Raf

Are you saying the scholarly consensus is not behind Ehrman on the issues I raised? Not even up for debate. Sorry. I only argue matters that are up for debate. You can say he's wrong, but you can't say the scholarly consensus on the authorship of the gospels disagrees with Ehrman.

Did Matthew write Matthew? Did Mark write Mark? Did Luke write Luke? Did John write John? Did Moses write Genesis (spoiler alert: probably not)? While we were discussing Steve Lortz' excellent question about the impact of the presence of errors and contradictions in the Bible on the status of those books as "God-breathed," Steve and I became engaged in a side discussion about whether Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and Acts. Steve says yes (or would it be more fair to say "probably?") and I say no (or, more accurately, "probably not"). Different scholars approach the material in different ways. There is a right answer, but no one can lay claim to it with 100.0000% certainty. The Floor is Open.

In order to maintain the integrity of this thread, which is concerned with how the Bible can still be God-breathed even if (or, as I would claim, even THOUGH) it contains errors and contradictions, I will be starting a thread in Questioning Faith to explore the state of scholarship regarding Who Wrote the Bible. We can there go into any area you would like (gospels, epistles, Old Testament) without derailing the conversation about what it means for a work to be God-breathed.

As you probably well know, that is NOT all Bart Ehrman says about Luke in terms of authorship of the gospel and Acts. Ehrman reached the conclusion, with scholarly consensus behind him, that the author of Luke and Acts was 1. Not Luke and 2. Not a traveling companion of Paul. In Ehrman's own words: "But there’s little reason to think he was Paul’s traveling companion and virtually no reason, in my opinion, to think that he was a physician named Luke." http://ehrmanblog.org/summing-luke-luke-2/ Unfortunately, Ehrman's blog posts are behind a pay wall, so I can't easily link to most of his argument online. Nonetheless, it is hard to conclude that Ehrman has nothing further to say about the authorship of Luke-Acts just because he had nothing further to say about it in the single chapter you cite. More to the point, the fact that he is calling the author "Luke" for "convenience" implies that he does NOT believe Luke to be the author of those books, which he documents in detail elsewhere (maybe not in that chapter, but certainly in other works and, for a lay audience, in his book "Forged: Writing in the Name of God: Why the Bible's Authors are Not Who We Think They Are"). Luke did not write the gospel. If you believe he did on the basis that no one has demonstrated otherwise, that's not scholarship. That's faith. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that's one of the reasons that I moved this thread from Questioning Faith. Because you're not. Which is fine. Regarding the gospel of Luke, you arrived at the conclusion that Luke interviewed Mary through pure, unadulterated speculation. There is not a scrap of evidence that he did so. In fact, there is good reason to believe otherwise (the anachronism of Jesus being born during the Quirinian census AND during the reign of Herod, historical events that were separated by as much as a decade, demonstrates that "Luke's" source was someone who would not have been aware of the conflict. Someone who was there would have been aware of the conflict. Mary was there. So either she did not know the circumstances of her son's birth, or she was not his source). This doesn't even take into account the absurdity of the Quirinian census as a plot device to move Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the birth of Christ (there was no requirement to go to where your ancestors lived for the census. What census does that? The whole point of a census is to determine where you are now, not where your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather lived a thousand years ago. I know, I'm short a few greats). As for the first few verses of Luke, I'll repeat what I said: "Luke" never claims to have interviewed witnesses. Read what YOU quoted: What is he saying? Other people have been writing things down that were handed to us by still other people. That, of course, is the definition of hearsay. But let's look at the rest of what he wrote as well: There is a claim to have investigated carefully, but there is no claim to have interviewed eyewitnesses. The only thing he is claiming is to have investigated what others have written, people who came before him. This makes sense when you think of WHEN Luke was writing. 80 AD. Decades after the events they portray. The vast majority of people discussed in the gospel are dead by then, and Mary would be among the OLDEST, at least in her 90s. That would have been an unusually long life at that time and place. Not saying it's impossible, but what IS impossible is to say with ANY degree of certainty that she absolutely was one of his sources. Peter? Dead. Paul? Dead. Most of the apostles by then, in fact, were dead (I'd venture to say "all" as a matter of probablity, but it's certainly possible some were alive. Regardless, Luke never claims to have interviewed them. His claim is to have reviewed the earlier accounts and composed a coherent story. So, in short, yes, I stand by both statements: Luke, the figure mentioned in Acts and the New Testament letters, did not write this gospel. And whoever did write it was not working off eyewitness testimony, except as it was allegedly passed down second and third hand from earlier writers.

Yes

yes

"You're not gonna fall for a banana in the tailpipe?"

I'll add there's no evidence of a historical Abraham and plenty of reason to suspect he is just as mythical as Adam. But whatever. I agree that Jesus the rabbi probably existed, but so much of what has been passed down about him is legend, midrash and nonsense that it's tough to discern what really happened in his life and what was made up to suit an agenda. The Virgin birth was made up to suit an agenda. There was no Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. And maybe he was born in Bethlehem, but how did he get there? The accounts in Matthew and Luke are mutually exclusive. One cannot have happened if the other did. When did the wedding at Cana take place? Read John. It's a couple of days after Jesus' baptism, right? JOHN HAD ACCESS TO THE PREVIOUS GOSPELS. He should have known full well that Jesus was fasting in the wilderness at that time. So either he wasn't, in which case Matthew, Mark and Luke are wrong, or he was, in which case John is wrong. I know! John time jumps! No he doesn't. That's an excuse on par with dispensationalism designed to explain away blatant contradictions in the text. The notion that Luke interviewed eyewitnesses to the events in question assumes two things that are not true. 1. It assumes Luke made this claim. Read the verses. He does not make this claim. 2. It assumes "Luke" wrote the gospel. No serious, unbiased scholar believes that. I could go on (and on), but I'm going to stop here for the sake of time. This thread is in the wrong forum. You are not questioning faith in the same sense as the name of this form. You are not really asking WHETHER the scriptures can be God-breathed while still containing errors and contradictions. You're asking HOW the scriptures can be God-breathed and still contain errors and contradictions. And that's a perfectly fine, valid, doctrinal question.

I don't think you mean the same thing I do when we use the term "questioning faith."

So when we're dividing the historical from the figurative, where do we draw the line? Ben Carson is out there talking about how the pyramids were built by Joseph to store grain. There probably was no Joseph, and if there were, the pyramids would have predated him by 700 years or so (give or take, based on proposed dates for the Exodus, adding the required number of years in Egypt, the pyramids were still around for centuries before that). But the Bible (conveniently) doesn't give the dates or the names of the Pharoahs involved in any of these stories. So was the sojourn in Egypt figurative? Was the Exodus figurative (because it, too, is probably not history. Egypt never lost that much of its population at one time, slave or free). If the Exodus is a figurative event, what does that mean about Passover and the giving of the Law? Or are we saying that only the Genesis creation myth is figurative? There was no Adam. There was no Eve. Ok. So why do we die? And how did sin enter the world? And how is Jesus the second Adam if there was no first? Big can of worms being opened when we say Genesis was figurative.

The Aileen on that list is Wournos. And she won an Oscar for it. And you could see the movie a dozen times and not recognize her. Which totally ruins her topless scene.

My Fair Lady

Spoilers? Good warning, but nothing mentioned was major, I don't think. I did like the fact that Supergirl's adoptive parents were Helen Slater and Dean Cain.

Regarding my use of the word "probably": I do not believe I am more astute than liberal or conservative theologians. I just think I'm choosing my words carefully because I am, frankly, in a forum where words get parsed more than they would in your average conversation. As such, when I am conscious of it, I try to express thoughts carefully. I originally wrote: "That Jesus walked is history. That he walked on water is not." But then I remembered that historians don't talk that way. They speak in probabilities, and the further removed they are from an event, the more qualified their language becomes. I have no doubt there will be times when I will slip and leave the "probably" out of my comments. For example, when I say "Adam and Eve, as described in the Bible, did not exist," I'm going to leave out the "probably" because including it introduces a level of uncertainty that is missing from my opinion. There was no first man and first woman living in Mesopotamia six or seven thousand years ago who are ancestors of all humanity. That is so extablished in multiple disciplines that to say "probably" would be misleading. I would also say Moses, as described in the Bible, did not exist. Now, there may have been a Moses who was influential in the founding of the religion that eventually became Judaism. Or not. But Exodus? Probably never happened. The evidence is against it. Overwhelmingly. Israel emerged from Canaan, it didn't invade Canaan. Probably. That's what the evidence strongly suggests. It is often said among atheists that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If I told you I drove to work today, you would probably accept my word for it, even though I am providing you with no proof. If I told you I teleported to work today, you would demand proof, and more than just my word. You would want to see the machine. You would want to test it. The amount of evidence required to support my extraordinary claim would be extraordinarily high. And you are under no obligation to believe my claim until I prove it. You don't have to disprove it. It is enought that you don't accept it. The burden of proof is mine. That a written work is "God-breathed" is an extraordinary claim. It requires extraordinary evidence. But it has none. The Bible shows no indication that it was written by anyone with any extraordinary insight into anything. Sure, there's some wisdom in it, but is it extraordinary wisdom? Not really. You find similar bits of wisdom in all sorts of historical writings. Science? Nah. It botches science left and right. God's existence is in the same category. That there is a transcendent being who created all life on earth, the earth, the solar system, the rings of Saturn, the diamond rains of Jupiter, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, BILLIONS of other galaxies, each with billions of stars, black holes, nebulae, dark matter... and that this transcendent being never began to exist and will never cease to exist, and he cares, very, very deeply, about who you please with your genitals, is an extraordinary claim. I no longer believe it. It's not that I've demonstrated that such a being doesn't exist. It's that no one has demonstrated that he does exist. Claims are not evidence. The Bible is a claim. It is not evidence. And no, I don't think it's God-breathed.

Regarding The World having TWO heroes now, I would argue that this does not necessarily exclude Flash and Arrow, each of whom is very much identified all but exclusively with his city. They are not The World's heroes. Superman is, and Supergirl, by using that expression, clearly intends to be. Just a thought. I'm going to see if I can merge the two threads.

Okaaaaaay

You can always see it online

Wow. This show rocks.

Enjoy your celebration! I actually agree with you on that point. If you isolate my comment from other comments I've made on the same subject, it would cause confusion, but I agree: "Paul" was not writing about the very letter he was writing when he said "all scripture is given by inspiration of God" (and, it is important to note, I do not believe Paul wrote the epistles to Timothy). Unlike other holy books, the Bible is not aware of itself as ONE book. It has no statements about itself as a book. When the writers of the Bible speak of "His Word," they are not talking about the Bible. They are not talking about Psalms. They are being very literal: HIS WORD. Insofar as any scripture contains His Word, it is His Word that is exalted. My problem, of course, is that "His Word," as communicated in those books, doesn't strike me as anything all that enlightened (see the "Are you more moral than Yahweh" thread for exploration of this position). But in this, we are coming to the material from very different positions. Steve, I appreciate you placing this thread in "Questioning Faith," and I see your reasons for doing so, but I'm feeling strengthened in the position that this is a more general doctrinal question: What does "God-breathed" really mean? By placing it here, you're explicitly inviting atheist input and/or views that might challenge your faith in God (as opposed to the nature of the Bible). I don't think you're questioning faith here. I think you're challenging a doctrinal position. I'm inclined to leave the thread right here where you put it, but it might not be seen by people who avoid this particular subforum. Your call.

I think the bottom line, in my opinion, is that if you believe the Bible's testimony of itself that all scripture is God-breathed, then you must conclude that it can contain errors and contradictions and still be God-breathed. Because it DOES contain errors and contradictions. If you look at the stories myths and legends as LESSONS, you can glean something from them. But the moment you call those stories HISTORY, you run into trouble. Some of the stories are history. Many, many, many are not. That Jesus walked is probably history. That he walked on water is probably not. If you are going to tie your faith in the inspiration of the Bible to a belief that this book is an accurate telling of events that took place in history, without error or contradiction, then you are going to be walking on a very fragile faith. In my opinion.

I raised those two points to demonstrate that the contradictions are not matters of failing to recognize figurative language, nor can they be dismissed with passive accusations of demonic influence.

In Matthew, Jesus and his family don't come to live in Nazareth until after he is born, after the Magi visit (he's a toddler by then), after the flight to Egypt, Matthew 2:22. In Luke, Jesus' parents lived in Nazareth before he was born (unmentioned in Matthew). Jesus comes to Nazareth eight days after he's born. Now, it would make some sense if Matthew 2 wasn't so clear about the reason Joseph went to Nazareth. It wasn't a return to his hometown. It's a flat-out contradiction. But ok.

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born during the Quirinian Census. According to both Matthew and Luke, Herod was alive when Jesus was born. Herod was dead for a decade at the time of the Quirinian census. There was no overlap. There is no figurative language that will fix this error/contradiction. The Bible contradicts itself. A lot.

Like Steve, I am not sure this topic is in the right place. There are two ways to approach the central question being asked: 1. It is possible for something to be God-breathed in the first place, which raises the question: How would we know? What qualities would a "God-breathed" writing have that distinguishes it from other writing? I'll give Wierwille credit for answering the question with qualities that are unequivocal and testable. But that doesn't make it Biblically accurate, because the Bible itself does not lay down any such qualities. The Bible never says that it is without error or contradiction. In fact, the Bible lacks the self-awareness it would take to define itself in any way. Paul did not know when he was writing Timothy (which he didn't, but that's another story) that his letters would be part of a collection that would later be referred to as "the Bible" and analyzed and dissected nearly 2,000 years later. The writer of Mark, who apparently was not terribly familiar with Palestinian geography, had no idea that three gospels would be written after his (in fact, many more were written, but only three others made the canon). Luke was aware that other accounts existed, and it's clear he had a copy of Mark's gospel with him when he plagiarized composed his account of the life of Jesus. But he had no idea the gospel of John was on its way. So it strikes me as unfair to hold the Bible to Wierwille's standard of what it means to be God-breathed. However, since Wierwille does offer us a definition of the qualities that a God-breathed work will exhibit, it is perfectly fair to hold his own writings to that standard. Thus, Actual Errors in PFAL is fair. Actual Errors in the Bible is fair only insofar as determining the accuracy of its claims. However, nothing proves the Bible is or is not God-breathed because no criteria are set forth in the Bible to determine such a conclusion. The best we have is, is it useful for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness? The answer to that, of course, is yes, BUT that doesn't make it God-breathed. Any work can be useful for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. In short, there is no way, Biblically, to determine that something is God-breathed, and no way, Biblically, to determine that it isn't. The best we can do is determine that sthe Bible meets some definition of God-breathed. It doesn't meet Wierwille's by a longshot. 2. This being "questioning faith," it is fair game in this forum (in any forum really, but in this one by design) to question whether God-breathed is possible in the first place. That is, there would have to be a God for anything to be God-breathed. I see nothing in the Bible that leads me to believe it was anything other than the product of its time. Certainly, as a moral guide, we are way, way ahead of the Bible in moral advancement (as I believe we have amply demonstrated in the morality thread). You can find lots of morality in the Bible, but there's lots of immorality as well, and that, to my way of thinking, argues strongly against the Bible as the God-breathed word according to any definition. Would a God-breathed word advocate for the death penalty for petty offenses? I would think not. Is picking up sticks on the Sabbath a petty offense? I would think so. Therefore... So as a strictly doctrinal question, without undermining faith, I would answer yes, the Bible can be God-breathed even though (there's no "if" about it) it contradicts itself. And as a question posed in "Questioning Faith," I would answer no, because the Bible fails to demonstrate that this God even exists outside the imagination of the writers and readers.

Technically, Ehrman prefers the term agnostic to atheist. But yeah.