donald (03/10/83)
Christ Almighty! (as the expression goes) I cannot believe that Dave Lee (floyd!dyl) can believe his own "refutations" of J.D. Jensen's (ihuxk!jdj55611) alleged contradictions. Dave's resolution of Acts 9:7 vs 22:9 is in the standard tradition of shifting translations until the desired result is obtained. It's a pity that fundamentalists don't use the same technique when it is not in their interests: e.g. the infamous mistranslation of "young woman" as "virgin" in an O.T. prophecy concerning the Messiah's mother. Dave's resolution of Acts 1:18 vs Matthew 27:5 is nothing short of astounding. In Matthew it says Judas gave the money back to the priests and hanged himself. In Acts it says he bought a field with the money and "fell headlong" and disintegrated. How Dave can interpret that as meaning the decomposition of Judas' body after death. What about the money? Why this odd meaning of hanged? Here we have an almost canonical example of a biblical glitch and still the fundamentalists persist in doublethink. If you asked me how J.F.K. died and I said that the worms ate him, I would be technically correct, what with ecological processes in cemeteries, but let's be serious... If I sound peeved you're right; this is not the first time I've heard this silly flimsy excuse for an argument from a fundamentalist. If I hear one more reference to Josh McDowell for Biblical scholarship I think I'll scream-- that's not unlike referencing a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" in your MSc thesis. Sorry, didn't mean to be so nasty: more like trying to learn programming by predicate transformers from "An Introduction to BASIC for the TRS-80". Liking the smell of napalm in the morning, Don Chan