Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Biblical Contradictions Message-ID: Date: 14 Jun 91 03:24:34 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 54 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article markn@ecs.comm.mot.com (DX560 Mark Nowak) writes: > Thank you all for your submissions to my list of Biblical Contradictions. > I know it is far from complete, but I don't have the time to devote any > more energy to this project. My original intention in compiling this list > was to point out to a fundamentalist friend of mine that he was simply wrong > in taking the Bible completely literally. At the time of my posting I did > not realize that there were books that already covered this topic. They are > listed at the end of this compilation. So without further ado, here's what > fell into my mailbox: > MN > > PS I tried to send copies to all who requested them. Some mail did > bounce back. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > The most famous contradiction is the > "Conflicting Genealogies of Jesus" found in Matthew and Luke. > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [etc,etc,etc] Unfortunately you listed all the submissions to your list of biblical contradictions without checking to see what anyone else said about them. Assuming your fundamentalist friend has a reasonable amount of instruction behind him-or-her, most of your list won't be much of a challenge. The "most famous contradiction" listed above, for instance, was brought up in the church services I went to as a kid. I could have answered that when I was ten. It was not brought up as some kind of contradiction that we should hide from, but a very important piece of information. Without those two geneologies, Jesus would have been breaking one or the other of some prophecies made in the law & the prophets. I forget the details of the prophecies in question, but the key to the geneology question is that the geneology in Matthew is the geneology of Joseph (the husband of Mary). The geneology in Luke is the geneology of Mary herself, which is the geneology of Jesus because Jesus is not the son of Joseph. The geneology in Matthew is important because it is the legal geneology of Jesus (it's how he has a right to be king). The one in Luke is important because it's the biological geneology of Jesus. My above comments are all from a fundamentalist position, of course. Other groups may treat these passages differently, obviously. However, if the objective of your list was to have something to show a fundamentalist friend, you should realize that many of the entries on that list are not going to sway their beliefs at all. I'd reply to other points on that list, but the list is so long that a reply to all points that I know a reply to would be much too long for me to type. As you note, a number of books have been written on the topic of contradictions. Many of those are written by people explaining the fundamentalist positions on apparent contradictions described by other groups. - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu