Wierwille taught that Jesus was arrested on what we would call Monday evening, and on pages 203-208 of JCOP, Wierwille (or whoever actually did the writing) taught that the particular appearance before Pilate referenced in John 19:13 occurred about noon on Tuesday. He went on to say that the soldiers mocked and rough-housed him until it was time to go on Wednesday morning.
I no longer believe that it's necessary or even possible to literally harmonize everything in the gospels (though I believe their intent coheres), but this treatment seems plausible to me...
Perhaps plausible, but it now strikes me as rather arbitrary to shoehorn an entire day of activity between vv. 16 and 17 and suggest, for no comprehensible reason, that the author did not find the events of those 21 hours worth mentioning.
In between his mention of John 19:13 on page 202 and Mark 15 on page 208, Wierwille quotes many of the verses that describe the soldiers brutalizing and mocking Jesus, so Wierwille doesn't just skip from noon to 9 am. Many of those verses are from Matthew and Luke. Since noon is mentioned in John and 9 am is mentioned in Mark, the length of that span of time wasn't really of particular interest to any of the gospel writers. Only Wierwille got interested when he tried to harmonize everything.
It's not Wierwille who skips from noon to 9 a.m., it's John. And John skipping from noon to 9 a.m. without so much as a "the next day" reference strains credibility beyond the breaking point, in my opinion.
I was only interested in how TWI addressed the discrepancy. Addressing the discrepancy itself is doctrinal. Not sure I'm interested in THAT conversation.
I was only interested in how TWI addressed the discrepancy. Addressing the discrepancy itself is doctrinal. Not sure I'm interested in THAT conversation.
There are no discrepancies, Raf, only APPARENT discrepancies. Sheesh! Weren't you listening during PLAF (The Wonder Class)?
Some folks may have noticed, back during the Mike wars a decade ago (it's been longer), that I refused to allow the debate to be distracted by appeals to actual errors in the Bible. My reasoning back then was simple: I was holding PFAL to its own standard of what it meant for a written work to be God-breathed. The Bible never actually declares itself to be without error or contradiction. That's an assertion made by PFAL about the Bible, not an assertion made by the Bible itself.
If PFAL is God-breathed, then PFAL must be right about what it means to be God-breathed. PFAL must therefore be without error or contradiction. We saw rather clearly that it is not. PFAL has both errors and contradictions.
If PFAL is right about the Bible,, then the Bible will be without errors or contradictions. But what if PFAL is wrong? Not about itself, but about the Bible? What if the premise that the Bible is without error or contradiction is simply a false premise? We find a shocking reality we cannot ignore: The Bible quite simply never, ever, anywhere, makes such a claim about itself. Nowhere.
You may find a reference to God's word as perfect, but here's a shocker: the Bible lacks the self awareness to call itself God's word! VPW popularly said: "The Bible does not contain God's Word. It is God's word."
Really? Is that the testimony the Bible gives of itself? Where?
Why can't two writers looking at the same event disagree on minor details, as is common? Why shoehorn six denials for Peter when every single gospel says there were only three? What if God's Word is simply that he was crucified, and the small stuff is just that-- small stuff?
Scriptural inerrancy as promoted in TWI really appears to be an unattainable fantasy. A thread on actual errors in the Bible would make the Actual Errors in PFAL thread look like child's play.
The issue of inerrancy is one of "the Fundamentals" that gave fundamentalism its name. It was a reaction against the claims for a geological time scale and the higher criticism that disallowed any possibility of the supernatural.
"Inerrancy" is a false way of looking at truth for a number of reasons. In terms of communication theory, there are four elements and three possible sources of error. There is encoding by the sender, the message itself, the channel, and decoding by the receiver. The possible errors are in encoding by the receiver, noise from the channel in the transmission, and errors in decoding by the receiver. If the original autographs WERE perfect as written, transmission errors in the form of countless clerical errors have destroyed the perfect form, and a multitude of decoding errors have resulted in today's plethora of denominations.
Seeking an illusory "inerrancy" prevents people from recognizing the real, metaphoric truths of the Bible.
I'm going to have to move this to doctrinal at some point, but maybe not just yet.
The problem I have with the harmonization efforts is that they take a reasonable proposition and stretch it to unreasonable limits. Remember the old story about the blind men and the elephant, and how every one of them is right about the elephant even though they appear to be contradicting each other? That's a real healthy way of trying to approach apparent Bible contradictions, and as long as the conflicts lend themselves to such a solution, I am comfortable accepting the harmonization.
But sometimes, now and then, the conflicts just don't lend themselves to such a solution.
Every single gospel puts three crosses on that hill. Every one. Maybe, MAYBE John doesn't, but I think the more natural reading of the verse puts three crosses up there, not five. Not one gospel explicitly states there are five crosses up there. Three in Matthew, three in Mark, three in Luke, and I'm no Greek scholar, but I think three in John makes more sense than five.
Every gospel that mentions Peter's denials say he denied Jesus three times. There's a discrepancy in the number of cockadoodle-doos, but not in the number of denials. We can harmonize and find six, but can you find me a gospel that lays out six denials? You can't. They all count to three and then stop.
Where was Jesus when the Magi come to visit? Read Matthew, and only Matthew. He's in Bethlehem. There's not a scrap of an indication to the contrary. Then Jesus goes to Egypt. Then he comes back. Then AND ONLY THEN does his family settle in Nazareth. But read Luke, and only Luke. There are no Magi in Luke, of course. There's also very little Bethlehem. Jesus is there to be born, then skips town right away. A pit stop at Jerusalem, and whamo! They're in Nazareth. Not a hint of an Egyptian detour before or after. Jesus is still an infant when the family settles in Nazareth according to Luke. He's probably in preschool by the time they get to Nazareth according to Matthew. These are not "apparent" contradictions. It's a big fat glaring gaping discrepancy.
Now, one can argue that Matthew never says the Magi find Jesus in Bethlehem. It's true. It doesn't say that. But it utterly fails to give even the slightest indication to the contrary. You cannot read Matthew on its own and conclude that the Magi found Jesus somewhere else.
These guys were writing quasi-biographies (as opposed to full biographies). They were not manufacturing jigsaw puzzles and deliberately leaving out pieces that deliberately created an incomplete picture that could only be assembled by buying someone else's puzzle! Matthew didn't leave out Nazareth and just say "Ah, whatever; Luke will fill them in." Matthew doesn't take the writing of Luke for granted like that. And Luke just ignores Matthew entirely on the Nativity. The only things they have in common are Joseph, Mary, virginity, Bethlehem and the baby.
I could go on. Maybe after I move this to doctrinal...
Somehow I expected a more, I don't know, vigorously antagonistic response.
:realmad:
How's that for antagonistic? lol.
This whole idea that everything HAS to fit like a foot in a gym shoe is just childish. It ignores the chronology and autonomous nature of the individual writings. Yeah, I know, "God had a plan for it all to fall together when the canon was decided on", blah, blah, blah. It's another case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. It's not inerrant. It's just not. Until one can accept that reality, the greater message is lost somewhere between the fine points of grammar and punctuation.
There are two legitimate reasons for the discrepancies between the gospels.
First, the Jesus tradition was handed down orally for a considerable period of time before it was finally written down, and due to the nature of oral transmission, details may vary in different locations while the main punchline of a pericope is preserved.
Second, the writers of the gospels were addressing different situations with appropriately different nuances of theology. Christianity was much more heterogeneous in its beginnings than it is now.
You may find a reference to God's word as perfect, but here's a shocker: the Bible lacks the self awareness to call itself God's word! VPW popularly said: "The Bible does not contain God's Word. It is God's word."
Really? Is that the testimony the Bible gives of itself? Where?
Why can't two writers looking at the same event disagree on minor details, as is common? Why shoehorn six denials for Peter when every single gospel says there were only three? What if God's Word is simply that he was crucified, and the small stuff is just that-- small stuff?
Scriptural inerrancy as promoted in TWI really appears to be an unattainable fantasy. A thread on actual errors in the Bible would make the Actual Errors in PFAL thread look like child's play.
IMO that was part of VPW's flim-flam act. 4 Crucified, the day JC died. All egotistical attempts to unify a harmony of the gospels that most consider forced. And out of that a cult of personality. Teachings laced with his specialty (homiletics) all to sell some minutae of an interpretation. Then from there to gain control. "If you can't trust them on how many died with Jesus, how can you trust them on more pertinent spiritual matters?".
And that egotistical appeal to the intellect snared many.
In reality, that's a scribe (Greek word grammeteis or something - synonym "grammatician"). One who strains at a gnat and swallows a camel.
The reality of the argument IMO is opposite - if you can't trust them (TWI) on the things that do not matter, like not straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, then how can you entrust them with your life spiritually?
I'm going to change the name of this thread to "TWI and Forcing Harmony in the Bible."
I would ask that we keep the discussion here about TWI. Any specific discussion that tackles a particular issue and ends up being doctrinal, we can flag and move to doctrinal. Everyone okay with that as a ground rule?
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WordWolf
I'm giving this a good, long think. it doesn't warrant a "shoot from the hip" reply. Either you're correct, or you're not. If you're not correct, and I reply with something cogent, but it's unpopu
chockfull
I know I have to be wrong about this because I look at this too simply. God inspired Luke to write a historical account, and to communicate along with the facts a unique spiritual perspective. Luke
waysider
I think I have it somewhere. I'll try to look for it this weekend.
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Steve Lortz
Wierwille taught that Jesus was arrested on what we would call Monday evening, and on pages 203-208 of JCOP, Wierwille (or whoever actually did the writing) taught that the particular appearance before Pilate referenced in John 19:13 occurred about noon on Tuesday. He went on to say that the soldiers mocked and rough-housed him until it was time to go on Wednesday morning.
I no longer believe that it's necessary or even possible to literally harmonize everything in the gospels (though I believe their intent coheres), but this treatment seems plausible to me...
Hope this helps!
Love,
Steve
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Raf
Oh, that's right. Wierwille stretched out the timeline. Totally forgot about that.
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Raf
Perhaps plausible, but it now strikes me as rather arbitrary to shoehorn an entire day of activity between vv. 16 and 17 and suggest, for no comprehensible reason, that the author did not find the events of those 21 hours worth mentioning.
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waysider
"You'll just have to take my word on this...Father told me."---VPW
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Steve Lortz
In between his mention of John 19:13 on page 202 and Mark 15 on page 208, Wierwille quotes many of the verses that describe the soldiers brutalizing and mocking Jesus, so Wierwille doesn't just skip from noon to 9 am. Many of those verses are from Matthew and Luke. Since noon is mentioned in John and 9 am is mentioned in Mark, the length of that span of time wasn't really of particular interest to any of the gospel writers. Only Wierwille got interested when he tried to harmonize everything.
Love,
Steve
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Raf
It's not Wierwille who skips from noon to 9 a.m., it's John. And John skipping from noon to 9 a.m. without so much as a "the next day" reference strains credibility beyond the breaking point, in my opinion.
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WordWolf
IIRC,
I have both JCOP and the twi Harmony of the Gospels (I think)
in storage. I'll have to dig them out and get back to you.
As in, next week.
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Raf
As you wish, WordWolf. However, I do believe Steve answered my question.
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waysider
WAIT!!!!
Isn't there a Greek word we can squeeze for some obscure meaning?
There has to be one there. I just know it. There has to be.
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WordWolf
Oh, good.
I didn't WANT to go through my books in storage right now.
And, since it was on cassette, I don't think I brought the Harmony with
me. It did amuse me, however, that vpw lambasted harmonies at time,
then put out JCOP and twi put out a Harmony.
Furthermore, for a guy who lauded the Aramaic versions to the sky,
he seemed to have never heard of the Diatesseron-
a harmony written in Aramaic, used by the Aramaic church BEFORE the
Peshi++a was translated and replaced it,
and popular for its time, unusual for an Aramaic text.
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Raf
I was only interested in how TWI addressed the discrepancy. Addressing the discrepancy itself is doctrinal. Not sure I'm interested in THAT conversation.
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waysider
There are no discrepancies, Raf, only APPARENT discrepancies. Sheesh! Weren't you listening during PLAF (The Wonder Class)?
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Raf
Some folks may have noticed, back during the Mike wars a decade ago (it's been longer), that I refused to allow the debate to be distracted by appeals to actual errors in the Bible. My reasoning back then was simple: I was holding PFAL to its own standard of what it meant for a written work to be God-breathed. The Bible never actually declares itself to be without error or contradiction. That's an assertion made by PFAL about the Bible, not an assertion made by the Bible itself.
If PFAL is God-breathed, then PFAL must be right about what it means to be God-breathed. PFAL must therefore be without error or contradiction. We saw rather clearly that it is not. PFAL has both errors and contradictions.
If PFAL is right about the Bible,, then the Bible will be without errors or contradictions. But what if PFAL is wrong? Not about itself, but about the Bible? What if the premise that the Bible is without error or contradiction is simply a false premise? We find a shocking reality we cannot ignore: The Bible quite simply never, ever, anywhere, makes such a claim about itself. Nowhere.
You may find a reference to God's word as perfect, but here's a shocker: the Bible lacks the self awareness to call itself God's word! VPW popularly said: "The Bible does not contain God's Word. It is God's word."
Really? Is that the testimony the Bible gives of itself? Where?
Why can't two writers looking at the same event disagree on minor details, as is common? Why shoehorn six denials for Peter when every single gospel says there were only three? What if God's Word is simply that he was crucified, and the small stuff is just that-- small stuff?
Scriptural inerrancy as promoted in TWI really appears to be an unattainable fantasy. A thread on actual errors in the Bible would make the Actual Errors in PFAL thread look like child's play.
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waysider
Well said.
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Steve Lortz
The issue of inerrancy is one of "the Fundamentals" that gave fundamentalism its name. It was a reaction against the claims for a geological time scale and the higher criticism that disallowed any possibility of the supernatural.
"Inerrancy" is a false way of looking at truth for a number of reasons. In terms of communication theory, there are four elements and three possible sources of error. There is encoding by the sender, the message itself, the channel, and decoding by the receiver. The possible errors are in encoding by the receiver, noise from the channel in the transmission, and errors in decoding by the receiver. If the original autographs WERE perfect as written, transmission errors in the form of countless clerical errors have destroyed the perfect form, and a multitude of decoding errors have resulted in today's plethora of denominations.
Seeking an illusory "inerrancy" prevents people from recognizing the real, metaphoric truths of the Bible.
Love,
Steve
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Raf
I'm going to have to move this to doctrinal at some point, but maybe not just yet.
The problem I have with the harmonization efforts is that they take a reasonable proposition and stretch it to unreasonable limits. Remember the old story about the blind men and the elephant, and how every one of them is right about the elephant even though they appear to be contradicting each other? That's a real healthy way of trying to approach apparent Bible contradictions, and as long as the conflicts lend themselves to such a solution, I am comfortable accepting the harmonization.
But sometimes, now and then, the conflicts just don't lend themselves to such a solution.
Every single gospel puts three crosses on that hill. Every one. Maybe, MAYBE John doesn't, but I think the more natural reading of the verse puts three crosses up there, not five. Not one gospel explicitly states there are five crosses up there. Three in Matthew, three in Mark, three in Luke, and I'm no Greek scholar, but I think three in John makes more sense than five.
Every gospel that mentions Peter's denials say he denied Jesus three times. There's a discrepancy in the number of cockadoodle-doos, but not in the number of denials. We can harmonize and find six, but can you find me a gospel that lays out six denials? You can't. They all count to three and then stop.
Where was Jesus when the Magi come to visit? Read Matthew, and only Matthew. He's in Bethlehem. There's not a scrap of an indication to the contrary. Then Jesus goes to Egypt. Then he comes back. Then AND ONLY THEN does his family settle in Nazareth. But read Luke, and only Luke. There are no Magi in Luke, of course. There's also very little Bethlehem. Jesus is there to be born, then skips town right away. A pit stop at Jerusalem, and whamo! They're in Nazareth. Not a hint of an Egyptian detour before or after. Jesus is still an infant when the family settles in Nazareth according to Luke. He's probably in preschool by the time they get to Nazareth according to Matthew. These are not "apparent" contradictions. It's a big fat glaring gaping discrepancy.
Now, one can argue that Matthew never says the Magi find Jesus in Bethlehem. It's true. It doesn't say that. But it utterly fails to give even the slightest indication to the contrary. You cannot read Matthew on its own and conclude that the Magi found Jesus somewhere else.
These guys were writing quasi-biographies (as opposed to full biographies). They were not manufacturing jigsaw puzzles and deliberately leaving out pieces that deliberately created an incomplete picture that could only be assembled by buying someone else's puzzle! Matthew didn't leave out Nazareth and just say "Ah, whatever; Luke will fill them in." Matthew doesn't take the writing of Luke for granted like that. And Luke just ignores Matthew entirely on the Nativity. The only things they have in common are Joseph, Mary, virginity, Bethlehem and the baby.
I could go on. Maybe after I move this to doctrinal...
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Raf
Somehow I expected a more, I don't know, vigorously antagonistic response.
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waysider
How's that for antagonistic? lol.
This whole idea that everything HAS to fit like a foot in a gym shoe is just childish. It ignores the chronology and autonomous nature of the individual writings. Yeah, I know, "God had a plan for it all to fall together when the canon was decided on", blah, blah, blah. It's another case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. It's not inerrant. It's just not. Until one can accept that reality, the greater message is lost somewhere between the fine points of grammar and punctuation.
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WordWolf
I'm giving this a good, long think.
it doesn't warrant a "shoot from the hip" reply.
Either you're correct, or you're not.
If you're not correct, and I reply with something cogent, but it's unpopular,
it's going to draw a lot of fire, and I no longer want to be bothered with it.
I can go anywhere on the internet and draw flak.
If you are correct, I won't be posting anything vigorously antagonistic, obviously.
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Steve Lortz
There are two legitimate reasons for the discrepancies between the gospels.
First, the Jesus tradition was handed down orally for a considerable period of time before it was finally written down, and due to the nature of oral transmission, details may vary in different locations while the main punchline of a pericope is preserved.
Second, the writers of the gospels were addressing different situations with appropriately different nuances of theology. Christianity was much more heterogeneous in its beginnings than it is now.
Is this vigorously antagonistic enough?
Love,
Syeve
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Raf
Nope. Can't be antagonistic if we agree
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chockfull
IMO that was part of VPW's flim-flam act. 4 Crucified, the day JC died. All egotistical attempts to unify a harmony of the gospels that most consider forced. And out of that a cult of personality. Teachings laced with his specialty (homiletics) all to sell some minutae of an interpretation. Then from there to gain control. "If you can't trust them on how many died with Jesus, how can you trust them on more pertinent spiritual matters?".
And that egotistical appeal to the intellect snared many.
In reality, that's a scribe (Greek word grammeteis or something - synonym "grammatician"). One who strains at a gnat and swallows a camel.
The reality of the argument IMO is opposite - if you can't trust them (TWI) on the things that do not matter, like not straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, then how can you entrust them with your life spiritually?
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Raf
Holy cow. Resistance is NOT futile!
I'm going to change the name of this thread to "TWI and Forcing Harmony in the Bible."
I would ask that we keep the discussion here about TWI. Any specific discussion that tackles a particular issue and ends up being doctrinal, we can flag and move to doctrinal. Everyone okay with that as a ground rule?
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