[UPDATED July 2006: I've extensively revised this posting, primarily so that I'll have it as a ready reference.]
Most Christian theology is grounded entirely on traditionalists' insistence that certain specific events really, truly happened as they're recounted in the New Testament. But inconsistencies and other anomalies in the New Testament writings raise serious questions about just how much the documents' authors actually knew about those events — and even whether they might have been "spinning" their stories to promote some agenda, or agendas.
(The inconsistency question is independent of the questions inherently raised by the weaknesses of oral tradition, on which the Gospels are based.)
This article reviews several specific examples:
1. The disciples certainly didn't act like Jesus had foretold his resurrection [link].
2. Many of Jesus's most influential friends and followers evidently didn't "sign on" with the early church [link].
3. Wouldn't you think John the Baptist would have been more involved in his kinsman's ministry [link]?
4. If Jesus really said to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then the apostles apparently ignored his instructions [link].
5. Peter, preaching at Pentecost, seems to have baldly misrepresented his scriptural source [link].
6. Other minor discrepancies raise additional concerns about how much the New Testament authors really knew [link].
[See also: The Apostles' Teaching Didn't Seem to Include a Divine Jesus as well as Is Jesus Coming Again? The Predictors' Track Record Doesn't Inspire Confidence. Technically, these articles don't address inconsistencies or anomalies in the New Testament writings themselves, but they still raise questions about the reliability of the Christian story as told by traditionalists.]
Many traditionalists tend to dismiss these matters as mere quibbles. But they're not mere quibbles to people who feel a responsibility to think for themselves (including, not least, many of our young people).
If the trads are serious about being effective in their evangelism — as opposed to preaching what seems good to them, and letting God worry about the results — then they're going to have to come up with solid, plausible responses. So far, I haven't seen any
1. The Disciples Didn't Act Like Jesus Had Foretold His Resurrection
This may be one of the most intriguing inconsistencies in the New Testament.
According to the Gospels, Jesus explicitly and repeatedly told his disciples that he would be put to death but would be raised on the third day [Mt 16.21-23, 17.22-23, 20.17-19; Mk 8.31-32; Lk 9.21-22, 18.31-33; Jn 14.18-20, 16.16-20].
Matthew and Mark indicate that the disciples very much got the message, judging by their strong reactions to it, including Peter's saying, no way, Lord, I won't allow it! [Mt 16.22, 17.23; Mk 8.33].
And during Jesus's ministry, the disciples are said to have seen not just one, but two examples of dead people being raised to life: Jairus's daughter [Mt 9.18-25, Mk 5.21-24, 35-42], and Lazarus [Jn 11]. So it's not like the disciples would have been unfamiliar with the concept.
But then after Jesus's own death, the disciples acted as though they'd never heard of anyone being raised from the dead, let alone that (supposedly) Jesus had explicitly and repeatedly foretold his own raising:
- On Easter Sunday, a handful of disciples went to Joseph of Arimathea's new tomb after the Sabbath. They were perplexed when they found the tomb empty [Mk 16.5; Lk 24.4; Jn 20.2, 9].
- Other disciples refused to believe the first reports of resurrection sightings [Mk 16.13; Lk 24.11; Jn 20.24-25].
- Mary Magdalene initially failed to recognize Jesus when she encountered him [Jn. 20.14]; ditto with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus [Lk 24.16].
- Jesus's followers are described as being startled and terrified when they saw him, thinking they were seeing a ghost [Lk 24.5, 24.37; Mt 28.10].
You would think at least some of the Eleven would have remembered Jesus's predictions of his resurrection. It appears none of them did.
This is a huge problem for the traditionalist view. The Gospels of both Luke and John make weak attempts to explain the problem away. Luke claims that the disciples "understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said" [Lk 18.34; see also 9.45]. And the Fourth Gospel says that after John looked, and Peter went, into the empty tomb, "They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead" [Jn 20.9, emphasis added]. But they hardly needed to understand it from Scripture, because Jesus himself had supposedly told them in no uncertain terms.
The disciples might have been uneducated [Acts 4.13], but we have no reason to assume they were dumb. It's impossible to imagine how they could have failed to understand Jesus's simple, repeated prediction: They're going to kill me, but on the third day I'll be raised back to life. Luke's and John's attempts at explanation don't square at all with the other factual accounts cited above. In the words of Dr. Henry Lee, testifying as a DNA forensics expert for the defense at OJ Simpson's murder trial, "something not right here."
So what should we make of this? To me, the simplest and most plausible explanation is that the Gospels simply got it wrong: Jesus never actually did tell his disciples he was going to be raised from the dead. (He might well have predicted that he'd be executed, of course.) That would neatly account for the disciples' shock when some of them believed they'd encountered Jesus after his death.
So why do the Gospels claim that Jesus did foretell his resurrection? To me, it seems quite plausible that this part of the story was a distortion, unintentional or otherwise, of the kind that often happens when stories get retold over time. All at once or bit by bit, consciously or unconsciously, the early church likely recast the story of the crucifixion and its aftermath into a narrative that retroactively gave meaning to Jesus's death — even if it didn't quite fit the facts.
[EDIT: Copied from my comment below of October 11, 2005 at 02:29 PM: I can think of only one way out of this conundrum, and it's pure speculation: Perhaps what Jesus really predicted was that he would be raised as part of the general resurrection, presumably at the end of time, as opposed to on the third day following his execution. That would account for the disciples' grief, and for their later surprise at encountering their teacher again so soon after his death. As I say, this is pure speculation.]
The Gospels portray the twelve apostles as Jesus’s main men, the guys whom the Teacher chose to serve as the foundation of the church despite their humble origins. But the Gospel evidence shows clearly that Jesus's friends and admirers included other well-off, influential people who evidently didn't sign on with the embryonic church founded by the Eleven. If the apostles' stories about Jesus's being raised to life were so convincing, it's difficult to understand why these other F.O.J.s are so conspicuously absent from the story of the church.
Lazarus: Jesus's Close, Wealthy Friend
According to John’s Gospel, Lazarus and his family were important in Jesus’s life. Jesus loved Lazarus and his family and wept at his death; he restored Lazarus to life [Jn 11] and dined with him just before his (Jesus’s) triumphal entry into Jerusalem [Jn 12].
Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha must have been pretty well off: when Jesus dined with them, Mary just happened to have on hand a jar of perfume worth a year’s wages, which she poured on Jesus’s feet! [Jn 11.2, 12.2-5; cf. Mark 14.3]. It’s hard to imagine how anyone other than the well-to-do would (or could) have offered such an extravagant gesture.
You’d think Lazarus might well have been among the most devoted to the man who rescued him from death. We might expect Lazarus to have worked alongside the Twelve; to have shared in the Last Supper; to have been there for Jesus during his agony in the Garden. And wouldn’t Lazarus have played at least some role in the early life of the church that the Twelve founded, even if it were just to provide financial support?
Maybe Lazarus did all these things. Maybe he was right in there with the Twelve during Jesus’s ministry and in the early days of the church.
But if so, the New Testament is silent about it.
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea: Jesus's Secret, Highly-Placed Disciples
Nicodemus is mentioned only in the Fourth Gospel, which recounts that he was a member of the Jewish ruling council who came by night to visit and talk with Jesus [Jn 3.1–21]. That Gospel also says that on one occasion Nicodemus objected when the chief priests and Pharisees berated the temple guards for not arresting Jesus [Jn 7.50–51].
Joseph of Arimathea, according to all of the Gospels, was a rich man, a member of the ruling council, a good and upright man, and also a secret disciple of Jesus [Mt 27.57–60; Mk 15.42–47; Lk 23.50–55, Jn 18.38–42].
It was these two men, not any of the Eleven, nor any of Jesus's women followers, who cared for Jesus’s body after his death. If in fact they had been secret disciples of Jesus, their actions would have been at some personal risk; you'd think they'd be minor heroes to the Eleven and would have shown up in the narratives as men of at least some influence in the early church. Moreover, there would have been little reason for them to remain closeted as secret disciples after "the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith" [Acts 6.7].
Yet not once does the New Testament ever mention either Nicodeumus or Joseph of Arimathea in the story of the early church.
One wonders whether these men gave credence to the tales told, and the claims of special authority made, by the Eleven. They might not have been followers of Jesus at all: They could easily have simply been good Jews who were not virulently hostile to Jesus (unlike many of their colleagues on the ruling council), who took charge of his body on behalf of the council to ensure that he got a decent burial. The extant evidence, I submit, is more consistent with the latter version.
Joanna, Wife of Herod's Household Manager
Joanna was one of the women who provided financial support for Jesus "out of their own means" [Lk 8.3]. Luke’s phrasing suggests Joanna was unlikely to have been poor; he also says explicitly that she was the wife of Herod's household manager.
Luke says that Joanna was one of the women who discovered the empty tomb on Easter Sunday, and who later reported to the other disciples that two men in gleaming clothes had told them Jesus had been raised [Lk 24.9-10]. That's the last we hear of Joanna in the entire New Testament.
It's possible, of course, that Joanna might have been one of the "certain women" mentioned in Acts as hanging out with the apostles after Jesus's ascension [Acts 1.14]. But it's at least equally plausible that the author of Luke / Acts didn't mention Joanna as being present on that occasion simply because she wasn't there.
Other Influential Friends and Admirers of Jesus
Other influential people make cameo appearances in the Gospels, usually because they owed big debts of gratitude to Jesus. These people included the royal official in Capernauam whose son was ill [Jn 4.46-54], as well as Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, whose twelve-year-old daughter Jesus declared was not dead but sleeping [Mt 9.18-25, Mk 5.22-23, 35-42]. None of them make any further appearance in the story of the church.
Why Weren't These Influential People Part of the Early Church?
We're left with a mystery: Why do all of these well-off or well-connected friends of Jesus simply disappear from the story? Why, for all we can tell, were they uninvolved in the early church?
My conjecture: These influential F.O.J.s simply didn't buy the claims of the Eleven about a risen Jesus and a special commission to preach his gospel. It probably occurred to them that Joseph of Arimathea — whose tomb it actually was, of course — might well move the body after the Sabbath following the crucifixion. (See "The Empty Tomb: Another Possibility," from which this section is adapted, for a more detailed discussion of this point.)
3. You'd Think John the Baptist Would Have Been More Involved in His Kinsman's Ministry
According to the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist's mother was well aware of how important her relative Mary's unborn son would be: "And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you [Mary] among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?" [Lk 1.41-43]
If this story were accurate, you'd certainly expect Elizabeth to later tell her own son John about the relative of whom such great things were expected, and for whom John himself was to prepare the way [Lk. 1.17, 76]. And mothers being what they are, you'd think Elizabeth and Mary might make sure their sons at least knew about each other as they grew up. You might also anticipate that the young kinsmen, as they began their respective missions, might keep in touch with each other and perhaps even work together; that certainly would have been a logical move under the circumstances.
But none of that seems to have happened. There's no evidence that Jesus ever asked John to help with his ministry (nor, for that matter, does he appear ever to have asked any of his own brothers or sisters, to whom their mother Mary presumably would have said at least something about Jesus's special destiny). Instead, Jesus chose as his first disciples a seemingly-random bunch of strangers to be his disciples and later his apostles.
The Gospels report no contact at all between Jesus and John until Jesus's baptism — and in the Lucan version of the story, John baptized his putative kinsman as seemingly just another face in the crowd, with no sign that he regarded him as anything special [Lk 3.21]. Later, when John's followers reported Jesus's doings to him, John sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask, are you the one who is to come, as though John was taken by surprise by Jesus's career [Lk 7.18-23].
To be sure, the Gospel of John reports that, when Jesus approached John the Baptist, John recognized him and proclaimed him "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" [Jn 1.29]. And after further encomia, John declared that Jesus "is the Son of God" [Jn 1.34].
But these passages from John make it even more strange that John didn't seem to be one of Jesus's long-term supporters and even disciples.
Why this discrepancy? My own guess is this: John the Baptist really had little or nothing to do with Jesus, apart from happening to baptize him as part of a crowd. John probably didn't proclaim Jesus to be the Son of God. He probably wasn't even related to the Teacher.
The Gospel stories suggesting otherwise seem to be factual "embellishments" by the early church. One naturally wonders what other parts of the story might be the fruits of similar embellishments.
Many traditionalist Christians, anxious to find scriptural support for the doctrine of the Trinity, set great store by the trinitarian baptismal formula in the Great Commission. They point to the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus commands the disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit [Mt 28.19].
(Curiously, in the Gospel of Mark, which is widely accepted as having been written earlier than Matthew, the Great Commission story doesn't mention baptizing in the name of anyone in particular [Mk 14.16].)
But, contrary to Matthew, the Book of Acts records that Peter and the disciples actually baptized in the name of Jesus only, when they baptized in the name of anyone at all [Acts 2.38, 8.16, 10.48, 19.5].
Some scholars believe that Jesus's baptismal instructions were subsequently edited to justify a later-evolved doctrine of the Trinity. The inconsistency between Matthew and Acts certainly supports this conjecture.
Which raises another question (in the same category as, You never see just one cockroach): What else in Matthew, or in other New Testament documents, might have been the work of later doctrinal editors?
5. Peter, Preaching at Pentecost, Seems to Have Baldly Misrepresented his Scriptural Source
If we're to believe the Book of Acts, the apostle Peter anticipated a sin not uncommon to lawyers, that of mischaracterizing an authority in the hope of furthering his argument and convincing his audience.
The scene: Peter is preaching to a Jerusalem crowd, immediately after the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. According to Acts, Peter argues that in Psalm 16.8–11, David supposedly foretold God’s rescue of the Messiah from the grave — and since God had just raised Jesus from the dead, it stood to reason that Jesus must have been the one about whom David spoke:
"David said about him [i.e., Jesus]: 'I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.'
"Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact."
(Acts 2.25–32, emphasis added.) This argument is an obvious fabrication. The psalm itself, entitled "A miktam of David," clearly is not a prediction that the LORD would protect David's future descendant. It begins: "Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge" (emphasis added). No, the psalm is an expression of confidence that God will protect David himself, not his descendant nor any other third party.
Either Peter mischaracterized the scriptural authority on which he purported to rely, or Acts got the story wrong. Neither possibility is good news for the traditionalist position.
• Matthew 1.2-17 and Luke 3.23-38 give two considerably-inconsistent genealogies for Jesus. The most obvious difficulty is Joseph's father: Was Joseph born of Jacob (says Matthew), or Heli (says Luke)?
• Luke describes Joseph and Mary as residents of Nazareth [Lk 1.26]. He recounts the familiar story of their journey to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, and their eventual return to Nazareth [Lk 2.1-39]. Matthew, on the other hand, presents us with a hair-raising tale of danger and narrow escapes. He is silent about Joseph and Mary's hometown, saying only that Jesus was born in Bethelem of Judea [Mt 2.1]. But then he has Joseph fleeing with the Holy Family to Egypt, to escape from Herod's Slaughter of the Innocents [Mt 2.13-18]. After Herod dies, according to Matthew, Joseph "went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth" (Mt 2.19-23]. Matthew thus implies that the Holy Family settled in Nazareth for the first time after the return from Egypt, directly contradicting the Lucan account.
• According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus and the disciples ate a Passover meal, following which Jesus was arrested, tried, and crucified [Mt 26.17-21; Mk 14.12-18; Lk 22.7-15]. According to the Fourth Gospel, however, Jesus was executed on the day of Preparation for the Passover [Jn 19.31]. Some theologians speculate that the author of the Fourth Gospel wanted to portray Jesus as the Lamb sacrificed for the new Passover. Was this merely literary license? (For other possible explanations of this discrepancy and the problems associated therewith, see this Web site.)
Commentary
As any lawyer can tell you, inconsistencies in documents are not uncommon. Personally, I accept that the New Testament is a reasonably reliable record of the main points of Jesus's life and death.
But the aforementioned inconsistencies in the documents — along with similarly-troubling manuscript differences — raise serious questions about many traditionalist Christian doctrines that are based entirely on the truth of the stories told in the New Testament narratives. It's completely plausible that, in any number of places, the New Testament authors didn't know the facts, and/or they tailored their stories to fit their theological agendas.
The logical conclusion is that, while the New Testament should be given serious weight, it would be a grave mistake blindly to accept the traditionalist interpretation and to put the NT writings on a pedestal, above all other potential sources of revelation.
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I think you may be reading too much into these "inconsistencies." In fact, I don't think these exist if you look at scripture with the broad picture in mind.
First, The scripture make it clear the disciples never really got it until after Jesus death and resurrection. It seems reasonable that they would not really understand the idea of Jesus being resurrected because it was outside of their understanding of the time.
The trinity is a non-issue. People can argue all they want, but it does not matter what formula is used for baptism. The Bible does not take sides.
The hometown issue is not inconsistent either. The authors do not contradict themselves. There is no suggestion that "they settled in Nazareth for the first time."
Jesus died on a Friday and that is consistent through all of the Gospels. The sabbath and the passover are not the same day.
People will do anything to try and find inconsistencies in the Word, but they are not there. I am not saying we have not mistranslated some thing etc. I am saying that the Bible is infallabile in the original language and proper translation shows no inconsistencies.
Posted by: Douglas Anderson | October 11, 2005 at 12:47 PM
Thanks for stopping by, Doug. I fear you may have missed the point of the posting: Those who believe the Bible to be infallible (about anything) have a very steep hill to climb in trying to persuade people who don’t accept that proposition a priori. I'm one of those people. I don’t see how your arguments can be squared with the facts in respect of the scriptural texts.
1. Your first point seems clearly wrong. If we believe the scriptural accounts, the concept of resurrection indisputably was not outside the disciples’ understanding. Both the Gospels and Acts record a lively debate between Pharisees and Sadducees on the question whether there would be a resurrection. Jesus himself reportedly participated in this debate.
And as I said in the main posting, the Jesus of the Gospels repeatedly predicted to his disciples that he himself would be killed but then raised just days later. That's a shocking prediction, one which caused Peter to respond explosively and the other disciples to be "filled with grief." To assert now that the disciples supposedly failed to "get it" is simply not credible.
I can think of only one way out of this conundrum, and it's pure speculation: Perhaps what Jesus really predicted was that he would be raised as part of the general resurrection, presumably at the end of time, as opposed to on the third day following his execution. That would account for the disciples' grief, and for their later surprise at encountering their teacher again so soon after his death. As I say, this is pure speculation.
2. As to baptism in the name of the Trinity, I doubt Jesus really gave a hoot whether people were baptized at all, let along in whose name the baptisms were conducted. What seems to have mattered to Jesus was not some ritual bath that manifested and symbolized a sinner's repentance, but the repentance itself.
My point was this: Suppose that Jesus really did order the disciples to baptize in the name of the Trinity. Either the disciples didn’t take the details of Jesus’s command very seriously (in which case why should we ourselves take the Trinity seriously), or Acts got it wrong about what the disciples actually did (in which case we should question the reliability of Luke’s sources on other matters as well).
This isn’t a false dichotomy / false dilemma. It really does have to be one or the other.
3. As to where Jesus was born, or what day he died: It doesn't really matter one way or another, except to the extent that the inconsistencies raise still more questions about the reliability of the stories we now call the Gospels.
Again, thanks for stopping by; I appreciate your having taken the time to comment.
Posted by: D. C. | October 11, 2005 at 02:29 PM
I guess we are just going to have to disagree on the first point. I am not saying there was not a disagreement on the idea of a general resurrection at the end of time between the Pharisees and Saducees. I am saying that the idea of a person being resurrected in three days was a completely foreign concept. Sure Jesus said it. He has also said many other things we argue about today or did in the not to distant past. This includes the issues of how we treat those less fortunate, the role of government etc.
The way I read the Biblical acocunts (and I freely admit these are my opinions. Shared by some scholar and not by others.) is that the disciples were still looking at Jesus as the conquering earthly King until after his death. They did not see his predictions as predictions. They saw them as him talking about what the opposition would like to do to him.
I completely agree with point 2. We have gotten way to legalistic on the whole baptism issue. Baptism is simply and outward expression of an internal belief. Not getting baptized or being baptized in the name of Jesus or trinity does not really matter.
I still don't even see the inconsistencies of his place of residence or day of his death. As I read scripture consistency is there on these issues.
Let me end by saying this. I truly appreciate people who ask hard questions over those who don't question at all. The church is failing in the western world because we don't ask questions of ourselves and don't try to answer the questions the world is asking us.
The Bible is actually a grand narrative filled with poetry, selective history, wisdom sayings, symbloic writing and other form of literature. I fear we try to make it a ext book that it was never meant to be. Each other includes and leaves out certain material because it does not fit thier purpose in writing.
Thanks for being on the journey.
Posted by: Douglas Anderson | October 11, 2005 at 03:02 PM
Please allow me first to compliment you on your ability to clearly articulate your thoughts. You have exhausted your topic and have done so in a clearly understandable fashion.
Before discussing the individual issues you raise, I would first like to expose your un-stated presupposition; it is this: the Bible is worth believing, except where it is not--and it is your intellect that determines the difference. You replace the authority of the Bible with your own choosing when and where you will trust it.
Friend, while you and I have many differences our common humanity gives us much similarity. Even given that you are smarter that I, I must say that you are just as much a wretched sinner as I. While I don't suggest a blind acceptance of the Bible, I do suggest that perhaps when there appears to be a conflict, the limitation is our own understanding, blinded by our sinful position, and not in the text.
For the sake space and time, allow me the leniency to reduce your arguments to their primary points:
1. You believe the Bible is unreliable because the Disciples didn't understand Jesus' plain teaching.
I read a statistics book last month. I came a part (about multiple regression) but I didn't understand what it was saying. I read it again outloud. The words were not intending to prevent understanding, they intended to make it clear; however it wasn't until after I read through the example (multiple times) that I understood more clearly the teaching. I think this is a limitation of mental capacity and hardly a reason to not truth the text.
In fact, if the Bible were in error, it is more likely according to our human nature that the disciples would have boasted about how they were the first to understand what Jesus was saying. Just the opposite occurs, they describe their ignorance. To me, that lends credibility to the text.
Finally, Jesus says in John 14 that the, "Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." I trust in the Holy Spirit's ability to remind of what Jesus said more than I trust the ability of the disciples to understand what Jesus was saying (obviously, because of their natures, God and man)
2. Because Peter doesn't do exactly what Jesus said to do in Matthew, the Bible must be wrong.
As you get to know the people in the Bible, you'll soon realize that some people were more in need of forgiveness than others. Peter, as you remember, cut off the servant's ear, denied Christ three times, and had to be rebuke by Paul for his hypocrisy. Does Peter's inclination toward error mean that Bible is any less true?
I suggest 'no'. In fact, the Bible's ability to admit error in the main characters suggest its reliability. Who would believe a it if everyone was perfect? Because the people err, it clearly aligns with our understanding of humanity.
3. Because no written record of the post-resurrection era of some key Biblical figures exists, they must not have believed Jesus was resurrected.
As you'll remember from your study of church history, a great persecution of the church resulted in the diaspora, or the dispersion, of the Christians from Jerusalem. Believers got away from Jerusalem because they were not safe. It then makes sense that some key figures were not written about in the Gospels because the authors weren't around those individuals.
If you travel today to India, the lies near a small (relatively speaking) village a memorial to the disciple Thomas who, during the time of diaspora, traveled to India to share the news about Jesus' resurrection. Yet, no word is heard about Thomas in the gospels.
3 down; 2 more to go.
4. Because Jesus didn't do things the way you think it would have been most logical, the Bible must be wrong, or worse, Jesus wasn't divine.
Here is a most interesting fact: no less than 10 times in this point alone, you use a phrase like, "you'd expect, you'd think, probably". So I ask, if Jesus was truly God, don't you think his plan was good enough?
I agree with you that the time between Jesus' birth and the beginning of Jesus' ministry are a mystery. Boy, wouldn't it be neat to see Jesus grow up. But, I really find it hard to believe that because what Jesus does doesn't align with my expectation, the Bible is in error.
Frankly, the idea of Jesus' death on the cross doesn't align with my expectations; but to put God in the box of my understanding would limit his divinity and reduce him to the limits of my imagination.
5. Other discrepancies prove the Bible isn't trustworthy.
I have studied the Bible all my life, with several years devoted specifically to that undertaking. I have never, ever found a discrepancy in the Bible that takes away from its trustworthiness.
The study is important, but perhaps you'll permit me to tell you what I've found. Let's say you were to study the rest of your life to determine the validity of the Bible; at the end of your life, you'd still be a sinner in need of God's grace--you'd just have a lot of knowledge. See, intelletual growth does not address the human condition: it's selfishness, pride, arrogance. The only religious text in the world to address the true state of humanity and to provide a solution to our sinfulness, is the Bible.
So, I would encourage you to be very careful before claiming that it is trustworthy though prone to error. In doing so, you elevate your authority and may find yourself explaining away your need for a Savior.
Posted by: Jefferson Reed | July 29, 2006 at 09:24 AM
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Jefferson. Unfortunately I don't think they get you even close to where you need to go. We'll have to agree to disagree on pretty much all of your arguments.
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Jefferson writes: I would first like to expose your un-stated presupposition; it is this: the Bible is worth believing, except where it is not--and it is your intellect that determines the difference. You replace the authority of the Bible with your own choosing when and where you will trust it.
You're basically correct. I'm one of those people that feels a responsibility to think for myself, because I happen to believe that ultimately I'm personally accountable to God for what I do in this life. There's no question but that, among our gifts of memory, reason, and skill are the memory, reason, and skill of other people. But if I mess up, if I cause harm to others, intentionally or otherwise, I'm the one who's responsible; it's not a blanket excuse that I was following the Bible, or the church's teaching, or the sayings of a prophet, or any of the other excuses people have conjured over the centuries. There's ample scriptural support for this view. For example, arguably the most important passage in the Bible is the mandate of Deut. 18.21 that we subject all prophetic claims to empirical scrutiny: If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD doesn't come to pass or prove to be true, it wasn't a word the LORD told him to say; the prophet was speaking presumptuously, and we shouldn't be afraid of him. Jesus too seems to have been an empiricist in this regard; in the Gospels, he's reported to have said, beware of false prophets — and by their fruits will you know them.
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Jefferson writes: "In fact, if the Bible were in error, it is more likely according to our human nature that the disciples would have boasted about how they were the first to understand what Jesus was saying. Just the opposite occurs, they describe their ignorance. To me, that lends credibility to the text."
Actions speak louder than words. What you read as the disciples being unafraid to confess their ignorance, I read as the Gospel authors trying hard to explain away an extremely inconvenient fact, namely that the tale they were spinning was directly in conflict with the disciples' past actions.
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Jefferson writes: "2. Because Peter doesn't do exactly what Jesus said to do in Matthew, the Bible must be wrong. ... In fact, the Bible's ability to admit error in the main characters suggest its reliability."
Where exactly does the Bible admit that Peter and the other apostles erred in baptizing in Jesus's name alone? It simply reports that they did so, not that they erred thereby. Sorry, Jefferson, but it seems to me that your argument falls considerably short of being persuasive.
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Jefferson writes: "... Believers got away from Jerusalem because they were not safe. It then makes sense that some key figures were not written about in the Gospels because the authors weren't around those individuals."
I dealt with that in the main posting: If the apostles were as successful in making converts in Jerusalem, including from among the priests, as Acts claims they were, then there would have been little reason for either Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea to remain closeted as "secret" disciples.
(Frankly, I question whether Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were actually disciples at all; the extant evidence is just as consistent with their being simply neutral toward Jesus.)
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Jefferson writes: "Here is a most interesting fact: no less than 10 times in this point alone, you use a phrase like, 'you'd expect, you'd think, probably'. So I ask, if Jesus was truly God, don't you think his plan was good enough?"
Jefferson, can't you see how circular your argument is? The claim that Jesus was God is purportedly derived entirely from the stories told in New Testament. That means you can't use the "fact" that Jesus was supposedly God to bootstrap those stories into being trustworthy.
(I say "purportedly" in the previous paragraph because an unbiased reading of the New Testament shows clearly that the apostles preached, repeatedly and explicitly, that Jesus was the long-awaited Anointed One — the warrior-king who would soon return to usher in the reign of God and restore Israel to its rightful place — not that he was God incarnate. If the apostles had thought Jesus was God himself, the New Testament would have been equally explicit and repetitive in saying so. It isn't.)
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Jefferson writes: "The only religious text in the world to address the true state of humanity and to provide a solution to our sinfulness, is the Bible."
You've got a big, big hill to climb on that point. While the truth of religious beliefs isn't a numbers game (cf. Deut. 18.21, mentioned above), it's certainly of interest that historically, by far the majority of the world's people have disagreed with you.
I appreciate your having taken the time to post.
Posted by: D. C. | July 29, 2006 at 10:09 AM
In my view your numerous speculations regarding the weakness of traditional Christianity are near to being worthless, certainly not worth the 0's & 1's necessary to form them on a computer.
Posted by: Tom | April 08, 2008 at 09:34 PM
Well here's just another example of a bunch of Gnostics wasting their lives trying to disprove and discredit the Bible. Join the ranks of others who have tried and miserably failed. There's a fundamental problem here. The Bible can not be understood by the carnal minded but only by the spiritually minded. Therefore you and others will go on gaining knowledge, but as the Bible says, will never come to the knowledge of the truth. Stick to the man-made, secular humanist philosophy that permiates your thinking. That would be more conceivable for you to understand. Romans chapter 1 gives a clear outline of secular humanistic thinking and where it will ultimately lead. Also, while you continue in your failing attempt to debunk the Holy Scriptures, try studying it in its original languages which gives you a more in depth meaning of the scriptures. Whatever your conclusion is, go ahead and have your opinion, but at the end of the day are you willing to gamble eternity based on your opinion? In that case, you better be right or there will be hell to pay. Study the Bible and let the Holy Spirit teach you what it means. He is the One that giudes us into all truth. The so-called inconsistencies do not negate the fact that Jesus is Lord and that salvation comes through Him.
Posted by: Marc S | May 04, 2008 at 10:06 PM
Marc S writes: "... The Bible can not be understood by the carnal minded but only by the spiritually minded."
Marc, this sounds like the tailors in the story of the emperor's new clothes: they proclaimed that anyone who couldn't see how truly marvelous their handwork was, was proving himself too stupid to appreciate fine tailoring. We all know how that story turned out ....
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Marc S writes: "... at the end of the day are you willing to gamble eternity based on your opinion? In that case, you better be right or there will be hell to pay."
Muslims say much the same thing, Marc — if their implied threat isn't enough to convince you, why should yours be enough to convince me?
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Marc S writes: "The so-called inconsistencies do not negate the fact that Jesus is Lord and that salvation comes through Him."
There are lots of people who, for good reason, simply won't accept assertions like this without competent supporting evidence that admits of no other explanation — and "evidence" that assumes the desired conclusion won't suffice.
Posted by: D. C. Toedt | May 05, 2008 at 08:40 AM
Hi D.C.,
Greetings from Florida. I just happened to come across your web site about the "Questioning Christian." I see nothing wrong with a person having doubts, questions, etc. I too question lots of things in life, including The Bible and illness. I've been battling colon cancer since December 2006 and that really makes you question things.
I'm not a Bible scholar or even very intellectual. But I do feel God calling me closer to Him since I've had cancer.
Regarding your "serious inconsistencies" mentioned on the web page, I see nothing wrong with such questions although I dislike the idea of using them to propose a significant discrepancy in the authorship or truth of the New Testament accounts.
Regarding the statement "You'd think John the Baptist would have been more involved in his kinsman's ministry," I agree with you. John the Baptish was probably a very unusual character. Wasn't he the last of the O.T. Prophets?
Yes I would think that Jesus and John would have known each other from childhood. But we probably don't know all the story. Maybe Elizabeth and Zacharias died shortly after John was born. How far apart did John live from Jesus? I read in Luke 1:80 that John "was in the deserts." Maybe he lived in the deserts or a desert community ( similar to the Qumran group )? If that's the case, then he and Jesus probably never met ( until Jesus was baptised ).
It does seem like John was only involved with Jesus for a short time. But Jesus certainly knew about John.
Why wasn't John a disciple of Jesus ? I don't know. Maybe he would have become a disciple if Herod had not beheaded him. I'm sure there are hundreds, even thousands, of disciples of Jesus who are not mentioned in the Bible.
I will have to continue my study about John. But no matter how much I doubt or question things, I hope I never deny how much God loved me by sending His only Son to die a horrible death for my miserable sins and selfishness.
John
Feel free to email me at [email protected]
Posted by: John | August 20, 2008 at 07:31 PM
Jesus died on a wednesday Abib 14, 31 AD and resurrected on a weekly Sabbath Abib 17, 31 AD. Matthew 12:40, 3 days and s nights is 72 hours, you cannot get 72 hours from friday to sunday. Sunday churches do not understand John 19:31 because they do not observe Gods Feast days of Leviticus 23. "(For that Sabbath was an High day" not a weekly Sabbath, and annual Sabbath. Jesus resurrected on a weekly Sabbath at sun set, Abib 17 during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Posted by: Jhn Didymus op | May 29, 2009 at 03:32 PM