GakuseiDon

No, I actually got the information about figs from various horticultural websites. Immature figs from the previous session DO remain on the tree over winter, and ripen in the early spring. A sample from here:
"Brebas are immature figs that are unable to ripen before winter sets in. When the trees come out of dormancy in the spring they ripen... Clarification on brebas? There are obvious fig buds at leaf nodes, which haven't emerged and have no stems."

And so...? I don't see the problem. Jesus sees a tree with leaves, and hopes to find a few early ripening figs, either brebas from the previous season, or ones from the new crop. There were none, as it wasn't the season of figs. What is the problem? (Perhaps you could say that it shows that Jesus wasn't omniscient, but that is a different issue). There were only leaves - not only were there no brebas, there were no buds for the new crop. So Jesus knew that the tree hadn't probably produced fruit last year and wasn't producing any this year.

Where is the problem?

Yes, that does occur. Whether this is happening in this case depends on the evidence. What I don't understand is that you can say you're not familiar with the botany in question, but you can still disagree with it.

If there is "standard apologetic thinking", would you agree that sometimes there is "standard contradictionalist thinking"?

French Prometheus

That would be consistent with his death...

Deut 18
20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death. 21 You may say to yourselves, "How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?" 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

Al Kafirun

Hooooooo, Jesus gettin' served, yo. The Jesus of the gospels is a perfect example of a false prophet.

There is not found in thee one causing his son and his daughter to pass over into fire, a user of divinations, an observer of clouds, and an enchanter, and a sorcerer, and a charmer, and one asking at a familiar spirit, and a wizard, and one seeking unto the dead. `For the abomination of Jehovah every one doing these, and because of these abominations is Jehovah thy God dispossessing them from thy presence.

Reads like a laundry list of the crap Jesus and his thugs did.

Kilgore Trout

I'm not going to go around in circles arguing over the wording they used. I still say because it says "it wasn't the season for figs" that means it is not a surprise that there were no figs. You are making a big thing about the "finding nothing but leaves" like that proves there were no buds. How do I know that they did a thorough analysis to know there were no buds? It could be more of your "typical hyperbole of the period." Since there was "nothing but leaves" I suppose that guarantees were no worms or bugs or birds in the tree either. There must not have been any bark on the tree either. Matthew does not write "it wasn't the season for figs", probably because he knew it made jesus look bad.

Notice he curses it by saying "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." Why does he say this if he thought it couldn't bear fruit already?

As I already said before, even if you are right and there were no figs last season and it looked like there would be none this season, it still means there is no reason to destroy it. It does not fit his parable in luke where the master waited three years then told the gardener to cut it down, but the gardener said "let me put fertilizer on it and see what happens next year." Maybe this tree just needs some special care. Just destroying it now is not how a rational person would handle it. Giving it fertilizer or something would be more in keeping with what christians claim jesus is like. He is supposed to give things a chance.

I know the reason why he doesn't give it a chance is because it's a myth that jesus is a caring person. He is always calling the Pharisees and scribes dogs. If he really cared about them, he would try harder to reach them, not treat them like scum all the time.

When you word it that way, yes. "contradictionalist thinking" would be the opposite of "apologetic thinking." While apologists assume the bible is perfect and therefore as long as they can think of any excuse for an apparent problem, you are supposed to assume that that problem is solved. A contradictionalist would assume the bible is pure garbage and thus would find contradictions everywhere. True rational people would not take either side. You are not supposed to assume anything before you examine it. You just examine the evidence and see if it is credible or not. Why is it that christians think jesus did these miracles because "witnesses don't lie", yet there are plenty of ancient stories where people performed miracles and those are all false?

If you read both the matthew and mark version of the fig tree story, you will notice that in mark it says the tree was withered the next day and in matthew it says it withered immediately.

Also, in mark the events go like this:
1. cursing fig tree
2. clearing the temple
3. the next morning tree is dead.

In matthew the events are:
1. clearing the temple.
2. cursing the fig tree - it dies immediately.

You don't have to be a contradictionalist to see the obvious problem here. A rational person would see from this that the "witnesses" can't agree on the story, therefore the whole story has a cloud of doubt and loses its credibility. We are not being evil, close-minded people seeing this, we just realize that people don't always tell the truth, and contradictory accounts are one way to judge this.

Kilgore Trout

That's a great point. He claims to be the messiah, yet he did not fullfill the things the messiah was supposed to do. (Bring all the Jews back to Israel, lion lies down with the lamb, etc.) This should have been enough for people to realize that he was a false prophet under Deut 18. But no! Instead they make up claims like "he'll do those things when he comes back!" If you can make up silly, unproven claims like that in order not to make him a false prophet, then anyone could qualify as the messiah. If a prospective messiah wasn't a descendant of David, you could always say "He is a spiritual descendant of David, don't you know that part wasn't meant to be taken literally?"

Jesus also is a false prophet under Deut 13. The Torah does not say that god is part of a trinity. By making jesus as god, that is a god the Jews did not know before, so he was trying to get them to follow another god. Also because he changed laws of the Torah. Deut 13:4 says to keep the lord's command so since jesus changed laws, like in Matthew 5 and mark 7:14-21, that makes him a false prophet.