From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Tue Mar 04 2003 - 13:29:44 EST
John Burgeson wrote:
>
> Commenting on my observation that the genealogy in Matthew cannot be seen as
> being without error, George replied:
>
> "We shouldn't imagine that Mt just didn't know how to count, or that he was
> hoping that nobody would notice that the last third of the genealogy had
> only 13 generations."
>
> Of course, I made no such claim. I did (and do) claim that the account is
> certainly in error. In so claiming I would not attribute either of the two
> "imaginations" above to the writer of Matthew.
>
> "It's one thing to try to figure out the theo-logic which he was using, as
> Gundry does. It's quite another to claim that somehow Mt really does list
> 14 biological generations so that he's historically "inerrant.""
>
> I agree with your second point -- But "theo-logic" or not, the passage is
> certainly in error. Mathematically in error. 14+14+14=42 in those days as
> well as in ours.
>
> There appear to be two ways of approaching the inerrancy of the Bible
> question.
>
> One is to assume inerrancy a priori; take the deductivist approach and force
> fit every problemmatic passage into its own "ad hoc" explanation. Almost all
> the problem passages I've looked at can be "explained" in this way, although
> the result has the Bible suffering "the death of a thousand qualifications."
> Some of the "ad hocs" are (IMHO of course) really strained, for instance:
>
> James 4:5 which quotes scripture that does not exist
> Jer 27 which reads "Jehoiakim" rather than "Zedekiah"
> Matt 27:9 which references Jeremiah rather than Zechariah (I note that
> Calvin commented on this and, in effect, said "so what?") But it IS a
> passage which falsifies inerrancy, except with a very far out ad hoc.
>
> Stephen Davis wrote a great book on all this -- THE DEBATE ABOUT THE BIBLE
> (1977). So good was it that an inerrantist, Pinnoch, even wrote the Forward
> to it. I have written notes on this book and placed them on my web site,
> page 2, section 11. I welcome comments on them.
>
> George, you also wrote: "...In his Mt commentary Gundry says: "To get this
> third fourteen Matthew probably counts Mary as well as Jospeh; i.e., the one
> chronological generation carries two other kinds of generations within it, a
> legal (Josph's) and a physical (Mary's).""
>
> I appreciate that explanation; I had not seen it before. Of course it is,
> like every other explanation I've seen, another "ad hoc." I would say that
> even if true (that is, accepting the ad hoc for the sake of argument) the
> passage remains in error; that is, the explanation does not suffice.
>
> Stephen Davis (and I) do not approach the Bible as being inerrant a priori
> -- that is, we do not take a deductivist approach, but an inductivist
> approach to the subject. But read my notes on his book -- better still, read
> his book. 150 pages.
>
> If one wishes to take the a priori presupposition that the Bible is without
> error, then there can be no debate of course (except whether that approach
> is the correct one). If one takes the inductivist approach -- studying the
> Bible for what it says and not what one brings to it -- concluding inerrancy
> might be possible, but I think one can do it only by turning off his or her
> brain at the church door.
>
> BTW -- another book on the subject is Harold Lindsell's THE BATTLE FOR THE
> BIBLE. In defending inerrancy, Lindsell points out that the idea that the
> Bible is without error makes it quite certain that Peter denied our Lord not
> 3 times, but 6 times. Davis has a lot of fun with that howler in his book.
I certainly do not argue for "inerrancy" in the popular sense - i.e., that all
narratives in scripture are historically & scientifically accurate because, among other
things, many simply aren't historical accounts. Nor do I deny the existence of errors
like Mt.27:9.
& I wasn't attributing to you the claim that "Mt just didn't know how to count,
or that he was hoping that nobody would notice that the last third of the genealogy had
only 13 generations." But what does it mean to say that the type of argument I cited
from Gundry is "ad hoc"? Ad hoc on whose part. If that means that it may have a
conscious artificial contruct used by the evangelist to fit the names into the 3 x 14
scheme, OK. That's pretty much what I meant by speaking of his "theo-logic." But if it
means that the explanation is just an attempt by the modern harmonizer to clear Mt then
we're still left with the question of what Mt meant (assuming that we wasn't just
sloppy).
If - for the sake of argument - Gundry's explanation is correct then we have to
be careful about saying what he wrote was an "error." That's like saying that either
Samuel or Chronicles must be in error because they record different sums paid for the
temple mount, or that either Mt or Mk must be in error because one has 1 blind man & the
other 2. The assumption underlying that is again the old mistake of thinking that
accuracy of historical narrative is the only kind of truth we're concerned with.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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