Deus Ex

Here is an excerpt from Joseph Wheless' Is it God's Word

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist..._it_gods_word/
THE LAST SUPPER

The holding and eating of a Jewish passover supper by thirteen
poor wandering Jews, in a borrowed dining room (Matt. xxvi, 18, 19;
Mark xiv, 14, 15; Luke xxii, 9-13), would seem to be a simple
affair, to be narrated by divinely inspired chroniclers with little
effort and with fair chances for truth. But already one inspired
contradiction stares us in the face. Was it the passover supper or
just an ordinary meal? Three of the gospel recorders declare
expressly that the Last Supper was the passover meal; John says
that it was a supper eaten before the passover.

According to the synoptists: "The disciples came to Jesus,
saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat
the passover? ... And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed
them; and they made ready the passover. Now when the even was come,
he sat down with the twelve" (Matt. xxvi, 17, 19, 20; Mark xiv, 12,
14, 16, 17; Luke xxii, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14). Luke quotes Jesus
expressly as saying, after they were all seated: "With desire I
have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer" (Luke
xxii, 15). Thus it was the passover supper. But John positively
controverts this, saying: "Now before the feast of the passover,
when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of
this world unto the Father. ... And supper being ended" (John xiii,
1, 2), then it was that the devil instigated Judas to betray Jesus.
The Last Supper was thus before the passover and was not the
passover supper.


And you follow the methods of dogmatic Christians who are so wed to the idea of inerrancy that you cannot see contradictions no matter how many we show to you. There is always a contrived harmonization.

Would you care to tackle the Nativity Stories in Luke and Matthew?

rhutchin

Regarding the timing issue.

We read:

And it was the third hour, and they crucified him. (Mark 15:25)
And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. (Matt 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44)

The Jewish day consisted of two 12 hour segments from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. Thus Jesus was crucified at 9:00 am and darkness covered the land from 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm.

John writes:

Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover...And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! (John 18:28; John 19:14)

According to the Jewish day, this took place at midnight, so that from this point, there would be nine hours until Jesus was crucified. However, given that John writes, ...and it was early..., it appears that John uses the Roman day which began at 12:01 am placing this event at 6:00 am in the morning and three hours before Jesus is crucified.

Regarding "preparation of the passover."

Passover would have begun on 6:00 pm Thursday and ended on Friday at 6:00 pm when the sabbath would then begin. The passover meal would then have been eaten shortly after 6:00 pm on Thursday.

John writes:

And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! (John 19:14)

The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. (John 19:31)

John says that at 6:00 am on Friday is the preparation of the passover. This cannot refer to the passover meal which would have occurred the previous night (Thursday). It must refer to the temple rite of killing the pascal lamb which would have occurred later on passover day. This is supported by John's later statement in verse 31, (The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation,... leading us to believe that the passover lamb was slain toward the end of passover day or close to 6:00 pm.


There is no basis for concluding that the accounts contradict each other.

rhutchin

What is the problem with the nativity stories? Do you understand the alleged problems enough to explain them (at least better than you did with the passover issues).

Jayrok

Your understanding of the passover meal is not correct. The Pascal lamb is slain the afternoon prior to the meal that evening. According to John, Jesus was THAT Pascal Lamb. He was killed Friday afternoon, yes. The point is that John does NOT record the actual passover meal (The last supper) but the synoptics do record it. John leaves it out, or replaces it with a regular evening meal, because his version of the story is different from the synoptics in that in his story Jesus is the passover lamb of God.


Exactly. This particular "preparation" was for the Sabbath. The "Passover Meal" was already eaten by the Jews, including Jesus the day before. The synoptics agree with this. John does not.

John 19:14 confirms that, in John's version, Jesus was arrested and tried on the day of preparation for passover. He died on this same afternoon, in John.

Preparation for passover included the killing of the lamb, so it fits with John... which is what I've been saying. But in the synoptics, this day of preparation for passover occurs before Jesus is even arrested.

Jayrok

Do you not see your mistake here?

The preparation for the passover comes before the actual passover feast... not after it. Preparation included slaying the lamb and making the unleavened bread.

You are saying that they had the passover feast on Thursday night, but that the preparation for the passover feast occured on Friday, the next day.

You cannot reconcile it. To the synoptics Jesus ate the passover meal and was crucified the following day. They took him off the cross because the sabbath was approaching. To John Jesus died on the day of preparation for the passover feast. That is a contradiction.

Let me ask you another question:

When was Jesus annointed at Bethany?

6 days before Passover prior to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as recorded in John 12?

or

2 days before Passover after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as recorded in Mark 14?

PapaverDeum

OK, so you did. I do appreciate the non-apologetic explanation, but of course that does not necessarily make it so. And in this case, what you have posted here does not seem correct to me.

First, the story of the Canaanite woman also occurs in Mark(7.25). If we follow the usual solution to the synoptic problem (Mark=original, Matthew and Luke use Mark's material), then must we not conclude that this part is not original to Matthew, but instead something he got from Mark. Yes?
Since that is so, then your conclusions about Matthew, be they correct or not, get no real support at all from this.

But now we have to deal with the fact that this is likely to have been original to Mark(taking the synoptic solution as a given). At the least, before Matthew and/or Luke used Mark's text.

So it would seem that this pushes this discrepency back to Mark. Thus, according to Mark, Jesus had no intention of offering the kingdom of god to the gentiles. Note that Jesus only compliments her faith and heals the daughter. But he does not offer his salvation to her nor does he recant that he has come only for the Jewish people.

Another interesting explanation was put forth (and I think this explanation only muddies the water and deepens the mystery);

So, Paul's epistle to the Romans, which was supposedly written before Mark (yes?) redefines the scope of who is and is not "of Israel". But Jesus in Mark, seems ignorant of this redefinition. Mark identifies the woman as "by nationality Syrio-Phonecian". Yet, regardless, Jesus seems clear that this woman is not among those to which he came.

I'm guessing that Mark and Paul did not collaborate well on this one ? Jesus does not seem to know of Paul's redefinition. In Mark he is adamate that this womman is not among those he came to save.

So, it would seem that you have not in any way solved or addressed the issue. Quite the contrary, you have made it stand out even more.

Thus, we con only conclude that either Mark did not know or read Paul's Letter to the Romans, or when he read it your quote was not there, or he interpreted it very differently from what you have.

Nice try.

Now this seems strange. The singular pronouns are troublesome. Paul thinks that "he", or is it they/those "born after the flesh" (the Jewish people) persecuted him/he/they those who was born after the spirit ? Wait a moment, what happenned to the "children of the promise". Are these now the same as "he" of the spirit ?

This seems like a mishmash of writing. But, we do have to remember that we are reading a translation, possibly a double one (greek -> latin -> english). I'm not so sure that the Greek-> latin is much of a problem in itself, save for linguistic context. In other words, I would have to believe that the greek-> latin is probably well done, considering that it happenned at a time when many were bilingual koine/latin. My gueess would be that it is the english that is probably were this mishmash of singular/plurals, children of this or that gets contorted.

But that's a tangent and I ought to be rapped sharply with a wooden ruler for exploring it !

Mark is claiming that Jesus brings salvation only to the Jews, and seems very clear on what he means by Jews (not gentiles at all). An interesting aside is that Mark seems ignorant of this part of the Wpistle to the Romans.

Doug Shaver

Here is some: http://dougshaver.com/christ/bible/c...adictions.html

Could I trouble you for some comments on my argument?

rhutchin

You are wordy but after skimming through your paper, it seems that your basic point is to say that the Bible could be reasonably said to have parts that contradict each other. I did not get the sense that you were arguing that "The Bible is clearly errant," but only that it could be inerrant.

Your illustration of the four reporters is not the best, I don't think. What we have in the gospels is one person (Mark) recording the events of Jesus' life according to the stories told by a participant in those events (presumably Peter). Another participant in those events (Matthew) comes along and expands on Mark's account to provide additional information that he thinks is important. Later, a researcher (Luke) interviews as many of the original eyewitnesses and participants as he can and writes an account to go along with the two earlier accounts. Finally, another participant (John) writes a separate account focussed on the personality/theology of Jesus rather than just giving an historical account.

Also, the argument of inerrancy has God as the author of the Bible and not men. It is God who moved men to write (in their unique styles and their limited vocabularies) and to say one thing but leave out another. The largest problem we have with the Bible is that it is not exhaustive but often provides summaries of events, or short snipets of things that occurred, where we would like to have more details of those events to tie all the snipets together. It is like having the five blind men each writing an account of their experience with the elephant. They sound contradictory until we understand that each is describing one piece of the puzzle.

rhutchin

What is to be reconciled? John and the synoptics do not disagree. Each says that Jesus ate the passover meal with the disciples on Thursday evening (the first day of unleavened bread) presumably after 6:00 pm so that it is the passover day. Jesus is then crucified the next day, Friday, (and still the passover) and then removed from the cross so as not to be left hanging on the sabbath (which would have begun at 6:00 pm Friday and continued into Saturday).

What you correctly note is that, following Jewish practice, the "preparation" (which includes the ritual killing of the passover lamb) would have occurred toward the end of the passover day (Friday) and then have been eaten later that night. Your argument is that Jesus and the disciples did not follow Jewish practice and not that there is a contradiction. Jesus and the disciples just observed the passover meal before they really should have.

What seems to be the case is that the sabbath immediately followed passover day on this occasion. Doing things on the sabbath presents a set of problems for people because of the rules that govern what can be done on the sabbath. Thus, it seems that people could observe the passover meal early on those occasions where passover day was followed by the sabbath. Regardless, your only real complaint, from what I can see, is that you object to Jesus and the disciples eating the passover meal on Thursday night when they should have eaten it on Friday night.

Johnny Skeptic

I embarrassed rhutchin in my post #234 in a thread at http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=258762 that is titled "The Rapture." Rhutchin conveniently refused to reply to the post. I reposted it as my post #254. I have debated rhutchin for a long time. Whenever he gets into trouble, he simply vacates the thread and pretends that he has not embarrassed himself, and that he has not been evasive when everyone who knows him knows that he is evasive.