Christians have a habit of trying to harmonize the discrepancies found in the Bible. Yet this practice contributes to stripping the Bible of what makes it interesting, and what can make it speak powerfully.
Harmonizing involves eliminating differences, usually by pretending they aren't there or by forcing incongruous pieces into a clumsy agreement. It's like trying to explain to children why it's no big deal that the poem "The Night before Christmas" doesn't mention Rudolph, whom a certain song has led them to expect when the reindeer are named. At first they'll let you contort the stories, but soon they figure out you're playing tricks.
We do this all the time with the Bible, especially by combining distinctive elements from different Gospels into a composite narrative. Sometimes we have to do it, to keep track of all the pieces available to us for envisioning the big picture of Jesus' life. Sometimes liturgical routines ingrain their harmonizing tendencies in us so deeply as to make us forget we have other options. But then, what's a Christmas pageant without both shepherds (from Luke) and magi (courtesy of Matthew) at the manger?
And what's a depiction of the crucifixion without Jesus' fending off death until he can utter both "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (as in Mark and Matthew) and "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (a la Luke)? Hmm ... Then again, this example alone makes a great argument against harmonizing, inflicting as it does upon Jesus quite a drastic mood swing in his final breaths.
The most unhelpful harmonizing comes from people who, for one reason or another, need the Bible to be perfect, utterly consistent, or without error as a historical chronicle. Such hyper-harmonizers will abandon common sense, if necessary, to create such a Bible. Take, for example, far-fetched theories that insist John's Gospel corresponds with the other three in the timing of Jesus' death in relation to Passover. Sorry, but John puts the crucifixion on Passover Eve, while the others say it happened on the feast day itself.
The better option for Bible readers is this: let the incongruities stand and understand the Gospels as setting the table for a multi-perspectival conversation about Jesus and the significance of his life story. Let each Gospel speak in its own voice, allowing each to offer a sketch of Jesus in its own colors, with its own emphases.
In a recent post Timothy Beal wrote, "The Bible canonizes contradiction." He's right. But we can also say, as his post implies, that the Bible canonizes a conversation among differing voices. Sometimes the perspectives are complementary; sometimes they clash. The Bible does not promise all its accounts will line up in a univocal consistency.
We approach the four Gospels, then, as we should enter any other lively conversation: willing to let each participant make a case in his or her own words. (Notice at least one biblical author seems to have demanded this courtesy from readers. Whoever wrote the Gospel according to Luke acknowledged the existence of other books about Jesus and intimated that he [she?] could do better than those predecessors, including in all probability the Gospel according to Mark [see Luke 1:1-4].)
Such an approach means we pay attention to each Gospel's themes. We need not always rush to another Gospel to resolve the ambiguity we might encounter in one.
I allow Matthew to impress upon me the fragility of faith, expressed even within an acid environment of us-versus-you sectarian struggles.
I wonder how anybody could ever muster the will to really follow a Jesus who scares the wits out of most folks in Mark yet remains true to his words.
I feel attracted to the Jesus in Luke, who is bent on upending social rules and arrangements, yet I anxiously wonder -- if I read honestly -- what this could mean for people like me who assume so many privileges of a relatively comfortable life.
I wade into John's deep symbolism, with its simultaneously comforting and strident assurances, and I marvel at a Jesus whose ability to keep everything under his control nearly defies his flesh-and-blood existence.
What's interesting about reading each Gospel on its own terms? Jesus can become richer, more multifaceted to us than a set of doctrines. This way of reading insists that we meet him in the particularity -- and perhaps in the limitation -- that is part of human perspective, comprehension, and testimony. Like anyone else, he comes across as most real and unrestrained when we consider him situated within a narrative, as opposed to a set of descriptive claims or abstract ideas.
How can the Bible speak powerfully in this way? Reading each Gospel on its own terms offers our engagements with them a modicum of protection against ourselves. It might keep us from insisting that our understanding of Jesus, his message, and his accomplishments have to fit squarely into a prearranged understanding. We might discover something new, or fresh.
Don't misunderstand me as saying we can't bring any theological preconceptions with us when we open the Bible. Nor am I suggesting there's no place for drawing theological or historical conclusions in response to what the Gospels -- in concert -- present to us. Of course this is important work.
My point is that we should not come to those conclusions by treating the incongruities we encounter across the Gospels as problems to be solved or idiosyncrasies to be downplayed. Rather, we respect the individual contributions that each biblical book makes to the conversation, even if other data or ideas might finally minimize those contributions or hold sway over them when we form our conclusions.
The fact that we get to those conclusions by attending carefully to conversations we overhear in the Bible's pages should also impress upon us the importance of conducting our reflections on Jesus in dialogue with others. These dialogues should take place between ourselves and the Bible's authors, as well as between ourselves and other readers.
We know that conversations aren't always harmonious, but they embody the overall testimony we find in the Bible better than any homogenized reconstruction can.
Matt J. Rossano: Why Was Jesus Crucified?
Synoptic Gospels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The overall story is consistent. The overall message is consistent. Love thy neighbor, live a life of compassion, strive to be a better person, etc. That's the part I care about.
I don't care if Jesus was crucified on Passover Eve or Passover day. I don't care if he carried the cross 8 feet or 8 miles. I don't care if Peter denied him 3 times or 6 times.
I care about the message. I care about trying to live my own life to meet that standard.
Here is an account of early Christian persecution, as compiled from numerous sources outside the Bible, the most-famous of which is Foxes’ Christian Martyrs of the World:
Around 34 A.D., one year after the crucifixion of Jesus, Stephen was thrown out of Jerusalem and stoned to death. Approximately 2,000 Christians suffered martyrdom in Jerusalem during this period. About 10 years later, James, the son of Zebedee and the elder brother of John, was killed when Herod Agrippa arrived as governor of Judea. Agrippa detested the Christian sect of Jews, and many early disciples were martyred under his rule, including Timon and Parmenas. Around 54 A.D., Philip, a disciple from Bethsaida, in Galilee, suffered martyrdom at Heliopolis, in Phrygia.
He was scourged, thrown into prison, and afterwards crucified. About six years later, Matthew, the tax-collector from Nazareth who wrote his gospel in Hebrew, was preaching in Ethiopia when he suffered martyrdom by the sword. James, the brother of Jesus, administered the early church in Jerusalem and was the author of an Epistle by his name. At age 94, he was beat and stoned, and finally had his brains bashed out with a fuller's club. Matthias was the apostle who filled the vacant place of Judas.
It appears Peter was condemned to death and crucified at Rome. Jerome holds that Peter was crucified upside down, at his own request, because he said he was unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord. Paul suffered in the first persecution under Nero. Paul’s faith was so dramatic in the face of martyrdom, that the authorities removed him to a private place for execution by the sword.
This is where you lost me.
"what makes it interesting," well that is kind of a subjective thing. I am pretty sure what I find interesting about the bible is completely different than what you find interesting.
and the second part, "what can make it speak powerfully" you as a professor know that is a anthropomorphism. bibles can't speak, humans do. So you will have to define what that means.
I think it would be helpful if these articles were approached like a thesis or dissertation defense, because subjective lines like, "what can make it speak powerfully," do not really have a lot of value since it is so subjective.
You might discover something new or fresh? Well, many Christians haven't even read the Bible, so I suppose you could say they would find things new and fresh. They'll find the BS they've been believing without nary a challenge for years or decades of their lives. Beyond that, the only new or fresh things stem from translation errors that are a result of time passing, differing canonical perspectives, scientific understanding improving, historical review, and overall crappy record keeping about 2000 years ago. In short, your new discoveries have the stamp of mankind on them, not a god.
This different perspectives trope stems from the claim that the four gospels are four different eye witness accounts of Christ. People need to read the distillations of what we know of the origins of the books of the Bible. The gospels aren't at all evidence of Christ's life; they are differing and very flawed accounts of someone who may have been real, but nonetheless no evidence supports the claims of his divinity, or anything else for that matter.
Faved BTW. :-)
It is an historical fact that in the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 the original manuscripts of the New Testament underwent numerous alterations and adulterations. Certain scholars, called 'Correctors,' were appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities and commissioned to 'correct' Scripture in the interests of orthodoxy. Further alterations and spurious interpolations were made in the sixth century AD to counter the surge in popularity of the Christian Gnostic movement. Consequently many of the Church's teachings are very different and, even in some cases, exactly opposite to that which Jesus originally taught.
Regarding the Epistles, no less an authority than the Roman Catholic Church's own official recorded history states that the Epistles were, quote, "greatly interpolated".
However, regardless of any later interpolation, there is a growing body of opinion which maintains that Paul was guilty of leading a schism against true Christianity. Certainly, many of the teachings of Paul (or at least the writings attributed to him) - who had never even met Jesus - were directly contrary to that which Jesus had originally taught. Paul's writings spoke in favor of meat-eating, the oppression of women, even slavery, etc. all things that were anathema to Jesus.
And that, because man has followed these teachings for the past few thousand years, how might our history books read now, if the truth was known(not hidden) back then ?
Because of a few, man has blindly lived in sin, all this time, believing he was living in accordance with God...
It's all been bastardized....
The Essenes were an extraordinary sect and a fitting community for the Messiah to have been born into. Pliny said of the Essenes that they were "a race by themselves, more remarkable than any other in all the world." Philo described them as living each day in "constant and unalterable holiness". Whereas the Roman historian Josephus described the Essenes as having "a reputation for cultivating a particularly saintly life"; adding "rightly do they deserve to be called an example for the life of other people".
Anyone who has studied the subject will know that Essene teachings differ markedly from those of their Catholic counterparts, which explains why the Catholic church went to such extraordinary lengths to obliterate every bit of documentary evidence linking Jesus to the Essenes.
Nazareth wasn't around in Biblical times, but was a later Roman encampment.
Rev. Ousely was a great scholar and a deeply spiritual man. He observed a purely vegetarian diet. He neither smoked nor drank and spent several hours each day in prayer and meditation. For daring to reveal the Truth, he was severely persecuted and forced to leave the Church of England in which he was an ordained priest.
The Gospel of the Holy Twelve contains the pure, original and unadulterated words of Christ. The following is a favorite verse, as it captures so beautifully the true spirit and nature of Jesus.
`And the birds gathered around him and welcomed him with their song and other living creatures came unto his feet and he fed them and they ate out of his hands'
The Essenes believed in the sacredness and unity of all life and were strict vegetarians. It can be no surprise that the original teachings of Jesus should be so full of love and compassion for all God's creation. Here are a few of the most interesting verses:
Why would you ask?
I am Taoist, No Gods, but I like to study religons. And the bible and the Lost Books of the Bible, where rejected during the formulation of the Bible by various edicts and councils of the early Church. Dissension, personal jealousy, intolerance, persecution and bigotry among the churchmen contributed to the evolution of the Bible, as we know it today.
As an effect of the in-fighting among the churchmen, writings of a pure purpose and sincerity have been omitted from the Bible text. Often it is expressed, by sincere seekers of the truth, a desire to know more.
What the fallow today, is not the truth.... Much has been left out...
Carl Sagan pointed out how, in Hindu cosmology, the universe undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths, and its timescales are in the same ballpark as those of modern cosmology. Here is a quote from Cosmos:
"There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the cosmic dream.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps greater.
It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."
Stephen Hawking spoke of "God" in a metaphoricÂÂal sense, such as in A Brief History of Time: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessarÂÂy to explain the origin of the universe. His 2010 book The Grand Design and interviews with the Telegraph and the Channel 4 documentarÂÂy Genius of Britain, clarify that he does "not believe in a personal God".
`Animals, verily these are your fellow creatures of the great Household of God, yea they are our brethren and sisters, having the same breath of life in the Eternal. And whosoever careth for one of the least of these, and giveth it to eat and drink in its need, the same doeth it unto me'.
`For of the fruits of the trees and the seeds of the herbs alone do I partake'.
........Clement of Alexandria, chief disciple of the apostle Peter [whom Clement also records as being vegetarian, or more precisely vegan], wrote: 'The Apostle Matthew partook of seeds and nuts and vegetables, abstaining from flesh'.
Literally oceans of innocent blood have been shed because these teachings were suppressed. I estimate that in excess of half a billion in the animal kingdom are butchered to satisfy the Christmas Day bloodlust of the world's "Christians." These and other teachings the Church suppressed can be seen in the Gospel of the Nazarenes, obtainable from your local bookshop, or by mail order from:
http://www.essene.com/Essene%20Teachings/True%20Christianity.html
"There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the cosmic dream.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps greater.
It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."
To turn the argument about the contradictions in the Bible into a simple difference of perspectives is disingenuous.
"personalized resolutions"
that about sums it up... it is what you want it to be.