The whole point is, if you want to disseminate you have to do it both in a way that you understand and in a way that your audience will understand. Even if the authors understood the science the people reading or hearing would not. Therefore the Scriptures are written for the time period they were in and all the knowledge or lack of, that would contain. As preachers, we modernise parables to make them easier to understand. That is not changing Scripture. Nor is it showing any sort of disrespect to scripture. Nor is it claiming any error in scripture. So, just because science might put a different slant on certain explanations or details, with knowledge unknown at the time, it is not destroying any truths that scripture might contain.
Not really. . The vast majority of all scholarship tells us Matthew copied Mark, a text written in Greek. Matthew was written in Greek and copied extensive portions of an already written Greek gospel. The early church considered Matthew the first Gospel. They got it wrong and scholarship widely recognizes this today.
It is very irrational. Moreland is wrong. There are hundreds if not thousands of obvious apparent discrepancies in the Bible spread across several distinct fields. Let this sink in: It is far more rational to be a young earth creationist than it is to believe in inerrancy. Most people don’t understand science well enough to sift through flood geology or attacks on radiometric dating. What people do understand is the law of non-contradiction. People understand that either Judas bought the field or he did not. Jesus said take a staff or take no staff.
That some guy had to make an encyclopedia resolving apparent Bible contradictions underscores how irrational this belief is. That the goal posts have to be moved so many times to accommodate inerrancy does the same. There isn’t even good reason initially to believe the Bible is inerrant. Christian’s are just kind of born into it and think that if they can come up with any logical possible solution to hundreds of very obvious things they would call errors in any other Holy Book, they are justified in maintaining their belief. This is special pleading that borders on cult-like thinking. Imagine trying to convict anyone of any crime ever if all a defense attorney had to do was imagine a logically possible way the defendant didn’t commit the crime. Children could be lawyers.
Even more interesting might be to ask why should we assume either one of them actually killed Goliath? I have Joel Baden’s book on David but haven’t had time to read it yet.
Surely that is self-evident. The David & Goliath scenario is all about brain v brawn and the ability of God to protect the underdog. By human expectations, David should lose. He doesn’t. But instead of claiming some sort of human supremacy scripture assigns it to God. That is the whole function of scripture. It is not the details but the message that really matters.
I agree with that statement, but it does not contradict the fact that many believe Matthew was written first in Aramaic and later translated into Greek.
You saw an error in my post that did not exist.
Even if Matthew were first written in Aramaic, Matthew could still have used Mark as a source document — because I did not specifically say Matthew was written before Mark (or the theoretical Q or common source). I only said many believe that Matthew’s first writing was in Aramaic.
Sometimes people are very quick to see an error where none exists. When this occurs, they make statements like this:
I have only found 9 or so real errors. I suspect that there are a few more here and there. But hundreds or thousands? That happens when people misunderstand or misinterpret the text or apply a modern, Western need for exactness when hyperbole or other techniques are in use.
I have Bauckham’s book and have skimmed parts. I have a folder of scholarly journal articles that discuss its merits (one of the articles is from RB himself).
I have read them hastily. I also just printed a 2022 article by Tripp (Journal for the Study of the New Testament 2022) which evaluates Bauckham’s model and finds it wanting.
He may very well get Papias correct on some points but the way critical scholars have received his overall work in general means I need to see someone cross-examine this specific section before buying what he is selling here. Bauckham often demonstrates possibilities but possibilities are not actualities.
You cannot imagine Matthew writing in Aramaic and using a Greek source?
I have no problem imagining a bilingual person using a source in a different language or another person who is bilingual reading and translating Mark or Q for Matthew as Matthew writes in Aramaic.
And Matthew did not directly copy Mark. If I recall correctly, Matthew used many fewer words in the parallel sections. Despite the gospel of Matthew being longer, I recall its common sections with Mark were more compact.
Oh, I have no problem imagining that. What I have trouble with is him doing that while preserving the Greek wording. If you translate a text into a completely different language and then translate it back again, you don’t get the sometimes identical phrasing that occurs between Mark and Matthew.
Have you looked at the passages in parallel? The Greek wording is not preserved. I may recall the statistic inaccurately, but I think Matthew has about 40% fewer words in the parallel passages.
An example:
Mark 1
As soon as they[a] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
Matthew 8
When Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever; 15 he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began to serve him.
What’s interesting is that the author(s) of I Chronicles didn’t agree, since they saw fit to change who Elhanan killed. I Samuel:
18 After this a battle took place with the Philistines at Gob; then Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants. 19 Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 20 There was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great size who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number; he, too, was descended from the giants.[e] 21 When he taunted Israel, Jonathan son of David’s brother Shimei killed him. 22 These four were descended from the giants[f] in Gath; they fell by the hands of David and his servants.
I Chronicles:
4 After this, war broke out with the Philistines at Gezer; then Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai, who was one of the descendants of the giants, and the Philistines were subdued. 5 Again there was war with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam. 6 Again there was war at Gath, where there was a man of great size who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number; he also was descended from the giants.[d] 7 When he taunted Israel, Jonathan son of Shimea, David’s brother, killed him. 8 These were descended from the giants[e] in Gath; they fell by the hand of David and his servants.
Of course it’s futile. For someone for whom inerrancy is axiomatic, any two statements can be made consistent with enough effort. It’s logically possible that in the Chronicles passages quoted above, the authors largely copied the stories from I Samuel but in the case of Goliath, substituted a different story about a different Elhanan killing the brother of a different Goliath, and then resumed copying from the earlier text. It’s logically possible but not plausible.
And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 A windstorm suddenly arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a dead calm. 27 They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
Mark 4
35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And waking up, he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Be silent! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
In Matthew, Jesus was asleep in the boat. In Mark, Jesus was on the boat in the stern asleep on the cushion.
Matthew is much more compact. The Greek wording was not preserved.
The most futile point (disadvantage) in the clashes about the apparent contradictions is that it takes the attention away from the key issues.
To be honest, who cares whether the person killed was called Goliath or the brother of Goliath? The story tells that a brave man called Elhanan killed a huge and dangerous enemy soldier and that was something the writer wanted to acknowledge and record. Why was it acknowledged is a more interesting question but for us, the key question is how does it affect our life? Does it tell something meaningful about the will of God in our life or about the relationship between God and us humans? Or does it reveal something about the relationship between the biblical scriptures and science?
I understand that throwing apparent contradictions is an easy way to tease those who think that there are no internal contradictions in the collection of scriptures called the Bible. Maybe it will even lead to a minor change in the mind of someone. Despite such a possibility, I suspect that the debates are mostly waste of time.
For me it has been an invaluable exercise. By looking honestly at difficult passages, I have come to a place where it is absolutely clear that reasonable people can disagree about the complete authority of the Bible.
When a person comes to faith in Jesus, which in no way depends on a perfect text, it depends on the promise of the Comforter, it’s a very curious question what a believer does with the Bible. At this point in history, I’m munching on the popcorn and eager to see how it unfolds.
There are some oddballs, Craig Keener is certainly one, I mean does anyone know how many times he read the Bible the first year after his conversion? And he is sincere about difficult passages. While I don’t know how he would take his commitment to the Bible being called axiomatic, he does call it a faith commitment.
There are very few people who are extremely competent in ancient Greek and Aramaic but it seems to be the dominant view that Matthew is not translational Greek. Maurice Casey does attempt to explain some things in Mark on the basis of Aramaic snafus.
Matthew streamlines Mark’s account at time because Mark tends to have a lot of unnecessary details. This is one of the evidences commonly cited that Matthew used Mark and not vice versa. Why cut out substance and add fluff? Instead, Matthew cuts out fluff and adds more stories of substance.
Matthew tends to retain significant order and like 90% of the verses in Mark. That does not mean he copies them verbatim. The wording, order and content is similar enough that the vast majority of all experts in the field believe it require literary dependence of some form. That Matthew streamlines the Greek text and corrects the inferior Greek of Mark indicates nothing more than that he streamlines the text Greek text of Mark and corrected it. Matthew is a Greek gospel, it shows little evidence of being a translation from Aramaic and shows all the evidence in the world of being copied from an earlier Greek publication.
An early layer of Q, the sayings source Matthew used in addition to Mark, may have been written in Aramaic and consisted of missionary discourse material. I can’t see why an early layer of missionary discourse material by Jesus’s closest followers wouldn’t be written in their language. I am certainly not going to give my students an article written in Chinese on Archimedes’ principle. That may be where the church tradition gets its incorrect information from. Its possible a historical Matthew wrote the first layer of Q in Aramaic. Eventually it is translated into Greek, expands and is combined with Mark. Even the latest redaction of Q is said to be based in Greek. The name Matthew may have just stuck with the document all along, much like the name Isaiah sticks with Isaiah despite being written by three authors over a couple hundred years. That or Papias is referring to another gospel entirely the later church conflated it with our Matthew based on an internal change Matthew makes about Matthew.
What is self-evident? The story is fictional folk-lore that may or may not be based significantly on any underlying historical reality? Two different authors being attributed with defeating the same giant certainly leads me in that direction along with the nature of the story itself. I can certainly agree the point of Biblical narrative is narrative. It is story, story meant to move us into action. Aside from Jesus being God incarnate I don’t find many details in the Bible to ultimately matter to my Christian faith and since most of the stories are ultimately impossible to falsify or authenticate that is a good thing. It would be nice in terms of salvation history if the call of Abraham and the Exodus actually happened (the Biblical version is impossible)…
