My book report pt1

[Drich]

For those of you who did not follow Minnie's last extended exchange with me, he offered to provide me with a faith shattering book written by Bart D Ehrman. The title : "Jesus Interupted."
Basically Mr. Erhman started out as a biblical scholar who has found reason to believe God does not exist through evidence he has compiled through his extensive studies in the bible, and it orginal texts.

My 'book report' will highlight a few of his more "faith crippling questions." and provide a perspective that not only satasifies the biblical account, but will also show where Mr. Erhman's understanding of faith is in error.

All Book Quotes will be taken directly from His book. If you want a copy look it up or Just ask Minnie, and I'm sure he'd be glad to sent you one.

To be sure, many beginning students are expert at reconciling
differences among the Gospels. For example, the Gospel of Markindicates that it was in the last week of his life that Jesus “cleansed
the Temple” by overturning the tables of the money changers and
saying, “This is to be a house of prayer . . . but you have made it a
den of thieves” (Mark 11), whereas according to John this happened
at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry (John 2). Some readers have
thought that Jesus must have cleansed the Temple twice, once at
the beginning of his ministry and once at the end. But that would
mean that neither Mark nor John tells the “true” story, since in both
accounts he cleanses the temple only once. Moreover, is this reconciliation
of the two accounts historically plausible? If Jesus made
a disruption in the temple at the beginning of his ministry, why
wasn’t he arrested by the authorities then? Once one comes to realize
that the Bible might have discrepancies it is possible to see that the
Gospels of Mark and John might want to teach something different
about the cleansing of the Temple, and so they have located the
event to two different times of Jesus’ ministry. Historically speaking,
then, the accounts are not reconcilable.

Oh, yeah this would be a big problem to resolve if one assumes like Bart has that Gospels of John and Mark were both meant to chronoligcally account the events as they happen. Mark's account does seem to do this, but John's account reads like an adventure story. It starts out with a bang it grabs a hold of the reader/listner of the story and takes you on an adventure... After all, John quickly establishes the Main Protaginst, then the deciples, then tips his hat to all of the technical stuff, and then Bang! He does the unthinkable, He challenges the authority of the Old oppressive Regime, not by debating with them, but by turning over their money tables, and basically whiping them out of the temple! to which, all of those who suffered under that Regime would be hooked to see what happens next!

Remember the books of the bible were not written to be later compiled, nor were they written in such a way as to follow 21th century doctrine on book writting/historical accounting. They were written as the writter saw fit to compile their accounts. They were taylored to the audeience that the writter orginally intended the message to goto. For example, what may appeal to the people in the innercity of detroit (on mass) would most likly put the people who live in Beijing China off a bit. There is a way to communicate the same message to both, just not in the exact same way, using the exact same method.

Bart's critical error here is the belief that these two books were indeed written to the standard he has decided to judge them by. He has over looked the culture these writtings came out of and paired these ideas with his own standards... Something that someone with as many letters after his name, as he has, should know better than do.

The same can be said of Peter’s denials of Jesus. In Mark’s Gospel,
Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him three times “before the
cock crows twice.” In Matthew’s Gospel he tells him that it will be
“before the cock crows.” Well, which is it—before the cock crows
once or twice?

This one has been done to death. I got this explaination here: http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/matth...ird-denial

If a cock crows a second time, then it has crowed once before. The problem is that in Mark, after Peter denies the Lord for the third time (Mark 14:71), immediately a cock crows a second time (v. 72). The other gospels tell us that after Peter's third denial a cock then crows. How do we reconcile this difficulty?

Mark does not mention when the cock crowed the first time. Therefore, it is possible that after Peter's third denial, the cock then crowed twice.
(In short Mark accounts how many total times the Cock Crowed, and the other's mention that simple fact that it happened. As Mark was an understudy of Peter he would have access to this extra bit of info.)

The same problem occurs in the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection.
On the third day after Jesus’ death, the women go to the tomb to
anoint his body for burial. And whom do they see there? Do they
see a man, as Mark says, or two men (Luke), or an angel (Matthew)?
This is normally reconciled by saying that the women actually saw
“two angels.”

In my thread Messenger/Message I say that anyone who carries the Message of God is technically a 'Messenger' which is the defination of the word angel. In the orginal texts the word is pronounced: mal’āk̠ Which literally means Messenger. It does not differenciate between a spiritual messenger or a Human one. It is simply one who carries the message of God. So if the men were spiritual being or humans, if they carried the message of God then technically they were angels.

Bart's failure is based on the persupposition that all Angels are spiritual in nature. Which is a doctrinal teaching not a biblical one.

That can explain everything else—why Matthew
says they saw an angel (he mentions only one of the two angels, but
doesn’t deny there was a second), why Mark says it was a man (the
angels appeared to be men, even though they were angels, and Mark
mentions only one of them without denying there was a second),
and why Luke says it was two men (since the angels appeared to be
men). The problem is that this kind of reconciling again requires
one to assert that what really happened is unlike what any of the
Gospels say—since none of the three accounts states that the women
saw “two angels.”

Mat was a tax collector and very 'beurcratic/techinically correct." In his account if one of two men Carried the word of God, then technically one one would be an angel, the other need not be counted. The other accounts count the second man/angel out of association. I would tend to favor Mat's account because only one of them spoke. That would be like me standing next to the President and he introducing himself as a world leader, someone not in the know may assume that i too am a world learder because I simply share proxcimity. Other's may not be so inclinded. Does that make me right and them wrong? I guess the answer lies in the culture doing the judgement.

That should be enough to get us started. If there are no questions or objection I will post the next few segments.