TheDiddleyMan

Hi! I was delving into the issue of biblical inerrancy, specifically regarding three distinct issues. These were the passages that came up in my discussion with someone, and they gave me answers from these apologetic sites.

1) Whether or not Matthew and Mark have Jesus contradict himself regarding divorce in Mk 10:11 Mt 19:9. This is Holding's response:

Holding

2) On Mark 1:2 and the quoting Isaiah. Here is Holding's response

Holding

What I find interesting is that biblical and evangelical scholar (highly regarded, I might add, unlike Holding) Daniel Wallace in discussing how this passage affects inerrancy admits that he doesn't know what the answer to this dilemna is.

3) Finally, there are the passages about taking or not taking a staff on the disciple's journey (Matt 10:9, Mark 6:8, Luke 9:3)

Glenn Miller's discussion is found here: Glenn Miller

I was wondering if any rebuttals have been given or what people's thoughts were and how I would answer my bible believing friend.

Just let me say that I am perfectly open to the idea that there are in fact no contradictions here (although I don't believe the bible is the word of God), so theists are welcome to give their thoughts or whatever...


Kevin

Amaleq13

Does explaining this as a common practice of ancient Jewish writers actually preserve inerrancy or does it support the idea that the text was written by humans without any divine error-correction? It seems to me more consistent with the latter than the former but I'm sure Holding a.k.a. Turkel would claim I am being too hard on God.

This isn't a direct response to your question but I've always wondered if there is any similarly adamant Jewish tradition of textual inerrancy?

Sensei Meela

Oh, yes, certainly!

However, the tanakh is viewed through at least 7 'layers' of understanding; literal, spiritual, etc... so one should be careful to make the distinction that it is not an inerrant literalist tradition, in the vein of Chirstian fundamentalism.

Amaleq13

Thanks for the info, Sensei Meela. Do you have a convenient (i.e. online) source I can consult so as to avoid entirely hijacking this thread? Thanks in advance.







PS If it had been convenient, I would have posted this at 4:20 in your honor.

Sensei Meela

Amaleq:

A source? Um, not exactly; I was going from memory of a survey of world religions course I once had! I can, though, recommend these sites, which I have just now perused:

http://groups.msn.com/JudaismFAQs/wh...ticismfaq.msnw

http://www.torah.org/learning/percep...764/yisro.html

[I may have been wrong; it looks like the Jews have at least 4 levels of understanding, not 7, but that could reflect the orthodox source of this last one]


[ps. Heh heh...4:20 ]

MiddleMan

Kevin I have recently been reading a site that has a number of articles about JP Holding aka R.Turkel's apologetics. There is a discussion there regarding Holding's "Divorce" issue. I don't know if it is what you are looking for but here's the link:

http://exposed.faithweb.com/divorce.html

GakuseiDon

The Chicago statement on inerrancy says that the Bible has to be interpreted in terms of the social conditions in which it was written. If that is the case, I think that Holding probably has the edge in his debate against Krueger. I found this link to a book that sounds relevent to that debate, though I don't know anything about the author: http://www.eerdmans.com/shop/product...key=0802849431

Kosh

Since the social conditions in which the Bible existed are supposed to have been determined by the Bible, isn't this circular reasoning?:boohoo:

Ebonmuse

In that case what I'd like to know is, if Jesus really had meant in the one verse from Mark that divorce and remarriage were never permissible, how he could have worded it so that Holding and other modern-day apologists would have recognized that as his intent. I mean, if Jesus had said, "Don't divorce and then remarry. Ever. I mean it," would Holding and his ilk still have blithely read in that exception based on the fact it was supposedly implicit in the social context of the times? It seems to me that this position on inerrancy would actually make Jesus literally incapable of taking any moral stance that differed from the norms of NT times.

UV2003

"be interpreted in terms of the social conditions in which it was written."

Hmm, what exactly can that mean for people today? Should it mean we should literally believe such things as talking donkeys and people murdering thousands with bones, but view them as symbolic stories? This is not what fundamentalists would have me believe ;-)

If so, does it further mean we should not literally believe in risen dead men?

-Confused
-UV