From: John Burgeson (burgythree@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 13:40:59 EST
George wrote: " You still seem to be missing the point which I made in my
post of 4 March...to the extent I am interested in it, it's because I want
to know what theological point Mt was trying to make with this particular
arrangement. Of course that is to give him the benefit of the doubt &
assume that he had a theological point, & wasn't just careless. When an
author says something that seems odd, characterizing all attempts to
understand what he or she was getting at as "ad hoc" doesn't seem very
helpful to me: It assumes _a priori_ that the passage really doesn't make
sense, and that anybody who thinks that it may is practicing eisegesis. Of
course there's the possibility that Mt just made an arithmetic error. Smart
people have been known to do that & it wouldn't shake my faith if Mt did."
1. No, I got your point. I just did not agree with it.
2. I am as interested as you are if there really IS a theological point to
14+14+14=41.
3. I do not assume a priori that there is not.
4. I wrestled with this sort of thing a lot in the past year. Francis Bacon
(or was it Roger) said that what a person wants to be true he preferentially
believes. I want the Bible to be inerrant. But I cannot approach that issue
deductively -- I cannot presume inerrancy and then force fit what I find to
that model. Perhaps it is my science education -- now an innate part of my
being -- that tells me the objectivist approach is to be preferred.
5. The fact that the writer of Mt made an error has 0 to do with my faith.
On that, at least, we can agree.
Burgy
www.burgy.50megs.com
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