Sometimes I think people overthink things too much. It's a book. Or, more precisely, a collection of books and writings. It has multiple authors. They didn't always agree on some points. In fact, sometimes their ideas were in direct opposition with each other. There is not even a universally accepted order (canon) in which the writings should be listed. To think there can be no contradictions seems a little delusional or at least unrealistic. That's why people have contrived methodologies, such as dispensations, to whom it's written, etc. to resolve the confusion[emphasis added by Steve]. The idea of being God-Breathed is a self declaration, promoted by Paul. It's a little bit like me declaring myself to be an expert. I ought to know because, well, I'm an expert. It's circular. No one can ever really know that they know that they know. Just accept it for what it is and accept that there will be things you will never be able to figure out.
My 2 cents (adjusted accordingly for current inflation)
That's the difference between "systematic theology" and "constructive theology", waysider. Systematic theology comes up with a system to interpret the scriptures, and if there is a conflict between the system and the text, the text has to give way to the system. Systematic theology says, "The difficult verse must be interpreted in light of the many clear verses." Constructive theology says "The existence of a difficult verse leads us to question the clarity of our interpretation of the many verses that seem clear. Perhaps they are not really as clear as we would like for them to be. They might mean something entirely different from what we think."
A little bit of definition (exploration of the limits of meaning)...
Raf posits a boundary that exists between what is "historical" and what is... what?.. non-indicative?...improbable?... ahistorical?... never happened?... stories, legends and myths?
Mark posits a boundary that exists between what is figurative (or mystic) and what is literal.
I am proposing that the boundary between what we take as poetic and what we take as propositional is not as sharp and distinct as protestants have taken it to be since the Enlightenment.
There is a spectrum of, what shall we call it?... degrees of probability/possibility?... between the extremes of being 100% poetic and 100% propositional. In English, the place on the spectrum is indicated by the use of modal verbs. Hebrew communicates it by combining functions of form (Imperative, Jussive and Cohortative) with functions of prefix and of word order. In the Greek, it's expressed by use of the subjunctive mood.
Raf, in one of your previous posts (#13 on this thread), you referred to the Bible as consisting of "stories, myths and legends." I think those are useful categories for topics under consideration, but I would modify it in the following way: Stories can be mythical or legendary or historical. Every narrative is a story, no matter how indicative it might be. Myths are stories based on poetic knowledge presented by means of similes and metaphors. Myths do not pretend to be presenting propositional knowledge. A myth can be regarded as true or false, or of any value in between, according to how well it accords with objective reality. The definition of the word "true" is not limited to the definition of logic, but includes such aspects as "fitness" and "power to show".
So... we see and talk about three categories of stories based on degree of indicativeness... histories, legends and myths, all the time recognizing that the difference is not qualitative, but quantitative. There are degrees of editing done in every historical account which makes it necessarily different from the actual event. The figures of every myth need to represent something recognizable to somebody. Even dreams. There has to be an actuality for the symbol to symbolize!
The stories of the Bible consists of stories of three types: 1) Myths, which are statements of poetic rather than propositional knowledge, which are not based on actual people or occurrences, an example from American history would be Paul Bunyan. 2) Legends, which are probably based on people or events that actually occurred, but around which stories have grown that point to important qualities or characteristics of the person or event. Many legends have grown up about George Washington. Washington is a legendary figure in our history. 3) Histories. President Obama is an historical figure. He actually exists. He has actually done things. But if we read two historical stories (biographies) about President Obama from different authors, how likely are they to agree? Even if they are both by people who agree with Obama's politics?
I think Abraham is probably the first historical human being mentioned in the Bible.
I think Adam and Eve were responses to the human progenitors in the mythical Enima Elish. Consequently, they would also be mythical. The primary truth presented in the early chapters in Genesis is not that God clumped a ball of mud together and inflated it, but that there is one, and one God only, who is responsible/free. She/he/it made humanity in her/his/its image by enduing humanity with responsibility/freedom. The desperate wickedness in the heart of mankind is to escape responsibility toward God by substituting itself for God. That is the poetic TRUTH expressed in the myth of Genesis. That, and the promise of the seed of the woman who would set things right.
Before Abraham, there were Noah and Nimrod who may have been real people, but not in the form the Bible presents them. Archaeology tell us that there were many catastrophic floods in the prehistory of Mesopotamia (the land of Shinar) that people could have escaped from in their boats. Those many intrepid boatmen may have been consolidated into Utnapishtim of Sumerian legend, and transcribed into Genesis as Noah. There were many, many founders of Mesopotamian city-states whose primary responsibility was to build a house for the city's god. Those founders had trouble collecting taxes from the rulers of their vassal towns because of the differences in their languages. The authors of Genesis consolidated those many founders into one, Nimrod, and poked their fingers in the eye of Sumerian mythology by saying "You may have taken us captive to Babylon, but it was OUR God, YHWH, who confused your languages!"
So there may have been Noahs and Nimrods, but not in the same sense as Abraham. I think Abraham WAS a specific individual who left Ur and received a promise from the one God that Abraham would have a seed, and that through his seed, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Otherwise, the things we have about Abraham are legendary.
I think that there may have been a small group of people who left Egypt under the leadership of a man whom we have come to know as Moses. There is much that is legendary about Exodus, but the story became the essence of covenant salvation to the nation of Israel. It defines salvation for the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament.
The book of Judges relates the adventures of a number of individuals who really existed. Who were they? Were they members of tribes that came from Egypt, or were they leaders of native Canaanite groups who bound their lives together with the growing Israelite movement? Good questions! Our knowledge of their lives is more legendary than historical.
Then we come to Samuel, Saul, David and Solomon. Here we change from people, knowledge of whose lives is primarily legend, to other people, our knowledge of whose lives is primarily historical. There were still some legendary and a few outright mythic characters after Solomon. By the time of the Maccabees, however, Jewish writing was split into two major types: historical, like the books of the Maccabees, and apocalyptic, which was almost entirely, consciously figurative.
Then we come to the New Testament, that contains two major types of writings, gospels and letters. The apocalyptic book Revelation was also included. Gospels are neither biographies, nor histories, nor theological proclamations... but they contain elements of all three. Acts describes the movement of the gospel beyond Jerusalem and Judea. In this respect, the biographical element shifts eventually to Paul.
Nobody ever doubted the historicity of Jesus before the 19th century. People might have thought he was a failed Jewish messiah, or a fool, or a quack, but nobody doubted that he really lived. In 1835 David Strauss began the search for the historical Jesus in his book, Life of Jesus, that purged the gospel accounts of all "supernatural" elements. Most scholars still believe that there was an actual human being who lived in Galilee in the early first century CE, whose adventures form the kernel of the gospels, but there are some scholars who propose that there never was a Jesus, that the "man" was completely the construct of a conspiracy of cult mongers, or a fictional personification of a Gnostic Redeemer.
There is more historical evidence for the life of Jesus than there is for many of the characters of antiquity whose actuality we take for granted. The fact that the writings of the 1st century authors were collected into what became a single volume doesn't negate the fact that they were originally independent sources, along with a few others we can identify such as Q and the independent Matthew and Luke sources. What John used as sources, we do not know, but they didn't directly include Mark and Q. Luke declared that he gathered information from eyewitnesses. Those eyewitness had to include at a minimum Mary, the mother of Jesus herself, Peter, and Paul... personal interviews... PFAL may have been a load of Wierwille crap, but that certainly doesn't mean the New Testament itself is!
The few completely indicative, completely propositional statements a person needs to believe in order to be a Christian are that 1) Jesus was a real human being who really died, and 2) God really raised him from the dead by giving him the Spirit of resurrection life, never to die again! These things are not optional. Everything else is.
The reason Paul wasn't re-teaching in Acts and his letters the information included in the gospels was partially because he taught that information in person. His understanding of the gospel period of Jesus' life was probably most similar to that of Mark. The thing that converted Saul, the Pharisee of the Pharisees into Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles was the fact that he became convinced, to the bottom of his soul, that Jesus Christ had been resurrected ALL BY HIMSELF! The age to come had NOT begun with the general resurrection of all of Israel, but with the resurrection of a SINGLE MAN!
That upset EVERYTHING Saul thought he new about Judaism (and Saul thought he knew it ALL). Paul could no longer see Jesus Christ as being limited to the Davidic messiah of Judaism, but as the promised seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, as the promised seed of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed!
Do I believe that Jesus was a real man who died a real death, and who God raised from the dead? Yes I do. What else do I believe about the Bible?... about life itself? What does it matter? And that last question, "What does it matter?" is the real substance of questioning faith.
Just to add one more statement about Jesus Christ as it is related to Steve Lortz and his final statements. If it was not for the life of Jesus Christ, and for someone of faith, Like Steve, this includes his life, death and resurrection. We would not know who God is or our understanding of God would be limited at best. But thanks to the life of Jesus Christ we can know God at least in part. For example, like Jesus Christ his Son, God's goal is the salvation of mankind. And as 1 Corinthians 15:26-28 states "the last enemy that will be destroyed is death". With the goal of Jesus Christ, "that God may be all in all."
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.
The modern usage of "God-Breathed" implies an inherent flawlessness. How can we even be sure that's the message the author of Timothy meant to convey? Immediately following the word "Theopneustos" it says it is profitable (or useful) for doctrine reproof and correction. It doesn't say it is infallible or totally void of error. That's something that's been read into the meaning for whatever reasons.
Just to add one more statement about Jesus Christ as it is related to Steve Lortz and his final statements. If it was not for the life of Jesus Christ, and for someone of faith, Like Steve, this includes his life, death and resurrection. We would not know who God is or our understanding of God would be limited at best. But thanks to the life of Jesus Christ we can know God at least in part. For example, like Jesus Christ his Son, God's goal is the salvation of mankind. And as 1 Corinthians 15:26-28 states "the last enemy that will be destroyed is death". With the goal of Jesus Christ, "that God may be all in all."
Would not know? Hmmm...
"For now we see through a glass, darkly..." I Cor 13:12
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.
...snip...
Usually when you write, Raf, you are SPOT ON! But in this case, I think you've allowed your passion to make you miss the mark. I can understand that. I remember how I felt when I first learned that people I had trusted had lied to me about the Bible and about God. That was a long time before I got involved with TWI. I was a little more cautious than many during my time in the Way, and still am.
An assumption is a guess that a person makes when she/he has to take a decision with incomplete information. Making assumptions is NOT a bad thing. We ALL have to do it because none of us ever have 100% COMPLETE information. The keys to dealing successfully with assumptions are, first of all, to be AWARE of your own assumptions. Then, as soon after the crisis is over as possible, and you have time to collect more information, FIND OUT whether or not your assumptions were correct.
I learned these things as a result of formal training in Nuclear Power School and in Prototype Training. On our exams we would be given problems with incomplete statements of the initial conditions, but the instructors never pointed out to us whether the information was or was not complete. We had to learn to recognize that for ourselves. We always had to state what assumptions we were making, and our answers would be correct if they lined up with our stated assumptions.
Why did they train us this way? Because in the engineroom, if we received indication of a casualty, we had to immediately take initial action to fight the casualty. We couldn't wait to make decisions. We had to make them instantly, so we trained to do that, even without complete information. As soon as the casualty was under control, the first thing the watchstander did was to find out if his assumptions had been correct. If they had been correct, everything was hunky-dory. If the assumptions had been incorrect, then further action would be required to minimize damage and restore the plant to at battery conditions.
In the scholarly world, we don't have to take instant decisions. We are expected to gather sufficient information before delivering our interpretation. When we deliver our interpretations, we are expected to state where our information has been incomplete, and suggest how we might acquire a more certain understanding, if possible. That is the same in the humanities (the world of poetic knowledge expressed as simile and metaphor) as it is in the world of "hard" science (the world of propositional knowledge stated in mathematics).
(I am using first person in the previous paragraph because I AM receiving the training of a professional scholar. I AM part of the scholarly community, more so than Wierwille or other leaders of TWI ever were or are.)
In journalism, responsible writers sometimes find it necessary to conceal the sources of their information. In scholarship, writers are required to reveal ALL of their sources in order to accept responsibility, or run the danger of committing plagiarism whether intentional or not.
So, what were my sources when I wrote the things I did about Luke?
My first New Testament exegesis paper was What Must I Do To Inherit Eternal Life? Luke 18:18-30. I had eight sources listed in the bibliography, but I'm only going to use one of those, a commentary, in this post, and two other sources that I didn't use in my exegesis paper. The commentary is:
Bock, Darrell. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Luke Volume 1, 1:1-9:50. Grand Rapids:
Baker Books. 1994.
The other two sources are:
Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.
Majeski, Kimberly. BIST 6210 class discussion covering Luke 1. Anderson, IN: Anderson University School of Theology. November 2, 2015.
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Lets start with your last sentence first: "2. It assumes "Luke" wrote the gospel. No serious, unbiased scholar believes that."
The phrase "serious, unbiased scholar" is a tell that this is not a statement of objective, doctrinal content, but rather a tendentious confession of faith. Unbiased scholars do not exist, no more so than unbiased journalists do. The things is, scholars are expected to be aware of their own biases, to take them into account, and express them in setting forth their argument. Unlike the work of journalists, scholarly work subjects bias to intense scrutiny and discussion. By saying "No serious, unbiased scholar believes that." you are implying that you have examined all scholarship and that anyone who disagrees with your bias CANNOT BE taken seriously.
How about Bart Ehrman? On page 137 of The New Testament he wrote,"All these features are found in Luke 1:1-4. The author (whom I will continue to call Luke for convenience) indicates that ..." That's ALL Ehrman said about the authorship of Luke in his chapter on the gospel of Luke.... "for convenience..."
If you read the introduction to Bock's commentary, you will find the same thing I did in examining a number of commentaries. There is no internal evidence attributing the authorship of Luke-Acts to a person named Luke. However, scholarship from patristic times forward has universally held the author to be an apostolic companion named Luke. There is NO evidence that anyone ever taught that there was an author other than a "Luke." It is not certain whether the Luke of patristic tradition was the same as the Luke of Colossians 4:14, but there is NO evidence precluding the possibility either.
If Ehrman had any evidence that Luke was not written by Luke, he would have presented it, convenient or not. There is no evidence that Luke-Acts was written by anybody other than somebody named Luke, and there is strong probability that the Luke who wrote Luke-Acts was Paul's companion mentioned in Colossians 4:14.
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"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."
Luke 1:1&2 (NRSV) say, "1Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account [diegeomai] of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed to us by those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,"
Luke never made the claim that he himself was an eyewitness, but let's look at what Bock had to say:
"The verb diegeomai in the NT speaks of both oral and written accounts... so whatever type of narrative Luke alludes to in 1:1, it is not clear whether the sources are oral or written or both." (p. 53)
"We should not think of Luke as a student locked up in a library, especially since written material was so rare in the ancient world. Here was an inquiring student, who took in whatever he could, oral or written." (p. 61)
Regarding Luke's use of the word akribos, "carefully" in verse 3, Bock wrote, "Some commentators see this as a description of how Luke wrote his material (i.e. modifying graphai) rather than as a description of his investigation. But the word order of the sentence makes this connection less likely. So, Luke's study is the fruit of a careful and thorough investigation that went back to Jesus' birth." (p. 62)
Who better to interview in a careful and thorough investigation that went back to Jesus' birth than Mary, his mother?
Orthodox tradition that can be traced back to the 8th century holds that Luke painted the first icon, a portrait of Mary, during or after his interview with her.
Dr. Majeski teaches the New Testament, both at the introductory level to freshmen at the University, and at an advanced graduate level at the School of Theology. She is a serious scholar, though she will be the first to say that she is biased, and will explain her biases in more excruciating detail than you want to hear. She has also presented at the SBL convention and writes a blog. She is taken seriously by N.T. Wright, who invited her to dinner with his circle of friends at the SBL convention. She has a selfie of herself with N.T. Wright to prove it!
Her field of specialty is the role of women in the NT... not feminist-gender theology, but examining the things people like Mary, Martha, Lydia, Phoebe, and Priscilla thought and did. Dr. Majeski recently adopted an infant son, and motherhood is now having a strong influence on her thought. I attended her graduate level NT class on Monday, Novenber 2, when she was covering the first chapter of Luke. She makes a convincing case that the only place Luke could have gotten his information about Mary's visit to Elizabeth, and about Jesus' visit to the Temple at the age of twelve would have been from Mary, and how the incident recorded in Luke 8:19, where Jesus denied his earthly family, would have been seared into Mary's memory and would have been an important part of her testimony.
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So...
" 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."
Are you still willing to stand on the soundness of what you wrote, Raf?
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."
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:
Luke 1:1&2 (NRSV) say, "1Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account [diegeomai] of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed to us by those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,"
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:
1. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2. just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4. so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
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.
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.
What is your source for saying scholarly concensus is behind Ehrman"?
You made the claim that my two "assumptions" are "not true".
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.
If you're asking me to produce a list of scholars who agree with Ehrman on this, it will take me some time to compile it. You can start with Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz.
Then there's Eugene Boring, who, not surprisingly, uses Ehrman's language in referring to the author as "Luke" as a matter of convenience. He writes: "The problematic historical value of patristic data regarding authorship of New Testament documents means the burden of proof is on advocates of its reliability."
In other words, "there's no evidence to suggest it wasn't Luke" is insufficient to conclude that it WAS.
But that's just one author of "An Introduction to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology."
You can look these folks up on Amazon.
Let me know if you need more. I'm really just stalling for time while trying to post on the other thread.
For the benefit our our correspondents, there is a small group of scholars, the prime of whose activities was in 1970s, who hold that everything that has come down to us in the New Testament consists of fake stories promulgated by third or later generations of Christians. They contend that the Q source is the only authentic account of the earliest Christianity, which is convenient, since we have NO copies of Q. These scholars try to find Q by isolating everything that agrees in Matthew and Luke that also does not appear in Mark. Needless to say, the process is highly speculative and subjective. These scholars were those involved with the Jesus Seminar, which determined by vote which words Jesus spoke.
The reason these scholars hold that everything in the New Testament is fake is because Schliermacher believed with the science of his day that there is no room in nature for the "supernatural". Therefore everything regarded as miraculous in the New Testament, including the resurrection of Jesus, (and human free will, by the by) are lies. This is the basis of liberal protestant theology, and the thinking of the scholars of the Jesus Seminar. Unfortunately for them, Neils Bohr described quantum mechanics in 1925, and since then, the Newtonian determinism at the basis of claiming the "supernatural" could not have actually happened has been demolished. There IS plenty of room in nature for human free will, and for the miraculous, and a "creation" is required by quantum mechanics. Is every story in the New Testament of the miraculous "true"? Probably not. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ is non-negotiable. As Paul said in I Corinthians 15:19&20 "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept."
A consensus of the "Q people", as other scholars affectionately call them, may well agree with Ehrman's assessment that Luke did not write Luke-Acts, but these people do not speak for the majority of scholars. If you read a wide variety of commentaries, they all pretty much agree that there is NO EVIDENCE that Luke-Acts was written by anybody other than an apostolic companion named Luke. Whether it was the Luke of Colossians 4:14 is not certain, but it begs the question, if it wasn't the Luke of Colossians 4:14, what other apostolic companion could it have been?
General scholarship is in agreement that Luke-Acts was written by a single man, a master writer and historian, whose was most probably one of Paul's companions named Luke.
If you don't believe me, look it up for yourselves!
Raf, you have named three names. The Society of Biblical Literature has over 8,500 members. Are you going to poll them all? If not, then how can you say a consensus agrees with Ehrman?
If the evidence against Lukan authorship is so strong, then why is it convenient for Ehrman to call the author of Luke Luke?
Raf, you wrote, "Then there's Eugene Boring, who, not surprisingly, uses Ehrman's language in referring to the author as "Luke" as a matter of convenience. He writes: 'The problematic historical value of patristic data regarding authorship of New Testament documents means the burden of proof is on advocates of its reliability.'
In other words, "there's no evidence to suggest it wasn't Luke" is insufficient to conclude that it WAS."
How much confidence can we place in Boring's statement "'The problematic historical value of patristic data regarding authorship of New Testament documents means the burden of proof is on advocates of its reliability.'"
Why? in the case of Luke specifically? What evidence is there that the patristic data EVER presents conflicting accounts of Lukan authorship?
Why should the "burden of proof" be put on the advocates of Lukan authorship when there is NO CONTROVERSY about Lukan authorship, as there is about the authorship of some other New Testament documents?
Raf... you are a professional newsperson, and a good one. You have to write according to the standards of journalism, and your work is judged by those standards. I haven't read a lot of what you've written professionally, but I know from watching my dad at work that you have to be good or you wouldn't be doing what you are doing.
I am working on a masters in Theological Studies. I am being trained by professional scholars to write up to professional standards. I had to withdraw from the thesis program because I no longer have the physical stamina or speed to complete a thesis within the parameters set for that program. But I DO have to write four exegesis papers. I did two of them last fall, and will finish the other two next spring. My work will be judged on whether or not I have written those four papers up to professional standards. I will pass or fail on the professional, scholarly quality of my writing.
But it's not just the actual scribbling... I will be judged on the quality of my research, which means I have to set my argument into the context of the broader, on-going theological conversation. If I were to cherry pick my sources, limiting them to people who agree with me, the way you are doing with Ehrman, I would be failed, not just on the papers, but on the entire classes. And rightly so.
My New Testament exegesis paper last fall was over Luke 18:18-30. Do you think I didn't study the question of Lukan authorship? Do you think I didn't include a brief assessment of the general state of that question in my paper? Do you think I would have passed if I hadn't? I passed.
If you moved your postings over to the Questioning Faith forum because you didn't want to disrupt the integrity of this thread, then why are you continuing to argue on this thread?
And you did so AFTER I stated I was starting another thread to keep this one from getting derailed.
So, if you're not going to question the authorship of Luke, I'll gladly let it go here.
No, I'm not going to poll Bible scholars. Nor am I going to dismiss them just because they are not evangelical, which is what you're suggesting we do.
If you're only going to trust scholars who reached their conclusions prior to their studies, I'm not going to stop you.
"Convenience," by the way, is because we all call the gospel "Luke," which is a lot shorter than "the anonymous author later claimed to be Luke without a scrap of evidence in favor and significant evidence to the contrary."
Theology is not history.
I think it's hilarious that scholarship that supports what I've been saying is so routinely dismissed on these threads without actually being refuted.
Regardless, I think my decision to move this thread has been vindicated.
By the way, yes, I do believe a student at a Christian University who does not challenge the Lucan authorship of the Gospel of Luke will pass. I would be shocked if you didn't.
I have been a biblical student, mostly from the writings of the Apostle Paul and now Luke sounds very interesting also. It sounds like Luke was a personal student of the apostle Paul, spent time with him and was his friend and doctor. See this in Colossians 4:14, "Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings", NIV.
Here is information from what I consider the equivalent of a biblical encyclopedia.
LUKE
A "fellow laborer" of the apostle Paul (Philem 24) and the probable author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. By profession he was a physician (Col 4:14). During one of Paul's imprisonments, probably in Rome, Luke's faithfulness was recorded by Paul when he declared, "Only Luke is with me" (2 Tim 4:11). These three references are our only direct knowledge of Luke in the New Testament.
A bit more of Luke's life and personality can be pieced together with the aid of his writings (Luke and Acts) and some outside sources. Tradition records that he came from Antioch in Syria. This is possible, because Antioch played a significant role in the early Gentile mission which Luke described in Acts (Acts 11; 13; 14; 15; 18). Luke was a Gentile (Col 4:10-17) and the only non-Jewish author of a New Testament book. A comparison of 2 Cor 8:18 and 12:18 has led some to suppose that Luke and Titus were brothers, but this is a guess.
Luke accompanied Paul on parts of his second third, and final missionary journeys. At three places in Acts, the narrative changes to the first person ("we"). This probably indicates that Luke was personally present during those episodes. On the second journey (A.D. 49-53), Luke accompanied Paul on the short voyage from Troas to Philippi (Acts 16:10-17). On the third journey (A.D. 54-58), Luke was present on the voyage from Philippi to Jerusalem (Acts 20:5-21:18). Whether Luke had spent the intervening time in Philippi is uncertain, but his connection with Philippi has led some to favor it (rather than Antioch) as Luke's home.
Once in Palestine, Luke probably remained close by Paul during his two-year imprisonment in Caesarea. During this time, Luke probably drew together material, both oral and written, which he later used in the composition of his gospel (Luke 4). A third "we" passage describes in masterful suspense the shipwreck during Paul's voyage to Rome for his trial before Caesar. Each of the "we" passages involves Luke on a voyage, and the description of the journey from Jerusalem to Rome is full of observations and knowledge of nautical matters.
Luke apparently was a humble man, with no desire to sound his own horn. More than one-fourth of the New Testament comes from his pen, but not once does he mention himself by name. He had a greater command of the Greek language and was probably more broad-minded and urbane than any New Testament writer. He was a careful historian, both by his own admission (Luke 1:1-4), and by the judgment of later history.
Luke's gospel reveals his concern for the poor, sick, and outcast, thus offering a clue to why Paul called him "the beloved physician" (Col 4:14). He was faithful not only to Paul, but to the greater cause which he served-the publication of "good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2:10).
A most excellent second gurgitation of that which has only been stated on multiple occasions, though I have to admit the absence of fresh content not already discussed is refreshing.
Anyway, so, Luke wrote Luke.
What does that have to do with it being god breathed?
If Luke contains historical errors (and it does) and the author of Luke does not claim divine inspiration (and he doesn't), by what reckoning is the gospel considered God-breathed? And what does "God-breathed" mean?
In a brief reply to what god-breathed means. There is only one usage in the entire Greek to English New Testament. For the Greek word this is Strong's number 2315. This makes it more difficult to understand the meaning, when only used once in the entire New Testament. This one usage is in 2 Timothy 3:16. Below is the verse with some context. Using the word breathed mixed with God it looks figurative as God does not need to literally breath like you and I. A simple definition of god-breathed is "inspired by God" as read in Thayer's Greek Lexicon.
10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
A helpful reminder, but it doesn't get us to the point of asserting that the gospel of Luke, for one example, is God-breathed. Is it useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness? Sure it is. But so are Steve Lortz' posts. Are they God-breathed? How about the God's Reconciliation thread? Is THAT God-breathed?
Clearly, in context, God-breathed is a quality that differentiates the Holy Scriptures from other writings. Its usefulness for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness stems from its origin as God-breathed. But that only works one way. When something is God-breathed, it will serve those purposes. BUT it doesn't work the other way around: just because something serves those purposes doesn't mean it's God-breathed!
So the central question remains unanswered: "Luke" (whoever he was) explicitly says writing his gospel was his idea. Nothing he says offers the slightest shred of evidence that it is God-breathed (even if one were to concede that it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness). In fact, assuming Paul wrote II Timothy (spoiler alert: he didn't), you would have to conclude that the "God-breathed" verse preceded the writing of the gospel of Luke by roughly 20 years (exact dates being unavailable, Paul dies in 64, and Luke is written somewhere between 80-90.
So we "know" II Timothy is not referring to Luke (or any of the gospels) when it says all scripture is God-breathed.
Put these together:
1. The gospels are written after the verse declaring all scripture to be God-breathed. The verse is not talking about the gospels.
2. Luke, the only gospel that talks about how it came into being, does not make a claim to be God-breathed.
3. A work can be useful for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness without being God-breathed.
How can one argue that the gospels are God-breathed? And if/when one does make the argument, what does it MEAN?
I give fundamentalists credit for attaching a testable meaning to God-breathed (without error or contradiction), but the gospels themselves fail that test (they are neither without error nor without contradiction). So THAT definition is out.
This is a matter of faith. If you believe it's God-breathed, more power to you. But I don't see how you get there from the evidence we have.
Then one of my pastors commented about the scriptural "tension" over things that outright contradicted other things. I thought it was an interesting way of looking at things.
...snip...
"Since the whole Bible is God-breathed, it cannot contain any contradictions, and if it contains even ONE contradiction, it will ALL fall to pieces."
This is NOT a statement of objective fact. It is NOT a statement of self-evident truth. It is NOT a point of doctrine. It is NOT taught in the Bible itself.
"Since the whole Bible is God-breathed, it cannot contain any contradictions, and if it contains even ONE contradiction, it will ALL fall to pieces" is a confession of faith.
It is not a widespread or long-lived faith. It is peculiar to Christians and agnostics/atheists who come from a fundamentalist/evangelical background. The faith originated about 150 years ago or so, and became officially incorporated into church doctrine about 50 years later at the Fundamentalist Conferences. When Wierwille taught that the autographs (original writings) of the Bible were perfect as given, he associated himself and his followers with this particular article of fundamentalist/evangelical faith. Oddly enough, agnostics and atheists continue to hold onto this article of their faith long after they have rejected all the others.
When Paul wrote "all scripture" in 2 Timothy 3:16, he was using a "shorthand" meaning "all the law and the prophets" as Jesus spoke of in Matthew 22:37-40, "37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." The Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) consisted of the Law , the Prophets and the Writings. Paul's "all scripture" may well have been intended to include all three sections of the Tanakh.
Those were the things Paul was declaring to be "God-breathed." In his thinking, he probably didn't include any of the writings that became what we call the New Testament. Were there contradictions in the Tanakh?
OH, YES!
The Old Testament contains a long epic that extends over many of its books. The epic is known as "The Doomed History of the Deuteronomist." It explains how and why all of God's promises to Israel came to nothing. The theology of the Deuteronomist was this:
Israel's salvation was in the Exodus from Egypt and in the giving of the covenant on Mt. Sinai. Salvation was by grace and preceded the giving of the law. Keeping the law was to be the thankful response of the people to the salvation already received. If an individual broke the law, and did not make atonement, that individual was to be expelled from among the covenant people. Successes and failures are the result of faithfulness, that results in success, or disobedience, that results in failure. The disobedience of Israel as a whole resulted in the destruction of the northern kingdom and the exile of Judah to Babylon in 587 BCE. Since that time, the Jewish people have looked forward to a restoration of the Davidic kingdom, a restoration that has not yet come to pass. In the first century, the Pharisees were a group of people who sought to speed up the restoration of the kingdom by trying their best to restore obedience to the Deutronomic law.
But the book of Ecclesiastes was ALSO included in the Tanakh, and it's theology is this:
"11I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to the men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all." (9:11)
"13And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the fruit of all his labour, it is the gift of God." (3:13)
"13Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (12:13)
The theology of the whole of Ecclesiastes contradicts the whole theology of the Deuteronomist! It was consciously, deliberately included in the Tanakh!
Wierwille subtitles the book of Job "Victim to Victor," but that's not what it is. Job seeks an answer to the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" but God NEVER answers the question! Instead, the book contradicts EVERY THEODICY! Job's miserable comforters put forth every reason possible why they think God would let bad things happen to good people, yet God said they had not spoken of him the thing that was right.
Job contradicts EVERY THEOLOGY! Yet, it also was consciously, deliberately included in the Tanakh!
Was Paul aware of these things when he wrote "all scripture is God-breathed"? You bet he was! He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees! We can't say where Paul stood on the scale of Old Testament scholarship in his day, but there's one thing we can be certain of, he was a better Old Testament scholar than anybody who is alive today!
God breathed the contradictions into the Tanakh in order to foil people who try to put him into a box (systematic theology). There is a tension between KNOWING who God is and what he will do, and NOT KNOWING who God is and what he will do, and that keeps us from thinking we can control him. Systematic theology, especially of the fundamentalist/evangelical type, try to make God a prisoner of the ink words written on the paper pages. Wierwille's theology, developed to "resolve apparent contradictions in the Bible," turned God into a vending machine with no will of his own. How disgusting he and we were!
How about it, Tzaia? Do these tensions make an interesting way of looking at things?
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waysider
I buried Paul. Sincerely, The Walrus
Steve Lortz
There is a thing we've been taught to do at Anderson University (all the way from freshman introductory Bible courses to grad school exegetical papers) called the hermeneutic or the exegetical circle.
Steve Lortz
I don't understand why you have a hang-up about the authorship of Luke-Acts. There are parts of the NT whose authorship is very much open to question, especially Paul's pastoral epistles, and serious
Steve Lortz
A little bit of thread-keeping...
That's the difference between "systematic theology" and "constructive theology", waysider. Systematic theology comes up with a system to interpret the scriptures, and if there is a conflict between the system and the text, the text has to give way to the system. Systematic theology says, "The difficult verse must be interpreted in light of the many clear verses." Constructive theology says "The existence of a difficult verse leads us to question the clarity of our interpretation of the many verses that seem clear. Perhaps they are not really as clear as we would like for them to be. They might mean something entirely different from what we think."
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
A little bit of definition (exploration of the limits of meaning)...
Raf posits a boundary that exists between what is "historical" and what is... what?.. non-indicative?...improbable?... ahistorical?... never happened?... stories, legends and myths?
Mark posits a boundary that exists between what is figurative (or mystic) and what is literal.
I am proposing that the boundary between what we take as poetic and what we take as propositional is not as sharp and distinct as protestants have taken it to be since the Enlightenment.
There is a spectrum of, what shall we call it?... degrees of probability/possibility?... between the extremes of being 100% poetic and 100% propositional. In English, the place on the spectrum is indicated by the use of modal verbs. Hebrew communicates it by combining functions of form (Imperative, Jussive and Cohortative) with functions of prefix and of word order. In the Greek, it's expressed by use of the subjunctive mood.
Raf, in one of your previous posts (#13 on this thread), you referred to the Bible as consisting of "stories, myths and legends." I think those are useful categories for topics under consideration, but I would modify it in the following way: Stories can be mythical or legendary or historical. Every narrative is a story, no matter how indicative it might be. Myths are stories based on poetic knowledge presented by means of similes and metaphors. Myths do not pretend to be presenting propositional knowledge. A myth can be regarded as true or false, or of any value in between, according to how well it accords with objective reality. The definition of the word "true" is not limited to the definition of logic, but includes such aspects as "fitness" and "power to show".
So... we see and talk about three categories of stories based on degree of indicativeness... histories, legends and myths, all the time recognizing that the difference is not qualitative, but quantitative. There are degrees of editing done in every historical account which makes it necessarily different from the actual event. The figures of every myth need to represent something recognizable to somebody. Even dreams. There has to be an actuality for the symbol to symbolize!
The stories of the Bible consists of stories of three types: 1) Myths, which are statements of poetic rather than propositional knowledge, which are not based on actual people or occurrences, an example from American history would be Paul Bunyan. 2) Legends, which are probably based on people or events that actually occurred, but around which stories have grown that point to important qualities or characteristics of the person or event. Many legends have grown up about George Washington. Washington is a legendary figure in our history. 3) Histories. President Obama is an historical figure. He actually exists. He has actually done things. But if we read two historical stories (biographies) about President Obama from different authors, how likely are they to agree? Even if they are both by people who agree with Obama's politics?
I think Abraham is probably the first historical human being mentioned in the Bible.
I think Adam and Eve were responses to the human progenitors in the mythical Enima Elish. Consequently, they would also be mythical. The primary truth presented in the early chapters in Genesis is not that God clumped a ball of mud together and inflated it, but that there is one, and one God only, who is responsible/free. She/he/it made humanity in her/his/its image by enduing humanity with responsibility/freedom. The desperate wickedness in the heart of mankind is to escape responsibility toward God by substituting itself for God. That is the poetic TRUTH expressed in the myth of Genesis. That, and the promise of the seed of the woman who would set things right.
Before Abraham, there were Noah and Nimrod who may have been real people, but not in the form the Bible presents them. Archaeology tell us that there were many catastrophic floods in the prehistory of Mesopotamia (the land of Shinar) that people could have escaped from in their boats. Those many intrepid boatmen may have been consolidated into Utnapishtim of Sumerian legend, and transcribed into Genesis as Noah. There were many, many founders of Mesopotamian city-states whose primary responsibility was to build a house for the city's god. Those founders had trouble collecting taxes from the rulers of their vassal towns because of the differences in their languages. The authors of Genesis consolidated those many founders into one, Nimrod, and poked their fingers in the eye of Sumerian mythology by saying "You may have taken us captive to Babylon, but it was OUR God, YHWH, who confused your languages!"
So there may have been Noahs and Nimrods, but not in the same sense as Abraham. I think Abraham WAS a specific individual who left Ur and received a promise from the one God that Abraham would have a seed, and that through his seed, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Otherwise, the things we have about Abraham are legendary.
I think that there may have been a small group of people who left Egypt under the leadership of a man whom we have come to know as Moses. There is much that is legendary about Exodus, but the story became the essence of covenant salvation to the nation of Israel. It defines salvation for the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament.
The book of Judges relates the adventures of a number of individuals who really existed. Who were they? Were they members of tribes that came from Egypt, or were they leaders of native Canaanite groups who bound their lives together with the growing Israelite movement? Good questions! Our knowledge of their lives is more legendary than historical.
Then we come to Samuel, Saul, David and Solomon. Here we change from people, knowledge of whose lives is primarily legend, to other people, our knowledge of whose lives is primarily historical. There were still some legendary and a few outright mythic characters after Solomon. By the time of the Maccabees, however, Jewish writing was split into two major types: historical, like the books of the Maccabees, and apocalyptic, which was almost entirely, consciously figurative.
Then we come to the New Testament, that contains two major types of writings, gospels and letters. The apocalyptic book Revelation was also included. Gospels are neither biographies, nor histories, nor theological proclamations... but they contain elements of all three. Acts describes the movement of the gospel beyond Jerusalem and Judea. In this respect, the biographical element shifts eventually to Paul.
Nobody ever doubted the historicity of Jesus before the 19th century. People might have thought he was a failed Jewish messiah, or a fool, or a quack, but nobody doubted that he really lived. In 1835 David Strauss began the search for the historical Jesus in his book, Life of Jesus, that purged the gospel accounts of all "supernatural" elements. Most scholars still believe that there was an actual human being who lived in Galilee in the early first century CE, whose adventures form the kernel of the gospels, but there are some scholars who propose that there never was a Jesus, that the "man" was completely the construct of a conspiracy of cult mongers, or a fictional personification of a Gnostic Redeemer.
There is more historical evidence for the life of Jesus than there is for many of the characters of antiquity whose actuality we take for granted. The fact that the writings of the 1st century authors were collected into what became a single volume doesn't negate the fact that they were originally independent sources, along with a few others we can identify such as Q and the independent Matthew and Luke sources. What John used as sources, we do not know, but they didn't directly include Mark and Q. Luke declared that he gathered information from eyewitnesses. Those eyewitness had to include at a minimum Mary, the mother of Jesus herself, Peter, and Paul... personal interviews... PFAL may have been a load of Wierwille crap, but that certainly doesn't mean the New Testament itself is!
The few completely indicative, completely propositional statements a person needs to believe in order to be a Christian are that 1) Jesus was a real human being who really died, and 2) God really raised him from the dead by giving him the Spirit of resurrection life, never to die again! These things are not optional. Everything else is.
The reason Paul wasn't re-teaching in Acts and his letters the information included in the gospels was partially because he taught that information in person. His understanding of the gospel period of Jesus' life was probably most similar to that of Mark. The thing that converted Saul, the Pharisee of the Pharisees into Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles was the fact that he became convinced, to the bottom of his soul, that Jesus Christ had been resurrected ALL BY HIMSELF! The age to come had NOT begun with the general resurrection of all of Israel, but with the resurrection of a SINGLE MAN!
That upset EVERYTHING Saul thought he new about Judaism (and Saul thought he knew it ALL). Paul could no longer see Jesus Christ as being limited to the Davidic messiah of Judaism, but as the promised seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, as the promised seed of Abraham through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed!
Do I believe that Jesus was a real man who died a real death, and who God raised from the dead? Yes I do. What else do I believe about the Bible?... about life itself? What does it matter? And that last question, "What does it matter?" is the real substance of questioning faith.
Love,
Steve
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Mark Sanguinetti
Just to add one more statement about Jesus Christ as it is related to Steve Lortz and his final statements. If it was not for the life of Jesus Christ, and for someone of faith, Like Steve, this includes his life, death and resurrection. We would not know who God is or our understanding of God would be limited at best. But thanks to the life of Jesus Christ we can know God at least in part. For example, like Jesus Christ his Son, God's goal is the salvation of mankind. And as 1 Corinthians 15:26-28 states "the last enemy that will be destroyed is death". With the goal of Jesus Christ, "that God may be all in all."
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Raf
I don't think you mean the same thing I do when we use the term "questioning faith."
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Raf
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.
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waysider
The modern usage of "God-Breathed" implies an inherent flawlessness. How can we even be sure that's the message the author of Timothy meant to convey? Immediately following the word "Theopneustos" it says it is profitable (or useful) for doctrine reproof and correction. It doesn't say it is infallible or totally void of error. That's something that's been read into the meaning for whatever reasons.
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Rocky
Would not know? Hmmm...
"For now we see through a glass, darkly..." I Cor 13:12
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Steve Lortz
A bit more thread-keeping...
Usually when you write, Raf, you are SPOT ON! But in this case, I think you've allowed your passion to make you miss the mark. I can understand that. I remember how I felt when I first learned that people I had trusted had lied to me about the Bible and about God. That was a long time before I got involved with TWI. I was a little more cautious than many during my time in the Way, and still am.
An assumption is a guess that a person makes when she/he has to take a decision with incomplete information. Making assumptions is NOT a bad thing. We ALL have to do it because none of us ever have 100% COMPLETE information. The keys to dealing successfully with assumptions are, first of all, to be AWARE of your own assumptions. Then, as soon after the crisis is over as possible, and you have time to collect more information, FIND OUT whether or not your assumptions were correct.
I learned these things as a result of formal training in Nuclear Power School and in Prototype Training. On our exams we would be given problems with incomplete statements of the initial conditions, but the instructors never pointed out to us whether the information was or was not complete. We had to learn to recognize that for ourselves. We always had to state what assumptions we were making, and our answers would be correct if they lined up with our stated assumptions.
Why did they train us this way? Because in the engineroom, if we received indication of a casualty, we had to immediately take initial action to fight the casualty. We couldn't wait to make decisions. We had to make them instantly, so we trained to do that, even without complete information. As soon as the casualty was under control, the first thing the watchstander did was to find out if his assumptions had been correct. If they had been correct, everything was hunky-dory. If the assumptions had been incorrect, then further action would be required to minimize damage and restore the plant to at battery conditions.
In the scholarly world, we don't have to take instant decisions. We are expected to gather sufficient information before delivering our interpretation. When we deliver our interpretations, we are expected to state where our information has been incomplete, and suggest how we might acquire a more certain understanding, if possible. That is the same in the humanities (the world of poetic knowledge expressed as simile and metaphor) as it is in the world of "hard" science (the world of propositional knowledge stated in mathematics).
(I am using first person in the previous paragraph because I AM receiving the training of a professional scholar. I AM part of the scholarly community, more so than Wierwille or other leaders of TWI ever were or are.)
In journalism, responsible writers sometimes find it necessary to conceal the sources of their information. In scholarship, writers are required to reveal ALL of their sources in order to accept responsibility, or run the danger of committing plagiarism whether intentional or not.
So, what were my sources when I wrote the things I did about Luke?
My first New Testament exegesis paper was What Must I Do To Inherit Eternal Life? Luke 18:18-30. I had eight sources listed in the bibliography, but I'm only going to use one of those, a commentary, in this post, and two other sources that I didn't use in my exegesis paper. The commentary is:
Bock, Darrell. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Luke Volume 1, 1:1-9:50. Grand Rapids:
Baker Books. 1994.
The other two sources are:
Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.
Majeski, Kimberly. BIST 6210 class discussion covering Luke 1. Anderson, IN: Anderson University School of Theology. November 2, 2015.
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Lets start with your last sentence first: "2. It assumes "Luke" wrote the gospel. No serious, unbiased scholar believes that."
The phrase "serious, unbiased scholar" is a tell that this is not a statement of objective, doctrinal content, but rather a tendentious confession of faith. Unbiased scholars do not exist, no more so than unbiased journalists do. The things is, scholars are expected to be aware of their own biases, to take them into account, and express them in setting forth their argument. Unlike the work of journalists, scholarly work subjects bias to intense scrutiny and discussion. By saying "No serious, unbiased scholar believes that." you are implying that you have examined all scholarship and that anyone who disagrees with your bias CANNOT BE taken seriously.
How about Bart Ehrman? On page 137 of The New Testament he wrote,"All these features are found in Luke 1:1-4. The author (whom I will continue to call Luke for convenience) indicates that ..." That's ALL Ehrman said about the authorship of Luke in his chapter on the gospel of Luke.... "for convenience..."
If you read the introduction to Bock's commentary, you will find the same thing I did in examining a number of commentaries. There is no internal evidence attributing the authorship of Luke-Acts to a person named Luke. However, scholarship from patristic times forward has universally held the author to be an apostolic companion named Luke. There is NO evidence that anyone ever taught that there was an author other than a "Luke." It is not certain whether the Luke of patristic tradition was the same as the Luke of Colossians 4:14, but there is NO evidence precluding the possibility either.
If Ehrman had any evidence that Luke was not written by Luke, he would have presented it, convenient or not. There is no evidence that Luke-Acts was written by anybody other than somebody named Luke, and there is strong probability that the Luke who wrote Luke-Acts was Paul's companion mentioned in Colossians 4:14.
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"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."
Luke 1:1&2 (NRSV) say, "1Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account [diegeomai] of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2just as they were handed to us by those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,"
Luke never made the claim that he himself was an eyewitness, but let's look at what Bock had to say:
"The verb diegeomai in the NT speaks of both oral and written accounts... so whatever type of narrative Luke alludes to in 1:1, it is not clear whether the sources are oral or written or both." (p. 53)
"We should not think of Luke as a student locked up in a library, especially since written material was so rare in the ancient world. Here was an inquiring student, who took in whatever he could, oral or written." (p. 61)
Regarding Luke's use of the word akribos, "carefully" in verse 3, Bock wrote, "Some commentators see this as a description of how Luke wrote his material (i.e. modifying graphai) rather than as a description of his investigation. But the word order of the sentence makes this connection less likely. So, Luke's study is the fruit of a careful and thorough investigation that went back to Jesus' birth." (p. 62)
Who better to interview in a careful and thorough investigation that went back to Jesus' birth than Mary, his mother?
Orthodox tradition that can be traced back to the 8th century holds that Luke painted the first icon, a portrait of Mary, during or after his interview with her.
Dr. Majeski teaches the New Testament, both at the introductory level to freshmen at the University, and at an advanced graduate level at the School of Theology. She is a serious scholar, though she will be the first to say that she is biased, and will explain her biases in more excruciating detail than you want to hear. She has also presented at the SBL convention and writes a blog. She is taken seriously by N.T. Wright, who invited her to dinner with his circle of friends at the SBL convention. She has a selfie of herself with N.T. Wright to prove it!
Her field of specialty is the role of women in the NT... not feminist-gender theology, but examining the things people like Mary, Martha, Lydia, Phoebe, and Priscilla thought and did. Dr. Majeski recently adopted an infant son, and motherhood is now having a strong influence on her thought. I attended her graduate level NT class on Monday, Novenber 2, when she was covering the first chapter of Luke. She makes a convincing case that the only place Luke could have gotten his information about Mary's visit to Elizabeth, and about Jesus' visit to the Temple at the age of twelve would have been from Mary, and how the incident recorded in Luke 8:19, where Jesus denied his earthly family, would have been seared into Mary's memory and would have been an important part of her testimony.
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So...
" 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."
Are you still willing to stand on the soundness of what you wrote, Raf?
Love,
Steve
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Raf
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.
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Raf
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.
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Steve Lortz
What is your source for saying scholarly concensus is behind Ehrman"?
You made the claim that my two "assumptions" are "not true".
Prove it.
Love,
Steve
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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.
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Raf
If you're asking me to produce a list of scholars who agree with Ehrman on this, it will take me some time to compile it. You can start with Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz.
Then there's Eugene Boring, who, not surprisingly, uses Ehrman's language in referring to the author as "Luke" as a matter of convenience. He writes: "The problematic historical value of patristic data regarding authorship of New Testament documents means the burden of proof is on advocates of its reliability."
In other words, "there's no evidence to suggest it wasn't Luke" is insufficient to conclude that it WAS.
But that's just one author of "An Introduction to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology."
You can look these folks up on Amazon.
Let me know if you need more. I'm really just stalling for time while trying to post on the other thread.
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Steve Lortz
For the benefit our our correspondents, there is a small group of scholars, the prime of whose activities was in 1970s, who hold that everything that has come down to us in the New Testament consists of fake stories promulgated by third or later generations of Christians. They contend that the Q source is the only authentic account of the earliest Christianity, which is convenient, since we have NO copies of Q. These scholars try to find Q by isolating everything that agrees in Matthew and Luke that also does not appear in Mark. Needless to say, the process is highly speculative and subjective. These scholars were those involved with the Jesus Seminar, which determined by vote which words Jesus spoke.
The reason these scholars hold that everything in the New Testament is fake is because Schliermacher believed with the science of his day that there is no room in nature for the "supernatural". Therefore everything regarded as miraculous in the New Testament, including the resurrection of Jesus, (and human free will, by the by) are lies. This is the basis of liberal protestant theology, and the thinking of the scholars of the Jesus Seminar. Unfortunately for them, Neils Bohr described quantum mechanics in 1925, and since then, the Newtonian determinism at the basis of claiming the "supernatural" could not have actually happened has been demolished. There IS plenty of room in nature for human free will, and for the miraculous, and a "creation" is required by quantum mechanics. Is every story in the New Testament of the miraculous "true"? Probably not. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ is non-negotiable. As Paul said in I Corinthians 15:19&20 "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable, But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept."
A consensus of the "Q people", as other scholars affectionately call them, may well agree with Ehrman's assessment that Luke did not write Luke-Acts, but these people do not speak for the majority of scholars. If you read a wide variety of commentaries, they all pretty much agree that there is NO EVIDENCE that Luke-Acts was written by anybody other than an apostolic companion named Luke. Whether it was the Luke of Colossians 4:14 is not certain, but it begs the question, if it wasn't the Luke of Colossians 4:14, what other apostolic companion could it have been?
General scholarship is in agreement that Luke-Acts was written by a single man, a master writer and historian, whose was most probably one of Paul's companions named Luke.
If you don't believe me, look it up for yourselves!
Love,
Steve
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Raf
Please do.
And when you do, isolate scholars with a theological agenda from those without one.
The results will NOT surprise you.
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Steve Lortz
Raf, you have named three names. The Society of Biblical Literature has over 8,500 members. Are you going to poll them all? If not, then how can you say a consensus agrees with Ehrman?
If the evidence against Lukan authorship is so strong, then why is it convenient for Ehrman to call the author of Luke Luke?
Raf, you wrote, "Then there's Eugene Boring, who, not surprisingly, uses Ehrman's language in referring to the author as "Luke" as a matter of convenience. He writes: 'The problematic historical value of patristic data regarding authorship of New Testament documents means the burden of proof is on advocates of its reliability.'
In other words, "there's no evidence to suggest it wasn't Luke" is insufficient to conclude that it WAS."
How much confidence can we place in Boring's statement "'The problematic historical value of patristic data regarding authorship of New Testament documents means the burden of proof is on advocates of its reliability.'"
Why? in the case of Luke specifically? What evidence is there that the patristic data EVER presents conflicting accounts of Lukan authorship?
Why should the "burden of proof" be put on the advocates of Lukan authorship when there is NO CONTROVERSY about Lukan authorship, as there is about the authorship of some other New Testament documents?
Raf... you are a professional newsperson, and a good one. You have to write according to the standards of journalism, and your work is judged by those standards. I haven't read a lot of what you've written professionally, but I know from watching my dad at work that you have to be good or you wouldn't be doing what you are doing.
I am working on a masters in Theological Studies. I am being trained by professional scholars to write up to professional standards. I had to withdraw from the thesis program because I no longer have the physical stamina or speed to complete a thesis within the parameters set for that program. But I DO have to write four exegesis papers. I did two of them last fall, and will finish the other two next spring. My work will be judged on whether or not I have written those four papers up to professional standards. I will pass or fail on the professional, scholarly quality of my writing.
But it's not just the actual scribbling... I will be judged on the quality of my research, which means I have to set my argument into the context of the broader, on-going theological conversation. If I were to cherry pick my sources, limiting them to people who agree with me, the way you are doing with Ehrman, I would be failed, not just on the papers, but on the entire classes. And rightly so.
My New Testament exegesis paper last fall was over Luke 18:18-30. Do you think I didn't study the question of Lukan authorship? Do you think I didn't include a brief assessment of the general state of that question in my paper? Do you think I would have passed if I hadn't? I passed.
If you moved your postings over to the Questioning Faith forum because you didn't want to disrupt the integrity of this thread, then why are you continuing to argue on this thread?
Love,
Steve
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Raf
You asked me to prove it on THIS thread.
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Raf
And you did so AFTER I stated I was starting another thread to keep this one from getting derailed.
So, if you're not going to question the authorship of Luke, I'll gladly let it go here.
No, I'm not going to poll Bible scholars. Nor am I going to dismiss them just because they are not evangelical, which is what you're suggesting we do.
If you're only going to trust scholars who reached their conclusions prior to their studies, I'm not going to stop you.
"Convenience," by the way, is because we all call the gospel "Luke," which is a lot shorter than "the anonymous author later claimed to be Luke without a scrap of evidence in favor and significant evidence to the contrary."
Theology is not history.
I think it's hilarious that scholarship that supports what I've been saying is so routinely dismissed on these threads without actually being refuted.
Regardless, I think my decision to move this thread has been vindicated.
By the way, yes, I do believe a student at a Christian University who does not challenge the Lucan authorship of the Gospel of Luke will pass. I would be shocked if you didn't.
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Mark Sanguinetti
I have been a biblical student, mostly from the writings of the Apostle Paul and now Luke sounds very interesting also. It sounds like Luke was a personal student of the apostle Paul, spent time with him and was his friend and doctor. See this in Colossians 4:14, "Our dear friend Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings", NIV.
Here is information from what I consider the equivalent of a biblical encyclopedia.
LUKE
A "fellow laborer" of the apostle Paul (Philem 24) and the probable author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. By profession he was a physician (Col 4:14). During one of Paul's imprisonments, probably in Rome, Luke's faithfulness was recorded by Paul when he declared, "Only Luke is with me" (2 Tim 4:11). These three references are our only direct knowledge of Luke in the New Testament.
A bit more of Luke's life and personality can be pieced together with the aid of his writings (Luke and Acts) and some outside sources. Tradition records that he came from Antioch in Syria. This is possible, because Antioch played a significant role in the early Gentile mission which Luke described in Acts (Acts 11; 13; 14; 15; 18). Luke was a Gentile (Col 4:10-17) and the only non-Jewish author of a New Testament book. A comparison of 2 Cor 8:18 and 12:18 has led some to suppose that Luke and Titus were brothers, but this is a guess.
Luke accompanied Paul on parts of his second third, and final missionary journeys. At three places in Acts, the narrative changes to the first person ("we"). This probably indicates that Luke was personally present during those episodes. On the second journey (A.D. 49-53), Luke accompanied Paul on the short voyage from Troas to Philippi (Acts 16:10-17). On the third journey (A.D. 54-58), Luke was present on the voyage from Philippi to Jerusalem (Acts 20:5-21:18). Whether Luke had spent the intervening time in Philippi is uncertain, but his connection with Philippi has led some to favor it (rather than Antioch) as Luke's home.
Once in Palestine, Luke probably remained close by Paul during his two-year imprisonment in Caesarea. During this time, Luke probably drew together material, both oral and written, which he later used in the composition of his gospel (Luke 4). A third "we" passage describes in masterful suspense the shipwreck during Paul's voyage to Rome for his trial before Caesar. Each of the "we" passages involves Luke on a voyage, and the description of the journey from Jerusalem to Rome is full of observations and knowledge of nautical matters.
Luke apparently was a humble man, with no desire to sound his own horn. More than one-fourth of the New Testament comes from his pen, but not once does he mention himself by name. He had a greater command of the Greek language and was probably more broad-minded and urbane than any New Testament writer. He was a careful historian, both by his own admission (Luke 1:1-4), and by the judgment of later history.
Luke's gospel reveals his concern for the poor, sick, and outcast, thus offering a clue to why Paul called him "the beloved physician" (Col 4:14). He was faithful not only to Paul, but to the greater cause which he served-the publication of "good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2:10).
Also see LUKE, GOSPEL OF; ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
(from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Copyright ©1986, Thomas Nelson Publishers)
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Raf
A most excellent second gurgitation of that which has only been stated on multiple occasions, though I have to admit the absence of fresh content not already discussed is refreshing.
Anyway, so, Luke wrote Luke.
What does that have to do with it being god breathed?
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Raf
If Luke contains historical errors (and it does) and the author of Luke does not claim divine inspiration (and he doesn't), by what reckoning is the gospel considered God-breathed? And what does "God-breathed" mean?
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Mark Sanguinetti
In a brief reply to what god-breathed means. There is only one usage in the entire Greek to English New Testament. For the Greek word this is Strong's number 2315. This makes it more difficult to understand the meaning, when only used once in the entire New Testament. This one usage is in 2 Timothy 3:16. Below is the verse with some context. Using the word breathed mixed with God it looks figurative as God does not need to literally breath like you and I. A simple definition of god-breathed is "inspired by God" as read in Thayer's Greek Lexicon.
10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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Raf
A helpful reminder, but it doesn't get us to the point of asserting that the gospel of Luke, for one example, is God-breathed. Is it useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness? Sure it is. But so are Steve Lortz' posts. Are they God-breathed? How about the God's Reconciliation thread? Is THAT God-breathed?
Clearly, in context, God-breathed is a quality that differentiates the Holy Scriptures from other writings. Its usefulness for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness stems from its origin as God-breathed. But that only works one way. When something is God-breathed, it will serve those purposes. BUT it doesn't work the other way around: just because something serves those purposes doesn't mean it's God-breathed!
So the central question remains unanswered: "Luke" (whoever he was) explicitly says writing his gospel was his idea. Nothing he says offers the slightest shred of evidence that it is God-breathed (even if one were to concede that it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness). In fact, assuming Paul wrote II Timothy (spoiler alert: he didn't), you would have to conclude that the "God-breathed" verse preceded the writing of the gospel of Luke by roughly 20 years (exact dates being unavailable, Paul dies in 64, and Luke is written somewhere between 80-90.
So we "know" II Timothy is not referring to Luke (or any of the gospels) when it says all scripture is God-breathed.
Put these together:
1. The gospels are written after the verse declaring all scripture to be God-breathed. The verse is not talking about the gospels.
2. Luke, the only gospel that talks about how it came into being, does not make a claim to be God-breathed.
3. A work can be useful for doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness without being God-breathed.
How can one argue that the gospels are God-breathed? And if/when one does make the argument, what does it MEAN?
I give fundamentalists credit for attaching a testable meaning to God-breathed (without error or contradiction), but the gospels themselves fail that test (they are neither without error nor without contradiction). So THAT definition is out.
This is a matter of faith. If you believe it's God-breathed, more power to you. But I don't see how you get there from the evidence we have.
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Steve Lortz
"Since the whole Bible is God-breathed, it cannot contain any contradictions, and if it contains even ONE contradiction, it will ALL fall to pieces."
This is NOT a statement of objective fact. It is NOT a statement of self-evident truth. It is NOT a point of doctrine. It is NOT taught in the Bible itself.
"Since the whole Bible is God-breathed, it cannot contain any contradictions, and if it contains even ONE contradiction, it will ALL fall to pieces" is a confession of faith.
It is not a widespread or long-lived faith. It is peculiar to Christians and agnostics/atheists who come from a fundamentalist/evangelical background. The faith originated about 150 years ago or so, and became officially incorporated into church doctrine about 50 years later at the Fundamentalist Conferences. When Wierwille taught that the autographs (original writings) of the Bible were perfect as given, he associated himself and his followers with this particular article of fundamentalist/evangelical faith. Oddly enough, agnostics and atheists continue to hold onto this article of their faith long after they have rejected all the others.
When Paul wrote "all scripture" in 2 Timothy 3:16, he was using a "shorthand" meaning "all the law and the prophets" as Jesus spoke of in Matthew 22:37-40, "37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." The Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) consisted of the Law , the Prophets and the Writings. Paul's "all scripture" may well have been intended to include all three sections of the Tanakh.
Those were the things Paul was declaring to be "God-breathed." In his thinking, he probably didn't include any of the writings that became what we call the New Testament. Were there contradictions in the Tanakh?
OH, YES!
The Old Testament contains a long epic that extends over many of its books. The epic is known as "The Doomed History of the Deuteronomist." It explains how and why all of God's promises to Israel came to nothing. The theology of the Deuteronomist was this:
Israel's salvation was in the Exodus from Egypt and in the giving of the covenant on Mt. Sinai. Salvation was by grace and preceded the giving of the law. Keeping the law was to be the thankful response of the people to the salvation already received. If an individual broke the law, and did not make atonement, that individual was to be expelled from among the covenant people. Successes and failures are the result of faithfulness, that results in success, or disobedience, that results in failure. The disobedience of Israel as a whole resulted in the destruction of the northern kingdom and the exile of Judah to Babylon in 587 BCE. Since that time, the Jewish people have looked forward to a restoration of the Davidic kingdom, a restoration that has not yet come to pass. In the first century, the Pharisees were a group of people who sought to speed up the restoration of the kingdom by trying their best to restore obedience to the Deutronomic law.
But the book of Ecclesiastes was ALSO included in the Tanakh, and it's theology is this:
"11I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to the men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all." (9:11)
"13And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the fruit of all his labour, it is the gift of God." (3:13)
"13Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (12:13)
The theology of the whole of Ecclesiastes contradicts the whole theology of the Deuteronomist! It was consciously, deliberately included in the Tanakh!
Wierwille subtitles the book of Job "Victim to Victor," but that's not what it is. Job seeks an answer to the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" but God NEVER answers the question! Instead, the book contradicts EVERY THEODICY! Job's miserable comforters put forth every reason possible why they think God would let bad things happen to good people, yet God said they had not spoken of him the thing that was right.
Job contradicts EVERY THEOLOGY! Yet, it also was consciously, deliberately included in the Tanakh!
Was Paul aware of these things when he wrote "all scripture is God-breathed"? You bet he was! He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees! We can't say where Paul stood on the scale of Old Testament scholarship in his day, but there's one thing we can be certain of, he was a better Old Testament scholar than anybody who is alive today!
God breathed the contradictions into the Tanakh in order to foil people who try to put him into a box (systematic theology). There is a tension between KNOWING who God is and what he will do, and NOT KNOWING who God is and what he will do, and that keeps us from thinking we can control him. Systematic theology, especially of the fundamentalist/evangelical type, try to make God a prisoner of the ink words written on the paper pages. Wierwille's theology, developed to "resolve apparent contradictions in the Bible," turned God into a vending machine with no will of his own. How disgusting he and we were!
How about it, Tzaia? Do these tensions make an interesting way of looking at things?
Love,
Steve
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