Grand Nubian

At the same time that being a complete monkey and trying the "I don't see it so it's not there" garbage.

Beleieve in your fairy tale. "I" know that the bible is FULL of hogwash. Which could explain why you are a comlete moron.

Viti

Hello svensky
A contradiction that always bother me was the differing accounts of the fate of Judas. This has been debated on this board before, but I have never seen it reasonably or logically refuted.

Matthew 27:3-8 states Judas felt remorse, went to the temple, threw the silver he had received on the ground and went and hanged himself. The priests used the money to buy a field to be used as a cemetery 8"Therefore that piece of ground has been called the Field of Blood to the present day" (Amplified Bible) then it states in 3:9 that that this was a fulfillment of a prophesy of Jeremiah

Acts 1:16-19 starts out with Peter stating "it was necessary that the scripture be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit foretold by the lips of David..." so the following is supposedly a fulfillment of a prophesy as well. Any way then it states Judas used the silver to purchase some land, where he fell headlong and burst open and his intestines poured out and 19"all the residents of Jerusalem became acquainted with the facts so that they called the piece of land in their own dialect Akedalma, that is, Field of Blood" (Amplified Bible)

So there are 3 questions raised

1) Which and whose prophecy was fulfilled?
2) Did Judas hang himself or fall and burst his guts?
3) Who bought the land?

As an aside, I find it interesting that the only item that is not contradictory is the name of the field, and anyone who knows a strangly named place will tell you this smacks of "local legend".

I grew up in a small fairly old Colorado town and the local ballfield and picnic area is named "Dirty Woman Park", there are numerous "local legends" regarding the name, and no one can agree on the truth.

svensky

Expreacher, i've had a bit of a look at the verses you've mentioned. I think it is a strech to say that jesus is practicing situational ethics here. Or at least what i noramlly associate with the term.

You'd have to agree that the bible is full of examples of 2 conflicting moral laws, ruth lying to save the lives of the isrealite spies, or the apostles preaching the gospel inspite of a command from rome not to, spring instally to mind.

This isn't any different. Or at least i dont think so.

As for errors. The first one i see is the differences in names used. Was that 1 ? The names seem to be similar so i'm not sure (at this point) that that is a problem. What were the other 2. I will point out that i only read the chapter you mentioned, and judging from the chapter i will need to go back a couple of chapters in samuel to figure out what is going on. So i will get back to you in a bit more detail here. At any rate what where the other 2 errors (assumint the name is one).

Jason

svensky

I'll just point you to the best explanation i have seen of this. I think it is a more than reasonable explanation.
http://www.tektonics.org/judasdeath.html

If i was to tell you what i thought and how to resolve it i would simply go along with this explanation. I was going to check the greek when i got that far through learning the languauge.

Does this offer a reasonable explanation ?

Jason

Viti

Well....I would call that quite a stretch...but apologetics is all about stretching, twisting, and turning to make things fit. BUT, more importantly, the article does not address question one, the inconsistency in the prophecy that was fulfilled. Was it Jeremiah's or David's? And where is the original prophecy (is it in the OT?) so we can test the veracity of the Christian assertation that God has fulfilled all prophecies?

Grand Nubian

That's why apologists are called monkeys. There's a technique to catch them in the wild. The trapper digs a hole in a stone wall and allows them to watch. Then he leaves while the monkeys try to take out the beans or whatever from the hole. If their hand is made into a fist with beans in side they aren't able to remove their hand. The only way is to release the beans.
Then they are right back where they started.

Apologist like to come see what atheists, and the secular community are up to.
You give them a few beans(bible errancy in this case)and they get stuck. The only way is to completely let go of the scripture and avoid looking like a moron.

Moron or monkey? What a choice to have everyday.

-DM-

See also Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe, a comment which was originally posted by Svensky in feedback and has now been copied to this forum.

--Don--

Viti

Thank you Donald. I had seen his original post and your reply. I am glad he has started to actually look at some of the items mentioned.

I often use your compilation BIBLICAL INCONSISTENCIES for reference; I somewhat agree with svenski in that some sites are incredibly nitpicky and drown the serious problems in minutiae. I have found yours to be easier to navigate and find specific items, and like that you linked to the various bible translations.

Thanks again for all you do!

svensky

Lady shea, is really that much of a strech. Could you explain why a simple copyist error is such a strech ?

Jason

My_Handle

Jason,
Since you have moved on to looking within the Bible for possible errors, I'm assuming that you have already concluded that the Bible, as assembled by men, is in the form intended by god -- no more/less than his word. Is this assumption true?

Personally, I cannot see how anyone ccould get past the external tests of the Bible, especially those related to the issue of the canonization of the NT. Everything in the Bible teaches us that man is imperfect, and that all of or works are as filthy rags, but christians are willing to accept that fallen man correctly assembled the canon without divine intervention.
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...lor/canon.html

Reading this article only confirmed what I had always wondered about when growing up in a Baptist church. I've always thought that no human can achieve perfection, but perfection was required of those that assembled the canon. My main concerns are:

1) To believe that our current canon of the Bible is the true and absolute canon is to not only assume perfection during the assembly phase, but to also assume that of the 5(?) major compositions of the canon, ours is the only correct one.

2) The idea that the canon was perfectly assembled is a relatively recent idea. I love to show people the quotes from Calvin and Luther that show that they favored some parts of the Bible over others -- clearly not allowable if all of it were divinely inspired.

Personally, I think a reasonable doubt that the canon is 100% correct is reason enough to discount a serious consideration of the Bible in the first place. I don't want to tackle the errancy issue until I can be reasonably sure that all of the books in the Bible are supposed to be considered as scripture in the first place.

Anyway, I'm not trying to lead this thread in a new direction, but I am curious to see if you have tackled this issue before the errancy one -- I don't see how you could do it in any other order.