Contradictions and Solutions

[a-seeker]

Elsewhere I started a thread that was concerned broadly with the role of reason when reading Scripture; whether reason has any say in what is and is not true in Scripture.  It quickly (and naturally) became a topic about "contradictions" and "inerrancy".  In this thread I would rather if we mention supposed errors in Scripture and give explanations or solution of them.  I am nervous to do so because a non-believer, not understanding the context of this OP, might use this thread to reinforce his/her current disbelief.  I can only remedy this by saying that I am a Christian, I think there are errors in the Bible, and I think it completely reasonable and logical for me to be the one and think the other: indeed, non-Christian explanations for the resurrection simply does not pass the muster (or mustard, as I heard one person say )

 

I list the Resurrection narratives.  A Harmony shows discrepancies over several points: how many women were there?  did MM and Mary son of J see the stone rolled away, or was it already rolled when they arrived?  How many angels were present, one, two, none?  I have found no REASONABLE solution; that is, so far, all solutions I have examined require of me an act of intellectual suicide.  I have to suspend clear thinking altogether.  But I am certainly open and eager to hear them again, and new ones.

 

Another one: the two genealogies given for Jesus (Matt and Luke).  They seem disparate; Shiloh has elsewhere mentioned an attractive solution, and I would greatly appreciate if he developed it a bit more in this thread.

 

 

And another (apparent) one: Genesis depicts the sun, moon, and stars to float within what we would call the atmosphere.  That is, not in outer space.  Put myself in an ancient mind who lacks precise instruments and has only what he sees with his own unaided eyes, that makes clear sense to me.  It certainly looks like the sun and moon and stars float in a dome-like structure.  If this is true, then whatever inspiration means, it does not mean that God corrected every false belief the ancients had on astronomy.  He allowed these errors to remain; that is not the same thing as God lying.

 

clb

 

clb

Edited August 19, 2014 by ConnorLiamBrown

[Guest shiloh357]

 

 

I list the Resurrection narratives.  A Harmony shows discrepancies over several points: how many women were there?  did MM and Mary son of J see the stone rolled away, or was it already rolled when they arrived?  How many angels were present, one, two, none?  I have found no REASONABLE solution; that is, so far, all solutions I have examined require of me an act of intellectual suicide.  I have to suspend clear thinking altogether.  But I am certainly open and eager to hear them again, and new ones.

 

There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs resolving.  There is no contradiction.   The kind of thing that would be a problem in this case is if the historical core were different from one to the other Gospel account.

 

The Gospel writers had different purposes for why they wrote and they had different perspectives John only writes about Mary Magdeline's encounter at the tomb with Jesus.   He is not saying that she was the ONLY one who visited the tomb.  He simply focuses on her encounter.   It's the same way witth the other Gospels.   They are not contradicting each other.  They are simply relating the events in line with what was relevant to the purposes they had in their accounts.   There may have been more than one visit to the tomb by more than one group of women.  

 

You're just trying to manufacture a problem that doesn't exist.

 

 

Another one: the two genealogies given for Jesus (Matt and Luke).  They seem disparate; Shiloh has elsewhere mentioned an attractive solution, and I would greatly appreciate if he developed it a bit more in this thread.

 

 

Yeah, I don't see what more is needed from me than what I presented   Joseph is considered the "son" of Heli, as Heli' son in law because Mary can't own property.  Genealogies are for the purpose of determining property rights.  So it is natura that the geneaology would end up going to Joseph on both sides, even though one of them is in actuality tracing the lineage of Mary's family and establishes her as the being from the tribe of Judah and a direct descendent of King David.

 

 

And another (apparent) one: Genesis depicts the sun, moon, and stars to float within what we would call the atmosphere.  That is, not in outer space.  Put myself in an ancient mind who lacks precise instruments and has only what he sees with his own unaided eyes, that makes clear sense to me.  It certainly looks like the sun and moon and stars float in a dome-like structure.  If this is true, then whatever inspiration means, it does not mean that God corrected every false belief the ancients had on astronomy.  He allowed these errors to remain; that is not the same thing as God lying.

 

 

The Bible, particularly, Genesis is pre-science.  It doesn't speak with our modern scientific precision.  The writers of Scripture speak in phenomenological language.  They simply relate what they see.   

 

From the standpoint of an observer on earth, the sun and moon appear to hang in our atmosphere. From the standpoint of the observer what they claim to see is exactly accurate.   Now we understand that the sun is like 86 million miles from earth.    But both the writers of Scripture and modern scientific observers are both correct in their claims based on their respective point of view or observation.  The writers of Scripture are not making scientific claims and should be held to that standard.

[a-seeker]

I had already looked into the question about the number of angels present, and there were two.  There were several women present, but three were mentioned by name, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, and a woman named Joanna.  Only one angel spoke to the women, and in one account of what happened, that was the only angel specifically mentioned.  In the genealogies, in Matthew, the purpose was to show that Jesus was heir to the throne of David, so it was tracing him back to David.  In Luke's gospel, the genealogies trace Jesus all the way back to the first couple, Adam and Eve in the garden.  They serve two different purposes, so they are handled differently. 

 

As far as the sun, moon and stars goes, I have never taken what is written in Genesis to indicate that they float in the atmosphere.  I don't see anything that even remotely looks like that is the case.  It mentions the sun, moon and stars being placed in the firmament of the heavens.  Firmament according to Webster's Dictionary means "the vault of heaven; sky."  That does not necessarily mean in the atmosphere.  When I read the Bible, and look at the things you are calling contradictions, I just don't see them.  Even in the two accounts of what happened at the tomb, there is no contradiction.  It is not like either says Mary and Mary Magdalene aren't there in one account but are in the other, and it is not like one says no angels are present and the other says two are present.  It is just the amount of details are greater in one account as opposed to the other.  There are no errors in the Bible,  What you call errors are not errors at all. 

 

Hey Butero:

 

I like you.  You seem like a humble person; so before you read my responses, I want you to ask yourself something, "If you became convinced there were contradictions or errors in teh Bible, would your faith shatter?"  If the answer is "Yes"; PLEASE let's just drop this altogether, don't read any further.  Maybe there are solutions, but it just isn't worth it if your faith is on the line.  Jesus is still Lord no matter what.

 

clb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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there is far more than that to the Resurrection appearances.

 

It is difficult to see a real reason why Mark should only mention three women, Matthew only two, Luke indicate numerous women but only select 3 for distinction, and John mention name only 1 (Magdalene) and give no hint that there were others.

 

In Luke and Mark when the women arrive the stone is ALREADY rolled away.  The do not see the physical removal of the stone.  In Matthew the same women arrive; find the stone in place; then witness an angel remove the stone, and subsequently sit ON the stone.  In Mark it is a man inside the tomb: note he is waiting, he does not appear.  In Luke it is two angels that SUDDENLY appear.  In John there is NO angel at the tomb; indeed, in all synoptics the women are told one way or another that the Lord is risen and it is that announcement that drives them to tell the disciples.  In JOhn however, no angel appears and it is fear of grave robbery or displacement that sends Mary M to tell Peter.  In Mark, the original ending has them say nothing, but I will leave that be since questions of text criticism is a thread in its own right.

 

In other words if anyone should pick up a harmony or create one of their own, they would have these elements to put into order:

 

1) number of women (and reasons why any should be left out)

2) Number of angels and their relation to the tomb and the time of their arrival.

3) the state of the stone upon arrival, rolled or not.

4) Who rushes home; and with what information (grave robbery or resurrection).

 

That should be enough, though there are some questions about the appearances of our Lord to the disciples.

 

The genealogy:  it is not the final destination that I am thinking about, whether it ends with Abraham or David; it is the route along the way.  Matthew 1:7 has the lineage get to David through Solomon; Luke 3:31 gets to David through Nathan, a rather obscure 9th son of David.  In Matthew the father of Joseph (Mary's husband) is Jacob; in Luke it is Heli.  

 

If we are dealing with a single line, they cannot be reconciled. Shiloh suggested an attractive proposal to solving this, but he is a little stubborn to develop it.

 

The cosmology of Genesis will be alarming if we actually read the text carefully and don't come at it with our own conceptions about the universe, assuming that the ancients held the same.  So let's look at what it says exactly.

 

Until day two there is water; then God creates an expanse in the midst of the waters that separates the waters from above the expanse from the waters below.  In other words we have Water Expanse Water.  What keeps this water from falling through the expanse?  It seems that the expanse is impermeable, more like a solid.  This arrangement is confirmed by v. 9 where the waters "below the heavens = expanse" are gathered together to make room for dry land; we have the waters below the heavens distinguished from the waters above the heavens.

 

Day 4 God creates the luminaries:  this he places "in the expanse" itself (v.17).  Not above the expanse; in the same region that he sets the birds to fly (v. 20 "Let birds fly above the earth across the expanse".

 

So we have: Water, Expanse (in which we have luminaries as well as birds) and Water.  A close reading of the text will yield those results.  If there is an honest way of getting our current atmosphere from a close reading of the text, I am open to it.

 

clb

[a-seeker]

 

I list the Resurrection narratives.  A Harmony shows discrepancies over several points: how many women were there?  did MM and Mary son of J see the stone rolled away, or was it already rolled when they arrived?  How many angels were present, one, two, none?  I have found no REASONABLE solution; that is, so far, all solutions I have examined require of me an act of intellectual suicide.  I have to suspend clear thinking altogether.  But I am certainly open and eager to hear them again, and new ones.

There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs resolving.  There is no contradiction.   The kind of thing that would be a problem in this case is if the historical core were different from one to the other Gospel account.

 

The Gospel writers had different purposes for why they wrote and they had different perspectives John only writes about Mary Magdeline's encounter at the tomb with Jesus.   He is not saying that she was the ONLY one who visited the tomb.  He simply focuses on her encounter.   It's the same way witth the other Gospels.   They are not contradicting each other.  They are simply relating the events in line with what was relevant to the purposes they had in their accounts.   There may have been more than one visit to the tomb by more than one group of women.  

 

You're just trying to manufacture a problem that doesn't exist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, I am not.  I am reading the text closely.  What you forget is that I would love to discover the Bible is free of all and any discrepancy. If I were an atheist or an unbeliever, the motivation behind this list would be obvious--but I am a Christian.  What possible motive would I have for this Shiloh except the rather mundane motive that I like to believe things that are TRUE, and only if I see them to be TRUE.  I will not embrace a theory simply because it backs up Christianity.  That is not intellectually honest.

 

Now, to Butero I gave other difficulties with the Resurrection.  I would be glad to receive a single harmonization (a single chronological account representing every element from every Gospel). In fact, I might even attempt one myself.  The chief difficulties are explaining why some women were relevant to mention and others not in each gospel; the state of the stone upon the arrival at the tomb; the number of angels and their spatial relation to the tomb...well, you can look above.

 

 

Another one: the two genealogies given for Jesus (Matt and Luke).  They seem disparate; Shiloh has elsewhere mentioned an attractive solution, and I would greatly appreciate if he developed it a bit more in this thread.

 

Yeah, I don't see what more is needed from me than what I presented   Joseph is considered the "son" of Heli, as Heli' son in law because Mary can't own property.  Genealogies are for the purpose of determining property rights.  So it is natura that the geneaology would end up going to Joseph on both sides, even though one of them is in actuality tracing the lineage of Mary's family and establishes her as the being from the tribe of Judah and a direct descendent of King David.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously more is needed, since I don't understand you, and I am a fairly intelligent person.  Your solution requires that both of them are descendants of David correct?  And that one of them is concerned with property rights, but the other is not, correct?  I will leave alone the fact that neither gospel proclaims them both as descendants of David, a rather prestigious pedigree that would only strengthen the claim.

 

1) What reason would one gospel have for protecting the property rights of a woman who by that time was either in the custody of the beloved disciple, or dead?  

2) What reason would the other gospel have for not protecting the property rights.  

3) Do we have outside sources showing this principle of adoption.  

 

Again, if all I had were Luke's gospel, nothing would ever lead me to believe I was reading anything other than Joseph's genealogy from start to finish: after all, what reason is given for the young couples' travel to Bethlehem?  Because Joseph was a descendant of David.  When I get to the genealogy, I am going to have Joseph on the mind.

 

You see Shiloh, these are the sorts of questions an honest person has to ask and I am trying to be an honest person.  I am not going to embrace the first solution offered simply because it confirms my faith.  That is dangerous. Remember the Trojan horse: what they hailed as a sign of their victory became the cause of their downfall.   If I haven't examined all the virtues and flaws in a solution, then someone (an atheist?) will, and if it does not hold up to scrutiny then I will have yielded to the enemy one more reason to scorn the faith as believable only by simpletons who will believe anything so long as it favors their faith.  I refuse to give them that opportunity.  I will scrutinize it before I let them.

 

 

And another (apparent) one: Genesis depicts the sun, moon, and stars to float within what we would call the atmosphere.  That is, not in outer space.  Put myself in an ancient mind who lacks precise instruments and has only what he sees with his own unaided eyes, that makes clear sense to me.  It certainly looks like the sun and moon and stars float in a dome-like structure.  If this is true, then whatever inspiration means, it does not mean that God corrected every false belief the ancients had on astronomy.  He allowed these errors to remain; that is not the same thing as God lying.

 

The Bible, particularly, Genesis is pre-science.  It doesn't speak with our modern scientific precision.  The writers of Scripture speak in phenomenological language.  They simply relate what they see.   

 

From the standpoint of an observer on earth, the sun and moon appear to hang in our atmosphere. From the standpoint of the observer what they claim to see is exactly accurate.   Now we understand that the sun is like 86 million miles from earth.    But both the writers of Scripture and modern scientific observers are both correct in their claims based on their respective point of view or observation.  The writers of Scripture are not making scientific claims and should be held to that standard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I see. I need some clarification, and I am switching to heliocentricity since it is a bit simpler.  We all know the Bible describes the Sun as moving.  So:

 

1) are you saying that the ancient authors knew as well as any modern meteorologist that the earth removes around the sun; but just as any meteorologist when not in the lab would say, "the sun rises at 6 am." so the Biblical authors describe it as moving or standing still?

 

2) Or are you saying that they erroneously thought the Sun moved; that they did indeed describe it such, but the Holy Spirit protected them from writing so explicitly, keeping all their language phenomenological, with the result that the Bible is protected by the phenomenological argument? 

 

 

3) Or are you saying something else?

 

clb

Edited August 23, 2014 by ConnorLiamBrown

[Guest shiloh357]

No, I am not.  I am reading the text closely.  What you forget is that I would love to discover the Bible is free of all and any discrepancy.

 

No, you are on a campaign to prove the Bible has errors.  I think it would disappoint you to find out that your approach to the Bible is erroneous

 

 

If I were an atheist or an unbeliever, the motivation behind this list would be obvious--but I am a Christian.  What possible motive would I have for this Shiloh except the rather mundane motive that I like to believe things that are TRUE, and only if I see them to be TRUE.  I will not embrace a theory simply because it backs up Christianity.  That is not intellectually honest.

 

No, YOU are the one who is intellectually dishonest.  You will not accept ANY solution.  You are dead set in your silly notion that the Bible is full of error and there is no argument rational enough to convince you.  You are really no different than an atheist in this respect.

 

Obviously more is needed, since I don't understand you, and I am a fairly intelligent person.  Your solution requires that both of them are descendants of David correct?  And that one of them is concerned with property rights, but the other is not, correct?  I will leave alone the fact that neither gospel proclaims them both as descendants of David, a rather prestigious pedigree that would only strengthen the claim.

 

Actually the Bible DOES say that both Mary and Joseph are descended from Judah.   Joseph is of the line of David and Judah.  And so is Mary.  Read the geneaolgies.   Matthew is establishing Jesus' legal right to the throne of David.  Luke establishes Jesus as the Son of Man of the tribe of Judah.  Both geneaologies taken together speak to Jesus' fitness to be Messiah who sits on the Throne of David.  All genealogies were concerned with property rights and in this case both genealogies qualify Jesus' right to David's Throne.

 

 

1) What reason would one gospel have for protecting the property rights of a woman who by that time was either in the custody of the beloved disciple, or dead?  

2) What reason would the other gospel have for not protecting the property rights.  

3) Do we have outside sources showing this principle of adoption.  

 

Your questions are based on false premises you have already assumed and are thus not worth answering, as I have had to correct those premises above.

 

Again, if all I had were Luke's gospel, nothing would ever lead me to believe I was reading anything other than Joseph's genealogy from start to finish:

 

Yes, and that is because you don't understand the cultural peculiarities in play.

 

I see. I need some clarification, and I am switching to heliocentricity since it is a bit simpler.  We all know the Bible describes the Sun as moving.  So:

 

1) are you saying that the ancient authors knew as well as any modern meteorologist that the earth removes around the sun; but just as any meteorologist when not in the lab would say, "the sun rises at 6 am." so the Biblical authors describe it as moving or standing still?

 

No, I am not saying that.  What I am saying is that they recorded what they saw happen from their vantage point as an observer on the earth. 

 

2) Or are you saying that they erroneously thought the Sun moved; that they did indeed describe it such, but the Holy Spirit protected them from writing so explicitly, keeping all their language phenomenological, with the result that the Bible is protected by the phenomenological argument? 

 

Again, I am saying that they wrote what they saw.   And what the saw was correct from their vantage point.  I am not trying to get in their minds and try to assign values to them as to what they did or didn't know.

 

Nothing that they said creates any problems for the Bible except for the ones you keep trying manufacture  because you are hell bent, for some reason, to convince the rest of us that the Bible is full of errors.

[OneLight]

Giving this thread a break to review its content. There have been a few threads lately that are questioning scripture. Allow me to remind everyone:

You may not post any material that is disrespectful of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, or the Bible.

There is a difference between asking for clarity where someone is confused or uncertain and claiming scripture is not true.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
 

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.