tcmaint@tektools.UUCP (Kim Vandemore) (11/02/86)
Which version of the New Testament is correct? Acts, Chapter 9, verse 26: And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples... Verse 25 of the same Chapter has him leaving Damascus and then goint to Jerusalem in chapt. 26. Galations, Chapter 1, verses 17-18: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after THREE years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. Just wondering... Tad tcmaint@tektools [Though this posting is perhaps a bit sly, I thought the evangelicals among us would probably be willing to use it as an opportunity to discuss in more general terms how they handle the "paradoxes" or "contradictions" in Scripture. I do *not* intend to discuss each of these individually, so you might want to refer to other similar problems. Tad may not realize it, but these things are well-known, and there is a large body of literature dealing with them. But this seems a reasonable place for one of our readers to summarize it for us. --clh]
root@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick) (11/03/86)
I'd like to comment on the issue of Biblical accuracy from the non-literalist perspective. I am hoping that one of our conservative readers will respond to you from their perspective. The following is very much a sketch. The problem is that there are enough issues that a rather long book would be needed. But I think enough of my view will come through to be useful. Before doing this, I guess I should comment on the specific question asked, which is about the supposed contradition between Acts 9:26 and Gal 1:17. The question is whether Paul went to Jerusalem immediately after his conversion or not. If Acts and Paul disagreed about what Paul had done, I would naturally tend to believe Paul. I have seen claims that there are places where it is hard to reconcile Paul and Acts. But I never looked at the passages carefully enough to be sure whether I agreed. It's not clear to me that this example is a contradiction. Act 9 does not say how long it was between Paul's conversion and when he went to Jerusalem. I think the difference between Acts and Gal is not in chronology but in viewpoint. Acts wants to portray the Church as one happy family. I think the mention of Paul's trip to Jerusalem serves in effect to reassure people that the original apostles agreed with his mission. If we assume that Acts is entirely chronological, then we get an extra visit to Jerusalem. But I rather think this is simply a mention of the later trip which Gal. refers to, and that the author wanted to mention it right after the conversion so that the reader would know that Paul's activities after his conversion were sanctioned by the other apostles. In Gal, Paul is having to defend the independence of his authority. So the last thing he wants is for people to think that his activities had to be passed on by anyone else. This is not necessarily a disagreement with the account in Acts, just a difference in context. But one could certainly come up with other passages in Scripture where there are disagreements that are harder to get around, so I'm going to proceed as if one of them had been mentioned instead. Not all Christians believe that the Bible is guaranteed to be free from factual error. My concept of the situation is that God acted in history, but that the reporting of these actions happened via normal human reporting. It is an unfortunate fact that even the most reliable human witness is not totally accurate. In most cases, this is not a problem. Courts and historians often find out what happened in a manner that is accurate enough for practical purposes. I see the Bible in much the same way. However there is an additional issue. The Bible isn't a deposition written for a court hearing. It is a collection of documents and stories with very different original purposes. If we believe the comments of the OT authors, they had access to some historical records. But they also seem to have used legendary material (e.g. the creation accounts). And of course we have erotic poetry (Song of Songs), philosophical discussion (Ecclesiastes), and various other things. My own feeling is that the people who passed on this material knew that they were dealing with various kinds of literature. E.g. notice that in both the OT and the NT there is a tendency to preserve multiple accounts of the same event. There are two creation stories (roughly Gen 1 and Gen 2), and most other major events in the Pentateuch turn out to be presented more than once. In my view, it is absurd to think that the people who passed on this material didn't notice the difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2. I think they did, that they knew they were dealing with legends, and that they wanted to pass on the full range of the tradition. Similarly, the early Church apparently was not bothered by disagreements among the NT documents. There was actually an attempt to combine the gospels into a single account. But the Church chose to pass on a number of accounts, written from different perspectives, and differing in various ways. I think the attempt to get a single, inerrant narrative out of these documents is simply a mistake. I think tape recorders and cameras have changed our perspective. We now have this ideal of "historical fact", i.e. if we could go back in a time machine with a video recorder, this is exactly what we would see. Not a word or a nuance is wrong. As far as I can see, ancient historians simply didn't have this model of accuracy. They tried to convey the substance of what they were describing. But they would create "typical" speeches, representing what the person would have said. I think it is a mistake to judge accuracy using criteria that simply didn't exist at the time. The obvious next question is: well, if the Bible isn't always accurate in 20th Cent. terms, can it form a basis for faith? I think it can. Although I do not think that Jesus necessarily said the exact words in the NT, I know of no reason to think that what he said was substantially different. I've read lots of critical commentaries, and yes, here and there his meaning may have been shaded in this direction or that. But by and large I don't see that much difference in Jesus' teachings as interpreted by the better scholars depending upon whether they accept or deny inerrancy. The main problem, it seems to me, is not with teachings, but with accounts of miraculous occurences. There is good reason to think that miraculous elements got introduced or emphasized as the tradition was passed on. So we may not know whether this healing or that miracle actually happened as presented, or whether the tale grew in the passing. But I'm not sure how important that is. Even the most radical commentators agree that Jesus was an exorcist. Thus it seems certain that he did do things which in the 1st Cent would be considered casting out daemons. Whether this was miraculous, or whether the faith he engendered allowed the person to be healed in a non-miraculous way doesn't seem terribly important to me. (I'm not sure the original authors would even have made the distinction.) Jesus himself continually said "Your faith has made you whole". Now I realize that it may be somewhat unsettling that I am not sure whether Jesus did in fact calm a storm in a lake, or whether this is a legend that grew up around him. But I am not terribly concerned. The one miracle that we can't duck is the Resurrection. Fortunately, on this one we have the evidence of Paul, who himself saw the resurrected Jesus, and talked to a number of others who had. So we are in a better position than usual to judge the nature of the tradition. I think we have enough evidence to be sure that the resurrection was an essential part of the original message, and didn't just get added as a later legend. Even here there is some ambiguity. What we know from Paul is that the disciples encountered Jesus after his death. He does not mention the empty tomb specifically. (He says things that might be an allusion to it. But I have been unable to convince myself that the allusion is unambiguous. I hold differing views on odd and even numbered days.) Given the changes in the empty tomb account among the 4 gospels, one can imagine that this will turn out to be a legend. But I am convinced that the resurrection itself, in the form preached by Paul, cannot be a legend. Of course it could be a delusion. Christians and non-Christians will no doubt differ on this. But what I am discussing is whether my view of Scripture still allows it to support the Christian faith. I'm not trying to claim that we have some sort of "objective" evidence that is going to convince every non-Christian. Note that my primary point is that the Bible must be dealt with in is own terms. We should not try to apply the ideals of 20th Cent. newspaper reporting, but should try to figure out what sort of thing each book really is. And when that thing is history, we need to be realistic about how history was transmitted in that period. Nevertheless, I see the Bible as showing us God's acts in history. Although I see no evidence for a supernatural accuracy, I do think it is accurate as accuracy would have been judged by its authors.