Nuwanda

Let me take your curiosity up a notch. When trying to prove that Jesus is the Messiah through his lineage, do you really think Matthew would risk this obvious "contradiction"? Or that the "corrupt translators" wouldn't change it? This is a big issue.

You have come to the classic fork in the road, and neither road is a good one for the critic. On the one hand either the corrupt translators don't really exist and we have a reliable historical account of Christ; or there is no contradiction, Matthew is accurate, and we have a reliable historical account of Christ.

It must be one or the other. 2000 supposed years of changes would not have missed this one. And, Matthew would not try to convince Jews based on a faulty genealogy, seeing as how important genealogies were to them.

Please refer back to my post (#10) for further info.

Stacey Melissa

That's right, she reigned for six years. That shows up in the search results I linked to. And she was the wife of Joram, who was already listed in the lineage in 1 Chronicles. She was in the same generation as Joram. She doesn't get her own generation.

You have no idea how I learned of this contradiction. It wasn't via the internet. It was from reading the annotations in my Oxford Annotated Bible.

I ignored the rest of your argument for two reasons. One, it is critical to your argument that the author of Matthew left out four generations. I showed this to not be the case. Thus, your argument failed. Two, that's a lot of work to debunk the rest of your argument, considering I already demonstrated a fatal flaw. I still may get around to it anyway, but I have to go to work right now, so see ya later. :wave:

Nuwanda

Wrong again (this is getting painful). Please read Exodus 20:5 with your Oxford study Bible. It says "I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the 3rd and 4th generations of those who hate Me."

There does not need to be 4, 3 is just fine, I was simply trying to impove on your argument before I let all the air out of it. Sorry.

Nuwanda

Stacey's argument has been hospitalized so while it's recovering would anybody else like to bring up a new favorite "contradition?"

Stacey Melissa

Yeah, I thought of that right after I got to work. Looks like you're gonna make me actually do some work for this one, eh?

Stacey Melissa

(in new threads, please)

Amaleq13

How much risk is involved when your readership is primarily, if not entirely, comprised of faithful followers of Jesus Christ who eagerly embrace any apparent support for their beliefs? This is, after all, the same author who introduced the Night of the Living Dead Saints to Christians who continue to be less than critical of it to this very day.

Or this is a false dichotomy and an unstated alternative is that the symmetrical lineage was accepted by his fellow Christians despite the fact that there is no basis in Judaism for the Messiah to qualify as Davidic by adoption.

Why do you assume the author was trying to convince Jews of anything?
Matthew's author would not likely have much success convincing many Jews that Jesus was both the magically conceived Son of God and a bloodline descendant of David.

Jack the Bodiless

14 does not equal 17. The contradiction stands.

You are arguing that Matthew lied about there being "fourteen generations". An explanation of WHY Matthew might have lied, even if plausible, doesn't change the fact that the Bible is wrong.

Also, as Matthew was written in Greek, the author isn't free to casually change the definition of "generation". I hereby declare that I am the President of the United States, where "President" means "householder" and "United States" means "my house". Because these words already have assigned meanings in English, I can't do this, and my statement remains false.
In some cases, this has happened (especially with earlier OT texts). Generally, however, both Jews and Christians have been understandably reluctant to alter what they consider to be the Word of God. Hence the many errors and contradictions throughout the Bible. "This contradiction is so obvious that it would have been fixed" is an argument that simply falls flat on its face: the fact remains that (like many others) it simply WASN'T fixed.

Jack the Bodiless

...And let's not forget that we're talking about Matthew here.

The most dishonest of the canonical authors. The one who was most willing to shamelessly plunder the OT and rip verses out of context. The one who had no qualms about embellishing the resurrection account with fantastic and conspicuous events that nobody else noticed (e.g. the "Night of the Living Dead" zombie incursion). The one whose poor grasp of Hebrew idiom resulted in Jesus riding into Jerusalem balanced on the backs of two steeds like a circus performer. The inventor of the entirely non-historical "Massacre of the Innocents". I could go on...

To suggest that THIS author would care about such a relatively obscure error being exposed is ridiculous.

spin

I don't think you can make a case for dishonesty, Jack.

What sort of tradition went before the writer? Did he really suddenly do it all himself with no tradition behind him? Obviously not. He at least had sources such as Mark and something like Q. There are signs in many writers that they used collections of citations. Mark has at least one example of a citation conflated with another. We don't know what tradition went before Matt.

Again, was it the writer of Matt or was he collecting the sorts of stories available?

This is a sign of him interacting with the literature, but it isn't a matter of dishonesty.

Yet another assumption that the writer invented content. The massacre of the innocents indicates to me a relatively long evolution. Massacres are well-known from history. You can read of Alexander Jannaeus massacring thousands of Pharisees. The Pharisee, Shimon ben-Shetach is recorded as having killed 80 "witches" in Ashkelon. Herod killed a a lot of his own family. Despite an event being "entirely non-historical", one cannot claim that it was simply invented, especially for deception. Chinese whispers are a much more likely way for such a story to evolve: Herod's soldiers beat up a boy and his dog; they beat a bunch of kids; they ruthlessly slaughtered the children; it was in the village of Beckley; they slaughtered all the children in Beckley. Etc.

I doubt he would have believed it was an error. Do the good believing folks who come here believe that they are making things up, when they make backs-to-the-wall defences regarding how say Daniel had to have been written in the sixth century, or when they try to defend the various re-used prophecies? I find it difficult to believe that they wouldn't believe the claptrap they say, so I couldn't see that they are making it up. It's easier -- at least for me -- to account for the problems of the writer for reasons based on the traditions he received and the stories he collected.


spin