Straight A

You're equivocating 'faith'. Atheists do not have 'faith', defined as belief entirely unsupported by evidence or logic.

If on the other hand you would like to suggest that any 'belief' or 'faith' is religious in its nature, then my 'belief' that the sun will rise tommorow is a religious belief, if I flush the chain on my toilet and I 'believe' it will be filled with water, this too is then a religious event.

In fact I have so much 'faith' in my own plumbing skills and almost certainly know the toilet bowl will fill with water that I am sure you could find in this a way to describe me as 'devoutly religious'.

Of course the problem here is that one is using the word 'faith' and 'belief' in both the religious sense and the common sense - and making no effort to differentiate.


Anyhow, I must go now I am off the pray at the bowl.

Straight A

Yes, it could be considered reasonable evidence that you are absent, along with other indicators such as visual conformation (or lack of) would all combine to inform the senses as to whether you are there or not.

John Kesler

When this contradiction came up on another list, a member offered this:

John 4:2 certainly reads like an insertion, and Russell Shorto, in his book Gospel Truth, pages 106-107, provides what I consider to be a plausible explanation for the insertion:

Jack the Bodiless

Indeed, they're still around today.

Mandaeism

ggazoo

I don't have the time right now to go through every "contradiction", but I'll start with the first two. Like these, many acclaimed contradictions can be answered on

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/bible.htm

1. First, Judas tried to kill himself by hanging himself. And this is not always a successful way. Maybe he tried, and failed (as have many others who have tried to commit suicide by hanging). Then after some time, he threw himself off a cliff and fell upon some jagged rocks. Keep in mind that it is not uncommon for people who commit suicide to have tried it before.

2. Judas could have tied a rope to a tree branch that extended over a cliff (after all, you have to get some space between your feet and the ground to hang yourself). In this situation, the rope/branch could have broke before or after death, and Judas plummeted to the ground and landed on some jagged rocks.

Certainly, these explanations are plausible, thus a contradiction has not been established. More from Frank Decenso below.

One of my favorites. My explanation for atheists and critics...

MAT 27:5-8 Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself. But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood." And they consulted together and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

First of all, notice that the text does not say that Judas died as a result of hanging. All it says is that he "went and hanged himself." Luke however, in Acts, tells us that "and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out." This is a pretty clear indication (along with the other details given in Acts - Peter's speech, the need to pick a new apostle, etc.) that at least after Judas' fall, he was dead. So the whole concept that Matthew and Luke both recount Judas' death is highly probable, but not clear cut. Therefore, if I were to take a radical exegetical approach here, I could invalidate your alleged contradiction that there are two different accounts of how Judas died.

Notice verse 5."Then he...went and hanged himself." Matthew does not say Judas died, does it? Should we assume he died as a result of the hanging?

What does Acts say? ACT 1:18 (Now this man purchased a field with the wages of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out.

ACT 1:20 "For it is written in the book of Psalms: 'Let his dwelling place be desolate, And let no one live in it'; and, 'Let another take his office.'

Here we may have a graphic explanation of Judas' death. Of course, maybe someone can find some medical source somewhere that discusses the possibility of one having their entrails gush out after being burst open in the middle, and still survive.

So, my line of reasoning to dispel the contradiction myth re: the "two" accounts of Judas' death is this. Matthew doesn't necessarily explain how Judas died; he does say Judas "hanged himself", but he didn't specifically say Judas died in the hanging incident. However, Acts seems to show us his graphic demise. Therefore, there is no contradiction between Matthew and Acts re: Judas' death.

We do know from Matthew that he did hang himself and Acts probably records his death. It is possible and plausible that he fell from the hanging and hit some rocks, thereby bursting open. However, Matthew did not say Judas died as a result of the hanging, did he? Most scholars believe he probably did, but....

One atheist I debated along these lines said... the Greek word "apagchw" (ie: hang oneself) is translated as a successful hanging. I replied, No you can't only conclude this, although...this was a highly probable outcome. But Matthew does not state death as being a result. The Greek word is APAGCHO. Matthew 27:5 is it's only occurrence in the New Testament. In the LXX (the Greek translation of the OT used at the time of Jesus), it's only used in 2 Samuel 17:23 : "Now when Ahithophel saw that his advice was not followed, he saddled a donkey, and arose and went home to his house, to his city. Then he put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died; and he was buried in his father's tomb." Notice that not only is it stated that Ahithophel "hanged himself" [Gr. LXX, APAGCHO], but it explicitly adds, "and died". Here we have no doubt of the result. In Matthew, we are not explicitly told Judas died. Also, there is nothing in the Greek to suggest success or failure. It simply means "hang oneself".


It is distinctly possible that Luke's account traces Jesus' lineage through Mary, and not Joseph. Some of the circumstantial evidence to support this is as follows:

(1) Luke's birth narrative is through the eyes of Mary, while Matthew's is through the eyes of Joseph. Thus, Luke could have received his material through Mary (or someone close), thus it is quite possible that he received her genealogy.

(2) Luke 3:23 reads, "Jesus...being supposedly the son of Joseph, the son of Heli, etc." Luke certainly draws attention to the fact that Jesus was not truly Joseph's son, so why would he then go to all the trouble in listing Joseph's genealogy?

(3) After considering the Greek of Luke 3:23, Robert Gromacki believes it should be translated as follows:

"being the son (as was supposed of Joseph) of Heli, of Matthat, etc."

Gromaki states: "Since women did not appear in direct genealogical listings, Joseph stood in Mary's place, but Luke was careful to note that there was no physical connection between Joseph and either Jesus or Heli."

(4) Luke's genealogy also lists Adam as "the son of God." This would indicate that one would have no grounds for insisting that the term "son" meant only the direct, biological offspring. Thus, one could think of Jesus as the "son of Heli."

(5) The writings of Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 100 AD) indicate that the early church thought that Mary was a Davidic descent. For example, he writes:

"Under the Divine dispensation, Jesus Christ our God was conceived by Mary of the seed of David and of the spirit of God; He was born, and He submitted to baptism, so that by His Passion He might sanctify water." -- Ignatius to the Ephesians

"Christ was of David's line. He was the son of Mary; He was verily and indeed born.." -- Ignatius to the Trallians

Since Ignatius believed in the virgin birth, it clearly follows that he would believe that she was "of the seed of David." Other apocryphal gospels and Justin Martyr (ca. 150 AD) also believed Mary to have been a descendent of David.

Objections to these claims are basically of two types:

A. The Jews did not typically trace genealogies through women.

Reply: This is true, but a virgin birth is not a typical birth. Thus standard practices would not be expected to hold.

B. There is no explicit mention that the genealogy is Mary's.

Reply: This is true again, but the reason for this is probably due to point A. The genealogy would lose all appeal if it was explicitly cited as Mary's. However, it does seem to be implied. Thus, one could discern this truth after they had converted and studied the text. This would account for the early church's belief about Mary's Davidic descent.

Whatever one makes of such reasoning, it is certainly possible that the above explanation might be true, thus a contradiction has not been proved.

Diogenes the Cynic

Matthew doesn't say he tried and failed to hang himself. He says he hanged himself, period.
Luke doesn't say anything about a hanging, just that he "fell headlong," which is impossible if you're hanging by the neck.

These are not new solutions. We've heard them before. Putting aside that they still don't resolve all the contradictions (like who bought field and when), they are patently forced, implausible and internally unsupported or even suggested. They call for each author to assume the reader knows of the other author when it's highly unlikely (actually impossible in Matthew's case) that the authors even knew of each other.
Sheer sophistry. No other conclusion is remotely arguable. Not only is this argument unbelievably specious from the translation but becomes even more untenable in the Greek. The Greek word translated as "hanged himself" is apegzato from the verb apogchomai which specifically means "to strangle, to throttle, to hang TO DEATH." Judas' death is implicit...no make that EXplicit in the Greek. This argument is dead on arrival.
How did he fall headlong if he was hanging from the neck/ Where does Luke say he was hanging at all. Who bought the field and when did they buy it?
Learn Greek. That they are both accounts of Judas' death is indeed clear cut.
Yes it does. In the Greek.
Yes.
No one disputes that Luke has Matthew die by exploding.
The literal meaning of the word is "choke away," i.e "strangle" (in the passive "be strangled" or "hang") to DEATH. In the active it means to kill by strangling, in the passive it means to die by strangling.

have you actually studied Greek or is this just something you looked up? can you provide some attestations for the word meaning hanged but not dying? can you provide any internal argument that Matthew's usage should be taken outside of its normal meaning?
No it isn't. Luke explicitly names Heli as the father of Joseph, he does not even mention Mary's name in his genealogy and the mother's bloodline was considered irrelevant in any case.
This is so specious it almost invalidates itself. Leaving aside the gross implausibility of Luke having known the mother of Jesus, the text itself still names Heli as the father of Joseph. Case closed.
Because he wanted to imply that Jesus was a successor to David by way of adoption through Joesph. Jewish law and (messianic expectation) does not permit this loophole, but Luke either didn't know that or didn't care.
Respectfully, Gromaki is completely full of shit. His parsing of the Greek is utterly tendentious and wrong. His assertion that "Joseph stood in Mary's place" lacks any basis either internally in the text or externally with any known Jewish custom. The whole thing is transparently forced and grasping and should not fool anyone with even a modicum of training in either Koine Greek or Ancient Jewish history.
He isn't called the son of Heli, Joseph is.
Who cares what Ignatius thought? How does that alter Luke's text?
Correct.
Why not? More to the point, why would it change the definitional requiremnts for the Jewish Messiah, The Messiah -by definition - was to be a direct patrilinear descendant of David. or to put it another way, it was expected that a direct patrilnear descendant of David -- an heir to his throne -- would bring the Messianic age. A virgin birth actually invalidates any claim to David's throne.
More than that, it is explictly stated as Joseph's.
Appeal is beside the point. It has no messianic relevance if it goes through the mother (which it doesn't).
No, it really isn't.
I've studied the text without bothering to convert first. The text doesn't say that.

John Kesler

Since you acknowledge that a "successful hanging" is the "highly probable outcome," doesn't it seem more likely that Luke and Matthew (to say nothing of a third tradition transmitted by Papias!) knew different traditions of how Judas met his demise? Doesn't this conclusion require fewer assumptions than scenarios which attempt to conflate Acts and Matthew?

This is an odd choice of "proof texts," because if anything, it appears that Matthew may have appropriated the description of Ahithophel's betrayal of David and subsequent suicide into the Judas narrative. In fact, the texts are related to such an extent that apologist Robert Turkel doesn't even attempt to deny the relationship, and instead claims that the borrowing indicates that Matthew isn't even attempting to tell how Judas died! Furthermore, the book of Tobit, which is part of the LXX, uses this Greek word at 3:10:

Sven

Let me just ask you a simple question: If "surface contradictions" (as one Christian once called them here) like these two appeared in any other piece of work which was composed by different authors years and hundreds of miles apart - would you also resort to these kind of harmonizations, or would you simply accept that one of the writers made an error?

offencivetruth

in order to say that the bible is or isnt a contradiction you must be able to read what is the hidden truth if you read the words for the way they are written then you are argueing about words not meanings if i told you all that there is a truth that i am yet to hear another man say let alone understand and is provable with fact it would make athiests that belive in facts have their world crumble because all that has been debated is thrown out the window and a new topic is on the table so have fun debaiting a nonexistant argument when in reality you are wearing the proof

Diogenes the Cynic

Can anybody do a Gibberish to English translation for this?