noah

Hi everyone,

I was doing a little looking around for xian attempts to answer Barker's Easter Challenge and I ran across this site.

http://www.geocities.com/meta_crock/...esharmony.html

The author concedes and so do his sources that not all the contadicitions can be resolved. But he does maintain,nevetheless, that a coherent story can be cobbled together from the texts of the gospels.
His thrust seems to be that each gospel is the product and a reflection of a community not an individual which I think many xians would not accept since they believe the names of each gospel are those of the authors themselves.
He makes the mistake of trying to cite eyewitness testimony in support of his claim. I say mistake because it seems to me that we don't have much in the way of reliable testimony to the events on Easter.
He cites Koester but my impression of Koester is he rejects the idea that the gospels are literally true which is what this xian is trying to show.
Koester futher detracts from this xian's argument believes that Mark's gospel was written first, and Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and changed things around and that the 12 apostles are a Lukan fiction
He openly admits that he must add to the gospels in order to make them coherent. He proposes a flashback scenario for the women in his opening paragraphs which I do not understand.

I thought you all would have some thoughts of your own on this xian's article.

Best,

Noah
.

Toto

Metacrock was poster here, until he decided he wasn't very good at debate. I think that you will find some discussion in some of the prior Easter Challenge threads:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=52409

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=34288

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=103978

noah

Yea I see that meacrock's banned here. Is he still banned? I know he just got banned over at Apologetics.org temporarily. The Mod says he needs to rethink what he hopes to accomplish there.

mata leao

all the "contradictions" are easily resolved, just as are the "contradictions" of the eye witness accounts of the kennedy assassination... this is an urban legend,(thay they are inconsistent) the Bible accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ are consistent and reconcilable. If they were "perfect" and clinically identical then you would know they were fraudulent!

noah

Well then why don't you take a stab at it mata?

DaMan121

The are no eye witness accounts in the bible, only hersay.

motorhead

One, please take the challenge if you feel the accounts are consistent and reconcilable.

Two, why wouldn't they match perfectly (or at least match nearly perfectly) if these stories are inspired by the all-knowing, all-powerful Christian God?

pharoah

What was Jesus's last words before he died?

I guess that's why everybody agees with the ______ theory. Help me out there, fill in the blank.

The resurrection accounts?
name the day and hour that Jesus died.

So that means that two geometry textbooks by different authors that teach the same identical theories using the same proofs must both be fraudulent.

RUmike

To mata leao:

What day was Jesus crucified... on Passover, or the day before Passover?


My New Testament professor, Mahlon Smith, a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, said that once he discovered this contradiction he couldn't possibly be a literalist anymore.

newtype_alpha

Finally, a Christian who knows the TROOTH!

Since you clearly have a strong reason to believe that the accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ are consistent and reconcilable, please take the time to answer Dan Barker's Easter Challenge and report the results back to us. :wave: