Family Man

Let's see. Matthew clearly states that Judas died by hanging himself. Accepting Vanderzyden's revised version (not knowing ancient Greek myself) it clearly implies that Judas died because his bowels burst (sans the fall). Only the most stupid and delusional Christian wouldn't see that as a contradiction.

Steven Carr

There is an important Biblical principle here, which Christians should learn.

Mark 14:55-59 'The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: "We heard him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.' " Yet even then their testimony did not agree.'

So the Bible is clear that witnesses are discredited if their testimony does not agree, even if the agree on the main point.

And Luke and Matthew hardly even agree on the main point.

Of course, Vandy will not let the Bible influence his beliefs.

leonarde

Posted by Steven Carr: 1) You are talking about "the Bible" as if it were truly one book, rather than a compilation of books
by many authors over centuries.

2)In the cited incident, it is the evangelists reporting, NOT on what "the Bible" says, but on what the Jewish contemporary standards for testimony in the 1st Century were.

3)What is "discredited" isn't necessarily
"all witnesses" who disagree but an accusation in a Jewish court whose "proof"
is based solely on eye/ear witnesses when the testimony of such is hopelessly conflictory.

4)Historical judgements, on the other hand,
---a subject that OCCASIONALLY comes up here----
don't necessarily have the some criteria.
"Beyond a reasonable doubt" would be an absurdly
high historical standard in most instances
(however desireable meeting such a standard would
be). Again: litigation is one thing, history another.

5)The semantic range of "witness" can be thought of as a series of concentric circles. The innermost one would be the so-called "eye witness"
(sometimes it is truly ear witness): someone who
was there in the flesh at the events described. That is evidently the meaning
in the passage in question.

6)I'm not familiar enough with Matthew to comment
on him, but Luke never claimed to be a witness (in this strictest sense)to the historical (ie flesh and blood)Jesus.

7)He is very explicit at the very beginning of Luke's Gospel that he is a compiler of the
testimonies of others:
[From first 4 verses of St Luke's Gospel, The New English Bible
Oxford University Press, 1970][emphasis leonarde's

Posted by Steven Carr: But
the main point has hardly been addressed here: Judas' exact manner of death has zilch in the way
of theological significance for contemporary believers. For all but the most literal-minded
believers and/or atheists, this is a tempest in
a teacup.
For believers the "main point" of the Gospels is: the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.
Though there may be a few discrepancies about
some peripheral details, the essence of the reportage of those events is consistent.
To wit: they both report him crucified under Pontius Pilate, and they both report him risen
sometime after that.

Cheers!

Steven Carr

SO both Luke , Matthew and Mark report that , and even though, Luke and Matthew relied upon Mark, changing it to suit themselves whenever they felt like that, you count that as reliable, even though the evidence is not such that you would hang a dog upon it?

'Peripheral details' include the day and time of the Crucifixion and who exactly was supposed to have witnessed the resurrection. Luke does not even have the names of all the people supposed to be there.

leonarde

Posted by Steven Carr: Luke used
multiple sources(including but not limited
to Mark).
Your characterization: I find quite revealing......about your general attitudes. Luke was---though one suspects he made no money from it----a de facto ancient historian.
I don't think historians, even those who lived
2000 years or so ago, typically "changed [things]to suit themselves". Sometimes they probably tried to curry favor with a patron (if
they had one) but "to suit themselves"???? What
would that mean exactly? 'Let's see, I could have
Jesus rise on a Wednesday.....Nah, Wednesday's my
poker night, can't have that! What about Sunday
morning?!?'
I agree that
such details would be interesting to have but they, in themselves, would be unverifiable anyway.
What would stop someone here from claiming that
such a list was simply an invention of the evangelists such as you have already hypothesized
for what they have written?
Presumably no one was "taking attendance" at either the Crucifixion OR the resurrection.

Cheers!

Jayhawker Soule

Who, and how do you know?

leonarde

Who? One of those bloody theists no doubt!!!

How do I "know"? See:
<a href="http://religion.rutgers.edu/nt/primer/2source.html" target="_blank">http://religion.rutgers.edu/nt/primer/2source.html</a>

Cheers!

Vibr8gKiwi

This is a bit off topic, but...

Believers already believe, they do not need to read the accounts, nor do they (which is proven by just noticing how few Christians are even aware of the inconsistencies in the accounts).

As for the non-believers, why should they believe ancient, seemingly legendary stories that don't even agree with each other on basic points (like who, when, where, etc.). No such inconsistent story would be the work of an all-perfect God-of-the-Universe. If you're going to make the curious move of taking other people's words for what god is and what he wants for you, you might as well find a consistent story.

Then again, taking other people's words for what a god supposedly is and wants seems pretty stupid to me. Again I can't believe a God-of-the-Universe would tell one person a message for someone else. Hey, god spoke to me and wants you to give me money (or do you only believe the words of ancient dead goat-herders, who aren't even alive to judge, when you pick your supreme beings?)

Family Man

A couple of points I wish to make:

1) While I appreciate Leonarde's more reasonable approach to the text, one thing he should realize is that many of us react more to the idiotic assertions that Vanderzyden's makes about there being no contradictions in the Bible. As Leonarde said, he may be able to explain a why a contradiction is there, but it doesn't -- to Vanderzyden's dismay -- eliminate the contradiction. And, in fact, this has other consequences that I don't think Leonarde will much like.

To illustrate, let's assume two different newspaper reports about a man's death. One says he was shot in the head and the other that he fell from a forty story building. Clearly contradictory. Let's say the explanation is that the man was shot first -- which killed him -- and which caused his body to take the plunge. What do we conclude? Not that there is no contradiction -- the explanation doesn't remove that. The conclusion we come to is that the second writer is incompetent, for he failed to report the true cause of death. That's where Vanderzyden's argument fails apart -- not only doesn't he remove the contradiction, he implies that Luke is an incompetent historian who didn't bother to get his facts straight.

2) While I agree with Leonarde that historical standards are lower than legal ones -- understandable since our legal system is designed to protect the falsely accused -- I believe he errs in treating the NT as if it was written as history. It wasn't. It was written as a faith document, as a religious polemic. There are numerous examples of the NT authors making up stories to advance a particular theological viewpoint. The notion that they were researching and writing about events as modern historians do -- or even some of the ancient ones -- is a misunderstanding of what the NT is.

And, in fact, that's probably what the Judas stories are -- fiction -- which also explains the contradiction. Matthew is kinder to Judas, letting him be remorseful and implying he was an unwitting but necessary pawn in the process. Luke is harsher, painting him as a greedy bastard who got what he deserved.

In short, the Judas contradiction is valuable because it demonstrates that much that was written in the NT isn't history at all.

Vanderzyden

Refuting the points that characterize the claim of a contradiction is equivalent to demonstrating that there is no contradiction.

This was addressed at some length beginning near the end of page two in this <a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=51&t=000647&p=2" target="_blank">thread</a>.


Vanderzyden