Greetings and Facilitations !! (You are far too gracious.)
Well not to throw a spanner into the works, but...
I know of a third position where one would claim that the New Testament texts have errors in facts and discrepancies in presentation, but is inerrant in doctrine and spiritual teaching.
What does it matter if Jarius' daughter was dead or not? It doesn't. The error in fact is irrelevant. What matters is that Jesus can resurrect. This is a hard thing to do, and when I raised Walter from the dead, I was flat out exhausted in bed for two days.
But I am surprised to see myself characterized as "
opposing the inerrant nature doctrine of Scripture." I'm not. Rather I am "
promoting the sane doctrine of reading what is actually written," and I read the initial Greek manuscripts so I can avoid bad decisions made by other translators who for the most part have been indoctrinated into certain theologies beforehand and so see these doctrines already in the text. The real trouble is when one learns that God loves you and he provided this Book for you to follow that Has no Errors! (Which you really aren't expected to read or question anyway.) But then someone comes along and actually reads it, only to find the numerous issues that Cobra chomps on about. And the Baby Jesus gets thrown out with the bathwater.
If you have not yet read the book
"Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman, I would highly encourage you to do so before we continue on. Bart makes some real blunders in his conclusions, but presents important facts regrading the transmission of New Testament scriptures from the ancient days. Yes, the book has destroyed the faith of many who were weak, but it hadn't destroyed mine. It just made me more aware. To a God fearing Christian, it will make his faith stronger.
When I find a discrepancy, I am not closed to the idea that such might be reconciled by a well presented argument. But when something in the text clearly shows that Jesus was crucified on Thursday, well... I will admit to being highly perplexed when I see all these morons attend Good Friday services. It's like they just don't care to spend the time and energy to be accurate in their beliefs. When a portion of scripture shows an error, I (personally) am not enthralled to "an unchanging/closed idea of the Scriptures being errant". Certitude within the Web of Belief should never be cemented into the unmovable rock.
Inerrant in both fact and spiritual truth? or just inerrant in spiritual matters? :AMR:
Cobra, more than I, has a "go to" list of his favorites, so I'll let him provide these, for which it would become your responsibility to be open and honest as to whether the specifics he provides actually do constitute an "error" (whatever that might mean). There are many Bibles out there that have errors, even amongst the corpus of Greek mss. (of course they are mostly spelling errors).
But God won't strike you down with lightning bolts if you realize that Matthew describes an event where Jesus is riding on two animals at the same time (one hopes sidesaddle). The author of Matthew just did not understand the doublet in Jewish poetry. Whoever the author of the gospel according to Matthew was, he most certainly wasn't a Jew, nor was he writing to Jews.
Personally, I'm more interested in hearing why you "ascribe to the doctrine of the inerrant Scriptures" and what that means.
But for any real discussion to take place, I would again recommend you read the book "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman
Zenn
PS: I don't think Cobra is OP. That would be jacob. I, as usual, am late to the party.
PPS: Borrow Ehrman's book from the library so he doesn't get any more money. :jolly:
opcorn:
