Does the Bible Contradict Itself?

[The Grand Nudger]

If they weren't then it would be difficult to explain the many varying translations of any given part of them wouldn't it? You're having trouble with my responses because you aren't reading them, or because you're reading around them (and again this would be an issue of interpretation and not text wouldn't it?)

At what point has anything I've said diverged from Socrates appraisal here? If you think that he and I disagree on this then I have to suggest again that you are reading around or not at all. Since we are on the subject of Socrates, and since you thought that Protagoras deserved mention as well -and since you seemed to think that Protagoras was invoking relativism with his comment about man being the measure of things- perhaps this is the time to mention to you that the comment you referenced specifically involved those things which are used by or otherwise related to man. I also think it's amusing, since we're using the example of Socrates, to point out that he (and thusly any conversation or comment you wish to reference about him) could be a narrative device himself. This btw, is regardless of whether or not there was an actual Socrates, because even if there were, Plato seems to be using the name for his own purposes. I hope you appreciate the irony here.

Your analogy of Mona Lisa falls flat on its face, perhaps you should have instead used the exit sign in that same hallway as the subject of disagreement. The exit sign is a man/enamored female/bemused at your passing gas. Nevertheless, in your example, the Mona Lisa is a clear canvass, not because the canvass itself is clear or empty, but because what is on that canvass in front of us and the picture we paint of the backstory in our minds are only marginally related. I agree with this bit here about how we might figure out what the artist meant, obviously. If you want to know what an artist -meant-, definitively, you'd have to ask them . Whether or not anyone's opinion of her disposition is any better than any other is not a matter of truth, it is a matter of opinion. If you would like to think that we are ignoring a truth wouldn't you have to establish that there is one to be had in the first place? If we re instead referring to fact, rather than opinion, then they would all be equally wrong, as to the reasons for the smile, because as far as I'm aware, none of those reasons offered have any definitive support.

Don't I now agree with you? Reread my responses in this thread. I don't think we're actually having a discussion with each other at all at this point.....Who have you been talking to?

I'm going to arrange this as a bullet point list, and recap what I've been babbling on about so far.

-The NT is a story, the author of the story and whatever opinions or comments they had about any "true meaning" they may have somehow hidden behind or around the words is lost to us.
-Stories, and characters within those stories, are not confined by the limitations imposed upon us by the real world, any attempt to make a magical story less magical or less inconsistent -as though that would reconcile it with something else (reality/itself) is entirely pointless, see the above.
-Ask two people about the same story and you'll get three opinions, none of which is any "better" or "worse" than any other, because they are opinions.
-Stories can and do leverage the literal within the narrative to evoke the symbolic outside of the narrative.

The question "which of these two sects have it right" is a particularly strange one, in that as long as we are asking this question about a narrative all we have are two book reports expressing the reviewers opinion. If you insist on asking "But what did Jesus really say" well, the problems with that should be obvious - Jesus says nothing -in reality-, the authors attribute words to jesus, and only within the confines of the narrative. Who would ask "but did Batman really say "I am Batman!""? Clearly he does, there it is in the script. "but what did Batman -mean- when he said "I am Batman""?-well, clearly the person asking this requires there to be more meaning than there is expressed in the text, that doesn't mean it's there in the text, but I'm willing to bet that any person willing to ask that question has a whole bag'o'meaning ready to be layed over the fabric of whatever narrative they wish to ask this question about. Take the simple statement we've bee discussing, "this is my body". Catholics have crafted an elaborate sort of sympathetic ceremony in which they replicate the particulars of this narrative to avail themselves of the covenant mentioned. This is found nowhere in the narrative. Protestants maintain that this is deeply symbolic of such and such. This is found nowhere in the narrative. It is a story, being used for differing purposes by different people, and in this context Protagoras appraisal that -man is the measure of all things- is particularly apt. Simultaneously, Socrates comments on the difficulties of words in spite of their stubborn refusal to morph into other things in reality is similarly apt.

(you and I should probably have a conversation about how greek philosophers composed their narratives and recorded their "conversations" with other philosophers as well. You do realize that this is mostly fiction, yes? The particular philospher you've been invoking, Plato-btw-not Socrates would invent a conversation, fill it with straw men, argue with himself, and then declare victory over an intellectual rival (or rival school of thought) in absentia.....)