Reading this thread brought to mind how perhaps God wants us to realize that
though several people can be at the same event and hear the same words, we
all hear them through our own personal "filter" and hence report it back
through a filter.
That doesn't mean the reports aren't accurate -- surely Jesus only said one
thing -- but since I do believe God "oversaw" the putting together of the
Bible, I can only conclude that including the differences is important in
and of itself. I can see many reasons:
(1) the differences actually represent real people writing what they
heard -- based on their personal "biases," interests, and perspectives. This
realness to the gospels is one of the main things that wooed me to
Christianity. CS Lewis said the same.
(2) the idea that different people see and report the same thing/event
differently is critical to understanding people, God, and reality. Same
thing goes with science. We all have the same info before us, but some of us
choose to believe one thing, and others believe another thing.
(3) Using different reporting of the same scenes is used in several places
in the Bible, including the Genesis creation account, Solomon's own accounts
versus accounts of his reign, the gospels, and other situations mentioned on
the list.
There's nothing wrong with recognizing the differences and discussing their
implications. Its even ok to wonder if they are "errors", IMO. God gave us a
free mind to find him and find truth. For too many years Christians were
afraid of questioning, to the detriment of the church in the long run!
Wendee
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Wendee Holtcamp -- wendee@greendzn.com
Environmental Journalist ~~ www.greendzn.com
Adjunct Instructor of Biology, Kingwood College
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>
> Of course this will upset those like Mr. Eisele who
> think that I'm simply
> looking for "errors in the Bible." I'm not. But while the
> Bible does deal with
> historical events, its primary purpose is to convey the
> theological significance of
> those events, and the different gospel writers do that in
> different ways because they
> have different theological concerns. I think we can hold as
> historical fact that at a
> crucial point in Jesus' ministry Simon Peter, as the _de
> facto_ leader of the disciples,
> stated a belief that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel or
> something functionally
> equivalent to that. This was wrong if "Messiah" meant the
> Davidic hero who would throw
> out the Romans & establish a Jewish empire. From the
> standpoint of the early church -
> inspired by the Spirit of Jesus - the confession that Jesus
> was the Messiah & Son of God
> was inarguably true. The different gospel writers are
> opering within those boundaries.
> As to the question "What did Jesus really say to
> Peter?", I don't think we can
> be certain. My own inclination, & I think that of many
> biblical scholars, would be that
> Mk is closest to historical accuracy in this regard. But
> that doesn't mean we should
> only read the Marcan account. The whole of scripture is
> authoritative, not just the
> parts we can agree by some criterion or other were spoken by
> the historical Jesus.
> (The latter notion might be called the Red Letter Bible
> Heresy.)
>
> Shalom,
> George
>
> George L. Murphy
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> "The Science-Theology Interface"
>
>
>
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