Chronicler rounded off to the nearest ten-thousand, whereas the author of 2 Sam rounded off more crudely, to the nearest hundred-thousand. 
And who made you privy to the rate of exchange between David's time and that of the Chronicler, some 600 years later? Chronicles was written in the Persian period. This is an intentional anachronism of the sort used by all ancient and modern historians intended to show a value in terms their readers could grasp. The great Greek writer Herodotus, for example, consistently uses Greek measurements such as "talents" and "stades" to tender weights, currency, distances etc which would not have been so measured by the people of the places concerned - and he does this even when supposedly translating inscriptions made by the people in question. So why isn't this a case of Chronicles giving a value of David's purchase in terms of his own currency and its value?
Re-read #2 above for some principles on textual criticism. The symbol used for six is a vertical stroke; the symbol for three is a vertical stroke plus a couple of tiny doodads, and they might be confused easily. Either number is acceptable.
No foolin'? How about you make a trip to pick up some books on textual criticism? Re-read #2 above again, then think about how this might have happened, and why it doesn't affect the inerrancy of the original.
It's nice to see you so excited about King Baasha, but re-read #2 again. "Twenty" and "thirty" in Hebrew are both rightward crooks that can be easily confused, so the 26 is more likely to be original in Chronicles.
Let's use an illustration from our popular literature, George Orwell's Animal Farm. In this story, Snowball the pig invented the slogan, "Four legs good, two legs bad" so as to exclude humans from Animal Farm society. The geese and other fowl objected, because they had only two legs. Snowball explained (more clearly in the book than in the movie) that in animal terms, the birds' wings counted as legs because they were limbs of propulsion, not manipulation, as a human's arms and hands were.
Now note the differentiation in Leviticus referring to "legs above the feet" for leaping. The "feet" are being differentiated from the "legs above the feet" because of their difference in function. They are legs, but in a different sense than the "four" legs which are just called "feet." We are being told of two types of legs: The "on all four" legs (which are nowhere called legs; they are only called "feet" [v. 23]), and the "leaping legs." It is clear that the Hebrews regarded the two large, hopping hindlimbs of the locust and the other insects of the same type, which are the only types of insects mentioned here (we now translate "beetle" as "cricket"), as something different than the other four limbs - perhaps because they were used primarily for vertical propulsion, whereas the other limbs were for scurrying around.
I mean come on, man. The alternative is to say that the Hebrews - who ate these things raw, for crying out loud - didn't see that these bugs had six legs. Maybe they closed their eyes before putting them in their mouths...?
Boy, what a series of dumb questions. Let's take 'em on at a time. Why are you so excited about the number five, by the way?
Irreconciable? Nuh uh. It's just not a problem. "In any given society, genealogies may function in more than one of the three spheres...it would be possible for a society to have a number of apparently conflicting genealogies, each of which could be considered accurate in terms of its function." [I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood, 213] So why are Jesus' genealogies different? Luke's goes all the way back to Adam and has 56 generations. His interest is in establishing a tone of universality in the Gospel message and mission, as he does in Acts with the admission of Gentiles into the Kingdom of God. This is all there is to his purpose, and so the genealogy is linear rather than segmented. Matthew's goes back to Abraham and has 3 groups of 14 generations. But Matthew is trying to prove certain points with his genealogy that Luke is not. He is, first, trying to establish Jesus as a legitimate heir to David's throne, and thus he uses the lineage through known names in 1 and 2 Kings. Second, Matthew has split into blocks of 14 so as to match the Hebrew sum for the numerical equivalent to the name David (14), and to match the breaks with significant events in Jewish history, a "pedagogical device". Finally, Matthew wants to include some women of a questionable character, because they serve as an "in your face" to the expected charge that Jesus' own birth was in some way scandalous or abnormal.
Missing kings? Sure, but again, no problem at all. In the ancient world, genealogies did have gaps, and the reason for this is that this was predominantly an oral culture. In an oral culture, things had to be memorized. Memory was made easiest by making things as short as possible while still retaining their purpose. Such fluidity in genealogical records is not exclusive of the Bible. "By virtue of its form a linear genealogy can have only one function: it can be used to link the person or group using the genealogy with an earlier ancestor or group. The actual number of names in the genealogy and the order of those names play no role in this function, and for this reason names are frequently lost from linear geneaologies, and the order of the names will sometimes change." [I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood, 213] The removal of names and the telescoping of lists is known in other oral cultures -- and it is also known that certain numerical patterns were preferred. R. R. Wilson [ibid., 196n] notes the example of the Luapula people of Rhodesia, who kept a royal genealogy of nine generations; but the genealogies of common people for the same space were telescoped to between four and seven generations. Elsewhere [Genealogy and History in the Biblical World, 33n] he cites the examples of the Bemba, Tallensi, Tiv, Yoruba, and Cyrenician Bedouin. All of these cultures used telescoped genealogies. And in an oral culture, why not? If Uncle Joe wasn't much to behold, and just sat around in his La-Z-Boy eating chips and burping, why keep him once his kid was secure in the line? Why make us remember more? An oral culture had to make such listings as easy as possible to remember. The royal line required more detail; the common lines less. Another example: West Semitic tribes show a "penchant for a ten-generation pattern" in their genealogies.
Missing Cainan? Nope. Realizing that the New Testament originally was written in Greek without punctuation or spaces between words, the insertion of the name Cainan easily could have crept into Luke's genealogy. Notice what the original text (in agreement with Genesis 10:24, 11:12, and 1 Chronicles 1:18,24) might have said:
touserouchtouragautoufalektouebertousala
toukainamtouarfaxadtouseemtounooetoulamech
toumathousalatouhenoochtouiarettoumaleleeeltoukainan
touenoostouseethtouadamtoutheou
If a scribe happened to glance at the end of the third line at toukainan, he easily could have written it on the first line as well as the third. Hence, instead of reading of only one Cainan, what we read today is two Cainans:
touserouchtouragautoufalektouebertousalatoukainan
toukainamtouarfaxadtouseemtounooetoulamech
toumathousalatouhenoochtouiarettoumaleleeeltoukainan
touenoostouseethtouadamtoutheou
As you can see, it would not be difficult for a weary scribe to copy "Cainan" inadvertently from Luke 3:37 as he was copying 3:6 And more than that:
Many are quick to point out that the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) mentions the name Cainan, and thus verifies that he was the son of Arphaxad, just as Luke 3:36 indicates. The problem with this line of defense is that the oldest Septuagint manuscripts do not include this reference to Cainan .
Titus 3:9? No, sorry, bud. There are a host of other factors about the false teaching Paul was addressing that you ignores, which don't fit in with slams on Matthew and Luke. The heresy did have Jewish elements (an emphasis on the law), but the focus on genealogies also fits lists found in the OT and in the book of Jubilees. The heresy also involves asceticism (1 Tim. 4:3-5). If anything, Paul's description matches a belief system similar to that of the ascetic . Imagining Matthew and Luke to be in mind is to take a common element of Judaism and indeed the ancient world (genealogies) and argue as though it is unique to Matthew and Luke.
What difference? I'll give you a hint - even adopted children can have rights and privileges of inheritance. Got it?
Logical is a Chaplet of Pretty Flowers…
Could you do your homework right the first time? Gen. 2:4-9 indicates no such thing as is claimed, for the latter specifies that what did not exist yet were plants and herbs "of the field" -- what field? The Hebrew word here is sadeh, and where it is used of known geographic locations, refers to either a quite limited area of land, and/or a flat place suitable for agriculture, as opposed to the word used in 1:11, "earth", which is 'erets -- a word which has much broader geographic connotations. (See for example Gen. 23:12-13: "And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land ['erets], saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I will give thee money for the field [sadeh]; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there." ; Ex. 9:22 "And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land ['erets] of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field [sadeh], throughout the land ['erets] of Egypt."; Lev. 25:2-3, "Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land ['erets] which I give you, then shall the land ['erets] keep a sabbath unto the LORD. Six years thou shalt sow thy field [sadeh], and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof...") A key to understanding what is being described here is that verse 2:5 goes on to explain WHY there were no "plants of the field" -- because a) there was no rain upon the earth, and b) there was no man to work the earth -- the two key elements for agriculture according to the ancient mindset. Thus, what this passage indicates is that there was as yet no organized agriculture, and that makes sense of the verses following, where God specifically plants the garden of Eden and places man to tend to it. Genesis 2:4-9 is not indicating that there were no plants created yet at all, but that a special place was set aside for the foundation of agriculture and for plants "of the field" to be developed.
If you have any more silly objections on this particular subject, they are probably covered at www.tektonics.org/jedp/creationtwo.html so please check there before bugging me about thus again, OK?
So you think movies are primary scholarly sources, huh? Well, yes, the standard explanation given by harmonists is that Judas hung himself, and then his body fell and broke open. This is a nicer try than you think: Judas would have hanged himself on Passover and before a Sabbath, and no Jew was going to touch the hanging corpse (touching a dead body caused defilement; it would have been work to take it down on the Sabbath; added to that, death by hanging was especially a disgrace; and hoisting a dead body isn't an attractive vocation if it isn't on your property), so if this is true, it is safe to assume that Judas hung himself and that the branch or rope eventually broke.
This solution is also supported by, of all people, the fringe scholar Hyam Maccoby (also noted by Polhill in his Acts commentary [92n]). In his book Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil [180], Maccoby notes that the phrase translated "becoming headlong" (prenes genomenos -- translated as "falling headlong" in the KJV, but literally being "becoming headlong" as shown in Green's Interlinear translation, 366) is a mere transcription error away from being "becoming swollen" (presthes genomenos). The latter may well be what was originally written, and as such might describe Judas' body swelling up after hanging for a while. This reading is found in later Syriac, Georgian and Armenian mss., though perhaps as an attempt at textual criticism of the sort we are doing. Taken together I still consider the "hanging body/rope broke" solution possible -- but now find something else even more likely. I would now opt for the idea that this is an example of Matthew's creative use of an OT "type". This would combine the idea that Matthew is not actually describing Judas' death, with Matthew's use of the OT texts as typologies. Audrey Conrad, in "The Fate of Judas" (Toronto Journal of Theology [7] 1992), notes that Matthew's unique words "departed" and "hanged himself" are found in combination in another place in the LXX:
2 Samuel 17:23 And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.
Conrad notes that rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 41:9 ("Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.") thought that Ahithophel was the traitor David was describing -- and of course this same verse was applied by Jesus to Judas (John 13:18). Conrad still thinks there are not enough parallels (!) but we would maintain that the parallels are sufficient, and that Matthew is indeed alluding to the traitor Ahithophel in this passage, and is therefore NOT telling us that Judas indeed hung himself, but that Judas fulfilled the "type" of Ahithophel by being a traitor who responded with grief and then died. Matthew is thereby making no statement at all about Judas' mode of death, and Luke's "swelling up" stands alone as a specific description of what happened.
Oh, and on buying the field? The word used by Matthew for "bought" is agorazo -- a general term meaning, "to go to market." It means to purchase, but also to redeem. It is a verb that refers to the transaction of business. Note how Luke uses it in opposition to another word:
Luke 22:36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell (poleo) his garment, and buy (agorazo) one.
Poleo can mean "sell" but it's primary meaning has to do with trading and bartering. Therefore the translation of "buy" (and "sell") is made according to context. How does this mean anything with regard to Judas? First note the word Luke uses. It is ktaomai, which means to "get, acquire, obtain, possess, provide, purchase." This word has the connotations of ownership that agorazo does not. Matthew says that the priests transacted business for the obtaining of the field, but they did not thereby have possession of the field. The money they used was Judas' and the field was bought in his name; the field was technically and legally his. And that leads to another question no one has yet raised, but which I will: How is it that the priests managed to buy the exact same field that Judas blew up in? Not very hard to figure, really. Once Judas blew his spare tire in the field, the land became defiled by his corpse. Hence it would become perfectly suited to become a full-time cemetery. In this ancient collectivist society, the gossip would readily get around as to where and how Judas died and it would not be a burden for the decision to be made to purchase the field in Judas' name (see below) to turn into a cemetery.
Note by the way that the money cannot be put in the treasury -- it cannot be made to belong to the temple again -- because it is blood money. Keener observes in his Matthean commentary [657-8]:
Ancient Eastern peoples regarded very seriously the guilt of innocent blood, sometimes viewed in terms of corporate responsibility. Like Pilate the priestly officials wanted nothing further to do with the situation, and likewise understand that the blood was innocent...
The money was profaned and tainted by the way it was used. By ancient thinking, it was ritually unclean -- though even today a charity may refuse money if it is gained by ill-gotten means. Now it follows that when they transacted the business of the field for the temple, to avoid association with ritual uncleanness, the priests would have to have bought it in the name of Judas Iscariot, the one whose blood money it was. The property and transaction records available to the public and probably consulted by Luke would reflect that Judas bought the field -- or else Luke is indeed aware of what transpired and is using just the right verb to make the point.
Oh yeah. You may want to complain also, that Matthew says the name 'Field of Blood' came because it was bought with blood money, while Luke says it was because Judas split his guts all over. This objection assumes that what was "known unto all the dwellers" was Judas' gut-bust episode, but it would seem that the phrase modifies all that precedes it: "Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out." Judas' gut-burst would hardly warrant a "field of blood" designation for the whole property! There would not be blood everywhere! The "Field of Blood" name was derived -- even as Matthew says -- from the act of purchase with the reward of Judas' iniquity -- what iniquity? The betrayal of innocent blood, which Luke recorded in his own Gospel.
Oops? Did you just realize that you'd made yourself look foolish trying to under first century methods of Jewish exegesis? Because that's what you did here.
As Brown rightly stressed, "given the care with which Matt reflects on the citation in 27:9-10, only by last resort should we consider the attribution to Jeremiah simply an error." [Brown, Death of the Messiah, 650] Dismissing Matthew as "misquoting" does no justice to the rich and intricate complexities of his work. Two factors are at work here.
First: Theme fulfillment. Your problem is that you are concentrating only on verses 9-10, when you should be looking at the passage beginning with verse 3. Menken, in his article, "The References to Jeremiah in the Gospel According to Matthew." (Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 60, 1984, pp. 5-25) offers this analysis:
A partial answer lies in the fact that in narrative (27, 2-8) and quotation (27,9-10) passages from Jer exercise their influence as well. Jer 18,2-3, where a potter is mentioned but no purchase of a field, is often adduced, as well as Jer 32,6-9, where the purchase of a field is dealt with but no potter occurs. A reference to Jer 19 may be more to the point: in front of the elders and priests, Jeremiah has to shatter an earthen potter's vessel, as a symbol of the disasters which will strike Judah and Jerusalem because of their idolatry, and because "they filled this place with blood of innocents" (Jer 19,4). The prophet has to do this on the place that is called Tophet but will be called "Valley of Slaughter", and will be one large burial-place. The points of contact between this passage and Matt 27,3-10 are obvious.
Menken thereby asserts that it is an atmosphere, rather than a quotation, that is being evoked: That of Jeremiah as being in Matthew "pre-eminently the prophet of rejection of the Messiah". This, along with Matt's theme of Jesus as a Jeremiac figure (Mt. 16:14), explains the "wrong" attribution of the Zech passage to Jerry. Zech may have been the writer, but the whole theme that Matthew is invoking is derived from Jeremiah. This type of attribution, of course, seems very odd to our Western mind that demands documentary exactitude in all things. But we should recall again that the ancients did not think as we did, and it is chauvinistic to regard such thinking as theirs as erroneous. Matthew is not stupid, but he is subtle. He wrote as an educated Jew and as a craftsman with a point to prove to his readers, and it is our own fault that it has taken us so long to "get the point" ourselves.
Second thing in play: Major attribution. Matthew has conflated ideas and words from both Zech and Jerry, and simply made the attribution to the more important prophet. A parallel to this is found in Mark 1:2, where Mark conflates Is. 40:3 and Mal. 3:1, but makes attribution only to Isaiah.. There is a third case of this in scripture in 2 Chron. 36:21. The first part of the verse is drawn from Lev. 26:34-35, the second is from Jer. 25:12, yet only Jeremiah is listed. So, there are three cases in scripture where more than one prophet is cited, and in each case only one is mentioned. There are no cases where more than one is mentioned. What does this tell us? Well, we can either believe it was an accepted practice to list the prophet who was making the main point, or we can believe that all three writers made a ridiculously careless mistake, and no one noticed it. However, composite attributions suit a common practice of Jewish exegetes. Z. H. Chages in The Student's Guide to the Talmud [172ff] relates a practice of the rabbis of quoting various persons under one and the same name. The rabbis "adopted as one of their methods that of calling different personages by one and the same name if they found them akin in any feature of their characters or activities or if they found a similarity between any of their actions." Thus for example Malachi and Ezra are said to be the "same person" (Meg. 15a) because they both say similar things (Mal. 2:2, Ez. 10:2). Chages gives examples of as many as three people being treated as one person because of such similarities.
The purpose of this collapsing down of identifies was to enact a principle of praising the righteous and pious, and honoring those due such praise. Thus when Matthew attributes the words of Zechariah to Jeremiah, he is enacting this principle by essentially melding the two prophets and giving attribution to the one who is the most deserving of honor and praise.
One last thing, about the "misquoted" jibe….you didn't explain HOW Matthew "misquoted" the passage, but you'd better keep in mind that in antiquity, quotations done in paraphrase were not considered to be in error, before you deliver a specific.
Nice try. Ready for a lesson on ancient composition? No doubt you already know a popular answer:
If there were two of them, there was at least one, wasn't there? Mark and Luke center attention on the more prominent and outspoken of the two, the one whose demonic occupants called themselves "Legion" (Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, p. 325).
Practically speaking, this answer is correct, if not complete, and does resolve the alleged contradiction. However, we have some more to drop on your head, so pay attention.
If you have a red-letter Bible, look over Matthew. You'll notice that the teachings of Jesus form 5 major sections. This is something Matthew INTENTIONALLY did, for many reasons -- but our main reason of concern is that he was writing his Gospel as a showcase for the teachings of Jesus. A handbook, if you will. Jesus' miracles were of secondary concern and used only to the extent that they provided connecting narrative frameworks that allowed Matthew's gospel to fit properly in the genre of bioi (ancient biography). Thus it is no surprise that he lacks the sort of detail Mark and Luke give for the story. His main interest isn't in Jesus' actions, but in Jesus' words.
Luke and Mark are MORE concerned with action, though. You see fewer (in Mark) and more scattered (in Luke) "red letter" parts in their Gospels (especially Mark, which is an "action" gospel that moves at a quick pace -- as a hint, look how often he uses the word "immediately"). They would be inclined to describe what happened in more detail.
So why would they leave one man out? Two points of possible answer, and we prefer the first, but you can take the second and mull on it too. The first is that Matthew has followed a normal literary procedure for the day, in that he has left out other accounts by Mark (1:23-6 of the demoniac; also the blind man of 8:22-26) and so has chronologically displaced them, quite intentionally - and thus, this is a literary device that cannot be classified as error. The second idea is simply practical: the second guy didn't do much, or as much. While the one guy came forth yelling and saying Legion and all that, the other hung back in the bushes yelling and physically cowering. We don't know exactly what happened, but the bottom line is that if he didn't do anything special, and Mark and Luke are emphasizing action, they aren't going to divert from the main story and tell all about the guy hiding in the bushes that had to be called out or chased down, and change their whole story to accommodate him. Wright in The Resurrection of the Son of God [613] notes within Luke the example of how Peter is reported only to have gone to the tomb, yet on the Emmaus Road the disciples say that "some of our number" went to the tomb. Clearly, "Luke is quite capable of highlighting one person when he knows, and tell us later, that more than one was involved....If Luke can say that there was one person, and then later that there was more than one, the numerical differences between the different accounts of the women and the angels cannot be regarded as serious historical problems."
A couple of other points to keep in mind. In the NT era only 10% of people could read at most. Stories for the average Joe had to be easy to remember when read out loud to them. Adding extra detail beyond your purpose would have made your readers have to work too hard and they'd lose track of the main point. Imagine all you'd have to remember if you couldn't read or write (and it cost money you didn't have to have someone do it for you -- and there aren't any charities to help you learn to read or anything like that). Furthermore, writing materials such as parchment and ink are very expensive and very hard to get. You have only a limited amount of space to write something, and if you have an area of concentration, you don't need distracting "by the way" elements running around in your account. You get to that point, and you don't waste expensive and limited resources blathering about what in your context is a non-essential.
By the way, the retort that if one of the demoniacs was prominent, he should have been mentioned by name or title, is rather inane. No member of the reading audience would be served by any such contextualization, as if the man (even if alive, in this day when the average lifespan was 35) were going to be alive to find and talk to. The prominence, if this is the explanation we use, is established by actions. Nor is it any answer to say that Mark and Luke "very strongly imply" that there was just one by merely mentioning one. Comparing two biographies of Lincoln we can find exactly the same sort of "mistake" you find here:
Oates: Lincoln "stood inside the doorway and shot a wild turkey as it approached."
Donald: Lincoln "spied a flock of wild turkeys outside the new log cabin. He seized a rifle and, taking advantage of one of the chinks (in the wall), 'shot through a crack, and killed one of them.' "
So does Oates "very strongly imply" that there was only one turkey? No, he doesn't - he merely highlights the single bird, for whatever reason. Please note the "original" source for this account in both:
A few days before the completion of his eighth year, in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached the new log-cabin, and A. with a rifle gun, standing inside, shot through a crack, and killed one of them. He has never since pulled the trigger on any larger game.
The original source quote quite clearly indicates the presence of a full flock. So by this logic, Oates (a professional historian and publisher writer) has "very strongly implied" that there was only one turkey and has committed an "error". But of course he has not, and neither has Matthew, Mark, or Luke however we look at it.
Too bad. Your psychological problems don't negate an answer which is perfectly sound. Let me ask you a question: If you were born before a certain date and lived today, and your name were "Ted Bundy" or "Adolf Hitler", would you keep it? I wouldn't either; nor would I expect Judas James Jr. to keep the same name as the guy who betrayed his Master. At the same time, Jews also made a habit of having a second, Hellenized name (Saul/Paul for example) so that "Thaddeus" would make sense as a second names for Judas-James Jr. I have a friend who travels for business in China, and Chinese businessmen do the same thing - they introduce themselves with an American-style name (such as "Fred") rather than using their native name, to ease communication. So again, too bad - you'll just have to live with that answer as a perfectly sound one.
Poor Pharisees. Poor you, too. You need to begin by quoting Matthew 5:22 in entirety: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
It is painfully obvious here that Jesus is talking in 5:22 about relations with one's brother (not physical brothers, of course, but fellow believers) and about words said in anger to that brother. In Matthew 23:17, Jesus is not talking to his brethren, but to the Pharisees, who are not members of his social ingroup. Read more carefully, eh?
Yeah, yeah. For one and two, see the last one on the demoniac. Has that sunk in yet?
For Jericho, you're no doubt aware of the answer that there was an Old and a New Jericho, which is one of two answers we offer; however, for my part I find the explanation of Rene Latourelle in The Miracles of Jesus [155] most coherent: Luke phrases matters as he does because he wants to follow with the episode of Zaccheus in Jericho. The difference in geographical location may be explained either by archaeology as above, or by compositional requirements per Latourelle.
It's no reply to say, by the way, that the Gospel writers would have specified which Jericho was in view. This answer is complained in vain, for unless you SHOW that such distinction was made between the two towns in literature of the period, you are merely contriving a requirement for the Gospels to adhere to, and then complaining without basis that they do not adhere to it. Archaeology HAS shown that there were two cities; that is all the evidence that is needed for a coherent explanation.
If you're seriously suggesting a "Passover Plot" scenario, you can leave now, because you're insane.
As for the rest, I expect you have more in your head than this, and I don't have room for a whole answer here, but you can go read http://www.tektonics.org/harmonize/lincoln01.html and explain what is wrong with it. Still, let me sum it up for you.
First: The Gospel writers did not have unlimited paper and ink at their disposal; this was expensive stuff, and anyone who wants to question this point need to explain why it is not relevant. The rez narratives were at the end of their works, so they were constrained to be as succinct as possible in their reportage -- more than they would be for any other part of their narrative. Also relevant is the point of "who knew what, when". The same exact knowledge could certainly have not been accessible to each and every Gospel writer. Your objection about Matthew being the only one to report the raised saints misses here on these assumptions:
1: All the returns are in.
Central to this assumption is that such an event could not have been missed by the other Gospels if it had really happened. But this is utterly presumptuous. There is far too much we do not know about it to assume that it could not possibly have been missed. We do not know:
1. How strong the quake was. We are only told that it caused rocks to split, but rocks may split under any degree of pressure depending upon such factors as mineral composition, previous stresses (water, previous quakes, etc), original formation, and location relative to the epicenter. We also do not know how many rocks were split and where they were located. Near Jerusalem? Out in the country? Minor quakes can be missed easily be those who are outdoors, as most people would have been at the Passover festival during the day.
2. How many were raised. Matthew says "many" were raised, but how many is "many"? Matthew's word polus is, like our "many," a vague term for an unknown, uncounted number or amount. It is used to refer to "great mourning" (Matt. 2:18 -- by time? 2 days? 4 days? by level? loud shouts, lots of crying?), the number of Pharisees and Sadducees who went to be baptized by John (3:7 -- how many of these did there need to be for John to recognize a pattern and make a judgment? with what frequency and under what circumstances did they come?), and the number of false prophets who will arise (24:11). "Many" could mean anything from ten to thousands.
3. Whether they were in natural-but-mortal bodies (e.g. Lazarus), natural-but-immortal bodies (e.g. post-resurrection, pre-ascension Jesus), or supernatural/glorified bodies (e.g. post-ascension Jesus in Revelation).
4. How long they remained on earth (till Jesus ascended? Until they died?). If they stayed on earth then there was a real threat, if connection was made to Jesus, that they would be targets for assassination (cf. John 12:10) or at least persecution. Silence may have been a safeguard until a certain date when Matthew's Greek version was written.
5. Whether they only appeared to believing Jews (cf. Acts 10.40-41) or anyone. How can we talk of witnesses if we do not know who they are or how many there were?
6. How and when Matthew found out about these saints. Was this information accessible to just anyone? This will depend on the factors above to a great extent (number raised, what time they were raised, and where, and in what form). But we do not know when Matthew received this information, or how, and from whom. This by itself does not make it unreliable but it also means that we cannot simply presume that silence by other writers gives us any arguable indications.
2 -- They Would Have Made Room!
John 21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.
It does not take much to see that each Gospel writer does include things that are unique. Some of these are non-spectacular events, but both Luke and John are alone in reporting certain miraculous events, especially John.
Does this raise doubts as to their veracity? Why should Matthew, Mark and Luke have omitted the Cana water-to-wine miracle or the raising of Lazarus? Why should John have missed out on the raising of Jairus' daughter? We could multiply these examples incessantly and for each note that we have some (or all) of the same questions as we do above. But let's just assume for the sake of argument that all the information of this sort in the four Gospels was available to all four authors to report. How then could they have missed reporting any of it?
The answer to this may be found in two social sub-factors:
1. The nature of composition of ancient books
2. The unique purposes of each Gospel writer
The quote of John above is hyperbolic, but it does make a point. The ministry of Jesus lasted at least two years. This allows for a ministry of around 4000-5000 hours (take out time to sleep, eat, travel, etc) which any writer of a life of Jesus had to select from. If you were asked to write a biography of Jesus, what would you write about? Before you answer, there are some restrictions you need to keep in mind.
First of all, you are limited to using only about 20 sheets of paper. What, you say? No more than that? Sorry. Office Depot won't be open for another 1900 years, and neither will WalMart, or Eckerd's, or any other place you are thinking of buying paper. You're not going to be writing on paper. You'll be writing on a scroll, and scrolls are both expensive and go no larger than a certain size. As Gamble reports in Books and Readers in the Early Church [44-50, 266], and Achtemeier in his JBL article, "Omne Verbatim Sonat"[11f]:
1. Scrolls could be fashioned to any length desired, but practically speaking, the mean length was seven to ten meters. "A roll of ten to eleven meters was too cumbersome for the reader to handle...authors of long new works made their own divisions by taking the customary length of rolls into account."
2. A roll of papyrus of typical quality "cost the equivalent of one or two days' wages, and it could run as high as what the labourer would earn in five or six days..."
3. While at times it was easy to get paper when you could afford it, there were times when this was NOT the case. Achtemeier reports that at one point in the reign of Tiberius, the Senate was asked to assume responsibility for the allocation of paper. But even at the most plentiful, paper never made it usual to print multiple copies of anything; the publication of 1000 copies of a work was significant enough for Pliny to give it notice.
Now maybe if you are wealthy, or know someone who is, you can get another scroll and do a "Life of Jesus, Part 2", perhaps a shorter half. But if you do, bear in mind that generations beyond you (and how can you anticipate WalMart, or the printing press?), in order to preserve your work, will have to also buy two scrolls. If you want your work to get out to people, that's not a very smart move. Your work is going to cost more to keep around than a work with one scroll. So you'd better plan carefully what you want to put on those scrolls. By the way, writing is cumbersome and difficult with comfortable chairs and writings desks not in the picture -- unless, again, you are very wealthy. So better keep it simple.
Okay, so now you have scrolls and some ink. Are you ready? Not so fast! Did you ever have to write an essay of exactly a certain number of pages? No more or less than the decided amount? There should be no problem here with writing too little; Jesus did plenty of stuff, and was around enough time, and did enough teaching, to draw material from. But you're only going to be able to fit a certain amount on those scrolls. So think for a while. What is more important to write about? His crucifixion and resurrection already have to go in there; that was the defining time in his life, and it is the heart of the kerygma. What else? The miracles? The teachings? His birth? You have to decide what you want to present, and how, before you ever put a pen to that scroll. Bear in mind if you don't do this carefully, you'll waste the entire scroll and either have to buy a new one, or will have to cut out the sheet you made the mistake on and connect it all back together! Small mistakes can be fixed, but if you start to do a whole story, you can't just change your mind and start over!
And there's another problem. The crucifixion and resurrection have to go in, but they will be at the end of the story, and you can't just write backwards from the end of the scroll -- unless you are a very unusual person! So you need to plan this account carefully. You need to decide what out of those 5000 hours you want to include.
So how do you start? You start by taking notes. This is where the "codex" or leaf book would have come in. Although the codex eventually evolved into the modern book, at this stage it was used for "school exercises, accounts, notes, first-drafts, and so forth," as well as being used for archival items like birth certificates.
So now you have a collection of notes, full of stories and teachings to choose from. Now what? Well, if you are an ancient writer, writing a story is not just a matter of slapping down things in order. You're a little more creative than that! You also want to establish a certain theme, or use certain techniques, to make the story run smoothly. (Biographies in the ancient world were often written topically rather than chronologically.) After all, most of your "readers" will actually be hearers! 90-95% of those who get acquainted with your Gospel will have to remember its contents. Your contemporaries all have good memories, because they are used to oral tradition, but that's partly because writers know ways to make memory easier.
Our Gospel writers took different approaches to this problem. On a macro level, Matthew divided his work into five sections of teaching interspersed with miracle stories (an imitation of the five books of the Pentateuch) and also begins with a genealogy and closes his work with an edict (the Great Commission), just like Chronicles opened with a genealogy and closed with Cyrus' decree in 2 Chronicles. Mark used his "sandwich" technique of intercalating a small story between two parts of another story. Luke wrote his work around the theme of traveling to Jerusalem (and wrote Acts around the theme of the gospel being preached around the Empire, with Jerusalem as a return point); he was also writing for the purpose of defending Paul at trial. John built his account around important "signs". These are but three of numerous examples of memory and/or literary techniques in the Gospels -- and each technique, used differently, would mean different results in order, and different results in selection of material.
But what of that selection? If you are a Matthew or a Mark writing a Gospel for the first time, what do you choose to offer? What miracles or teachings "stick out" the most and will tell readers the most about Jesus as a person? What events were most memorable? By now it will be easy to guess that the constraints of selection would have a major impact on what appears in a Gospel and would explain a great many of the differences across the Gospels. In some cases selection will be subjective. Selection will also be ruled by available space. Matters of judgment being subjective, this is why a Mark may prefer to offer two loaves and fishes routines, while Matthew may prefer to add more teaching instead.
On this matter as well, we have further input from Byrskog's Story as History concerning the selectivity of ancient historians in their reports [256f]. The rhetoriticians as writers "knew that certain matters had better not be included. One should avoid an excess of unnecessary facts and words, Cicero says. Other rhetoriticians said very much the same." Further: "As a matter of course, a selection always took place on different levels of research and writing, such as when the historian chose what particular subject to investigate or when circumstances forced him to leave out matters concerning which he could not receive sufficient information." Matthew alone may have had access to needed information in his time and place when he composed his gospel; so likewise Luke or even John. Each writer had also to consider their audience and decide what was "worth mentioning" -- we even see writers occasionally apologizing for including what they think may be perceived as unworthy information -- and needless to say, we, not being the intended audience, are in no position to make such a decision. A good secular example should shut up critics like you who claim that some event was "too important" to leave out [258]:
As we see perhaps most evidently in the case of Xenophon, the essential criterion of this kind of selectivity remained quite subjective....the Hellenica Oxyrhychia, according to the London papyrus P. Oxy. 842 III 11-43, gives great prominence to the naval war of 396 BCE, while Xenophon mentions only the stir caused at Sparta in the winter of 397-396, ignoring entirely the war itself. An event that was extremely important for the Oxyrhynchus historian was not at all important for Xenophon.
One can easily imagine critics arguing that the naval battle must not have happened if Xenophon said nothing about it! A key issue Byrskog notes is that the historian was supposed to interpret and report history so as to make it a bridge between the past and the present [262]. Material was selected for relevance to the readership, not "because it was so exciting and amazing," and the resurrected saints were certainly of little relevance to anyone outside of Matthew's region.
And then, what of later writers? A Luke or a John, knowing of or seeing an earlier Gospel, is also working with the same constraints you are in terms of expense and materials. Now with that the case, why waste space reporting mostly the same things? Aside from the expected "defining moments" of the crucifixion and resurrection week, we would expect a later writer to try to select as many different events, not found in other Gospels, as possible. And of course this is why John is so much different than the rest, generally speaking, and why he does not mention such things as the crucifixion darkness. He has another story to tell. In fact, he assumes you already know Mark, but that's another story.
And so what of that particular example of the missing earthquake and saints? Even if we assume that Mark, Luke and John knew of these things, if they had other stories to tell, it is enough to point out that practically speaking, they had no room to tell every detail. Luke offers instead some stories of resurrection appearances, and from his rushed ending apparently barely squeezed those in. Now which is more important? A story of the Risen Jesus, or a story of an earthquake (probably felt by few people, and definitely not felt by Luke's Gentile readers living outside Palestine) and some resurrected persons (who none of Luke's Gentile readers would have seen, and few others would have seen?) Note that there is not a clear comparison here with such events as were recorded: the darkness or the rending of the Temple veil. These were events of public note and exposure; the quake likely was not, and the saints definitely were not, other than to some of Matthew's Jewish readers.
"But it's just a sentence! Surely Mark or Luke or John could have fit it in." Sure! At the expense of some other part of their account being shorter. Bear in mind that this little blurb is part of the very end of Jesus' life, which is already very crowded at the end of the scroll. We do not know how Mark originally ended, and we see that John supplements the Synoptics; but that extra sentence for Luke (assuming he knew about it) means something else has to go. How about, "And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb"? Well, what about the need to stress the physicality of Jesus' resurrection body (very important in a Greco-Roman world that did not like the concept of resurrection)? How about cutting out the repentance of the one thief (23:40)? Why do that for your sake? Another of Luke's themes is the universality of the Gospel message, and showing how even a despised thief could be saved illustrated that beautifully. Keep thinking. In conclusion: While critics may (and no doubt will) reject accounts like this on any number of grounds, the exclusion of the report from the other Gospels is not sufficient grounds for doing so.
Now back to the general harmonizing of the Gospels. A second factor is about the nature of writing and precision in the ancient East. Abraham Rihbany in The Syrian Christ [108ff] writes of Easterners who offer what we call "misstatements" which "are more often the result of indifference than the deliberate purpose to deceive. One of his besetting sins is his ma besay-il -- it does not matter. He sees no essential difference between nine o'clock and half after nine, or whether a conversation took place on the housetop or in the house. The main thing is to know the substance of what happened, with as many of the supporting details as can be conveniently remembered." This is important to remember when it comes to minor varying details, as the oral nature of the original material. Variations in oral tradition in no way contradicts the idea of inerrancy. The idea of inspiration as wooden and mechanical in all cases is something that the Scriptures never demand. Nor is there any indication that such variations were considered "erroneous" by the ancients, under whose paradigms we are compelled to work here. Skeptics must show that such variations were considered problematic by ancient commentators, not merely foist their own 21st-century literary values upon the text. Albert Lord, in his essay entitled "The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature" which appears in The Relationships Among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, remarks generally upon oral traditional narratives as having "textual fluidity", such that they are "constantly being repeated without concern for word-for-word retelling of a set, established text." [37] One may compare the material in the link and note differences which are very much like those in the Gospels -- with no place to claim "error" or "contradiction" between them as the substantial message remains the same.
So do your homework on ancient methods of composition. Then get back to us with a new version of the argument, if you have one. Yeah, right!
Not if she wasn't there. By now you know you need to do some homework on ancient compositional principles, so you're already on assignment, but here's some more on this one.
First, we need to look at who went to the tomb. We have Mary Mag and the other Mary; we have those two plus Salome; we have those two plus Joanna and unnamed "others"; we have Mary Mag, though obviously not alone (v. 2 in John, "we" do not know...) No one list excludes any other; none speaks of these being the only persons to travel to the tomb. We note the common Skeptical response that we cannot thereby exclude little green men from Mars either; but the difference again is whether the presence of other female disciples is in any sense an issue or an improbability. It isn't. Anointing the dead was considered women's work; a composite party is not at all unlikely.
So why the differing lists? As Rihbany says, ma besay-il. It doesn't matter. Each writer chose women representative of the party, based perhaps on their own knowledge or on that of their audience. Mary Mag appears in all four accounts; this suggests her prominence in the tradition and makes it difficult for any rez account to leave her out. Matthew has little room to spare; he obviously needed to devote time to the "stolen body" claim and also wanted to close with the great commission. That left him almost no room for detailed rez appearances or for special cameos like the one John gave Mary Mag. His report is by necessity short and to the point and he has no space for a detailed listing of who was where, and when. It is therefore absurd to demand that he meet the precision-demands of Western literature which has no such constraints.
As far as the angels go: John is supplementing Mark and skips this section. Mark's "young man" is one of the angels; the phrase "young man" was used elsewhere (as in Josephus) to describe angels, so that there is no contradiction of identity. The point of "one angel or two" is answered by the principles in the issue of the demoniacs - go back and look at it.
There's another, better option: You messed up again. The word used by Jesus to Mary means "cling to", not "touch". It's so much more personal that other weirdos say that it means Mary and Jesus were husband and wife. It's actually just language of devotion, but in any event, it amounts to, not, "don't touch me" but "don't get too used to me being here."
This presents an interesting debate, for those who steadfastly insist that Paul's letters are to be given preference over Acts are stuck here with a case where what Paul reports is often regarded as less probable than what Luke does. But who was really after Paul? Both parties would have their motives; the Jews for obvious reasons, Aretas because of his suspicion of Jewish preachers, helped along by his stormy relationship with the Herods [Witherington commentary on Acts, 324]. Cooperation, intentional or otherwise, would not be impossible, and Luke's omission of Aretas may be related to Paul's lack of success in the Arabian mission - for to mention Aretas might require Luke to explain WHY Aretas was after Paul. What exactly did Aretas do, and how did he do it? The answer depends on who was in control of Damascus at the time, and even then there are many possibilities. Did he watch from outside the city himself, or send his minions? Was he watching from the outside because the Romans were in charge of the city, and he couldn't get inside -- and therefore did he recruit the Jews hostile to Paul to help him on the inside? If Aretas was in charge of the city, how much power did he have as a client-king? How many men did he have helping him? The point is, Paul was being pursued by two different parties - Jews on one hand, and Arabs on the other. If you wonder why, you need only figure out what sort of reaction Christian missionary efforts would have gotten from each.
You have the "jerk" part right (takes on to know one, eh?) but it was Paul himself who inserted it, and he wasn't the jerk. The jerk was whoever he was quoting and then answering. Paul is quoting mistaken opponents here, as is shown by four points:
There is a tiny little particle in the Greek text--not even translated in the NIV and NAS!--that provides some interesting evidence in favor of this view.
Immediately after verse 35, the first word in verse 36 is a single letter particle that is translated "What?!" in the KJV and ASV. This word in most contexts is translated as 'or' or 'rather', but these are always in series, like "either...or" or "this or that or that...".
But in this case, it is (1) in the front of the sentence; (2) introduces a completely different subject; and (3) has a complete change of tone--to that of irony and rebuke. Where else does this type of construction occur in Paul?
Rom 2.3-4: So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? Notice that in verse 3, Paul has stated a view (pernicious and/or erroneous). He uses the particle "What?!" (perhaps best translated at "NOT!" in the slang of today!) and issues a harsh rebuke of the position's content and tone.
Rom 9.20-21: But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, `Why did you make me like this?'" 21 (particle is here, but untranslated in the NIV) Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? Notice that in verse 20, Paul has stated a view (pernicious and erroneous). He uses the particle "WHAT?!" (remember, "NOT!") and issues a harsh response to the arrogance of the position.
I Cor 6.8-9: Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers. 9 (particle is here, but untranslated in the NIV) Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Notice that in verse 8, Paul has stated an erroneous practice. He uses the particle "WHAT?!" and issues a strong response to the assumptions of the position.
What this amounts to is that the tiny particle (in this type of construction and flow) indicates VIOLENT DISAGREEMENT with the preceding verses. (See similar usage in Rom 6.3; 7.1; 11.2; I Cor 6.9, 16, 19; I Cor 10.22; 2 Cor 13.5.) The older commentator Findlay, in the Expositor's Greek Testament, used the phrase "indignant protest" to describe Paul's intent with the particle.
Nice try, but all you keep doing is showing why you aren't qualified to make these kinds of criticisms…
Common Nonsense
The problem being, what? No matter what interval it is, you seem to have a complaint (without any actual grounding) so what's the problem?
Only if you're too uneducated to understand ancient "trash talk." For example, in a war inscription Ramesses III says, "I slew the Denyon in their islands, while the Tjekker and Philistines were made ashes. The Sherden and the Washesh of the sea were made non-existent, captured all together and brought on captivity to Egypt like the sands of the shore." Ramesses speaks of the Sherden and Washesh being "made non-existent" but then goes on to say that they were captured. So what do you think Ex. 17:14 is really saying now that you've had a small education in the art of ancient war rhetoric?
Sorry, but blame the 1611 KJV for that one. What you need to prove is not that rabbits don't chew cud, but that they don't 'alah their gerah. Can you do that? I didn't think so. What rabbits do is called refection, a process in which they eat their own dung mixed with undigested material. Gerah is used nowhere in the Old Testament besides these verses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. We have only this context to help us decide what it means in terms of the Mosaic law. In refection, rabbits pass pellets of partially digested food, which they chew on (along with the waste material) in order to give their stomachs another go at getting the nutrients out. Contrast this with what cows and some other animals do, rumination, which is what we moderns call "chewing the cud." They regurgiate partially digested food in little clumps called cuds, and chew it a little more after while mixing it with saliva. So then: partially digested food is a common element here. The Hebrew word simply refers to any partially digested food -- the process is not the issue, just the object. "Yeah, right, Holding! So are you more of an expert in Hebrew than all those Bible scholars like Strong who decided that 'cud' was the best word to use here? Get real!!!"
Our other key word here is 'alah, and it is found in some grammatical form on literally every page of the OT. This is because it is a word that encompasses many concepts other than "bring up." It also can mean ascend up, carry up, cast up, fetch up, get up, recover, restore, take up, and much more. It is a catch-all verb form describing the moving of something to another place. (The literal rendering here is, "maketh the gerah to 'alah.") Now in the verses in question, 'alah is used as a participle. Let's look at the other verses where it is used this way (NIV only implies some of these phrases; where in parentheses, the phrase is in the original, sometimes in the KJV):
Josh. 24:17 It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt....
1 Sam. 7:10 While Samuel was sacrificing (offering) the burnt offering...
Nahum 3:3 Charging cavalry, flashing swords (lifted), and glittering spears!
Isaiah 8:7 ...therefore the Lord is about to bring against them the mighty floodwaters of the River...
2 Chron. 24:14 When they had finished, they brought the rest of the money...
Ps. 135:7 He makes clouds rise (up) from the ends of the earth...
2 Sam. 6:15 ...while he and the entire house of Israel brought the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets. (Similar quote, 1 Chr. 15:28)
So: the Hebrew word is question is NOT specific to the process of regurgitation; it is a phrase of general movement. And related to the specific issue at hand, the rabbit is an animal that does "maketh" the previously digested material to "come" out of the body (though in a different way than a ruminant does) and does thereafter does chew "predigested material"! The mistake is in our applying of the scientific terms of rumination to something that does not require it.
Where, exactly? You forgot to explain how these claims are mutually exclusive. By the way, the word "evil" is ra. This word does indicate moral evil in some cases, but can also mean "adversity". Note the antithesis in the first part of the verse from Isaiah: light/darkness. The second part of the verse must also be therefore reckoned as an antithesis. The word we translate "prosperity" is a familiar one: shalom. We commonly translate this word "peace" - but it is NEVER used to indicate moral goodness, the antithesis of moral evil! We must therefore translate "ra" in terms of its specified antithesis, and that is why it is thoroughly proper to give it the meaning of calamity/disaster/adversity here.
Um, right. Did you bother to look up "astrology" in the dictionary before you composed this one? It means, "The study of the positions and aspects of celestial bodies in the belief that they have an influence on the course of natural earthly occurrences and human affairs." That's not what the Star of Bethlehem is said to do; it is said to announce that an event has already happened.
False Presuppositions
So who's your advisor for this project? Bob Jones?
Sorry, but that answer is just fine. The word "death" is used throughout the Bible this way (so is the word "life") without any "proviso". Commentators as far back as pre-Christian Judaism have read this as indicating spiritual, not physical, death. The literal Hebrew says, "Dying you shall die," which does indicate a "progressive" death. However, even if it did not -- as is the case with many cites where "death" and "die" is used in isolation -- nothing needs to be said because the context says all that is needed. You would have us believe that the writer of this story, which forms a literary unity, wrote something so blatantly contradictory in such a short space. Common sense alone therefore supports the "spiritual death" interpretation, but there is more:. The account in Genesis goes on to depict Adam and Eve as losing fellowship with God. To the Hebrew mind, loss of fellowship with God is a fate worse than death, for it was the loss of fellowship with the prime source of peace. Thus the word "death" --- representing the most fearsome and irreversible fate in this life --- was chosen to figuratively describe this loss of fellowship with God. This is no expediency, but a fact of the culture that wrote the book, and no amount of chronological snobbery can change that.
I really have only two questions: Who writes your material? And how long have they been deceased?
You need to quote exactly what Is. 7 predicts. After 7:6 it says "conquer it for ourselves"; and it says "and make the son of Tabeel king in it." In v. 8-15, 2 Chron. goes on to detail the aftermath of Rezin and Pekah's victory. They were about to take the people captive and plunder their property when the prophet Obed came and told them to let the people go, which they did. And, as 2 Chron. 28:16 says, Ahaz was still alive and kicking. So while they did conquer Judah, they never got to enjoy the spoils of war or replace Ahaz as king, which was their plan according to Is. 7.
Hint: Ramsses III. The Sherden. It can be inhabited afterwards all it wants to, and Isaiah and Jerry would still be right.
Sorry, but Semitic languages are still spoken all over the place in this area -- and native Egyptian isn't. This prophecy was fulfilled by the time of Jeremiah, when gajillions of refugees fled Palestine for the land of Egypt.
I'll just cut you off there. Here's a hint. Ramsses III. Sherden. In reverse. Though by the way, Jerry only says that David will always have a descendant available to occupy his throne. And I don't think you want to argue that there are no possible living descendants of David or the Levites today.
It's not the Apocalypse. "The day of the Lord" is a general phrase of judgment that can describe the final eschatological judgment of the world, but more often describes any forthcoming day of judgment. What "day" is in mind is determined by context, not merely by the phrase itself. What is was here depends on when Zephaniah wrote, but since he mentions Hezekiah, he is probably predicting the upcoming Babylonian invasion.
Sorry, but it's you who has been caught red-handed on this one - pretending to be an expert in 1) first century Jewish exegetical methods; 2) the Hebrew language.
Let's start with exegesis. Matthew was doing nothing that his Jewish contemporaries did not find acceptable. As Biblical scholar Richard Longenecker puts it:
"Jewish exegesis of the first century can generally be classified under four headings: literalist, midrashic, pesher, and allegorical….
"Midrashic exegesis ostensibly takes its point of departure from the biblical text itself (though psychologically it may have been motivated by other factors) and seeks to explicate the hidden meanings contained therein by means of agreed-upon hermeneutical rules (e.g., Rabbi Hillel's seven Middoth; Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha's later set of thirteen; Rabbi Eliezer ben Jose ha-Galili's thirty-two). The purpose of midrash exegesis is to contemporize the revelation of God given earlier for the people of God living later in a different situation. What results may be characterized by the maxim: "That has relevance for This"--that is, what is written in Scripture has relevance for our present situation. In so doing, early Judaism developed what George Foote Moore once aptly defined as "an atomistic exegesis, which interprets sentences, clauses, phrases, and even single words, independently of the context or the historical occasion, as divine oracles; combines them with other similar detached utterances; and makes large use of analogy of expression often by purely verbal association"
Matthew's use of Isaiah here was an example of midrashic exegesis - and it is perfectly valid, not in the least dishonest. It is dishonest, however, to pontificate about subjects you know little about.
Now the Hebrew. Sorry, on this one, you're just plain wrong. You can read a full report at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/fabprof2.html but here's a summary for you to gnaw on:
1. Almah refers to one who has not yet borne a child and as an abstraction refers to the adolescent expectation of motherhood. It is never used of a non-virgin.
2. Bethulah means only a woman that still lived under her father's sponsorship, roof, and legal authority. In that day and age, this would sometimes imply virginity, but it would not have been the main focus of the word at all.
Now go do some homework - again.
I'll cut you off there, because you still need to learn what "misrashic exegesis" is.
Nice try, but time for another cultural lesson. This is actually an instance in which we need to understand Jewish idiom, which understood "a day and a night" to include even the smallest part of a day and night. A Jewish source from after the time of the New Testament, positing a solution to a problem having to with menstrual cycles, puts it this way: "A day and a night are an Onah ['a portion of time'] and the portion of an Onah is as the whole of it" [J.Talmud, Shabbath 9.3 and b.Talmud, Pesahim 4a] Other examples of this kind of usage can be found throughout the Bible (Gen. 42:16, 1Kings 20:29, Esth. 4:16, Matt. 27:63). Jesus was in the tomb for only a small part of Friday and Sunday, but that counts according to Jewish idiom for the entire "day and night" for each of those days. Note that while the menstrual cycle was the "problem" causing the discussion, the resolution is completely independent of the problem and is not uniquely associated with it. In addition, the online Jewish Encyclopedia says this about "day": In the Bible, the season of light (Gen. i. 5), lasting "from dawn [lit. "the rising of the morning"] to the coming forth of the stars" (Neh. iv. 15, 17). The term "day" is used also to denote a period of twenty-four hours (Ex. xxi. 21). In Jewish communal life part of a day is at times reckoned as one day; e.g., the day of the funeral, even when the latter takes place late in the afternoon, is counted as the first of the seven days of mourning; a short time in the morning of the seventh day is counted as the seventh day; circumcision takes place on the eighth day, even though of the first day only a few minutes remained after the birth of the child, these being counted as one day.
Are you done ranting now?
Good.
2000 years is not soon, true; but 20-40 years is, and that's how long it took to fulfill what was promised in Mark 13, Matthew 16 and 24, and Revelation. Guess what chum: The "end times" happened between 67-73 AD. And YOU MISSED IT!
You can check the information at http://www.tektonics.org/esch/eschatology.html and get back to us when you have an answer. Just one more thing, on Eccl. 1:4 -- Ecclesiastes is either a dialogue of a man debating with himself, "torn between what he cannot help seeing and what he still cannot help believing," [Kidner, Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, 91], or else as the author's "challenge to the man of the world to think his own position through to its bitter end, with a view to seeking something less futile." I prefer the second interpretation, but in either case, the compositional principle is the same, and derives from the ancient Near Eastern methodology, which we might loosely compare to a Hegelian case of combining thesis and antithesis, to arrive at a synthesis; or else for sports fanatics to a game of tennis in which the ball is batted back and forth between opposing points to arrive at a consensus.
In this regard Ecclesiastes is related to other ANE literature with the same, or similar, content and methodology. Works like A Dialogue About Human Misery and Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant (on which, Murphy comments, the "dexterity the slave displays in affirming both the positive and negative aspects of a situation is reminiscent of [Ecclesiastes'] own style" -- Murphy commentary on Eccl, xliii] from Babylon; The Man Who Was Tired of Life from Egypt; and the book of Job from the OT, are all examples of this genre in which problems were discussed and resolved via dialogue. With that in mind, about this:
Eccl. 1:4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
Even on the surface this isn't a contradiction. The word used in Matthew carries the meaning of perish or neglect (Luke 11:42 "But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God..."); it does not automatically equate with destruction or passing out of existence. Even so, let's keep these words in context. Matthew, first of all, actually is an example of an oath and essentially means "even if" heaven and earth were to pass away (and they will not), so the idea is that Jesus' words will NEVER pass away (Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary, 51). It is like saying, "When pigs fly."
OK, the party is over now. Time to go do your homework. See ya.