Steven Carr

Notice the big gap between Jesus saying that the temple would be destroyed and his saying that that generation would not pass away :-

Matthew 24
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2“Do you see all these things?� he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.�

3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,� they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?�

4Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,[a]’ and will deceive many. 6You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8All these are the beginning of birth pains.

9“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

15“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[b] spoken of through the prophet Daniel–let the reader understand– 16then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. 18Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 19How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now–and never to be equaled again. 22If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect–if that were possible. 25See, I have told you ahead of time.

26“So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the desert,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

29“Immediately after the distress of those days “ ‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

30“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. 31And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. 34I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.


'For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now–and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.'

The destruction of the Temple was not a distress unequalled from the beginning of the world until now, and that is what Jesus said would happen as part of the 'all things' that would happen before that generation passed away.

Metacrock

Steven, you always seem to assume that these guys were writting scripts for docudramas? Is that the only form of hitory you ever study, the history Channel? Because there's a huge difference in writting a text and making a play. In the text it looks like a huge gap, if it was on film it would only be a few seconds.





Matthew 24
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2“Do you see all these things?� he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.�

3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,� they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?�



see, at that point you have two questions:

(1) when will this happen? (destruction of temple was the immediate context)

(2) What will be the sign of your coming?






right, but see you need to look at it as a redactor, or a textual critic, not as a play write or a viewer of docudarmas. The point is not that they asked him "when is the temple going to be destoryed" and he said "when you see th son of man int he clouds." But that the two questions were conflated into one. The answer given above is only an aswer to question two. In the Mark ersion there's one question.

so what happened was he had two questions, two sets of answers, they assumed in listening to him that these events would happen soon and at the same time. So they just callapesd the qeutions into one and even matt where the two distinct questions are preserved the answer is collapsed into one.

the proof: in mark there's only one question. So we know this conflatting process is going on.

Metacrock

So did they have SMSA"s to help establish if it was populated or not? Or did they start counting people around the area evertime it came up?

Diogenes the Cynic

Defining "city" vs. "country" isn't really the issue. My question is whether there is a non-literal way to interpret "stone to death."

Steven Carr

Yes, but Matthew deliberately conflated them for a reason, and I imagine he would object to people taking apart what he has put together.

You have to read a text as a whole, and not as a collection of sentences which can be rearranged at will.

And, after Matthew has done his work of conflation, he has produced a text with a false prophecy. The fact that he deliberately produced the text the way he produced it, does not alter that it reflects what he wanted to write.

Steven Carr

Time to quote the Bible again.....


deut. 22:

23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death-the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, 27 for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.

Metacrock makes a good point. How did they decide what was 'town' and what was 'country'?

It was important , as the girl would not be killed if she could prove a) she was in the country and b) she was pledged to be married.

Jack the Bodiless

She would, presumably, also escape death if she was single (and so would the rapist). There wasn't a punishment for rape per se. Rape of a married or betrothed woman was "adultery".

Anat

I would guess there was a definition of the boundaries of a town, such that a rape taking place outside those boundaries, or beyond hearing distance from the boundaries would be considered as taking place 'in the country'. There is at least one other law where the location of a town's boundaries would be important - the law dealing with a dead body found outside any town (the elders of the nearest town are required to perform a ceremony in which they swear they were not in any way responsible for the death) - Deuteronomy 21:1-9. And in later generations it would also become important for the definition of the farthest one can walk out of town on Shabbat.

(BTW the traditional commentary on why the victim of a rape within the town is to be put to death is - what was she doing outside her home anyway?)

Jack, indeed, Deuteronomy 22:28-29:
If a girl didn't want a man, all he had to do was rape her, and he had her for life.

Anat

Cooking was common since the stone age. It is not entirely obvious that the purpose of laws regarding food avoidances was to promote physical health. All cultures have food taboos of one kind or another (though not in all cultures are these taboos written into law) and many make no sense from strictly health considerations, some are even deleterious to the physical health of those observing them. But taboos have other effects as well. For example, they form part of a set of customs that promote group identity and separation from other groups. They give people opportunities to practice self-control. They add ritual into daily life. There might be additional effects. It is not at all clear which of them are the 'original' purpose of the taboos.

Anat

Was Jonah a false prophet as well?