Sven

No. There are still the problems
(1) who bought the field and
(2) why it was named "field og blood".

I agree with Mageth: The accounts are indeed so different that the most "reasonable" conclusion (apart from errancy) would be that they talk about to different Judases.

Edited to add: I see that you addressed these problems later, again with a reference to the Aramaic. I'll wait for the answers to see if this has merit.

Clivedurdle

Hold on, are any NT texts in aramaic - I thought they were all in Greek. Have I misunderstood something?

Clivedurdle

The commandments have

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God etc....and

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

If an honest appraisal leads me to the conclusion that God is a myth I cannot love a myth with all my heart etc. The one about not bearing false witness means I must conclude there is no God!

Sven

Problem is, judge claims that the original documents are in Aramaic. Nobody so far has been able to convince him otherwise. Just search for the thread he started about this some time ago and judge for yourself why this is the case.

jbernier

The only document that may been in Aramaic is Matthew - and most Matthew experts I know say that it is highly unlikely.

jbernier

This, of course, assumes that you can demonstrate that there is no such thing as God. I am not sure that one can produce an airtight disproof of the idea of God (nor, as I have said here, can one produce an airtight proof of the idea of God).

Either way, if we understand the text as the people who produced the text understood it this would not have seemed at all contradictory as they did believe that God existed. They in no way contradict themselves here - and being mistaken about a factual detail is not identical to contradicting oneself.

jbernier

Chorion can equally mean "field" or "land." And the Aramaic, remember, is a translation of the Greek and has about as much evidentiary weight as the KJV. And, no, there is absolutely no way that the original of Acts was written in Aramaic - the Greek is way, way, way, way, way, too good to be a translation, there are no semitisms, etc.

ichabod crane

Let me tell you why this is extremely improbable, judge. The verb apagchomai occurs only once in the New Testament, Mt. 27:5, but it occurs twice in the Septuagint, and on both occasions it clearly means to hang oneself. The meaning of a word in the New Testament is likely to be much closer to the Septuagint meaning than to that found in classical literature; in fact the New Testament writers quoted from the Septuagint all the time. Here is the evidence from the Septuagint:

Apagchomai occurs in II Sam. 17:23 in the Septuagint. It translates the Hebrew verb chanaq which means "to strangle"; it occurs here in the passive (nif`al) stem, meaning to strangle or hang oneself. In this case, it clearly speaks of Ahithophel hanging himself. The verb also occurs in Tobit 3:10, again meaning to hang oneself: "When she heard these things she was deeply grieved, even to the thought of hanging herself. But she said, "I am the only child of my father; if I do this, it will be a disgrace to him, and I shall bring his old age down in sorrow to the grave."

In summary, the evidence is very strong for the meaning "to hang oneself".

Regarding the issue of the Bible teaching that Jesus would return within the lifetime of the apostles, which it clearly does in some passages, can I bring to your attention an important passage in which it does so, because we see how fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals try to evade the plain sense of the text in its historical context, and read it in a way that the author could not have intended. The verse in question is I Corinthians 15:51. It says "Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed". Now the question is, when Paul says "we", to whom is he referring? The natural sense in historical context is that we means himself and the Corinthian Christians to whom he is writing and to whom the letter is addressed. But if that is true, then Paul clearly indicates his belief that not all of these people alive at that time would die before Jesus returns. Evangelical conservatives and fundamentalists always read "we" as referring to Christians throughout the ages. But ask yourself, did Paul have any idea that this letter he was writing to the Corinthian church would be read by people hundreds of years into the future? Not likely! And if he did, why did he not address the letter to these future readers? The obvious meaning of the text is that Paul believed that Jesus was going to return within the lifetime of these people.

No, you haven't, you're quite right. But judge believes that they were originally written in Aramaic. It's a "left field" theory mainly held by the descendents of the Nestorian church. It's not regarded as credible by any New Testament scholars, and with good reason. But myself and other people have argued this at length with judge on other threads, and he won't be persuaded.

Also, judge jumps at any chance to argue for his Aramaic original theory, so I predict some posts on this topic from him coming up soon ...

OK, jbernier, you've asked for it now ... go get 'im, judge!

P.S. A pedantic note re. transliteration: when the letter gamma in Greek is followed by another gutteral, it is pronouned "n" instead of "g". A good example is "aggelos" which is pronounced "angelos" i.e. angel. Hence Judge has transliterated the verb as apanchomai, how it is pronounced, whereas I have transliterated it as apagchomai, to avoid confusing gamma and nu.

diana

Hi, Sven.

He does use common sense. You're just missing his unspoken assumptions. Let me try to spell it out for you.

Assume the following:

1. The Bible is perfect and infallible.
2. It is the literal Word of God.
3. It reports nothing but the facts.
4. If you find an error you can't reconcile, you'll go to hell for eternity.

Now. The Bible says Jesus was God. As God, he knows everything, including the future. As such, he would have known he wasn't coming in "this generation," as the text reads. Based on assumptions 1-4 above, he had to have meant he'd come in that generation (i.e., not really this one, which would be current, but that one, a future generation), because we know that now, presumably 2000 years later, he still hasn't returned.

It's all there in very clear, unassailable circular reasoning. I don't know what your problem is.

This is your basic problem when you get into discussions of inerrancy with those who have already assumed the Bible is the inspired word of God and refuse to critically examine that assumption. You simply cannot win such an argument, because they will loop-de-loop forever, as Magus is so graciously demonstrating. (He's even been gracious enough to make it clear that he's postulating what the text might have meant--as though he's aware he's building a rickety bridge indeed--but that's as far as he'll go.)

If you begin with the assumption that something is true no matter what, you can explain away 2+2=5. What's more, you'll wonder why people argue with you, why they can't see 2+2=5, the idiots.

d

Rifleman

The very fact that the Bible is so confusing to interpret and contains, at the VERY least, apparent contradictions is itself strong evidence that it was not inspired by a perfect God. An argument might go like this:

If God is perfect, then He will do all things perfectly.
The purpose of the Bible is (supposedly) to communicate God's word to mankind.
The Bible does not fulfill its communicative purpose perfectly.
Thus, the Bible cannot be God's method of communicating His word to mankind.

Let's face it: If God wanted to send a message to mankind, He could have simply speak it aloud to every man, woman, and child on earth. According to the the Bible, God had no problem with speaking to mere mortals back in ancient times, so why doesn't God do so now? Why use a book to send the message? Surely God must understand that the Bible is anything but convincing to thinking people?

By the way: If God is so concerned with His image that He will punish those who so much as misuse His name, then WHY is He not as concerned with people using false attributes to describe His very nature? Obviously the vagueness of the Bible has caused many people to do exactly that (judging from the thousands of Jewish and Christian sects). It makes no sense whatsoever for God to punish someone for merely being careful not to put too much stock in a characterization of God (or of His will) that hasn't been proven, especially if that characterization goes against that person's conscience (as much of the Bible goes against mine).