sky4it

Where's the contradiction? So lets say John Doe gets in a car wreck and dies. One guy just tells you John Doe died. Another guy comes and tells you exactly how the car crashed. So in your mind, that story would conflict and what? Did this mean John Doe didnt die at all instead it was his wife Jane Doe who got run over by a freight train. That's about how much sense that last post made.

Minimalist

Oh, please. Chronicles was written two hundred years after Josiah died. Stop with the "witness" crap, will you.

sky4it

So how sure are you that it was written 200 years after he died? Then is that recorded by the writer? Then if he recorded it how sure are you he wasnt a scribe who was just writing a copy? The scribes were the copy machines back then so they didnt even have like a laser copy machine so was he making a copy and if not how are you sure that was the first account?

spin

Umm, read the genealogy of David in 1 Chr 3. But maybe that was prophecy.

(Personally, I think 200 years is way too conservative.)


spin

-Jay-

[Python]Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.[/Python]

Dating of ancient texts is a complicated matter. Scholars use numerous techniques involving linguistic clues, relating named places or events within a text to places or events known from other sources, and such like (e.g. a lack of Egyptian loanwords in a given Hebrew text would suggest that the text was composed prior to significant cultural contact between the two. A text that references a particular king known from other sources to have ruled in, say, the 6th century BC, scholars would assign that text to no earlier than the rule of that king.)

The point that the OP was making, though, wasn't that there are identifiable transmission errors. That is taken as a given. (You appear to acknowledge that scribes can make copyist errors. Am I reading you correctly?)

The OP and others are making the point that:
IF the Bible is to be considered a divinely protected text
THEN there shouldn't be those copyist errors. (Or disagreements between numbers. Or two versions of a story, one of which says Josiah died on the battlefield and one that says he was heroically carried back to Jerusalem before he joined the choir invisible. Or four mutually inconsistent Resurrection narratives...)

These things are, however, precisely what one would expect if the Bible is a human-penned and transmitted collection of different books written at different times with different social and political pressures behind them.

The notion of "inerrant in the original autographs" is something of a red herring, since we don't have the originals. Citing documents we don't have allows the apologist to handwave away any objections he might encounter. In explaining everything, the apologist in fact explains nothing.

(It would be interesting to see how we would actually identify the "original autographs" if the were to be discovered, and how that identification could possibly be strong enough to prevent the apologetic authors from claiming that there were documents somewhere that were more original - God's rough drafts, maybe?)

regards,

NinJay

Clivedurdle

I like the argument in the thread in the OP that we are not looking at copyist errors at all in Chronicles but at deliberate editing changes to attempt to tidy up the mess of Kings and Samuel!

spin

Because I suspect that pointing to one reason why Chronicles was written at least 200 years after the time of Josiah will not be enough for those who won't look at the text, I guess I should explain:

The genealogy of David contains a rather long line of descendants from David down to the exile and then for another thirteen or fourteen generations. Giving 20 years per generations, it means that the genealogy would extend beyond the exile for 280 years and therefore is well over 300 years after the time of Josiah.


spin

sky4it

Well how about this then.

King Josiah was one of the most respected and loved Kings ever in Israels history. The text of both accounts wasn't very elaborate. One person said the other author wanted to sensationalize it (I am characterising what he said)

It sort of like who shot Abraham Lincoln. Even if it wasn't recorded, the story would be told and retold so that many people would know it. And that's even if he was a unknown King. So I think it should be fairly easy to deduce that many people would have known not only that Josiah died but that he was shot in his chariot and hauled into town dead. There wasn't anything that sensationalized his death either. Now if the story was that he killed 100 of his enemies with a hand gun yeah, then I would understand the point. I think its fairly clear that how a famous person like that died should not be a mystery and even in question.

-Jay-

Sky4it-

Surely you know how the above situation plays out - the story grows and has "details" added that weren't present in the original. Eventually you end up with a different story that bears little in common with the source. It's like a class of preschoolers playing a game of telephone.

In any event, you're dodging the point. The point is that there are contradictions present in the Bible (specifically between Samuel/Kings and Chronicles) that we would not expect to see if the Bible were inerrant and protected in its transmission by God.


The issue in question is more significant. 2 Kings 33 has Josiah killed on the spot, at the scene of battle. 2 Chronicles 35 has Josiah seriously wounded at the scene of battle, carried on his chariot back to Jerusalem, and dying there - a journey of a good 40 miles. That's not an insignificant difference. The accounts contradict each other in a key, maybe the key, detail, and you're handwaving that away like it doesn't matter.

What are you actually claiming in this thread?

In your first post in the thread, you appear to propose that there were people who treated the word of God haphazardly, but their recordings of God's word were included alongside the recordings of those who were more diligent recorders.

A few posts later, you lay the groundwork for the very familiar claim that different witnesses see the same event differently and report different details.

Then you switch to an allusion to the "inerrant in the original autograph" line, while allowing that there are copyist errors in later instances.

How are any of these positions consistent with the notion of inerrancy?

In the first, all you've done is establish that humans don't always write things down very well, and you've allowed that flawed accounts could and did make their way into the Bible. This directly refutes any notion of inerrancy (and makes one wonder why God picked such careless authors to entrust His word to...).

In the second, you've attempted to claim that if multiple witnesses describe the same event with disagreements in the details, those disagreements aren't contradictions because the overall event is the same. That's absurd on its face. Details that don't agree are contradictions. Period. Whether they're significant contradictions is beside the point. Whether both versions of the story can be used to illuminate different theological concerns is beside the point. The point is that both versions cannot be factual - either one (or both) is wrong. To claim otherwise is specious. This also directly refutes the notion of inerrancy.

In the third, you've introduced the specious notion of "original autographs". We don't have them. To suggest that they were inerrant but were subjected to copyist errors (copyist errors, I note, that according to this line of thought have led to some huge discrepencies - e.g. the Creation accounts) is merely baseless speculation. (It also raises the issue of why God might have allowed subsequent copies of His word to get altered by copyists, and speaks loudly against any claims of divine protection of the texts.) By the time you fall back to this argument, you've implicitly conceded the point that the Bible as we have it now is not inerrant and does contain contradictions, and you've had to retreat to the logic-proof box of appealing to original autographs that we don't have.

So what is it you're really trying to claim here?

regards,

NinJay

sky4it

NinJay:


Nope, I was just trying to get the facts so that I could see where this stuff was at.

There is no such thing in the bible as an interpretation of the LETTER.

In fact, the bible tells people not to do it. "... of the new testament not of the letter but of the spirit: for the letter killeth but the spirit giveth it life.

Giveth what life? Both people and the letter.

There are today several groups that have spun a hodge podge of passages in Greek and ran off and made a whole new belief system. Which proves that God did not want it that way.

Am I saying this is by design of God himself? Yes this is what I am saying. Surely you people must beleive that if God were living, he could give those passages life right? Thus, the trademark of the bible is; make sure you have the spirit giving it life. It was never intended for anything else.

There is more. I Corinthians 2:13 "not in words which man's wisdom teacheth but that which the Holy Ghost teacheth.

Thus, the words to be effective must be those which the Holy Ghost is teaching. I could give you examples how one group spun off a 4 thieves crucified with Christ thing and many more from isolating text's. The point is that simply, God would, I believe, ALLOW this to happen by design so that people were busy doing it not creating multiple sects. The words about Samuel that I recited were a little footnote to tell people it was coming.

There is more: I John 2:27 speaks along the same lines as Corinthians.
Jesus also told his disciples John 16:13 same thing. John 15:26 says that the Holy Spirit will , he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Notice there wasn't a lot of concern about writing things down and making sure you have all the details right. Why? Because that is not the message of the bible. The message of the bible is a CLEAN spirit for someone.

The other point is with spin off groups, if one is too careful with ones words, one can make more problems for oneself than the other way. Thus, it enhances the word, for it requires people to seek the author by definition.

Would God allow someone to go on in a untruthful, anti-God stance and "give them over to it", if they have no interest in righteousness? Yep, In fact not only would he, he does give them over to it.