Fascinating Denis, thanks. The Egyptian inspiration of Genesis’ cosmology is total. The Babylonian inverts all activity above the waters, with the fixed stars rolling in their deeps on the top of the firmament? One can see the court of heaven on the same continuum as man as in Moses and the prophets?
PS So, Genesis starts out Egyptian, but goes rapidly Babylonian?
We can use all the theological fabric softener we want. At the end of the day the Bible assumes incorrect ancient cosmogony and uses it to make pronouncements about God. Nowhere is it shown to possess supernatural knowledge of science. In many places it shows the exact opposite.
The only thing questionable is the methodology of conservative exegetes in dismissing claims Paul did not write certain epistles through mental gymnastics. The facts are simple. There are hundreds of forgeries in antiquity. It was a common practice. We have several works by “Paul” already not in the NT because they are deemed forgeries. Paul’s name is a prime candidate to forge an epistle in. Thus, every unbiased historian not grinding a theological axe knows that every single work in antiquity has to be vetted for authorship. The mere fact that a letter claims to be written by someone means very little.
There are a bunch of arguments that all suggest pseudonymous composition of the Pastorals. The weight of the arguments are cumulative, not based on any one. Conservatives usually misrepresent critical scholarship and dismiss caricatures. The truth is some don’t like the conclusion and know ahead of time it must be wrong (because the Bible would never lie about authorship!) so they fault the methodology.
Can you provide any evidence in favor of Pauline authorship aside from idle speculation? Coming up with potential solutions or harmonizations to try to salvage Pauline authorship is bringing the evidence in conformity to your conclusion which was made beforehand. Affirming Pauline authorship requires positive evidence. Merely placating doubts through “what ifs” is not scholarship. Ancient works all exist alongside a sea of forgeries and that id how academic questions of authorship must approach the issue.
It is absolutely a solid slab. The mainline commentaries on Genesis make this plain. Only wishful thinking and a desire to maintain Biblical inerrancy suggests otherwise.
Vinnie
I agree with you that science can’t prove we were created or come from nothing at this current juncture and probably never will be able to. For science errors galore here is something previous I wrote:
START: “How do we reconcile Genesis with science?”:
The short answer is we can’t reconcile Genesis with science. When read as a literal description of how the world was made, the scientific difficulties are insurmountable. The two-creation accounts in Genesis and several passages in other parts of Scripture cannot be reconciled with our current scientific understanding of the universe. Christianity has a long history of both advancing and fighting science. John Calvin famously wrote:
“We will see some who are so deranged, not only in religion but who in all things reveal their monstrous nature, that they will say that the sun does not move, and that it is the earth which shifts and turns. When we see such minds we must indeed confess that the devil possess them, and that God sets them before us as mirrors, in order to keep us in his fear. So it is with all who argue out of pure malice, and who happily make a show of their imprudence.” [Sermon on 1 Corinthians 10:19-24]
People who thought the earth moved were deemed deranged and possessed by the devil at one time but this isn’t as bad as it seems. Incorrect beliefs can be warranted and the proponents of them like Calvin can be intellectually forgiven. It is customary for pre-scientific people to embrace pre-scientific ideas and it takes time for major paradigm shifts to occur in human thinking. Conventional knowledge at the time would tell Calvin the sun moved and the earth stood still. The Bible is, after all, “unashamedly geocentric” to steal Derek Kidners phrasing. Sometimes scientific progress is at odds with what has been considered the plain understandings of Scripture for hundreds if not thousands of years. In today’s world it is no longer heliocentric vs geocentric ideology. For most that issue has fully worked itself out but now we have biological evolution needlessly battling creationism. First and foremost we must understand that the Bible is not a science textbook. It assumes the cosmogony of the time period it was written in. Scientific errors appear scattered throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Parts of the Bible refer to the four corners of the earth (Is. 11:12), think thoughts come from our kidneys (Psalm 16:7), believe there is a solid firmament in the sky the stars are set in that lets water in or keepes it out (Genesis 1:7; 7:11; 8:2, Job 37:18, Ezekial 1:22, Isaiah 40:22), proclaims much to Galileo’s chagrin, the earth is immutable and does not move (1 Chron 16:30; Ps 93:1, 96:10, 104:5; Is 45:8), that the earth is flat (Mt 4:8, Dan 4:10-11), stars are small and close enough to the earth they can fall from the sky and land on it (Rev 6:13-16, 8:10; Mt 2:10, 24:29; Dan 8:10). A host of problems are also evident if the details of Genesis 1-2 are taken as literal, factual history. A sampling is presented below and all of these texts could be multiplied several times over. We can certainly quibble over some of these potential conflicts and debate their intended meaning but overall, they make a pretty compelling case that God did not intend to leave us a scientific guide to creation nor did he feel the need to override the incorrect scientific and cosmological background knowledge of the Biblical authors. END
And this is to say nothing of the flood!
For the gospels, I recommend getting a synopsis and reading them side by side. We can see how one author intentionally changes the text granted we know Matthew and Luke copied Mark. We know they are not chronological and the setting is often artificial as it changes oddly at times and differs from Gospel to Gospel. For internal consistency errors see the resurrection accounts, infancy accounts, accounts of Judas’s death, was Jairus’s daughter dead already? Heck, even the accounts of Paul’s conversions contradict in Acts and all three come from the same author who is rather competent. We can also compare how John presents material radically different from the synoptics. Then there are anachronisms like Mark having Jesus assume women could divorce their husbands which makes little sense in its Jewish context. For historical ones, geography blunders are often pointed out, the census in Luke, the unlikelihood (utter absurdity) of Pilate releasing an insurrectionist guilty of murder and so on, the way the conflict narratives and Jesus’s disputes with leaders over the law are presented and so on.
Vinnie
Yes - but this is no more any problem for the Bible or what it teaches than, say, Jesus, making use of an “incorrect history of events” in order to tell a parable the purpose of which is to teach something else entirely. We make use of cultural stuff all the time (regardless of its correctness or wrongness) in order to help people more easily make connections. To “assume” such things for the sake of illumination and connection is not the same as our teaching or promoting the initial presumption. To try to make the teaching be about that is to entirely misunderstand and misapply the teaching.
This does not change the fact that the Bible has science errors galore which is what I originally stated. It is also not a problem for your Bible or mine. But millions of Christians today and many more throughout history would find it very troubling to view scripture as erring so egregiously on so many issues when it was inspired by God. All of Genesis 1-11 is dumped in favor of a new interpretation and historically, a lot more if we continue the trend. People have the expectation that when they read “the word of God” they are reading what happened. We are claiming this is not true and the plain sense of the words as taken today are not correct. Science difficulties are only the beginning. Once we open the door the flood waters come rushing in leading to a radical reinterpretation of scripture. Dei Verbum was absolutely a step in the right direction for the church. There is no sugar coating this despite our fondness for holding on to as much of our prior beliefs as we can and retreating up that never ending hill of harmonization, rationalization and force fitting. We all do it. No shame in admitting it on my part.
I can also foresee the conservative objection: Jesus knew what he was saying was not true but patronized his audience using incorrect statements to teach a point? So Jesus was purposefully deceptive and a liar? I’d rather take Jesus plainly at his word. I think he believed what he said was true. I have little reason to suppose Jesus didn’t think Moses substantially wrote the Pentateuch like most Jews of his day. His words give me no reason to think otherwise and suggest the opposite in fact. Too many people are in the habit of conforming Jesus to their standards, intellectually and morally. We feel we need to rescue Jesus from errors but we all know at the end of the day, it is Jesus that rescues us. For me, it is okay that God incarnate got the authorship of the Pentateuch wrong. I don’t buy this whole “its just a literary reference thing” some promote here. Most conservatives see through that the same way. The gospels clearly indicate Jesus was not omniscient. It is easier to just say as part of being fully human he had to work from within his culture, sincerely, not deceptively. If he didn’t have to fight his culture and upbringing then how could we even say he was like us in very way? At least in this scenario I don’t have to imagine Jesus being deceptive. Though it seems the author of GJohn had no issues with Jesus lying, it is more alarming to me than genuine ignorance due to the divine condescension. The true humanity of Jesus only makes the incarnation more powerful to me. I would say, go the extra step.
Vinnie
As you may know, being able to answer every objection is not logically necessary for holding to a belief in inerrancy. If you had a look at the video I shared with you by Keener, he has no hesitancy to put that out there with the example of Matthew’s genealogy. Nevertheless, I was wondering what are a few of the errors you see in the text.
With regard to Mosaic authorship, Hitchens had a chapter about this in his book god is not Great. I wrestled with this then, and don’t see an issue with having Mosaic authorship along side subsequent editors.
I’m far from an expert but was curious to see what the experts say with respect to a few of the gross errors you have found.
What is being and needs to be “dumped” is our modern obsession with wanting to turn the Bible into something it’s not and never has been. Nobody among the many EC believers here who have long worshipped God as the Creator and sustainer of all that is and ever was - none of us here have “dumped” Genesis 1-11 or any other part of the Bible. So we are living, breathing contradictions of that observation. In fact, for many of us, we are finally open to receiving the truths actually being taught after freeing ourselves from the “science only” lens that attempts to read the bible exclusively under the narrow-band modern light under which you insist on keeping it.
You mean what the Bible has always been to the Church. Maybe that’s a little too sweeping but historic Christianity, once it got rolling, largely took the statements in the Bible as factually accurate. Yes they had allegorical interpretations and could sitinguish between genres but to think they didn’t think the Bible was accurate or authoritative in what it wrote is not a sustainable posture. Look at all the great theologians of the last 2,000 years. Calvin alone thought people who thought the earth moved were possessed by the devil. Why? Because the Bible is unequivocally and unashamedly geocentric. The Biblical stories has been background knowledge for countless people throughout the world.
We now know for sure many of the statements are not accurate as such and we rationalize “after the fact” that this is how the Bible should have been interpreted all along. I share your view but I am very much interested in calling it what it is and steel manning it as opposed to the alternative.
The historic interpretation is what has been dumped. Theological truths are still gleaned. And you can see how many ECs are reticent about jettisoning a literal Adam. Its alarming which only underscores the point I am making. They also try to imagine a local flood or a small exodus–nothing of which is actually in our sacred scripture. The Bible being accurate in what is narrates dies very hard and we retreat top that never-ending harmonization hill thinking we finally figured it all out. So many can’t let go because they would expect a book written by God to be accurate not only to literary critics who find hidden, esoteric meanings behind the plain surface reading of the text but, have meaning to simple Galilean fishermen. Simple Galilean fisherman who when seeing references to historical figures in the past and their deeds narrated, would in all probability take them as accurate statements and not as myths with a kernel of historicity only to be properly interpreted by exegetes 2,000 years later. I know our ancestors were not literalists but to try to make them liberal exegetes is to err equally in the opposite direction.
Do you really think much of the Christian church didn’t accept Adam and Eve as historical people the lost 2,000 years? I find that a hard pill to swallow. That myth was embraced and Paul in Romans kind of necessitated it for ancient Christians.
Yes I like Genesis 1-3 far better after immersing myself in comparative mythology. Its meaning comes out. But I guess after 2,000 years of it being lost, we’ve finally discovered the truth about the Bible so many Christians and Jews before us didn’t know. That is super suspicious to me. I can reduce it at its simplest to: Science forced our hand. Otherwise most of us would be reading Genesis literally still. Because the literal meaning retains the theological truths just as well. This is why ECs struggle so much with YECs. They are not offered a cogent alternative to inspiration as they understand it. Instead you get ECs pretending the modern stance they have been forced into was the proper position the Church should have adopted all along.
Vinnie
Of course not. Just as coming up with logically possibly solutions in no way necessitates they are accurate or the Bible is in fact inerrant. Instead of residing in hypothetical what if land, I’d approach it from a different angle. When a popular apologist feels the need create an encyclopedia aimed at answering all the Biblical difficulties, the skeptic in us should be scratching its head.
But you see an issue with not having Mosaic authorship along side subsequent editors? How much does Moses have to write? One page? One line? Thirty-three percent? This is just holding on to the fringes of a defeated belief. We all do it. Its wishful thinking and defeated apologetics. There isn’t a shred of credible evidence Moses authored the Pentateuch and much of it comes well after him. I mean the view that he authored it seems to have taken shape extremely late (a thousand years?).
I generically listed some above:
For the gospels, I recommend getting a synopsis and reading them side by side. We can see how one author intentionally changes the text granted we know Matthew and Luke copied Mark. We know they are not chronological and the setting is often artificial as it changes oddly at times and differs from Gospel to Gospel. For internal consistency errors see the resurrection accounts, infancy accounts, accounts of Judas’s death, was Jairus’s daughter dead already? Heck, even the accounts of Paul’s conversions contradict in Acts and all three come from the same author who is rather competent. We can also compare how John presents material radically different from the synoptics. Then there are anachronisms like Mark having Jesus assume women could divorce their husbands which makes little sense in its Jewish context. For historical ones, geography blunders are often pointed out, the census in Luke, the unlikelihood (utter absurdity) of Pilate releasing an insurrectionist guilty of murder and so on, the way the conflict narratives and Jesus’s disputes with leaders over the law are presented and so on.
Point taken. That would be suspicious to me too. Maybe I’m thinking of it rather more along the lines of: that we are the first generations (these recent ones now steeped in scientific-minded culture) to think of the Bible (and truth generally) so exclusively along those terms, and so we have been more susceptible to a large blind spot there than the many centuries of interpreters from before.
The only desperate attempts I see are those who believe Moses authored his burial narrative, and those who, like certain NT scholars discount all historical reference to Jesus as an actual person, would do the same with respect to Moses and an Exodus.
As far as the other issues you raise, the conversion of Paul caught my eye. I’ll look into it. I think NT Wright has a book on Paul… Did you by chance look at the video by Keener?
There are obviously extreme views on the subject of Mosaic authorship, but I found this interesting bit from Longman:
“Right from the start it is important to note that the Pentateuch is anonymous. Nowhere in the Pentateuch is an author named, not Moses or any other person. However, that said, a number of passages in the Pentateuch mention that Moses wrote things down.”
The Story of God Bible Commentary: Genesis
Mosaic authorship is dead in the water. Dry-bone dead, Ezekiel; 37 style.
I don’t know of any NT scholars who “discount[s] all historical reference to Jesus as an actual person” aside from a few fringe Jesus mythicists that are not taken seriously in the historical Jesus community. The historical evidence for Jesus compared to Moses and the Exodus is miles apart. There is outstanding for the former and very little for the latter. Not the same question but I compare the historical evidence for the Resurrection to Noah’s ark here.
I got 15 minutes in but stopping was only due to a lack of time. I appreciate Keener, but the guy asking the questions was bad to me to the point of hurting the video. He kept asking Keener questions loaded from a bad historical apologetics perspective/camp. He was looking for confirmation for his conclusions. Keener is a very respectable scholar, however. I will eventually finish the video. I have perused and started several of Keener’s works. Need to finish some.
No need. Just go to Keener. He has some solid commentary on Acts. I put up a piece on Doublets in the Bible and Inerrancy where I quoted something Keener wrote. The following is the beginning of it and the snippet from Keener is at the end.
Occasionally there are two different versions of the same story in Scripture that often appear to conflict on some details. The Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives are a prime example along with the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his followers. So both the beginning and ending of Jesus’s earthly life are marred by apparent discrepancies. Sometimes these potential errors are more significant than others and it is true that plausible solutions exist for a large swathe of them, but some, admittedly, do not lend themselves easily to harmonization and look like genuine errors. An explicit example of one without an easy solution is the fate of Judas in Matthew (27:3-10) and Acts (1:16-19). Did Judas (Lk) or the chief priests buy the field (Mt)? Did Judas die by hanging (Mt) or by falling headlong, bursting open and having his bowels gush out (Lk)? Was the field named Akeldama “to this day” because the priests bought it with blood money (Mt) or did “everyone in Jerusalem hear about this” because Judas died there (Lk)? I’ve seen very poor apologetics along the lines of, “If you send your daughter to the store to purchase something then it would be accurate to say she bought it from one perspective and you did from another.” But if I threw money away–as did Judas-- and someone picks it up and purchases something with it, in no meaningful sense can it be said Judas purchased the field. If they had donated the money to the poor, would we feel comfortable saying that Judas gave the money to the poor? Other solutions rely on the equivocating notion that the temple priests didn’t accept it and the money remained Judas’s despite him clearly giving it back by throwing it on the floor. These poor solutions are not very convincing.
The examples above from the New Testament compare stories from one book of scripture with another or several others. I do not want to focus on these issues because curiously enough, in the Pentateuch, there are often two different versions of the same story right next to one another in a single work! These are referred to as “doublets” and while they will be highlighted below, first we will examine a “triplet” that occurs in the New Testament . Acts 9, 22 and 26 provide us with three separate recollections of Paul’s conversion. The gist of the incident is clearly delineated but there appear to be subtle differences.
| Acts 9:3-9 | Acts 22:6-11 | Acts 26:13-16 |
|---|---|---|
| Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ 5 He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’ 7 The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one . 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. | 6 ‘While I was on my way and approaching Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. 7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 8 I answered, “Who are you, Lord?” Then he said to me, “I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.” 9 Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. 10 I asked, “What am I to do, Lord?” The Lord said to me, “Get up and go to Damascus; there you will be told everything that has been assigned to you to do.” 11 Since I could not see because of the brightness of that light, those who were with me took my hand and led me to Damascus.’ | 13 when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.” 15 I asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The Lord answered, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.” |
Acts 9 says Paul’s companions heard the voice but saw no one whereas Acts 22 says they heard not the voice but saw the light. Acts 26 says they saw the light, that was allegedly brighter than the sun, and fell down but Acts 9 depicts them as standing speechless. We can also ask as Keener does, “Did the commission come on the road (26:16-18), through Ananias (9:15-17), or in Jerusalem (22:21)?” (Baker Exegetical V2). Quite a few translations harmonize one difficulty by interpreting 22:9 as “they did not understand the voice” instead of “they did not hear the voice.” This is undesirable as Fitzmyer writes, “This distinction may be valid for Greek in general, but it ‘does not accord with Lukan usage.’ See 10:46; 11:7; 14:9; 15:12; 22:7.” [AB Acts Commentary pg 426] Keener extends this: “Some scholars seek to resolve the difference by appealing to classical usage: άκονω with the genitive (as in 9:7) means to “hear a sound” whereas with the accusative (as in 22:9) it means to “hear with understanding.” Luke, however, does not observe this distinction in his writings (e.g., Luke 2:47; 6:18, 47), and it appears that the lxx, other nt writers, and Epictetus also do not.” How do we make sense of this? Keener distinguishes between ancient and modern historiography:
Ancient historians fleshing out minor details of a simpler account might flesh it out differently on different occasions. Such variation could also function as a deliberate rhetorical device; Tannehill suggests that when recounting events that he has treated before, Luke likes “to vary details and emphasis” and sometimes goes further than modern readers feel comfortable with, creating conflicts for attentive readers. The difference is less consequential than modern arguments often make it (cf. comment on Acts 22:9); it is certainly less than many differences between accounts of the same events in Josephus’s War and his Antiquities of the Jews. That Josephus composed differently even in such elite works, each potentially read by the same audience as the other, suggests that ancient audiences normally saw little problem with, and probably often expected, such rhetorical variation.
I’ve personally addressed Mosaic authorship in a lot of detail. Curiously enough, not all apologists agree with what you quoted above. Guys like Gleason Archer think otherwise. For modern Christians it is irrelevant that the Pentateuch makes no self claims about Mosaic authorship. They accept the tradition because Jesus did. its Christological and for many Christians, no amount of evidence could ever, in their mind, overturn anything the incarnate Son of God said or believed. That is why I put that issue off until a second article. I do have one up on Jesus and the flood though. The one of Jesus and Mosaic authorship will be very similar.
As I read the passage in John 5, I don’t see how it’s unambiguous what Jesus is saying of Mosaic authorship. Note the passage has a kind of esoteric ring about it that John is known for. Moses wrote about Jesus is almost like saying Moses wrote about God.
But he more than likely wrote things as the text describes.
I was thinking of Early Doherty, and while his views are on the fringe, aka desperate attempt, I was once persuaded by his book and thought that I could still know God apart from Jesus through philosophy… aghh.
Over the years since then, reading various amounts of skeptical scholarship and countering it with the Gleason Archer types, I finally began to settle my faith on the knowledge of my sin and the need I have for a righteousness that was not my own, aka the Gospel.
Acts 2:36 became important for me in the way the argument rests on the testimony of Scripture, eyewitness testimony, and the testimony of the Spirit. “Therefore know for certain.” I got to share this view with Keener not too long ago, and while he acknowledged my comment, he didn’t respond to that in particular. Which has kind of left me wondering as he is such an authority on Acts.
Be careful with that! 
Genesis 7 may be one of those passages. It’s no doubt an odd rendering. I thought it was a genuine contradiction until I read a commentary that explained its chiastic structure.
That is an interesting conflict. Never noticed it before. Interesting also that the Greek allows for both readings. And while Luke’s use may count against it, the latter account may be accurate of Paul’s own words. And it could be a deliberate literary device as Keener notes.
So far I’ve briefly skimmed the section on Acts 2:36 in his commentary, listened to his lectures on Revelation (my introduction to him), read the book he wrote with his wife Impossible Love, and listened to the audiobook of Miracles Today.
Edit: Oh and also read a hundred or so pages of The Historical Jesus of the Gospels and Spirit Hermeneutics. Two books I should make the time to finish.
Nothing is unambiguous in a 2,000 year old religious propaganda text especially when we don’t want it to be. I just look at all these references and I see no distinction between David, Adam, Noah, Moses etc when mentioned. They are all references as people of the past. When Jesus says Moses wrote about him I take him at his word. He said what he said and this was the common belief at the time even if it may have been nuanced by some.
If he existed and was literate yes. But the truth is we have no historical information about Moses for many hundreds of years after he is reputed to have lived. Little of the concrete information in those accounts is trustworthy on historical grounds. 2500 year old religious propaganda about events that allegedly occurred 800 years before them don’t make good history. So I would say “But he more than likely wrote things as the text describes.” is false. Not because its more likely he did not write things as the text described but simply because we have no way of being sure. He may have written things, he may not. We just believe the account or we don’t. We have to bring that to the table.
I have the Jesus Puzzle and spent time reading the works of Acharya S, Freke and Gandy, etc, but they do not represent mainline, critical New Testament scholarship anymore than YECs with phds represent mainline geology. You would read Richard Carrier’s zillion page book today if you want to dialogue with Jesus mythicism. I don’t think it has any merit whatsoever and neither do the vast majority of critical scholars today. Most of them don’t even dialogue with it granted how obscure and fringe it is in scholarly circles. Jesus Seminary type books are on the liberal spectrum of mainline NT studies. Jesus mythicism is in another universe.
Christians certainly read themselves and Jesus into the OT. He probably did the same but the connections are nowhere near as explicit as is often claimed. So many Christians tout “messianic prophecy” as definitive proof, but when you look them up, they don’t hold up to modern standards. Or the next verse of the “prophecy” has Jesus sinning. What I learned is the way the Biblical authors used the OT was nothing like modern day fact-literal westerners–nothing like the way I am trained to approach and interpret sources. So I have to take a step back and treat scripture the way they did. Which means I have to stop viewing every line as if it contains immutable truths and universal proclamations from heaven. I am wrestling with the issue of hermeneutics and doctrine now.
You will find there are many experts on Acts that come to different conclusions. Pervo’s commentary is great even if his personal life was deplorable (child porn). Fitzmyer’s Anchor Bible commentary was also really good. Then there are a bunch on Luke as well (Sacra Pagina by Luke Timothy Johnson, NIGTC by I Howard Marshall etc). I download a host of full length individual book commentaries and consult with them all when studying an issue. Then if I am really deep-diving I go to the journal articles I see referenced in the dense footnotes. Keener is a very solid scholar but he is also an evangelical Christian. For me that label alone is often a detriment to the quality of scholarship that can be produced. There are certainly scholars who err in the opposite direction as well. If we want intellectual balance we need to read a range of commentaries. We have to step outside our echo-chambers. That is why I read Keener.
For me, there is definitely a bunch of history in Acts but the final form is a smoothed over history of the church, presumably with a lot of created speeches. It looks back on (writing near the turn of the century) and presents the a apostolic church as a bit more unified than we see 40-50 years earlierin the letters of Paul where more controversy abounds.
Yes, there are two flood accounts. Two creation accounts. Two genealogical listings in between them as well IIRC. Friedmann [ The Bible with Sources Revealed ] listed the following 31 examples of doublets in the Pentateuch alone:
[1] Creation. Gen 1:1-2:3 (P) and Gen 2:4b-25 (J).
[2] Genealogy from Adam. Gen 4:17-26 (J) and 5:1-28,30-32 (Book of Records).
[3] The Flood. Gen 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 7,10,12,16b-20,22-23; 8:2b-3a,6,8-12,13b,20-22 (J) and 6:9-22; 7:8-9,11,13-16a,21,24; 8:1-2a, 3b-5,7,13a, 14-19; 9:1-17 (P).
[4] Genealogy from Shem. Gen 10:21-31 (J and P) and 11:10-2 (Book of Records).
[5] Abraham’s migration. Gen 12:1-43 (J) and 12:4b-5 (P).
[6] Wife/sister. Gen 12:10-20 (J) and 20:1-18 (E) and 26:6-14 (J). (Triplet)
[7] Abraham and Lot separate. Gen 13:5, 7-11a, 12b-14 (J) and 13:6, 11b-12a (P).
[8] The Abrahamic covenant. Gen 15 (J, E, and R) and 17 (P).
[9] Hagar and Ishmael. Gen 16:1-2,4-14 (J) and 16:3,15-16 (P) and 21:8-19 (E). (Triplet)
[10] Prophecy of Isaac’s birth. Gen 17:16-19 (P) and 18:10-14 (J).
[11] Naming of Beer-sheba. Gen 21:22-31 (E) and 26:15-33 (J).
[12] Jacob, Esau, and the departure to the east. Gen 26:34-35; 27:46; 28:1-9 (P) and 27:1-45; 28:10 (J).
[13] Jacob at Beth-El. Gen 28:10,11a,13-16,19 (J) and 28:11b-12, 1 7-18, 20-22 (E) and 35:9-15 (P). (Triplet)
[14] Jacob’s twelve sons. Gen 29:32-35; 30:1-24; 35:16-20 (JE) and Gen 35:23-26 (P).
[15] Jacob’s name changed to Israel. Gen 32:25-33 (E) and 35:9-10 (P).
[16] Joseph sold into Egypt. Gen 37:2b,3b,5-11,19-20,23,25b-27, 28b, 31-35; 39:1 (J) and 37:3a, 4, 12-18, 21-22, 24, 25a, 28a,29-30 (E).
[17] YHWH commissions Moses. Exod 3:2-4a,5,7-8,19-22; 4:19-20a (J) and 3:1,4b,6,9-18; 4:1-18, 20b-21a, 22-23 (E) and 6:2-12 (P). (Triplet)
[18] Moses, Pharaoh, and the plagues. Exod 5:3-6:1; 7:14-18, 20b-21, 23-29; 8:3b-11a, 16-28; 9:1-7,13-34; 10:1-19 , 21-26, 28-29; 11:18 (E) and 7:6-13,19-20a,22; 8:1-33,12-15; 9:8-12 (P).
[19] The Passover. Exod 12:1-20,28,40-50 (P) and 12:21-27,29-36, 37b-39 (E).
[20] The Red Sea. Exod 13:21-22; 14:53,6,9a,10b,13-14,19b,20b, 21b,24,27b,30-31 (J) and 14:1-4,8,9b, 10a, 10c, 15-18,21a,21c, 22-23,26-27a, 28-29 (P).
[21] Manna and quail in the wilderness. Exod 16:2-3,6-35a (P) and Num 11:4-34 (E).
[22] Water from a rock at Meribah. Exod 17:2-7 (E) and Num 20:2-13 (P).
[23] Theophany at Sinai/Horeb. Exod 19:1; 24:15b-18a (P) and 19:2b-9,16b-17,19; 20:18-21 (E) and 19:10-16a, 18,20-25 (J) (Triplet)
[24] The Ten Commandments. Exod 20:1-17 (R) and 34:10-28 (J) and Deut 5:6-18 (D). (Triplet)
[25] Kid in mother’s milk. Exod 23:19 (Covenant Code) and 34:26 (J) and Deut 14:21 (D). (Triplet)
[26] Forbidden animals. Leviticus 11 (P) and Deuteronomy 14 (D).
[27] Centralization of sacrifice. Leviticus 17 and Deuteronomy 12.
[28] Holidays. Leviticus 23 (P) and Numbers 28-29 (R) and Deut 16:1-17 (P). (Triplet)
[29] The spies. Num 13:1-16,21,25-26,32; 14:13,2-3,5-10,26-29 (P) and 13:17-20,22-24,27-31,33; 14:1b, 4,11-25,39-45 (J).
[30] Heresy at Peor. Num 25:1-5 (J) and 25:6-19 (P).
[31] Appointment of Joshua. Num 27:12-23 (P) and Deut 31:14-15,23 (E).
Of course I think its important to note as I concluded my Mosaic Authorship thoughts:
Te presence of conflicting details in the text is only a problem for inerrancy advocates. Bill Arnold writes:
While it may seem odd to us at first that an editor retained such discrepancies, we may assume that the sources or traditions underlying the whole had already attained authoritative status, and the editor valued the traditions enough to retain the inconsistencies, which were not problematic in ancient literature." [Genesis Baker Exegetical Commentary, 96-97]
The Jewish Study Bible notes that the intertwining of these distinct sources “could not have happened, however, if the existence of variation was seen as a serious defect or if rigid consistency was deemed essential to effective storytelling.”
Nice. My Revelation knowledge is extremely weak. Definitely an area I need to sit down and look at one day. From Keener I have the following works:
Christobiography, Memory, History and Reliability of the Gospels
4 Vol Commentary on Acts (Exegetical)
1 Vol Commentary on Acts (New Cambridge)
2 Vol Commentary on John
Galatians Commentary (New Cambridge)
Commentary on Matthew
1-2 Corinthians Commentary (New Cambridge)
Also a couple of Journal Articles from Brill 2011 (JSHJ) which featured a whole segment on evangelicals and the historical Jesus. I think the essential question was something along the lines of, can critical New Testament scholars meaningfully dialogue with evangelical scholars. A bunch of scholars on all sides of the issue weighed in.
Vinnie
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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