tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post7963590965871450676..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Gospel ContradictionsRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-40297024699092005372016-01-26T09:41:51.172-05:002016-01-26T09:41:51.172-05:00By the way, I was absolutely appalled at the examp...By the way, I was absolutely appalled at the example he gave of so-called "harmonization" of the accounts of Jairus's coming to Jesus. I doubt that anyone has ever suggested the "harmonization" that he got the audience laughing about--that the girl died twice and Jairus came back to Jesus. And there are much more reasonable suggestions available with even a modicum of imagination. That sort of mocking of harmonization is really bad and unworthy of Licona. It's more the kind of thing you'd expect from Ehrman.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-30801522452101014462016-01-25T21:39:59.683-05:002016-01-25T21:39:59.683-05:00Okay, I've gone through the video. I'll be...Okay, I've gone through the video. I'll be working on writing on this.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-35317700751807147522016-01-25T09:41:28.453-05:002016-01-25T09:41:28.453-05:00Notice that he's even conjecturing that Plutar...Notice that he's even conjecturing that Plutarch himself altered details. So he's basin a conjectural interpretation of the gospels on a conjectural interpretation of Plutarch! We don't even know for sure that the pagan authors did this on purpose. As opposed to,sometimes, getting some detail wrong accidentally. This whole "compositional devices" thing appears highly conjectural from the get-go.<br /><br />" He wrote more than 60 biographies of which 50 have survived. Of these, nine feature Roman leaders who had lived at the same time and knew one another. These were written between AD 96-120, right on the heels of the Gospels and in the same language, Greek. This provides historians with a unique opportunity. Because the main characters in these nine biographies often knew one another, a significant overlap of material is present. When material overlaps in two or more of these nine biographies, we can examine that material very carefully for differences. Differences can occur for numerous reasons, such as lapse of memory or sloppiness or Plutarch used better information he had obtained after writing an earlier biography or he employed a compositional device that required him to alter certain details.<br />Thus far, I’ve identified around 45 stories that appear two or more times in these nine biographies. Differences abound in them. At present, I’m engaged in identifying the differences and especially looking for recurrences of the same type of differences. It’s from these one gets the impression Plutarch has altered the details intentionally. I then propose explanations (or compositional devices) for the alterations that appear to account well for the differences in many, if not most, of the contexts in which the differences occur."<br /><br />http://gregmonette.com/blog/post/why-do-the-gospels-contain-differencesLydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-6915584008479473442016-01-25T09:31:02.373-05:002016-01-25T09:31:02.373-05:00Annoyed, I don't have time to listen to the en...Annoyed, I don't have time to listen to the entire interview, but can you give me the minutes where Licona is giving more examples?<br /><br />By the way, I would encourage you to lean away from Licona's position, _not_ because you're afraid not to be an inerrantist, but because<br /><br />a) it's too dismissive of harmonization, which often works just fine<br />b) it seems to confuse deliberate "transferring" because of a "compositional device" with merely using a figure of speech (e.g., saying that the centurion said something and meaning by that that the centurion said through his servants<br />c) it calls the reliability of the gospels into question more than he admits, and we have plenty of independent reason to think the gospels are reliable in the very sense that he is (without admitting it) abandoning<br />d) it is lazy<br />e) it doesn't really follow in the way that he implies it does from some sort of deep scholarly understanding of the genre of the gospels (just as Matthew's making up the dead coming out of the tombs isn't clearly a "literary trope" just because Licona found some extravagant occurrences in pagan sources surrounding the deaths of leaders)<br />f) it is at odds with other indications we have of great precision on the part of the gospels<br />g) it would actually be _better_ from an apologetic perspective to be willing to admit that a gospel author may have made some trivial error while _trying_ to give an accurate account than to cast a fog over the entirety of the gospels by holding that they just changed stuff deliberately and made stuff up deliberately in a way that is impossible to distinguish (in that text) from would-be-accurate historical narrative.<br /><br />Sorry, some of those are repetitious, but you get the picture. Anyway, I'd like to know what some of his other examples are, but I admit I haven't the patience to listen to something an hour long to find them.<br /><br />Frankly, I think this is a case where the desire to hang onto the inerrantist label, combined with a despair of resolving some putative contradictions, is leading to something worse than abandoning the inerrantist label.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-43451061697689530812016-01-21T12:29:54.946-05:002016-01-21T12:29:54.946-05:00The example he gives about the centurion is not th...The example he gives about the centurion is not that big of a deal. Calvin says as much in his commentaries as a solution to this "contradiction". That was probably circa 1540.<br /><br />Is there some other, more interesting, example Licona can give?<br /><br />Granted, Licona's view of resurrection account in Matthew 27 is in the back of my mind.geoffrobinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14949411893531888555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-35054110432899996992016-01-20T23:12:27.287-05:002016-01-20T23:12:27.287-05:00Geisler was never the standard of comparison. That...Geisler was never the standard of comparison. That's why I mentioned more astute representatives of inerrancy in my post. I think the Chicago Statement is basically fine as far as it goes, but it does not and cannot address the best way to interpret particular passages, either individually or in relation to other passages. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-34571941276225125212016-01-20T19:58:25.317-05:002016-01-20T19:58:25.317-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.CRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03231394164372721485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-57396079336799454672016-01-19T23:31:57.158-05:002016-01-19T23:31:57.158-05:00Licona gives more detailed examples of what he mea...Licona gives more detailed examples of what he means in the following video. Clearly his views contradict Geisler's definition of inerrancy and his interpretation of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy . These days I'm finding myself leaning toward a view similar to Licona's and I worry if I'm unorthodox now. Anyway, here's the link:<br /><br /><b><a href="https://youtu.be/xtemSTrkogE" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xtemSTrkogE</a></b>ANNOYED PINOYhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00714774340084597206noreply@blogger.com