From the Lips of God

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> Ray:

> I guess Till does not answer your posts but I think if he did he

would say

> he did not mean this the way you are interpreting it. I agree with

Till

> that an inerrantist would say the gospels were the word of God but

not that

> this was the technique by which they learned what happened. I know

that

> sometime inerrantists will say a biblical author would write in a

trance

> simply giving forth the words received from God, but this was really

for

> the prophets in the OT. Some of that stuff does read as if they were

> smoking some kind of weed.

> 

> Except maybe for Revelations, the NT is very different. I pointed

out how

> Luke clearly says earlier writings were based on eyewitness accounts

and

> his information was carefully investigated. His gospel is exactly

the same

> genre of the others, however. Paul says he got the gospel from God

but his

> writings are clearly not any stream of consciousness output but a

record of

> his experiences and letters from him - not God.

> 

> How inerrantists get from these "eyewitness" accounts to them being

the

> true words of God (and without error) is their problem. The

information is

> clearly presented as eyewitness accounts, even though we know they

were

> not.

> 

> Regards, Ray


BRYCE
     Ray brings up a good point.  There are several events in the
Bible where either nobody was present, or nobody could have lived to
tell the tale.  The first one I noticed (probably in 9th grade) was
Samson's pillar-smashing escapade (Judg. 16:30).  Who could have
witnessed that Samson caused the building to fall, and then lived to
get the word out?  

     Then there's Christ's forty day fast.  If the Gospels were
collected by interviewing eyewitnesses,  then this event should have
been omitted entirely (with the possible exception of Christ magically
appearing atop the temple with a somewhat sinister and
none-too-trustworthy-looking companion).  There shouldn't even be a
way for the author to know that Christ was really fasting at the time.
 Maybe when Satan told Christ to turn the stones into bread, his real
response was, "[urp!]  thanks, but I've had plenty."

     Finally,  we have Christ's suffering in Gethsemane (in LDS
theology, he suffered infinitely, and the atonement for sin took place
at that time,  but as far as I can tell, in mainstream Christianity, 
Jesus just had a really bad case of pre-execution jitters).  The only
three possible witnesses were asleep for most of it.

     So,  how do inerrantists reconcile the theory of the Gospels
being gathered from eyewitnesses with the fact that no eyewitnesses
could have been present for these two events?


==
Bryce Anderson
http://members.tripod.com/~Idafab/index.html

Thus spake Nostradamus:  "Two nations shall go to war.  One shall lose."  What a remarkable prediction of the Spanish-American War!

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