Jerry McDonald

Well, it’s nice to know that some things never change isn’t it Farrell? What you have just read is typical Farrell Till rhetoric that he uses to make people think that he has fulfilled his responsibilities in debate. He wonders why I didn’t go to the IIDB and read the discussion that he and Jason had already had. I didn’t know that I needed to Farrell. I thought this was a debate between us and us alone. Now I see that I was expected to go to another discussion list and read a discussion that he had with someone else. Not only that but now I see that I have every Tom, Dick and Harry on this list responding to my debate article and I guess they are expecting a response from me. Sorry, I am only responding to what Farrell Till has to say, not what everyone else on this list has to say. I agreed to a formal debate, not an internet discussion. However, every question and point that these others brought up will probably be answered in the course of this article.

Farrell tells us that the word “irreconcilably” was just an unintentional insertion probably because the word accurately represents his view of the matter. Well…he should have no problems with it being there. Since I brought this out he says: “I hate to disappoint McDonald after all the space he wasted talking about his expertise in logic, but I am going to take care of the wording of the proposition by agreeing that ‘irreconcilably’ should be in it” (Till’s Second Affirmative, p.1). Well…good, I am glad that he is agreeing to this word so easily.

He wasted a lot of space with examples like the color of his wife’s car, the name of a so-called dog and his supposed date of birth. As far as the first and the last one are concerned they are called “contraries” where both are false. The middle one, however, is possibly a sub-contrary where both are true. It is true that he could have had a Beagle and a Bassett Hound both with the name of Buddy. However, I understand his point. And had he bothered to read my first rebuttal rather than just read at it he would have seen that I covered this area. And so that Farrell won’t miss it this time, I am going to use all capital letters. I am not doing this to shout, but rather to make the letters large enough for Farrell to read this time.

“THE DICTIONARY DEFINES THE WORD “CONTRADICTORY” AS “2 LOGIC EITHER OF TWO PROPOSITIONS SO RELATED TO ONE ANOTHER THAT IF ONE IS TRUE, THE OTHER MUST BE FALSE” (IBID, P. 309). WELL, WHAT IF BOTH ARE FALSE? GOOD QUESTION! COPI SAID: “TWO PROPOSITIONS ARE CONTRADICTORIES IF ONE IS THE DENIAL OR NEGATION OF THE OTHER, THAT IS, IF THEY CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE AND THEY CANNOT BOTH BE FALSE” (INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC, P.173). SO TO ANSWER THE QUESTION, IF THEY ARE BOTH FALSE, THEY CANNOT BE CONTRADICTORY BECAUSE ONE FALSE PROPOSITION CANNOT DENY OR NEGATE ANOTHER FALSE PROPOSITION, NEITHER CAN ONE TRUE PROPOSITION NEGATE OR DENY ANOTHER TRUE PROPOSITION. ONE OF THEM HAS TO BE TRUE AND THE OTHER ONE HAS TO BE FALSE IF A CONTRADICTION EXISTS” (McDonald’s First Rebuttal, p.2).

Contraries are instances where both can be false, but both cannot be true. They do not negate each other; they are not in opposition to each other which is why they won’t work here. They are both false statements and are only contrary to each other. Farrell isn’t saying that the two accounts depicting Mary Magdalene are merely contrary to each other, he argues that they actually negate each other. The example of the color of his wife’s car isn’t parallel because they don’t negate each other. They are a negation of the true color which is “White.” However, they are simply contrary to each other. The one statement is not saying that the other statement is false. They are simply false statements about the color of Sandra’s car. However, Farrell argues that John’s depiction of Mary Magdalene in 20:1-18 is a negation of Matthew’s depiction in 28:1-10. If that is so then they contradict each other. And for Andre’s information I have studied logic for 25 years, and while I don’t “fancy myself as a master logician”, I do know how to read and I can read what the “master logicians” have said. I began studying logic at the Brown Trail School of Preaching in 1980. Andre said that I should have at least attempted to show that the two propositions (I assume he means the accounts under discussion) were sub-contrary before I started waving my hands. Well…again, if he had actually read what I wrote rather than just skimming over it, he would have seen that this is exactly what I did. And as I did for Farrell I will quote it and place it in capital letters so Andre can see it:

IN LOGIC THERE IS SOMETHING CALLED A “SUB-CONTRARY.” THAT IS WHERE TWO PROPOSITIONS ARE SUCH THAT BOTH CANNOT BE “FALSE, THOUGH THEY MIGHT BOTH BE TRUE” (INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC, P.175). IN THESE STATEMENTS THEY HAVE, “THE SAME SUBJECT AND PREDICATE TERMS, AGREE IN QUALITY AND DIFFER ONLY IN QUANTITY, THERE IS OPPOSITION EVEN THOUGH THERE IS NOT DISAGREEMENT IMPLIED. (IBID). THESE TWO ACCOUNTS, THOUGH THEY MAY DIFFER, ARE NOT IRRECONCILABLY INCONSISTENT. THEY CAN BE RECONCILED. (McDonald’s First Rebuttal, paragraph 9).

Now that should be enough to satisfy Andre on this issue. Now to his so-called problem if we assume (and he has already so stated) that all Martians are purple spotted then the two statements would contradict each other. However, if they are not all purple spotted then they are contrary to each other. However, they do not negate one another unless all Martians are purple spotted.

Farrell accused me of thinking of myself as “a master logician”, something that he knows that I have never tried to pass myself off as, but…he has said that he is an English, writing and proof-reading expert. So let him tell us: “Would it be right, Farrell, for you to have the word inconsistent in your proposition twice right next to each other?” In order to get out of this he tries to wiggle out of the meaning of “irreconcilably” by quoting the meaning of “reconcile” and then saying that since the meaning of “’Reconcile” means ‘to make consistent or compatible’ (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary)” that the word “irreconcilably” “denotes the inability to make something consistent or harmonious” (Till’s Second Affirmative p.2). Well that is alright we will go with that. If he can use opposites then so can I. He defines the word “reconcile” as to make consistent. Then he says that the opposite of reconcile is irreconcile which, according to him “denotes the inability to make something consistent.” Well, let’s use his method here. The inability to make consistent is the meaning he has ascribed to the word “irreconcile”. Now if the word means the inability to make consistent it must be because it is inconsistent, because “inconsistent” would be the opposite of “consistent”. , I already gave the definition of “irreconcilable”: “that cannot be reconciled; that cannot be brought into agreement; incompatible, conflicting, INCONSISTENT [All Caps for Emphasis jdm] (Webster’s New World Dictionary, p.745). In other words his proposition says that the depiction of Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28:1-10 is INCONSISTENT INCONSISTENT. (All caps for emphasis jdm). Now, tell us Farrell…I mean after all you are the English Expert here. You went to Harding and Freed Hardeman and graduated with a degree in English. You taught College writing for years there at Canton. Is that GRAMMATICALLY correct? (Again all caps are used for emphasis jdm). If one of your students had handed in a paper with such on it would you have allow that to pass unobserved and uncritiqued? That wouldn’t work at all, would it? Yet, you expect us to allow you to get away with it without making note of it. Now Farrell…you have known me for far too many years to even think that I would allow that to pass without saying something. It wouldn’t even work if you put an “and” between the two words or if you put an “ly” at the end of the first word, now would it?

The only way that it makes any sense at all is if you define it with the second word as “contradictory”, but then he has already stated that he doesn’t like the strict meaning of the word “contradictory.” Well he is right about that, he never has liked it, but there are just some things in life that you might not like, but you have to put up with them any way. The strict meaning of words is just some of those things I guess. Then he surprised me by saying: “I have never claimed, AT ANY TIME, that in the strictest sense of the word in Logic, Matthew’s depiction of Mary Magdalene in 28:1-10 ‘contradicts’ John’s depiction of her in 20:1-18” (Till’s Second Affirmative, p.6). Well…now…that is quite a concession isn’t it? Is he saying that there are NO (emp jdm) contradictions (in the strictest sense of the word “contradictions”) in the resurrection accounts? I do believe that it was he that said: “Few of these ‘solutions’ can withstand logical scrutiny, but the one that remains the Achilles heel of inerrantists who have tried to harmonize the resurrection accounts is what I call the Mary Magdalene problem” (Till’s First Affirmative, p.1). Well…if the Mary Magdalene problem is the Achilles heel of the harmonization of the resurrection accounts and if the Mary Magdalene depictions between Matthew and John are not contradictory (in the strictest sense of the word you understand) then there must be no contradictions (in the strictest sense of the word you understand) in any of the resurrection accounts. Now if that’s true, why the discussion on it? I’m not interested in mere differences. I’m not even interested in your so-called inconsistencies because you will not allow the logical definitions. If all we have is just your opinion and my opinion whose to say that your opinion is any better than mine? Do you know, absolutely, that you are right and I am wrong? If all we have are just some differences which seem to be inconsistent with each other, why all the fuss?

He proceeds to tell us that I got my “prison argument” from Roy Deaver who taught me at preacher’s training school. Two things: (1) I got the argument from Thomas Warren in his debate with Anthony Flew, and (2) Roy C Deaver (I assume that is who he meant) never taught me in school. His son, Roy Hardeman Deaver, was my Greek teacher. So, no, I didn’t learn this from Roy Deaver. Sorry, but his info is off just a little.

He then deals with the first wall: “the word “irreconcilably” and states: “It is entirely possible Matthew’ and John’s resurrection accounts to be irreconcilable without one of them having to be true.” (Till’s Second Affirmative, p.6). Again he didn’t understand what I said, so let me put it down to his level of understanding. You cannot have the word irreconcilable to mean inconsistent if your next word is inconsistent with the meaning of “incompatible” unless you are using the logical meaning of “incompatible”. It won’t work, and as a former College writing professor you should know that.

After much “explication” (actually what he does cannot be called explication because the word “explication” means: “an intensive and exhaustive scrutiny and interpretation of a written work, often word by word” [Webster’s New World Dictionary, p.494] and that is something that he just does not do) he goes to the second wall, “inconsistent” and says: “I also showed that it is possible for irreconcilably inconsistent narratives to both be false, and the fact that McDonald apparently can’t see this speaks volumes about his knowledge of logic. There is no second wall.” (Till’s Second Affirmative, p.15). No…he did no such thing. All he showed was that two statements can be false, but they are contraries, one cannot negate the other. Again Copi said: “Two propositions are contradictories if one is the denial or negation of the other, that is, they cannot both be true and they cannot both be false” (Introduction to Logic, p.173). Now…while I am no expert in logic Copi is, and he is the one that said two false propositions cannot negate or deny the other. You say that Matthew’s account is a negation of John’s account. If that is indeed the fact, then one of them has to be true. You are the one who affirms that the two accounts are irreconcilably inconsistent. Now unless you are willing to say that the two accounts are inconsistent inconsistent then you must recognize the fact that the other meaning of the second word inconsistent is appropriate; the word “contradictory.” You either have to admit that or that will speak volumes about your knowledge of English.

He says that the first three walls don’t exist and so the fourth, fifth and sixth walls don’t exist either. He decides not to comment on my statement because he doesn’t want to give me any more wiggle room than he already has. In other words he can’t answer the argument.

Then he goes to the seventh wall about God not being able to lie or be wrong and says:

“We see a bit of question begging in McDonald’s seventh wall, because he can say that ‘God cannot lie or be wrong’ only by assuming the inerrancy of the Bible, which makes those claims—even though the Bible contradicts itself on them” (Till’s Second Rebuttal, p.16).

There are two things wrong with this statement. (1) It is not begging the question for me to quote the Bible in its own defense. I have debated with these guys since 1988 and I have yet to see one of them make even one logical argument against the inerrancy of the Bible. I have yet to see anything from any of them which would lead me to believe that the Bible is not the inspired, inerrant word of Almighty God. (2) He says that the Bible contradicts itself on these things. What do the words “these things” in your statement mean Farrell? Do they refer to the resurrection accounts? Didn’t you just say that you have never contended that Matthew’s depiction of Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28:1-10 contradicts (in the strictest sense of the word) John’s account? Well…if you have never contended such, you must not have included those two accounts in your statement about the Bible contradicting itself. I’m wondering about those two words “these things” in your statement. My argument was dealing with the two accounts (Matthew and John) of Mary Magdalene. You said that the Bible contradicts itself in these things. Does it or not? Well maybe he doesn’t mean “contradict” in the strictest sense of the word. That ought to be good!

He then tells us that it doesn’t logically follow that if part of the Bible is inspired that all of it is inspired. Now, he wants to use logic! Have you ever noticed how he likes logic when he thinks it agrees with him, but how he doesn’t like it when it doesn’t? Well…it is true that people can add uninspired works to inspired scripture, but you can tell what is compatible with known inspired writings and what is not.

In his response to the final wall he says that I cannot understand the difference between different information that isn’t inconsistent with another account and in different information that is irreconcilably inconsistent. No…I am not the one with that problem, Farrell is. He is the one that doesn’t understand that the different information between the two accounts isn’t inconsistent.

If he continues to contend that the two accounts are irreconcilably inconsistent, in order to be “grammatically” correct, he is going to have to define the word “inconsistent” as “contradictory” otherwise he will have a redundancy in his proposition. If he has a redundancy in his proposition he will have to do one of two things (1) take the word “irreconcilable” out in which case he will end this debate before its completion or (2) change the meaning of the word “inconsistent” as “contradictory” in which case he will have to admit that at least one of the two narratives is true, thus giving credence to the proposition and ending right back up in his prison again. Well…what’s it going to be Farrell? You decide.

Now to answer his questions:

1. By names, who were “the women” who went to the tomb in Matthew’s narrative? Answer: Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.

2. What is your textual basis for this answer? Answer: Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1.


3. If you excluded Mary Magdalene from your answer to number 1, what was your textual basis for this solution? Answer: I didn’t exclude her. I mentioned her name.

4. By names, who were “the women” whom the angel told that Jesus had risen (v:5)? Answer: Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary.

5. If you exclude Mary Magdalene from your answer to number 4, what was your textual basis for this exclusion? Answer: I didn’t exclude her. I mentioned her name.

6. By names, who were “the women” who ran from the tomb and encountered the resurrected Jesus (vs: 8-10). Answer: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.

7. If you exclude Mary Magdalene from your answer to number 6. what was your textual basis for this exclusion? Answer: As you can see, I didn’t.

8. If you included Mary Magdalene in your answers, how do you explain Mary Magdalene’s telling Peter and John that the body of Jesus had been stolen? John gave information that Matthew did not give. I stated this in my first rebuttal, but since you could not seem to find it, I will restate it this time in all capital letters so you can find it:

“WE HAVE THE SAME ISSUE HERE. MATTHEW HAS MARY (AND I AM NOT GOING TO QUIBBLE ABOUT HOW MANY MARYS THERE WERE OR WHO THE MARY WAS, IT IS AGREED THAT IT WAS MARY MAGDALENE) COMING TO THE TOMB, SPEAKING WITH THE ANGEL AND BEING TOLD THAT JESUS IS GOING TO MEET HIS DISCIPLES IN GALILEE AND TO TELL THEM TO MEET HIM THERE. AS THEY LEAVE JESUS MEETS THEM HIMSELF AND TELLS THEM AGAIN TO TELL HIS DISCIPLES TO MEET HIM IN GALILEE. THAT IS ALL THAT MATTHEW RECORDED. HE DIDN’T RECORD ABOUT PETER BEING TOLD OR RUNNING TO THE TOMB AS PETER ISN’T EVEN MENTIONED IN MATTHEW’S ACCOUNT.

JOHN ON THE OTHER HAND INCLUDED MUCH MORE INFORMATION. IT HAS MARY COMING TO THE TOMB AND SEEING THE STONE TAKEN AWAY FROM THE ENTRANCE. SHE RUNS AND MEETS PETER AND JOHN AND SAID, “THEY HAVE TAKEN AWAY THE LORD OUT OF THE SEPULCHER, AND WE KNOW NOT WHERE THEY HAVE LAID HIM” (JNO. 20:2). PETER AND JOHN THEN RUN TO THE TOMB AND THEY FOUND IT EMPTY AND THEY WENT HOME BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW THE SCRIPTURE [ISA. 26:19] THAT SAID THAT HE MUST RISE AGAIN FROM THE DEAD (JNO. 20:3-10).” (McDonald’s First Rebuttal, p.3).

Now I have a few questions for him.


1. Is the word “contradictory” the logical meaning of the word “inconsistent”?

2. Is it grammatically correct to have a redundancy in a sentence or proposition?

3. Is the word “contradictory” the logical meaning of the word “incompatible”?

4. Does the Bible have any self-contradictions (in the logical sense of the word) in it?

5. Since you have never claimed that there was a contradiction (in the strictest sense of the word) between the two accounts (Matthew and John) depicting Mary Magdalene and since the Mary Magdalene problem is the “Achilles heel” (in your estimation) of the resurrection accounts, do you mean that there are no contradictions (in the logical sense of the word) in the resurrection accounts?

6. Is it possible for John to have given added information about the Mary Magdalene experience and still be harmonious with Matthew’s account?

7. Do you absolutely know that Matthew’s depiction of Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28:1-10 is irreconcilably inconsistent with John’s depiction in John 20:1-10?

8. Since your definition of “inconsistent” is “incompatible” and since the logical meaning of “incompatible” is “not predicable of the same subject without contradiction” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, p.711) do you mean that the two accounts of Mary Magdalene actually contradict each other in the logical sense?

There are a few things that Farrell failed to respond to from my first rebuttal in his second affirmative. So let’s notice those first then we will go to his grammatical analysis.

1. He did not say anything about Copi’s statement of the sub-contrary. This is where two propositions are such that both cannot be false, through they might both be true (Introduction to Logic, p.175).

2. He didn’t say anything about trying to place me in the affirmative when he is in the affirmative position in this debate. I have nothing to solve. He has the obligation to prove that the two accounts are irreconcilably inconsistent.

3. He said in his first affirmative that this debate centers on what Matthew said about Mary Magdalene and I showed that this was not true. This debate centers on the totality of Biblical teaching on the matter. No response.

4. He said, in his first affirmative, that the early Christians would have not had John’s account until it was circulated to them. To this I responded by saying that it wouldn’t matter. If there was a question about it that amounted to anything surely the early church fathers would have covered it in their writings. They wrote long before the bound volumes were made. There is nothing said about it by them to my knowledge. Farrell has not produced anything to show that there was. No response.

5. I pointed out Farrell’s theory of Biblical inspiration as the “dictation” theory and to this he chose not to respond.

6. I pointed out in his “two visit theory” that there is no evidence as to how far Mary ran when she ran into Peter and John, it may have just been a few feet. I pointed out that after she told them that the body was gone they ran and looked in for themselves. When they ran away she stayed behind to look in and that is when she met the angels. What did Farrell say about that? Not a word.

7. I pointed out that John wrote from the standpoint of an eyewitness while Matthew did not. John’s account would naturally have more information than Matthew’s account. To this, Farrell failed to reply.

8. I pointed out that I was not going to quibble about Mary Magdalene being one of the Marys who went to the tomb, but his questions seem evident to me that he did not read my rebuttal because it seems that he did not know that I believed that Mary Magdalene was there. Yet he accused me of not responding to his grammatical analysis. As far as his quibble about the personal pronouns there is no question about who the pronouns “them” and “they” refer to in Matthew’s account. They refer to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. You know, if Farrell would actually read my articles rather than just reading over them he would see that I answered his grammatical analysis when I stated that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were the women Matthew was talking about.

Now to further look at his grammatical analysis of Matthew 28:1-10. While doing that I want to say something about his analysis of Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper. He said: “Whether this ‘difference’ is a discrepancy or not is really very debatable, because the word ‘then’ in Luke’s account implies chronological sequence” (Till’s Second Affirmative p.13). Then down from that he wrote:

“…the word translated ‘then’ in verse 19 of Luke’s account was ‘kai’ in Greek, which, conveys the English sense of “and.” Although it was common in Greek—as is also true in English—for chronological sequence to be implied by the conjunction ‘and,’ I will just agree for the sake of argument that Luke meant nothing more than that Jesus had some time during the last supper taken a cup and taken a loaf of bread but not necessarily in that order” (Ibid, pp. 13,14).

He then went on to say that this was different from the Mary Magdalene problem. Well, let’s see if it is different. By the way I didn’t bring up Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper to trap Farrell, but it went together so nicely.

1. Verses one and two of Matthew chapter 28 says: “In the end of the Sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to the sepulcher. And (kai) behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from haven, and came and (kai) rolled the stone back from the door, and sat upon it.” Now Farrell has stated that the word “kai” which conveys the English sense of “and” was common in the Greek as well as in English, for chronological sequence to be implied. So there could have been a difference in the time that the angel came and spoke with the women.

2. Verse five of Matthew chapter 28 states: “And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.” The word for “and” here is a different word which is “apokirtheis” which comes from “apokrinomai” which means: “and, later, also…to answer” (The Analytical Greek Lexicon Revised, p.43).

3. The translation would be proper if interpreted this way: “Later, the angel answered and say unto the women, Fear not ye:” The word “and” which appears twice in verse 2 shows that the chronological sequence was not followed directly and the word “and” in verse 5 goes with the word “answered” which shows that while there was a skip in the chronological sequence the angel later answered the women. Matthew’s account is not in chronological sequence.

4. Now let’s put the two together: “In the end of the Sabbath as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake: for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled the stone away from the door and sat upon it.” (Matthew 28:1,2). “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home. But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain” (Jno. 20:1-12). “Later the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.” (Matthew 28:5). The words “kai” and “apokritheis” show that there were skips in the chronological sequence thus allowing the information from John to fit in very nicely. The only problem that Farrell can logically have with this is that John only mentions Mary Magdalene (but that is the only one he seems interested in to begin with) and two angels while Matthew mentions Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and only one angel. That should take care of Farrell’s so-called grammatical analysis of Matthew 28:1-10.

I don’t know how many more exchanges we have, but Farrell is going to have to do much better than he has done in his past two articles to prove his proposition.

Jerry McDonald

Sven, is there any way to get back in and re-edit the article? I was not aware of how to do that when I posted the first article.:banghead:

Toto

You can only edit your posts for about two hours after you post. After that you can ask a moderator to make changes.

Farrell Till

Despite having explained the intended meaning of my proposition in terms that are clear enough for even a grade-school student in language arts to understand, McDonald came back with the same nonsense about “irreconcilably inconsistent” in my proposition having to mean “inconsistent inconsistent.” At best, it would have to mean “inconsistently inconsistent,” since irreconcilably is an adverb and not an adjective.

The best way to expose McDonald’s linguistic ignorance in this matter is to refer him to websites where the expression irreconcilably inconsistent was used repeatedly in legal and court documents. If he will bother to Google the term irreconcilably inconsistent, he will obtain 895 articles where it was used in reference to court cases that involved claims of inconsistencies that could not be harmonized. Here are just a few of them.

The first one is quoted from http://www.insurancedefenseblog.net/...ncilably_.html Insurance Defense Blog with emphasis added to highlight the use of the term that McDonald claims would have to mean “inconsistent inconsistent.”

It is too bad that McDonald wasn’t involved in this legal case. He could have set the litigants straight on the misuse of “irreconcilably inconsistent.”

The next example was quoted from http://tinyurl.com/zmat4 Sampson Fire Sales v. Dennis Sampson and Louise Sampson, with emphasis again added.

The poor Sampsons! They must have had lawyers who just didn’t know that irreconcilably inconsistent would necessarily mean “inconsistent inconsistent.” Maybe they can appeal their case to a higher court on the grounds that the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which issued this decision, was so incompetent that it too didn’t know that irreconcilably inconsistent would have to mean “inconsistent inconsistent.”

In the case of http://tinyurl.com/n2hy8 Earl Johnson v. Ablt Trucking Co., Inc., and Ted Tammen, the United States Court of Appeals of the Tenth Circuit, issued a decision from which the following quotations have been taken. Emphasis has also been added to the term irreconcilably inconsistent in these quotations.

What kind of dummies do we have running our courts in this country? Don’t they know that irreconcilably inconsistent would necessarily mean “inconsistent inconsistent”?

Finally, the last quotation, which is just one more of several hundred that I could have quoted, is from http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...5619-3&invol=3 the State [of Washington] v. Holmes, No. 25619-3-II, decided by the Superior Court of Pierce County, Washington. Again, the term irreconcilably inconsistent has been emphasized.

Poor Holmes! He went to court and argued that the verdicts he was challenging were “inconsistent inconsistent”! McDonald should go to law school and become an attorney. There would obviously be a huge demand for his services in cases where the litigants were disputing whether charges or court decisions were irreconcilably inconsistent.

The flaw in McDonald’s reasoning will be easily recognized by those with enough common sense to read and understand a dictionary. Webster’s II New College Dictionary defines irreconcilables as “conflicting beliefs or ideas that cannot be brought into accord,” so just what is so erroneous about saying that Matthew’s depiction of Mary Magdalene on “resurrection morning” contained ideas that cannot be brought into accord with the ideas that “John” used in depicting her? New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus defines irreconcilable as “ideas, beliefs, etc. that cannot be brought into agreement,” so just where did I err linguistically in saying that Matthew’s depiction of Mary Magdalene on “resurrection morning” contained ideas that cannot be brought into agreement with the ideas that “John” used in depicting her?

McDonald has wasted hundreds of words on an utterly silly quibble about the meaning of “irreconcilably inconsistent,” in my proposition, an expression that I have shown to be perfectly sensible and widely used in legal documents. Despite all of the time he has wasted on this quibble, some progress has been made, because he has admitted that the grammatical structure of Matthew 28:1-10 necessitates the presence of Mary Magdalene throughout. Hence, I need not spend time on his answers to my questions about the pronoun references in this passage except to comment on his answers to the first two.

I asked him to tell us “by name,” who the women were who went to the tomb in Matthew’s narrative, and he said, “Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.” He must have reading comprehension problems, because my question clearly stipulated that he was to identify the women in Matthew’s narrative who went to the tomb, and this narrative named only Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In answer to my request for the “textual basis” of his answer, he said, “Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1,” so he apparently does have trouble understanding rather simple questions. My proposition is that “(t)he depiction of Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28:1-10 is irreconcilably inconsistent with her depiction in John 20:1-18,” so what was said in Mark’s narrative is irrelevant to my proposition. The issue is whether Matthew’s narrative can be reconciled with John’s, and my position, of course, is that they are irreconcilably inconsistent.

To his credit, however, McDonald did make an attempt to solve the inconsistency problem in these two narratives, so I will now show how McDonald has tried a bit of linguistic legerdemain to try to make Matthew’s narrative mean something that it clearly did not say. He said, without giving any lexicographical support at all to his claim, that the Greek word apokrinomai in Matthew 28:5 meant “later”; hence, he argued that there is a “gap” between verses 4 and 5. The earthquake happened, the angel descended, Mary Magdalene left the scene (without panicking), went through all of the experiences related in John 20:1-18, returned to the tomb, where the angel “later” said to her and the other Mary that Jesus had risen, and so on.

Before I show the absurdity of all this linguistically unjustified mingling of the narratives, let’s look at the “solution” that McDonald put together from all this speculation. The italicized part is what he injected into Matthew’s narrative from John’s account.

McDonald said that the word apokrinomai meant “later” but gave no lexicographical evidence to support this claim. In their Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1952, pp. 92-93), Arndt & Gingrich assigned three meanings to it: (1) to answer or reply, (2) to continue [to speak], and (3) to begin to speak up. They said nothing about “later” as a meaning of this word.

Here are some examples of the first usage of the word.

I suppose McDonald thinks that this passage is saying that when John objected to Jesus’s request to be baptized, Jesus then left the scene and maybe even went back to Galilee to think about John’s objection for a while, and then returned to the Jordan area “later” and said to John, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Such an interpretation of the passage is, of course, ridiculous, for the obvious meaning is that when John objected to the baptism request, Jesus replied to him to let it be so now. The reply came immediately in response to John's comment.

Because of space limitations, I will simply quote the other examples of how Matthew used apokrinomai, because it is easy to see that this word simply meant to say or answer in reply to someone present on the scene, who had in most cases raised issues that called for a reply or answer. I will emphasize in bold print the derivations of apokrinomai. Since all quotations will be from the book of Matthew, I won’t repeat the book’s name each time.

Altogether, there are 55 different passages in Matthew, where derivations of apokrinomai (usually apokritheis) were used. All 55 examples can be seen at the Crosswalk.com http://tinyurl.com/znpgy lexicographical site. A check of these usages will show that the word did not convey the sense of “later” as McDonald alleged without citing lexicographical support but instead conveyed the sense of replying or answering, as in the examples quoted above, or “continuing to speak,” as in examples that I will quote immediately below, or “beginning to speak,” as in the examples that I will quote after that. The examples above were cases of this word being used in its primary sense of “replying or answering,” and the contexts in which it was so used showed that it was used to convey the sense of immediate replies or answers to something that had just been said or asked. There are no contextual indications anywhere in these examples that something was said or asked and then, after significant delays in which change of scenery occurred, the reply or answer was given.

The example below illustrates the second meaning of the word, where someone was speaking and then continued to speak or add comments to what he had already said. Again, I will quote from the book of Matthew so that we will have an example of how the author of this book sometimes used the word in this secondary sense.

Although apokritheis was translated as answered in the KJV--“At that time Jesus answered and said”--the word was clearly not used in the sense of “later,” which McDonald claims that it meant--but in the sense of continuing to say or speak that which was already begun.

A third usage of apokritheis was the sense of beginning to speak, and this is important, because as I will later show, this was how it was used in Matthew 28:5, where McDonald has tried to twist the word into meaning “later.” Before, we look at this verse, however, let’s notice some other places where Matthew used the word in the sense of beginning to speak.

Here Peter was not replying or answering anyone but began to speak in response to the emotional experience of seeing Moses and Elijah transfigured with Jesus. The same usage can be seen in the passage below from the book of Matthew. To show the transition from the previous chapter, I will begin quoting with the last two verses of chapter 21.

Here the word was being used in its third sense of beginning to say something, and it was this sense in which the word was used in Matthew 28:5, where McDonald has arbitrarily claimed, without lexicographical support, that the word apokritheis meant “later.” Let’s see if there is any contextual support for this assertion.

McDonald would have us believe that Matthew was here saying that the two Marys came to the tomb; experienced an earthquake; saw an angel descend, roll away the tomb, and sit upon it; at which time, Matthew’s narrative was put on hold while Mary, without panicking, left the scene, found Peter and the other disciple, told them that the body of Jesus had been stolen, after which Peter and the other disciple went to the tomb, looked inside, went inside, found the linen cloths that the body had been wrapped in, believed, and returned to their homes, while Mary M stood outside crying, and then stooped down, looked into the tomb, saw two angels sitting one at the foot and the other at the head of where Jesus had lain, at which time Matthew’s narrative kicked in again, and the angel
“later” answered and said to the women, etc., etc., etc. At this point in McDonald’s “solution,” he claimed that the words kai and apokritheis “show that there were skips in the chronological sequence thus allowing the information from John to fit in very nicely.”

There are two major problems in McDonald’s solution: (1) the Greek word kai was not used here with apokritheis and (2) apokritheis did not convey the sense of “later” as McDonald claims.

If McDonald will check a Greek text, he will see that apokritheis in Matthew 28:5 was preceded by de, which was a Greek particle (a short, indeclinable part of speech) that was “commonly used to connect one clause w[ith] another when it is felt that there is some contrast betw[een] them, though the contrast is oft[en] scarcely discernible” (Arndt & Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 1952, p. 170). This lexicon went on to explain that the most common translations of this particle were “but, when a contrast is clearly implied; and, when a simple connective is desired, without contrast” but “freq[uently] it cannot be translated at all.”

In Matthew 28:5, the de particle was translated by the English word and, which is probably why McDonald thought that apokritheis had been preceded here with the Greek word kai. At any rate, his assumption that “chronological sequence” was conveyed here with the Greek conjunction kai is obviously wrong.

That brings us to his claim that apokritheis conveyed the sense of “later,” but he gave no lexicographical evidence to support this claim. I, on the other hand, cited Arndt and Gingrich above to show that they assigned three meanings to it: (1) to “answer” or “reply,” (2) to “continue” [speaking], and (3) to “begin” to speak up. They said nothing at all about the word’s conveyance of “later” as its meaning. I analyzed above several of the 55 times that Matthew used this word--and cited where all 55 of them can be read on a lexicographical website--and none of them even remotely suggested that this word could convey the sense of “later.” This is probably something that McDonald read in an apologetic work seeking to solve the discrepancy now under consideration, and he uncritically accepted it without bothering to check for verification. If, however, there is any lexicographical evidence that apokritheis meant “later,” I haven’t been able to find it. Here are two other lexicons whose definitions of apokrinomai agree with the one quoted above but do not say or even imply that the word meant “later.”

Strong, like the Arndt & Gingrich lexicon, noted that apokrinomai was sometimes used to mean “begin to speak.” He cited word #6030 in his Hebrew lexicon as a point of comparison for this usage. That word was ‘ânâh, which he defined, by extension, to mean “to begin to speak.” Noticeably absent from all of these lexicons is anything that can be construed to say, as McDonald is claiming, that apokrinomai meant later. Hence, his “solution” to the Mary-Magdalene problem turns out to be just another inerrantist exercise in futility. Matthew’s narrative gives no linguistic basis at all for the assumption that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, found the stone rolled away, ran to tell Peter and John that the body had been stolen, returned to the tomb, and then had the encounters with the angel and Jesus related in verses 5-10.

There are other problems--huge problems--in McDonald’s “solution,” but I will have to present them in my next post, because I am rapidly running out of space. If I don’t address McDonald’s questions, he will accuse me of evasion, so what little space I have left will be devoted to those questions.

In the sense of the meaning used in formal logic, no, it isn’t, but I have explained to the satisfaction of anyone but a fundamentalist hairsplitter that I intentionally used the word inconsistent in my proposition instead of contradictory, because I didn’t want the debate to get bogged down in the kind of quibbling in which McDonald has now mired it. I have shown that the word inconsistent means “not in agreement or harmony,” and that is the meaning that I intended in the wording of my proposition.

Redundancy is considered unnecessary repetition in writing. Although not a grammatical error, it is considered a writing flaw. This question, however, is irrelevant to my proposition, because it does not contain redundancy. As I have shown above irreconcilably inconsistent is a perfectly legitimate and coherent expression used to denote inconsistencies that cannot be harmonized. It has wide currency in our legal system, so the redundancy in my proposition exists only in McDonald’s imagination.

I am sure that McDonald is using the word logical to denote how formal logic would define incompatible, and as I have explained and explained and explained, I did not intend to so use the word. Incompatible, as any reputable dictionary will tell McDonald, means “not in harmony or agreement,” and I am affirming in this debate that Matthew’s and John’s depictions of Mary Magdalene are not in harmony or agreement.”

Yes, but I don’t have the space to present them here. Besides, whether the Bible has self-contradictions in it is irrelevant to this debate, because I am not affirming that Matthew’s and John’s resurrection narratives are self-contradictory. I am simply affirming that they depicted or characterized Mary Magdalene in ways that are not in harmony or agreement.

No, I don’t mean that. Contradiction, in the strict meaning of the word as used in logic, does exist in the resurrection narratives, but this is now irrelevant to this debate, because I am not affirming that Matthew’s depiction of Mary M contradicted John’s. I am simply affirming that the two depictions are inconsistent. If McDonald doesn’t mind looking any sillier than he already does, I will be glad to debate those other issues with him later. Right now, I would like to pin him down to the specific issue defined in my proposition.

Yes, it would have been possible for him to do this, but as I have shown, he didn’t.

Hmm, I can’t help wondering if McDonald meant to ask here if I think that the depictions of Mary Magdalene in the two accounts are “inconsistent inconsistent.” McDonald, of course, is trying to give himself room to quibble about the word absolute, so I will simply say that I doubt if there is anything that I can “absolutely” know, because I am not omniscient. Anyway, I am certain that the two accounts are irreconcilably inconsistent, and until someone shows me that they aren’t, I will remain certain.

I have now crowded the word limit in the IIDB forum, so I will have to answer his final question without quoting it. That answer is that I have said and said and said and said that I have not intended words like “incompatible” to be limited to their meaning in formal logic. Incompatible means “not in harmony,” and that is how I am using the word in this debate.

McDonald needs to address the problems in his “solution” to the Mary-Magdalene problem and stop wasting time on irrelevant semantic matters.

Jerry McDonald

McDonald’s Third Rebuttal

Mr. Till responds to my final question with this statement: “I have now crowded the word limit in the IIDB forum, so I will have to answer his final question without quoting it” (Till’s Third Affirmative). If he hadn’t spent so much space producing six law cases where the words “irreconcilably inconsistent” were used in his feeble attempt at turning the table on me trying to make it look like I was saying that irreconcilably inconsistent meant “inconsistent, inconsistent” he might have been able to have quoted that last question and maybe even tried to affirm his proposition in some way. I never have contended that “irreconcilably inconsistent” meant “inconsistent inconsistent”. All I have said is that this is the way he has defined the terms of his proposition and I have pointed out that he is wrong in doing that. His reason for using so many examples is the very same reason he used so many passages where the word “apokritheis” when he could have made whatever point he thought he wanted to make with one or two passages. Why, then, did he use so much space on these and other irrelevant examples? Simply because he has run out of soap! Never, in all the years I have known him, have I ever seen him in such a sad state. The man has absolutely nothing to affirm which is manifested by his complete lack of material in his last article.

First of all, I am not the one who has defined the proposition, he is. He started out with the proposition with just the word “inconsistent.” I then pointed out that the word “irreconcilably” must be in the proposition and when it was defined it would have the same basic definition that his word inconsistent had. I pointed out that the only way he could possibly get out of having a redundancy in his proposition is to define the word “inconsistent” as “contradictory” or define the word “irreconcilable” as “incompatible” which has the definition of “contradictory” and define “inconsistent” in the way that he did. This is an old trick that those of us who have debated Till in the past are well aware of; it is called “turn the table” and he engages in it quite often. It isn’t going to work on me and he ought to know that. He also tells us that “redundancy is considered unnecessary repetition in writing. Although not a grammatical error, it is considered a writing flaw”. Hmm…let’s see, Webster says that the word “flaw” means: “2. a defect, fault, error…” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, p.532). Webster also says that the word “error” means: “something incorrectly done, through ignorance or carelessness; mistake” (Ibid, p.476). Well…it sounds to me like Farrell is saying that it is not a grammatical error, but it is a writing error. The word “grammar” means: “the system of word structures and word arrangements of a given language at a given time” (Ibid, p.606). Writing has to do with grammar and if it is a writing flaw, then it seems to me that it ought to be a grammatical flaw or error. This is why he didn’t bother answering my question about a student handing in a paper with redundancies in it. He is trying his best to avoid the real issue here.

I don’t have a problem with the words “irreconcilably inconsistent” as long as they both don’t have the same basic definition. In each of his law cases he failed to define “irreconcilably inconsistent.” I have no doubt that the two words are used together, we use them that way all the time, but we don’t give them the same definitions or even the same basic definition. His original definition for inconsistent was: “’incompatible’ or ‘not in agreement or harmony’ or ‘lacking in logical relation’” (Till’s First Affirmative, paragraph 1). When I reminded him that the word “irreconcilable” was a part of this proposition he then tried to define “reconcilable” as “’to make consistent or compatible’ (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary)” (Till’s Second Affirmative, p.2). Then he tries to define “irreconcilable” as “the inability to make something consistent or harmonious” (Ibid). Well, if he defines “inconsistent” as “incompatible” or “not in agreement or harmony” and if “irreconcilable” means the “inability to make something consistent or harmonious” (his definitions) isn’t he giving both words the same definition? If not, why not? “He used the word “compatible” as the meaning of “reconcile” and as he said: “’irregular would have opposite meaning of ‘regular’, ‘irrational’ would have the opposite meaning of ‘rational’ and so on” (Ibid). Well…I guess irreconcilable would have the opposite meaning of reconcilable and since his definition of reconcilable” is “to make something consistent or compatible” then the opposite of “reconcilable” would be irreconcilable” which would mean to “make something inconsistent or incompatible.” And that is where he gets himself into trouble because he has already defined “inconsistent” as being “incompatible.” Therefore all of his examples are moot because he hasn’t shown how those words in his examples were being defined. The only cover he can run to is to define one of the words as “contradictory” and this is something he does not want to do. This is the only point I have been making and even a child can see that. He can create all the smokescreens he wants, but the fact of the matter is, he has a problem with his proposition because of the way he has chosen to define it.

He stated: “At best, it would have to mean ‘inconsistently inconsistent,’ since ‘irreconcilably’ is an adverb and not an adjective”. If he will go back to my last article he will see that I covered this one as well: “It wouldn’t even work if you put an ‘and’ between the two words or if you put an ‘ly’ at the end of the first word, now would it?”

Most of the rest of his article dealt with the word “apokritheis” and he used close to three quarters of his article on passages that use this word. He also stated five times that I alleged that “apokritheis” meant later “with no lexicographical support”. And he thinks I have a reading comprehension problem! Well…as I did last time I guess I will have to put it in all capital letters so he can be sure to see it:

“THE WORD ‘AND’ HERE IS A DIFFERENT WORD WHICH IS ‘APOKIRTHEIS’ WHICH COMES FROM ‘APOKRINOMAI’ WHICH MEANS: ‘AND, LATER, ALSO…TO ANSWER’ (THE ANALYTICAL GREEK LEXICON REVISED, P.43).” (McDonald’s Second Rebuttal).

Now I am not denying what Thayer and Ardnt and Ginrich say, the fact is they don’t pars the word. The Analytical Greek Lexicon does (which is why it is preferred over the others) and it states that “apokritheis” is “nom, sing, masc, part, aor 1 passive of apokrinomai and it carries the sense of “and, later, also”…the definition is “to answer.” (The Analytical Greek Lexicon Revised, p.43). Now you can argue with that until the Lord returns, but you won’t change that fact. Ardn’t and Gingrich didn’t say that sometimes the word “de” an unimportant particle of a word that has no translational value. They said that sometimes it cannot be translated. Notice what they said:

“Most common translations: but, when a contrast is clearly implied: and, when a simple connective is desired, without contrast; freq. it cannot be translated at all” (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament And Other Early Christian Literature, p.171).

Sometimes the conjunction (or particle) “de” is there but cannot be translated because the conjunction (but, and, also, moreover and according to Moulton even “later”) is already implied. Therefore, there is no separate place for its translation in that sentence. The word “de” in the Textus Receptus in Matthew 28:5 follows the word “apokritheis” with a dash. It actually looks like this: “apothritheis_de”. In such cases the “de” is not translated because the conjunction is already understood in the meaning of the word itself and there is no place in the sentence for a separate translation of “de.”

I never said that the word ‘kai” was used in Matthew 28:5, I said it wasn’t used. Again Farrell needs to read what I actually said. I further said, “the word ‘and’ which appears twice in verse 2 shows the chronological sequence was not followed directly and the word ‘and’ in verse 5 goes with the word ‘answered’ which shows that while there was a skip in the chronological sequence the angel later answered the women” (McDonald’s Second Rebuttal). What Till is talking about is the statement I later made: “The words ‘kai’ and ‘apokritheis’ show that there were skips in the chronological sequence thus allowing the information from John to fit very nicely.” (Ibid). However, this was said later in the article and the word “kai” refers to the word “and” in Mt. 28:2, not Mt. 28:5.

He also writes: “This is something McDonald probably read in an apologetic work seeking to resolve the discrepancy now under consideration, and he uncritically accepted it without bothering to check for verification” (Till’s Third Affirmative). What is that, another assumption much like the one about Roy Deaver teaching me the prison argument? I know of no other work even dealing with this issue, let alone uncritically accepting the conclusion without bothering to check it for verification.

Till says: “If, however, there is any lexicographical evidence that ‘apokritheis’ meant ‘later,’ I haven’t found it” (Till’s Third Affirmative). Well…that doesn’t surprise me very much because there’s a lot of things in this world that Till hasn’t been able to figure out or find. Go buy a copy of Moulton’s lexicon and turn to page 43 and you should find it in there. The parsing of the word “apokritheis” gives it the sense of “later” or “and” (which Till agrees can show that there is a skip in the chronological sequence) or “also.”

I don’t believe for a moment that Farrell is really having all this trouble understanding what I have written. I firmly believe that he sees these things, but because he doesn’t know how to respond to them in any way that will keep him looking like a complete fool he simply overlooks them.

He said: “To his credit, however, McDonald did make an attempt to solve the inconsistency problem in the two narratives….” In the first place I am not in the position of having to solve anything at all. He is the affirmant and he is supposed to produce evidence that there is a problem between the two accounts so much so that they cannot be reconciled. Logically, and I know how he hates logic (that is until he thinks it agrees with him), he is supposed to be showing that these two accounts actually negate each other. All I have to do is to show that he hasn’t and cannot do that. He likes to talk about legal cases, so let’s use this idea. What would a jury think if the prosecution got up and told the jury: “Today, my friends the defense is supposed to solve the problem regarding the defendant. He must prove that his client is innocent or you must convict him of the crime for which he has been charged.” O, my…I thought the prosecution was in the position of proving (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the defendant is guilty. I guess that’s just the ignorance that comes from eleven years of law enforcement experience. All those years sitting in court rooms and testifying in cases. I thought the prosecution was supposed to do the proving and make their case, beyond a reasonable doubt. Now Farrell comes along and wipes all that out by telling us that I am supposed to solve the inconsistency problem he thinks exists. Again we see his tactic of trying to turn the table on me. If he can get me to take the affirmative in this debate it takes a huge burden off his shoulders. Well…it won’t work, because he is in the affirmative and he has to show where these two accounts actually negate each other. I have been showing that that he has failed to show that a problem does indeed exists between these two accounts and that is my only obligation.

In the second place he is supposed to be giving evidence that shows that one account negates the other and in order to do that he is going to have admit that one account is false while the other is true; something he does not even want to attempt. All in the world I did was to spring an unintended trap and show the fallacy of his position. I am not going to let him get out of this. He is supposed to prove (and I am sorry he doesn’t like it when I continue bringing up the word “contradictory” but, O, well…I’m all broken up as you can clearly see) that Matthew’s account negates John’s account. In order to do this he is going to have to show that they contradict each other.

The following shows just how desperate he really is. He asked me which women were mentioned in Matthew’s narrative. My reply was: “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome.” In his next question he asked for the textual basis for my answer and my answer was: “Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1”. Now, I did mention Mary the mother of James to show who the other Mary (in Matthew 28:1) was and since Salome’s name was in Mark 16:1 I mentioned it as well. Here is Farrell’s response:

“I asked him to tell us ‘by name’ who the women were who went to the tomb in MATTHEW’S NARRATIVE, and he said, ‘Mary Magdalene, Mary, the Mother of James and Salome’. He must have reading comprehension problems, because my question clearly stipulated that he was to identify the women in MATTHEW’S NARRATIVE who sent to the tome, and this narrative only named Mary Magdalene and the other Mary…” (Till’s Third Affirmative).

Question: “Did I not mention Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (of course who was the mother of James) and did I not give Matthew 28:1 as my textual basis? The fact that I added Salome and Mark 16:1 in no way makes my answer out of line and it in no way means that I have reading comprehension problems. I know what his question “clearly stipulated”, and I gave the correct answer to both questions. I said Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and Mt. 28:1 was the textual basis for my answer. If that is all he has to complain about then he has nothing. Mary Magdalene is the woman under consideration in this debate (the other Mary is not even mentioned in the proposition) and as long as I gave her name and gave the right scripture then I fulfilled my obligation. The fact that I identified the other Mary and mentioned Salome and gave the textual basis for those names does not make me wrong. I didn’t know that a little “explication” was going to hurt anything, but I guess I was wrong. Actually I put Salome’s name in there and identified the other Mary because I saw a possible future objections about it and I wanted to handle it now.

He was hoping that I would not mention Mary Magdalene so he could have something to argue about, but when he found her name there and Matthew 28:1 in answer to the next he wasn’t expecting it and my answer left him with no room to respond. In other words, I took his sugar stick away from him and now he needs something to play with. Alright, for the moment, we will say I was wrong for explaining who the other Mary was and for mentioning Salome’s name and Mark 16:1. So here is my answer to his first question: “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.” My answer to question number two is: “Matthew 28:1”. Okay…good enough?

Now let’s look at his scriptures one by one and see what the deal is on them. He lists Mt. 3:15 where the word “de” follows the word “apokritheis” and is translated “but”. However, the word “de” is not the word in question. It is the word “apokritheis” which is exactly the same as is found in Mt. 28:5. His analysis of Jesus’ statement: “let it be so now” meaning that the answer came immediately is a false analysis because Jesus was saying: “let it be so for now.” Chrysostom wrote:

“And He did not merely say, ‘suffer,’ but He added, ‘now.’ ‘For it will not be so forever,’ saith He, ‘but thou shalt see me such as thou desirest; for the present, however, endure this.’” (The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Volume 10, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, p.76).

We don’t know how long it took Jesus to respond to John. John was busy baptizing people and when Jesus came to be baptized John told him that he would not baptize him. Jesus could have told him later to let it be so for now. The KJV says: “Suffer it to be so now….” The word “now” here doesn’t refer to when Jesus responded, but rather to let John know that for now this is the way it had to be.

Mt. 4:4 has the word “de” preceding the word “apokritheis” and probably means “but”, and it was evidently an immediate answer. However, this does not mean that it always has to be that way. Farrell is trying to make you think that every time I see the word “apokritheis” that I am saying that it has a sense of “later” and this is something that simply isn’t true.

The word in Mt. 8:5 could very well mean that it was an answer given later because Luke’s account of this narrative has the centurion sending his friends and it is very probable that Jesus told the friends he would come to the centurion’s house, then the friends went back and told the centurion and the centurion sent word back to Jesus not to come, but to just say the word.

The word in Mt. 11:2-5 does not necessitate an immediate answer as the Jesus was doing other things. It is very plausible that he could have given his answer later to allow the messenger to rest up before going back.

In Matthew 12:39 we have the same instance. The word “de” precedes the word “apokritheis” and is usually translated “but” and probably gives the sense of an immediate answer. However, the word “kai” does not always give the idea of there being a gap in the sequence of events and it doesn’t with this word either. Let it be understood that I did not say that the word “apokritheis” always necessitated the sense of “later”, but at times it does allow it. The context will determine when it does and when it doesn’t; much like Farrell’s analysis of Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper. “Kai” doesn’t always necessitate it, but it will allow it, and this will be determined by the context.

The word in Mt. 12:46 can certainly give a sense of later since Jesus was preaching. Someone told him that his mother and his brethren were there. I do not see where the word necessitates Jesus giving an immediate answer. He could have worked this into his lesson somewhere down the line.

The same is true of Mt. 13:10. Not everything that Jesus said or did was recorded and he could have given them a lesson and then told them why he spoke in parables. However, even if it does give the sense of an “immediate” answer in this passage it does not mean that it has to in every time; (the same thing is true of Mt. 13:36).

Then he goes to Matthew 11:24 which does give a sense of an immediate answer and his beginning to pray, but it does not have to be this way every time the word is used. As I originally said it can be translated “and, later, also”. “And Jesus said….” “Also Jesus said….” Sometimes it demands an immediate response and this is something that no one denies, but the context is what determines this. If Farrell can’t see this then he should not even be debating such issues.

His analysis of the transfiguration in Matthew chapter 17 would be laughable if it were not so serious. He writes: “Here Peter was not replying or answering anyone but began to speak in response to the emotional experience of seeing Moses and Elijah transfigured with Jesus.” Really! Do you think, Mr. Till, that Peter butted in at that exact moment while Jesus was speaking with Moses and Elijah or do you figure he waited until Jesus was through then spoke to Jesus?

His analysis of Mt. 22:1 is also false because he cannot prove that there was no time lapse. The passage simply states: “Once more Jesus spoke” (whatever translation Till is using). The KJV says: “And Jesus spoke”. The word for “and” there is the word “kai”. Now tell me Farrell, does this give a sense of something being done “immediately” or could it be later?

Then he caps it off with this statement:

“There are other problems—huge problems—in McDonald’s ‘solution,’ but I will have to present them in my next post, because I am rapidly running out of space. If I don’t address McDonald’s questions, he will accuse me of evasion, so what little space I have left will be devoted to those questions” (Till’s Third Affirmative).

Well, if he hadn’t spent so much of his allotment of words in irrelevancies he would have had the time to expose those “huge problems” with my solution. However, we will give him the benefit of the doubt and we will be waiting with “bated breath” to read his response to my “huge problems.” Well…I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for him because his statement is just another one of his favorite tactics to get out of dealing with his opponent’s material. This is the Farrell that I am used to debating: “I can’t get to your arguments because I don’t have the space.” You don’t know how many times over the years I have heard him make that or a similar statement.

I have responded to everything he has said up to this point. However, he has not given me the same courtesy. Now I want to deal with his answers to my last questions.

1. I asked if the word contradictory was the logical mean of the word “inconsistent” his answer: “In the sense of the meaning used in formal logic, no, it isn’t,…” Well he either messed up on this one and meant to say “yes, it is” or he needs to check the dictionary. Let me quote it one more time: “…not uniform, self contradictory…” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, p.712).

2. We have already addressed his answer to question number two. I dealt with it earlier in this article.

3. He failed to answer this question. He objected to the way I answered one of his, but at least I answered it. Please answer this question.

4. He says that the Bible does have self-contradictions in it, contradictions in the strict meaning of the word, but he doesn’t have the time to go into them. Hmm…I thought he didn’t like to talk about contradictions in the strict meaning of the word?

5. He says that he doesn’t mean that there are no self-contradictions in the resurrection accounts; contradictions in the strict meaning of the word you understand. He says that they do, and he would be happy to make me look sillier than I already do in another debate, but he just wants to pin me down right now to this issue. Well…he says that this is the “Achilles heel” of the resurrection accounts and he says that there is no contradiction (in the strict logical sense) here so if there are none here how is he going to prove that they exist elsewhere in the resurrection accounts? We will talk about it and see if he has the juice to do what he says he can do in this debate first before I waste my time on him in another one.

6. He says that it is possible for John to have given further information, but he didn’t. Well, does he know that absolutely?

7. He says he doesn’t absolutely know that these two accounts are irreconcilably inconsistent, but he is certain that they are. Well, if he will accept the definition of “certain” he will see that it means: “sure…not to be doubted, unquestionable.” (Webster’s New World Dictionary, p. 233). Hmm…the word “absolute” means: “an absolute certainty, 5. not doubted…” (Ibid, p.5). Then we look up the word “sure” and it means: “4. that cannot be doubted, questioned or disputed, absolutely true” (Ibid, p1432). It sounds to me like he is saying that he does absolutely know, but then he says he doesn’t. Farrell doesn’t want to be pinned down on this so he acts like a drowning man, he’ll grasp at anything.

8. He says that he is not using the formal logical definition. Well…if he will read my second rebuttal as well as this one he will see that I destroyed with his “not in harmony” idea because that is the exact meaning for the word “inconsistency” that he gave in his first affirmative: “not in agreement or harmony.” He is defining both words exactly the same way and as such he has a redundancy. Now he can call it a writing flaw or whatever, but it is the same as a grammatical error.

THINGS HE HAS OVERLOOKED IN PREVIOUS ARTICLES.

1. All eight of the things that I mentioned in my second rebuttal (I encourage the reader to go back and look and see what he overlooked from my first rebuttal). Respond please!

2. He didn’t respond to my response about his analogies concerning the color of Sandra’s car, his dog’s name and my quotation from my first rebuttal on the meaning of “contradiction.” Please respond.

3. He used Andre’s post as proof that I did not do what I was supposed to do and when I quoted from my first rebuttal, he had nothing to say. Is he saying that I was right after all? Respond please!

4. He didn’t deal with my defense of the prison argument after he responded to it, there were seven walls that he argued against and I defended. Is he saying that I am right after all? If not, he needs to respond to my defenses.

Now, he has all eight of the things that I bought out in my second rebuttal that he did not respond to. I want him to deal with those things, and he also has three other areas, one of which has seven things to deal with, and I am not through yet, because I have some questions for him.

Questions for Till.

1. Does the word “kai” show a gap in sequence of events every time it is used?

2. In your example of Peter speaking on the mount of transfiguration, do you believe that he interrupted Jesus, Moses and Elijah and began to speak immediately, or do you think that he probably waited until later?

3. Did I at any time say that the word “apokritheis” always gave a sense of “later” in my second rebuttal? If your answer is “yes” please show where I said it.

4. When I answered your first question with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome and gave Mt. 28:1 and Mk. 16:1 as my textual basis did I not correctly include the one person this debate is about and where it is found in Matthew’s account?

5. Is this the correct definition of the word “sure”: “4. that cannot be doubted, questioned or disputed, absolutely true”?

6. Is this the correct definition of the word “certain”: “sure…not to be doubted, unquestionable”?

7. If your answer to questions five and six are “yes” then are you saying that you do absolutely know that the two accounts between Matthew 28:1-10 and John 20:1-18 are irreconcilably inconsistent?

8. In your examples of the court cases listed in your third affirmative, did you check the definition of the words “irreconcilably inconsistent” that were used in each court case? If not, then how did you ascertain that one of the words wasn’t defined as “self-contradictory”?

Farrell has a lot to do and if he is going to answer even half of what I have previously said he is going to have do better than he has done in the past. And not only that, but now he has the things I have written in this article to deal with as well, along with the new questions. Jerry McDonald.

Jack the Bodiless

This discussion of the precise meaning of words like "inconsistent" does seem to be a derailment.

Is McDonald seriously suggesting that Mary Magdalene watched an angel come down from Heaven and roll the stone away, and then ran away crying "the body has been stolen"? Why would she do this? And if she actually meant "the body was taken by angels", why would this account not mention that the "thieves" were angels? This isn't a noteworthy detail?

The accounts are indeed inconsistent! If that word somehow causes problems, how about substituting "ludicrously divergent"?

Sven

Does this means that someone actually reads these posts?

Farrell Till

McDonald began his second rebuttal with the complaint that I had been unable to quote his final question to me because I had “spent so much space producing six law cases where the words ‘irreconcilably inconsistent’ were used in [my] feeble attempt at turning the table on [him],” but I devoted all of that space to showing the linguistic compatibility of these two words precisely because of the issue that McDonald had made in claiming that the two words meant the same thing. If I had just ignored his silly semantic quibbling, he would have accused me of evasion.

His second “rebuttal” contained 4,872 words, and he devoted 2,026 0f them to semantic quibbling, the bulk of which was an attempt to make irreconcilably inconsistent mean inconsistent inconsistent, and then he complained because I took the time to show that his quibble is completely without merit. He said that if I had not devoted so much space to make it look as if he were saying that “irreconcilably inconsistent” meant “inconsistent, inconsistent,” I might have been able to quote that last question. I had answered his question, but that apparently didn’t satisfy him, because he complained because I didn’t also quote it. Hence, we see that McDonald is going to continue to waste our time on petty quibbles and especially quibbles about the way that I have defined key words in my proposition.

Did McDonald try to make the terms irreconcilably inconsistent mean inconsistent inconsistent? Well, let’s just let the record speak for itself.

Such semantic gymnastics as this may arch the eyebrows of some, but it didn’t surprise me at all, because I have seen it before in previous debates with McDonald, who will waste huge chunks of time and space quibbling about the meanings of words so that he can set up semantic straw men to distract attention from his inability to refute his opponent’s arguments. If I should contend that the Bible’s requirement that one believe in an unseen, unknowable deity in order to avoid punishment in an unverifiable afterlife is irrationally unreasonable, McDonald would run to the dictionary, see that one definition of irrational is “contrary to reason” or, in other words, unreasonable, and shriek, “Aha, the dictionary says that irrational means unreasonable, so Till is arguing that the Bible’s requirements for salvation are ‘unreasonable unreasonable.’” Such linguistic ignorance as this ignores completely that [1] the vast majority of words in a language will have multiple definitions and [2] everything that is unreasonable is not irrational. This applies also to the wording of my proposition. Every inconsistency isn’t necessarily irreconcilable. If one newspaper article said that John Doe lives in Canton, Illinois, and another article said that he lives in Canton, Missouri, this would appear to be an inconsistency. However, if it could be shown that Doe maintains residences in both towns, which are only a relatively few miles apart, the inconsistency would disappear; hence, it could be said that the inconsistency in the two articles was reconcilable.

I defined the key terms in my proposition in a way that clearly stated my belief that the depictions of Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28:1-10 and John 20:1-18 cannot be made consistent.

I maintain that this definition of the terms irreconcilably and inconsistent were entirely appropriate in the wording of my proposition and that the redundancy that McDonald has claimed is entirely in his mind, which isn’t exactly the sharpest linguistic mind that I have encountered in my debates. By modifying inconsistent with the adverb irreconcilably, I was simply stating my belief that the inconsistent depictions of Mary Magdalene in the two gospel accounts cannot be plausibly explained away as in my John-Doe example above. McDonald has apparently recognized how linguistically foolish he was looking, because he said in his latest post that he doesn’t “have a problem with the words ‘irreconcilably inconsistent’ as long as they both don’t have the same basic definition,” but as any reasonable person can see by reading my definitions immediately above, I did not assign the same meaning to both words. Apparently to save face, McDonald said that in the first defense of my proposition, I had used incompatible to define inconsistent, which means that I had assigned the same definition to inconsistent as I was now giving to irreconcilable. Just take a look at McDonald’s linguistic brilliance.

For what good it will do, I will try to explain the “why not” to McDonald. To say that inconsistent means not in agreement or harmony” is to express a state of affairs pertaining to the ideas inherent in the word. If I say that X is inconsistent or not in agreement or harmony with Y, I am saying that the state of affairs, i. e., the ideas, represented in X don’t agree with the state of affairs or the ideas in Y. However, when I say that irreconcilable means “the inability to make something consistent or harmonious,” in this case, the inability to make X and Y harmonious, I am talking about the states of affairs or ideas in X and Y only in the sense that they are such that the ability to bring the two into agreement doesn’t exist. Hence, the one definition refers to conflicting ideas within X and Y; the other definition refers to the inability to bring those conflicting ideas into agreement. If McDonald were half the linguistic wizard that he apparently thinks he is, he would be able to see that.

I apologize to readers for the time that has been wasted on McDonald’s semantic quibbling, and I don’t intend to waste any more time in the rest of this debate responding to his linguistic ignorance, such as when he made the incredibly ignorant claim that a writing flaw would be a grammatical mistake. From now on, I am going to focus attention on what has become the sole issue in this debate: Whether Mary Magdalene’s presence throughout Matthew’s narrative can be reconciled with John’s claim that she went to the tomb, found the stone rolled away, and then ran to tell Peter and the other disciple that the body had been stolen.

McDonald has admitted that Mary Magdalene was present when the angel told the women that Jesus had risen and that she was present when the women encountered Jesus, touched him, and worshiped him, so the problem now is to determine if Matthew’s depiction of Mary M is consistent with John’s. To do this, McDonald postulated a delay between verses 4 and 5. Verse four tells of how the guards became paralyzed with fear, and verse five says that the angel spoke to the women, told them that Jesus had been raised, invited them to come see where he had lain, etc. The text doesn’t speak of a delay, but McDonald thinks that he has found it in the Greek word apokritheis, which he claims that with the addition of de meant “and, later, or also” as well as “answer.” Here I must admit that I erred in saying that McDonald offered no lexicographical support for this claim, because he did cite The Analytical Greek Lexicon Revised, so I freely apologize to him for having overlooked this reference. I will say more about this reference later, but first I want to point out that McDonald did not cite or quote any examples that this lexicon gave to show that this word sometimes conveyed the sense of “later.” To show that this word didn’t convey this sense, I took the time not just to cite but to quote several example of where Matthew used apokritheis, but McDonald cited no examples of where it had conveyed the sense of “later.” I am not familiar with the lexicon that McDonald quoted, but if it is a reputable one on a par with Arndt’s and Gingrich’s and Thayer’s, I would think that examples of where apokritheis had been used to convey the sense of “later” would have been cited in the definition of this word. Arndt & Gingrich, for example, cited over 40 examples of where this word was used in the sense of answering or replying to a question, and even more examples were given to show where it was used in the sense of “continuing [to speak].” After McDonald sees the section below where I quote various translations of Matthew 28:2-5 to show that none of them even hint of a delay between verses 4 and 5, maybe he will favor us with some examples of where the word was used in the NT to convey the sense of later.

Meanwhile, I will refer readers to http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/...cgi?number=611, where the word apokrinomei is defined by Thayer and all 248 examples of where it was used in the New Testament are quoted. I am later than usual in replying to McDonald’s third rebuttal because I have taken the time to read all of those passages in context, and I could find none where the context indicated that the word meant “and, later, also....” It would be helpful, then, if McDonald would cite some examples of where the word conveyed this meaning. He might also want to quote some English versions of the Bible where this word was so translated. Without such examples, we have only the word of a lexicographer who published his work in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that this was what the word meant in Matthew 28:5. Later, I will analyze McDonald’s quotation from the lexicon he cited and show that its “pars[ing],” to borrow McDonald’s word, is not just a bit suspicious but also contrary to verifiable fact.

I have taken the time to read 34 English translations of Matthew 28:5, and not a single one of them used later in translating this verse, yet McDonald contends that it meant, “And the angel answered later.” Let’s notice now the complete lack of support for this position in the various English translations of the verse.

What is there in this translation that would let us know that Matthew intended us to understand that apokritheis, translated said in verse 5, conveyed the sense of delay between the guards’ freezing in fear and the angel’s speaking to the women, or for that matter, where is that sense of a delay conveyed anywhere within the contextual translation of what the angel said to the women? If it is there, McDonald should be able to point us directly to it, or perhaps he doesn’t know that the meanings of words can be determined only from the contexts in which they are used. Furthermore, if that sense was inherent in the word apokritheis, why didn’t the translators render the verse to say, “But after a delay [or later], the angel said to the women”?

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation. To save words that I am going to sorely need later, I will truncate the remaining versions that I quote.

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation.

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation.

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation.

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation.

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation.

I am asking McDonald the same questions about this translation.

These are quotations of the passage in Matthew from the most frequently used English translations. Because space is now at a premium, I won’t be able to quote here the other 27 versions that I have copied, but if McDonald sticks to his position--and he will--I will quote them later. As we go through these 30+ English versions, readers will see that none of them gives even the slightest indication of a delay between the angel’s rolling back of the stone and his comments addressed to the women. To show that McDonald’s claim of a delay is not only without basis but is also totally absurd, I intend to [1] parse Matthew 28:5 in accordance with Thayer’s second definition of apokrinomai and [2] expose the questionable parsing of verse 5 in the lexicon that McDonald quoted. First let’s notice http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/...cgi?number=611 Thayer’s second definition of apokrinomai with emphasis added.

As previously noted, Arndt & Gingrich also included this meaning of the word, but they incorporated it into their first definition, so if apokritheis was sometimes used to note a reply or answer to something that was done, it would convey the idea of "later" only in the sense that the answering occurred after something had been done but hardly as long after as McDonald is claiming. With that in mind, let’s look at the word again in its broader context.

I submit to McDonald that this parsing of the interval between verses 4 and 5 is far more logical than his, which would require readers to understand the narrative like this....

I have expanded the passage to include six more verses so that I can show the absurdity of McDonald’s spin on Matthew’s narrative. That spin requires us to think that the action at the tomb stopped while Mary Magdalene ran to find Peter and do all of the other things included in the bracketed insertion above. Since doing all of these things would have entailed the passage of far more time than just a brief interval, certain problems present themselves for McDonald to explain.

1. What did the angel and the other Mary do while Mary Magdalene was running to find Peter and the other disciple and doing everything else included in the bracketed insertion? Did they just stare silently at each other or play tiddlywinks or something?

2. Since, according to McDonald’s scenario, the angel didn’t invite Mary Magdalene and the other Mary into the tomb to see where Jesus had lain until after Mary M had returned to the tomb, she couldn’t have known that the tomb was empty, so why did she tell Peter and the other disciple that the body had been stolen?

3. If McDonald claims that before Mary Magdalene left the scene to find Peter and the other disciples, she did look into the tomb and see that the body was missing, then why did the angel upon her return invite her into the tomb to see what she already knew?

4. Verse 11, quoted in italics above, claims that “while they [the women] were going" to tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, some of the guards went into the city to report to the chief priests all the things that had happened. Does this mean that the guards had remained paralyzed with fear all during the things that Mary M did from the time she left the scene until she returned and then left the tomb again?

This brings us to McDonald’s lexicographical claim that the Greek words apokritheis de in Matthew 28:5 meant “answered later” and hence shows that Matthew meant for his readers to understand that there was a significant “time gap” between the angel’s descent and his remarks to the women about the resurrection of Jesus. With my renewed apologies for having overlooked McDonald’s reference to this source, let’s now examine it in more detail than his presentation of it.

The word for and in Matthew 28:5 was not apokritheis but de, which can be verified by checking any interlinear Bible like Hendrickson’s. Such a check will show that the Greek word de, separate from apokritheis, sits immediately below the English word and in the translated part. I don’t have access to the lexicon that McDonald cited, but I have sent for it through interlibrary loan so that I can check to see what was in the place that McDonald omitted with the ellipsis [...]. I find it hard to believe that this is an accurate quotation of what the lexicon said, because apokritheis is a verb, and the words and and also are conjunctions, and later is an adverb, so I find it rather odd that a reputable lexicographer would use these parts of speech to define a verb. Reputable lexicons will use English verbs to define Greek verbs, so I suspect that the lexicon cited by McDonald was actually saying that the expression apokritheis de meant “to answer later” and that the intention was to claim that de, which was used after the verb in verse five, meant “and, also,” or “later” and that “to answer” was the meaning of apokritheis. If so, that throws a different light on what McDonald's source was actually saying.

When I gain access to The Analytical Greek Lexicon Revised, I will be able to check to see if my suspicions are correct. Interlibrary loan usually takes two to three weeks for reference books like lexicons to arrive, so if anyone reading this already has access to this one, I would appreciate receiving a copy of page 43, which McDonald cited. I have a fax machine in my home office, so if anyone who can copy this page will contact me, I will send the fax number and then send reimbursement for the cost of faxing. Since McDonald apparently has a copy of this lexicon, I make this offer to him too. If he is willing to copy the page and fax it to me, I will send him both the number and reasonable reimbursement.

Besides the omission where the ellipsis [...] occurred in McDonald’s brief citation of Moulton’s lexicon, another major weakness in his source is that neither he nor the lexicon--at least the part quoted--cited any examples of where the word later was used in translating apokritheis de, but when someone is claiming that there are better or more accurate ways to translate a biblical text than what appears in the popular translations, it is customary to cite other versions that so translate it. If, for example, I should claim that Isaiah 7:14 did not say that a virgin would give birth to a son, because the word ‘almâh in Hebrew meant “maiden” or “young woman,” my claim of inaccurate translation would carry no weight unless I cited examples like the RSV, NRSV, JPS, GNB, REB, Jerusalem Bible, among several others, that so translated it. If, then, there is any merit at all to McDonald’s claim that the words apokritheis de meant that a significant delay had occurred between verses 4 and 5 in Matthew 28, he should be able to quote some translations that have recognized this or at least to quote some NT passages where apokritheis de was translated to convey the sense of a significant delay between events where these word were used.

I don’t think that he will be able to do either, because, as I noted above, I have checked some thirty English translations of Matthew 28:4-5 and have found none that even remotely suggest that such a delay occurred. I have also checked all 248 places in the NT where apokritheis appeared and found that none of these implied significant delays. We have every reason to suspect, then, that McDonald has either distorted what Moulton’s lexicon said or else this lexicon, published in a city famous for its fundamentalist books, has strained to try to find some way to address the Mary-Magdalene problem.

I originally addressed every quibble that McDonald made about the usage of apokritheis in Matthew 28, but I had to cut some 3,000 words from my original draft to keep it under the IIDB 5,000-word limit. This cutting required me to omit my replies to McDonald’s far-fetched efforts to find delay in some of the examples I had quoted where Matthew had used the word apokritheis. Perhaps I will be able to include these in later replies, but now I need to use the rest of my limited space to answer the diversionary questions that McDonald asked at the end of his latest “rebuttal.” I’ll have to be brief.

No, it’s usually used much in the same way that we use the conjunction and in English, so in narrative writing it usually ties events together in chronological sequence.

I parsed this text in detail to show that McDonald doesn't have the slightest idea of how apokritheis was used here, but I had to cut out this part. I will include it later when I address McDonald's quibbles that tried to find delays in some of the places where Matthew used this word.

I am now out of space, so McDonald’s other questions, which were intended to distract attention from the central issue, will have to wait.

Decypher

As far as I am aware (correct me if I am wrong) a strict "contradiction" would necessarily require an error in the Bible, whereas an "inconsistency" doesn't mean with 100% certainty that the Bible contains error, but it may be very strong evidence for error.

It seems to me that someone with an inerrantist belief can't really ignore mere inconsistency (so to speak). They can't say, "It isn't a contradiction so I'm not going to worry about it". If they wanted to do so, then they would have to concede that they hold their inerrantist belief against strong evidence that the position is false. And presumably Christian apologists would not want to make that admission.

Johnny Skeptic

You have a problem. The only witness who makes any difference is the being who supposedly inspired the writing of the Bible, and you do not have idea whatsoever whether or not he revealed his true intentions. Paul basically says that it is not surprising that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. Why then would you find it surprising is God masquerades as an angel of light. If he was, how could you know about it?