godfry n. glad

Additionally, I was under the impression that Acts was written by the same author who redacted a proto-Luke into what is now known as Luke.

Am I misinformed on this?

godfry n. glad

Bumble Bee Tuna

I noticed the same trend when I issued this challenge to fundies on a different board. They had no answer, but immediately covered for that by claiming I had a poor attitude and they "weren't going to bother". Sure, they bother to argue just about anything else, but this one in particular struck fear into their hearts. So you're "not going to bother" answering the challenge because you don't like some very minor things Barker says? What a cop-out.

I realize that it's futile to discuss, but we discussed Judas for 11 pages, so...

-B

Butters

Posted by CX,
Thts the problem. I am surrounded by people that claim that the Bible is a historicly accurate document. That the events described in the Gospels actually happened, and were written down by eyewitnesses,(or at least second hand witnesses), whos hands were guided by the Holy Ghost, to insure that these events were acurately recorded as they happened.
Of course they allways start out with that argument, then when faced with something like Barker's Easter challange, they fall back to the idea of faith, but the next time you talk to them, the're back to claiming it's history. Yes cognitive dissonance is the right term. It is why I believe that most people are crazy. Most people believe in a God, and an after life that they not only can't prove to be true, but that necessitates cognitive dissonance. This leads to a way of thinking that allows the person to believe all sorts of weird things, while ignoring reality. It is no coincidence that the more devout a person is, the less in touch with reality they are. This culminates in cases like Jim Jones, David Koresh, Osama Binladen.
Whenever I see a homeless person out on the street screaming the Gospel, I always ask myself, Did the way of thinking they devoloped through religion make them crazy, or did their insanity make them extremly religious?

JohnV

Hmmm, maybe I'll give this a try. First let's clarify the challenge. What time period does Mr. Barker want reconciled?

MortalWombat

You can find Barker's Easter challenge <a href="http://www.ffrf.org/lfif/stone.html" target="_blank">here</a>.

Here is the time period in question (taken from the link above):

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: MortalWombat ]</p>

Darwin's Finch

JohnV, start at Easter morning and read through to the end of each Gospel: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20-21. Then construct a chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension, without omitting any details from the separate accounts.

Have fun. Let us know what you come up with.

JohnV

Hold on now. From the link:

"I HAVE AN EASTER challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born."

Some of the events in "Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20-21" clearly occur subsequent to Easter day itself. For example:

John 20
26Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: JohnV ]</p>

Kosh

...And I'll start the popcorn machine...

David Bowden

Beginning on Easter morning, through the end of each gospel's account of Easter day, or perhaps the end of Jesus' life on earth, depending on how you interpret the challenge.

Dan Barker's Easter Challenge (condensed version; the original post has a link):

"...The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened; who said what, when; and where these things happened.
"The important condition to the challenge is that not one single biblical detail be omitted..."

Good luck!

For the truly ambitious, here's a few more scriptural issues that could do with some reconciling...

While we're trying to harmonize the end of Jesus' life, his Davidic lineage needs some attention.

Using Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38 as incontrovertible (God-guided) authorities, compile Joseph's complete family tree - without omitting any names listed by these (allegedly honest, inspired and well-informed) authors.

Once you've done that, for extra credit you might address the following essay question: What purpose does it serve to cite Joseph's ancestry, if it doesn't really show that Jesus was his son or a descendant of David?

[---]

-OT prophecy fulfilled, or not:

Isaiah 7:14 is mistranslated in Matthew 1:23; Matthew misinterprets Isaiah as predicting Jesus' "virgin" birth. Most modern translations - and all Jewish ones - correct the Isaiah 7:14 error made in the Septuagint (which was apparently the source of Matthew's error, though it was known to have such errors before the time of Herod the Great), by using the more accurate translation of the original Hebrew phrase, "young woman".

Extra credit: If it's at all possible that Jesus's "virgin" birth was invented to fulfill a misreading of the OT, then it would also seem to be possible that other events in Jesus' life were also invented to fulfill or parallel or otherwise connect with OT material. Concede this, or show where this reasoning is flawed.

[---]

-If even one passage in scripture is shown to be an attempt at making the unfactual sound factual, does that not expose scripture's general claim to be reliable and true testimony, to reasonable doubt?

And doesn't such reasonable doubt make it completely prudent for everyone today to demand external corroborating evidence for each questionable claim, prior to provisionally accepting it as fact?

Don't Christians have a similarly healthy skepticism about non-Christian supernatural accounts from pagan writers in late antiquity? Shouldn't we be absolutely consistent in our application of skepticism?

[---]

Related to the "virgin birth" prophecy:

-Did flies and bees settle all over the land after Jesus' birth, as Isaiah prophesies immediately after the "virgin"/young woman prophecy? In that day, did Isaiah's clear prophecies about milk and honey and peace come true?

If not, it seems either that Isaiah erred on several points in his prophecy concerning Jesus' birth (raising the question of how this could possibly be the case, considering the alleged infallible source of a true prophet's prophecy), or, that (as a rabbi might argue today) Christianity surely does not know the authentic prophesied messiah, since neither Jesus nor anyone else has actually fulfilled the entire prophecy.

[---]

Other unsolved mysteries of the Bible:

-Was it God or Satan who incited King David to take that fateful census, after which God destroyed many lives to punish David's action? (2 Sam. 24:1 vs. 1 Chron. 21:1).

(Whoever incited David's census, God's decision to strike the population for the sin of David is really absurd. It is especially so, if 1 Chron is correct and Satan, and not God, instigated the whole affair. As David himself says, "I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall upon me and my family." God ignores this sensible plea, and he never bothers to explain this action, either to David or to the surviving relatives of those massacred.)

-Are there, in truth, insects with four legs, as Leviticus 11:20-21 states? And does the hare or rabbit in fact chew its cud, as Lev 11:6 quotes God as claiming? If not, then don't these errors point us in the direction of a scripture that cannot claim to be perfectly reliable?

-Where did Aaron die? Deut. 10:6 says he died and was buried in Moserah, while Numbers 33:38 says he died on Mount Hor, after leaving Moseroth (=Moserah) and passing through half a dozen other places. If the Bible can get its history and biography wrong in the OT, isn't it possible that the NT also says some things about Jesus that aren't true?

(The following one is borrowed, if I remember correctly, from Don Morgan's page of contradictions and absurdities)

An oddity of incredible proportions: According to 1 Kings 6:2, and 2 Chronicles 3:3, Solomon's temple was only about ninety feet long by thirty feet wide (area=~2700 sq feet, or about the area of a modern upper-middle-class house).
And yet:
-153,300 persons were employed to build it (1 Kings 5:15-16),
-it took seven years to build (1 Kings 6:38),
-13,100,000 lbs. of gold and 116,400,000 lbs. of silver were consumed in its construction (1 Chronicles 22:14), and
-24,000 supervisors and 6,000 officials and judges were employed to manage it (1 Chronicles 23:4).
-How many builders, supervisors, officials, and judges (and how much raw material) does it take, in the real world, to construct a building not larger than a Super 8 Motel?

-In James 4:5, the author quotes scripture. Where in scripture does this quotation come from?

-In John 8:14 Jesus says that if he bears witness to himself, his testimony is true. But in John 5:31 Jesus says that if he bears witness to himself, his testimony is not true. Well, one does wonder: if Jesus bears witness to himself, is his testimony true?

-God himself restricts the diet of his chosen people - for instance, He prohibits forever the eating of blood and fat in Lev. 3:17. But in Colossians 2:20-23, Paul says of dietary rules that they "have an appearance of wisdom," but are in fact based only on human injunctions. Unfortunately, Paul doesn't quote God himself on this matter, leaving us with Paul's word versus God's in scripture.

Whose word do Christians abide by in this matter? And why might Paul attribute human origin to teachings that the OT says came from God?

-In Acts 9:7 those present at Paul's conversion remain standing. However, in Acts 26:14 they all fall to the ground. Which was the case?

The same writer (Luke, according to tradition) seems not to be able to distinguish an imagined state of affairs from an actual state of affairs in his own memory (assuming that one or the other account describes an actual state of affairs).

In neither case does he indicate that he may not be recalling the event correctly. So it seems quite possible that he may not have recalled other events correctly. If this is characteristic of the NT's level of authority, then the possibility of other "errors in remembering" which aren't so easy for us to point out detracts from scripture's reliability, and also introduces the possibility that at least some recorded events were completely imagined, not actual - giving a fair-minded person good reason to be skeptical, yes?

-In Jeremiah 7:21-22, God claims he did not give the Israelites commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices. But the Pentateuch is very clear: God did do just that. Assuming for the sake of argument that God isn't forgetful nor duplicious, which part of the Bible actually speaks for God? (The NIV hides this contradiction, but the original language doesn't, nor do most translations.)

-It is known from other historical sources that the punishment for Roman soldiers who fall asleep on their watch was death. So why would Matthew record that a group of Roman soldiers accepted money and a (worthless, for all they knew) pledge of safety from Jews, in exchange for their official testimony (to a heavyhanded Roman government) that they fell asleep on duty and were outwitted by a bunch of body-snatchers?

Or is this just another one of those poetic, erroneous bits that got mixed in with the "true" parts of the Gospel?

Skepticism regarding the factual content of the OT and NT seems extremely reasonable in light of such conundrums. Kudos to anyone attempting to reconcile all these scriptural issues without committing any errors in reasoning.

-David

[edited to add: I see that others answered your original question, JohnV; well, anyway, enjoy!]

[ December 05, 2002: Message edited by: David Bowden ]</p>

JohnV

Depending on how I interpret it? Barker claims that the challenge is "straightforward" and "simple." If it's straightforward and simple, there are not two reasonable intepretations, only one. So, which is it?