sschlichter

you are beating the spot where the horse used to be but not because the horse died, he walked away. you are no longer even discussing contradictions, instead you are grading my analogies.

because ameleq claims to be beating his head against the wall, does not speak to the strength of his argument. in fact, if he made a good argument, he would not have to bang his head against it.

this claim to be so very frustrated is akin to an athlete claiming he is hurt to draw a foul. just drop it and argue your point, or don't.

~steve

WVIncagold

That kind of like saying your ignorant of leprechauns. Bwwwahhhhh. sorry way to funny. :rolling:

Amaleq13

Since my knowledge, in this context, is entirely dependent upon the Gospel authors, that remark would apply to them. I only know what they tell me.

All the analogies do is describe how the two of you wish the Gospels read.

What knowledge about angels allows one author to describe the character who informs the women that Jesus has risen as a young man and another as a flying, glowing angel? You are only kidding yourself. And your amigo.

Amaleq13

Yep, just as I said happens when analogies are used instead of an explanation. Your analogies only describe your beliefs. They do not comport with the text.

I don't recall making that claim in this discussion but you are correct. The frustration you describe would only speak to your refusal to accept the criticisms offered against your analogies.

Yes, if you had made good analogies, you would not have to defend them.

Excellent advice that clearly applies to your own position. Drop the failed analogies and stick to the actual texts. :thumbs:

James Brown

How did Mary know what angels look like?

From what apologists tell me, this is how it went down. Something happened on Easter morning. Thirty years later, Mary and Peter sit down with Mark and tell him their story, and he writes his gospel. Over the next ten years, Matthew and Luke independently write their gospels, each of them holding an open copy of Mark in their laps. They both agree that it's okay to copy portions of Mark word for word, but they add their own touches as well. One to two decades later, John writes his gospel.

Now when Mary and Peter were retelling their story to Mark, they must have told him everything. They were there, right? Mary and Peter knew all about the earthquake and the two angels descending out of the sky and the rolling of the massive stone away and the questioning back and forth. Mary told Mark how the angel told her that Jesus was in Galilee but that he was actually behind her the whole time. Apologists tell us that only one set of events happened that morning, but it took four authors to flesh out the details.

So, if the apologist is correct, Mary and Peter told Mark about two angels in shining rainment making thundering pronouncements and causing stone-splitting earthquakes. Mark nods thoughtfully, then turns to his desk and writes, "There they saw a young man sitting quietly in the tomb."

Mary looks over Mark's shoulder and says, "I said they were two angels, not one young man."

Mark replies, "Oh, that's all right. Over the next couple of decades, other people are going to fill in the details, and we can count on them to use the proper terminology. After all, if I said that there were two angels sitting in the tomb, our detractors would accuse of collusion."

This argument has little weight. When questioning eyewitnesses, police detectives prefer their stories agree. They don't have to be word for word, naturally (unlike certain passages in Mark, Matthew and Luke, by the way) but they do have to be consistent. If one eyewitness says there was one man who robbed the bank, and another says it was two men, then someone is in error. If the first eyewitness backpedals and says, "Yeah, there were really two men robbing the bank, but only one man spoke out loud, so I didn't feel it necessary to mention the other one," then that's a problem that can't be swept away.

sschlichter

you are wrong. these 2 sentences are an account of the same event and do contradict to the author and his original audience. This analogy is especially relevant because once you understand how context is relevant in the case of abraham Lincoln (where you have the missing pieces of info) then you will understand how it is relevant when you do not.

of course, it is <b>manufaxctured</b> to be analogous.

If you think these accounts contradict then it is because you have not taken into account that the doctor was referring to the location and cause from his perspective and the actor from his own perspective.

If you cannot see that when you have the context and situation of Abraham Lincoln's death then their is little hope for you in the case of Judas when you do not. I am not conceding the fact that they contradict, but I will concede that you will not be able to see how because you are unwilling to view the account from the perspective of the author.

I wrote them to be analogous to the 2 accounts. since I do not have the missing context, I can never be sure how analogous they are. However, the burden is to prove a contradiction, since one account stated that Judas hung himself and the other states that (for some undeclared reason) he burst open or fell headlong then you have not pointed out a necessary contradiction and you should move on to your next potential contradiction.

[quote]
Does he fly? Does he glow like a lamp? Doesn't sound at all like the explicitly identified angel.

This is a ridiculous argument. you are assuming it contradicts because there is information that is not supplied to you. you supply the information yourself and then declare it a contradiction based on what you have added. He may or may not fly. How could I know that based on what is here. why would you assume he can fly? In the NT, angels are described as looking like men or even mistaken as men in some cases or even intentionally mistaken as men in some case.

~steve

thentian

*sigh* I'm all for disagreeing agreeably in principle, but I have a hard time understanding why you're not getting the point here. Two versus four airplanes are directly analogous to one versus two young men (or angels). If you had seen one newsreport saying there were two airplanes and another that there were four airplanes attacking the twin towers, you would immediately know that one of them must be wrong. But you don't think like that when it comes to the bible. Somehow both must be correct because this is the Holy Bible and it cannot be wrong about anything.

Yes, and others have tried to explain why they don't answer the Easter Challenge. Now let me try: One of the things you need to do to meet the challenge is to harmonize what was said by the various persons at the various places. None of your links even attempts to do that. Where, for example, are Mary's words to Peter: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

Could you give us the titles of those books, please?
[/QUOTE]

We have many more sources than the canonic gospels which could have mentioned this earthquake and the risen saints. The apocrypha, the Talmud, Josephus, they are all silent about these events. The silence is deafening.

Amaleq13

No, one describes who flew the planes into the towers and one describes who sent them. Those are different events.

The statements in the failed Lincoln analogy also do not describe the same event. One describes the direct cause of death and the other describes the eventual location of his death. You need two different descriptions of the cause of death to have an analogy.

The perspectives of the claimants does not rescue their statements from contradictions if they are supposed to describe the same event. But they don't. If they do not describe the same event, they are not analogous to our two contradictory accounts of the means by which Judas died.

You wrote them to be analogous to how your faith allows you to read the otherwise clearly incompatible accounts of how Judas died.

Since it is impossible to die from hanging and from having one's guts burst open/falling headlong, the contradiction is obvious to anyone refraining from reading the accounts through faith-colored glasses.

It is equally clear that your entire position is based upon your refusal to accept that the author of Acts is describing means of Judas' death. If we did have Matthew's alternate version of the means of Judas' death, you would quite happily believe that he died by bursting open. Pretending otherwise is simply not credible and only your faith causes you to do so.

No, I am concluding the accounts contradict because they clearly do not describe the same figure providing the same information to the women as they arrive at the tomb. One describes a young man in white informing the women that Jesus has risen while the other describes a flying, glowing angel informing the women that Jesus has risen.

Both authors are describing the figure (ie the one the women first encountered and who informed them Jesus had risen) but their descriptions contradict. A young man in white seated in the tomb is not a flying, glowing angel seated on the rock outside the door.

thentian

Another way to say it is that, if Mark knew full well that it was an angel (or even worse; two angels), then by writing that it was a young man he was blatantly writing a lie. The only other possibility is that Mark did not know that it was an angel (or two angels), but then he was not inspired by the Holy Spirit in such a way as to cause him to write the truth.

sschlichter

:snooze:That is exactly my point. They appear to be talking about the same thing and appear to contradict. However, you and I know that they are talking from a different context and one of them is referring to the attack on the twin towers (which is referred to as 9/11 by many) and the other is referring to all of the planes that were hijacked. There is no technically correct name for the event and each aspect of it. It is referred to as 9/11 collectively and sometimes each aspect is referred to as 9/11. You have to know that this is how language works. We all do this. it is part of language

Only if both accounts are claiming to be describing the cause of death. You have to know why the person is supplying the information and to whom he is supplying it to.

No one in the gospels or in my most adequate analogy is claiming to provide an autopsy report. To claim that someone swelled up and died without explaining anything else is exactly the opposite. It is possibly assuming you already know or seeing the topic as tangential and not bothering. This is after all not a story about Judas.

Only in your mind is this a rule. No gospel author is attempting to provide a textbook. The account is grounded in the context of the author and audience. You do this when you claim to have seen the sun rise. You are technically in error in claiming the sun rises but you say it anyway because from the context of where you are standing on earth, it appears to rise. You would be a very boring person otherwise.

:snooze:

(Acts 1:18) (Now this man Judas acquired a field with the reward of his unjust deed, and falling headfirst he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out.

Please point out the word or phrase that makes any statement about how Judas died. Any reference to his death at all?

I have no problem with the accusation of faith. However, I hate to tell you that your faith in the fact that their must be a contradiction has caused you to see that Acts 1 claims to state Judas cause of death. It is misplaced faith because it does not. Just goes to show you that faith is universal to all men; it is the object of your faith that matters.

Your claim to contradiction is apparently still baking and getting worse. Now the angel is glowing and flying!? They are both describing a supernatural presence wearing white. One uses the term angel (which means messenger) and the other uses the term man but clearly alludes to the supernatural nature of the man who hangs out in tombs during resurrections.

~Steve