The Bible-- Full of Errors And Inconsistencies? (page 11)

Etude

Leolaia, I truly respect your opinions and your craftiness for supporting what you say with research. However (oh no!), the reason I mentioned how a circle would not be associated (within this discussion) with a flat surface is because of Finkelstein's reference regarding Daniel 4:10-11 (his post 1143), which prompted King Solomon to inform me that "And neither circles or spheres have corners (much less 4 corners)." You make a fine point by mentioning the "circle of the earth" as in Isaiah 40:22 to suggest a circular land mass on a flat surface. But Job 26:10 and Proverbs 8:27 refer to the circle over the "watery deep" or on the "surface of the waters". So, while that would agree with your presentation that a circular Earth was bounded by a circular ocean, it contradicts the references to corners of the earth (as many ancients believed, especially the Bible writers). So, I'm thinking that (at least some) believed that the Earth might have been flat and circular sitting on a square ocean, or that the Earth was circular sitting on a circular ocean, thereby not having any corners, or that the Earth was spherical and that the "corners" reference was to what they were used to, as when you look for something in all corners of a room (yes, a metaphor but a very logical one that would apply to a lot of people, except Eskimos and Indians living in Tepees). At some point, we would have to assume that they believed the ocean surrounding the circle-Earth was square and not a circle in order to support the "corners" theory (if they believed that the term came from a square flat earth). I don't know. I think that a lot of that is subject to speculation and is all inconclusive. I merely suggest one possibility.

I sometimes wonder how much some ancients actually believed about their own bullshit, especially the priests who had plenty of opportunity to see where their own predictions and beliefs failed. I tend to think that religion in those days was a tool for the educated to keep the uneducated in place. Even in relatively recent times, royalty in the 17th and 18th century probably didn't really think that their rule was divinely ordained. It's just something they perpetuated in order to keep the little people in awe of them. The more elaborate they made their universes the more I tend to think they were being artistic and poetic rather than literal and truthful.

I agree with all the other stuff about Martin Luther, the non-freezing of the mammoths, errors in the Bible, the bull about the mark of the beast (666), the bull about organs of cognition and that Exodus ever happened. But by now, we're way off topic.

myelaine

dear Finkelstein...

ok, I get where this thread is "coming from" now.

in your example of God not changing but later repenting it can be seen in scripture that the nature and values of God don't change but within His character (like His human creation themselves) there is the probibility of the emotion of regret, joy, sadness, pleasure etc.

we can't take just one scripture and exclude the rest to draw a conclusion about God or anything else in the bible. The bible itself is full of data that must be evaluated in order to gain insight into the issue of how God has and does interact with His creation. It would be a lot easier for us if God wrote the whole history of His dealings with mankind (and especially israel) without any errors or inconsistencies but then that wouldn't be condusive to His wanting us to seek Him out through His continued interaction with us, would it?

love michelle

hoser

myelaine you have a pm

Finkelstein

Of course everything you mentioned Michelle is in concordance to inerrancy to establish a semblance of unremitting faith and devotion.

I wouldn't want to intensionally devalue the message of the Gospel of Christ or show disrespect of its unbodied moral imperative.

"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise." .... Sam Pascoe

Leolaia

Finkelstein, I discussed the variance in the stories of Judas' death in this thread:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/116729/1/The-Evolution-of-Judas-Iscariot

The difference is due to the use of different exegetical traditions in the composition of the different narratives. The same process continues in post biblical interpretation, with OT interpretation being a prime source of details in the stories. The same is the case with the difference between the Lukan and Matthean birth narratives; the latter drawing on biblical and haggaaic tradition about the birth and life of Moses which accounts for all the details and narrative elements that contrast with the Lukan story (the Magi, the star, the divorcing, the massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt, the return home when Herod died, etc.).

Christ Alone

The apologetic press explains Judas supposed contradiction this way:

Matthew 27:5 and Acts 1:18 cannot be accepted as legitimately contradicting each other if it is possible for both to be true—and it certainly is scientifically and logistically possible for both incidents to have occurred. Consider a brawl in which two men are fighting to the death. The larger man strikes the undersized man in the throat, crushing his larynx. For nearly 60 seconds, the wounded man stumbles around trying to breathe, but to no avail. He then goes limp, falls to the ground, and strikes his head on the cement, having died from asphyxia. When the police come to the scene and ask witnesses what happened, one person will likely declare, “James struck John and killed him.” Another person may say, “John suffocated,” while another might add, “Falling headfirst, John busted his skull on the ground, causing part of his brain to ooze out onto the concrete.” Are the witnesses’ statements contradictory? No. They are supplementary. Likewise, neither of the statements concerning the death of Judas is contradictory. Simply put, one does not exclude the other.

According to ancient tradition, Judas hanged himself above the Valley of Hinnom on the edge of a cliff. Eventually the rope snapped (or was cut or untied), thus causing his body to fall headfirst into the field below, as Luke described. Matthew does not deny that Judas fell and had his entrails gush out, and Luke does not deny that Judas hanged himself. In short, Matthew records the method in which Judas attempted his death. Luke reports the end result.

Leolaia

That tradition is harmonistic; my thread shows there was a little cottage industry in harmonizing the stories, limited only by imagination. It's amazing the number of scenarios exegetes devised. But the stories are quite distinct and irreconcilable without disregarding narrative features. But the reason for the differences is quite explicable from the way the authors used OT sources.

BTW the Lukan story does not say that Judas fell headlong. That itself is a harmonistic reading.

King Solomon

etude, remember that the Bible was written over centuries by many authors (and editors, AKA redactors), who attempted to modify the depiction of cosmology based on the best knowledge of their day (whether Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, or later Babylonian). A similar modification is seen with the belief in the soul surviving death, where some sects (eg Essenes) didn't believe in a soul, and hence the Bible presents a contradictory view depending on where you read. The same occurs with the theodicy issue: it's ala carte, where a selection is presented so readers can pick their own to fill a need.

That's a problem with even Aesops fables, eg "look before you leap" or "he who hesitates is lost" are both on offer. Of course, Aesop didn't claim his words to be divinely-inspired, so it's not an issue. The Bible claims to have Divine YHWH telling his message to prophets, and presumably an omniscient would see logical discontinuities conflicting with His prior writings, and avoid the problem.

There's many ways to depict the Hebraic view of cosmology, but here's another which shows the model as it pertains to the Creation account and Flood:

PS Leolaia explained the problem with the story of Job, where subsequent redactors attempted to "resolve" what they saw as issues by a bit of "editing", but often created more problems as a result of "too many cooks spoiling plot by introducing continuity errors.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/233839/2/JOB-Was-He-Used-As-A-Gambling-Pawn

(The dead sea scrolls also reveal many similar redaction efforts, a problem for Biblical apologetists)

Etude

King Solomon "etude, remember that the Bible was written over centuries by many authors", that thought never escaped my mind. This is why I singled out the idea that if some will redact for reasons of revisionism in an effort to conform with a particular view (which is an important reason why the gospels contradict each other and omit events from each other), it's possible to assume the opposite. That is, not that they added words ("circle" for example) to conform to a view, but that they omitted words (or a genealogical entries) in order to support an opposing view. I guess we have to look at individual examples. The one we're discussing, whether and if it's a circular earth on a circular ocean or a spherical earth must exclude the mention of "corners" as a support for assuming that the ancients believed the world was flat and having corners.

Finkelstein

One thing one can take from reading the bible and other ancient texts, is what were the compelling and needful reasons for those words

to be written. Was it an inner expectation of something greater than himself or a understanding of why mankind was here, with a

real foreboding purpose of are very existence . One should realize and accept that human ignorance in itself played a great roll in these

imagined deities and the forwarding necessity to worship them, this also bares well with the Hebrew culture/civilization.

The Bible-- Full of Errors And Inconsistencies?

Share this